The 1970s Conspiracy / Espionage / Paranoia Movie Poll

I like movies where things go all the way to the top.

this is hard!

torn between conversation, parallax view and 3 days of the condor but most of these are very watchable

what about the ostermann weekend

black sunday is cool too

i voted for "parallax view", even though i think "day of the jackal" is the best movie here. but it doesn't fit the thread title that well - it's more of a really good police procedural than an espionage film, isn't it?

i really like "the conversation", "all the president's men", "three days of the condor" and "westworld".

re: "the conversation" ... what about "blow up"?

I guess it's just that there's something so utterly monophonic and shallow about it's thesis for why so many politicians were getting assassinated

isn't a conspiracy monophonic by definition?!?

what about the ostermann weekend

Released in 1983.

The Conversation

I actually kinda prefer Day of the Jackal to the Converssation.

-- remy bean, Tuesday, 13 May 2008 00:30 (14 hours ago) Link

That said, there's no way I can vote here. Voting activates the protocols that lead to my 'disappearance'. There are too many fun movies on this list.

today's vote was actually 3DOTC

Recuse yourself!

Klute is certainly a paranoid movie, better than Parallax and maybe even AllPrezMen among Pakula's trilogy.

still waiting for my library res of The Spook Who Sat By The Door!

Putting 007 movies in with these is nucking futz.

Parallax View - it's probably not the best movie here but it was the first one that made me go OMG SHOCK ENDING

oh come on morbs what's more paranoid than sending a 7' tall man with metal teeth into outer space with his new dorky yet zaftig brazilian girlfriend

wow, i have not seen most of these. day of the jackal is going on my list, i know i saw it on tv as a kid but don't remember anything about it.

blow out? is that 80s?

1981, I think.

yes.

isn't One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nset close enough for this?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

As much as I heart The Parallax View and All The President's Men, this has to be The Conversation. For the closing saxophone scene alone it deserves to top this list.

i totally thought we'd done this poll before

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

justice is served

http://www.worldwidedanceuk.com/image_library/10/43/907.jpg

triumph of the overrated

"the conversation" is more sad than anything, look, here is a sad lonely man, he lapsed for one moment in his distrust of everyone around him and now he's worse off than he was to begin with. I prefer the bright everyman with a little curiosity finding out he is in fact more naive than he ever would have imagined, that's a far better theme.

and JR & th'Bs posting that just made me realize that L&LD IS in fact exactly in that vein, Bond thinks he knows what he's doing until it turns out all of the black people in America except for maybe two or three are working for Mr. Big against him, and then Mr. Big turns out to be Dr. Kananga in a bad Frank Lucas mask, and not only that but is this voodoo shit for real or what? Totally the creepiest Bond, too bad Roger Moore was in it.

Too bad I didn't post it earlier, than L&LD might have gotten TWO votes.

I can't stand Three Days of the Condor.

"triumph of the overrated"

The Conversation can't be rated high enough IMO. Perfect movie.

I don't think it's overrated, but it does drag.

I prefer to think that it takes it's time, but that's kind of a hallmark of 70s cinema. All these movies drag compared to National Treasure ya know.

Love The Conversation, and nice to see The Parallax View come in second place. Winter Kills wuz totally fucking robbed, though.

My favorite film of this type not on the list: Arthur Penn's Night Moves. Another great nihilist hero/anti-hero turn from Gene Hackman. Nowhere near as "perfect" a film as The Conversation, but a lot of 70s-style downbeat fun.

I prefer to think that it takes it's time, but that's kind of a hallmark of 70s cinema. All these movies drag compared to National Treasure ya know.

it was only a matter of time before someone made a boneheaded analogy.

Hackman is superb. and it's well-edited and tense in places, but it's 10 minutes longer than it needs to be.

Also: Altman's The Long Goodbye. Hell, why isn't Chinatown on the list?

Night Moves is good, but I'm not sure it fits as well with stuff (more noir, less conspiracy.) Could be an entirely separate poll for that stuff (Drowning Pool, Long Goodbye, Chinatown, et all.)

The Long Goodbye's about as paranoid as Elliot Gould's cat. I love it to bits.

I guess Night Moves, Long Goodbye and Chinatown all fit better into the "paranoid 70s noir detective" bin, but as long as we're considering stuff like Americathon...

Which 10 minutes would you cut, Alfred?

Andromeda Strain shoulda been an option

Conversation is great though. that whole "party" scene in Hackman's office is so weird.

i'd kill it if I had the chance

Which 10 minutes would you cut, Alfred?

That party scene dawdles, but I'm willing to listen to arguments that it's supposed to accurately represent what kind of ambiance a half dozen dorks would conjure.

Andromeda Strain shoulda been an option

I thought about it, but left it out because it's more of an alien invasion movie than a political paranoid thriller. Besides, I already have two Michael Crichton movies in the poll (one by mistake) and Andromeda Strain was already in the 1970s SF poll.

I was Gene Hackman in The Conversation for Halloween one year, and played in a band called Andromeda Strain. But I voted for The China Syndrome.

day of the jackal is so awesome. what else is similar?

and is the remake in any way worth watching?

getting a strange feeling that I really need to see Americathon again. the opening scene depicting everyone waking up in shantytowns of immobilized cars and several million people biking to work in LA has been stuck in my head recently

ebert on the remake:

There was never a moment in ``The Jackal'' where I had the slightest confidence in the expertise of the characters. The Jackal strikes me as the kind of overachiever who, assigned to kill a mosquito, would purchase contraband insecticides from Iraq and bring them into the United States by hot air balloon, distilling his drinking water from clouds and shooting birds for food.

Without giving away too much of the plot, I would like to register one dissent on the grounds of taste. There is a scene making a target out of a character clearly intended to be Hillary Rodham Clinton (hints: She is blond, 50ish, the wife of the president, and is dedicating the New Hope Children's Hospital). The next time Willis or Gere complains about the invasion of their privacy by the media, I hope someone remembers to ask them why their movie needed to show the first lady under fire.

Watched The Conversation for the first time last night, and I'd forgotten that it won this poll.

Loved it, Hackman plays a lonely man charater so fucking well.

How did Marathon Man not win this?

because there's a ton of awesome paranoia movies from the 1970s and a lot of them are even better than it?

I guess I have homework.

Winter Kills wuz totally fucking robbed, though.

― contenderizer, Tuesday, May 20, 2008 6:02 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Weird how in the early 70s, when all these themes were nascent, they seemed to define the age, but now that it's largely come to pass, it's mostly meh, privacy.

Spook Who Sat By the Door was recently re-released on DVD - just saw it for the first time a few weeks ago - it's a classic.

15 conspiracy movies that don’t fall apart at the end (a very good list from the AV Club)

Sorry I missed this--some of my favourite films of the decade. 1. (more or less a tie) The Conversation and All the President's Men; 2. The China Syndrome; 3. Marathon Man; 4. The Boys from Brazil (total junk, I know); 5. The Parallax View. I don't know who deserves the most credit for these films: Nixon, Kennedy, or Johnson. (Or maybe Allen Dulles or somebody like that...of course, two are Nazi-related, so I won't pin those ones on them.)

Just finished mass watching all 12 episodes of Salamander
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/07/salamander-bbc4-belgian-thriller-bridge

Good show. Basically a straight-up Eurocrime police detective story, but worth your time if you're looking for secret societies, bank robbery, unfinished WWII business, and Belgian politics.

sounds interesting, will check it out. Although I guess I'll have to wait for a rerun now.

FWIW, the episodes were easily found in the corners of the Internet you would expect to find such things.

Saw "Blue Sunshine" at the ICA tonight; both plot and acting is erratic, but it is very interesting as a 60's kids growing into disillusioned 70's types film. The election campaign and gun store scene also give it a weird kinship with "Taxi Driver". Anyway, this is a good essay on the movie:

http://www.ica.org.uk/blog/jon-towlson-jeff-liebermans-blue-sunshine

The Nickel Ride seems related, from an unexpected director (Robert Mulligan)

http://www.bam.org/film/2014/the-nickel-ride