1970s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[domino harvey]

Swo PMed me to inform me to correct my guess and let me know that the director is actually Comedy Joke Answer

[matrixschmatrix]

Hey, these are due at midnight eastern tomorrow, right? I don't want to submit one until the last possible moment, as I have a lot I wanted to squeeze in.

[swo17]

The official drop-dead deadline is sometime shortly after I wake up Monday morning Mountain time.

[Yojimbo]

Hey, these are due at midnight eastern tomorrow, right? I don't want to submit one until the last possible moment, as I have a lot I wanted to squeeze in.

......before voting for 50 of 'the usual suspects'!

[domino harvey]

I've already set my alarm for 230 Monday morning so I can crank call Swo's house and wake everyone up though, so fair warning

[Yojimbo]

I've already set my alarm for 230 Monday morning so I can crank call Swo's house and wake everyone up though, so fair warning

Just be careful that he doesn't hold off on releasing the final tallies for an extra 7 days, out of spite for having his beauty sleep disturbed!

[swo17]

Actually, out of preemptive spite, I've already posted the results somewhere on this forum, hidden away as an edit to a post that I made some time in the last six years. Good luck finding it!

[Yojimbo]

Actually, out of preemptive spite, I've already posted the results somewhere on this forum, hidden away as an edit to a post that I made some time in the last six years. Good luck finding it!

So much for Mat fitting in another 10 obscure films before the deadline!

[knives]

Surprised no one called Dom out on his blech. It's not my favorite film (didn't even make my list), but it's more than earned its stature.

[Yojimbo]

Surprised no one called Dom out on his blech. It's not my favorite film (didn't even make my list), but it's more than earned its stature.

We all know that Dom has very individual tastes though; and very difficult to 'tie down', taste-wise

[matrixschmatrix]

Hey, these are due at midnight eastern tomorrow, right? I don't want to submit one until the last possible moment, as I have a lot I wanted to squeeze in.

......before voting for 50 of 'the usual suspects'!

I do literally plan on voting for The Usual Suspects fifty times but my tastes are as valid as any others

[Yojimbo]

Hey, these are due at midnight eastern tomorrow, right? I don't want to submit one until the last possible moment, as I have a lot I wanted to squeeze in.

......before voting for 50 of 'the usual suspects'!

I do literally plan on voting for The Usual Suspectsp fifty times but my tastes are as valid as any others

Wrong decade, Mat!

[Forrest Taft]

The ones that almost made my list:
51. Sisters (De Palma, 1973)
52. Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975)
53. Juggernaut (Lester, 1974)
54. Cockfighter (Hellman, 1974)
55. The Driver (Hill, 1978)
56. Badlands (Malick, 1973)
57. Trafic (Tati, 1971)
58. Harold and Maude (Ashby, 1971)
59. Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
60. Soldier of Orange (Verhoeven, 1977)
61. Frenzy (Hitchcock, 1972)
62. Robin and Marian (Lester, 1976)

[Shrew]

Last minute hopeless recommendation of a film I haven't seen mentioned in this thread and didn't make previous lists: Miyazaki's first film, The Castle of Cagliostro is eligible for this decade. It doesn't have the thematic depth of Miyazaki's later works, but it's an incredibly fun, charming film. I expect some fans of the original series might take issue with how makes the titular protagonist far nobler (and less pink) and downplays the usual sexualization of its female characters, but I think those are improvements, and they particularly well within the confines of the film.

And even though it doesn't really matter, I watched Quintet so I could write up all the Altman this decade, so I'm going damn well going to finish this.

3 Women- My top Altman for the decade, and a deeply unsettling but beautiful film. Rewatching it this time, I was struck by how Altman color-codes the characters but then doesn't pull the obvious trick by switching their pallettes after things get crazy. Indeed, Pinky and Millie don't so much switch identities, but become idealized versions of each other. Pinky becomes the modern girl Millie wishes she was, and Millie becomes the caring, sensitive friend that Pinky thought she was. In a way it goes beyond identity theft into dream theft.

I also watched Black Moon for this project, and that is an awful film, but it reminded me of 3 Women. Both seem to be surreal attempts by progressive directors who didn't always progressively portray women to grapple with the rise of second-wave feminism. But while Malle breaks that down into both an overly literal and obtusely metaphorical war of the sexes, Altman created something that truly challenged patriarchal structures.

A Wedding
I feel A Wedding is perpetually doomed to be left behind in Altman's 70s. I love the film (minus perhaps the sudden climactic actions of Geraldine Chaplin,who is otherwise great) but it's not as moving or perceptive as Nashville or as irreverently funny as MASH. My favorite of the storylines is the romance between Carol Burnett and Pat McCormick, which moves easily from absurd to sweet to tragic.

A Perfect Couple
Fine, funny, often sweet, but overlong. It doesn't help that Dooley's horribly insular family seems ripped from another film entirely. Henry Gibson did fine work in Altman's other films, but his work here is awkward caricature (predicting the greater horrors of Star Trek's Profit and Lace). Heflin's band is better, but their music has not aged well at all.

Buffalo Bill and the Indians
The good-- the opening credits with the stunt rehearsal. Gets the film's point across clearly and effectively, so lets hammer at that for another 120 minutes.
The bad-- Dear God, this film falls so hard into self-parody I'm half convinced Glen Beck invented a time machine and came back to the Bicentennial to make this film as a right-wing call-to-arms after the fall of Nixon. Did you know every myth about the American West was false? Did you further know that everyone out there was an irredeemably terrible human being? Did you know Sitting Bull just wanted to sit impassively while all around him rejected his humble requests? That Grover Cleveland took time out from being one of the more effective Presidents of the era to play the fool at roadshows? And oh hey, did you know that Robert Altman thinks the Star Spangled Banner is stupid? Can we stick yet another jab at it in here somewhere?

Quintet
As Paul Newman marched interminably through the snow, off to who-the-fuck-caresville, thoughts raced--no more like trickled out of a frozen pipe--through my mind. Why? Why get this cast for this? Why the vaseline cinematography? Why anything? How did two of America's greatest actors and directors create such awful films together? Is it worse than Buffalo Bill? Buffalo Bill is an agonizingly awful film, while Quintet is simply that deadliest of pejoratives--boring.

At least casting Fernando Ray as some figure of undefined authority and nobility makes sense. And the data banks are fun cheap set design. But as annoying as Buffalo Bill can get, I think I have declare Quintet the worst Altman film. Because not many films try to kill off "life" in the first act, and then endeavor to take that from audience as well.

[domino harvey]

After seeing it invoked by zedz as a companion piece to Nashville's messy style, A Wedding was actually the last film I watched before putting a lid on viewings for this list and I liked it a lot, even if it didn't add up to much for me. Honestly, the best part was how Altman managed to capture how a wedding reception feels, with distant relatives swarming about and palatial estates and people trying to use restrooms (or, in one amusing recurring joke, trying to find the restroom). I didn't buy the finale, though, which seemed like a desperate attempt to attach meaning to a meandering by-design narrative (Nashville did it better, obv)

[Gregory]

A Perfect Couple
Fine, funny, often sweet, but overlong. It doesn't help that Dooley's horribly insular family seems ripped from another film entirely. Henry Gibson did fine work in Altman's other films, but his work here is awkward caricature (predicting the greater horrors of Star Trek's Profit and Lace). Heflin's band is better, but their music has not aged well at all.

I thought his family was the most interesting thing about the film. What sinks the film for me is Keepin’ ’Em Off The Streets. The movie seemed like a vehicle to promote this hopeless band of out-of-work actors who knew how to play some music. It's unbelievable how much screen time they get—ten or more songs if I recall correctly.

[Yojimbo]

I haven't seen A Perfect Couple, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Quintet, but I have seen A Wedding and I wouldn't place it even close to top rank Altmans, and a number of superior Altmans didn't even make my 50.

[Shrew]

As awful as Keepin' Em Off the Streets' music is (also odd how the name gets casually introduced in the film, as if they were some band we should already know), I liked them fine as actors, and enjoyed the dynamics between the group. For me, Dooley's family clashed with the relative naturalism of the rest of the film, excepting some associative editing and the "perfect couple" gag. (That couple looks like something out of a Bunuel film--older man, younger woman, absurdly bourgeois). They seemed like a cartoon parody of a rich insular family, rather than a real one. That may just be a product of their already-dated-at-the-time social codes looking all the more bizarre 35 years later.

[Yojimbo]

The ones that almost made my list:
51. Sisters (De Palma, 1973)
52. Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975)
53. Juggernaut (Lester, 1974)
54. Cockfighter (Hellman, 1974)
55. The Driver (Hill, 1978)
56. Badlands (Malick, 1973)
57. Trafic (Tati, 1971)
58. Harold and Maude (Ashby, 1971)
59. Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
60. Soldier of Orange (Verhoeven, 1977)
61. Frenzy (Hitchcock, 1972)
62. Robin and Marian (Lester, 1976)

Plenty of fun films among your 'nearly made its', although I'm disappointed that you didn't find room for Frenzy, which I've just delighted in again recently, to coincide with my purchase of the 'Van Der Valk' box-set.

[swo17]

Wow, thanks to very high placements on all five lists that I've received so far today, a film that last night wasn't even in the top 10 is now comfortably our new #1! For now anyway...

[Yojimbo]

Wow, thanks to very high placements on all five lists that I've received so far today, a film that last night wasn't even in the top 10 is now comfortably our new #1! For now anyway...

Hmmm...we look forward to further updates between now and close of the polls

[thirtyframesasecond]

Wow, thanks to very high placements on all five lists that I've received so far today, a film that last night wasn't even in the top 10 is now comfortably our new #1! For now anyway...

Well I would be delighted if it's what I think it is!

[domino harvey]

I'm just ready for the 80s list to start more than I'm curious about the results for this one (true of every list though!)

[knives]

Yes, I've already stock piled more than enough '80s films and even have my spotlight jimmer jammer written up.

[domino harvey]

Yeah, I got a jump-start on 80s viewings this weekend and culled together 80s titles from my unwatched aquifer for forthcoming list purposes. Maybe this will be the round where I actually get through most or all of my eligible titles, but knowing how it usually goes, it'll probably end up with me buying a whole bunch of additional 80s movies over the course of the project with the end result netting little in the way of headway on the yet-to-be-viewed discs