BOY HOWDY'S TOP TEN

BOY HOWDY'S TOP TEN

CREEMEDIA

by

Georgia Christgau

Before you notice that this is a “ten best” list, please be informed that it was written before King Kong, Network, A Star Is Born, Bound For Glory, and Silver Streak. I expect those would have knocked off a couple of my choices, because even though these are my favorite movies of the year, I like them knowing that there were other years better than this one. The Last Tycoon and Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson, movies I really looked forward to, turned out to be only ambitious, weird efforts by great directors (Elia Kazan and Robert Altman). After that I didn’t watch for great directors anymore. But I can’t justify figuring a Best Of list which compares the directorial skills of Clint Eastwood to Burt Reynolds, either. Sometimes people, old-timers or novices, miss; that’s all. So here’s a list of near-best movies with the added postscript that, now that I live in New ; York, I’ve missed all the junk first-runs—that is, disaster movies—too. Reruns and revivals are often more tempting than whatever costs four dollars up on the Strip. Ever see Buster Keaton in The Navigator? Now there’s a movie...

AU The President's Men (Alan Pakula):: A friend of mine pegged this right when he said that, unlike the book, it didn’t undercut the drama of the suspense with the reality of Nixon’s insanity. Otherwise, I can’t think of any criticism of this film; two hours-plus seem to go by in minutes. Hope the supporting actress Oscar goes to Jape Alexander, as the C.R.E.E.P. bookkeeper, whose confession is the first bit of “hard information” for the reporters and whose scene is the pivotal one in the movie, changing the unimaginative locker room antics of the Washington Post’s city room into the ethical, political, and competitive battle it was.

The Front (Martin Ritt):: What Woody Allen wouldn’t do to make ah audience laugh.. .even take a political stand. In this movie about anti-communist blacklists in the entertainment industry of the early Fifties, the credits note each actor, writer and producer blacklist date, beginning with Ritt and ending with Zero Mostel. In the script Woody uses a sacrificial lamb (Mostel) to stir his conscience, but nobody’s perfect. Neither is the ending, which suggests that the only people who go to jail are the romantics. A fine performance by Andrea Marcovicci.

The Man Who Fell To Earth (Nicholas Roeg)::Candy Clark, the blonde from American Graffiti, in another growing-up role, convinces us that she has actually fallen in love with David Bowie, who (in addition to being his pale humanoid self) portrays a creature from outer space. This alone should win her an award. But Bowie’s the real shocker: he convinces us he’s revolutionized earth’s electronic systems just for love, too. Sounds like an average lpve triangle, but it’s more—all that’s missing is Station To Station, which would have made a neat soundtrack.

Sparkle (Sam O’Steen)::Although the story is too unbelievable to reveal anything about the consequences of ambition for black artists in the music industry, Lonette McKee was so good that I couldn’t forget her here. The song that made her a star in Sparkle, “Giving Him Something He Can Feel,” was also Aretha Franklin’s first hit single in two years. It was nearly impossible to tell that Lonette McKee wasn’t using her own voice, and when you’re fronting Lady Soul, that’s saying something.

Taxi Driver (Martin Scorcese)::The “You talking to me?” pantomime was the password for cool among those of us who like to think young when this movie came out. Now only Robert De Niro’s chilling characterization of an alienated, grown man remains, and cool is something you used to have when you thought being from the streets was being like everyone else. If you think Midnight Cowboy is the ugliest way to see New York, you haven’t tried this.

The Missouri Breaks (Arthur Penn)::Marlon Brando laid an egg big enough to waste this whole picture, so some.said. But meanwhile, Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton portrayed a maid friendship that became not only a secondary plot but the first innovation in a western script since True Grit. They dug stealing and lazing around as much as any other cowboy, but they also invested their loot in some property and divided up the responsibility for keeping it so that the lazy guy (Nicholson) didn’t look foolish and the conscientious guy (Stanton) didn’t look dull. The former even started a garden and fell in love with a neighbor whose characterization was equally refreshing.

The River Niger (Krishna Shah):: Glynne Turman grows up—something every actor or actress should have to do on screen, especially if they start out as kids as Turman did in Cooley High. He wheels a mean speech, this one about leaving the service because it didn’t make him feel like a man, even making his father (James Earl Jones), an actor prone to proselytizing, speechless. I don’t know about films like this (Car Wash) which show black heroes splitting from the revolution, &nd promote falsemiddle class values insteadsuppose we can wait to find out uhtil the Turman character finishes law school in the next picture?

Jackson County Jail (Michael Miller)::The difference between this rape movie and the worst movie of the year (Lipstick) is that in Lipstick rape seems like a sex fantasy of th.e producer—canopy bed, satin sheets, jgroaninggirl, post-coital self-mutilation by the “offender.” What lengths some men won’t go to, pretending to pay pennance! In Jackson County Jail rape is rape, and you don’t know the graphic details until hours later, when Yvette Mimieux’s beauty queen composure quietly comes unglued. The difference is that the recovery is about the woman, not the man.

Bingo Long And The Traveling All-Stars And Motor Kings (John Badham)::It must be some kind of record to have a single actor show up in two top fflms of the year without extolling his virtues in either film or it could be that James Earl Jones fills the screen without ever imposing his presence; his grin alone is enough to make you forget anything mediocre he ever did. The film stands on its story, a fictional biography of Jackie Robinson, and the disarming way that humor is used not only to tell the story but also to explain what’s been left out of whiter 1 versions. Even Richard Pryor’s chameleon antics aren’t just funny; he comes across better in this cameo/comedy part than any he’s had since Wattstax.

Family Plot (Alfred Hitchcock):: Barbara Harris’ best role since A Thousand Clowns ten years ago, in a role equallydunny but not so dizzy. The Diz is her cab-driving boyfriend, Bruce Dern, who really loves her—their most convincing moments are spent arguing about millions he heard of some place or other, over hamburgers in the kitchen. Here, as in The Laughing Policeman, Bruce Dern is at his best as a bumbling idiot with a history of intelligence.