Favorite Films By Decade: 1970s

My picks for favorite films of the decade leading up to the Napa Valley Film Festival and the opening of the new Century theater. This is the 1970s edition, limited to 20, some with notes.

In no particular order:

The Life Of Brian (Religion gets the Python treatment.)

The French Connection (Winner of 5 Academy awards including best actor, best director and best picture for a film about an anti-hero cop busting a heroin ring, shot on a low budget, documentary style. Hollywood was different in the 70s.)

Apocalypse Now (Unlike most males of my generation, this movie, and not Star Wars, is the defining film experience of my youth.)

All The President’s Men

Chinatown

The Godfather & The Godfather 2

Blazing Saddles & Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks hits his peak with this these two movies. Both were released in 1974 and are still hilarious.)

Murder By Death

American Graffiti

3 Days Of The Condor (Great 70s paranoid thriller)

The Driver (A very cool Noirish film about a getaway driver played by Ryan O’Neal pursued by a obsessed and sort of weird detective played by Bruce Dern. Written and directed by Walter Hill.)

The Conversation (Coppola had a really good decade.)

The Sting

The Man Who Would Be King (Great performances by Sean Connery and Michael Caine, directed by John Huston. It could be seen as a commentary on imperialism.)

Little Big Man & The Missouri Breaks (Two revisionist Westerns from director Arthur Penn.)

Barry Lyndon

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

The Great Waldo Pepper