Top Ten Movies of the Year: The Nineties

Which were the best films of the 1990s? Here are my selections! The 1990s represent my formative cinematic education, as I spent a good part of the time at University where going to see a film was a frequent ritual. From the moment that Quentin Tarantino hit the screens with “Reservoir Dogs” in 1992, all the signs were there that the years to follow would generate a new independent-flavoured ethos to movie-making. The appropriation of music, film history, and pop culture in all its forms blended together in Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”, surely one of the defining films of the ‘90s. But it was by no means alone in drawing on the past to create something new and exciting. So which were the best films of the decade? I make no apologies for my choices or omissions, as these are my favourites, but I hope you get some inspiration to add to your own film collections when you’re shopping for DVDs!

Here are my favourite movies for each year of the 1990s:

1999

What a year for film! 1999 was a hard “Top 10” to put together, and it could easily have been a Top 30. I’ve plumped for “Magnolia” as my year’s “best”, purely because I love the multiple narratives, can forgive the biblical frogs, and find so many compelling elements to Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterpiece. Tom Cruise is great as “inspirational” speaker ‘TJ Mackey’, and the whole tale ties together strands of coincidence, fate, luck, while walking the line between anguish and hope so beautifully. If you’ve never heard of “The Red Violin”, I was astounded by it when I first saw it in the cinema. The central conceit of the movie is that a very special violin is up for sale in a contemporary Canadian auction house, but the movie takes you through the centuries following the path of the violin (and its international owners) over time. “American Beauty” is a stunning film in every way, and was rightly awarded Best Picture at the Oscars, although the most original and mind-blowing film of the year was “Being John Malkovich”. Maaaaaaaalkovichhhhh!!!!

1) MAGNOLIA
(dir: Paul Thomas Anderson, stars: Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore)

2) THE RED VIOLIN
(dir: Francois Girard, stars: Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Flemyng)

3) AMERICAN BEAUTY
(dir: Sam Mendes, stars: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening)

4) ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER
(dir: Pedro Almodovar, stars: Penelope Cruz, Cecilia Roth)

5) BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
(dir: Spike Jonze, stars: John Cusack, Catherine Keener)

6) THE CIDER HOUSE RULES
(dir: Lasse Hallstrom, stars: Michael Caine, Charlize Theron)

7) THE END OF THE AFFAIR
(dir: Neil Jordan, stars: Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore)

8) SHOWER
(dir: Zhang Yang, stars: Quanxin Pu, Wu Jiang)

9) TOPSY-TURVY
(dir: Mike Leigh, stars: Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner)

10) SUNSHINE
(dir: Istvan Szabo, stars: Ralph Fiennes, Jennifer Ehle)

1998

I remember the Oscar ceremony in early 1999 (for the 1998 films) as being very entertaining because costume dramas “Elizabeth” and “Shakespeare in Love” (eventual Best Picture winner) were pitted against each other, as were World War Two epics “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Thin Red Line”. Crowd favourite “Life is Beautiful” even took glory as Roberto Benigni clambered over the distinguished heads of Hollywood’s elite to get his Best Actor award. For me the year’s real virtuoso movie was “The Truman Show” which really says far more about contemporary culture than many films do. My two sentimental favourites for the year are the remake of “Great Expectations”, with Floridian Ethan Hawke continually downtrodden by the unrequited love of his life, Gwyneth Paltrow. Equally, the beautiful “Besieged” tells of pianist David Thewlis longing for the love of Thandie Newton. “Croupier” features the excellent Clive Owen, while Brendan Gleeson is phenomenal as the complex real life character, Martin Cahill, in “The General”.

1) THE TRUMAN SHOW
(dir: Peter Weir, stars: Jim Carrey, Ed Harris)

2) GREAT EXPECTATIONS
(dir: Alfonso Cuaron, stars: Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow)

3) BESIEGED
(dir: Bernardo Bertolucci, stars: Thandie Newton, David Thewlis)

4) CROUPIER
(dir: Mike Hodges, stars: Clive Owen, Alex Kingston)

5) THE THIN RED LINE
(dir: Terrence Malick, stars: Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn)

6) THE GENERAL
(dir: John Boorman, stars: Brendan Gleeson, Jon Voight)

7) SLAM
(dir: Marc Levin, stars: Saul Williams, Sonja Sohn)

8) SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE
(dir: John Madden, stars: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes)

9) CENTRAL STATION
(dir: Walter Salles, stars: Fernanda Montenegro, Vinicius de Oliveira)

10) BULWORTH
(dir: Warren Beatty, stars: Warren Beatty, Halle Berry)

1997

What I said about 1999 was also true of 1997. Although “Titanic” took all of the Oscars, including Best Picture, and “L.A. Confidential” was many critics’ favourite, my choices for the year may offer you some surprises. I’m particularly attached to the wonderful “Love and Death on Long Island”, as stuffy English writer John Hurt falls in love with American teen screen idol Jason Priestley, gently mimicking his own success in the likes of “Beverly Hills 90210”. “The Ice Storm” is one of Ang Lee’s terrific collection, and dissects early 1970s suburban America as both the physical and emotional landscape go through a freeze and thaw. I make no apologies for loving “Good Will Hunting”, as the Matt Damon mathematical genius meets therapist Robin Williams is a very engaging story. “Donnie Brasco” should get more respect due to the based-on-a-true-story tale of FBI agent Jonny Depp who infiltrated the mob, befriending Al Pacino. Foreign Language Oscar winner “Character” and nominee “Beyond Silence” are both beautiful films set in the Netherlands and Germany respectively.

1) LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND
(dir: Richard Kwietniowski, stars: John Hurt, Jason Priestley)

2) THE ICE STORM
(dir: Ang Lee, stars: Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire)

3) GOOD WILL HUNTING
(dir: Gus Van Sant, stars: Matt Damon, Robin Williams)

4) DONNIE BRASCO
(dir: Mike Newell, stars: Johnny Depp, Al Pacino)

5) BEYOND SILENCE
(dir: Caroline Link, stars: Sylvie Testud, Sibylle Canonica)

6) NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN
(dir: Sidney Lumet, stars: Andy Garcia, Ian Holm)

7) BOOGIE NIGHTS
(dir: Paul Thomas Anderson, stars: Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds)

8) THE SWEET HEREAFTER
(dir: Atom Egoyan, stars: Ian Holm, Sarah Polley)

9) CHARACTER
(dir: Mike van Diem, stars: Fedja van Huet, Jan Decleir)

10) THE SPANISH PRISONER
(dir: David Mamet, stars: Campbell Scott, Steve Martin)

1996

The late-great director Anthony Minghella left behind a phenomenal if all too brief cinematic legacy, with the tip of the iceberg being the beautiful Oscar Best Picture winner, “The English Patient”. This is a film I could watch any number of times and still find completely compelling on so many levels, although if your local cinema ever decides to show it again on their big screen, jump at the chance to see it on the big screen. My love of American sports is catered to nicely as Tom Cruise inhabits the highs and lows of an agent in “Jerry Maguire”, although its Cuba Gooding with the celebrated one-liner “show me the money” who grabbed the Oscar glory. Liv Tyler heads a very good cast in the lush “Stealing Beauty”, and for quality small-scale drama, check out the Italian restaurant action in “Big Night”. Just don’t watch it when you’re hungry! “Secrets & Lies” by Mike Leigh, and the Coens’ “Fargo” deserve a place in any film fan’s collection because they are both brilliant.

1) THE ENGLISH PATIENT
(dir: Anthony Minghella, stars: Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas)

2) JERRY MAGUIRE
(dir: Cameron Crowe, stars: Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr.)

3) STEALING BEAUTY
(dir: Bernardo Bertolucci, stars: Liv Tyler, Jeremy Irons)

4) BIG NIGHT
(dir: Campbell Scott & Stanley Tucci, stars: Tony Shalhoub, Stanley Tucci)

5) SECRETS & LIES
(dir: Mike Leigh, stars: Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste)

6) FARGO
(dir: Joel Coen, stars: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy)

7) CARLA’S SONG
(dir: Ken Loach, stars: Robert Carlyle, Oyanka Cabezas)

8) RIDICULE
(dir: Patrice Leconte, stars: Charles Berling, Jean Rochefort)

9) GET ON THE BUS
(dir: Spike Lee, stars: Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher)

10) SWINGERS
(dir: Doug Liman, stars: Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau)

1995

In the middle of the decade when so many original and exciting movies were being made, it seemed an anomaly to find Mel Gibson’s kilt-wearing, make-up wearing, sword-wielding old-fashioned battle epic “Braveheart” taking Best Picture at the Oscars. Critics revelled at Nicolas Cage’s turn as a drunk deciding to check out in an alcoholic stupor in “Leaving Las Vegas”, and director Mike Figgis makes the film moody and atmospheric. “The Usual Suspects” is still a highly quotable movie if you can remember all the plot twists and answer the question “who is Keyser Soze?” as described by the compelling Kevin Spacey. Hankies at the ready for Richard Dreyfuss inspiring generations of American high school students to learn music in “Mr. Holland’s Opus”. Ang Lee may have seemed an odd choice to direct a quintessentially English costume drama, but he did it very well because “Sense and Sensibility” is a really beautiful movie. One of the cinematic moments that sticks with me is a scene in Paul Auster’s “Smoke” where Harvey Keitel shows his photograph albums to William Hurt. Each picture reveals the same scene of a Brooklyn street corner at 8am, and as Hurt protests that they’re all the same, Keitel explains that it’s a living document of a place. If you look closely you see the changing seasons, different people, and then the defining image: Hurt sees his wife who has since died. A very poignant film, and must be seen in tandem with the improvised sequel “Blue In the Face”.

1) LEAVING LAS VEGAS
(dir: Mike Figgis, stars: Nicolas Cage, Elisabeth Shue)

2) THE USUAL SUSPECTS
(dir: Bryan Singer, stars: Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey)

3) MR. HOLLAND’S OPUS
(dir: Stephen Herek, stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Glenne Headly)

4) SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
(dir: Ang Lee, stars: Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet)

5) SMOKE
(dir: Wayne Wang, stars: Harvey Keitel, William Hurt)

6) ANTONIA’S LINE
(dir: Marleen Gorris, stars: Willeke van Ammelrooy, Jan Decleir)

7) IL POSTINO
(dir: Michael Radford, stars: Massimo Troisi, Philippe Noiret)

8) DON JUAN DE MARCO
(dir: Jeremy Leven, stars: Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando)

9) NIXON
(dir: Oliver Stone, stars: Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen)

10) RICHARD III
(dir: Richard Loncraine, stars: Ian McKellen, Annette Bening)

1994

I don’t mind admitting that I think “Forrest Gump” is an excellent film! In fact I saw it twice in the cinema as I found it such a clever and original idea to transport a fictional character through the defining moments of the (American) 20th century. It won a heap of Oscars, including Best Picture, and arguably 1994 is the year with the most accomplished collection of nominees for the top category. Critics and film fans every since have bemoaned the lack of awards for “The Shawshank Redemption”, but remember also that Quentin Tarantino’s witty and explosive “Pulp Fiction” was nominated too. (Can you think of a sentence that made your heart skip a beat more noisily than “Bring out the gimp!”??) As well as the funniest Britcom “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, I would argue that the unsung masterpiece is Robert Redford’s film “Quiz Show” about the television scandals of the 1950s when America’s trust for TV was dealt a huge blow when it emerged that contestants on the universally-watched game shows were being fed the answers in advance to make for more compelling drama. Ralph Fiennes is excellent as the charming intellectual groomed as the quiz champion in place of working man John Turturro, but it’s the 1966 Best Actor winner, Paul Scofield, who stands out with gravitas and intensity as Fiennes’ father. Having thought so highly of the year’s Best Picture nominees, I can point out that my favourite film of the year was Linklater’s talky “Before Sunrise”. A simple concept – an American guy meets a French girl on a train, they get off in Vienna, and talk their way through to a sunrise that leaves them wondering if they will ever meet again. See it and then watch the follow-up (a mere ten years later!) “Before Sunset”!

1) BEFORE SUNRISE
(dir: Richard Linklater, stars: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy)

2) THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
(dir: Frank Darabont, stars: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman)

3) QUIZ SHOW
(dir: Robert Redford, stars: Ralph Fiennes, John Turturro)

4) PULP FICTION
(dir: Quentin Tarantino, stars: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson)

5) FORREST GUMP
(dir: Robert Zemeckis, stars: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright Penn)

6) FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL
(dir: Mike Newell, stars: Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell)

7) GROUNDHOG DAY
(dir: Harold Ramis, stars: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell)

8) LEON
(dir: Luc Besson, stars: Jean Reno, Natalie Portman)

9) SHALLOW GRAVE
(dir: Danny Boyle, stars: Ewan McGregor, Kerry Fox)

10) ED WOOD
(dir: Tim Burton, stars: Johnny Depp, Martin Landau)

1993

Great films stick in the memory, and my choice for 1993 easily makes it into my Top Five of films from any decade. While some may dismiss it as theatre pasted onto film, John Guare’s stageplay “Six Degrees of Separation” is given a very engrossing telling by director Fred Schepisi. Although Will Smith was known for “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and then spent the rest of the 1990s working on his bank balance with a slew of blockbuster shoot ‘em ups, he is excellent as a con artist who wants acceptance into the elite echelons of New York high society by masquerading as the son of film legend Sidney Poitier. As the theory of six degrees of separation purports, we are all globally linked by a chain of six people to any other human being. That concept stands as the metaphor for the intersection of lives in the microcosm of the Manhattan / New England elite. Stockard Channing is amazing, Donald Sutherland his usual brilliant self, and throw in Ian McKellen, Heather Graham, Bruce Davison, and 80s “Breakfast Club” alumnus Anthony Michael Hall for a great ensemble cast. But it’s a Will Smith you have not seen before or since that makes it a film to see. “Fearless” is a existential look at life and death through the eyes of plane crash survivor, Jeff Bridges. “The Remains of the Day” is a touching look at servant life before the Second World War, recounting the pent-up emotions of Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” is an episodic interlinking of disparate characters around Los Angeles involving sex, death, life and love.

1) SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION
(dir: Fred Schepisi, stars: Will Smith, Stockard Channing)

2) FEARLESS
(dir: Peter Weir, stars: Jeff Bridges, Rosie Perez)

3) THE REMAINS OF THE DAY
(dir: James Ivory, stars: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson)

4) SHORT CUTS
(dir: Robert Altman, stars: Bruce Davison, Jack Lemmon)

5) THE MUSIC OF CHANCE
(dir: Philip Haas, stars: James Spader, Mandy Patinkin)

6) DAVE
(dir: Ivan Reitman, stars: Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver)

7) SHADOWLANDS
(dir: Richard Attenborough, stars: Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger)

8) IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER
(dir: Jim Sheridan, stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Emma Thompson)

9) THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA
(dir: Anh Hung Tran, stars: Tran Nu Yen-Khe, Thi Loc Truong)

10) THE PIANO
(dir: Jane Campion, stars: Holly Hunter, Anna Paquin)

1992

If you’ve watched “The West Wing” on TV in the past few years, writer Aaron Sorkin’s earlier foray into the world of Washington politics was in the military courtroom drama “A Few Good Men”.
Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, and Demi Moore headline this gripping and quote-worthy movie. For a quieter and more thoughtful story, Kevin Kline and Danny Glover find a solidarity of purpose to their lives as they journey (ultimately) towards “Grand Canyon”. Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning Best Picture western, “Unforgiven”, clearly did this more successfully for the critics, but I rate “Grand Canyon” very highly. In excellent form again, Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives” looks at the battles between married New Yorkers, and features a very funny supporting role by film director Sydney Pollack as a guy having a mid-life crisis (with accompanying girlfriend half his age!). “Jamon, Jamon” is a typically sexually-charged offering from Spanish director, Bigas Luna, and is great for fans of both Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. “My Cousin Vinny” is classic culture-clash comedy with Italian New Yorkers Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei trying to save the bacon of Ralph Maccio in a small(-minded) Southern town. Billy Crystal will forever be remembered for playing opposite orgasmic Meg Ryan in “When Harry Met Sally ...” (1987) but the film that really shows him off as very good performer is “Mr. Saturday Night” through the entire career of fictional comedian Buddy Young Jr.

1) A FEW GOOD MEN
(dir: Rob Reiner, stars: Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson)

2) GRAND CANYON
(dir: Lawrence Kasdan, stars: Kevin Kline, Danny Glover)

3) HUSBANDS AND WIVES
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Woody Allen, Judy Davis)

4) JAMON, JAMON
(dir: Bigas Luna, stars: Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem)

5) MY COUSIN VINNY
(dir: Jonathan Lynn, stars: Joe Pesci, Marisa Tomei)

6) MR. SATURDAY NIGHT
(dir: Billy Crystal, stars: Billy Crystal, David Paymer)

7) MALCOLM X
(dir: Spike Lee, stars: Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett)

8) CHAPLIN
(dir: Richard Attenborough, stars: Robert Downey Jr., Dan Aykroyd)

9) ENCHANTED APRIL
(dir: Mike Newell, stars: Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson)

10) LOVE FIELD
(dir: Jonathan Kaplan, stars: Michelle Pfeiffer, Dennis Haysbert)

1991

Love him or hate him, Oliver Stone created a cinematic masterpiece in the epic telling of Jim Garrison’s (Kevin Costner) attempt to bring conspirators to justice over the killing of President John F. Kennedy. “JFK” caused as much debate in the United States about the “responsibility” of filmmakers to document history as he did in riling up a new generation to the possibility that Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 did not happen in line with the official story of events. The Oscar, and indeed all of the top five awards, went to “Silence of the Lambs” as Anthony Hopkins appreciation for Chianti and assorted meats was the other main talking point of the year. “Point Break” is a superb action film and has a fantastic atmosphere and pace to it with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze duelling through a tale of Californian surfing and bank robbery. “Rambling Rose” and “Boyz N The Hood” are poles apart in terms of the settings, but equally engaging in their handling of small-town Southern USA and the ganglands of South Central Los Angeles respectively.

1) JFK
(dir: Oliver Stone, stars: Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones)

2) POINT BREAK
(dir: Kathryn Bigelow, stars: Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze)

3) RAMBLING ROSE
(dir: Martha Coolidge, stars: Laura Dern, Robert Duvall)

4) SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
(dir: Jonathan Demme, stars: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins)

5) BOYZ ‘N’ THE HOOD
(dir: John Singleton, stars: Cuba Gooding Jr., Laurence Fishburne)

6) BARTON FINK
(dir: Joel Coen, stars: John Turturro, Michael Lerner)

7) RAISE THE RED LANTERN
(dir: Zhang Yimou, stars: Gong Li, Ma Jingwu)

8) BUGSY
(dir: Barry Levinson, stars: Warren Beatty, Annette Bening)

9) L.A. STORY
(dir: Mick Jackson, stars: Steve Martin, Victoria Tennant)

10) MEDITERRANEO
(dir: Gabriele Salvatores, stars: Diego Abatantuono, Claudio Bigagli)

1990

“Dances With Wolves” is a beautiful piece of cinema in my eyes, and is a fine example of an epic film winning the Best Picture Oscar. I’m fascinated by American history, and while I’m sure the film has its critics for various reasons, I find it eminently watchable no matter the number of viewings. 1990 was also the “year of Gerard Depardieu”. “Green Card” is something of a throwaway “light” movie featuring Gerard as a Frenchman needing an arranged marriage, and Andie MacDowell as an uptight garden-loving New Yorker desperate to show that she has the requisite husband to be allowed to move into a desirable apartment block. In his Oscar-nominated role, Depardieu is the nasally-challenged “Cyrano de Bergerac”, and is really very funny and charismatic in the leading role. “Avalon” is not very well-known but follows the story of an Polish-Jewish immigrant family in Baltimore during the early years of the 20th Century. I don’t mind sneaking “chick flicks” like “Pretty Woman” and “Ghost” into the Top 10 for the year because they’re stories well-made and engaging that are still popular nearly twenty years later.

1) DANCES WITH WOLVES
(dir: Kevin Costner, stars: Kevin Costner, Graham Greene)

2) CYRANO DE BERGERAC
(dir: Jean-Paul Rappeneau, stars: Gerard Depardieu, Vincent Perez)

3) GREEN CARD
(dir: Peter Weir, stars: Gerard Depardieu, Andie MacDowell)

4) AVALON
(dir: Barry Levinson, stars: Armin Mueller-Stahl, Aidan Quinn)

5) GOOD FELLAS
(dir: Martin Scorsese, stars: Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta)

6) JU DOU
(dir: Zhang Yimou, stars: Gong Li, Li Baotian)

7) THE GRIFTERS
(dir: Stephen Frears, stars: Anjelica Huston, John Cusack)

8) PRETTY WOMAN
(dir: Garry Marshall, stars: Julia Roberts, Richard Gere)

9) MISERY
(dir: Rob Reiner, stars: Kathy Bates, James Caan)

10) GHOST
(dir: Jerry Zucker, stars: Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze)

The 1990s is the decade where a cinema fan in the 21st century must begin before working back in time to expand their film knowledge. There really were so many good films made, advances in technology were considerable throughout the period, and a generation of new directors and writers were clearly influenced by the classics of their own seventies youth. To pick a favourite ten movies from the decade is a challenge, but for the record, here they are:


TOP 10 MOVIES OF THE 1990s!

1) SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION (1993)
(dir: Fred Schepisi, stars: Will Smith, Stockard Channing)

2) BEFORE SUNRISE (1994)
(dir: Richard Linklater, stars: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy)

3) MAGNOLIA (1999)
(dir: Paul Thomas Anderson, stars: Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore)

4) DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990)
(dir: Kevin Costner, stars: Kevin Costner, Graham Greene)

5) THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998)
(dir: Peter Weir, stars: Jim Carrey, Ed Harris)

6) THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996)
(dir: Anthony Minghella, stars: Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas)

7) LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND (1997)
(dir: Richard Kwietniowski, stars: John Hurt, Jason Priestley)

8) THE RED VIOLIN (1999)
(dir: Francois Girard, stars: Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Flemyng)

9) JFK (1991)
(dir: Oliver Stone, stars: Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones)

10) LEAVING LAS VEGAS (1995)
(dir: Mike Figgis, stars: Nicolas Cage, Elisabeth Shue)

Top Ten Movies of the Year: The Eighties

Which were the best films of the 1980s? Here are my selections! The 1980s is a decade that cinema critics deign to remember as a time when the big budget studios were wrestling control back from the ‘70s creative mavericks in favour of producing family fare and teen comedies. That is certainly true to an extent, but there were plenty of quality films that should not be neglected. So which were the best films of the decade? I make no apologies for my choices or omissions (none of the “Police Academy” series makes the list!), as these are my favourites, but I hope you get some inspiration to add to your own film collections when you’re shopping for DVDs!

Here are my favourite movies for each year of the 1980s:

1989

For my money, 1989 is one of the most plentiful years for cinema. “Driving Miss Daisy” is a fine film, it won Best Picture at the Oscars, and along with “My Left Foot” took much of the critical acclaim. Neither make my list for the year! My sentimental favourite is “Dead Poets Society”, although American Civil War epic “Glory” and baseball tale “Field of Dreams” follow close behind. Also pay attention to two very fine movies due to the quality acting. The Bridges brothers and Michelle Pfeiffer make “The Fabulous Baker Boys” an excellent movie, and the shenanigans of Ron Silver and his various women in “Enemies, A Love Story” are highly amusing.

1) DEAD POETS SOCIETY
(dir: Peter Weir, stars: Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke)

2) GLORY
(dir: Edward Zwick, stars: Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington)

3) FIELD OF DREAMS
(dir: Phil Alden Robinson, stars: Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones)

4) THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS
(dir: Steve Kloves, stars: Jeff Bridges, Michelle Pfeiffer)

5) ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY
(dir: Paul Mazursky, stars: Ron Silver, Anjelica Huston)

6) BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY
(dir: Oliver Stone, stars: Tom Cruise, Raymond J. Barry)

7) DO THE RIGHT THING
(dir: Spike Lee, stars: Danny Aiello, John Turturro)

8) CINEMA PARADISO
(dir: Giuseppe Tornatore, stars: Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio)

9) CAMILLE CLAUDEL
(dir: Bruno Nuytten, stars: Isabella Adjani, Gerard Depardieu)

10) DEAD CALM
(dir: Phillip Noyce, stars: Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill)

1988

John Sayles is one of the great American filmmakers for his choice of subject matter. Perhaps not very well-known in the UK, “Eight Men Out” recounts the baseball scandal of 1919 in which eight members of the World Series Chicago White Sox team were thrown out of the sport for allegedly taking money to lose the Championship, is part of American sporting lore. Great drama, a fine ensemble cast, and it fits nicely in to the canon of ‘80s baseball cinema, such as Costner’s “Bull Durham” in fourth place this year. “Rain Man” took the Best Picture, but for a funny and touching road movie of a different kind, see Robert De Niro trying to take prisoner Charles Grodin across country in “Midnight Run”!

1) EIGHT MEN OUT
(dir: John Sayles, stars: John Cusack, David Strathairn)

2) MIDNIGHT RUN
(dir: Martin Brest, stars: Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin)

3) RAIN MAN
(dir: Barry Levinson, stars: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise)

4) BULL DURHAM
(dir: Ron Shelton, stars: Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon)

5) BIG
(dir: Penny Marshall, stars: Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins)

6) RUNNING ON EMPTY
(dir: Sidney Lumet, stars: River Phoenix, Judd Hirsch)

7) THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
(dir: Philip Kaufman, stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche)

8) DANGEROUS LIAISONS
(dir: Stephen Frears, stars: John Malkovich, Glenn Close)

9) STAND AND DELIVER
(dir: Ramon Menendez, stars: Edward James Olmos, Carmen Argenziano)

10) A FISH CALLED WANDA
(dir: Charles Crichton, stars: John Cleese, Kevin Kline)

1987

James L. Brooks won 3 Oscars for writing, directing and producing “Terms of Endearment” in 1983. He may now be celebrated for creating “The Simpsons” cartoon over the past two decades, but I think “Broadcast News” is a very entertaining film about the television news business. Holly Hunter is angry at herself for falling for the “dumb blonde” new anchor, William Hurt, while her wise-cracking colleague Albert Brooks is desperately in love with her. “Matewan” features the excellent Chris Cooper as a labour union man, taking on the might of the mining industry, at the risk of violence and unemployment in an early 20th century mountain town. Michael Douglas won his Oscar for the summation of ‘80s “greed is good” corporate culture as the take-no-prisoners Gordon Gecko, mentoring Charlie Sheen to financial gain and moral ruin in “Wall Street”. Bertolucci’s beautiful “The Last Emperor” won Best Picture for 1987 at the Oscars, but for a lighter option, choose Woody Allen’s lovely nostalgia-ridden “Radio Days”. Special mention for Anne Ramsay (also of “The Goonies” fame) as the mother from hell in the darkly funny “Throw Momma From the Train”!

1) BROADCAST NEWS
(dir: James L. Brooks, stars: William Hurt, Holly Hunter)

2) MATEWAN
(dir: John Sayles, stars: Chris Cooper, David Strathairn)

3) WALL STREET
(dir: Oliver Stone, stars: Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen)

4) RADIO DAYS
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Dianne Wiest, Mia Farrow)

5) THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN
(dir: Danny DeVito, stars: Billy Crystal, Danny DeVito)

6) THE LAST EMPEROR
(dir: Bernardo Bertolucci, stars: Peter O’Toole, Joan Chen)

7) WITHNAIL & I
(dir: Bruce Robinson, stars: Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann)

8) AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS
(dir: Louis Malle, stars: Gaspard Manesse, Raphael Fejto)

9) FULL METAL JACKET
(dir: Stanley Kubrick, stars: Matthew Modine, Vincent D’Onofrio)

10) HOPE AND GLORY
(dir: John Boorman, stars: Sarah Miles, Ian Bannen)

1986

Oliver Stone took all the Oscar plaudits in 1986, including Best Picture, for the first of his Vietnam trilogy (or will that be “quadrilogy” when “Pinkville” is released?!), “Platoon”. However, for my money his best work of 1986 was on “Salvador”. James Woods is superb as a journalist investigating killings and conflict in El Salvador in the early ‘80s. Also set “somewhere” in Central America, Harrison Ford is a man on a mission to find a utopian life for his family away from the United States. As with many of the great Peter Weir’s movies, the protagonist is a man living outside of his comfort zone, placed in another place or culture, while trying to make sense of his identity. Woody Allen received awards and acclaim for “Hannah and Her Sisters” with Michael Caine falling in love with his wife’s sister. Oh, and if you want to see Nick Nolte eating dog food, the very witty “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” places homeless Nolte in the charitable hands of wealthy Richard Dreyfuss and his neurotic family.

1) SALVADOR
(dir: Oliver Stone, stars: James Woods, Jim Belushi)

2) THE MOSQUITO COAST
(dir: Peter Weir, stars: Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren)

3) HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Michael Caine, Barbara Hershey)

4) PLATOON
(dir: Oliver Stone, stars: Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe)

5) HOOSIERS (a.k.a. BEST SHOT)
(dir: David Anspaugh, stars: Gene Hackman, Dennis Hopper)

6) DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS
(dir: Paul Mazursky, stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Nick Nolte)

7) CROCODILE DUNDEE
(dir: Peter Faiman, stars: Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski)

8) BETTY BLUE
(dir: Jean-Jacques Beineix, stars: Beatrice Dalle, Jean-Hugues Anglade)

9) STAND BY ME
(dir: Rob Reiner, stars: River Phoenix, Kiefer Sutherland)

10) THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
(dir: Denys Arcand, stars: Remy Girard, Yves Jacques)

1985

From “Chariots of Fire” and “Gandhi” through to “The Last Emperor”, Best Picture Oscars were often handed to epic films in the 1980s. “Out of Africa”, replete with soaring music and endless vistas of the African landscape, made for beautiful cinema and was a deserving winner. On a far smaller scale, my pick for 1985 is the intimate southern town romcom / dramedy / feel-good, well-written “Murphy’s Romance”, with James Garner and Sally Field as the age-gap cautious romantics. Harrison Ford and Peter Weir made the Amish community compelling viewing in “Witness”, while Michael J. Fox in “Back to the Future” has really stood the test of time in the popularity stakes. My guilty pleasure is “Cocoon”, featuring a community of pensioners given a lease of life while swimming in a pool filled with alien pods. A great cast of Hollywood oldies, and Steve Guttenberg drooling in the direction of the otherworldly Tahnee Welch!

1) MURPHY’S ROMANCE
(dir: Martin Ritt, stars: James Garner, Sally Field)

2) WITNESS
(dir: Peter Weir, stars: Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis)

3) OUT OF AFRICA
(dir: Sydney Pollack, stars: Meryl Streep, Robert Redford)

4) BACK TO THE FUTURE
(dir: Robert Zemeckis, stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd)

5) AGNES OF GOD
(dir: Norman Jewison, stars: Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft)

6) COCOON
(dir: Ron Howard, stars: Steve Guttenberg, Don Ameche)

7) THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels)

8) THE OFFICIAL STORY
(dir: Luis Puenzo, stars: Norma Aleandro, Hector Alterio)

9) KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
(dir: Hector Babenco, stars: William Hurt, Raul Julia)

10) RUNAWAY TRAIN
(dir: Andrei Konchalovsky, stars: Jon Voight, Eric Roberts)

1984

Take America’s pastime of baseball, bathe Robert Redford in golden light, tell a story about an enigmatic sportsman trying to become a success when he’s old enough to be “past his prime”, and you get a wonderful piece of cinematic Americana. “The Natural” was down the pecking order at the Oscar ceremony for 1984 behind Best Picture winner “Amadeus” and weighty pair “The Passage to India” and “The Killing Fields”, but I think it makes for a beautiful movie. Bill Murray getting “slimed”, Sigourney Weaver being “transformed”, and Rick Moranis being strange are all features of the classic popcorn film “Ghostbusters”. I don’t mind admitting I own it on video in a double pack with its sequel! I’m a broad-minded film fan, equally at home with Salieri’s rivalry with Mozart in “Amadeus”, as I am with Tom Hanks chasing Daryl Hannah in her “Splash” mermaid outfit!

1) THE NATURAL
(dir: Barry Levinson, stars: Robert Redford, Glenn Close)

2) THE KILLING FIELDS
(dir: Roland Joffe, stars: Sam Waterston, Dr. Haing S. Ngor)

3) AMADEUS
(dir: Milos Forman, stars: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce)

4) PLACES IN THE HEART
(dir: Robert Benton, stars: Sally Field, John Malkovich)

5) GHOSTBUSTERS
(dir: Ivan Reitman, stars: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd)

6) SPLASH
(dir: Ron Howard, stars: Tom Hanks, Daryl Hannah)

7) BROADWAY DANNY ROSE
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow)

8) A SOLDIER’S STORY
(dir: Norman Jewison, stars: Howard E. Rollins, Adolph Caesar)

9) ROMANCING THE STONE
(dir: Robert Zemeckis, stars: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner)

10) THE RIVER
(dir: Mark Rydell, stars: Mel Gibson, Sissy Spacek)

1983

“Theatrical” films catch my eye for 1983’s collection. Playwright Harold Pinter wrote the magnificent “Betrayal” where Ben Kingsley is the cuckolded friend of Jeremy Irons, who secretly knows his “pal” is having an affair with his wife. By contrast, the relationship in “The Dresser” is between theatrical powerhouse Albert Finney, onstage as King Lear during the Second World War, and his backstage assistant, Tom Courtenay. “Terms of Endearment” won Best Picture, and was recognised for its ensemble of great performances. “The Big Chill” features a number of Hollywood icons, and “The Right Stuff” is a fascinating look at the rise of America as a country demanding its top pilots handle spaceships instead of airplanes.

1) BETRAYAL
(dir: David Hugh Jones, stars: Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley)

2) THE DRESSER
(dir: Peter Yates, stars: Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay)

3) THE BIG CHILL
(dir: Lawrence Kasdan, stars: Kevin Kline, Glenn Close)

4) THE RIGHT STUFF
(dir: Philip Kaufman, stars: Sam Shepard, Ed Harris)

5) REUBEN, REUBEN
(dir: Robert Ellis Miller, stars: Tom Conti, Kelly McGillis)

6) TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
(dir: James L. Brooks, stars: Debra Winger, Shirley MacLaine)

7) ZELIG
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow)

8) TRADING PLACES
(dir: John Landis, stars: Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd)

9) THE RETURN OF MARTIN GUERRE
(dir: Daniel Vigne, stars: Gerard Depardieu, Nathalie Baye)

10) THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
(dir: Peter Weir, stars: Mel Gibson, Linda Hunt)

1982

“The World According to Garp” may seem a surprising choice as my “best” of the year, particularly as it’s a slightly odd tale of a mother (Glenn Close) and son (Robin Williams) whose writing aspirations lead to differing results. John Lithgow steals the show while showing of his feminine wiles! Dressing in women’s clothes was also common to Dustin Hoffman’s hilarious performance in “Tootsie”, as a TV actor fed up with being rejected for parts as a man, who decides that being a woman might be a more rewarding career path. “Gandhi” took the top Oscar honours; “E.T.” deserves to be in every cinema fan’s collection, unless you’re completely heartless; and “Diner” was the first in a number of beautiful films that director Barry Levinson set in the city of Baltimore. Moral of the story: never sit next to Mickey Rourke in a cinema if he happens to be holding a box of popcorn!

1) THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP
(dir: George Roy Hill, stars: Robin Williams, Glenn Close)

2) DINER
(dir: Barry Levinson, stars: Mickey Rourke, Steve Guttenberg)

3) E.T.
(dir: Steven Spielberg, stars: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore)

4) TOOTSIE
(dir: Sydney Pollack, stars: Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange)

5) GANDHI
(dir: Richard Attenborough, stars: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen)

6) THE VERDICT
(dir: Sidney Lumet, stars: Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling)

7) MISSING
(dir: Constantin Costa-Gavras, stars: Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek)

8) AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN
(dir: Taylor Hackford, stars: Richard Gere, Debra Winger)

9) SOPHIE’S CHOICE
(dir: Alan J. Pakula, stars: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline)

10) ROCKY III
(dir: Sylvester Stallone, stars: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire)

1981

For me 1981 is a year of brilliant performances. Legends Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda make for great married sparring partners in “On Golden Pond” as they contemplate the aging process, and patching up their relationship with daughter Jane Fonda. Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon make for a touching pair in “Atlantic City”, while the entire ensemble of Oscar Best Picture winner “Chariots of Fire” are terrific. For atmosphere you have to track down either the Director’s cut German language version of Wolfgang Petersen’s “Das Boot” about a World War Two German U-boat, or the amazing full length series that I first saw many years ago on British television. It must have been at least six one-hour parts long, but extremely tense, claustrophobic, and so “authentic” in feel that you could practically smell the body odour and fear coming from the screen. However, push all those to one side and marvel at the amazing Klaus Maria Brandauer in Istvan Szabo’s “Mephisto”! Brandauer is probably best known in English-speaking cinema for playing Meryl Streep’s husband in “Out of Africa” (1985), but in the first of Szabo’s “trilogy” (that later included “Hanussen” and “Colonel Redl”), Brandauer is an actor in Nazi Germany who effectively sells his soul to the devil, supporting the regime, in order to further his theatrical career. Quite simply one of the most brilliant acting roles I think I’ve ever seen.

1) ATLANTIC CITY
(dir: Louis Malle, stars: Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon)

2) CHARIOTS OF FIRE
(dir: Hugh Hudson, stars: Ben Cross, Ian Holm)

3) MEPHISTO
(dir: Istvan Szabo, stars: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Krystyna Janda)

4) DAS BOOT (full-length German version)
(dir: Wolfgang Petersen, stars: Jurgen Prochnow, Herbert Gronemeyer)

5) ON GOLDEN POND
(dir: Mark Rydell, stars: Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn)

6) GALLIPOLI
(dir: Peter Weir, stars: Mel Gibson, Mark Lee)

7) HEAVEN’S GATE
(dir: Michael Cimino, stars: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken)

8) PRINCE OF THE CITY
(dir: Sidney Lumet, stars: Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach)

9) ARTHUR
(dir: Steve Gordon, stars: Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli)

10) OUTLAND
(dir: Peter Hyams, stars: Sean Connery, Peter Boyle)

1980

One of the rules of cinema criticism is that “thou must love “Raging Bull” by Martin Scorsese, featuring the superb Robert De Niro as boxer Jake La Motta”. I humbly accept that I adhere to this mantra, however, I push two movies ahead of the black and white masterpiece as my favourites of 1980. Robert Duvall is excellent as a domineering military man who doesn’t know how to love his family without barking out orders in “The Great Santini”, and Peter O’Toole is one part mad one part hilarious as a film director pushing his cast and crew to the edge (and over it) in “The Stunt Man”. Robert Redford directed the year’s best Picture, “Ordinary People”, and stars in one of his lesser-known films, “Brubaker”, as a prison warden turning the system on its head. You also have to take note that after the cultural impact of “Star Wars” being released in 1977, this was the year of its first sequel, “The Empire Strikes Back” – definitely better than the original!

1) THE GREAT SANTINI
(dir: Lewis John Carlino, stars: Robert Duvall, Michael O’Keefe)

2) THE STUNT MAN
(dir: Richard Rush, stars: Peter O’Toole, Barbara Hershey)

3) RAGING BULL
(dir: Martin Scorsese, stars: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci)

4) BRUBAKER
(dir: Stuart Rosenberg, stars: Robert Redford, Yaphet Kotto)

5) ORDINARY PEOPLE
(dir: Robert Redford, stars: Donald Sutherland, Timothy Hutton)

6) THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
(dir: Irvin Kershner, stars: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill)

7) TRIBUTE
(dir: Bob Clark, stars: Jack Lemmon, Robby Benson)

8) PRIVATE BENJAMIN
(dir: Howard Zieff, stars: Goldie Hawn, Eileen Brennan)

9) BREAKER MORANT
(dir: Bruce Beresford, stars: Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown)

10) TESS
(dir: Roman Polanski, stars: Nastassja Kinski, Peter Firth)

The 1980s offered plenty of mainstream commercial fare, but those films receiving critical acclaim were often dealing with historical, political, or even very nostalgic fare about America and its place in the world. The Vietnam War, baseball, and relationships featured prominently thematically. To pick a favourite ten movies from the decade is a challenge, but for the record, here they are:

TOP 10 MOVIES OF THE 1980s!

1) DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989)
(dir: Peter Weir, stars: Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke)

2) THE NATURAL (1984)
(dir: Barry Levinson, stars: Robert Redford, Glenn Close)

3) GLORY (1989)
(dir: Edward Zwick, stars: Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington)

4) ATLANTIC CITY
(dir: Louis Malle, stars: Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon)

5) BETRAYAL (1983)
(dir: David Hugh Jones, stars: Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley)

6) FIELD OF DREAMS (1989)
(dir: Phil Alden Robinson, stars: Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones)

7) CHARIOTS OF FIRE (1981)
(dir: Hugh Hudson, stars: Ben Cross, Ian Holm)

8) SALVADOR (1986)
(dir: Oliver Stone, stars: James Woods, Jim Belushi)

9) EIGHT MEN OUT (1988)
(dir: John Sayles, stars: John Cusack, David Strathairn)

10) THE GREAT SANTINI (1980)
(dir: Lewis John Carlino, stars: Robert Duvall, Michael O’Keefe)

Top Ten Movies of the Year: The Seventies

Which were the best films of the 1970s? Here are my selections! The 1970s continued the late ‘60s innovation in terms of storytelling and more a gritty and realistic tone to American cinema. There was a spate of films influenced by the circumstances in the USA at the time, from the Vietnam War to social unrest, to the abuses of power of the Nixon presidency. By the middle of the decade, big budget action films and then intimate domestic dramas played into the agenda. So which were the best films of the decade? I make no apologies for my choices or omissions, as these are my favourites, but I hope you get some inspiration to add to your own film collections when you’re shopping for DVDs!

Here are my favourite movies for each year of the 1970s:

1979

Woody Allen ended the decade with his third masterpiece in as many years. “Manhattan”, a beautiful black and white ode to New York City, followed on from “Annie Hall” (1977) and “Interiors” (1978) in showing his abilities as an all-round filmmaker. “Kramer vs. Kramer” took Best Picture at the Oscars, and while many would argue the case for Coppola’s epic “Apocalypse Now” (particularly after the release of the “Redux” version in 2001), I’m a huge fan of the cycling movie “Breaking Away”, featuring a young Dennis Quaid, Jackie Earle Haley (best known for his creepy turn in “Little Children”), and Daniel Stern. Most critics slam Milos Forman’s “Hair”, and whether you like it or not will depend how you feel about a bunch of hippies singing and dancing their way around New York City! I think it’s great!

1) MANHATTAN
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Woody Allen, Mariel Hemingway)

2) BREAKING AWAY
(dir: Peter Yates, stars: Dennis Quaid, Dennis Christopher)

3) HAIR
(dir: Milos Forman, stars: Treat Williams, Beverly D’Angelo)

4) APOCALYPSE NOW
(dir: Francis Ford Coppola , stars: Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen)

5) KRAMER VS. KRAMER
(dir: Robert Benton, stars: Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep)

6) STARTING OVER
(dir: Alan J. Pakula, stars: Burt Reynolds, Jill Clayburgh)

7) ALL THAT JAZZ
(dir: Bob Fosse, stars: Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking)

8) NORMA RAE
(dir: Martin Ritt, stars: Sally Field, Ron Leibman)

9) THE CHINA SYNDROME
(dir: James Bridges, stars: Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon)

10) LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
(dir: Edouard Molinaro, stars: Ugo Tognazzi, Michael Serrault)

1978

“The Deer Hunter” deservedly won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1978, but from the first time I saw it, I’ve been particularly attached to Jill Clayburgh’s performance in “An Unmarried Woman” which I find a really enjoyable film. Aside from Cimino’s epic and the intense “Interiors” by Woody Allen, Warren Beatty comes back from the dead as an American Footballer in “Heaven Can Wait”, and you get an acting masterclass from Ingrid Bergman in the Swedish film “Autumn Sonata”. Oh yes, and this was the year of Christopher Reeve stepping out of phone boxes in the guise of “Superman”!

1) AN UNMARRIED WOMAN
(dir: Paul Mazursky, stars: Jill Clayburgh, Alan Bates)

2) THE DEER HUNTER
(dir: Michael Cimino, stars: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken)

3) INTERIORS
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Geraldine Page, Diane Keaton)

4) HEAVEN CAN WAIT
(dir: Warren Beatty & Buck Henry, stars: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie)

5) AUTUMN SONATA
(dir: Ingmar Bergman, stars: Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann)

6) DAYS OF HEAVEN
(dir: Terrence Malick, stars: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams)

7) MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
(dir: Alan Parker, stars: Brad Davis, John Hurt)

8) SUPERMAN
(dir: Richard Donner, stars: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman)

9) COMING HOME
(dir: Hal Ashby, stars: Jane Fonda, Jon Voight)

10) CALIFORNIA SUITE
(dir: Herbert Ross, stars: Maggie Smith, Richard Pryor)

1977

“Annie Hall” is consistently named as the definitive Woody Allen film about angst-ridden relationships in New York, and while it does feel a bit dated in part, it holds up as an entertaining piece of cinema with plenty of inspired scenes. Luis Bunuel’s films were often rather unusual, but “That Obscure Object of Desire” sticks with me as a masterpiece precisely because the legendary Fernando Rey is obsessed with a woman who throughout the film alters physically between two different actresses. I confess to being a tad confused when I first saw it on TV, but the title goes some way to explaining the philosophical underpinnings for man’s attraction to women! Director Herbert Ross has a big year in 1977, helming two Oscar-nominated films: “The Turning Point” about two ballerinas who made life choices favouring career or family, and the witty “Goodbye Girl” following the love hate relationship between a lodger and his landlady. “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” signalled that a new kind of sci-fi movie had arrived in 1977.

1) ANNIE HALL
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Diane Keaton, Woody Allen)

2) THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE
(dir: Luis Bunuel, stars: Fernando Rey, Carole Bouquet)

3) THE TURNING POINT
(dir: Herbert Ross, stars: Shirley MacLaine, Anne Bancroft)

4) STAR WARS
(dir: George Lucas, stars: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill)

5) ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
(dir: Franklin J. Schaffner, stars: George C. Scott, David Hemmings)

6) THE GOODBYE GIRL
(dir: Herbert Ross, stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Marsha Mason)

7) EQUUS
(dir: Sidney Lumet, stars: Richard Burton, Peter Firth)

8) SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER
(dir: John Badham, stars: John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney)

9) CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
(dir: Steven Spielberg, stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Francois Truffaut)

10) LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR
(dir: Richard Brooks, stars: Diane Keaton, Richard Gere)

1976

I believe that 1976 was the pinnacle of filmmaking in the 1970s. The first two parts of “The Godfather” had made their mark in ’72 and ‘74, alongside many other dramas delving into the criminal underworlds. 1976 was America’s bicentennial year, and while celebrations for the nation’s 200th birthday seemed somewhat hollow in the wake of Vietnam and Nixon’s resignation from office, the films had a tremendous political and social resonance. “Bound for Glory”, made by one of the most fascinating ‘70s directors, Hal Ashby, follows the folk singer Woody Guthrie during his 1930s Depression era quest to raise worker consciousness. “Network” and its famous “I’m mad as hell and I can’t take it anymore!!” rant by newsreader Peter Finch brilliantly showed the nation how the media’s drive for ratings was superficially papering over what was really happening in the country. “Rocky” won the Best Picture Oscar, “Taxi Driver” is the best known film for its iconic De Niro performance, but “All The President’s Men” should be watched today with one eye on American politics in the 21st century!

1) BOUND FOR GLORY
(dir: Hal Ashby, stars: David Carradine, Ronny Cox)

2) NETWORK
(dir: Sidney Lumet, stars: Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch)

3) ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN
(dir: Alan J. Pakula, stars: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman)

4) TAXI DRIVER
(dir: Martin Scorsese, stars: Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd)

5) ROCKY
(dir: John G. Avildsen, stars: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire)

6) LOGAN’S RUN
(dir: Michael Anderson, stars: Michael York, Jenny Agutter)

7) MARATHON MAN
(dir: John Schlesinger, stars: Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier)

8) SEVEN BEAUTIES
(dir: Lina Wertmuller, stars: Giancarlo Giannini, Fernando Rey)

9) TWO-MINUTE WARNING
(dir: Larry Peerce, stars: Charlton Heston, John Cassavetes)

10) THE LAST TYCOON
(dir: Elia Kazan, stars: Robert De Niro, Tony Curtis)

1975

If you are ever in any doubt about the quality of Jack Nicholson, he gives a stunning performance as a rebellious inmate of a mental hospital in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. The film swept all five major Oscars (Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor and Actress) in 1975. Spielberg’s thriller “Jaws” has proved the most popular film over time, but if you want a couple of great dramas, try Al Pacino as a bank robber with the watching public on his side in “Dog Day Afternoon”, or Robert Redford on the run as a bookish CIA researcher who finds that he has become the target in “Three Days of the Condor”.

1) ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
(dir: Milos Forman, stars: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher)

2) DOG DAY AFTERNOON
(dir: Sidney Lumet, stars: Al Pacino, Charles Durning)

3) THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR
(dir: Sydney Pollack, stars: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway)

4) JAWS
(dir: Steven Spielberg, stars: Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss)

5) SHAMPOO
(dir: Hal Ashby, stars: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie)

6) THE DAY OF THE LOCUST
(dir: John Schlesinger, stars: Donald Sutherland, Burgess Meredith)

7) THE STORY OF ADELE H
(dir: Francois Truffaut, stars: Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson)

8) THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH
(dir: Arthur Hiller, stars: Maxilian Schell, Lois Nettleton)

9) BITE THE BULLET
(dir: Richard Brooks, stars: Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen)

10) THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
(dir: John Huston, stars: Sean Connery, Michael Caine)

1974

It was the generation of the paranoid political conspiracy thriller! “They’re out to get me” was a common theme in some of the mid-‘70s movies, and in the case of the brilliant “The Parallax View”, Warren Beatty finds that he’s a journalist who knows too much. In Coppola’s “other” movie of 1974, “The Conversation”, the subject is surveillance and the protagonist is a wire-tapping expert played by Gene Hackman. Buddy movies were a mainstay of 1980s cinema, but Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges are brilliant sparring partners as they try and find some stashed loot in “Thunderbolt & Lightfoot”. “Chinatown” by Polanski, and Coppola’s epic “The Godfather Part II” are both adored by film critics. I make no apologies for enjoying three movies more than them from the crop released in 1974!

1) THE PARALLAX VIEW
(dir: Alan J. Pakula, stars: Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn)

2) THUNDERBOLT & LIGHTFOOT
(dir: Michael Cimino, stars: Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges)

3) THE CONVERSATION
(dir: Francis Ford Coppola, stars: Gene Hackman, John Cazale)

4) CHINATOWN
(dir: Roman Polanski, stars: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway)

5) THE GODFATHER PART II
(dir: Francis Ford Coppola, stars: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro)

6) AMARCORD
(dir: Federico Fellini, stars: Bruno Zanin, Armando Brancia)

7) LENNY
(dir: Bob Fosse, stars: Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine)

8) THE LONGEST YARD
(dir: Robert Aldrich, stars: Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert)

9) ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE
(dir: Martin Scorsese, stars: Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson)

10) THE GREAT GATSBY
(dir: Jack Clayton, stars: Robert Redford, Mia Farrow)

1973

I first saw “The Paper Chase” as a University postgraduate student, and while I did not study at Harvard Law School, the experience of the student Timothy Bottoms combating the college’s revered Professor (the brilliant Supporting Actor Oscar winner John Houseman) really struck a chord with me. It captures superbly the self-imposed pressure of high-powered academic life, and the cream of America’s students desperate to graduate with brain and nerves intact. “The Sting” won the year’s Best Picture Oscar, reuniting the charismatic pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. While many will surely argue that “The Way We Were” is a soppy love story about a couple who never really quite get together, I think Redford and Streisand give great performances in a very engaging movie with quite a political edge running through it. If you’re looking for tense thrillers “The Day of the Jackal” is a fantastic watch, mainly for the cold mannered “Englishness” of Edward Fox’s assassin. “Paper Moon” is extremely witty and showcases the very talented young Oscar-winning Tatum O’Neal playing alongside real-life father Ryan O’Neal.

1) THE PAPER CHASE
(dir: James Bridges, stars: Timothy Bottoms, John Houseman)

2) THE WAY WE WERE
(dir: Sydney Pollack, stars: Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford)

3) THE STING
(dir: George Roy Hill, stars: Paul Newman, Robert Redford)

4) THE DAY OF THE JACKAL
(dir: Fred Zinnemann, stars: Edward Fox, Michael Lonsdale)

5) PAPER MOON
(dir: Peter Bogdanovich, stars: Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal)

6) SERPICO
(dir: Sidney Lumet, stars: Al Pacino, John Randolph)

7) BADLANDS
(dir: Terrence Malick, stars: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek)

8) BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY
(dir: John D. Hancock, stars: Robert De Niro, Michael Moriarty)

9) THE LONG GOODBYE
(dir: Robert Altman, stars: Elliott Gould, Sterling Hayden)

10) THE LAST DETAIL
(dir: Hal Ashby, stars: Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid)

1972

Before Ben Stiller and the Farrelly Brothers got their hands on “The Heartbreak Kid”, the 1972 original was a perfect comedy of manners, class, and relationships. Charles Grodin had the perfect “loser” quality to him as the newly-married man, convinced his wife was perfect, until a long drive to Florida, combined with a nightmare honeymoon and the sighting of the blonde beauty on the beach, Cybill Shepherd, turned his heart and head. Grodin’s badly sunburnt bride, Jeannie Berlin, steals the show in a film I could watch on repeat! The excellent Eddie Albert (Gregory Peck’s sidekick in “Roman Holiday”) is perfect as the protective father of Cybill Shepherd. “The Godfather” may be revered as a classic having won Best Picture at the Oscars and been added to every film fan’s collection, but watch “The Heartbreak Kid” for a true classic of the time period. Speaking of sequels, the original “Sleuth” with Michael Caine in the younger role (which Jude Law took over in the recent remake) to Laurence Olivier’s cuckolded trickster is very entertaining. If you ever plan a canoeing trip through the impoverished Appalachian Mountains in America, avoid locals who play the banjo and have (allegedly) an inbred quality to them. “Deliverance” should dissuade you, as the words “squeal like a piggy” become ingrained on your consciousness.

1) THE HEARTBREAK KID
(dir: Elaine May, stars: Charles Grodin, Cybill Shepherd)

2) SLEUTH
(dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, stars: Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine)

3) DELIVERANCE
(dir: John Boorman, stars: Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight)

4) THE CANDIDATE
(dir: Michael Ritchie, stars: Robert Redford, Peter Boyle)

5) THE GODFATHER
(dir: Francis Ford Coppola, stars: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino)

6) THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE
(dir: Ronald Neame, stars: Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters)

7) CABARET
(dir: Bob Fosse, stars: Liza Minnelli, Michael York)

8) AVANTI!
(dir: Billy Wilder, stars: Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills)

9) SOUNDER
(dir: Martin Ritt, stars: Paul Winfield, Cicely Tyson)

10) TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT
(dir: George Cukor, stars: Maggie Smith, Alec McCowen)

1971

“The Last Picture Show” is quite simply an American classic. Shot in black and white, Peter Bogdanovich’s film about a small Texan town in the 1950s, where the youth have to cope with boredom, coming of age, and the closing of their cinema is a film that deserves a continuing audience. For curiosity, watch the 1990 sequel “Texasville” to see how time has made the innocence of youth turn to cynicism. “The French Connection”, 1971’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, still holds up as good cinema, but if you’ve grown up on several decades of movies detailing crime and drugs, Hackman chasing the dapper Fernando Rey may feel a little tame. “Summer of ’42” is a charming rose-tinted movie set on the island of Nantucket off the Massachusetts coast about a boy’s love for a woman longing for the return of her soldier husband, off fighting in World War Two. “Harold and Maude” is a very quirky comedy, while “Carnal Knowledge” is a witty look at the sixties sexual revolution that Art Garfunkel and Jack Nicholson are trying to make sense of.

1) THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
(dir: Peter Bogdanovich, stars: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges)

2) SUMMER OF ‘42
(dir: Robert Mulligan, stars: Gary Grimes, Jennifer O’Neill)

3) CARNAL KNOWLEDGE
(dir: Mike Nichols, stars: Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel)

4) HAROLD AND MAUDE
(dir: Hal Ashby, stars: Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort)

5) THE FRENCH CONNECTION
(dir: William Friedkin, stars: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider)

6) DUEL
(dir: Steven Spielberg, stars: Dennis Weaver, a scary truck!)

7) BANANAS
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Woody Allen, Louise Lasser)

8) THE HOSPITAL
(dir: Arthur Hiller, stars: George C. Scott, Diana Rigg)

9) WALKABOUT
(dir: Nicolas Roeg, stars: Jenny Agutter, John Meillon)

10) SHAFT
(dir: Gordon Parks, stars: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn)

1970

Only a year after his noteworthy turn in “Easy Rider”, Jack Nicholson gives a perfect slow-boiling performance as an apparent working man who returns to his upper class family roots, with ditzy girlfriend in tow. It’s about reopening old wounds, and the title refers to Nicholson’s piano-playing as a younger man. I highly recommend you invest in a copy if you’ve never seen it, or pick up one of the various Jack Nicholson box sets that includes “Five Easy Pieces”. Superb drama! In a similar vein, “I Never Sang for My Father” is not well-known on either side of the Atlantic, but father and son combo Melvyn Douglas and Gene Hackman were both Oscar nominated for their performances. As with Nicholson and his father’s frozen relationship in “Five Easy Pieces”, the potency of “I Never Sang for My Father” is really in the evoking of a stark generation gap. As for “M*A*S*H”, the Altman treatment is far different from the subsequent sanitised television version of the American army’s experiences during the Korean War. Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould are a brilliant double act, focusing only on golf and rather blood-spattered and chaotic medical procedures. The highlight is a morbidly funny ceremony to witness the departure of a depressed colleague, to the tune “Suicide is Painless”! Enjoy!
1) FIVE EASY PIECES
(dir: Bob Rafelson, stars: Jack Nicholson, Karen Black)

2) M*A*S*H
(dir: Robert Altman, stars: Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould)

3) I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER
(dir: Gilbert Gates, stars: Gene Hackman, Melvyn Douglas)

4) THE MOLLY MAGUIRES
(dir: Martin Ritt, stars: Sean Connery, Richard Harris)

5) JOE
(dir: John G. Avildsen, stars: Peter Boyle, Susan Sarandon)

6) TRISTANA
(dir: Luis Bunuel, stars: Fernando Rey, Catherine Deneuve)

7) LOVE STORY
(dir: Arthur Hiller, stars: Ryan O’Neal, Ali MacGraw)

8) PATTON
(dir: Franklin J. Schaffner, stars: George C. Scott, Karl Malden)

9) SCROOGE
(dir: Ronald Neame, stars: Albert Finney, David Collings)

10) THE GREAT WHITE HOPE
(dir: Martin Ritt, stars: James Earl Jones, Jane Alexander)

The 1970s is, to my mind, the seminal decade for cinema (so far!). You could go to your local cinema tonight and I would probably win money that you won’t see as good a film as you could see if you stayed hom and turned on a DVD of any of the decade’s classic offerings. Arm yourself with a pile of movies by Sidney Lumet, Hal Ashby, or Scorsese, or Coppola. Pick up any of the performances by Jack Nicholson. Explore a time period where the tone of films was changing, and the darker side of the human animal was explored on screen. To pick a favourite ten movies from the decade is a challenge, but for the record, here they are!


TOP 10 MOVIES OF THE 1970s!

1) FIVE EASY PIECES (1970)
(dir: Bob Rafelson, stars: Jack Nicholson, Karen Black)

2) THE PAPER CHASE (1973)
(dir: James Bridges, stars: Timothy Bottoms, John Houseman)

3) THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971)
(dir: Peter Bogdanovich, stars: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges)

4) ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975)
(dir: Milos Forman, stars: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher)

5) BOUND FOR GLORY (1976)
(dir: Hal Ashby, stars: David Carradine, Ronny Cox)

6) NETWORK (1976)
(dir: Sidney Lumet, stars: Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch)

7) MANHATTAN (1979)
(dir: Woody Allen, stars: Woody Allen, Mariel Hemingway)

8) AN UNMARRIED WOMAN (1978)
(dir: Paul Mazursky, stars: Jill Clayburgh, Alan Bates)

9) THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974)
(dir: Alan J. Pakula, stars: Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn)

10) THE DEER HUNTER (1978)
(dir: Michael Cimino, stars: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken)

Top Ten Movies of the Year: The Sixties

Which were the best films of the 1960s? Here are my selections! The 1960s was a diverse decade for cinema. Hollywood was still clinging to the big budget studio productions, a new breed of film-maker was emerging in America on the back of the New Wave in France. So which were the best films of the decade? I make no apologies for my choices or omissions, as these are my favourites, but I hope you get some inspiration to add to your own film collections when you’re shopping for DVDs!

Here are my favourite movies for each year of the 1960s:

1969

“Midnight Cowboy” took the Best Picture at the Oscars but arguably “Easy Rider” has had the longer-lasting impact on pop culture, while “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” is most fondly remembered. My favourite is a beautiful skewering of the 60s middle classes appropriating the “free love” and therapy craze in California. “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” sees Natalie Wood and her husband, Robert Culp, trying to influence their slightly uptight friends, Dyan Cannon and Elliott Gould, to join them and experiment! Brilliant comedy!

1) BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE
(dir: Paul Mazursky, stars: Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould)

2) BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
(dir: George Roy Hill, stars: Paul Newman, Robert Redford)

3) GOODBYE, COLUMBUS
(dir: Larry Peerce, stars: Ali MacGraw, Richard Benjamin)

4) EASY RIDER
(dir: Dennis Hopper, stars: Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson)

5) MIDNIGHT COWBOY
(dir: John Schlesinger, stars: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight)

6) THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?
(dir: Sydney Pollack, stars: Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin)

7) THE WILD BUNCH
(dir: Sam Peckinpah, stars: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine)

8) Z
(dir: Constantin Costa-Gavras, stars: Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant)

9) ALICE’S RESTAURANT
(dir: Arthur Penn, stars: Arlo Guthrie, Pat Quinn)

10) THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE
(dir: Ronald Neame, stars: Maggie Smith, Pamela Franklin)

1968

1968 was a curious year for film because to me it looks like the last death throes of the “Old Hollywood” with “Oliver!” claiming the top Oscar. My selection for favourite film of the year is a unique piece with Burt Lancaster, a suburban man who has apparently suffered some form of life crisis, deciding one day to make his way across the landscape by leaping fences and swimming through the pools of his friends and neighhours. I don’t think “The Swimmer” is very well-known, but I think is worth watching. Also check out the brilliant “Battle of Algiers” about the French colonial struggle in Algeria.

1) THE SWIMMER
(dir: Frank Perry, stars: Burt Lancaster, Kim Hunter)

2) THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
(dir: Gillo Pontecorvo, stars: Jean Martin, Brahim Hadjadi)

3) BULLITT
(dir: Peter Yates, stars: Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn)

4) THE LION IN WINTER
(dir: Anthony Harvey, stars: Katharine Hepburn, Peter O’Toole)

5) THE PRODUCERS
(dir: Mel Brooks, stars: Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel)

6) ROSEMARY’S BABY
(dir: Roman Polanski, stars: John Cassavetes, Mia Farrow)

7) THE ODD COUPLE
(dir: Gene Saks, stars: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau)

8) FACES
(dir: John Cassavates, stars: Gena Rowlands, John Marley)

9) OLIVER!
(dir: Carol Reed, stars: Ron Moody, Oliver Reed)

10) THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
(dir: Robert Ellis Miller, stars: Alan Arkin, Sondra Locke)

1967

I think 1967 will long be remembered as a seminal year in cinema history, although masterpieces like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate” don’t even make my favourite Top 3 films of the year! Instead I plump for a very clever film called “Two for the Road”, following the non-chronological highs and lows of a relationship between Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn. I also love Neil Simon’s play “Barefoot in the Park” in which Robert Redford and Jane Fonda adjust to the life of newly-weds. For those of you who enjoy scenes involving the consumption of vast quantities of boiled eggs, “Cool Hand Luke” is one of Paul Newman’s best performances. It was “In The Heat of the Night” that was the Academy Awards choice for Best Picture. Check out “In Cold Blood”, and then watch the 2005 movie “Capote” to see how they connect.

1) TWO FOR THE ROAD
(dir: Stanley Donen, stars: Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney)

2) BAREFOOT IN THE PARK
(dir: Gene Saks, stars: Jane Fonda, Robert Redford)

3) COOL HAND LUKE
(dir: Stuart Rosenberg, stars: Paul Newman, George Kennedy)

4) THE GRADUATE
(dir: Mike Nichols, stars: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft)

5) BONNIE AND CLYDE
(dir: Arthur Penn, stars: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway)

6) DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE
(dir: Bud Yorkin, stars: Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds)

7) IN COLD BLOOD
(dir: Richard Brooks, stars: Robert Blake, Scott Wilson)

8) IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
(dir: Norman Jewison, stars: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger)

9) GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER
(dir: Stanley Kramer, stars: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn)

10) WAIT UNTIL DARK
(dir: Terence Young, stars: Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin)

1966

Quite simply, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” should be in every serious movie fan’s collection. If you ever want to see a film with two great central performances, with superb dialogue, immensely complex characters, and a riveting and exhausting feel, try this film! When Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor let fly with words, the vitriol wounds deeper than in any other movie I can think of. Another superb performance is given by Paul Scofield in “A Man for All Seasons”, the film awarded the Best Picture at the Oscars that year.

1) WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
(dir: Mike Nichols, stars: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton)

2) ALFIE
(dir: Lewis Gilbert, stars: Michael Caine, Shelley Winters)

3) A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
(dir: Fred Zinnemann, stars: Paul Scofield, Robert Shaw)

4) THE SAND PEBBLES
(dir: Robert Wise, stars: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough)

5) THE FORTUNE COOKIE
(dir: Billy Wilder, stars: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau)

6) SECONDS
(dir: John Frankenheimer, stars: Rock Hudson, John Randolph)

7) A MAN AND A WOMAN
(dir: Claude Lelouch, stars: Anouk Aimee, Jean-Louis Trintignant)

8) BLOW-UP
(dir: Michelangelo Antonioni, stars: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave)

9) GAMBIT
(dir: Ronald Neame, stars: Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine)

10) THE PROFESSIONALS
(dir: Richard Brooks, stars: Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin)

1965

One of my great quests is to find a copy of “A Thousand Clowns” on DVD (or video!). I saw it many years ago when I lived in New York, it’s brilliant and funny, and features a great performance from Jason Robards more than a decade before he won back-to-back Supporting Actor Oscars. I’ll put it at the top of my list for 1965 and keep on hoping it will see a release one day. “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” is another gem from the Cold War era, and again highlights just how good Richard Burton was. One of Terence Stamp’s earliest leading roles was in “The Collector”, a very creepy and atmospheric film about a butterfly collector and voyeur. “The Sound of Music” walked away with Best Picture at the Oscars.

1) A THOUSAND CLOWNS
(dir: Fred Coe, stars: Jason Robards, Martin Balsam)

2) THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD
(dir: Martin Ritt, stars: Richard Burton, Oskar Werner)

3) SHIP OF FOOLS
(dir: Stanley Kramer, stars: Oskar Werner, Vivien Leigh)

4) THE COLLECTOR
(dir: William Wyler, stars: Terence Stamp, Samantha Eggar)

5) DARLING
(dir: John Schlesinger, stars: Julie Christie, Laurence Harvey)

6) THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES
(dir: Ken Annakin, stars: Stuart Whitman, Terry Thomas)

7) DOCTOR ZHIVAGO
(dir: David Lean, stars: Julie Christie, Omar Sharif)

8) THE SOUND OF MUSIC
(dir: Robert Wise, stars: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer)

9) VON RYAN’S EXPRESS
(dir: Mark Robson, stars: Frank Sinatra, Trevor Howard)

10) THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX
(dir: Robert Aldrich, stars: James Stewart, Richard Attenborough)

1964

While “Dr. Strangelove” probably ranks at the top of most critics’ Top 10 lists for 1964 due to their Stanley Kubrick appreciation, I’m very taken by the warmth and unique experience of seeing Englishman Alan Bates relax in the company of the exuberant “Zorba”, played by Anthony Quinn. “Becket” is a Hollywood classic in my eyes, detailing a grand piece of British history in the form of
Henry II’s (Peter O’Toole) tussle with his friend Thomas a Becket (Richard Burton) whom he appoints Archbishop of Canterbury, only to find he is not as obedient as he would have liked. A superb film, nominated for 12 Oscars, it lost out on Best Picture to the more popular musical “My Fair Lady”.

1) ZORBA THE GREEK
(dir: Mihalis Kakogiannis, stars: Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates)

2) BECKET
(dir: Peter Glenville, stars: Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton)

3) TOPKAPI
(dir: Jules Dassin, stars: Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov)

4) SEVEN DAYS IN MAY
(dir: John Frankenheimer, stars: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas)

5) YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW
(dir: Vittorio De Sica, stars: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni)

6) FATHER GOOSE
(dir: Ralph Nelson, stars: Cary Grant, Leslie Caron)

7) DR. STRANGELOVE
(dir: Stanley Kubrick, stars: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott)

8) MY FAIR LADY
(dir: George Cukor, stars: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison)

9) THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA
(dir: John Huston, stars: Richard Burton, Ava Gardner)

10) WOMAN IN THE DUNES
(dir: Hiroshi Teshigahara, stars: Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida)

1963

Fans of Paul Newman should take note if they have never seen “Hud”. Equally, anyone who has seen “The Last Picture Show”, “Brokeback Mountain”, or “Terms of Endearment” should be interested in it originating from the writing of Larry McMurtry. It’s pure Americana, set in 1950s Texas, and Newman’s character of Hud Bannon is disillusioned and battling with his father. For a touch of British working class drama, either Richard Harris playing rugby league in “This Sporting Life”, or French actress Leslie Caron coming to London to contemplate having an abortion in “The L-Shaped Room” should fit the bill. “Tom Jones” dominated the Oscars in 1963, although Fellini’s masterpiece “8 ½” has the better reputation.

1) HUD
(dir: Martin Ritt, stars: Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas)

2) THIS SPORTING LIFE
(dir: Lindsay Anderson, stars: Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts)

3) THE L-SHAPED ROOM
(dir: Bryan Forbes, stars: Leslie Caron, Tom Bell)

4) 8 ½
(dir: Federico Fellini, stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale)

5) THE CARDINAL
(dir: Otto Preminger, stars: Tom Tryon, John Huston)

6) LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER
(dir: Robert Mulligan, stars: Steve McQueen, Natalie Wood)

7) CHARADE
(dir: Stanley Donen, stars: Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn)

8) LILIES OF THE FIELD
(dir: Ralph Nelson, stars: Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala)

9) TOM JONES
(dir: Tony Richardson, stars: Albert Finney, Susannah York)

10) THE LEOPARD
(dir: Luchino Visconti, stars: Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale)

1962

Few Hollywood stars engender as much respect as Gregory Peck. He had been nominated for Best Actor four times between 1945 and 1949, but it wasn’t until 1962 when he finally took home a statue for his portrayal of lawyer Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Peck risks unpopularity in a Southern US town for defending a black man falsely accused of rape, and it stands as a classic in American cinema for the quality of the film, the performances, and the message conveyed. “Lawrence of Arabia” took Best Picture at the Oscars, and indeed it is a masterpiece, but I think director John Frankenheimer deserves recognition for making “Birdman of Alcatraz” starring Burt Lancaster, followed by the “paranoia trilogy”, “The Manchurian Candidate”, “Seven Days in May” (see Top 10 for 1964), and “Seconds” (see Top 10 for 1966).

1) TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
(dir: Robert Mulligan, stars: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham)

2) BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ
(dir: John Frankenheimer, stars: Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden)

3) THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
(dir: John Frankenheimer, stars: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey)

4) LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
(dir: David Lean, stars: Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness)

5) LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD
(dir: Alain Resnais, stars: Delphin Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi)

6) LOLITA
(dir: Stanley Kubrick, stars: James Mason, Shelley Winters)

7) DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
(dir: Blake Edwards, stars: Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick)

8) THAT TOUCH OF MINK
(dir: Delbert Mann, stars: Cary Grant, Doris Day)

9) THE LONGEST DAY
(dir: Ken Annakin, stars: John Wayne, Henry Fonda & everyone in Hollywood!)

10) SUNDAYS AND CYBELE
(dir: Serge Bourguignon, stars: Hardy Kruger, Nicole Courcel)

1961

If you’ve seen “The Color of Money”, Scorsese’s mid-80s tale of a young pool player (Tom Cruise) schooled by an aging legend (Paul Newman) then you must get a copy of “The Hustler”. This is the original story of pool hustler Eddie Felson, and features great action scenes between Newman’s lead character, and the brilliant Jackie Gleason as pool marathon man Minnesota Fats. “West Side Story” was a good choice as Best Picture. Audrey Hepburn’s film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” doesn’t age brilliantly, mainly due to the terribly offensive casting of Mickey Rooney as her Japanese neighbour, but is still a beautiful story. Special note goes to Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, who was quietly churning out black and white masterpieces about the human condition. “Through a Glass Darkly” was one of his best.

1) THE HUSTLER
(dir: Robert Rossen, stars: Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason)

2) BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
(dir: Blake Edwards, stars: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard)

3) WEST SIDE STORY
(dir: Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins, stars: Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno)

4) THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
(dir: Ingmar Bergman, stars: Max von Sydow, Harriet Andersson)

5) JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG
(dir: Stanley Kramer, stars: Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell)

6) LA DOLCE VITA
(dir: Federico Fellini, stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg)

7) SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS
(dir: Elia Kazan, stars: Warren Beatty, Natalie Wood)

8) TWO WOMEN
(dir: Vittorio De Sica, stars: Sophia Loren, Jean-Paul Belmondo)

9) THE GUNS OF NAVARONE
(dir: J. Lee Thompson, stars: Gregory Peck, David Niven)

10) THE CHILDREN’S HOUR
(dir: William Wyler, stars: Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine)

1960

“Psycho” is perhaps the most famous of 1960’s crop of films, and ‘though the excellent Billy Wilder film “The Apartment” deservedly won Best Picture at the Oscars, having seen “Spartacus” when I was quite young, it really stuck in my mind as a great epic. Little-known in the UK, Fred Zinnemann’s “The Sundowners” is a brilliant film about a family of sheep farmers in the Australian outback. If you want a dose of high-brow cinema, Alain Resnais made “Hiroshima Mon Amour” and “Last Year at Marienbad” (see Top 10 for 1962) which are both very dreamy studies of memory and relationships.

1) SPARTACUS
(dir: Stanley Kubrick, stars: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier)

2) THE APARTMENT
(dir: Billy Wilder, stars: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine)

3) THE SUNDOWNERS
(dir: Fred Zinnemann, stars: Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum)

4) THE VIRGIN SPRING
(dir: Ingmar Bergman, stars: Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg)

5) ELMER GANTRY
(dir: Richard Brooks, stars: Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons)

6) HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR
(dir: Alain Resnais, stars: Eiji Okada, Emmanuelle Riva)

7) PSYCHO
(dir: Alfred Hitchcock, stars: Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins)

8) IT STARTED IN NAPLES
(dir: Melville Shavelson, stars: Clark Gable, Sophia Loren)

9) INHERIT THE WIND
(dir: Stanley Kramer, stars: Spencer Tracy, Fredric March)

10) SUNRISE AT CAMPOBELLO
(dir: Vincent J. Donehue, stars: Ralph Bellamy, Greer Garson)

The 1960s has plenty to offer the contemporary cinema lover. Many of the “classic” Hollywood stars were still operating, although a whole generation of stars and directors who are even making films in the 21st century got their start. To pick a favourite ten movies from the decade is a challenge, but for the record, here they are!

TOP 10 MOVIES OF THE 1960s!

1) WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)
(dir: Mike Nichols, stars: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton)

2) THE HUSTLER (1961)
(dir: Robert Rossen, stars: Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason)

3) A THOUSAND CLOWNS (1965)
(dir: Fred Coe, stars: Jason Robards, Martin Balsam)

4) HUD (1963)
(dir: Martin Ritt, stars: Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas)

5) BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (1969)
(dir: Paul Mazursky, stars: Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould)

6) BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)
(dir: George Roy Hill, stars: Paul Newman, Robert Redford)

7) TWO FOR THE ROAD (1967)
(dir: Stanley Donen, stars: Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney)

8) ZORBA THE GREEK (1964)
(dir: Mihalis Kakogiannis, stars: Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates)

9) BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961)
(dir: Blake Edwards, stars: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard)

10) TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962)
(dir: Robert Mulligan, stars: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham)

Haven’t We Seen This Before? The World of Hollywood Remakes

If you close your eyes and think really hard for a minute, a realisation hits you. If you’re a big movie fan like me then you will have seen a long list of movies more than once. I’m not talking about being crazy about “Lord of the Rings” and watching it every Saturday night like a ritual, I mean sitting in the cinema and either knowingly or unknowingly viewing a movie that is completely unabashedly unoriginal! Are we experiencing the death of original storytelling?

Remakes! We can’t escape them in contemporary Hollywood. But if you think back through cinema history, to be honest, they’re nothing new. In the early days of the film business, whether before the advent of sound, or during the studio system and the black and white film days, stories were continually rehashed, repackaged, adapted, and rereleased over and over for the express purpose of making money and entertaining the millions who were yet to be introduced to the domestic “convenience” of television.

Original versus Familiar

Now in the 21st century the postmodern internet generation seems rife with conjecture about the death of original ideas and how continually remaking previous hit films is sapping the enjoyment out of going to the multiplexes. Why do studios continue to make new versions of films that we’ve seen before? Well, there are a number of reasons. Quite obviously money is high on the list. How about creative vision? Can you improve on something that arguably was flawed in its original version, and have the audacity to think you can make it “better”? Perhaps you want to contemporize the story because the big shoulder pads and synthesizer-heavy soundtrack smacks of eighties bad hair days and will confuse the target audience who were born after 1995?! Films in other languages are pillaged and given the “Hollywood makeover” for “middle America”, unwilling and incapable of watching moving pictures while reading subtitles, and balancing supersize buckets of popcorn on their ample laps. Isn’t it just easier to produce, film, and market a movie that your audience can determine very quickly that they want to see? Remakes are not the only money-sure way for studios to cash in on public demand though.

Sequels

The summer of 2007 has seen a number of high profile movie sequels hit the big screens. I suppose the movie studios figure that what worked once will work again, and the way to entertain your audience is to give them what they want. Last Sunday I went to see “The Bourne Ultimatum”, the last outing (or maybe not?!) in a trilogy that has catapulted director, Peter Greengrass, into the mainstream. The film is a superb piece of cinema, and succeeds not just as a supposed conclusion to the Matt Damon trilogy, but could also be viewed as a stand-alone story. Likewise “Shrek 3”, “Evan Almighty”, the latest “Harry Potter” episode, “Ocean’s Thirteen”, “Spider Man 3”, “Rocky Balboa”, “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”, and “Rush Hour 3” all arguably offer cinema-goers both familiar characters, and a new adventure, in the worlds that they know and love already.

There is much debate among film buffs and followers of pop culture about the concept of “originality”. If all we are fed is a diet of films that include “2, “II”, or a colon adding a new subtitle to a well-worn brand, in the title, then where is the space on the big screens for entirely new stories and original cinematic ideas? The website www.sequelogue.com pays attention to the number of remakes and sequels being churned out by Hollywood. “Is Hollywood running out of ideas?” they ask?

Show Me The Money!

Clearly the financial dictates of the film business are such that movie executives, whose shelf-life is often short, are wielding budgets of multi-millions with the pressure to deliver a return on their investment. They could push their chips onto a story about a disabled Eskimo girl who believes she can become a Winter Olympic champion (I don’t believe this story has yet been written), or politely inquire whether Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker might like to dust off their respective acting talents for another mad-cap adventure. After all, the last episode made the big bucks!

So what is it about remakes? Surely that’s a different phenomenon altogether? Making a new film to follow on from a popular and successful movie can have producers thinking they will knock “The Godfather Part II” from its mantle as “greatest ever sequel”. But would you throw the megabucks at a director to say “Hey, Coppola’s original “Godfather” movie was pretty good, but I was kind of put off by seeing Brando talking with cotton wool in his mouth. I loved Travolta in “Hairspray”! Is he free right now? Couldn’t we get him to do Corleone, and Chris Columbus can direct?” Not gonna happen. I hope.

Rose-tinted Childhoods

I’m pretty sure there is a lot of personal influence dictating what gets remade. When you look at which movies have had a subsequent remake, it’s clear that the impressionable childhoods of many a star, director or producer caused them to fall in love with one story or another. Maybe one exec went to a drive-through in the 1950s, got his first kiss, and has loved the movie that he saw that night ever since? It’s luck of the draw whether the movie that night was actually any good or not! A child of the 70s was inspired by a particular actor that made him or her want to become a movie star. Thirty years later their ego dictates that they want to bring the very same movie to the big screen, but this time with themselves in the lead role! I’m sure it happens.

And what constitutes a “remake” anyway? What if the medium changes? Is adapting a novel into a film a form of “remake”? When we read a story in novel form we create the characters in our minds, play out the story in our own personal worlds. Then somebody comes along and “adapts” the book into a movie and we go along to see characters we already “know”, only they’re not how we imagine them, and the protagonist is far too old to be given Brad Pitt’s body! Plays that were written for the stage are translated to the cinema screens. What was original in one form is remade into something else. Does a movie spin-off from a well-known and popular TV series constitute a “remake”? I would argue it does, particularly if time has passed between 60s or 70s series that is made with an entirely new cast some thirty years later. However, maintaining the small screen cast of “Sex and the City” for a forthcoming film can’t be labelled as a “remake”.

All remakes suck!

One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve trawled the web for debates about remakes is how clearly delineated the arguments are. The debate surrounding remakes never seems to get much further than “how did it compare to the original?” (invariably worse!), “why was it made anyway” (for money!), and “why is acting always worse in a remake?” This is a curious side argument in itself! What I did realise is just how many remakes I have seen. My research is by no means exhaustive, and I’m sure you can think of others that are not on my list. But to give you an idea about the recent world of remakes, I suggest that they can be grouped into a number of categories.

Remakes of famous TV series

When a loyal TV audience has the chance to see a film version of a series it has held close to its heart, you’d figure the movies would be popular. It’s not always the case though. 1994’s “Maverick” starred Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, and original star, James Garner, from the late 50s-early 60s western series. That was a successful remake for updating the original, while impressing critics and audience alike. The same (and more) could be said for the massive box office draw of the “Mission: Impossible” movie franchise, starring Tom Cruise, that has surely surpassed any comparison you make with the original series. Harrison Ford’s turn in the Oscar-nominated “The Fugitive” (1993) alongside Tommy Lee Jones would count as an improvement on the 60s series, although personal opinion may hold sway on 70s series such as “Charlie Angels” (Farrah Fawcett fans v. Cameron Diaz & Drew Barrymore aficionados), and “Starsky and Hutch” (is Ben Stiller’s wig worthy of comparison with Paul Michael Glaser’s mop?).

Remakes such as “The Avengers” (Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman), “The Mod Squad” (Omar Epps and Claire Danes), “The Dukes of Hazzard” (Seann William Scott and Jonny Knoxville), and “Lost in Space” (William Hurt and Matt LeBlanc) raise questions such as “why???”, particularly from avid fans of the originals. “The Addams Family” spawned both a film version and sequel, while British TV has inspired, rather than offered blueprints for, Soderbergh’s Oscar-winning “Traffic” and the less successful Robert Downey Jr. film version of Dennis Potter’s “The Singing Detective”. In the first case, the original series “Traffik” looked at drug smuggling from the Middle East, while Soderbergh’s film should probably be classed as an adaptation, since Stephen Gaghan’s screenplay transferred the action to North America. Family films such as “The Brady Bunch Movie”, “Scooby Doo”, “Inspector Gadget”, “The Flintstones” all met with rather less success than the originals, but “Transformers” was remade from an 80s cartoon into this summer’s big budget live action effects blockbuster. Perhaps the best example of a television series that received a worthy movie remake was Michael Mann’s ultra-cool “Miami Vice” starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx.

Remaking the Classics

More opposition seems to exist when directors dig into the archives and pull out respected classics from the past. In 2006, Sean Penn and an all-star cast featured in “All The King’s Men”. The original won the Best Picture Oscar for 1949, so any comparisons were likely to be tough on the remake. The 30s classic “Scarface” was remade, and definitely “reimagined”, in Pacino’s shoot-em-up from 1983, while 50s films such as the musical “The King and I” (remade as “Anna and the King” with Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat), “Sabrina” (the 90s version starred Harrison Ford), and “Father of the Bride” (remade with Steve Martin) were all less acclaimed than the originals. When the Coen Brothers attempted their southern US remake of Ealing comedy “The Ladykillers”, Tom Hanks and his mullet were critiqued for not being nearly as impressive, or sinister, as Alec Guinness in the British original.

The 60s have been plundered liberally for recent remakes. In the early 90s Robert De Niro starred in “Cape Fear”, in the role that Robert Mitchum had featured in originally. Family films such as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (Johnny Depp playing Gene Wilder’s role), “Flubber” with Robin Williams (a remake of 1961’s “Absent Minded Professor”), or “The Nutty Professor” (Eddie Murphy twice reprising the 1963 film starring Jerry Lewis) have met with mixed reviews. Michael Caine’s films “Alfie” and “The Italian Job” have both been remade, with the latter featuring Mark Wahlberg, a particular fan of starring in films first shot in the 1960s, as he’s also made “The Truth About Charlie” (a remake of the 1963 Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn film “Charade”) as well as “Planet of the Apes”. For every miss like “Bedazzled” or “Psycho” (possibly the most lambasted remake due to Gus Van Sant’s creative decision to shoot like-for-like scenes in colour, of a Hitchcock classic no less!) there is a completely worthy remake like Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven” or “Casino Royale”. In the first instance, the Rat Pack original had little point to it, and plenty of scenes which felt like they had switched the camera on while Dean Martin and Sammy Davis drank whisky and sang next to a piano. The Bond film starring Daniel Craig was a far superior take on the Fleming novel, which in the late 60s had been filmed as a spoof with David Niven in the lead. I will also stand by Adrian Lyne’s remake of Kubrick’s “Lolita”, itself an adaptation of the Nabokov novel, and Jonathan Demme’s remake of John Frankenheimer’s tense 60s paranoia thriller “The Manchurian Candidate”, as decent remakes of impressive originals. You can also justify Mel Brooks’ involvement in remaking his 60s comedy “The Producers” due to the huge success of the theatre version in the past decade. In the pipeline is a remake of 60s fantasy film “Fantastic Voyage”. When it comes to films with special effects, the technological improvements must surely be a major reason to tempt producers to splash millions on the screen, even if they are remaking old stories.

The Seventies All Over Again

Films made in the seminal decade of the 1970s have been prominent remakes for the 90s generation and beyond. But here lies the problem! There are many great movies that were made by the Scorsese and Coppola generation. Unfortunately very few remakes have cut the mustard. When Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange starred in the 70s remake of “King Kong” there was considerable criticism, yet Peter Jackon’s decision to do the same as his follow-up to Lord of the Rings was extremely worthwhile, in my opinion, and tense as a film epic. But can the same be said for remakes of “The Day of the Jackal” (“The Jackal” starring Bruce Willis), “Get Carter” (Stallone instead of Michael Caine??), “The Poseidon Adventure” (“Poseidon” - what could be better than Gene Hackman and an upside-down Christmas tree?!), or “The Thomas Crown Affair” (Pierce Brosnan playing Steve McQueen’s part?). Director John McTiernan was guilty of the last of those films, and also helmed the remake of “Rollerball”. Comedian Chris Rock has starred in two remakes from 70s movies – the Burt Reynolds film “The Longest Yard”, and “Down to Earth” (previously “Heaven Can Wait” starring Warren Beatty, itself a remake!) “Superman” in the 70s with the iconic Christopher Reeve wearing the lycra will be better remembered than Brandon Rouse in any “remake”, but comic book adaptations are frequently made and remade so as not to truly justify their inclusion in a debate such as this.

Comedies such as “The Stepford Wives”, “The Out of Towners”, and “Freaky Friday” have all been remade, arguably to their detriment, but it is the horror genre that has been most criticized when it comes to updated releases. When the nature of the film is to scare and surprise, fans of the original “Halloween”, “The Omen”, or “The Wicker Man” are most obviously going to be disappointed when firstly they know what will happen, and secondly are bitter that somebody else is messing around with what is a perfectly good film to begin with! Perhaps one of the rare 70s movies to receive a degree of respect in both its original incarnation and remake thirty years later, was “Shaft”. He was the original detective John Shaft in 1971, but actor Richard Roundtree also played a role in the 2000 release as “Uncle John Shaft” to the star of the film, Samuel L. Jackson. Remake or sequel?! A very fine line in this instance!

How Long Do You Wait to Make it Again?

It seems it will only be a matter of time before the upcoming generation of actors, producers, and directors, raised on a diet of John Hughes, “Top Gun”, “Police Academy” and “Beaches”-style tearjerkers will start remaking the “classics” of their youth. Just this summer John Waters’ “Hairspray” (1988) was given the mainstream treatment with John Travolta and Michelle Pfeiffer lending the star names. Can a movie be made and its shelf-life be over so fast that a studio will take advantage of people’s short-term memories to remake it and release it again? The DVD generation are being fed re-released films with “20th Anniversary edition” packaged on them, and in many instances, getting to see movies for the first time. That is all well and good, but when will we see ads for a new version of “Amadeus” starring two actors whose previous credits are that they were teen heart-throbs in a California-based TV series? Or how about a remake of “Driving Miss Daisy” with a touch of race reversal? Oprah Winfrey can play Jessica Tandy’s Oscar-winning role, and Harrison Ford can drive the car in place of Morgan Freeman. Probably not necessary, but who knows! At what point do films from the 80s become fair game and desirable as fodder for remakes?

You’re Not From Around Here!

One very clear pattern is for Hollywood to celebrate the creativity of various international cinemas, be they French, Spanish, Italian, or Asian, and instead of trying to market them to the American people, and / or English-speaking audiences, simply get somebody to rewrite them and recast! In some examples the original casts themselves play the identical roles in English! The most recent Oscar-winner for Best Picture was Martin Scorsese’s Boston crime drama, “The Departed”. Contrary to being a purely original piece of cinema, the film is largely based on “Mou Gann Dou” (or to give it the English title, “Internal Affairs”) by the Hong Kong director, Alan Mak Siu. Notable other remakes from original foreign source material include “The Ring” (from the 1998 Japanese horror “Ringu”), and Soderbergh (again!) taking on Tarkovsky’s 70s sci-fi “Solaris”, this time with George Clooney in the lead. From Italian cinema, Al Pacino’s Oscar performance in “Scent of a Woman” owed much to the original “Profumo di Donna” from 1974, while Guy Ritchie directing his wife Madonna in a remake of Lina Wertmuller’s “Swept Away” was thought by many to be a terrible mistake. I have a lot of time for “The Last Kiss” starring Zach Braff, and have yet to see the original “L’Ultimo Bacio” which brought director Gabriele Muccino to Hollywood’s attention to merit guiding Will Smith to his Oscar-nominated performance in “The Pursuit of Happyness”.

Other Americanized remakes of non-English language cinema include “Shall We Dance?” for Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez, from the beautiful 1996 Japanese film, another Richard Gere performance in “Sommersby” (alongside Jodie Foster) transforming Gerard Depardieu’s role in the French picture “The Return of Martin Guerre”, Robin Williams and Nathan Lane camping it up in “The Birdcage” (from the 1978 French farce “La Cage Aux Folles”), and the Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage romance “City of Angels”, based on Wim Wenders’ 1986 German masterpiece “Der Himmel Uber Berlin” (“Wings of Desire”). After Christopher Nolan was acclaimed for “Memento” in 2000 he directed Oscar winners Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank in “Insomnia” just five years after the Norwegian original was released in 1997. Most prominent of all foreign films remade in America may have been the Cameron Crowe – Tom Cruise project “Vanilla Sky” that came out in 2001. Much was made of the decision to buy the rights to Alejandro Amenabar’s tense 1997 psychological drama “Abre Los Ojos”, not to mention the casting of Penelope Cruz in the remake to reprise her role of ‘Sofia’. Subsequent changes in the private lives of the film’s leads added some colour to the debates surrounding the remake, but did not help critics’ opinions after they had seen it.

Remaking The Future?

It seems that the trend for remaking films from the past will continue unabated. If we are lucky the true classics and gems of cinematic history will be left intact while a second tier of good films may be dusted off and given a new lick of paint in the form of a remake. Television will continue to offer original source material for new films as forthcoming projects will testify to. Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway are the reported stars of “Get Smart”, while “Magnum PI”, “I Dream of Jeannie” and “Knight Rider” all look set for film remakes. Following “Walk The Line”, James Mangold’s new film stars Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in “3:10 to Yuma”. It purports to be a remake that maintains the integrity of the original 1950s western. How you react to news of a remake very much depends on how you feel about the original! I am curious to know how the forthcoming “Sleuth” will turn out, with Kenneth Branagh directing Michael Caine and Jude Law. The 1972 film cast Laurence Oliver in the senior role, while the gimmick to the new version is that Michael Caine will let Jude Law play his original part. The brilliant Charles Grodin was the downtrodden husband on a honeymoon from hell in the 1972 movie “The Heartbreak Kid”. Now that the Farrelly Brothers have their hands on it, and Ben Stiller is playing yet another “victim”, we may be seeing something akin to “There’s Something About Mary” with a few more anatomy jokes! Even Alfred Hitchcock may not be safe from the remake treatment if rumours about a new version of “The Birds” are to be believed, not to mention “Chinatown” screenwriter Robert Towne attempting a remake of the 1935 classic “The 39 Steps”. Or is it merely a contemporary adaptation of John Buchan’s novel?! Finally, I’ve noticed that the wonderful “Logan’s Run” from 1976, capturing a futuristic vision of America’s decline (timed for the country’s 200 year anniversary, the bicentennial) is due for a remake to be released in 2010 with James McTeigue (of “V for Vendetta” fame) directing.

Is it all just about the money? Is there artistic merit and audience appreciation for new versions of films that audiences may (or may not) have seen before? Do TV series make for good movies, and are the memories of classics sullied by modern special effects and younger casts pasted over the faces of yesteryear? To watch a remake means we naturally compare with what has gone before. In some cases there is improvement, but in many examples we lose something by forging a replica or “adaptation”. At the very least a poor remake can bring an old film to a new audience as they “discover” another piece of cinema history. But don’t audiences deserve stories that are new, and filmmaking that doesn’t just invest heavily in special effects and stereotyped characters, but continues to enlighten human experience? I, for one, will continue to be selective in my consumption of cinema that merely remakes what has gone before, but ultimately it’s the masses who decide. Cinema is a democracy and money talks. If nobody lines up at the multiplex to see the next remake of an old favourite, then maybe the executives will hold on to their cheque books a little tighter in future.