Best movies of the 1970s

The Godfather▲ Rising

Coppola turned a pulpy bestseller into an American opera, opening with a wedding and a whispered favor before closing with a door shut firmly in Kay's face. It redefined the gangster picture as tragedy, made Brando's mumble and Pacino's slow-burn transformation into legend, and its influence — every 'I'm in the mafia' movie since owes it a debt — is exactly why it sits atop lists like this.

Year: 1972Director: Francis Ford CoppolaIMDb: 9.2/10Oscars: 3

added by IJRin 12 rankings

The Godfather Part II▲ Rising

A sequel that dared to be a diptych, cross-cutting young Vito's rise in Little Italy with Michael's icy collapse into paranoia and murder, ending with him alone by the lake, having won everything and lost everyone. It's the rare follow-up regarded as equal or superior to its predecessor, proof that gangster sagas could be generational tragedies as much as Shakespeare or Greek myth.

Year: 1974Director: Francis Ford CoppolaIMDb: 9/10Oscars: 6

added by IJRin 10 rankings

Star Wars: A New Hope▲ Rising

Lucas fused Kurosawa, Flash Gordon serials, and Joseph Campbell into a single trench-run climax that rewired what a summer movie could be and birthed the blockbuster era overnight. The twin suns of Tatooine, the cantina band, Vader's first rasping breath — it's pure myth-making that made merchandising, sequels, and fandom itself into industries.

Year: 1977Director: George LucasIMDb: 8.6/10Oscars: 6

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Alien▲ Rising

Ridley Scott turned a haunted-house plot into cosmic dread aboard the Nostromo, and the chestburster dinner-table scene became the moment audiences learned to scream in unison. Its slow, industrial-grunge terror and Sigourney Weaver's Ripley — a woman who simply outlasts the monster and the men — reshaped both horror and science fiction for decades.

Year: 1979Director: Ridley ScottIMDb: 8.5/10Oscars: 1

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Apocalypse Now▲ Rising

Coppola marched into the Philippine jungle chasing Conrad and Vietnam and nearly lost his mind making it, and the result is a fever dream of napalm, surfing soldiers, and Brando murmuring about the horror from the shadows. Willard's river journey toward Kurtz becomes cinema's most harrowing descent into war's madness, a production disaster that became a masterpiece.

Year: 1979Director: Francis Ford CoppolaIMDb: 8.4/10Oscars: 2

added by IJRin 3 rankings

Monty Python and the Holy Grail▲ Rising

Six Cambridge and Oxford absurdists took Arthurian legend and beat it to death with a killer rabbit, a Knight who insists it's just a flesh wound, and coconuts standing in for horses because there was no budget for the real thing. It rewired comedy's DNA — quotable, anarchic, low-budget ingenuity turned into an entire school of humor that's still being imitated.

Year: 1975Director: Gilliam & JonesIMDb: 8.2/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 4 rankings

The Exorcist

Friedkin turned a possessed 12-year-old's bedroom into the most notorious set piece in horror history — spinning heads, pea soup, a crucifix used as a weapon — and audiences reportedly fainted and vomited in theaters. It's the horror film that crashed the mainstream, earning a Best Picture nomination and legitimizing the genre as capable of real artistic and cultural shock.

Year: 1973Director: William FriedkinIMDb: 8.1/10Oscars: 2

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Jaws

Spielberg's mechanical shark barely worked, so he shot around it, and the absence made Bruce scarier than any monster reveal could — that John Williams two-note theme alone triggers panic. It essentially invented the summer blockbuster as concept, emptying beaches nationwide and proving a director could turn technical disaster into pop-culture terror.

Year: 1975Director: Steven SpielbergIMDb: 8.1/10Oscars: 3

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Taxi Driver

Scorsese and Schrader built a portrait of urban alienation so precise it still diagnoses loneliness decades later, with De Niro's Travis Bickle talking to his mirror before erupting into a bloodbath he half-wanted as martyrdom. 'You talkin' to me?' became shorthand for a whole strain of American male rage, cementing the film as a landmark of New Hollywood discomfort.

Year: 1976Director: Martin ScorseseIMDb: 8.2/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Rocky

Stallone wrote himself a underdog fairy tale on a shoestring budget, and the sight of Rocky Balboa sprinting up the Philadelphia Museum steps became the most imitated triumph-montage in movie history. It's corny, unabashedly sentimental, and exactly the kind of scrappy, feel-good filmmaking that beat out heavyweights for Best Picture and launched a franchise on pure heart.

Year: 1976Director: John G. AvildsenIMDb: 8.1/10Oscars: 3

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Halloween▼ Falling

Carpenter shot a masked killer stalking a suburban street for pocket change and invented the slasher template almost single-handedly — the steady Steadicam, the synth score he composed himself, Jamie Lee Curtis as the babysitter who won't die easy. Michael Myers' blank white mask became horror's most enduring boogeyman, spawning an entire genre's worth of imitators and sequels.

Year: 1978Director: John CarpenterIMDb: 7.7/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 4 rankings