Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Jan 24, 2023 4:24:27 GMT -5
Man, I've really fallen behind with this thread. I think the last year I posted about was 1959! I should try and catch up, but writing about 12 years of my favourite cinema in one go seems like a fairly daunting and time consuming undertaking, but then again, I'm only gonna fall further behind if I don't at least attempt to catch up.
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Post by berkley on Jan 24, 2023 10:42:58 GMT -5
Man, I've really fallen behind with this thread. I think the last year I posted about was 1959! I should try and catch up, but writing about 12 years of my favourite cinema in one go seems like a fairly daunting and time consuming undertaking, but then again, I'm only gonna fall further behind if I don't at least attempt to catch up.
I think I only made it up to 1951 or so. I've started responding to the last few years anyway without waiting until I catch up. But I will go back and fill in the years I haven't done yet at some point. I think I have from 1952 to somewhere in the late '60s to do.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,221
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Post by Confessor on Jan 24, 2023 11:02:14 GMT -5
Man, I've really fallen behind with this thread. I think the last year I posted about was 1959! I should try and catch up, but writing about 12 years of my favourite cinema in one go seems like a fairly daunting and time consuming undertaking, but then again, I'm only gonna fall further behind if I don't at least attempt to catch up. I think I only made it up to 1951 or so. I've started responding to the last few years anyway without waiting until I catch up. But I will go back and fill in the years I haven't done yet at some point. I think I have from 1952 to somewhere in the late '60s to do.
Hmmm...that's not a bad idea. Joining in from, say 1970, seems a much less daunting task than trying to catch up by posting about the years 1960-1972. I might just have to do that myself. And go back to fill in the missing years when I can. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 26, 2023 12:16:16 GMT -5
Onward to 1973. (just a super good year for movies) The Sting - This movie is just pure fun. A brutally fun and complicated screenplay. Outstanding acting from top to bottom. George Roy Hill gives us just a joyful movie. I honestly can't come up with a single bad thing to say about it. The Exorcist - I'm generally not a fan of modern horror movies. I loved my Universal Monsters. I liked a lot of the Hammer output. But modern horror, by and large, doesn't do much for me. I do rather like The Exorcist. I think that the use of less well known actors was the right call. And Linda Blair was just brilliant as Regan. And the film is still genuinely scary, at least on the first watch. I remember watching it in a big dark fraternity house with my wife (we were very newly married) and one other girl. She had never seen it before and by the end she'd damn near crawled on my wife and I's laps. The Long Goodbye - Talk about a polarizing movie. Nobody in their right mind would cast Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe. And Robert Altman wouldn't be my first choice for a Marlowe film, though he probably could handle Chandler's dialogue. People seem to love it or hate it. I was in the latter camp until I watched it again quite recently. I don't love it yet, but I can see what they're doing. It's kind of an anti-noir. Honestly if the protagonist wasn't named Philip Marlowe I might be persuaded to love it. Mean Streets - I probably owe this one a re-watch. I feel like the importance of this film is frequently overlooked. It was, for me, Scorsese's break-out film. It feels like a fully modern movie and it really is a touchstone for the modern gritty urban drama. It was absolutely Robert De Niro's breakthrough and he's brilliant as "Johnny Boy" Civello. If this isn't Harvey Keitel's best performance it's very very close. Just a great film. High Plains Drifter - Eastwood had shown that he was an up-and-coming director before, but this was the movie that showed he really had the chops. A fun combination of western and ghost story, the film is a love-letter to Eastwood's mentor's Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. Eastwood is excellent as The Stranger, truly a man with no name who may not be a man at all. The screenplay is by Ernest Tidyman of Shaft and The French Connection. No...the western was not dead. Enter the Dragon - The final film completed before Bruce Lee's death this was just an international phenomenon. Estimated to have returned 400 times its budget. And that doesn't include any ancillary monies. This is simply as good as martial arts films get. It's the standard upon which all others are judged. Lee, John Saxon, Jim Kelly. A supremely influential film it's also a damn fun movie to watch as Bruce Lee is at his absolute best. The Wicker Man - Maybe 1973 is the year for horror movies I like. Fabulous cult film that is just super fun. Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee give it their all and it's clear they're both enjoying their work. Subtly thrilling and chilling with a banger of an ending. Soylent Green - I love this movie way more than I probably should. I really don't like Charlton Heston that much. And there's so much silliness in it. But I don't care. It entertains me every single time. Westworld - Overall, a better film than Soylent Green. And it's just so damn fun. Yul Brynner is just menacing as The Gunslinger. I'll watch it any time. The Friends of Eddie Coyle - Excellent neo-noir crime film based on an excellent novel. Absolutely one of Robert Mitchum's best performances in a role that was tailor made for him. A movie that absolutely should have found more of an audience. The Three Musketeers - Just a super fun swashbuckler. It's been quite a while since I've watched it but I remember it very fondly. Oliver Reed and Christopher Lee stick out in my memory in particular. As usual there are many films I've either not seen or not seen in far too long. Including; most of the big foreign language films; Badlands (nope I've never seen it); Papillon (haven't seen it in eons); Serpico (way too long); Paper Moon (only seen it once eons ago); F for Fake (I need to see this one again); The Last Detail (haven't seen this in eons); American Graffiti (I want to re-watch this one to see how I feel now); My Name is Nobody (so long); Charley Varrick (sigh...so long); So what's my favorite film of 1973? Honestly this is one of the hardest years so far. On any given day it could be The Sting, Mean Streets, High Plain Drifter or Westworld. Today...I'll go with The Sting because it's so damn much fun. And 1973 in film for those as need a look. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 26, 2023 13:24:13 GMT -5
Paper Moon is my pick for 1973.
But yeah, The Sting is great. I’ve seen it a bunch of times.
When I was a kid, I thought Charlton Heston was the greatest actor ever! And one of the reasons was Soylent Green!
There’s a lot of great movies mentioned so far. I especially love Badlands and F for Fake. To be honest, if I was going to pick my favorite based on how many times I’ve watched it in the last ten years, F for Fake would win.
Looking at Japanese films, we have Lady Snowblood; Sex and Fury; two films from the Yakuza Papers film series; and Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons, my favorite film in the Lone Wolf and Cub series.
I’m still going to stick with Paper Moon. I’ve been watching it since I was a kid when it was still a fairly recent film. And I still love it.
But, wow, 1973 has a lot of great films. It would be very hard to pick a favorite if I seriously started trying to rank the films I’ve mentioned.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2023 17:54:34 GMT -5
Well, Live and Let Die *was* my favourite 007 movie when I was young. I must have worn out the VHS at times. I liked how eventful it was, how larger-than-life the villains were, and just the quirky fun of it all.
Nowadays, I’m more likely to name The Living Daylights as my favourite Bond film (and that’s so different to Live and Let Die), but I’ll always have an appreciation for Roger Moore’s first outing.
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Post by commond on Jan 26, 2023 19:07:54 GMT -5
I have a wrist injury atm, so I can only type with one hand, but here are some favorites from 1973:
The Outfit (John Flynn)
Emperor of the North (Robert Aldrich)
The Fantastic Planet (Rene Laloux)
Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita)
Battles Without Honour and Humanity: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima (Kinji Fukasaku)
The Day of the Jackal (Fred Zinnemann)
O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson)
Day for Night (Francois Truffaut)
A River Named Titas (Ritwik Ghatak)
Distant Thunder (Satyajit Ray)
Turks Fruit (Paul Verhoeven)
The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)
Ritwik Ghatak is a truly underrated director. As far as I'm concerned, he ought to be just as famous as Satyajit Ray in the West. I really like Paul Verhoeven's early stuff before he moved to Hollywood. Getting to see a young Rutger Hauer doesn't hurt either. The Outfit is an awesome neo noir that is totally in Ed Brubaker's wheelhouse (in fact there may have been an easy about it in criminal.) I was surprised to see that The Mother and the Whore is 3h 40 m. I've watched longer films, but man, I don't think I'm that hardcore anymore.
My favorite film is The Spirit of the Beehive by Victor Erice. Exquisitely beautiful Spanish film. One of the best films of the decade, imo. Also, one of the great performances by a child actor.
There's actually quite a lot I haven't seen from this year. If I could just scrounge up the time to watch more films.
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Post by commond on Jan 26, 2023 19:18:51 GMT -5
They weren't on the list I submitted for the Best of the 70s poll, but I have fond memories of Fellini's Amacord and Ingmar Bergman's Scenes Scenes from a Marriage, two of the better late period films from both directors.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 26, 2023 19:44:09 GMT -5
I’d forgotten about the Spirit of the Beehive, which I’ve seen three or four times over the years. Another great film from 1973.
It just makes it harder to pick one!
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Post by berkley on Jan 28, 2023 1:11:32 GMT -5
I'm going with The Long Goodbye, though there are a lot of other contenders this year: Amarcord, O Lucky Man, Enter the Dragon, ... and a lot of really good, enjoyable movies such as The Last of Sheila. But The Long Goodbye gets the nod from me. My first Altman movie and it made a big impression. I saw it at our little local university film club sometime around 1978-1979. Elliot Gould isn't anything like my idea of Chandler's Marlowe, but then neither is Bogart, but The Big Sleep is still a great film and so is Altman's The Long Goodbye, though it's more of an "inspired by" than a real adaptation of Chandler's novel, IMO.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 28, 2023 4:08:54 GMT -5
Amarcord is a wonderful film...
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Post by commond on Jan 29, 2023 6:24:54 GMT -5
The Wicker Man is awfully dated looking. I wasn't a fan of a lot of the photography or the colors, and the music was terrible, but what a great ending. If you're going to have one great scene, might as well make it the ending.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 1, 2023 12:13:27 GMT -5
Onward to 1974. This may be the year that makes me throw up my hands and say...I don't know. I don't think it's the deepest year, but at the top-end it's as good as it gets for me. (And it's a bit early because I'm going to have far more time today than tomorrow. And let's get some controversy over with quick...I don't really like The Conversation. I get why people do. But to me it's pretty boring. The Godfather Part II - The rare sequel that is generally viewed as being as good as, if not better than, the original. The film is really anchored by absolutely brilliant acting by Al Pacino (I think it may be his best work ever) and Robert De Niro. The film itself is just so incredibly ambitious. The interplay of sound and picture is always spot-on. It's just an amazing film that truly looks at one man's descent. Chinatown - I know that Roman Polanski is super problematic. That doesn't change the fact that Chinatown is simply a brilliant film. The quintessential neo-noir which is anchored by an appropriately Byzantine screenplay by Robert Townes and a great performance by Jack Nicholson. John Huston is simply a great screen villain as Noah Cross. If I had any complaint it's that I really don't care for Faye Dunaway in general. But this is a great noir mystery. Blazing Saddles - Did anyone have a better year in 1974 than Mel Brooks? Two stone-cold classic films that both were among the top five grossing films of the year. This film is just anarchic fun. It is broad and crass and is all the better for it. It's just silly fun that pokes at the conventions of traditional western movies and TV shows. Madeline Kahn and Harvey Korman are particularly funny in support. I sincerely consider this to be one of the great film westerns. Young Frankenstein - I think this is a better movie than Blazing Saddles. I don't think it's quite as funny, but it holds together better as a whole film. But it's really really fun all the same. And, like Blazing Saddles, possibly even moreso, it is endlessly quotable. Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle are great. Cloris Leachman is brilliantly funny as Frau Blucher. Gene Hackman slays me as the hermit. The sets are amazing and absolutely evoke the old Universal monster movies. I had the pleasure of seeing this in a theater a few years back and it was just a great experience. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three - A good crime film anchored by Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw as opponents as Shaw holds a New York City subway hostage and Matthau as the police lieutenant in charge of ending the situation. Just a good solid entertaining movie. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia - To quote Roger Ebert this movie is "some kind of bizarre masterpiece." It probably helps that I'm a huge fan of Warren Oates. And I love that Kris Kristofferson and Donnie Fritts appear as bikers. This is just a fever-dream of a movie that was absolutely savaged when it came out but has achieved cult status in the years since. I can't say why I really like this movie, but hate Straw Dogs. But here we are. As usual there are many films I've either not seen or not seen in far too long. Including; most of the big foreign language films; A Woman Under the Influence; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; Black Christmas; Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More (so many years since I've seen this); The Paralax View; Murder on the Orient Express; The Longest Yard; Thunderbolt and Lightfoot; So what's my favorite film of 1974? I don't know. Really I'm not sure I can choose between The Godfather Part 2, Chinatown, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Gun to my head, I would probably say the one I'm the most likely to just watch on the spur of the moment would be Blazing Saddles. But that's partly because I've seen it the most often and it's just so silly and easy to watch that it takes zero effort. So maybe it wins for that reason. But maybe not. And 1974 in film for those as need a look. |
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Post by tartanphantom on Feb 1, 2023 13:15:15 GMT -5
Onward to 1974. This may be the year that makes me throw up my hands and say...I don't know. I don't think it's the deepest year, but at the top-end it's as good as it gets for me. (And it's a bit early because I'm going to have far more time today than tomorrow. Chinatown - I know that Roman Polanski is super problematic. That doesn't change the fact that Chinatown is simply a brilliant film. The quintessential neo-noir which is anchored by an appropriately Byzantine screenplay by Robert Townes and a great performance by Jack Nicholson. John Huston is simply a great screen villain as Noah Cross. If I had any complaint it's that I really don't care for Faye Dunaway in general. But this is a great noir mystery.
The SCTV parody, "Polynesiantown" was better than the actual film.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 1, 2023 17:09:42 GMT -5
1974 is a year that has so many great movies that I could easily see having a four- or five-way tie.
But there is one film from 1974 that I love so much, I’ve seen it over and over again through the years, it really sticks out for me, even in the same year with Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, etc.
My pick for 1974 is Chinatown.
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