I'm making the most definitive list of favorite movies ever.

For every year, I'm listing every movie I've seen and compare them all to each other asking one question; Which movie do I like more. Movies that score in the 80th percentile or higher, advance to the next round: Favorite of the Decade. After each Decade is done, an All Time list will be formed.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Favoritest Movies of 1977

So, not yet age two, or close enough, and Han Solo activates the hyperdrive and I get turned into a nerd for life.  All the top-ever movies will get their own write up, so this is not Star Wars' moment in the sun.  But, it's the first movie I saw in the theater, and there's nothing else to talk about in 1977.


Oh shit.


Alright, let's talk about you.  Let's say that you're actually a more original, more intelligent and more creative movie than Star Wars.  Let's imagine a world, not far off, (ours) where you may have deserved "Best Picture".  You have two or three moments where you actually are self aware and creative enough to see how movies can go beyond their narrative conventions, and be an intellectually interactive experiential medium.  I get that, probably only, because I was comparing you to Star Wars.  Just as Star Wars ripoffs, for the most part thought they could spray paint junk, and blow it up in slow motion, and say anything without it even being intelligible (if you just thought ""the prequel trilogy", get over it!  See a new movie or three...).   The movies you influenced mister Annie Hall, did not even notice your narrative originality, and instead acted like every guy with blue balls and an Arriflex SHOULD make a movie about just how hard his spoiled brat life is.  Sure, if Lucas made a Kurosawa film into a Douglas Trumball looking Flash Gordon serial in England, then all you did was make a '60's French movie in New York in the '70's.  And, after that the only movie that seemed to learn any actual positive lessons from you was the second Austin Powers movie.

I don't think you won Best Picture.  I think you were in the right place to benefit from jealousy, like Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, and The Hurt Locker.  You've been an ongoing life lesson that I was just reminded of the other night.  Taste is fickle.  There is so little separating the popular from the pariah, that often it's just the movement of the flock.

The other night we were watching a movie that took dramatic license with the life of William Shakespeare, with spectacular performances and production values told an all but completely impossible, but no less intriguing fiction in Elizabethan times.  Which one were we watching?


 



Romantic or Tragic?

Entertaining, or Challenging?

Satisfying or Piquing?

Lauded or Scorned?









The story goes that Lucas and Spielberg swapped points on Close Encounters and Star Wars, both thinking the other had the bigger hit.  So, if they don't know what's good, why do so many others act like experts?  The question might require more thought than that.  I've no idea what, if anything is actually "good", I just know what I like, in relation to whatever I'm comparing it to...



  1. Star Wars
  2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  3. Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown
  4. The Hobbit
  5. The Spy Who Loved Me
  6. Oh, God!
  7. Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo
  8. The Amazing Spider-Man
  9. A Bridge Too Far
  10. Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
  11. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
  12. The War in Space
  13. Kentucky Fried Movie
  14. Annie Hall
  15. MacArthur
  16. Smokey and the Bandit
  17. High Anxiety
  18. The Gauntlet
  19. Cross of Iron
  20. Saturday Night Fever
  21. Airport '77
  22. Pete's Dragon
  23. The Island of Dr. Moreau
  24. Exorcist II: The Heretic
  25. Orca
  26. Wizards

1 comment:

Jace Pawlak said...

Aw, Winnie The Pooh was not THAT good! :)