#9 Kramer vs. Kramer

In Kramer vs. Kramer, we see two of this generations best actors at their finest. Meryl Streep plays Joanna Kramer, a Smith College graduate, who has been a stay at home mom and now decides she wants to venture out of the house and find herself. Being neglected by her husband Ted, played by Dustin Hoffman doesn’t help matters at home. He is shocked at his wife’s decision and is left to raise Billy, their son by himself. With the help of his neighbor and Joanna’s friend, Margaret, played excellently by Jane Alexander. Ted becomes more invested in raising Billy than in his job (which he eventually loses).
About a year and a half after leaving, Joanna returns and decides to claim Billy and a custody battle ensues.

The passion and the emotion in this film is wrenching. Dustin Hoffman is most powerful as he states to the court his reasons of wanting custody of the child. Streep is at her finest portraying a mother that needs and wants her son in her life as well as a career.

Released in 1979, it won five Academy Awards in 1980, Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor and Actress.

 

#10 Chinatown

The film marked French-born Polish director Roman Polanski’s return to Hollywood five years after the gruesome 1969 Manson murders that took the life of his actress wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the Charles Manson Family. One of my favorite directors this would also be the last film Polanski would make on location in the US. It was also supposedly during the making of this film that he would be indicted and convicted with the 1977 statutory rape (and drugging) of a 13 year-old girl (later identified as Samantha Geimer) while at the home of star/actor Jack Nicholson (absent at the time), and had to flee to Europe as a fugitive. But enough about the director.

The film was a fall back to the old studio detective films of the 40’s, the classic detective/film noir genre elements, mystery, romace and suspense. Set in 1937, the first scene opens in the upscale office of a Los Angeles private detective-hero, an overdressed character named J. J. (Jake) Gittes (Jack Nicholson). He’s a former cop who now specializes in investigations involving messy, ‘dirty’ divorce cases and extra-marital affairs. And here is just the beginning of the story.

Jack Nicholson, as always is superb in this dark, and somewhat disturbing film, and he wrestles throughout trying to make bad look good, only to find more and more of the story unravel, failing to proove that good triumphs over evil.

This movie if released a year later, probably would have swept the Oscars due to Godfather Part II, but out of eleven Academy Award nominations, only one took the Oscar home, Best Original Screenplay for Robert Towne. Chinatown however did win four of its seven nominations at the 32nd Annual Golden Globes ceremony: it defeated Coppola’s film for the Best Picture-Drama award; Polanski won the Best Director award; Jack Nicholson won the Best Actor in a Leading Role-Drama award; and Robert Towne won the Best Screenplay honor.

 

#7 Liza Minnelli in Cabaret

Liza Minnelli, the daughter of actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli had already made a name for herself in 1965 for being the youngest actress to have ever won a Tony Award in the show, Flora, the Red Menace.

When coming to the big screen critics were ready to pounce, but Liza suprised them all. Her role as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, as an American singer in 1930s Berlin. She falls in love with a bi-sexual man and the story goes on. (Sounds very famillar to her life story)

Liza wooed audiences and critics alike with her raw performance, dance and song. She also went on to win the Oscar for Best Actress that year.

 

#8 Linda Blair in The Exorcist

Even today thirty three years later, Linda Blair is recognized as the blasphemous, vomit-spewing little girl from in the William Friedkin horror movie, The Exorcist.

“The Exorcist” was the zenith of Blair’s Hollywood career: She was nominated for an Oscar, and won a best supporting actress Golden Globe award for the role of Regan.

Even though her portrayl of the possessed little girl was phenomenal, her career since then has languished. It was downhill from there. Blair went on to star in such B flicks as “Roller Boogie” (1979) “Red Heat” (1985), “Repossessed” (1990) and “Bedroom Eyes II” (1990).

 

#7 George C. Scott – Patton

For a long time when I saw pictures of George C. Scott, I immediately thought it was a picture of General George Patton. The reason for this? After seeing him in this role I associated Scott as Patton.

One of the most difficult things to do on film is to portray a famous individual. From Patty Duke as Helen Keller to Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, there have been a magnitude of actors that have pulled off this ability, and done it well. Others are not as convincing. But those that are are usually showered with awards.

George C. Scott was the ultimate Patton. His mannerisms, his personality, his arrogance, and his humbleness WAS Patton. I became obsessed with this man after seeing Scott’s portrayal of one of the greatest leaders of our country. It is hard to imagine anyone else playing this colorful, egotistical character than Scott. But surprisingly the role was also considered by Burt Lancaster, Rod Steiger, Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum and John Wayne.

Scott won the Best Actor Oscar for this role, but chose not to accept it in true George C. Scott character.

 

#8 Malcolm McDowell – A Clockwork Orange

Either looked over or snubbed, Malcolm McDowell did not receive an Academy Award nomination for his most memorable role to date, in A Clockwork Orange. Even though the movie itself garnered 4 other nominations including Best Picture, Malcolm’s extraordinary work in this chilling film.

Malcolm plays Alex de Large the film’s main hero/protagonist and he narrates a large portion of the movie. He is a delinquent that is obsessed with rape and Beethoven. Set in the future he is a volunteer to aversion therapy, in the government’s ability to solve a staggering crime rate.

Malcolm is brilliant, and even after 30 years this movie and his portrayal will cause you to be speechless for a matter of minutes after viewing. There has only been one other movie and characterization that caused me to have this reaction which was Hilary Swank in Boy’s Don’t Cry.

Unfortunately Malcolm became typecast as psychotic villains and was never really able to become a great actor, and later had the unfortunate task to play the villain that kills Captain Kirk in the Star Trek phenomena.

 

#12 Julia

Julia, which is based on one of the portraits Lillian Hellman wrote in her book of memoirs, PENTIMENTO, about her lifelong friend Julia. Jane Fonda was excellent in this role, and if you look at pictures of Lillian Hellman during this time frame, you can actually see a resemblence between her and Jane Fonda’s portrayl of her. Vanessa Redgrave as always was brillant.

Even though there were and still are many speculations about the truth of Hellman’s memiors and who was the real Julia, the movie was extraordinary. One of the few “women” moives that made it big during the 70’s.

 

#13 Apocalypse Now

The first time I saw this movie, I had just graduated High School and went with friends to see what I had heard was a disturbing Vietnam War movie. What I witnessed was much more than a movie about Vietnam. It is one of the first times I became so engrossed in a film that I had to see it again the next day to understand what it was really all about. The cinematography, the music, and the superb acting was a study in how a movie should be made.

The film tells about a personally tomented US Army assassin (played by Martin Sheen) who’s mission was to ‘terminate’ what had become a dangerous, and lawless warlord. His journey became both a mental and physical one, and you immediately became drawn into his psyche. The target of his assasination was former Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando) who had gone AWOL and become a self-appointed god, and rules a band of native warriors in the jungle. As I watched it the first time I immediately thought of an adult Lord of the Flies tale, and I got exactly what I expected.

“Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. They brought it up to me like room service…It was a real choice mission – and when it was over, I never want another…” Say’s Sheen’s character and you become part of this mission.

This was also my first glimpse at the actor Martin Sheen and after viewing his perfomrance I became a life long fan of his work. The movie was brillantly directed (Francis Ford Coppola) as everything worked together; the camera, the music, the actors and the locations. Even today when I sit down to watch this masterpiece I walk away a bit disturbed.

The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Robert Duvall), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Film Editing, but the film won only two well-deserved awards: Best Cinematography (Vittorio Storaro) and Best Sound.

 

#14 Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is great filmmaking. Its success is technical, not story. While being much more a technical achievement than a success dramatically, the film does still employ some great acting talent. After almost every other male actor in Hollywood had turned Spielberg down, Richard Dreyfuss, having previously worked with Spielberg on Jaws, was cast as Roy Neary, a man obsessed by aliens and Teri Garr who plays his harassing wife Ronnie.

The film follows the lives of various characters, including Dreyfuss, and a distraught mother named Gillian (Melinda Dillon), and her young son Barry (Cary Guffey), as they are lured to Devil’s Mountain in Wyoming, to experience a spectacular, extra-terrestrial encounter.

With Pre-Digital special effects, the visual and special effects of the alien’s mothership are spectacular. This film help usher in the era of blockbuster sci-fi films as well as the push for outstanding special effects which led to today’s digital effects.

What sets this film apart from the former B Sci-Fi movies of the past is that the aliens are loving and beneficent, not the raging creatures lusting for human lives as found in most other Hollywood movies.

 

#15 The French Connection

In 1971, William Friedkin directed this classic police drama, a commercial breakthrough film for him. He with producer Phillip D’Antoni put together a true to life film about the largest narcotics seizure that took place in 1962. The style in which they brought The French Connection together (semi-documentary) was innovative to say the least at the time and was able to tell the story with very few words. They added to the authenticity of the film by using dozens of on location NYC sites and many hand held camera shots which puts the viewer directly into the action, which is quite a bit of it in this film.

What else brings this movie into it’s own genre is the gritty, gutsy, powerful performances of Gene Hackman, and Roy Scheider. Unlike today’s action flicks, which rely on violent scenes and blood and gore, French Connection relied on raw performances, genuine genius direction, in your face camera work, and complex characters that you care about, but never really know or understand.

When the Oscars were given out, The French Connection garnered 8 nominations and 5 wins, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Hackman.