By John H. Foote 3. THE GODFATHER (1972) “I believe in America…” – Bonasera to Don Corleone in The Godfather The masterful film The Godfather is about so much more than an Italian family and their worldwide Mafia operation. Francis Ford Coppola, the visionary director of the film, saw so much in the film when…
By John H. Foote 4. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975) Breathtaking. That word best describes the purity of Jack Nicholson’s mesmerizing performance as R. P. McMurphy in Milos Foreman’s superb film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, adapted from the Ken Kesey novel. Nicholson was never better, and let’s be clear he has…
By John H. Foote The answer is absolutely. The late actor, who passed away August 28 after a quiet, dignified battle with cancer, could very well be a double nominee this year, earning nominations for Best Actor in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and for Best Supporting Actor for his superb, haunting performance in Da Five…
By Alan Hurst For most of 1940’s and into the early 1950’s Gene Tierney was a major Hollywood presence, but today even casual movie buffs look vacant when you mention her name. Her personal troubles forced a withdrawal from filmmaking around 1955 and, despite a few forays back on to a soundstage in the early…
By John H. Foote 5. TAXI DRIVER (1976) Something changed in me forever after seeing Martin Scorsese’s seething Taxi Driver for the first time. I was 17, an avid movie goer, I saw everything and was reading everything about cinema I could get my hands on. Discovering the film book section at the library was…
By John H. Foote It has been a year at the movies unlike any other. 2020 will go down in history as the year the movies were forced, due to the pandemic, to welcome streaming to their industry. Knowing if they did not accept the new business, they would sink, they began streaming their films,…
By John H. Foote 6. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) To be clear, Warner Brothers, an American company, produced and distributed this film as they would all the films directed by Stanley Kubrick until his final work, Eyes Wide Shut (1999). That is why the movie is included here in the seventies, because it is at…
By Marie-Renee Goulet The festival stopped rolling this past Sunday. We’ll now have to wait another year for the next tales of distant journeys, ground-breaking expeditions, and remarkable achievements, told by adventurers, photographers, authors, and filmmakers from around the world. Here are this year’s competition winners. I watched films on this list and did not write…
By John H. Foote 7. NETWORK (1976) Sidney Lumet’s lacerating black comedy Network, which is also a cautionary film about the power of television, seemed to see far into the future with blistering clarity, exploring how reality programming took over television. The fictitious UBS Network rests firmly behind ABC, CBS and NBC and struggles to…
By John H. Foote 7. ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976) and NETWORK (1976) Yes, a tie. I agonized over both, but in the end had to tie them. It is not cheating, I do it again in 2012, it does happen. In 1976 both films were topical and foreshadowed or dealt with history honestly and…