ILX Best Films of the 1970s

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am i the only one who always thought the monty python movies were way inferior to the tv show?

i'm having trouble coming up with my own list; i'm a bit bored of the usual crop of classics from this decade (coppola, scorsese, altman blah blah blah) but i can't exactly dismiss them either. a few i like:

f for fake
duel
taxi driver
alien
being there
quadrophenia

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 23 July 2005 02:58 (twenty years ago)

(actually props to morbs for reminding me of real life! it's been awhile since i've seen it but young'un joe loved it)

― joseph (joseph), Saturday, 23 July 2005 03:00 (twenty years ago)

Black Christmas
A Fistful of Dynamite
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
The Getaway
Straw Dogs
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
The Iron Cross
Junior Bonner
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
High Plains Drifter
Saint Jack

― Gear! (Gear!), Saturday, 23 July 2005 03:08 (twenty years ago)

i'm a bit bored of the usual crop of classics from this decade

I'm a bit bored of them in theory, but whenever I actually see most of them I get unbored again.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 23 July 2005 03:14 (twenty years ago)

eraserhead was so bad. i am the happiest man alive for not blind-buying the dvd from davidlynch.com

― t0dd swiss (immobilisme), Saturday, 23 July 2005 05:30 (twenty years ago)

harold and maude, without a doubt.

― bela lugosi meets a brooklyn gorilla (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 23 July 2005 06:03 (twenty years ago)

and brewster mccloud.

― bela lugosi meets a brooklyn gorilla (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 23 July 2005 06:06 (twenty years ago)

La Maman et La Putain
Picnic at Hanging Rock

― jaymc (jaymc), Saturday, 23 July 2005 06:57 (twenty years ago)

i'm a bit bored of the usual crop of classics from this decade

Oh come on. If you're bored watching Patton you need to check your pulse.

If I'm bored with any of these, it's only from overviewing. Like Apocalypse Now.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Saturday, 23 July 2005 11:05 (twenty years ago)

i should explain: i'm not actually bored WITH a lot of these movies, i'm just bored of hearing about them! but yeah, most of them do hold up surprisingly well, despite the overexposure.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 23 July 2005 11:29 (twenty years ago)

(If I buy a DVD player, as I might finally get around to doing this fall, these threads will be very useful, if a bit overwhelming.)

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Saturday, 23 July 2005 12:06 (twenty years ago)

don't forget the decade of alan arkin:

7% solution
fire sale
catch-22
deadhead miles (for you malick fans)
last of the red hot lovers
freebie & the bean
rafferty & the gold dust twins
the in-laws
hearts of the west
little murders

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 23 July 2005 12:08 (twenty years ago)

Wow, I haven't thought about Young Frankenstein in possibly a decade or so.

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Saturday, 23 July 2005 12:12 (twenty years ago)

Freebie and the Bean! I love that film. Also Breaking Away and The Bad News Bears.

Not forgetting A Boy and His Dog, the only good thing Don Johnson has ever done.

Did we say Cabaret yet? I didn't see it.

If you had asked me in 1980, when I was ten, what my favourite films of the seventies were, I would have said The Bad News Bears, The Rescuers, Watership Down, and Breaking Away.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Saturday, 23 July 2005 13:49 (twenty years ago)

My list will probably be herzog heavy

aguirre
even dwarfs started small
kasper hauser
heart of glass
Stroszek

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Saturday, 23 July 2005 13:50 (twenty years ago)

I got A Boy and His Dog as a gift. I don't want to say it was good, but it was certainly different. Better than Mad Max, at least.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Saturday, 23 July 2005 14:33 (twenty years ago)

California Spilt
Who Is Harry Kellerman And Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?
Smile
Letter To Jane
Jonah, Who Will Be 25 In The Year 2000
Night Moves
Vanishing Point
Over The Edge
Bed & Board
The Conformist
Smokey & The Bandit
American Graffiti
Dirty Harry
Little Big Man
Performance
Airport (the one good one in the franchise)

Apologies for any dupes.

― Marxism Goes Better With Coke (Charles McCain), Saturday, 23 July 2005 16:14 (twenty years ago)

Also:
The Heartbreak Kid
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Thunderbolt & Lightfoot
Play It Again Sam
The Jerk
Papillon

― Marxism Goes Better With Coke (Charles McCain), Saturday, 23 July 2005 16:37 (twenty years ago)

some of my favorite new york films of the '70s:

the out-of-towners
three days of the condor
a new leaf
an unmarried woman

― juicy juice is 100 percent juice (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 23 July 2005 17:15 (twenty years ago)

let's throw the hot rock in there too. 1972 redford = hottie.

― juicy juice is 100 percent juice (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 23 July 2005 17:16 (twenty years ago)

and harry and tonto.

― juicy juice is 100 percent juice (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 23 July 2005 17:18 (twenty years ago)

and the sunshine boys!

― juicy juice is 100 percent juice (Jody Beth Rosen), Saturday, 23 July 2005 17:19 (twenty years ago)

Halloween
The Brood
The Fury

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 24 July 2005 03:07 (twenty years ago)

BUMP.

Good good.

http://www.panix.com/~dangelo/top.html

some good lists here.

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Sunday, 24 July 2005 16:34 (twenty years ago)

I wouldn't say so... Dude has Badlands, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Eraserhead as the best of their respective years! And his two best films of 2001 are Memento and The Man Who Wasn't There! Not that any of these really suck, but surely there are better nominees.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 24 July 2005 16:48 (twenty years ago)

i don't think badlands is such a bad choice for 1973.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 24 July 2005 18:26 (twenty years ago)

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music
Pumping Iron
Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke
Rock 'n' Roll High School
THX 1138

― richardk (Richard K), Monday, 25 July 2005 06:59 (twenty years ago)

the new one-armed swordsman

― fe zaffe (fezaffe), Monday, 25 July 2005 07:21 (twenty years ago)

beyond the valley of the dolls pales before the '70s output of meyer's heir john waters (esp FEMALE TROUBLE)

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 July 2005 12:34 (twenty years ago)

Shoot, I forgot about the original Willy Wonka and THX-1138!

― Kitten, the body needs it, the body cries out for Ian Riese-Moraine! (Eastern Ma, Monday, 25 July 2005 15:18 (twenty years ago)

Great decade for martial arts, including -

Master Of The Flying Guillotine (1974, Jimmy Wang Yu)
36th Chamber Of Shaolin (1978, Lau Kar-Leung)
Magnificent Butcher (1979, Yuen Woo-ping)

Also -

The Chant Of Jimmy Blacksmith (1978, Fred Schepisi)

― Mil (Mil), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 10:25 (twenty years ago)

for horror fans Suspiria is a must.

― zaxxon25 (zaxxon25), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 12:33 (twenty years ago)

for horror fans Suspiria is a must!

― zaxxon25 (zaxxon25), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 12:35 (twenty years ago)

Wow I haven't seen any of those Arkin movies. I loved The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter when I was little...

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 13:02 (twenty years ago)

I'm going to make a big pitch for The War At Home (1979)
http://imdb.com/title/tt0080118/

It provided the template for later '60s documentaries, from Eyes on the Prize to Berkley in the Sixties, in how it used news footage and vintage popular music (especially "For What It's Worth" and "We Should Be Together"). It was also very good in its tone--sympathetic but also ironic and objective. If there's a better video history of the anti-Vietnam War movement, I'd love to see it. This one was nominated for an Academy Award.

Though it was a TV series, not a movie, the documentary that Real Life was satirizing is also worth seeing if you can: 1973's An American Family. Reality TV starts here.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0211195/

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 13:49 (twenty years ago)

Scratch "video history" and replace with "film history."

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 13:56 (twenty years ago)

Picking only 20 films from the '70s is faintly ridiculous; how do you pick among the various significant Altmans, Fassbinders, Tarkovskys, Mazurskys, Bergmans? If you limit it to one or two of each, picking them 'symbolically', then the other fans of those auteurs will likely pick different ones. So The Godfather(s) and Star Wars win in a walk.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 13:59 (twenty years ago)

Another vote for 30. :)

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 14:05 (twenty years ago)

Don't mind me, I'm not voting.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 14:06 (twenty years ago)

"Solaris" (Tarkovsky, 1972)

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 14:07 (twenty years ago)

So The Godfather(s) and Star Wars win in a walk.

sheesh, they would have anyway

― fe zaffe (fezaffe), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 14:13 (twenty years ago)

Yep. So why have a poll, again?

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 14:23 (twenty years ago)

The Sorrow and the Pity

One of the greatest documentaries ever...

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 14:27 (twenty years ago)

The China Syndrome
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 14:28 (twenty years ago)

My best argument for a Top 30 rather than a Top 20: Grease. Okay, maybe I have to do better than that...

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 14:33 (twenty years ago)

oh god oh god i almost forgot:

harlan county

― t0dd swiss (immobilisme), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:09 (twenty years ago)

I want to do the '60s poll!!

I might start the nominations process concurrently with this one but wait until this is over and done with completely to get the voting started.

I think that decade is more unpredictable, which is why I'd find it interesting to do.

― gear (gear), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 17:47 (twenty years ago)

My best argument for a Top 30 rather than a Top 20: Grease.

Oooo! Thanks for reminding me. Now I have to figure out where to rank it on the list.

― pullapartgirl (pullapartgirl), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 22:25 (twenty years ago)

Dawn of the Dead
The Wicker Man
Willard
The Brood
Susperia
Phantasm
Carrie
Deep Red
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Last House on the Left
Night of the Lepus
Halloween
Marathon Man
Black Christmas
Jaws
The Sentinel
The Exorcist
Theatre of Blood
The Omen
Alien
Deathrace 2000

― pullapartgirl (pullapartgirl), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 14:41 (twenty years ago)

bump.

I've recieved a whopping 0 submissions so far. 3 weeks and 4 days till poll closes.

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Thursday, 28 July 2005 20:37 (twenty years ago)

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