The 1970s gave Hollywood its first genuine auteur era, with directors handed creative control and audiences handed films like The Godfather and Taxi Driver in return. It was a decade of paranoia, ambiguity, and moral unease on screen, bookended by the blockbuster boom that Star Wars helped ignite. See what Macca made of it all below.
Rating: 4.0★
Walter Hill doesn't waste your time. That's the first thing you notice watching Hard Times, his 1975 debut feature, and it's a quality that separates him from most filmmakers working then or now. No fussy preamble, no overly explained backstory, no hand-holding. A
Rating: 3.5★
There's a particular kind of chill that comes from watching a decades-old film and realising it was right. Not in a vague, hand-wavy way, but in sharp, specific, uncomfortable detail. That's exactly what watching THX 1138 today feels like. George Lucas's 1971
Rating: 3.5★
There's a moment in Touki Bouki where you feel the whole film snap into focus: two young lovers on a motorbike adorned with a cow's skull, tearing through the streets of Dakar with nothing but nerve and a half-formed plan, dreaming of Paris like it&
Rating: 3.5★
There's a particular kind of admiration you can have for a film that sits completely apart from actually enjoying it. That tension is exactly where I spent most of my time with Ritwik Ghatak's A River Called Titas, a film I watched as part of my
Rating: 3.0★
There's a peculiar pleasure in watching a film that you can tell has quietly influenced dozens of things you love, even when the film itself won't quite let you fully love it. That's the honest truth of my experience with Little by Little. Jean
Rating: 1.0★
Twenty minutes. That's all it asks of you. And yet somehow, Candomblé in Togo still manages to feel like an imposition. Directed by José Agripino de Paula, this 1972 short is, by any honest measure, barely a film. What you get is handheld footage of traditional Candomblé dancing,
Rating: 2.0★
Not every film deserves a sequel. Some stories end, full stop, and trying to continue them only exposes how much of the original's power came from its simplicity. Futureworld is a textbook case. Directed by Richard T. Heffron, it picks up two years after the catastrophic events of
Rating: 3.5★
There's a moment in Westworld where the holiday is over and the horror begins, and Michael Crichton makes you feel that shift in your gut before you've even fully registered it. One second you're watching two blokes larking about in a cowboy fantasy, the
1970s
There's a moment early in Fantastic Planet where a giant blue hand reaches down and scoops up a tiny human like you or I might pick up a woodlouse off the kitchen floor. It's matter-of-fact, almost gentle, and it's one of the
Genre Documentary
Here and Elsewhere (1976)
Genre Drama
★★★★ — The Last Picture Show (1971)
Genre Drama
★★★½ — Punishment Park (1971)
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