Best movies of 1979
June 1, 2025.
More movies here than I usually do, but hear me out.
It’s not like 1979 is a particularly brilliant year for film; even my top two chosen “best” films of the year probably don’t crack the top fifty of all-time. The major reason I expanded this year is because there were several really good “bad” movies that have to be included.
But let’s get to our unifying theme: the dystopia.
We start off with two weird births of futuristic sci-fi: Alien and Mad Max. I have seen the future and I don’t like it.
Apocalpse Now & Breaking Away: both are about Vietnam, directly and indirectly. I have seen the present, and I don’t like it. Add in the previous year’s Deer Hunter and you have a perfect trilogy of Vietnam as interpreted by Hollywood, both in the shit and on the home front.
Being There. It’s so close to being a perfect movie. The acting is brilliant. The story, original. The cinematography impeccable and inspired. But is it... a little too TV-ish? That’s ironic. Or brilliant. Or both.
Manhattan is Woody Allen’s masterpiece even as it flaunts exactly why we are supposed to hate him. But art is art, and this is art. What I don’t get is why Hollywood, (which always had a grudge match against New York), gave Kramer vs Kramer a tongue-bath over this vastly superior New York movie. I suppose it’s because they gave Woody the Oscar two years previously and were trying to expunge their sins but really. KvK is terrible. Period.
Anywhom, the best portrayal of New York is the deliciously mediocre The Warriors. Fight me.
You think New York is bad? Try “Bodymore, Murderland”...And Justice for All, set in Baltimore and teeing up Charm City’s future portralys of charming corruption on the small screen in Homicide: Life on the Streets, The Corner, and The Wire.
Whew, let’s take a break and have some laughs. Pure comedies: The In-Laws, The Jerk, Monty Python. No explanations needed. Just laugh.
1979 was the swan song of musicals. After next year’s Blues Brothers it was pretty much dead until 2002’s Chicago. So let’s enjoy the last rays of sunset with the intensity of All That Jazz and the joyfulness of The Muppet Movie.
As Peter Falk would say every week as Columbo, “Oh, just one more thing.” A musical. Rock’n’Roll High School. So bad, but oddly compelling.
Veteran Jack Warden appears in two great films. Melvyn Douglas shines one last time in his second (deserved) Oscar win after five decades in film.
Hats off to PJ Soles who also appears in two of these: perhaps the best and worst of the year. I like her. I really, really like her. (If you get that joke, give yourself a laurel and hearty handshake).
FXD
Arlington VA.
~As always, click on the movie poster for clips~
Alien
d. Ridley Scott
****1/2
starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt
This ain’t no Star Wars, this ain’t no Star Trek, this ain’t no fooling around. Director Ridley Scott gives a tip of the cap to Stanley Kubrick in the dystopian space genre, John Carpenter in horror/slashers, but his ultimate homage is to the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock as the characters disappear one by one, leaving us alone with bad-ass Sigourney Weaver. Most critics agree the sequel is better, but I’m kinda partial to the original, in large part because the supporting cast is so great.
All That Jazz
d. Bob Fosse
****1/2
starring Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ben Vereen
Behold: the most intense musical you’ll ever watch. In real life, director Bob Fosse had recently suffered a heart attack while trying to simultaneously choreograph Chicago on Broadway and edit a biopic of Lenny Bruce while going through a divorce. Take it as a wake-up call and go on a sabbatical? Nah. Let’s make a movie about it! His near-death experience became the seed for this screenplay, indicating perhaps that he had learned… nothing?! Great choreography, dazzling camerawork and many homages to films of the past make this a tour de force— and a far cry from Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland putting on a backyard show with the kids.
…And Justice For All
d. Norman Jewison
****
Al Pacino, Jack Warden, John Forsythe, Lee Strasburg, Jeffrey Tamboor, Christine Lahti
“No YOU’RE out of order!” Al Pacino shouts at the world. FranxFlix loves courtroom dramas, and this is one of the best: just don’t expect the usual ending. Pacino plays a not-very-successful lawyer in Baltimore, surrounded by nutcases, corruption and bureaucracy. (You know, as is portrayed in every movie and show set in Baltimore). Veering from melodrama to absurdist comedy and back again throughout, Jewison’s direction never loses its focus on the big case he’s putting together.
Apocalypse Now
d. Francis Ford Coppola
*****
Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper
There is so much lore about the making of this film - the cost and schedule overruns, the rampant drug use and general weirdness of the cast and crew - that it is always a little shocking to see how good the final product is. Sheen, Hopper, and Brando are as good as can be, and Robert Duvall even better. The meandering story is based on Joseph Conrad’s 19th century novella “Heart of Darkness”, but the action is transferred from South America to the Vietnam War, and it remains the the benchmark for movies about the war, over-the-top as it is. There are several versions out there; I prefer the original theatrical release. Avoid the “Final Cut”.
Being There
d. Hal Ashby
****1/2
Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden
Peter Sellers, the man of a thousand characters, pestered the novel’s writer Jerry Kosinski for years to play the role in a film version, saying it was the “Chance” he always yearned for: to play a chameleon with no innate personality. He was referring to the main character, “Chance Gardener”, though that isn’t his name at all. Beautifully filmed in Washington DC (with North Carolina’s Biltmore Estate standing in as a Georgetown residence), the film tells of a simple-minded man mistaken for a brilliant financier by powerful men, who take his observations of plants to be prophetic metaphors. As cynical as it is sweet, I’ll bet you did not see that ending coming - and what exactly does it mean? Talmudic scholars have been debating it for years.
Breaking Away
d. Peter Yates
*****
starring Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Jackie Earle Haley, Daniel Stern, Barbara Barrie, Paul Dooley, PJ Soles
This coming-of-age movie about four boys in Indiana is among the most accurate portrayals of 70s middle America to emerge from Hollywood at the time. (Okay, the frat boys are a little clichéd). The home scenes with Barbara Barrie & Paul Dooley are so simultaneously touching and weird that I’m sure they were a major inspiration for David Lynch. Looking back from an era in which college football finally admits that athletes are indeed paid professionals, Mike (Dennis Quaid)’s soliloquy on what state colleges were supposed to be compared to what they are rings twice as true.
The In-Laws
d. Arthur Hiller
****
starring Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Nancy Dussault, Penny Peyser
“You didn’t serpentine, Shel. Go back and do it again,” he says under live fire. A variation of the Odd Couple scenario, Peter Falk plays Vince Ricardo: the annoying, rumpled, strange new father-in-law-to-be to Alan Arkin’s straight-laced middle class dentist Sheldon Kornpett. Vince may or may not be in the CIA. Discomfort at dinner turns into zany, madcap misadventures as we find out the truth about Vince. As actors they complement each other so well; they should have made more movies together.
The Jerk
d. Carl Reiner
****
starring Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Mabel King, Jackie Mason
“I was born a poor black child,” intones whiter-than-mayonaisse-on-Wonder Bread-in-a-snowstorm Steve Martin at the opening, in this, the most touching picaresque visual novels ever documented on film one of the most solidly comical movies ever made. Directed by Carl Reiner (father of Rob and sometimes partner of Mel Brooks), it is one of those films that has so many gags it’s hard to pick just one as being the best. But ok, it’s when Bernadette Peters plays the cornet. I would say more but I would just end up reciting quotes for hours. The takeaway message is to find your life’s special purpose.
Monty Python’s The Life of Brian
d. Terry Jones
*****
starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin
Former Beatle George Harrison mortgaged his country estate to finance the release of this film for his buddies in the comedy troupe Monty Python after the original backers pulled out when it was condemned by the Catholic Church. He made his money back. Perhaps it is not as quotable or absurd as Holy Grail, but I think I like this one better. Python had such a knack of blurring the lines between history and absurdity and turn it all into a witty fart joke. The graffiti scene is twice as funny if you ever had Latin class taught by a nun, as I did. Same words, same mannerisms as the Roman centurion.
Mad Max
d. George Miller
***1/2
starring Mel Gibson, Hugh Keays-Burn, Joanne Samuel
This is where it all started, and maybe the only one you’ve never seen because it was a raw indie Australian film starring an unknown actor called Mel Gibson. And yet, for twenty years it held the distinction of being the most profitable movie ever made: greatest return on the smallest budget. Hollywood saw the promise and financed the increasingly bigger budget sequels. Looking back at it’s humble beginnings: My gosh, are the makeup, props and special effects terrible— and so good. If you like post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasies, this is your huckleberry.
Manhattan
d. Woody Allen
****
starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Anne Byrne
New York has never looked so beautiful: shot in gorgeous black and white by cinematographer James Wong Howe and set to the music of George Gershwin. Say what you will about Woody, but this is peak film-making right here; he is more mature and composed than his 1977 Oscar-winning Annie Hall. His New York Jewish intellectual humor may not be to everyone’s taste, but it contains the finest dollops of insult humor dressed with existential insights. Fifty years on, the (autobiographical?!) story about a 42-year-old man in love with a 17-year-old girl may be a bit discomforting, but pretend you were me seeing it for the first time with no foreknowledge of future tabloid stories. Watch it and enjoy it at face value.
The Muppet Movie
d. James Frawley
****
starring Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Charles Durning, Bruno Kirby, and 15 “special guest stars”
The two ends of the musical rainbow in 1979 are All That Jazz and this, The Muppet Movie. Hearkening back to Hollywood’s golden era, it’s got it all: catchy songs, corny jokes, lame puns, action scenes, forbidden love, all piggy-backing (wocka wocka!) on an origin story for our beloved characters from the muppet television show(s). Plus: fantastic cameos by some of Hollywood’s brightest luminaries spanning decades. If ever a movie was made to just watch and enjoy at face value, this is it.
Rock’n’Roll High School
d. Alan Arkush
**1/2
starring PJ Soles, Vince Van Patten, Clint Howard, Dey Young, Johnny Ramone, DeeDee Ramone, Joey Ramone, Marky Ramone
It would be disconcerting for Ramones to be in a movie that didn’t suck, that wasn’t produced by B-film king Roger Corman, that didn’t star PJ Soles, and that you can’t turn off in spite of yourself: so we dodged a bullet and got this wonderful anything-but-masterpiece. In pre-production, the film went through several concepts, including Disco High School & Heavy Metal High School, with Cheap Trick, Todd Rundgren, Blondie, and The Clash floated as participants, but none of the bands were interested so it came way down to… Ramones. Spoiler alert: they really did blow up the school at the end. Just like Bridge on the River Kwai, they had one take to get it right, and it’s okay. Or close enough, whatever. It makes the film better. I mean worse. I mean… Hey, ho! Let’s go!
The Warriors
d. Walter Hill
***
starring Michael Beck, James Remar, Deborah Van Valkenbergh, Lynn Thigpen
So who’s your favorite gang? I personally like the guy who clanks the three Coke bottles on his fingers as he says “Warriors…come out to plaaa-aay”, but my oldest daughter is partial to the guys dressed as the Yankees-meets-KISS. We both agree that the roller-skaters deserve Best Supporting Gang. It’s a simple story, but a brilliant vehicle for minimal plot: all the gangs in New York call a truce and have a gangland meeting at which someone gets killed and blames the Warriors, and then the poor Warriors have to make it back to their home turf on Staten Island iwhile their every movement is relayed to the other gangs in real time by an anonymous radio dj. FranxFlix Pro Tip: Dystopia + All-Seeing DJ = Win.
Great job. And I didn't realize/remember that Breaking Away was nominated. Loved that movie.