(0029) Klute

June 27, 1971 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? A sinewy, bracingly intelligent thriller.

What did I get? A masterpiece. It’s difficult to think of a Hollywood product as pervasively acute and well executed as Klute. By sheer alchemy it manages to be a thoroughly mesmerizing document of its time (without ever feeling limited by it) as well as a compelling study on the nature of intimacy, the movie’s real subject. It’s “just” a thriller, but Klute gives genre movies a good name.

(0010) Kelly’s Heroes

June 28, 1970 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A badass heist movie in which a bunch of WWII GIs steal Nazi gold.

What did I get? It took me the longest time to figure this movie out. As I said, I was expecting a “badass” movie — but Kelly’s Heroes isn’t really a badass movie at all, it’s a countercultural war comedy that happens to involve a heist. I’d been hearing for years about this rousing classic war movie with … Telly Savalas in which a bunch of grizzled grunts make a run for this Nazi stash of gold. Great! That sounds like a rollicking adventure with lots of rugged badassery. But that’s not what Kelly’s Heroes is.

(0002) M*A*S*H

February 1, 1970 | 5 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? I’ve seen this movie many times, so I knew what to expect. What interested me on this viewing was whether the “juvenile,” “bullying,” even “cruel” aspects of the main characters’ behavior would bother me more than it had on prior viewings.

What did I get? I continue to find M*A*S*H uncommonly, sheerly, inexplicably wonderful. There’s something about the messy, overlapping, offhand style and the senseless-yet-sensible goings-on that resonates with me very powerfully. As I watched the movie this time, several times I became a bit misty and emotional in a way that has nothing to do with the content of the movie. There’s something difficult to define about the form and the purpose of M*A*S*H that — for me — is close to the Platonic ideal of what a movie should be and how a movie should work, and I find it profoundly… moving. It’s jammed with meaning, it’s genuinely funny, it takes itself seriously but is really about not taking yourself too seriously…. I don’t know. It works wonders on me.