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Francis Ford Coppola "wins" with a brilliant double shot of classics. Yet another incredible and bountiful year from the 1970s in which I can't stop at just ten.
1. The Conversation (Coppola)
1. The Godfather Part II (Coppola)
3. The Mirror (Tarkovsky)
4. Chinatown (Polanski)
5. Lacombe, Lucien (Malle)
6. Stardust (Apted)
7. Vincent, Francois, Paul et les autres (Sautet)
8. The Nickel Ride (Mulligan)
9. Mahler (Russell)
10. Butley (Pinter)
10. The Parallax View (Pakula)
California Split (Altman)
Thieves Like Us (Altman)
The Yakuza (Pollack)
Murder on the Orient Express (Lumet)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Sargent)
also good: Phantom of the Paradise, Lenny, The Towering Inferno, Zardoz, The Odessa File, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Effi Briest, The Great Gatsby, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, McQ, Lost in the Stars, The Island at the Top of the World, The Tamarind Seed, Juggernaut, The Man With the Golden Gun, Kazablan, The Front Page, QB VII (TV miniseries)
still need to see: Lancelot du Lac, Freebie and the Bean, Martha, Stavisky, A Woman Under the Influence, The Gambler, The Girl from Petrovka, The White Dawn , Daisy Miller, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Man on a Swing, 11 Harrowhouse, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
What are some of your favorites? The more obscure, the better. 
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Posted: |
Oct 17, 2013 - 1:09 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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What are some of your favorites? The more obscure, the better.
There are plenty of obscure films, most deservedly so. A few ambitious ones that didn't quite make it:
• “Caravan to Vaccares” – The films based on Alistair MacLean novels continue their slide to oblivion. Following 1969’s “Where Eagles Dare,” the films are progressively worse: “When Eight Bells Toll,” “Puppet On a Chain,” “Fear Is the Key,” and “Caravan to Vaccares.” It’s a long fall from Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood to David Birney. Another eight MacLean novels will be filmed, but only “Breakheart Pass” will make much of an impact.
• “Dark Star” – Perhaps the only outer space comedy in the past 30 years that doesn’t rely on Star Wars or Star Trek for its raison d’être, since it is released years before those films debut.
• “Flesh Gordon” – The soft-core porn film/fantasy that reportedly caused the Academy to delete the competitive special effects Oscar category in 1974 for fear that this film would win. Instead, a noncompetitive “Special Achievement Award” was given to the effects crew for “Earthquake.”
• “Mame” – Which became only the most recent of a long line of filmed Broadway musicals to flop at the box office. In the 10 years following 1965’s “The Sound of Music,” only 5 Broadway musicals would succeed on the screen: “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying,” “Funny Girl,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Cabaret,” and “Jesus Christ Superstar.” The flops included “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “Camelot,” “Half a Sixpence,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” “Sweet Charity,” “Paint Your Wagon,” “Hello Dolly,” “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” “Song of Norway,” “The Boy Friend,” “1776,” “Man of La Mancha,” and “Godspell.” No Broadway musical would again succeed on film until 1978’s “Grease.”
• “S*P*Y*S” – Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland can’t repeat the magic from “M*A*S*H.”
• “The Sugarland Express” – Steven Spielberg’s first and perhaps least-known theatrical feature. Well-known on this board for its holy-grail John Williams score.
• “Zandy’s Bride” – Directed by Jan Troell, who broke into the American market with his immigrant-themed films “The Emigrants” and “The New Land.” “Zandy’s Bride” paired his star from those films, Liv Ullmann, with Gene Hackman. The earlier films had both received Academy Award nominations, but "Zandy's Bride" was not a success. Although still working today, Troell has never again had a mainstream U.S. release.
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THE NICKEL RIDE is generally considered a 1975 film, since, despite a showing at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, it didn't open commercially until January 1975.
Festival premiere dates are valid, in my opinion - whereas, say, a private industry viewing would not be.
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Wow. Now I'm very intrigued to see "The Midnight Man." What a tag line!
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Posted: |
Oct 17, 2013 - 5:41 PM
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By: |
mastadge
(Member)
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Both Peter Weir and Jonathan Demme made their inauspicious feature debuts this year!
Tentative top 10:
Chinatown (Polanski)
The Conversation (Coppola)
The Godfather: Part II (Coppola)
Young Frankenstein (Brooks)
A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Sargent)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder)
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Scorsese)
The White Dawn (Kaufman)
Harry and Tonto (Mazursky)
Also good: The Yakuza, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Cockfighter, Lacombe Lucien, Blazing Saddles, Sugarland Express, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Mirror
Despite some great movies, this is somehow not really a favorite year of mine -- the movies, while great, are not those that make up my personal canon of favorite movies or ones that I saw at the right time in my life for maximum impact.
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THE NICKEL RIDE is generally considered a 1975 film, since, despite a showing at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, it didn't open commercially until January 1975.
Festival premiere dates are valid, in my opinion - whereas, say, a private industry viewing would not be.
To each his own. But if you strictly kept to that rule, you'd be off the accepted dates for a number of films.
It can get tricky. For instance, Melville's "Army of Shadows" premiered in the U.S. in 2006 and made top 10 lists for many American critics that year, but it premiered in France 37 years earlier - so I would certainly consider it a film of 1969.
In the case of "The Nickel Ride" though, that opened up in the U.S. in the fall of '74, so no problems there. (IMDb is incorrect with the Jan. '75 date.)
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Wow. Now I'm very intrigued to see "The Midnight Man." What a tag line!
Decent film, Lancaster usual solid performance.
Susan Clark again of Coogan's Bluff fame.
Zoobs right, he plays a security man with a torch wandering around the campus at night, think there's a murder at the college and he's the smart one who is the only one who figures it all out. Clever twist I think! Nice little Grusin score. Fairly gentle from memory, but typical Grusin. Understated. Dont think it ever got a soundtrack LP release.
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