#3 Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer

The performances in Kramer vs. Kramer are what drive the story to great drama. Both Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep won Academy Awards for their portrayals of the dueling Kramer’s. Streep plays a woman who has grown cold and distant from the family she once loved. Like many women, her troubles may lie in that she married too young; or, as she states, the fact that Ben’s love of his work is what dominates his life, not his love for his wife and child. Her assertiveness to leave is a sad fact among many married couples today—they don’t feel like working things out. On the flipside of that coin, Ben seems blinded to Joanna’s needs and feelings. His world revolves around making it to the top of the corporate ladder. Even when Joanna is trying to tell Ben she’s leaving him, his reaction is for her to wait one minute while he finishes up a task brought home from the office.

Streep is very good as Joanna, though she’s off-screen so much that her character almost seems to be even lower than supporting. Some say this Oscar was given due to the fact that she SHOULD have won the year before for her role in Deer Hunter. Regardless as to why, Meryl gave her all, as she always does.

 

#4 Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver

One of the saddest by-products of the Hollywood fame game is the Teenage Burn-Out. Once puberty robs them of their angelic looks and innate cuteness, child stars traditionally have a terrible time keeping their feet on the ladder. In a time when image and box office records mean everything, they’ve not only become another person but also carry the burden of not being able to provide what they once did. Think Macaulay Culkin, or the awful fall of Drew Barrymore. It should have happened to Jodie Foster, too. In fact, many people think it did. Popular wisdom has it that she broke precociously through as a 12-year-old whore in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, enjoyed a brief spell of success then disappeared, only to struggle heroically back with her Oscar-winning performance, ten years later, in The Accused.

But this is far from the truth. Jodie had actually been a Face from the age of 3, starring in TV commercials. Then came many TV and film roles, meaning that, come Taxi Driver she was already a seasoned veteran. After that burst of teen stardom, she chose college over a short-term career, then returned in a series of deliberately chosen “interesting” roles, as she studied techniques on both sides of the camera. And now, due to these efforts, she’s a producer, director, double Oscar-winner AND, as 2002’s hit Panic Room proved, a $10 million-a-picture actress, capable of carrying a Number One movie on her own.

 

#3 Marlon Brando in The Godfather

The Godfather movies today are classics. They were the standard by how all other pictures in the 1970’s should be measured. Marlon Brando was a living legend by the time the Godfather movies were made, but he had become somewhat of an enigma in Hollywood by this time. What he gave as Vito Corleone was almost cinematic perfection and he also gave us probably one of the most famous lines in Cinematic history… “I’ll give him an offer he can’t refuse”When his face came onto the screen in Godfather, you knew immediately this would be an Oscar winning performance. He didn’t disappoint.

However, he did disappoint at the Award ceremony when he was announced that The Godfather, wins the Oscar for best actor in his role as Don Vito Corleone, and refuses to accept his Academy Award.

Brando takes the opportunity to protest cinematic abuse of Native Americans. Spokeswoman Sacheen Littlefeather [a beautiful Apache woman with piercing dark eyes] appeared at the ceremony to read Brando’s statement.

 

#4 Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer

Hoffman’s character, Ted Kramer, a father who is not even sure what grade his son is in, suddenly faces the reality of parenting. Once he adjusts his life and begins to become the good guy in steps his wife, played by Meryl Streep and demand custody.

You begin to root for the dad, mainly due to Hoffman’s dynamic performance. All of his best scenes come late in the film, especially one eleventh-hour job interview. This movie was an actor’s dream, and with it Dustin Hoffman’s dream finally came true. After being nominated three times prior, he finally walked away with the gold and begins to move into a new role in Hollywood as a living legend. Both he and Streep won the Academy Award (she for the supporting category), as well as the film taking home the Best Picture award and Best director.

What became a landmark film, Kramer vs. Kramer was a controversial film in 1979, but for Dustin Hoffman it was a role of a lifetime.

 

#7 Murder on the Orient Express

A year after helming Serpico, director Sidney Lumet returned with a different type of crime flick: an engrossing adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel. What makes this such a classic film, and one fo the best of the decade (in my opinion) is the fact that Lumet was able to put together a cast of major stars, and a difficult storyline (you try to maintain an audience, with 14 charecters) into such a great film. Albert Finney is Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in this classic Agatha Christie thriller. An American businessman has been killed on board the famed transcontinental train and it’s up to Poirot to uncover the murderer. Lauren Bacall, Anthony Perkins, Sean Connery and, in an Oscar-winning performance, Ingrid Bergman head the all-star cast.

The movie is good, but the film itself is wonderful. Lumet use of colors, music, and camera angels brings this Christie story to life. It was actually my first experience with one of the greatest crime authours of our generation, and I was very well pleased.

 

#8 JAWS

JAWS was one of the first realistic science fiction suspense/horror/disaster films to hit the screen. A huge summer blockbuster event in 1975, it caused beach goers to go into shark hysteria, much like Hitchcock’s Psycho caused for showers.

Watching the movie now you see that the Great White Shark is nothing more than a mechanical monster, but in 1975 it was so realistic that many theater goers had to leave do to the extreme realism.

Roy Scheider fresh from his amazing role in the French Connection starred, along with several teenagers that met their tuntimely death at the hands/teeth of this shark that threatened the beaches of New England.

Speilberg, who was only 27 when filming started on this his second directed feature film, used special effects and exciting camera shots to scare anyone from going into the water.

JAWS won 4 Oscar nominations, winning three and it launched Speilberg into the spotlight. And the dadadada theme music for the oncoming shark is forever immortalized.

 

#5 Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Louise Fletcher accepted the casting call for the role of Nurse Ratched only a week before filming began. This role was her film debut, and a debut it was. Nurse Ratched role was turned down by the likes of Anne Bancroft, Colleen Dehurst, Geraldine Page, Ellen Burstyn and Angela Landsbury. Louise played the part of the domineering and sexually depressed Ratched with pure excellence. She is a tyrant that has controlled her patients with an iron hand. To her, correct behavior from her patients means they are sane; any other kind of behavior deems them insane. When McMurphy enters the ward, a battle begins between the patient and the Ward Nurse.
She knows she has the power and wields it like a magic wand and she begins her battle with this enemy knowing that she will do what she must to ensure he will not defeat her. Fletcher came onto the screen in a role of a lifetime and proved to Hollywood that she was an actress to be reckoned with, and history has proven she has what it takes. She walked away with an Academy Award for Best Actress that year and continued a long and lucrative career.

 

#6 Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express

Her role as shy, nervous, repressed Swedish missionary Greta Ohlsson awarded Ingrid Bergman her third Oscar win in a career that spanned six decades. Some say this was not her best role, and not even an award winning performance; that she won the Oscar due to her long career. Apparently those have never seen her performance.

She enlivened the screen with her appearance, and her introverted Greta was one of the best performances in this star studded ensemble. Many of the other roles were over acted, almost to the point of comedic, but not Bergman. She delivered a true and heartfelt performance and worthy of her Oscar.

 

#5 Jack Nicholson in Chinatown

Evil influences can make a man do just about anything, and Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes knows it all too well. Jack Nicholson is superb in just about any role he is given, and the 70’s was his decade. From Easy Rider in the later sixties to the Shining in 1980, Nicholson came onto the screen with vim and vigor. In his role as Jake in Chinatown he was flawless. Unfortunately The Godfather II was released the same year, and the Academy gave it’s best Actor award to an aging Art Carney.

Jack came into his own in this film, and his portrayal of a detective bent on finding the truth, but then realizing maybe the truth is not a good thing is powerful and moving. Jack is by far the greatest actor of our generation, maybe of any generation and this film gives one of the reasons why.

 

#6 Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man

Ten time nominated Academy Award winning Actor, Lawrence Olivier was still a big draw in 1977. In a role which would become his 9th Oscar nomination, Olivier played the part of the evil Dr. Christian Szell, perfectly.

When watching this film you do not see a superb actor who could play Shakespeare’s characters better than anyone else, but you saw an evil, menacing ex Nazi bent on finding what he was looking for, and using whatever means necessary to obtain it. He scared the shit out of me!

Olivier did not win the Oscar that year for Best Supporting Actor, but he should have as all his roles, this one was excellent and Olivier excelled. He did go on and become nominated again in 1979 for his role in the Boys in Brazil, and won an honorary Oscar that same year.