My Top Ten Films of 1976

This is part of my continuing series looking back on films from the years before I began this blog.

The ten films below are unranked and listed in no particular order. Enjoy.


Network - It's scary how prescient the film was, to the point where Howard Beale's mad media prophet actually seems a little passe in the era of FOX News and Breitbart. Combining the artistic forces of Sidney Lumet, Paddy Chayefsky, and a superb cast, the film is a fantastic exploration of unchecked ambition, madness, and exploitation. It makes the case that the media may be monstrous, but only because it is a reflection of our worst impulses.

Marathon Man - Who could forget one of the least graphic, most effective torture scenes ever filmed? I count this as a career high for director John Schlesinger and writer William Goldman. And while everyone talks about Laurence Olivier as the chilling Nazi dentist, I don't think that Dustin Hoffman gets enough credit. He does the lion's share of selling the escalating thrills and paranoia, famously pushing method acting techniques to worrying extremes.

1900 - This ambitious Bernardo Bertolucci epic is difficult to approach due to the language issues and the considerable length. However, it's worth it to see the rare intersection fo so many acting greats, including Robert DeNiro, Gerard Depardieu, and Donald Sutherland playing a criminally underappreciated psychopath. As historical drama, it's unusually earnest in its political stances, offering a candid look at Italian history from multiple perspectives.

The Bad News Bears - Walter Matthau plays a grouchy, drunken reprobate who is roped into coaching a dysfunctional little league team. Together they proceed to skewer and subvert every trope of sports movies, and especially kids' sports movies, that they can get their grubby mitts on. It's such a joy to watch these little stinkers embrace their status as oddballs and outcasts. It's also a rare movie that really commits to the moral that winning isn't worth selling out.

All the President's Men - Still the prime example of the modern journalism movie, a clear-eyed procedural that systematically shows the investigation and reporting behind the Watergate scandal. Rarely sensational, but utterly absorbing, the film offers a sinister, murky vision of Washington D.C. and the workings of the federal government. It's a view that serves as a vital counterpoint to the usual, jingoistic cinematic images of American politics.

Carrie - Has two of my favorite female monsters in all of cinema, Carrie White and her mother. It's still a gutting portrait of female growing pains, religious mania, and toxic parental relationships, as well as a real scream of a horror picture. This was the first major adaptation of a Stephen King novel, and made a star of Sissy Spacek, one of my favorite actresses. It also helped to cement the reputation of foremost schlockmeister Brian DePalma, possibly the only director who could have done the material justice.

Face to Face - A female psychiatrist has a breakdown and slowly loses her grip on reality, to thrilling effect. This is one of the inimitable Liv Ullman's greatest performances, and I've always been disappointed that the longer miniseries version of this Bergman classic is nearly impossible to find, because I'd love to see more of it. As is, "Face to Face" makes a good pairing with other Bergman/Ullman classics like "Persona" and "Cries and Whispers."

Rocky - It's hard to remember when "Rocky" wasn't really about the boxing, but about a young man looking for his place in the world and someone to share it with. I appreciate the movie so much for the way it follows Rocky's courtship of Adrian. The training sequences with Mickey and the final showdown are wonderful, of course, but it makes such a difference that Rocky Balboa's life is portrayed as a many-sided, emotionally interesting one on the way to his triumph.

Taxi Driver - A snapshot of New York on the brink of economic disaster, mirroring Travis Bickle as a man teetering on the edge of rage and violence. Robert DeNiro's performance remains deeply moving, frightening, and sympathetic, and Bickle is as starkly relevant now as he was in the '70s. This is one of several collaborations between Martin Scorsese and DeNiro, but it was also the first of four films Scorsese made with Paul Schrader, a cinema great in his own right.

Martin - Of all the different takes on vampires I've seen, George Romero's tale of a young man who may or may not actually be a real creature of the night stands out. Martin's struggles against his darker impulses and emergence as a minor radio celebrity make good metaphors for the difficulties of certain populations to adjust to modern life and society. Even if Martin isn't supernatural, he's clearly a monster of a sort, and just familiar enough to be fascinating.

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