I'm told the kids today have never seen the original theatrical version of what in my youth was known simply as Star Wars.
In case you don't remember Star Wars, that was the out-of-nowhere surprise indy hit of 1977 that knocked the movie world on its ear, launching a thousand movie franchises and driving the final nail in the coffin of what Quentin Tarantino refers to as hippie auteur cinema. I myself haven't missed the likes of Bob Rafelson and Paul Mazursky but I sure do miss the original cut of Star Wars.
Han shot first! And if you're under thirty and don't know what that means, I weep for you. Trying to describe the impact of that version of the movie in 1977 is like trying to describe filet mignon to somebody who's only ever eaten Soylent Green.
(If you're over thirty and don't know what I'm talking about, consider yourself lucky.)
THE ORIGINAL SCENE:
AND GEORGE LUCAS'S MULTIPLE RE-EDITS:
Raymond Chandler wrote in his introduction to Trouble Is My Business: "There are things in my stories which I might like to change or leave out altogether. To do this may look simple, but if you try, you find you cannot do it at all. You will only destroy what is good without having any noticeable effect on what is bad. You cannot recapture the mood, the state of innocence, much less the animal gusto you had when you had very little else."
George Lucas didn't get the memo ...
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I think the consensus pick for best drama of 1976 is Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese's classic tale of a violent, paranoid loner who's spent far too long with the himself as the hero of the movie playing in his head. I recognize its importance in film history, and I have chosen its star, Robert De Niro, as the year's best actor, but just between you and me, I've always had a bit of trouble connecting with it. Maybe I'm not supposed to.
Another good pick would be All The President's Men, a really nifty mystery about Nixon, Watergate, and the two intrepid reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, who blew the lid off the biggest political scandal of my lifetime (well, until the neverending scandal that is Donald Trump arrived on the scene. I mean, the man single-handedly tanked the USFL in 1986, a disaster that would have croaked most careers. But does anybody care? Apparently not ...). And given that I met Katie-Bar-The-Door while working for the college newspaper, not to mention that I worked for years in downtown Washington, D.C., All The President's Men really resonates for me on a personal level.
And then there's Rocky, which won the Oscar and sold a lot of tickets and which might have a better reputation today if Sylvester Stallone had taken an early retirement.
Or how about Network, a scathing look at television and our obsession with celebrity and novelty which was considered pretty far out back in the day but which plays more like a documentary now.
But I'm going with The Outlaw Josey Wales, Clint Eastwood's post-Civil War tale of a Southern guerilla fighter who refuses to be re-assimilated into society only to find himself playing caretaker to a motley assortment of losers and underdogs, and rediscovering his humanity in the process.
Orson Welles had this to say about it: "When I saw that picture for the fourth time, I realized that it belongs with the great Westerns. You know, the great Westerns of Ford and Hawks and people like that." It's full of action, yes, and at first seems like it's going to be a re-run of the Man With No Name spaghetti westerns, but it unexpectedly turns warm and funny and finally quite touching. Personally, I like it better than Unforgiven which won the Oscar and tons of praise as a revisionist Western. This one, which I came to late during my taping frenzy of the mid-90s, is plenty revisionist for me.
I know, I know, Josey Wales is not a consensus pick at all — what pollsters these days would call an "outlier" — and normally, I value consensus above nearly everything. But I'm sticking with it.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
A year ago, Sight & Sound magazine came out with its once-a-decade list of the greatest movies ever made, passing over the likes of Dr. Strangelove, Double Indemnity and Pulp Fiction, which didn't make the top 100, and skipping over past winners Citizen Kane and Vertigo as well, before settling on Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a French art film about a woman silently peeling potatoes for three and a half hours.
I've seen Jeanne Dielman and I've gotta tell you, its appeal mystifies me. But if by some miracle it really is the best movie ever made, then Delphine Seyrig definitely deserves the Oscar for best actress because she's on screen every single minute — the movie lives or dies on her performance.
Me, I'm going with Ann-Margret in Tommy. I can't say with 100% confidence that it's the best performance of 1975 but she had a great career, was a wonderful singer-dancer and deserves some kind of award for letting that lunatic of a director, Ken Russell, hose her down with a swimming pool's worth of Heinz baked beans.
As always, though, the choice is yours.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Chinatown is about seeing without understanding, and rushing headlong where angels fear to tread. Detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is a true-blue American — which is to say venal, well-meaning, blindly stumbling around, certain of his own abilities, confident of final victory, and the unwitting architect of his own defeat.
The mystery (centered on a real-life scheme to profit from L.A.'s water rights) is labyrinthine; the payoff, legendary. And personally, I think this, rather than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is Jack Nicholson's best performance.
Too often people associate the word "masterpiece" with the spinach your tenth grade English teacher made you eat. Chinatown is a masterpiece in the best sense of the word — enthralling, thrilling, moving, and yes, even occasionally thought-provoking. Highly recommended.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
The Sting is fifty years old — fifty! — which means I'm even older. I saw it in a theater with my dad and little brother when it came out. Maybe my all-time favorite movie-going experience was hearing my dad groan at what was then the entirely predictable end of the movie then him laughing with pure pleasure when it turned out not to be. For years prior to that — thanks to the suffocating morality of the Production Code then the hipster nihilism of the New Wave — caper films always ended the same empty way. The Sting was something new.
Of course, now the end of The Sting is predictable and the nihilism of postwar noir feels fresh. These things run in cycles.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Just to clarify, yes, Marlon Brando won the Oscar for best actor in 1972 (and then declined the award for ... reasons.)
But here at the Monkey, we base our nominations not on billing or fame or wishful thinking but on what showed up on the screen. And anyone who has ever seen The Godfather knows that Al Pacino — a virtual unknown in 1972 — was the star of the show. So he gets the nod for best actor and Brando, who will no doubt decline the award anyway, is dropped to the supporting actor category where he belongs.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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