I've seen a few of these "Favorite Film from Each Year of Your Life" facebook status things making the rounds lately. I wanted to do one, too, but as I sat down with the various year-in-film lists, mine got a little too annotated for facebook. Luckily for me (and you!) I have ol' Dog Star Omnibus to house my ramblings and rantings. And so:
I was born in August of 1974. I considered leaving off any films that came out prior to August but that seemed like a lot of work. Which brings me to an important confession up front: contrary to how this all might appear, I didn't really vet the below as much as I should have. I did a pass through wikipedia, imdb, my DVD folders, my external hard drive, and then wikipedia again. Even with that, I'm sure I missed a few.
In other words, this isn't really an honest attempt to evaluate the cinematic output of each year of my life, more like a overview of my tastes as they evolved over the years and a snapshot of those films I want to throw on right now in April 2017. It's more interesting to me to see how the same films hit me in different eras and contexts.
I'm sure the rest will be self-explanatory. Let's get started.
The Godfather 2 sucks all the air out of the room in any discussion of '74. Or Chinatown. Understandably so - both are well-deserved classics. But put either of them in front of me and I'll find myself instead throwing in:
I just watched it not too long ago (and not too long before that) and that's the thing: who wouldn't want to watch it whenever, just because? And it's not just the cars - it's the sound design, the locations, the attitude, the scruffy DIY-ness, and the macho anti-heroism of it all. It's just goddamn entertaining, the kind of pure, reckless America cinema that was our best line of defense against the the communists.
Two slightly classier suggestions:
Honorable Mentions: The Conversation, Electra-Glide in Blue, The Man with the Golden Gun, Steppenwolf, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And Zardoz. Because wtf.
Documentary: F for Fake.
Foreign: Going Places aka Les Valseuses. This is my personal bar to clear in the French-evisceration-of-economic-classes-cloaked-in-provocative-sexual-satire genre.
As a kid: Not literally, obviously, but '85-86 I watched Island at the Top of the World an awful lot on VHS. A movie I hadn't thought of probably since then until looking things up for this post. I remember nothing about it.
Can You Believe I've Still Never Seen... Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla? Me neither. Plenty more (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Parallax View, et al) but I want to keep this as breezy as possible. (Says the guy turning a facebook status into 4 different blogs with a hundred screencaps.)
You'll hear "arguably the best film ever made" a lot in this series of posts. Here's the first:
One of the most beloved and widely discussed films in film history hardly needs any further commentary from me (though I didn't let that stop me before) but what can you say? How much of a 911 pedo terrorist do you have to be to not love Jaws? Don't be an asshole.
Honorable Mentions: Barry Lyndon, Death Race 2000, Dog Day Afternoon, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Rollerball (also arguably the best film ever made), Shivers, The Stepford Wives. All classics. One more:
This movie is seriously underrated. I watched it again the other night just to make sure I wasn't Rashomon-ing the awesomeness and am happy to report I am not.
As a kid: Escape to Witch Mountain. Many people I talk to focus only on the terrorized children aspect of it. While I can certainly see that as an adult viewer, such things were a) unremarkable for the era, and b) very appealing to me as a kid. Kid-protagonists in adventure movies need actual villains and danger the same way adult-protagonists do, especially when super powers and aliens enter the mix. This was implictly understood not just by me, I think, but by most kid-age viewers. Adults forget. Bill Denbrough was right.
Can You Believe I've Still Never Seen... Nashville? One of these days.
As with '74, one film (Taxi Driver) tends to dominate all discussion of this year in film. (Although I could just as easily say Rocky or Carrie (or even Logan's Run) depending on the audience.) In my heart of hearts, though, if I had to be the director of any of those - as personally cherished as each of them are to me - I'd most want to be known as the guy responsible for:
Each scene is better than the next, but for me its appeal is summed up by the drawbridge scene. Well, kind of. I could just as easily have chosen any of the Doomsday Machine scenes, or the Oktoberfest scene, or any scene at random. Killer score, though, in that drawbridge scene - "Inspector Clouseau's Theme" by Henry Mancini, one of my faves - so there it is. I chose to emphasize this film, too, over the others because comedies too often get slighted in critical discussion (unless they're by Buster Keaton). Is any aspect of its production (from performance to composition to script) inferior to any from a "serious" movie? I'd never claim TPSA is superior to Taxi Driver or a few others mentioned below, but - speaking to my subjectivity as objectively as possible - it's probably my favorite.
Honorable mentions: Murder by Death, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Network, which hasn't aged so well, but neither has America, I guess. That Chinese Bookie, though, man - what a classic. I've heard it described as overlong and I admit it's a slow burn. But for me it's an incredibly intense experience. Criterion reviewed it about as well as anyone ever could - too lengthy to quote here but worth reading for the interested.
As a kid: The Bad News Bears, Freaky Friday. I consider doing Freaky Friday from time to time as a From Novel to Film entry. But do I really want to? Seems like it's time better spent finishing any of the ones left to do on the list before adding any.
In some circles naming anything but Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind as your 1977 favorite will get you unfriended; in others, Annie Hall. (In still others, Suspiria.) I'd never argue with any of those - I only ever saw Suspiria once but I have no problem certifying its reputation as a bonafide - and I even support ending relationships over passionate disagreements on which movies are awesome. Better over art than politics or religion.
But I've got to choose the one I go back to more than all of those:
When I first saw this - 20 years after it came out - I was impressed but mystified. I kept coming back to it over the years, though, and each subsequent viewing revealed a new layer of awesomeness. In some alternate universe, Sorcerer was a huge hut, giving Friedkin another round of Oscars and cementing him on a different career path altogether. What films did that Friedkin go on to make? Maybe the same ones. Regardless, when you've got a one-two-three punch like The French Connection, The Exorcist, and Sorcerer on your cv, it puts you in rarefied company.
Honorable mention: The Duellists. A little rough in spots, but an auspicious beginning for one of one of filmdom's most consistent maestros, Ridley Scott. Here is an excellent case study of the worth of "foreign" accents in English language films. Is anyone fatally distracted by Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine not bothering to deliver their lines in a I'm-going-to-steal-your-girlfriend-Wood-ee way? I don't think so. (Keitel's New York accent is pretty thick, and perhaps that can be a tad distracting, but he owns the role and that's all that matters.)
Documentary: A Grin Without a Cat, Pumping Iron.
Foreign: Hausu (wtf?)
As a kid: The Rescuers and of course:
I won't bury the lede:
Not just a holiday favorite, though it is undoubtedly that: no October passes without my watching it at least once, but I watch it outside of October at least twice. Halloween began a run of feature films for Carpenter that is even more rarely matched than the Friedkins just mentioned, and we'll be seeing 6 of his next 8 features in the next post.
Honorable Mentions: Every Which Way but Loose (covers the same conceptual ground as Taxi Driver though rarely mentioned alongside it), Dawn of the Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dossier 51, Days of Heaven.
As a kid: Grease, Jaws 2, Lord of the Rings, Return to Witch Mountain.
Can You Believe I've Still Never Seen... The Deerhunter? Actually I probably have seen all of it, now, but never all the way straight through. Also: Convoy (famed for the amount of Bolivian marching powder its director consumed while making it - or rather, while holed up in his trailer while James Coburn finished making it for him), Cross of Iron, Harper Valley PTA, The Cat from Outer Space, and Up in Smoke. Seems crazy to me. How can I not have seen Up in Smoke even accidentally?
Honorable Mentions: All That Jazz, The In-Laws (this is the scene I think about at every dinner party I've ever been to.) I never saw the remake. I did watch the original not too long ago, though, and it's better than ever.
You Should Probably Have an Opinion about... 10, Alien, Apocalypse Now, The Tin Drum.
Learn All That Is Learnable and Return That Knowledge to the Creator: Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Stalker.
As a kid: The Black Hole (if anything, I love it even more as an adult), The Frisco Kid, The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Movie.
And Ladies and Gentlemen Literally the Best Film Ever Made:
Okay I overstate things. Perhaps. Is there ever a time I don't want to watch Moonraker? No, there is not. Just wanting to watch it all the time wouldn't alone make it my favorite film of 1979, but over the years something about this movie has turned it from a guilty pleasure/ nostalgic pleasure into a shining city on the hill.
Why the hell is this? I have no idea. You Only Blog Twice, though, does its usual comprehensive job of getting to the bottom of the Moonraker gestalt; the answer probably lies therein.
I was born in August of 1974. I considered leaving off any films that came out prior to August but that seemed like a lot of work. Which brings me to an important confession up front: contrary to how this all might appear, I didn't really vet the below as much as I should have. I did a pass through wikipedia, imdb, my DVD folders, my external hard drive, and then wikipedia again. Even with that, I'm sure I missed a few.
In other words, this isn't really an honest attempt to evaluate the cinematic output of each year of my life, more like a overview of my tastes as they evolved over the years and a snapshot of those films I want to throw on right now in April 2017. It's more interesting to me to see how the same films hit me in different eras and contexts.
I'm sure the rest will be self-explanatory. Let's get started.
~1974~
The Godfather 2 sucks all the air out of the room in any discussion of '74. Or Chinatown. Understandably so - both are well-deserved classics. But put either of them in front of me and I'll find myself instead throwing in:
 |
| Gone in Sixty Seconds Written and Directed by H.B. Halicki |
I just watched it not too long ago (and not too long before that) and that's the thing: who wouldn't want to watch it whenever, just because? And it's not just the cars - it's the sound design, the locations, the attitude, the scruffy DIY-ness, and the macho anti-heroism of it all. It's just goddamn entertaining, the kind of pure, reckless America cinema that was our best line of defense against the the communists.
Two slightly classier suggestions:
  |
| Bob Fosse's Lenny, and Ken Russell's Mahler. |
Honorable Mentions: The Conversation, Electra-Glide in Blue, The Man with the Golden Gun, Steppenwolf, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And Zardoz. Because wtf.
Documentary: F for Fake.
Foreign: Going Places aka Les Valseuses. This is my personal bar to clear in the French-evisceration-of-economic-classes-cloaked-in-provocative-sexual-satire genre.
As a kid: Not literally, obviously, but '85-86 I watched Island at the Top of the World an awful lot on VHS. A movie I hadn't thought of probably since then until looking things up for this post. I remember nothing about it.
Can You Believe I've Still Never Seen... Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla? Me neither. Plenty more (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Parallax View, et al) but I want to keep this as breezy as possible. (Says the guy turning a facebook status into 4 different blogs with a hundred screencaps.)
~1975~
You'll hear "arguably the best film ever made" a lot in this series of posts. Here's the first:
 |
| Jaws Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by Carl Gottlieb. |
One of the most beloved and widely discussed films in film history hardly needs any further commentary from me (though I didn't let that stop me before) but what can you say? How much of a 911 pedo terrorist do you have to be to not love Jaws? Don't be an asshole.
Honorable Mentions: Barry Lyndon, Death Race 2000, Dog Day Afternoon, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Rollerball (also arguably the best film ever made), Shivers, The Stepford Wives. All classics. One more:
  |
| The Wind and the Lion Written and Directed by John Milius. |
This movie is seriously underrated. I watched it again the other night just to make sure I wasn't Rashomon-ing the awesomeness and am happy to report I am not.
As a kid: Escape to Witch Mountain. Many people I talk to focus only on the terrorized children aspect of it. While I can certainly see that as an adult viewer, such things were a) unremarkable for the era, and b) very appealing to me as a kid. Kid-protagonists in adventure movies need actual villains and danger the same way adult-protagonists do, especially when super powers and aliens enter the mix. This was implictly understood not just by me, I think, but by most kid-age viewers. Adults forget. Bill Denbrough was right.
Can You Believe I've Still Never Seen... Nashville? One of these days.
~1976~
As with '74, one film (Taxi Driver) tends to dominate all discussion of this year in film. (Although I could just as easily say Rocky or Carrie (or even Logan's Run) depending on the audience.) In my heart of hearts, though, if I had to be the director of any of those - as personally cherished as each of them are to me - I'd most want to be known as the guy responsible for:
 |
| Directed by Blake Edwards and written by Blake Edwards and Frank Waldman. |
Each scene is better than the next, but for me its appeal is summed up by the drawbridge scene. Well, kind of. I could just as easily have chosen any of the Doomsday Machine scenes, or the Oktoberfest scene, or any scene at random. Killer score, though, in that drawbridge scene - "Inspector Clouseau's Theme" by Henry Mancini, one of my faves - so there it is. I chose to emphasize this film, too, over the others because comedies too often get slighted in critical discussion (unless they're by Buster Keaton). Is any aspect of its production (from performance to composition to script) inferior to any from a "serious" movie? I'd never claim TPSA is superior to Taxi Driver or a few others mentioned below, but - speaking to my subjectivity as objectively as possible - it's probably my favorite.
Honorable mentions: Murder by Death, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Network, which hasn't aged so well, but neither has America, I guess. That Chinese Bookie, though, man - what a classic. I've heard it described as overlong and I admit it's a slow burn. But for me it's an incredibly intense experience. Criterion reviewed it about as well as anyone ever could - too lengthy to quote here but worth reading for the interested.
As a kid: The Bad News Bears, Freaky Friday. I consider doing Freaky Friday from time to time as a From Novel to Film entry. But do I really want to? Seems like it's time better spent finishing any of the ones left to do on the list before adding any.
~1977~
In some circles naming anything but Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind as your 1977 favorite will get you unfriended; in others, Annie Hall. (In still others, Suspiria.) I'd never argue with any of those - I only ever saw Suspiria once but I have no problem certifying its reputation as a bonafide - and I even support ending relationships over passionate disagreements on which movies are awesome. Better over art than politics or religion.
But I've got to choose the one I go back to more than all of those:
 |
| Directed by William Friedkin and written by Walon Green. |
When I first saw this - 20 years after it came out - I was impressed but mystified. I kept coming back to it over the years, though, and each subsequent viewing revealed a new layer of awesomeness. In some alternate universe, Sorcerer was a huge hut, giving Friedkin another round of Oscars and cementing him on a different career path altogether. What films did that Friedkin go on to make? Maybe the same ones. Regardless, when you've got a one-two-three punch like The French Connection, The Exorcist, and Sorcerer on your cv, it puts you in rarefied company.
Honorable mention: The Duellists. A little rough in spots, but an auspicious beginning for one of one of filmdom's most consistent maestros, Ridley Scott. Here is an excellent case study of the worth of "foreign" accents in English language films. Is anyone fatally distracted by Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine not bothering to deliver their lines in a I'm-going-to-steal-your-girlfriend-Wood-ee way? I don't think so. (Keitel's New York accent is pretty thick, and perhaps that can be a tad distracting, but he owns the role and that's all that matters.)
 |
| Also: Slap Shot. (Not for accents, for the awesome.) |
Documentary: A Grin Without a Cat, Pumping Iron.
Foreign: Hausu (wtf?)
As a kid: The Rescuers and of course:
 |
| Race for Your Life Charlie Brown Directed by Bill Melendez and written by Charles M. Schultz. |
~1978~
I won't bury the lede:
 |
| Halloween Directed by John Carpenter and written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. |
Not just a holiday favorite, though it is undoubtedly that: no October passes without my watching it at least once, but I watch it outside of October at least twice. Halloween began a run of feature films for Carpenter that is even more rarely matched than the Friedkins just mentioned, and we'll be seeing 6 of his next 8 features in the next post.
Honorable Mentions: Every Which Way but Loose (covers the same conceptual ground as Taxi Driver though rarely mentioned alongside it), Dawn of the Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dossier 51, Days of Heaven.
As a kid: Grease, Jaws 2, Lord of the Rings, Return to Witch Mountain.
  |
| Man I can't tell you how often I watched these 4 movies 1982-1983. |
Can You Believe I've Still Never Seen... The Deerhunter? Actually I probably have seen all of it, now, but never all the way straight through. Also: Convoy (famed for the amount of Bolivian marching powder its director consumed while making it - or rather, while holed up in his trailer while James Coburn finished making it for him), Cross of Iron, Harper Valley PTA, The Cat from Outer Space, and Up in Smoke. Seems crazy to me. How can I not have seen Up in Smoke even accidentally?
~1979~
Honorable Mentions: All That Jazz, The In-Laws (this is the scene I think about at every dinner party I've ever been to.) I never saw the remake. I did watch the original not too long ago, though, and it's better than ever.
You Should Probably Have an Opinion about... 10, Alien, Apocalypse Now, The Tin Drum.
Learn All That Is Learnable and Return That Knowledge to the Creator: Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Stalker.
As a kid: The Black Hole (if anything, I love it even more as an adult), The Frisco Kid, The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Movie.
And Ladies and Gentlemen Literally the Best Film Ever Made:
 |
| Directed by Lewis Gilbert and written by Christopher Wood. |
Okay I overstate things. Perhaps. Is there ever a time I don't want to watch Moonraker? No, there is not. Just wanting to watch it all the time wouldn't alone make it my favorite film of 1979, but over the years something about this movie has turned it from a guilty pleasure/ nostalgic pleasure into a shining city on the hill.
 |
| "Well" (clink) "here's to us." |
Why the hell is this? I have no idea. You Only Blog Twice, though, does its usual comprehensive job of getting to the bottom of the Moonraker gestalt; the answer probably lies therein.
~
NEXT:
