By John H. Foote 25. LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR (1977) The sexual revolution exploded in the seventies, going far beyond the innocence of the sixties when free love became a practice among the youth. It was nothing in the seventies for college kids to have a different partner each night, affairs were far more commonplace,…
By John H. Foote 26. KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979) Robert Benton’s powerfully honest divorce drama which is more about a father and son learning to love one another, won five Academy Awards in its year of release. Best Picture, Best Actor (Duston Hoffman), Best Supporting Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Director (Benton) and for the screenplay…
By John H. Foote 27. THE SHOOTIST (1976) The last performance given by John Wayne was so filled with bitter irony, almost as though it had been pre-ordained. Cast as John Bernard Books in The Shootist, Wayne would portray an aging gunfighter dying of cancer. What the cast and crew realized as filming took place,…
By John H. Foote 28. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING For decades Academy Award winning Director John Huston wanted to make this film, with a variety of actors, but it simply could never happen, there always seemed to be another film, another adventure for the boxing partner of Hemingway. In the seventies, he finally…
By Alan Hurst This one really isn’t that high up on any list of Woody Allen’s best films, or for that matter a list of the great comedies of the 1990’s. But a recent re-viewing – a couple decades away from the behind the scenes personal dramas that were playing out in real time during…
By John H. Foote 29. AN UNMARRIED WOMAN (1978) An Academy Award nominee for Best Picture, this superb Paul Mazursky film gave Jill Clayburgh the role of her career as Erica, a beautiful near fortysomething who goes through a startling transformation. Seeming to be the perfect couple, they have it all. A daughter, beautiful apartment,…
By Craig Leask In 2016 the film Carol which starred Cate Blanchett as a bored housewife who falls in love with an aspiring female photographer (Rooney Mara) earned six Oscar nominations. The following year Moonlight, a film ultimately about a gay black youth struggling to find acceptance and his identity in a world filled with…
By John H. Foote As I have stated before, horror and comedy represent the two most deeply personal genres of film that exist. What scares you might not scare me, or your partner, or friends, and so on and so on. My wife loved horror films, the jump factor and let me tell you, my…
By John H. Foote For the next few months I will explore the greatest films of the decades, beginning with the seventies, and counting down the 30 greatest films. The eighties will follow, the nineties, the 2000’s and the 2010’s and if they prove to be popular I will go backwards through the sixties, fifties,…
By John H. Foote (****) On Criterion Blu Ray Fifty-nine years before the election of Donald Trump to the office of President of the United States came this cautionary tale directed by two-time Academy Award winner Elia Kazan, and starring a rising actor named Andy Griffith. The film was not a success, though in the…