THE FILMS OF '78: The good, the bad, The Michigan Daily-Friday, January 12, 1979-Page 7 and the unnatural THOGH Village Voice film critic 1 Anirew Sarris claimed it was the poorestseason for movies in fifty years, we at tle Daily found that 1978 was not withou its gems and pleasant sur- prises. The blossoming "rock film" remais a dubious genre, but never- theless provided the intermittently spirit'd antics of American Hot Wax and The Buddy Holly Story. The horror film reared its head as well, with Halbween, Eraserhead, and Martin, the Last from Night of the Living Dead director George Romero. And with such diverse sensitive efforts as Girlfriends,, Interiors, and Invasion of the Body £. Snatchers, perhaps 1978 engendered a little well-founded optimism about the future of movies, both here and abroad. Ten best lists contain a necessary quotient of arbitrariness, so we'll skip the apologies and get on with it. One qualification, though, is in order: . several critically acclaimed films - notably The Deer Hunter, winner of the New York Film Critics' Circle award for Best Picture - have yet to arrive in Michigan and we haven't seen them. Their exclusion from this list reflects economic logistics rather thaa critical judgement. The list of best and worst films was compiled by Owen Gleiber- man and Christopher Potter. Where a single opinion is given it represents a concensus. It is, however, inpossible to get two people to agree on everything absolutely - especially novies - and some irreconcilably opp)sing opinions are represented by the aithors' initials. The "Notable Distinctins" were com- piled by Owen Gleibernan, Christopher Potter, and Anne Sharp. All lists reflect no order of preference THE 10 BEST: 1. Days of Heavn. The camera becomes narrator, is writer-director Terrence Malick weaves a tale of Texas sharecroppers in tle early 1900s. The plot is marginal, involving a love triangle between tvo field workers and a wealthy famer, out Malick's lens is the unabashed sta of the film; the out- door imagery s so staggeringly beautiful that thf viewer finds himself gasping audibly scene after scene, as Malick and cinematographer Nestor Almendros revrently pay homage to America's last ige of isolation and in- nocence.- 2. Invasion if the Body Snatchers. Tension, wit, .nd something you don't see every dW: a sci-fi-horror story boasting heres as richly drawn as those of most"normal" films. Director Philip Kaufnan's flashy meditation on the plot of tie original 1956 Body Snat- chers is a trumph of terrifying nuance, and the files never lets up - a true gold nugget for novie lovers. 3. Heagn Can Wait. This witty remake o the 1941 Here Comes Mr. Jordan isa rather modest effort con- sidering the high-powered talent (Elaine ,PIay, Buck Henry, Warren Beatty) iehind it, but in these days of excess tiere's certainly nothing wrong with a little old-fashioned restraint. Charles Grodin is delightful as a snivelirg, scheming yes-man, and the final scene between Beatty and Julie Christie offers some of the hottest eye contac since Casablanca. 4. Bread and Chocolate. An ab- solutdy dazzling tragi-comedy by Italiai director Franco Brusati about a man compelled, like many of his coun- trymxn, to work and live in Switzerland due to a lack of jobs in Italy. The film is nimle and often hysterically funny, yet beneath the humor it becomes a : terrifying testimony to the agony of estrangement and the desperate desire to belong. Nino Manfrendi is stupen- dous in the lead role. 5. Girlfriends. A story of what hap- pens to a pair of apartment mates when one gets married and leaves, provides a 3 stunning naturalistic portrait of urban loneliness. Claudia Weil's film is unsen- timental yet incredibly tender, funny yet gutwrenching almost in the same breath. Star Melanie Mayron delivers one of the most subtly modulated per- formances in many a year. 6. An Unmarried Woman. O.K., so Paul Mazursky's latest Movie About Real People is not the definitive statement on modern life it aspires to be. There is still much to admire in this buoyant comedy on the perils of unheralded separation. Pretention may hang on some of Mazursky's subtly pointed dialogue, but his wit always cuts through. 7. National Lampoon's Animal House. With everyone slaving for in- k- sulatory law and medical degrees these days, this messy dose of cheerful anar- chy gave college students across the land .a healthy little message: Have some quick kicks before you become an establishment vegetable. Though the Lampoon's notably tasteless barbs keep a low profile, the laughs hit their mark, and in Bluto we have a Vinnie Barbarino for the college set. (OG) One must judge Animal House by a dual standard: as comedy, it's often hilarious; as filmmaking, it's wincingly maladroit. Simply having funny people say funny lines in front of a camera doth not a movie make. And for all its proven comic value, Animal House remains a series of revue-style set pieces whose link to the art of motion pictures is as tenuous as a skit on John- ny Carson. (CP) 8. Midnight Express. Easily the most underrated, maligned, and misunder- stood film of the year. This harrowing depiction of a young American, trapped for years in a Turkish prison on a minor drug offense, is a Kafkaesque parable of an individual smothered underfoot by unseen and uncaring political forces totally beyond his comprehension, much less control. Accusations to the contrary, Midnight Express is one of the least exploitive as well as one of the best films in a year of stifling cinematic hucksterism. (CP) The unabashedly stereotyped Turks are not the overriding flaw in this vision of Hell-on-Earth, but they are sym- ptomatic of director Allen Parker's thematic impotence. For all its flashy grittiness, there is amazingly little agony or desperation in the saga of poor Billy Hayes; our only option is to sit back, count the horrors, and be glad it ain't us. (OG) 9. Interiors. With the very words "Ingmar Bergman" currently sending chills up and down the spines of aspiring film majors, it's no wonder that Woody Allen's first movie with no laughs received a critical lambasting for supposedly emulating someone's sterile notion of art-films. Never mind if Interiors looks like Cries and Whispers. Allen's chamber drama is a cool but moving study of several won- derfully affecting characters, and I haven't seen a better slate of perfor- mances in a long while. (OG), L'wish it were possible to like this film better, since it has so many good elements. Interiors is never phony, never dull, yet one just can't avoid the feeling that it's all in the wrong mode, that it's Woody Allen masquerading rather nervously as a total stranger. He tries so hard to bring his good intentions to bear that he sublimates thefil's many fine moments into what becomes an uncomfortable, slightly em- barassing experience. (CP) 10. Martin. It's a memorable year that produces not one but two horror movies on such a level of intelligence and sophistication as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and George Romero's Martin. The latter, a picture about a teenage vampire with teenage problems, is one of the most wildly complex, funny, and certainly most erotic horror films in memory. The ar- chly independent Romero has wrought wonders with a miniscule budget, len- ding viable proof to the notion that one can buck the cinema establishment and emerge with a work of art. (CP) I like a good horror movie as much as anybody, but Martin is a prime exam- ple of a fine director becoming so ob- sessed by the cinematic possibilities of his material that he loses his bearings, This craft-for-craft's-sake story of a vampire/sex murderer is a technical showcase, but little either provocative or scary resides behind the portentous hypodermic montages, eerie sound ef- fects, and graphic gore. (OG) THE 10 WORST: 1. FM. How can a movie possibly claim to be anti-commercialism and pro-FM rock? Answer: it can't. But FM sure tries, resulting in one of the most singularly inept concoctions ever to have emerged from the gates of Hollywood. May those responsible be tied down and forced to listen to 100 straight hours of Arthur Penhollow. 2. Convoy. A film even a truck driver's mother would boycott. Sam Peckinpah's misanthropic ode to the joy of the road comes across as one ex- tended low-IQ belch. It's sole positive function might have been to torpedo Ali McGraw's third comeback attempt, but even that hasn't worked out. 3. Moment By Moment. Whether writer-director Jane Wagner gorged herself on too many reruns of Love of Life or was simply beaten as a child doesn't seem all that relevant now; what is relevant is how we're going to get our money back. John Travolta and Lily Tomlin copulate their way through an affair that might have been scripted in the Gerald Ford School of Dramatic Arts. Moral: "What a world." 4. The Greek Tycoon. This misbegot- ten Jackie-Ari gossip column was too easy a potshot target for the critics even before it was released. The less- than-scandalous finished product only proves that the rich and famous are every bit as boring as the rest of us. Come browse through our Green House COCRELL IT GREEN HOUSE . A Large Selection of Hanging Baskets & House Plants includ- ing Green Plants. Cactus & Succulents * Macrame, Pots, Ceramics, Soil & Accessories 7330 Geddes Rd., 482-8205 (N. of Ypsilanti, 2 miles E. of US 23) 5. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. If the Monkees were a plastic incarnation of the Beatles, then Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees are pure Saran Wrap. May Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down squarely on Robert Stigwood's head. 6. The Boys In Company C. The ideal Vietnam film recipe: lift every good ole boy cliche from every World War I and II picture ever made, mix in some Nam-era naughty cuss words, and add just a dash of moral indignation over jungle atrocities. Then, presto! - the perfect handy-dandy synthetic war flick, interchangeable with any other war film about any other war, and highly marketable for TV. Must we vaporize our own heritage just to make a buck? 7. Foul Play. Exemplifies the worst in recent American movies. This pale Hit- chcock pastiche is formula drivel that masquerades as comedy by including. some glib references to disco, party dolls, and - his humorous holiness - the Pope. With all that Barry Manilow in the background, you can be glad the star is Chevy Chase and you're not. 8. House Calls. Doctor Walter Mat- thau and patient Glenda Jackson shriek barbs and endearments at each other in a stupifyingly humorless, wheezy bedroom farce that would have seemed archaic fifty years ago. The film is good for three laughs - I went "ha!" once, and "ha! ha!" sometime later. Other- wise, nil. 9. Comes A Horseman. The imminent death of the western seems heralded by this stillborn epic. Jane Fonda and James Caan ride the range a lot, rope a bunch of steers, and shoot Jason Robards a few times, their activities all conducted with a studied freneticism that inadequately obscures the fact they have nothing - literally nothing - to say. Happy trails and shut up. 10. The Revenge of the Pink Panther. Seeing dear old Inspector Clouseau on screen yearly is beginning to resemble an annual visit to your senile, half-deaf, and very dull uncle. With Revenge, Sellers, Edwards, and company hit new lows. If someone doesn't practice cinematic euthanasia and put the ailing inspector to sleep, we might all soon join Herbert Lom in the rubber room. Revisit THE FIRESIGN THEATRE $3.99 per album REYCLE . LIGHT &SOUND NOTABLE DISTINCTIONS: Best underwear: John Travolta's black bikini briefs in Moment By Moment. Actor that should be put out to pasture: George Burns, for his smokers'-cough rendition of "Fixing a Hole" in Sgt. Pepper; Burgess Meredith, for his George Burns imper- sonation in Magic.. Worst scene: In The Boys From Brazil - Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck, and six Dobermans. Most overrated rock concert film: The Last Waltz. So it has Dolby sound and professional camerawork; The Band still isn't God's gift to rock and roll, and Woodstock still towers. Most wooden performance: Fats, in Magic. Best movie poster: Goin' South. Most misleading movie poster: Goin' South. The AM award for worst soundtrack: Thank God It's Friday. Worst Line: John Travolta to Lily Tomlin in Moment By Moment - "You only love me in bed!" Worst remake of Smokey and the Bandit: Convoy. Most unoriginal film: Halloween. A formula rip-off of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Carrie, and Night of the Living Dead that adds up to more trick than treat. Most resounding "Thank you": From us to Gene Wilder, for not making a "comedy" this year. Critic with the most grating voice: Frank Beaver. Critic with the most grating opinions: Susan Stark. Most disappointing film: A Wedding. Robert Altman conforms to what his detractors have claimed for years, with this trite tribute to unabashed cynicism. Worst bedroom scene: In Coming Home - come on, Jane - everyone could see it was a stand-in. T, .1 HAL ASHBY 1978 COMING HOME The Sixties come alive again in this drama of love and war. Contrary to the gore and pillage documented in Hearts and Minds, Coming Home depicts the home front with its embittered veterans and the loved ones left behind. The insistent beat of such artists as RICHIE HAVENS and the ROLLING STONES combine with the superb cinematography of Haskell Wexler to create a back- drop of Sixties paranoia and passion against which the tender love affair of a paraplegic Viet vet and a marine officer's wife develops. Jon Voight won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival with his sensitive but powerful performance as Luke. Also starring the incomparable JANE FONDA, with BRUCE DERN. Ia SATURDAY-Coming Home CINEMA II TONIGHT AT 7 and 9:15 ANGELL HALL AUD. A $1.50 I do Grads D Singles you are cordially invited to a WINE 5 CHEESE P6;RTY with university grad studentsfrom Canada An Evening of Music, Fun! 8 pm-H ILLEL Sat. ]an. 13 Charge: $1.00 1 429 H ill St. 221 E. Liberty Plaza corner of E. Liberty & 5th lowsF level *bS-US momod i I e r :Y'' M n- Fri