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1. Taxi Driver (1976) R | 114 min | Crime, Drama. 8.2. Rate. 94 Metascore. A mentally unstable veteran works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City, where the perceived decadence and sleaze fuels his urge for violent action. Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Albert Brooks.
- ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ (1975) There were “midnight movies” before the big-screen version of Richard O’Brien’s tongue-in-cheek stage show, assembled from the spare parts of science fiction double features, musical theater and underlined passages of “Notes on Camp.”
- ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (1977) Meet Tony Manero, age 19, a native of Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge. During the day, this outer-borough everyguy sells paint and bickers with his Italian-American family.
- ‘Cooley High’ (1975) Set in 1964 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and scored by Motown’s vibrant back catalog, this coming-of-age tale follows a group of young, Black high schoolers in Chicago — led by the burgeoning poet Preach (Glynn Turman) and his college bound best friend Cochise (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) — through a series of teenage hijinks (sneaking out of class, fights at house parties).
- ‘F for Fake’ (1973) Orson Welles is at his slipperiest in this essay film, as he imports his gift for telling plummy tall tales on the talk-show circuit to a feature-film format.
A list of 140 movies from the 1970s that capture the moods and themes of the decade, from horror and thriller to drama and comedy. Find out the ratings, reviews, and synopsis of each movie, and discover some hidden gems and classics of the 70s.
- Jeremy Urquhart
- Feature Writer/Senior List Writer
- 'Apocalypse Now' (1979) Director: Francis Ford Coppola. It's easy to call Apocalypse Now a great war movie, but it's also more than just a war movie. It's a loose adaptation of the novella Heart of Darkness, following one man who's given the task of traveling deep into a jungle for the purposes of killing another who's said to have gone rogue, and therefore poses a threat.
- 'Chinatown' (1974) Director: Roman Polanski. Chinatown expertly brings the film noir genre into the 1970s, melding classic noir tropes and storytelling devices with a New Hollywood look/feel.
- 'The Conformist' (1970) Director: Bernardo Bertolucci. Though it's certainly not a musical (instead functioning more as a psychological drama), The Conformist is another early 1970s movie that joins Cabaret as a blunt, eye-opening exploration of Fascism.
- 'Jaws' (1975) Director: Steven Spielberg. Jaws wasn't the very first movie Steven Spielberg ever directed, but it was his first arguably perfect (or close to it) one.
- Marc Chacksfield
- The Godfather Part II (1974) View now at Amazon. Whenever the argument arises over the inferiority of sequels, Francis Ford Coppola’s first follow-up to The Godfather is commonly used as a classic example that bucks the trend.
- Star Wars (1977) View now at Amazon. After Jaws showcased just what mainstream audiences were looking for in the 70s, George Lucas took the idea of a blockbuster one step further.
- Jaws (1975) View now at Amazon. While Star Wars is often seen as the film which invented the summer blockbuster, it was actually Steven Spielberg’s terrifying tale of shark v man which changed how Hollywood viewed the warmer months.
- Alien (1979) View at Amazon now. One of the last films of the decade was also one of the most important. Blending sci-fi and horror in a way that hadn’t been done before (at least not quite as successfully), Ridley Scott’s terrifying thriller kicked off a franchise that’s still going today - a sequel to 2017’s Alien: Covenant is currently in the works.
1. The Godfather (1972) R | 175 min | Crime, Drama. 9.2. Rate. 100 Metascore. The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son. Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Diane Keaton. Votes: 2,008,731 | Gross: $134.97M. 2.
1. The Godfather (1972) R | 175 min | Crime, Drama. 9.2. Rate. 100 Metascore. The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son. Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Diane Keaton. Votes: 2,010,364 | Gross: $134.97M. The Godfather I (1972) 10/10
