1970s, group 1
- Three Days of the Condor (1975)
- The Parallax View (1974)
- Black Sunday (1977)
- The French Connection (1971)
- The French Connection II (1975)
- The Laughing Policeman (1973)
- Charley Varrick (1973)
- The Driver (1978)
- Walking Tall (1973)
- The Gauntlet (1977)
- Across 110th Street (1972)
- The Conversation (1974)
- Day of the Jackal (1973)
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)
- Vanishing Point (1971)
- Get Carter (1971)
- Hard Times (1975)
- Sorcerer (1977)
- The Getaway (1972)
- The Mechanic (1972)
*****
More of these lists to follow. So if you haven’t seen some of these, get on it, people. Go. I can wait.
Wow, that’s sad. The only one I’ve seen from start to finish is Black Sunday. Not my favorite movie.
Worth watching for Dern, but also for Robert Shaw, one of my favorite actors. Substitute The Sting—a superior movie, but one that lacks the darkness or grittiness other movies on this list possess.
I’ve seen at least bits of four of those. You’ll be mildly flabbergasted to learn that one of my favorites was Across 110th Street.
Of course, if you’re going to make room for blaxspoitation flicks in these lists, you’ll want to include Blacula.
Plenty of blaxploitation flicks to come. But if you liked Blacula, try Ganja and Hess.
Huh, I’d forgotten Bruce Dern was in that. I mostly remembered it as the last time the NFL ever let a movie use the real team names and uniforms. The last time, for very obvious reasons.
The Gauntlet? Now I’m going to laugh at you, Jeff.
A relative of a neighbor of mine out in California worked at the film studio and bought the 6×6 trucks used to film Sorceror. He built one working 6×6 out of the two and used to run it around the lower Mojave like the biggest dune buggy you ever saw.
Laugh if you want, Robin, but there’s more going on in The Gauntlet than you probably give it credit for, and it features a fantastic performance from Sondra Locke—something you won’t hear me say very often.
For some reason, I’ve always considered this an interesting thematic companion piece to The Warriors. If you haven’t seen it in a while (I just watched it again about a week or two ago), give it a go.
Three Days of the Condor is fan frickin’ tantistic. Your making that number one on the list is motivating me to watch all those movies (or watch them again.)
Missing The Warriors (I agree) and Dog Day Afternoon.
Not missing them—they’ll show up on other lists. Just picked out 20 that I thought were kinda similar in style.
Dog Day Afternoon is on of Pacino’s greatest performances, and the movie is one of Lumet’s best (and that’s saying something). And the Warriors is an absolute surrealist classic. But for purposes of this particular list, I went with Walter Hill’s more gritty flicks, Hard Times and The Driver.
You’ve got a soft spot for political thrillers, eh, JG?
Couldn’t agree more about The Conversation, too. 1974 wasn’t a bad year for Coppola, was it?
What? No Zorro The Gay Blade, perhaps the finest of the Hamilton oeuvre?
Love the political thriller. And a good crime drama. Next set of twenty will include a few more of each.
What, no Can’t Stop the Music???
Yes, more crime please.
I’ve seen one of these: The Conversation. It was a terrific movie, but I’m not sure I agree with its central conceit (having to do with word stress). Nicely executed, though.
Good stuff, though I think ‘The Seven-Ups’ needs to wiggle in there somewhere. And maybe not as overlooked, but “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” always, always deserves a shout out.
Seven-ups—great chase, still not available on DVD. Pelham is fantastic. Shaw, Matthau… Man, it’s amazing to find how many great crime flicks star Matthau, isn’t it?—Charley Varrick, Laughing Policeman, Taking of Pelham 123…
I’d never heard of it before, but this is the second time I’ve heard of Sorcerer in as many weeks. The first time was on the commentary for the “Mr. Plow” episode of The Simpsons (on the season 4 DVDs).
The writers were saying that they were afraid that nobody would get the references that they made to the film (Homer driving his snowplow over a rickety bridge, etc.) and I guess they were right. I’ll have to check it out.
Oh, by the way, anybody out there who hasn’t seen Get Carter should watch it post-haste. A classic British gangster movie.
The Stallone remake, however, is an abortion.
’The Mechanic’ was less than I remembered when I saw it again recently.
Jeff may have been overwhelmed by the mature masculinity of Bronson matched with the nascent masculinity of Jan Michel Vincent. It’s a musky film.
I liked ‘The Mechanic’’s plot, the twists, the last scene, et cetera, but the pacing was off and I kept waiting for Airwolf to show up.
Along the same lines as some of Jeff’s other choices, “The Solider” with Ken Wahl, otoh, is more than it was originally.
Imo, it went from good to great movie upon rewatching it- “The Solidier’ is an early 80s flick, so maybe that will make round 3-4 of Jeff’s ‘Must See’. Given the events of the day, it manages to have circled back to ‘relevant’ —
lax border security
terrorists
dirty bomb
oil fields
and
Alberta Watson: Hot.Mossad.Agent.
Steve McQueen. The guy so cool, he was cool even with “queen” in his name.
“… it features a fantastic performance from Sondra Lockeâ€â€something you won’t hear me say very often. “
And you won’t hear me say it ever.
As for The Warriors, I like the story better in Xenophon’s original Greek. I can’t read it in Greek, but I like it better.
Sneer away Jeff, because – gulp – I haven’t seen ONE of your movies. But, I have a GREAT personality. Does that make up for my shortcoming?
Haven’t seen The Laughing Policeman, The Driver,
Across 110th Street, Vanishing Point, Sorcerer, or the Mechanic. Wasn’t Sorcerer just The Wages of Fear, though? And didn’t it basically finish Friedkin as a director? OK, except for The Brink’s Job, which was pretty good.
Is group two going to have Brewster McCloud? It’s got the Astrodome as a main character, after all.
Yes,wasn’t the Sorcerer a remake of an old Humphrey Bogart movie? I liked the original, but didn’t bother to see the newer version because the reviews were so bad.
Sorcerer was Friedkins homage to Wages of Fear, and in my opinion it’s even better.
The film suffered at the box office from the ridiculous title and its release proximity to Star Wars. It is gritty and tense, and perhaps one of the most underrated American films of all time.
Friedkin came back with To Live and Die in LA a little later on, his last great film.
I’d also be interested to see your top 20 lists of books – fiction, nonfiction, etc.
Well, these aren’t exactly TOP 20. Just 20. One of two of these titles might make my top 20, but I plan on doing a number of these lists.
I don’t think I could even NAME 20 nonfiction books.
Oh, hell. Goldstein’s giving homework. I am so failing this class.
OK, OK, now I get it. You left out the original Rollerball because it will obviously be in your list of the TOP TWENTY MOVIES OF ALL TIME. Right? Because your list has no credibility whatsoever if you omitted Rollerball for any other reason.
I very much like the original Rollerball, and yes, it will be making an appearance. But that goes alongside such films as Westworld and Andromeda Strain on a different list.
Don’t forget Logan’s Run. Not in the same league as the sublime Rollerball, but if memory serves you get a cameo appearance by Farah Fawcett before anyone had heard of her.
I was busy throughout the seventies watching all the sci fi futuristic stuff and missed out on a lot of the gritty stuff. I remember Logan’s Run better than I remember the ones on Black Sunday. And Soylent Green. Let us not forget Soylent Green. Just laugh at me and call me a geek.
delete “the ones on”. Dogs were distracting me.
Oh sure, blame the dog.
If I goof, can I blame my springtime testosterone deficiency? :>
So long as we’re doing early-seventies Hackman, how about Night Moves? Arthur Penn doing seventies-ersatz noir in the Keys, with Jennifer Warren and the very young Melanie Griffith? And a great cheap-existentialist-O-Henry ending.
Charley Varrick; now that’s a great movie.
Hopscotch should make some top list somewhere as well.
Surely there will be a 70s group for “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Young Frankenstein?” Or am I just a lowbrow schlub? (Don’t answer that).
Finally met someone else who thinks Laughing Policeman is one of the great unsung cop movies! The only other guy I know who is a fan of that flick is a Chicago policeman, so I think we’re in good company.
Hey Webb. . . . Blucher.
And by the way, I think the blind hermit was Gene Hackman’s greatest role.
Bruce Dern in ‘The Laughing Policeman’ was just awesome.
And lest we forget: Busting starring Elliot Gould and Robert Blake, and that genre-defining vehicle for Charles Bronson Death Wish. (This last featured Jeff Goldbloom as a psychotic gang-mamber.
Finally – someone gives kudos to “Walking Tall”.
A good old fashioned, gritty, emotional, good guy vs. bad guys vehicle, that deserved more attentiont than it got!!
TV (Harry)
Damn – I’ve only seen 2 of the Part 2 list, and now I find that I’ve only seen 2 of these as well. Wait – was The Conversation the one that ends with the main character ripping out all the walls of his home? Make that three then.
And, yeah, what about Hopscotch? I love that movie.
Whew! I’m 17 of 20 on that one, but one is a soft hit, since I watched Sorcerer late one night after closing time in a tequila fog. I should probably rent it along with the 3 I missed,just to be sure.
There’s nothing like a movie list to bring out the geek in all of us.
That being said, where the hell is “The Car”?
VERY SORRY
Kevin Anderson
Anthony Nelson
Kevin Lee
Sarah Wright
Daniel Campbell
Daniel Turner
Anthony Rodriguez
Sarah Wright
Dorothy Taylor
Paul Lewis
Steven Collins
Robert Anderson
Joseph Nelson
Carol Parker
David Evans
VERY SORRY