Netflix generates more contemporary content than anyone, but they’re dipping into the past to curate the great movies from the ’70s. These are the films that people like myself discovered as kids in the early days of when HBO premiered on cable. Bravo, I say. Here’s the preliminary list.
Alice Doesn’T Live Here Anymore
A widowed singer and single mother starts over as a diner waitress in Arizona, befriending her coworkers and romancing a ruggedly handsome rancher.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Robert Getchell
Producers: Audrey Maas, David Susskind
Key Cast (Alphabetical): Ellen Burstyn, Jodie Foster, Diane Ladd, Alfred Lutter, Harvey Keitel, Kris Kristofferson, Vic Tayback
Distributed By: Warner Bros. Discovery
Initial Release Date: December 9, 1974
At the 47th Academy Awards, Burstyn won Best Actress
Black Belt Jones
High-kicking Black Belt Jones is dispatched to take down a group of Mafia goons trying to muscle in on a downtown karate studio.
Alice Doesn’T Live Here Anymore
A widowed singer and single mother starts over as a diner waitress in Arizona, befriending her coworkers and romancing a ruggedly handsome rancher.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Robert Getchell
Producers: Audrey Maas, David Susskind
Key Cast (Alphabetical): Ellen Burstyn, Jodie Foster, Diane Ladd, Alfred Lutter, Harvey Keitel, Kris Kristofferson, Vic Tayback
Distributed By: Warner Bros. Discovery
Initial Release Date: December 9, 1974
At the 47th Academy Awards, Burstyn won Best Actress
Black Belt Jones
High-kicking Black Belt Jones is dispatched to take down a group of Mafia goons trying to muscle in on a downtown karate studio.
- 1/17/2024
- by Mike Fleming Jr
- Deadline Film + TV
1974 was quite a year for cinema; 50 years later, Netflix (of all places) is celebrating the golden jubilee.
In recognition of the anniversary, the streamer on Wednesday launched a new, dedicated content row (and direct URL link) with the first films being honored under its new “Milestone Movies: The Anniversary Collection” banner. Each of the 14 films came to Netflix this month by way of Warner Bros., Paramount, or Sony — the distributors that license content to Netflix.
The 1974 collection includes “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Black Belt Jones,” “Blazing Saddles,” “California Split,” “Chinatown,” “The Conversation,” “Death Wish,” “The Gambler,” “The Great Gatsby,” “It’s Alive,” “The Little Prince,” “The Lords of Flatbush,” “The Parallax View,” and “The Street Fighter” (“Gekitotsu! Satsujin ken”).
Netflix doesn’t plan to stop with disco’s heyday. In April, the streaming service will do the same for films from 1984 (turning 40); July will celebrate 1994 movies (turning 30); and in October...
In recognition of the anniversary, the streamer on Wednesday launched a new, dedicated content row (and direct URL link) with the first films being honored under its new “Milestone Movies: The Anniversary Collection” banner. Each of the 14 films came to Netflix this month by way of Warner Bros., Paramount, or Sony — the distributors that license content to Netflix.
The 1974 collection includes “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Black Belt Jones,” “Blazing Saddles,” “California Split,” “Chinatown,” “The Conversation,” “Death Wish,” “The Gambler,” “The Great Gatsby,” “It’s Alive,” “The Little Prince,” “The Lords of Flatbush,” “The Parallax View,” and “The Street Fighter” (“Gekitotsu! Satsujin ken”).
Netflix doesn’t plan to stop with disco’s heyday. In April, the streaming service will do the same for films from 1984 (turning 40); July will celebrate 1994 movies (turning 30); and in October...
- 1/17/2024
- by Tony Maglio
- Indiewire
"The Annihilation of Fish" is a terrifyingly bad film, whose ineptitude is compounded by the status of those involved in its production. How could Charles Burnett, director of "Killer of Sheep" and "To Sleep With Anger", and Paul Heller, the producer who has been involved with films such as "David and Lisa" and "My Left Foot", working with a cast including Lynn Redgrave, James Earl Jones and Margot Kidder, have come up with such a woebegone product?
Further film festival appearances are this film's only likely public exposure. And for the sake of everyone involved in this misguided venture, it would be best if the film simply disappears.
Screenplays that insist on seeing mental illness and alcoholism as cute comic devices are always suspect. But Anthony Winkler's goes past the bounds of reason or logic. What is pathetic cannot be made into something funny or endearing.
The three-character piece feels like more like a play than a movie, in which three characters search for a meaning to their damaged lives. Fish (Jones), an elderly Jamaican newly released after years in a New York mental institute, continually wrestles an imaginary demon named Hank.
He moves to Los Angeles and an apartment building where his neighbor is Poinsettia, a drunkard who has maintains a longtime affair with the composer Puccini, a romance seemingly undeterred by the fact the man has been dead for nearly 75 years.
Soon Poinsettia is enlisted to referee Fish's imaginary bouts with Hank. Their landlady, Mrs. Muldroone (Kidder in hideous old age makeup) is untroubled by all the invisible people, wrestling matches and even the occasional gun shot.
Winkler's writing is sticky with sentimentality. His story contains no forward momentum and repetition is the order of the day. The only fascination the film holds is watching three outstanding actors try to play unplayable roles.
Production values on the film clearly made on an extremely modest budget are minimalist.
THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH
Paul Heller Productions
in association with American Sterling Prods.
Producers: Paul Heller, William Lawrence Fabrizio, John Remark, Eric Mitchell
Director: Charles Burnett
Writer: Anthony C. Winkler
Executive producer: Kris Dodge
Director of photography: John Ndiaga Demps
Production designer: Nina Ruscio
Music: Laura Karpman
Costume designer: Christine Peters
Editor: Nancy Richardson
Color/stereo
Cast:
Poinsettia: Lynn Redgrave
Fish: James Earl Jones
Mrs. Muldroone: Margot Kidder
Running time -- 110 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Further film festival appearances are this film's only likely public exposure. And for the sake of everyone involved in this misguided venture, it would be best if the film simply disappears.
Screenplays that insist on seeing mental illness and alcoholism as cute comic devices are always suspect. But Anthony Winkler's goes past the bounds of reason or logic. What is pathetic cannot be made into something funny or endearing.
The three-character piece feels like more like a play than a movie, in which three characters search for a meaning to their damaged lives. Fish (Jones), an elderly Jamaican newly released after years in a New York mental institute, continually wrestles an imaginary demon named Hank.
He moves to Los Angeles and an apartment building where his neighbor is Poinsettia, a drunkard who has maintains a longtime affair with the composer Puccini, a romance seemingly undeterred by the fact the man has been dead for nearly 75 years.
Soon Poinsettia is enlisted to referee Fish's imaginary bouts with Hank. Their landlady, Mrs. Muldroone (Kidder in hideous old age makeup) is untroubled by all the invisible people, wrestling matches and even the occasional gun shot.
Winkler's writing is sticky with sentimentality. His story contains no forward momentum and repetition is the order of the day. The only fascination the film holds is watching three outstanding actors try to play unplayable roles.
Production values on the film clearly made on an extremely modest budget are minimalist.
THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH
Paul Heller Productions
in association with American Sterling Prods.
Producers: Paul Heller, William Lawrence Fabrizio, John Remark, Eric Mitchell
Director: Charles Burnett
Writer: Anthony C. Winkler
Executive producer: Kris Dodge
Director of photography: John Ndiaga Demps
Production designer: Nina Ruscio
Music: Laura Karpman
Costume designer: Christine Peters
Editor: Nancy Richardson
Color/stereo
Cast:
Poinsettia: Lynn Redgrave
Fish: James Earl Jones
Mrs. Muldroone: Margot Kidder
Running time -- 110 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 10/6/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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