(0088X) Herbie Rides Again

June 9, 1974 | 2 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A cute comedy about a sentient VW bug.

What did I get? With a mise-en-scène not far removed from the campy Batman movie of eight years prior, Herbie Rides Again probably felt like a throwback the day it opened. The second movie in the sort-of-franchise kicked off by 1968’s The Love Bug, it’s easy to take but not very memorable. A precursor to Pixar’s Cars movies, Herbie Rides Again has something of that series’ essential ordinariness.

(0087X) Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

May 26, 1974 | 2 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A diverting heist movie or western? Not much info going in here.

What did I get? The underappreciated Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a 1970s movie in the truest sense thanks to its deep trust in the quirks of character to moor its plot. Riskily, it feels like a different movie every fifteen minutes, calling to mind, at least in this respect, Jonathan Demme’s 1986 masterpiece Something Wild. Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate would famously bring the director-centric (some would say self-indulgent) 1970s cinema crashing to a close, but in his first feature there’s much to admire.

(0086X) Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry

May 19, 1974 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A crazy road trip adventure!

What did I get? Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is a grubby countercultural classic for greasemonkeys, it seems, but don’t let that exalted description fool you: engineered for the bad-trip post-Manson generation, it’s now scarcely intelligible to anyone else. Offering more screeching tires than a half-season of The Dukes of Hazzard, the movie founders on the levels of plot, characterization, and theme. Some onlookers extol the chemistry between the eponymous duo, but to me it adds up to a bunch of aimless attitudinizing.

(0085X) The Lords of Flatbush

May 4, 1974 | 2 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? Something about Brooklyn thugs, tone to be determined.

What did I get? The Lords of Flatbush artlessly combines the raw ethos of 1970s American filmmaking and the budding interest in 1950s America that had already manifested in Sha Na Na and American Graffiti and would soon spawn Grease and the popular TV show Happy Days. Even as it cribs many of the strategies of American Graffiti — particularly the soundtrack — the under-emotive Lords sorely lacks Lucas’s directorial verve.

(0084X) The Conversation

April 14, 1974 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? An exceptional, probing character study, rather typical of its time.

What did I get? No Hollywood feature in American history ever wore its seriousness of intent on its sleeve as ostentatiously as Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. Good for us that Coppola’s skills at that moment were developed enough to deliver on his promises — and then some. The quality of The Conversation isn’t really up for debate — one surmises that it may have dated, à la Antonioni’s Blow Up, but it’s far too thoroughgoingly conceived and brilliantly executed for that.

(0083X) The Sugarland Express

April 7, 1974 | 2 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? A tense, intelligent study of extreme motherhood.

What did I get? Better than expected and yet not as good as it seems, The Sugarland Express provides early evidence of Steven Spielberg’s otherworldly filmmaking skills while evincing a prosaic, boilerplate maturity that, for most of his career, Spielberg instinctively shunned. If Sugarland bafflingly fails to resonate as it ought, it may be because Spielberg’s impersonation of a cooler, more measured director was an iffy fit all along.

(0082X) The Great Gatsby

March 31, 1974 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? A droopy adaptation of the Fitzgerald masterpiece.

What did I get? Jack Clayton’s version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic 1925 novel evinces much earnest endeavor by a great many talented and well-meaning people, but it’s foredoomed by its unaccountably guileless approach. Robert Evans hit on the idea of adapting Gatsby as a means of flattering his then-wife Ali MacGraw and, indirectly, of celebrating the new class of nouveaux riches residing in Malibu — didn’t anyone notice the irony? Pitched at an erudite audience that would probably prefer not to countenance it in the first place, the movie’s main achievement is to remind us how fantastic the book is — and how elusive.

(0081X) Blazing Saddles

February 17, 1974 | 7 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? An utterly hilarious and tasteless western parody.

What did I get? Rude, sunny, and not what you’d call ironic, Blazing Saddles ripples with a restless comedic energy that frequently feels something close to musical (it’s also got a lot of good music in it). Arguably the most enjoyable movie of the entire Boffo project, it’s seldom a jot less than fully realized and blazingly memorable. Gleefully, scurrilously anachronistic, Blazing Saddles is properly scattershot and quite sedate in its hilarity. The secret to its hold on us, however, is elusive, as all really great movies must somehow be.

(0080X) The Exorcist

January 6, 1974 | 6 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? An unpleasant, terrifying movie.

What did I get? The strategies employed in The Exorcist are probably unique in Hollywood history — and uniquely successful. Tasked with adapting William Peter Blatty’s relatively sincere (I’m told) novel into the upper middlebrow wigout of the century, William Friedkin left no strategy unconsidered; this constitutes both the movie’s primary strength and its primary weakness. After one viewing, The Exorcist seemed a classic; after three, a disgrace. The truth lies somewhere in between.

(0079X) Magnum Force

December 30, 1973 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A continuation of the stirring conservatism offered in Dirty Harry.

What did I get? Strange as it may seem, Magnum Force is a Dirty Harry movie designed with liberals in mind. Everywhere Harry looks, he is confronted with versions of himself, only more malign and unbalanced: his bile-spewing old buddy Charlie McCoy, a quartet of eager-beaver rookie cops with crackerjack profiency with their weapons and zealotry in their eyes — and that’s far from all. The movie is carefully engineered to establish the sensible limits that Harry does honor, to present his warrior’s code as something approaching mainstream. Harry represents common sense, but the emphasis here is more on the “sense.”