List of Crap #115: Top 50 Movies of the 70s Countdown!

[Johnny Unusual]

#33

38 Points, 2 Lists, #6 CJones

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare: crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor and surviving.

Year 1979

What's it about?

Col. Walter Kurtz has gone mad.  His superiors have learned that he has isolated himself in an outpost in Cambodia with a contingent of Montagnard troops who now worship Kurtz as a God.  Captain Benjamin Willard has been sent to "terminate" Kurtz "with extreme prejudice" and despite his ambivilance and disdain for the war is ready to do his duty or his country.  Traveling up river in Vietnam, Willard sees the madness of the war first hand, seeing strange events.  Willard also comes to learn that he isn't the first man sent after Kurtz and the man who arrived before him joined him.  As Willard ventures further down the river, things get increasingly more dire until he finally comes face to face with Kurtz... as his prisoner.

What's it REALLY about?
Obviously there's the inherent madness of war how it can spread.  It is an indictment of American imperialism and values and the hypocrisy of presenting themselves as the heroes in the wake of the destruction and death they caused.

Interestingly, philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard accuses the film, despite its intentions, of accidentally turning the Vietnam War into his film itself, linking the two and turning it into a "victory" (Coppola might actually agree, partially, as he stated "It isn't about Vietnam.  It is Vietnam."), .  I'd have to read his book, Simulacra and Simulation, to make a real judgment about what I feel but it is true that it can be next to impossible to make a war film that doesn't, in some way, glorify war.  That said, despite stories of soldiers cheering the Ride of the Valkyries scene in this film (personal citation needed, for all I know its an urban legend), this one comes pretty close.

Legacy
It's hard to underestimate it.  It's on a lot of list of all time best films and is considered to be among the greatest war films of all time.  In addition to that, even the story behind the making of the movie is famous, as covered in the documentary Heart of Darkness.  The film has been constantly parodied since its release, including kids cartoons (Eek! the Cat, Animaniacs).  It also has a lot of very famous lines parroted throughout pop culture such as "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" and "The horror!  The horror!"  The use of Ride of the Valkyries during the helicopter scene has also been parodied and homaged many, many times.

Trivia
Laurence Fishburne was 14 when production began in 1976. He lied about his age.

Johnny's Thoughts
It's been a long time since I've seen this one.  I found it very engaging at the time, but I would like to see it again with fresh eyes.  Also it might have been the somewhat derided "Redux" cut.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

I had not seen Apocalypse Now in it's entirety until last year, after Frank and Trace gushed about it on their podcast.

After watching it I was still not impressed as others seem to be, it is great in parts, but as a whole it just doesn't stand up for me.
Maybe I was expecting the scenes with Brando to be much better, people talk them up so much but I did not think they were that good.

[CJones]

Fun Fact: Martin Sheen really was drunk when they filmed the "Hotel" scene. It was NOT in the script for him to punch the mirror, so the mirror wasn't made of breakaway glass. It was real glass, and he cut his thumb on it.

[Johnny Unusual]

Fun Fact: Martin Sheen really was drunk when they filmed the "Hotel" scene. It was NOT in the script for him to punch the mirror, so the mirror wasn't made of breakaway glass. It was real glass, and he cut his thumb on it.

Also, it was his birthday!

[Johnny Unusual]

#32

38 Points, 2 Lists, #3 Johnny Unusual

It had nothin' to do with me, I mean, I just turned in the tapes...What they do with the tapes is their own business.

Year 1974

What's it about?

Harry Caul is a surveillance man.  One of the best.  He's excellent of spying and not being scene.  So, understandably, he values his own privacy greatly.  His latest job lands him some tapes of a young couple having a converation.  As he uses his various recordings to piece together their conversation to the best of his ability, the pieces fall into place... but the full picture remains distressingly worrying.  Harry worries that this couple might be killed and that his involvement may play a part.  But as Harry looks into this situation, he finds that when he starts looking, someone might be looking into him.  Harry could just do the job and walk away... but will he be responsible for the outcome?

What's it REALLY about?
You might think this was inspired by Watergate, but fun fact, the script was written in the 60's AND Coppola had no idea that many of Caul's techniques were used in the Watergate scandal.  But it is a film that explores the mentality of people who spy and how a little knowledge really is a dangerous thing.  It is also about how fragile and fleeting privacy can be, which is interesting in this era where we often have that fear but are also, in many cases, choosing to give up large swaths of it in our everday lives.

Legacy
The film seemed like a smaller piece, made between the first two Godfather movies, but it certainly became something of a classic.  Hackman says it is his favourite of his films (in 1995, so maybe Welcome to Mooseport shot past it in the rankings) and is one of the great paranoid thrillers of the 70s (an era famous for them following Watergate).

Also, Better Call Saul's third season finale had an extended homage to the Conversation's finale and is about as powerful, even though the contexts are quite different.

Trivia
Gene Hackman played a former N.S.A. Agent who is a surveillance expert in Enemy of the State (1998), and the images of his character in his younger days are taken directly from this film. Hackman's characters are so similar in both movies, fans have theorized that they may be the same person, but there is no evidence of this provided by the makers of either film.

Johnny's Thoughts
The Conversation was loaned to me by a friend who told me it was one of his favourites and now it is one of mine, too.  I love a good tragedy and Harry Caul is one of the great tragic characters who learns to late that there's a big difference between seeing the whole picture and understanding it.

[F-Zero]

I have an itch about The Poseiden Adventure I just have to scratch, but I can't reach it myself.

Does Gene Hackman's character die in the end basically due to a childish tantrum that results in suicide? I might be remembering that wrong. One of my most painful dreads is witnessing suicide by tantrum. The more pointless the tantrum the more horrible it is. My worst nightmares are made of that stuff. I have someone in my life I worry about and I don't think I want to watch that scene again.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

I have an itch about The Poseiden Adventure I just have to scratch, but I can't reach it myself.

Does Gene Hackman's character die in the end basically due to a childish tantrum that results in suicide? I might be remembering that wrong. One of my most painful dreads is witnessing suicide by tantrum. The more pointless the tantrum the more horrible it is. My worst nightmares are made of that stuff. I have someone in my life I worry about and I don't think I want to watch that scene again.

There is a steam valve that has to be turned off, and since everything is upside down there is nothing to stand on, so someone in the group has to jump to the valve and hang from it while turning it (while it's burning their hands), then no way back so the only thing left to do is fall and die.  He does go on a rant against God as he is doing it, over all the people that died during their journey through the ship, so it's more a reverend losing his faith than a tantrum.

[Pak-Man]

So far the only movie from my list is also the only one I've even seen so far, and that's Rocky Horror, because I'm a total Philistine. My list contained a lot of crowd-pleasers, though, and I'm sure I'll see a lot of representation further up the list.

[PsychoGoatee]

Not to name drop it too much, but have you seen Shock Treatment (1981) Pak-Man? It's an alternate adventure for Brad & Janet, and it's one of my fav rockin' musical films.

And love The Conversation, nice to see so much Gene Hackman here.

[Johnny Unusual]

#31

39 Points, 2 Lists, #4 Charles Castle

This isn't Dallas

Year 1975

What's it about?

In Nashville, Tennesse, a mecca of country music, a political convention for a populist outsider is heating up.  Popular queen of country Barbara Jean is returning to the city following her recovery from a nasty burn and is having a hard time holding it together.  Gospel singer Linnea Reese deals with her struggling marriage and the advances of folk singer/Lothario Tom Frank.  Haven Hamilton is an obnoxious country star with political ambitions.  Kenny looks like Howdy Doody and has something in his violin case.  It is not a violin.  The next five days will be  very eventful for them and the fifth may change all of their lives forever.

And that's just a few of the characters.  It's a pretty big movie...

What's it REALLY about?

Roger Ebert probably handles this better than me (my answer was "AMERICA" and that's not a good answer"

Taking down Pauline Kael's 1976 collection Reeling to re-read her famous review of "Nashville," I find a yellow legal sheet marking the page: my notes for a class I taught on the film.  "What is this story about?" I wrote. The film may be great because you can't really answer that question.

It is a musical; Robert Altman observes in his commentary on the new DVD re-release that it contains more than an hour of music. It is a docudrama about the Nashville scene. It is a political parable, written and directed in the immediate aftermath of Watergate (the scenes in the Grand Ole Opry were shot on the day Richard M. Nixon resigned). It tells interlocking stories of love and sex, of hearts broken and mended. And it is a wicked satire of American smarminess ("Welcome to Nashville and to my lovely home," a country star gushes to Elliott Gould).

But more than anything else, it is a tender poem to the wounded and the sad. The most unforgettable characters in the movie are the best ones: Lily Tomlin's housewife, who loves her deaf sons. The lonely soldier who stands guard over the country singer his mother saved from a fire. The old man grieving for his wife, who has just died. Barbara Harris' runaway wife, who rises to the occasion when she is handed the microphone after a shooting. And even that smarmy country singer (Henry Gibson), who when the chips are down acts in the right way. Kael writes: "Who watching the pious Haven Hamilton sing the evangelical `Keep a' Goin,' his eyes flashing with a paranoid gleam as he keeps the audience under surveillance, would guess that the song represented his true spirit, and that when injured he would think of the audience before himself?"

And from wikipedia

In a 1995 academic article published in American Quarterly, Paul Lauter, a Professor of American Studies at Trinity College, compared the film to "a poststructuralist theoretical text", adding that "it invites, indeed valorizes, contradiction and seems designed to resist closure."[13] As a result, he explained, "interpretations of the film have been wildly divergent and evaluations contradictory."

I'll also through in "people are often more than they might appear" especially when Haven steps in at a time of crisis.  It could be scene as quick thinking political ambition but I read the characters motives as sincerely wanting to help, despite being unpleasant for most of the movie.

Legacy
The film was not well-received in the country music scene as many took it as a mocking view of their sincerity and talent but really, that's not what is going on.  For the most part.  The film was well-reviewed at the time and then got some backlash but it is largely considered to be Robert Altman's greatest movie.  And it certainly shows up on quite a few "greatest of all times lists."

One of the film's best scenes...

Trivia
Each actor and actress was required to write and perform his or her own songs for the movie.

Johnny's Thoughts
I saw this in film class and while I wasn't over the moon for it at the time, I really enjoyed a lot of the individual scenes and that powerful ending.  I suspect I'll like it a lot more with 17 years of more wisdom and getting better at liking movies (trust me, I watched it a couple years after having the worst taste in movies... Don't even ask).

[PsychoGoatee]

I've been meaning to see Nashville, I dig some Altman flicks.

[Cyrusso]

I've been meaning to see Nashville, I dig some Altman flicks.

Including Popeye and Mccabe and Mrs Miller?

[Edward J Grug III]

I've been meaning to see Nashville, I dig some Altman flicks.

Including Popeye and Mccabe and Mrs Miller?

I LOVE Popeye. I haven't seen Mccabe and Mrs Miller, but it's considered a masterpiece, so the pairing of these two in your comment seems funny to me.

[Edward J Grug III]

Anyway, that's three tremendous films in a row! Only one made my list though - Nashville.

I've only seen Apocalypse Now once and it was awhile ago, so in all likelihood, it might have made my list after a fresh viewing, but it only just missed out at number 28.

The Conversation was at a very respectable 32.

[CJones]

I've been meaning to see Nashville, I dig some Altman flicks.

Including Popeye and Mccabe and Mrs Miller?

I LOVE Popeye. I haven't seen Mccabe and Mrs Miller, but it's considered a masterpiece, so the pairing of these two in your comment seems funny to me.

Fun Fact: The fictional village of "Sweethaven" still stands to this day, and is open to the public. So if you ever find yourself in Malta, it might be worth checking out.