MC Yearly Consensus - 1976

[Kurosawa Fan]

#4(TIE)

Carrie
Brian De Palma

A mousy and abused girl with telekinetic powers gets pushed too far on one special night.

Sissy Spacek wasn't considered for the role of Carrie until her husband, Jack Fisk, convinced director Brian De Palma to allow her to audition. Her audition so pleased De Palma that she got the lead role. The script called for a model of the White home to be crushed by a hail of rocks. The filmmakers spent an evening trying unsuccessfully to pull off the effect, and as dawn approached, they abandoned the rocks and decided to burn it down. They liked what they saw so it stayed in the film.

"Wickedly reckless and deliriously tasteless, Carrie is about the creation of a sorceress, a geek-girl fantasy—what nerdy high-school chick hasn’t longed to zap the popular bitches?—rife with hilarious sexual symbolism (my personal favorite is Carrie’s control of a wildly leaping fire hose). No movie ever needed to end with an orgasm as much as this one, and De Palma rises to the occasion with a scene many have imitated but none have duplicated. Even when his heroine is post mortem, it seems De Palma can’t stop watching." - Jeannette Catsoulis

[Kurosawa Fan]

#4(TIE)

All the President's Men
Alan J. Pakula

Reporters Woodward and Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Nixon's resignation.

British director John Schlesinger declined an offer to direct as he felt the story of Watergate should be told by an American. One scene involving Robert Redford on the phone is done in a continuous six-minute single take with the camera tracking in slowly. Towards the end Redford makes a mistake - he calls the phone caller by the wrong name - but as he stays in character it simply appears genuine and this was the take used in the final cut.

"Directed by Alan Pakula from William Goldman's script, President's Men works as drama as well as thriller; fencing with each other like dogs in a pen, Redford's Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman's Carl Bernstein develop an uneasy (and, inevitably, temporary) truce between Democrat and Republican, Jew and Gentile, to bring down the common enemy. The movie that launched a thousand J-school admissions, All the President's Men does journalists the service of making them human." - Sam Adams, Philadelphia City Paper

[Kurosawa Fan]

#3

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
John Cassavettes

A proud strip club owner is forced to come to terms with himself as a man, when his gambling addiction gets him in hot water with the mob, who offer him only one alternative.

This was actually a story idea developed by John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese years previously. Ben Gazzara was unhappy with the role initially, unable to find a way to connect to Cosmo Vitelli. That changed when shooting a scene, Cassavetes spoke to Gazzara about the gangsters in the film as a metaphor for the people who are constantly trying to steal or ruin people's dreams. Cassavetes started to cry and Gazzara saw that playing Cosmo was representing John Cassavetes and the movie was a metaphor for the director's struggles for his own dreams.

"Fascinating in its originality, the film is somewhat undercut by an unsteady blend of naturalism and artifice. Originally developed with Martin Scorsese, the movie is ostensibly a gangster film, but the genre is bent into a demented character study. Cassavetes regular Ben Gazzara delivers an absorbing performance as the man forced into a moral quandary and barely aware of it." - Brendon Hanley

[Kurosawa Fan]

#2

Network
Sidney Lumet

A TV network cynically exploits a deranged ex-TV anchor's ravings and revelations about the media for their own profit.

Henry Fonda turned down the role of Howard Beale, saying that it was "too hysterical." Director Sidney Lumet said that he shot the film using a specific lighting scheme. He said in the film's opening scenes, he shot with as little light as possible, almost shooting the film like a documentary. As the film progressed, he added more light and more camera moves and by the end of the film, it was as brightly lit and "slick" as he could make it.

"There's so much high-blooded speechifying going on, it's no wonder the cast rose to the occasion like a battery of thoroughbreds, and selecting standouts from William Holden's leathery old lion, Faye Dunaway's babbling clockwork orange, Peter Finch's exploded psychotic, and Robert Duvall's ferocious bullethead is a losers' game. But the film, in retrospect, is something of a rueful dinosaur, as the filmmakers must've known: It exemplifies exactly the dense, grown-up, meaning-seeking culture that Chayefsky saw being replaced by amoral bastardization. Look around, then look at the film: He was right. " - Michael Atkinson

[Kurosawa Fan]

#1

Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese

A mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran works as nighttime taxi driver in a city whose perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge to violently lash out, attempting to save a teenage prostitute in the process.

Various studios considered producing this film; one suggested Neil Diamond for the lead role. The scene where Travis Bickle is talking to himself in the mirror was completely ad-libbed by Robert De Niro. The screenplay details just said, "Travis looks in the mirror." Martin Scorsese claims that he got the inspiration for the scene from Marlon Brando mouthing words in front of a mirror in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). Harvey Keitel rehearsed with actual pimps to prepare for his role. The scene where his character and Iris dance is improvised, and is one of only two scenes in the film that don't focus on Bickle.

"In short, thanks to what can only be termed the transformation of Taxi Driver's experimental and European elements into razzle-dazzle Hollywood effects, the spectator is invited to identify with a violently Calvinist, racist, sexist, and apocalyptic fantasy, complete with extended bloodbath, that's given all the allure of glittering expressionist art and involves very few moral consequences for most members of the audience. Because the whole thing takes place inside one glamorous character's head, the social ramifications are effectively rationalized to the point of nonexistence." - Jonathan Rosenbaum

[Kurosawa Fan]

Final Scores:

1. Taxi Driver - 93
2. Network - 56
3. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie - 35
4. All the President's Men - 31
4. Carrie - 31
6. The Tenant - 30.5
7. Assault on Precinct 13 - 23.5
8. Rocky - 20.5
9. The Outlaw Josey Wales - 17
10. Mikey and Nicky - 12
10. Small Change - 12

11. The Bad News Bears - 10.5
12. A Real Young Girl - 10
13. Harlan County, USA - 9.5
14. Logan's Run - 9

[Spinal]

Originally Posted by Kurosawa Fan

12. A Real Young Girl - 10

Well, Yum-Yum, we gave it out best shot.

[Qrazy]

Network is exceptional, glad to see it getting the credit it deserves.