Flashback 1977: My top 10 favorite films from 40 years ago

The year 1977 was an interesting one -- beyond the Son of Sam and blackouts -- it's the year my older brother was born. It also the year that President Jimmy Carter was sworn into office. It's the year of Saturday Night Fever, and the beginning of disco fully consuming the mainstream of pop culture.

It was also, perhaps most famously, the year of Star Wars -- and appropriately the latest installment of that series, which has now become known as a franchise is coming out in December, with Mark Hamill bookending his breakthrough performance as Luke Skywalker 40 years ago as an older, wiser character in The Last Jedi.

It was a year of fantasy and escapism, and it was hard to narrow this list down, I had to leave off Charles Burnett's haunting Killer of Sheep, badass thrillers like Rolling Thunder and Black Sunday, and quirky comedies like The Late Show, Which Way Is Up? and The Kentucky Fried Movie.

That said, I am pretty happy with this list...

10) 3 Women - Robert Altman's strange, dream-like film is really largely about two women (played in tour de force fashion by Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek) and that's just the start of its open-ended questions. It's at times a bizarre character study and in some passages it feels like a horror film. Altman himself seemed not to be fully sure of what his film meant in its entirety but its mercurial nature is part of its power. A film I like more every time I see it -- it's an unsettling masterpiece.

9) Pumping Iron - Not only is this body building documentary a fascinating window in the profoundly weird world of the Mr. Universe competition, it's also an amazing expose of the egomaniacal, but also pretty damn likable, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Here he's a young, aspiring wannabe superstar, who likes to mentally manipulate his new competition (a sweet and bashful Lou Ferrigno) in between boastful interviews. One of the great sports films ever made is cringe inducing at times and funny as hell.

8) Slap Shot - I have no idea if this hilariously profane hockey comedy is an accurate portrayal of what the world of minor league sports is really like, but I do know that it's an infectious riot and contains one of the loosest and best performances of Paul Newman's career. A movie that relishes its political incorrectness and anarchic spirit. It's remained a cult classic for years because of its tribute to a certain kind of unapologetic masculinity, but its got a lot of heart too.

7) Eraserhead - The movie that put David Lynch on the map. It looks years to make and you can see a lot of the painstaking detail on the screen. Like most Lynch films, it defies easy categorization -- it's nominally about a socially awkward man living in a dystopian city and saddled with a mutant baby to care for. Delightfully strange and absorbing, the movie is a triumph of production design, sound and visuals. It has proven to be incredibly influential on the art films that came in its wake and remains a symbol of how 70s cinema could stay risky even amid the rise of blockbusters.

6) Suspiria - Never has gore looked so gorgeous. This horror film from Italian master Dario Argento is short on story but makes up for it with some unforgettable visual aesthetics. His use of color is sublime in this strange scary movie set in an all girls dance school. I remember I first saw a particularly grisly scene from this in high school and I never forgot it. Not for the faint of heart,  but a real find for horror fiends.

5) Sorcerer - William Friedkin's remake of the legendary French thriller The Wages of Fear was a flop upon its first release, but has since become recognized as a seminal work in its own right. Roy Scheider headlines a strong international cast in this gritty look at desperate men hauling nitroglycerine thorough a treacherous (unnamed) country. Some stunning sequences and documentary-style realism in this one.

4) The Spy Who Loved Me - Many James Bond aficionados consider this the best entry of the Roger Moore era, and there is a good argument to make for that (although I have a very soft spot for For Your Eyes Only). It's a fun ride from start to finish -- introducing the classic blade-toothed villain Jaws, some terrific gadgets, and one of the most gorgeous Bond girls of all time, Barbara Bach. But most importantly, this is the Bond film in which Moore made the character his own. He plays the comedy beautifully but includes just enough intensity to keep it from becoming too camp.

3) Close Encounters of the Third Kind - This is vintage Steven Spielberg at the peak of his powers mixing both the personal and the grandiose to make a smart, epic film about aliens touching down on planet earth. Using a terrific Richard Dreyfuss as his stand-in, Spielberg makes the audacious decision to portray the alien visitors as genteel instead of monstrous, and the final result is probably the smartest sci-fi film since 2001: A Space Odyssey.

2) Annie Hall - Woody Allen's most accessible and sweet film, which is probably why he hates it so much. This Best Picture winner kicked off a particularly successful run of more serious comic films from the polarizing but prolific filmmaker. His ace in the hole here is Diane Keaton giving her most iconic performance as the loopy but fully realized titular character. I constantly return to this film's self referential wisdom in my personal life and it remains arguably the most signature work of Allen's long and varied career.

1) Star Wars (a.k.a. A New Hope) - Is anyone really surprised? The film that changed the nature of movies forever (for better or worse) is still a genius game-changer. What is often lost in its groundbreaking special effects and revolutionary impact on the box office, is the swift and adept storytelling on display here (with plenty of homages to George Lucas' inspirations like Akira Kurosawa). Alec Guinness lends gravitas, Harrison Ford brings charm and sex appeal and the movie itself is undeniable candy for the kid in all of us.