Badlands (1973)

Badlands (1973)

[8]

What an odd, beguiling vigilante road-trip romance this is. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek star as two oddly unaffected youths who casually pair up and embark on what turns out to be a killing spree through South Dakota. This was director Terrence Malick’s (Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line) first feature film, and much of his trademark style is here — the beautiful scenery, cutaways to flora, fauna, and natural phenomena (including the most beautiful house burning put to film), as well as voice-over narration that begs a more poetic interpretation of the material.

Day of the Dolphin (1973)

Day of the Dolphin (1973)

[9] George C. Scott (Patton, The Changeling) stars as a marine biologist teaching a dolphin named Alpha to speak in this unusual film from director Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and screenwriter Buck Henry (adapting loosely…
The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather (1972)

[9] The Godfather balances the private lives of its characters with their sensational 'occupation', and that's why I like it more than other 'tough-guy' movies. If I didn't care about the family members, no amount of horse beheadings or car…
The Last Picture Show (1971)

The Last Picture Show (1971)

[10] Peter Bogdanovich adapts Larry McMurtry's nostalgic coming-of-age tale, creating a film so believably rooted in a lonely time and place (the early '50s Texas dust bowl), that you have a hard time shaking it when it's over. The film…
The Beguiled (1971)

The Beguiled (1971)

[9] The Beguiled is a period suspense drama that spirals into claustrophobic horror. Clint Eastwood plays against type as a dying Union soldier rescued by a little girl who brings him to her finishing school in the Confederate south. The…
Walkabout (1971)

Walkabout (1971)

[9] A teenaged girl (Jenny Agutter) and her little brother (Luc Roeg) are stranded in the Australian Outback after their father begins shooting at them, catches the car on fire, and blows his brains out. They manage to survive for…
Summer of ’42 (1971)

Summer of ’42 (1971)

[9] Gary Grimes stars as Hermie, a sensitive teenager spending his summer on Nantucket Island, idling away the hours reading comic books, watching movies, and wandering the beaches with his friends. But when he meets a kind, twenty-something newlywed named…
Deep End (1970)

Deep End (1970)

[8] A fifteen-year-old boy (John Moulder-Brown) begins working at a British bathhouse where a young woman (Jane Asher) goads his sexual awakening. The boy begins obsessing over the woman and her fiancee. He stalks them at night and tries to…
The Lion in Winter (1968)

The Lion in Winter (1968)

[10] Which of King Henry II's sons will succeed him on the throne? This question is rife with political intrigue, personal vendettas, and intense family drama in The Lion in Winter. The relationships are fascinating to watch unfold. The three…
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

[9]

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway star as the legendary real-life bank robbers in Arthur Penn’s volatile Bonnie and Clyde. With its anti-hero point of view and graphic violence, this film helped lead the charge for grittier, more realistic fare that cropped up throughout the ’70s. While the film certainly sensationalizes the criminals, it also humanizes them. It’s easy to see how a bored waitress like Bonnie Parker would fall for a handsome bad boy like Clyde Barrow (I mean, who wouldn’t get in a car with smoking-hot Warren Beatty?) And since the two only robbed banks, they became folk heroes to a working class destroyed by foreclosures. I also like that the film suggests Clyde is impotent. It’s refreshing to see a tough guy with flaws and foibles, and it also makes the romantic relationship more interesting than most.