When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1979, it gave its Best Picture award to Kramer vs. Kramer. That isn't a bad movie, but it's a tad too earnest for me. I prefer these:
1. Being There
Directed by Hal Ashby
Written by Jerzy Kosinski and Robert C. Jones, from a novel by Kosinski
Hal Ashby may be the most undersung American filmmaker of the 1970s, and this satire is his crowning achievement. After that the hammer came down, the New Hollywood era ended, and he spent the last few years of his life snorting cocaine and directing crap like Let's Spend the Night Together and 8 million ways to die. RIP.
2. Life of Brian
Directed by Terry Jones
Written by Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin
BRIAN: "You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!"
CROWD: "Yes, we're all individuals!"
3. Manhattan
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Allen and Marshall Brickman
Orson Welles once called Woody Allen "a man who presents himself at his worst to get laughs, in order to free himself from his hang-ups. Everything he does on the screen is therapeutic." In this case, I gather it worked better as comedy than as therapy.
4. Apocalypse Now
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Written by Coppola, John Miluis, and Michael Herr, from a novel by Joseph Conrad
When the New Hollywood died, Coppola did a better job of surviving than Ashby did. But as with Being There, there's a bright line that separates the movies he made up through this one from all the pictures that came afterward.
5. Wise Blood
Directed by John Huston
Written by Benedict and Michael Fitzgerald, from a novel by Flannery O'Connor
The book is too good for any adaptation to equal it, but this one comes closer than anyone had a right to expect.
6. The Third Generation
Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Experiments with overlapping sound, a large cast with no clear protagonist, withering satire that doesn't spare anyone—if Robert Altman made a movie about German terrorists, it would look like this.
7. Winter Kills
Directed by William Richert
Written by Richert, from a novel by Richard Condon
It's like JFK, but with a sense of humor.
8. Escape from Alcatraz
Directed by Don Siegel
Written by Richard Tuggle
Clint Eastwood as Number Six, Patrick McGoohan as Number Two.
9. Murder by Decree
Directed by Bob Clark
Written by John Hopkins
The Sherlock Holmes mystery as '70s conspiracy thriller.
10. All That Jazz
Directed by Bob Fosse
Written by Fosse and Robert Alan Aurthur
I've seen artists attack themselves before (cf. Manhattan, above), but I had no idea a musical could be so self-lacerating.
Honorable mentions:
11. The Great Santini (Lewis John Carlino)
12. Me Vang Nha (Nguyen Khanh Du)
13. Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog)
14. The Tin Drum (Volker Schlöndorff)
15. Alien (Ridley Scott)
16. The Brood (David Cronenberg)
17. The Muppet Movie (James Frawley)
18. Scum (Alan Clarke)
19. A Perfect Couple (Robert Altman)
20. The Castle of Cagliostro (Hayao Miyazaki)
Of the films of 1979 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Zombi 2 and Mr. Mike's Mondo Video.
