(0043) What’s Up, Doc?

March 12, 1972 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? Honestly, a misfire. Something like High Anxiety, maybe.

What did I get? Wow. Just— wow. What’s Up, Doc? clocks in as the biggest surprise of the Boffo project thus far, by a wide margin. I’m not crazy about Barbra Streisand, I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for Peter Bogdanovich’s previous movie, The Last Picture Show, and the whole idea of a screwball comedy set in the early ’70s…. well, I wasn’t optimistic. But I must give Bogdanovich and the cast and the screenwriters their due: This movie is a wonder to behold.

(0042) Cabaret

February 13, 1972 | 4 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A really good musical about the Nazis.

What did I get? If anything, I underestimated it. Cabaret is a fantastic movie, every bit as good as its reputation. I’ve always had an aversion to Cabaret, its pretensions to seriousness, its apparent reveling in kicky perversity… the whole thing never appealed to me at all. I knew it was about the rise of the Nazis, but it never occurred to me that it could have anything worthwhile to say about the subject. Boy, was I wrong about that.

(0041) The Hot Rock

January 30, 1972 | 3 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? A comical heist movie.

What did I get? The Hot Rock is sort of the Ocean’s 11 of 1972. A heist movie whose comic elements tend to sap the movie of its tension, it has an uneasy relationship to the “gritty 1970s New York” school of movies of which it must be counted a part. It’s “gritty” only because New York is gritty; the movie could have been moved to Tampa or Denver intact. The Hot Rock traffics in most of the countercultural tropes of the time without seeming to understand any of them — or care, much. The four guys who perpetrate the crimes dress down, have shaggy hair, and never sweat the details of the jobs we see them undertake. They qualify as antiheroes only insofar as there’s nothing heroic about any of them.

(0040) The Cowboys

January 16, 1972 | 2 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A western, about cowboys. In other words, not much to go on here.

What did I get? Ah, now I see! The title, “The Cowboys,” in a bit of wordplay that doesn’t quite work, is meant to throw the emphasis on “boys.” Because it’s all about preadolescent ranchers, you see. But “cowboys” doesn’t mean “ranchers who are children,” does it? Nobody ever intends it to denote fresh-faced fourteen-year-olds, I don’t think. Anyway, that’s a quibble. The Cowboys is a canny piece of entertainment in which Wil Andersen (John Wayne) plays stern papa bear to a ragtag group of tweens who, in a pinch, help him transport his cattle a few hundred miles. It’s a pretty brilliant setup for the older Wayne, and the movie is pretty darn effective. It’s not what I would exactly call a good movie, but it does its job tolerably well, and it’s very enjoyable.

The Year in Review: 1971

Summary: A marvelous, marvelous year. I’d be very surprised if it’s not the strongest year that Boffo will cover.

Looking over 1971, it’s composed almost entirely of good movies; Kotch and Summer of ’42 are the only real stinkers. It might have been expected that 1971 would betray all manner of incoherent doubt, rage, and frustration. But far from incoherence, movies instead grappled with difficult subjects with stunning narrative assurance. Number 1 movies are accessible by definition, but this group presented audiences with difficult subjects and flatly refused to take the easy way out.

(0039) Dirty Harry

December 26, 1971 | 3 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A brutalist police movie with an agenda.

What did I get? Hooooo, boy. In Dirty Harry entertainment and politics have a fight to the death, and — well, in all honesty entertainment wins, in the world at large anyway. But here at Boffo politics is going to get its day in court — big surprise. I also view Dirty Harry as a war between two fantasies, the revenge fantasy that the Bay Area understandably needed after the Zodiac Killer case, trumped by the more regrettable political fantasy of a world in which liberals have no sway. In short, this is a stirring, problematic movie.

(0038) Diamonds Are Forever

December 19, 1971 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? A good late-Connery Bond movie.

What did I get? Pauline Kael deprecated Diamonds Are Forever on the grounds of insufficient suavity. She was on to something — it’s a relatively rough-hewn and low-key Bond movie — but I say she had it upside down. The test of a Bond movie is whether it would hold up as a good movie if you removed all the de rigueur Bond tropes and unmotivated globetrotting; by this standard, Diamonds Are Forever comes out looking pretty good — it can almost bear scrutiny as a regular movie. It’s very entertaining, and it admirably ignores many of the canonical James Bond tropes. More interestingly, it’s also a piece of lighthearted propaganda about the stupidity and worrisome might of the United States of America. That I was not expecting.

(0037) Fiddler on the Roof

November 14, 1971 | 5 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A really Jewy musical.

What did I get? Despite its considerable popularity, I was expecting Fiddler on the Roof to be a pill, not candy. Shows you what I know. Fiddler is a remarkably appealing movie, a truly cinematic musical à la The Sound of Music, only with more gravitas and stylistic coherence. The songs are really good, and the movie’s great warmth prevents the subject matter from becoming distancing. Compliments to the writers behind the original musical, Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, Joseph Stein; to the director, Norman Jewison; and to the lead actor, Chaim Topol. Those five people, more than any other, are responsible for the highly enjoyable movie experience that Fiddler is.

(0036) Play Misty for Me

November 7, 1971 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A creepy thriller.

What did I get? I had my forebodings about Play Misty for Me. I don’t always react well to movies that depict intense mental states or anguish, and I was worried that the movie would put its audience through the ringer somewhat. I needn’t have worried — Clint’s first feature as a director is a very intelligent, enjoyable, measured movie with only a few stray moments of hysteria, which, given the subject matter, is only fair. The poster is markedly more lurid than the movie itself.

(0035) The Last Picture Show

October 24, 1971 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? A flawlessly dreary drama about 1950s Texas.

What did I get? I’m impervious to the well-documented allure of The Last Picture Show. There can be no question of the quality of the filmmaking or the ambition of the enterprise, but it just does not do much for me. The movie’s precise, black-and-white cinematography is simply gorgeous to look at, intelligence and taste are everywhere evident, but the characters are not involving enough, there’s too much unremitting misery (with hardly a thing in any other emotional register), and the lofty intentions of the filmmakers constantly drown out the activities of the characters. It may be a great movie, but it’s just not for me.