Flashback 1976: My top 10 favorite movies from 40 years ago

The year 1976 was a pivotal one for this country. America celebrated its bicentennial, put a fork in the Watergate era by electing Democrat Jimmy Carter president and it also marked the post-Jaws era in Hollywood.

Making a blockbuster began to mean more at the time, although there were plenty of artistically sound movies that found a massive audience, too.

That was the magic of the '70s at the movies. Something as overtly commercial as King Kong could be just as profitable as something as challenging as Taxi Driver, one of my all-time favorite films.

It was a good year for unconventional movie stars (like Dustin Hoffman), a year which launched the career of a future one (Sylvester Stallone), and capped off the achievements of a prematurely departed actor (Peter Finch).

Here are my top ten favorite movies from forty years ago (with honorable mentions for Silent Movie, The Bad News Bears, The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Shootist).

10) The Tenant - A profoundly strange and unsettling thriller from Roman Polanski (and his last before his ongoing exile following rape charges), is part of his paranoid apartment trilogy -- and quite possibly the least accessible. Polanski stars in the film himself, which is a nightmarish look at madness and sinister personality disorders. This is definitely not for most audiences' tastes, but if you like creepy existential dread, this might be a movie for you.

9) The Killing of a Chinese Bookie - A moody, and at times darkly funny, character study about a socially awkward nightclub owner who winds up getting drawn into organized crime because he can't pay his own debts. Ben Gazzara gives a towering performance in the lead as a man who is desperate to be loved but can't express his emotions effectively. Another oddball film, in John Cassavetes' signature meandering style. 

Silver Streak

8) The Omen - One of the great horror films of its era, The Omen borrows elements of The Exorcist, but also spins its own arresting brew of mysticism and mayhem. Gregory Peck lends his gravitas to what could have been a silly movie about a demon child, and the well-paced and well-scored action -- directed by Richard Donner -- takes care of the rest. As over-the-top as it is, the chilling ending is a classic.

7) Silver Streak - We are all accustomed to mixed race buddy comedies now, but this first pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor was one of the first and one of the best. This wild, mixed bag of a movie is both an homage to Alfred Hitchcock style thrillers and a straight ahead comedy featuring the somewhat manic Wilder finding an unlikely friend in the wisecracking Pryor. The iconic blackface scene could never happen today -- but it still holds up, in part because the joke is on Wilder, not African-Americans.

6) Carrie - I have never read the Stephen King book, so I am not sure how Brian De Palma's iconic horror film compares, but I do know that his riveting camerawork in this film is peerless, as is Sissy Spacek's incredibly sympathetic performance in the title role. Everyone knows the show-stopping climax where he character is doused with pig's blood and exacts revenge, but that pay-off only works because of what proceeded it, which is a surprisingly sensitive portrayal of an outcast, who happens to have telekinetic powers.

5) Marathon Man - A terrifically acted adult thriller with a dream cast, headlined by Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier and Roy Scheider. Hoffman somewhat improbably plays a graduate student who becomes a target of nefarious figures with ties to a sadistic Nazi dentist (played to perfection by Olivier). There are some classic scenes and chases in this very watchable potboiler, which is emblematic of the kind of smart complex genre movies they just don't make anymore.

4) Network - When this brilliantly written film came out it was largely seen as absurd satire of the state of television, albeit an entertaining one. But the rise of reality television and demagogues in our politics have made this dynamite movie appear very prescient. Peter Finch (who delivers the classic "I'm as mad as hell" monologue), Faye Dunaway, William Holden and Robert Duvall all deliver pitch perfect performances in this scathing look at the gradual degradation of media due to corporate malfeasance. This is a film that grows in stature every year.

3) All the President's Men - This movie shouldn't have worked. Coming just two years after Richard Nixon's resignation, everyone going to see this film (about how reporters Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) broke the story of the Watergate break-in), knew how the story was going to end. And yet, this is one of the great suspense films of all time and a fascinating look into how the sausage got made at newspapers when they still had tremendous clout and influence. Redford and Hoffman have wonderful chemistry with each other and are singlehandedly responsible for making journalism seem like a glamorous profession, at least for a while.

2) Rocky - This film has a very special place in my heart -- it's a film that my wife and I have deeply bonded over. I think that is because, despite its boxing pedigree, it's essentially a very sweet love story between a lovable lug who nobody respects (Rocky) and a shy, sweet girl who nobody notices (Adrian). Their delicate romance forms that backbone to this persistently underrated masterpiece. Sure, it's story may be simple, but it is also timeless in a way, and writer-star Sylvester Stallone injects the movie with such humor, vitality and authenticity, that it's impossible to ignore this movie's value, unless you are a snob.

1) Taxi Driver - As I've said repeatedly, Martin Scorsese is my favorite director -- and this is my favorite Scorsese film, quite possibly an all-time top five favorite flick. Why would I like a movie about a racist, violent, misogynist freak who nearly assassinates a presidential candidate and becomes a 'heroic' vigilante after killing several people in cold blood? Because of the beauty of its images, because of the arresting score, because of the remarkable performances -- chief among them Robert De Niro's nuanced and complex portrait of Travis Bickle -- and because the film is endlessly challenging and inventing and somehow speaks to a universal truth about loneliness and wanting to matter. I'll defend this movie to death.