#11 — A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974) It’s monstrously difficulty to detail the strengths of the cinematic signature pieces of John Cassavetes. The revolutionary filmmaker’s defining strengths are well-established: a bruising verisimilitude, a compulsion to push his … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Eleven
#12 — Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972) I’ll admit that I don’t even have the time to watch everything I want to (an issue to which some of the omissions from this list may attest), much less immerse … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twelve
#13 — Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975) Occasionally in the nineteen-nineties, I had to explain to friends that Al Pacino was once indeed a great actor, capability of shrewdness and subtlety in his performances. Presumably this shouldn’t have been … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Thirteen
#14 — Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973) I have a strong awareness that retroactively visiting certain films creates an entirely different impact than, say, connecting with them chronologically, especially as they’re released. For example, I’d seen a lot of films … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Fourteen
#15 — Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973) Terrence Malick has so solidly secured his place in cinema as the agonizingly meticulous crafter of exquisitely poetic, emotionally abstracted films–with perhaps the decisive argument in favor of that judgment offered by the utterly brilliant Tree of Life–that it obscures the earthy urgency of his earliest efforts. Yes, Malick has a preternatural ability to realize beautiful imagery, just as Steven Spielberg had an uncanny knack for the mechanics of narrative storytelling from the very beginning, but there was also a deep ferocity to his storytelling in his first couple of films, an ability to … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Fifteen
#16 — The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) One of the risks in indulging in this ongoing exercise in counting backwards is that all my various cineaste heresies will eventually be revealed. Certainly filmmakers will be underrepresented and specific titles that have earned consensus admiration among learned film viewers (or at least the cool kids among them) will be utterly absent. I think I ultimately have fairly conventional, time-tested tastes when it comes to my tallies, which makes the aberrations stand out all the more. Tracking through the seventies, for example, illustrates that I’m completely out of step with the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Sixteen
#17 — The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973) When I first watched The Last Detail, some fifteen years ago, it was the first time that the reverential opinion usually afforded nineteen-seventies American cinema really began to fully make sense to … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Seventeen
#18 — Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) First, a consideration of the pleasure and reward of a perfectly chosen line of dialogue. One of the most famed elements of Steven Spielberg’s sophomore feature film, Jaws, is the way that the technical … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Eighteen
#19 — Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979) A few months ago, I wrote about Hal Ashby’s Being There, proposing it as an excellent choice for the film geek debate over which work represented the true end of the artistic boom in … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Nineteen
#20 — Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978) The legend and legacy of Days of Heaven begins with the lush, vivid, painfully beautiful imagery. The second full-length feature from director Terrence Malick, the film was and is renowned for its … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twenty
Coffee for Two 