War Dreams and Space Terrors: Cinema’s Last Great Era
Discover the best films from a landmark year in cinema. Explore rankings of cult classics, sci-fi masterpieces, and award-winning dramas.
If you want to pinpoint the exact moment when the grit of seventies New Hollywood collided with the spectacle of the modern blockbuster era, look no further than 1979. It was a year that felt like a bridge between two worlds. The decade started with a focus on realism and weary cynicism, then drifted toward the cosmic and the fantastical. By the time 1979 rolled around, the industry was operating at a fever pitch, producing masterpieces that managed to be intellectually rigorous while also functioning as massive cultural events.
The most towering achievement of the year was undoubtedly Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. After a production cycle that nearly killed its cast and crew, the film arrived as a hallucinatory scream about the soul of America. It represented the ultimate ambition of the director-driven era. It was a movie that pushed the medium to its breaking point, proving that a war film could be a psychedelic art piece. Yet even as Coppola was exploring the darkness of the human heart, Ridley Scott was taking us into the darkness of deep space.
Alien changed everything for science fiction and horror. It stripped away the optimism that Star Wars had injected into the genre just two years prior, replacing it with cold industrialism and a terrifying biological threat. It gave us Ellen Ripley, a protagonist who redefined what a hero could look like, and it proved that a B-movie premise could be executed with A-list sophistication. Between the jungle of Vietnam and the corridors of the Nostromo, 1979 was a year defined by atmosphere and dread.
However, it was not all gloom. The year also showcased a remarkable range of human stories. Woody Allen gave us Manhattan, a love letter to a city that functioned as a pinnacle of the sophisticated urban comedy. On the other end of the spectrum, Being There gave Peter Sellers the role of a lifetime in a biting satire about the emptiness of political fame. These films reminded audiences that cinema could be quiet, witty, and deeply observant about the way we live.
We also cannot overlook the cult phenomena that emerged. The Warriors turned a trip through the New York subway into a neon-soaked odyssey, while Mad Max burst out of Australia to introduce a visceral new language of action filmmaking. Even the world of comedy was being upended by Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which remains perhaps the boldest and bravest religious satire ever put to celluloid.
Film fans remember 1979 because it felt like the last year of total creative freedom before the franchise-obsessed eighties truly took hold. It was a year where a movie about a divorce, Kramer vs. Kramer, could become the highest-grossing film of the year and sweep the Oscars. It was a time when the box office and critical prestige were often in total alignment. Cinema was evolving. The tech was getting better, the budgets were getting bigger, but the stories were still deeply human. It was the perfect finale for an incredible decade of film.

A collection of Warner Brothers short cartoon features, "starring" the likes of Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Wile.E.Coyote. These animations are interspersed by Bugs Bunny reminiscing on past events and providing links between the individual animations which are otherwise unconnected. This 1979 feature-length compilation includes several of his best cartoons. Among the 11 shorts shown in their entirety are the classics "Robin Hood Daffy," "What's Opera, Doc?," "Bully for Bugs," and "Duck Amuck". The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Movie provides a showcase not only for Jones's razor-sharp timing, but for the work of his exceptional crew, which included designer Maurice Noble, writer Mike Maltese, composers Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn, and voice actor Mel Blanc.

In a small presbytery in Yorkshire, England, living under the watchful eyes of their aunt and father, a strict Anglican pastor, the Bronte sisters write their first works and quickly become literary sensations.

Charles is a bored civil servant struggling through a harsh Utah winter. He spends most of his time reflecting on his romance with Laura, a coworker who left him to return to her husband, an A-Frame salesman.

An LA police officer is murdered in the onion fields outside of Bakersfield. However, legal loopholes could keep his kidnappers from receiving justice, and his partner is haunted by overwhelming survivor's guilt.

This biopic traces Elvis Presley’s life from his impoverished childhood to his meteoric rise to stardom to his triumphant conquering of Las Vegas.

A rich student's fiancee has her face destroyed by a car accident, and refuses to return to him fearing the loss of his love.

George Lutz, his wife Kathy, and their three children have just moved into a beautiful, and improbably cheap, Victorian mansion nestled in the sleepy coastal town of Amityville, Long Island. However, their dream home is concealing a horrific past and soon each member of the Lutz family is plagued with increasingly strange and violent visions and impulses.

Now in his thirties, Antoine Doinel is a divorced proofreader in love with a record seller. Colette Tazzi, now a lawyer, buys his first published autobiography, leading them to a chance meeting.

When a leak of information in the African section of British Intelligence is discovered, a security man is brought in to investigate.

In 1879, the British suffer a great loss at the Battle of Isandlwana due to incompetent leadership.

Having fathered an illegitimate child with his lover, Marie, feckless soldier Franz Woyzeck takes odd jobs around his small town to provide some extra money for them. One job is volunteering for experiments conducted by a local doctor, who puts Woyzeck on a diet of peas. This serves to drive him close to madness, and the discovery that Marie is involved in an affair with the local drum major exacerbates the situation. Pushed too far, Woyzeck resorts to violence.

A hitchhiker named Martel Gordone gets in a fight with two bikers over a prostitute, and one of the bikers is killed. Gordone is arrested and sent to prison, where he joins the prison's boxing team in an effort to secure an early parole and to establish his dominance over the prison's toughest gang.

During WWII, the United States set up army bases in Great Britain as part of the war effort. Against their proper sensibilities, many of the Brits don't much like the brash Yanks, especially when it comes to the G.I.s making advances on the lonely British girls. One relationship that develops is between married John, an Army Captain, and the aristocratic Helen, whose naval husband is away at war. Helen loves her husband, but Helen and John are looking for some comfort during the difficult times.

After the death of the paranoid emperor Tiberius, Caligula, his heir, seizes power and plunges the empire into a bloody spiral of madness and depravity.

The explorer craft USS Palomino is returning to Earth after a fruitless 18-month search for extra-terrestrial life when the crew comes upon a supposedly lost ship, the USS Cygnus, hovering near a black hole. The ship is controlled by Dr. Hans Reinhardt and his monstrous robot companion, but the initial wonderment and awe the Palomino crew feel for the ship and its resistance to the power of the black hole turn to horror as they uncover Reinhardt's plans.

After divorcing his ambitious singer wife, a middle-aged man begins a new relationship with a teacher.

Distant, well-worn memories of childhood are inhabited by a little gray wolf. Through astonishing imagery, the memory of all of Russia is depicted.

Richard Pryor delivers monologues on race, sex, family and his favorite target—himself, live at the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach, California.

Secret agent Harry Hannan suffers a mental breakdown when a botched mission in Mexico results in the death of his wife. He is sent to a mental asylum, after which he eventually returns to work. But, once again, he begins to doubt his sanity when he receives a bizarre death threat written in Hebrew. Not knowing which of his colleagues wants to kill him, Hannan teams up with pretty young college student Ellie Fabian to attempt to unravel the mystery.

Documentary about Cape Verde and the island of Fogo produced by the revolutionary government of the new country. A culture learning to live without tutelage.

While touring in Italy, a recently-widowed American opera singer has an incestuous relationship with her 15-year-old son to help him overcome his heroin addiction.

Rock-and-roll singer Mary Rose Foster's romantic relationships and mental health are continuously imperilled by the demands of life on the road.

In the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, panic grips California, where a military officer leads a mob chasing a Japanese sub.

A Southerner--young, poor, ambitious but uneducated--determines to become something in the world. He decides that the best way to do that is to become a preacher and start up his own church.

Three kindly old men decide to light up the dimming twilight of their lives with a last blaze of glory – by sticking up a Manhattan bank in broad daylight.

A runaway criminal breaks into an eerie chateau, taking its two frightened chambermaids hostage. As night falls, a group of mysterious aristocratic women arrive and the criminal begins to realize the women are hiding a sinister secret.

Rabbi Avram arrives in Philadelphia from Poland en route to San Francisco where he will be a congregation's new rabbi. An innocent and inexperienced traveller, he is tricked by con men to pay for the trip to go west, then they leave him and his belongings scattered along a deserted road. He is befriended by a stranger, Tommy, who is a bank robber and have many adventures during their journey.

While traveling with his father, young Alec becomes fascinated by a mysterious Arabian stallion that is brought on board and stabled in the ship he is sailing on. When it tragically sinks both he and the horse survive only to be stranded on a deserted island. He befriends it, so when finally rescued both return to his home where they soon meet Henry Dailey, a once successful trainer. Together they begin training the horse to race against the fastest ones in the world.

Widowed Elinor Randall and her young daughter Jerrine arrive in a barren stretch of Wyoming in 1910 after Elinor's application for work as a housekeeper is accepted by Clyde Stewart, a rancher. The work is back-breaking and the isolation is brutal, particularly as winter arrives. Elinor begins to think about homesteading her own property near Stewart's ranch, but Stewart tries to dissuade her with explanations about the killing conditions and poor rewards, especially for a woman with no man to help her ranch. Although their temperaments are different and little affection exists, Elinor and Stewart agree to marry and combine homesteads. What lies ahead is the severest test of all.

Capt. William "Buck" Rogers is a jovial space cowboy who is accidentally time-warped from 1987 to 2491. Earth is engaged in interplanetary war following a global holocaust, and Buck's piloting skills make him an ideal starfighter recruit for the Earth Defense Directorate.

An artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill.

A bankrupt entrepreneur attempts to recoup some of her losses by getting a washed-out boxer she picked up as a tax loss back into the ring — an idea her protégé isn't fond of.

A semi-fictional account of life as a professional football player. Loosely based on the Dallas Cowboys team of the early 1970s.

Jack Flowers is an American hustler trying to make his fortune in 1970s Singapore in small time pimping. His dreams of building a fortune by running a brothel himself and returning to the States is materialized when he is offered the opportunity by the CIA to run a brothel for the R&R activities of U.S. soldiers on leave in Singapore.

Powerful, uncompromising drama about two boys' struggle for survival in the nightmare world of Britain's notorious Borstal Reformatory.

Tourists on a tropical island anger an island god, who turns himself into a giant alligator and stalks them.

A pushy, narcissistic filmmaker persuades a Phoenix family to let him and his crew film their everyday lives, in the manner of the ground-breaking PBS series "An American Family".

A young woman who is determined to maintain her independence finds herself at odds with her family who wants her to tame her wild side and get married.

A group of bored teenagers rebel against authority in the community of New Granada.

A former champion rodeo rider is reduced to using his saddle skills to promote a breakfast cereal in a gaudy Las Vegas show. When he's asked to perform with a $12 million horse, he discovers it is being doped to remain docile. He flees into the desert astride the beast in an act of defiance. A story-hungry female reporter gives chase.

The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’

Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.

Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.

The younger brother of an assassinated US President is led down a rabbit hole of conspiracies and dead ends after learning of a man claiming to be the real shooter.

A man tries to uncover an unconventional psychologist's therapy techniques on his institutionalized wife, while a series of brutal attacks committed by a brood of mutant children coincides with the husband's investigation.

Upon receiving his draft notice and leaving his family ranch in Oklahoma, Claude heads to New York and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to boot camp.

An ethical Baltimore defense lawyer disgusted with rampant legal corruption is forced to defend a judge he despises in a rape trial under the threat of being disbarred.

In preparation for his daughter's wedding, dentist Sheldon Kornpett meets Vince Ricardo, the groom's father. Vince, a manic fellow who claims to be a government agent, then proceeds to drag Sheldon into a series of chases and misadventures from New York to Central America.

Dracula and Renfield relocate to '70s era New York in search of Cindy Sondheim, the reincarnation of Dracula's one true love, Mina Harker. "Trouble adjusting" is a wild understatement for the Count as he battles Cindy's psychiatrist, Jeffrey Rosenberg, a descendant of Van Helsing, who may be in love with Cindy too.

Writer H. G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to modern day San Francisco after the infamous serial killer steals his time machine to escape the 19th century.

An adaptation of Henry James' novel about the Countess Eugenia Münster and her brother Robert, expatriate Americans who have grown up in Europe. Returning to prosperous relatives in New England, Eugenia hopes to make an advantageous marriage with a wealthy cousin. While Eugenia encounters obstacles, Robert finds his suit bearing fruit.

After an abandoned boat sails into New York harbor with a zombie aboard, a reporter teams up with the daughter of the boat's missing owner to investigate the island where he was last seen conducting research—the site of an alleged zombie outbreak.

A strong-willed peasant girl is sent by her father to the estate of some local aristocrats to capitalize on a rumor that their families are from the same line, but is left traumatised from her experiences.

Tripper is the head counselor at a budget summer camp called Camp Northstar. In truth, he's young at heart and only marginally more mature than the campers themselves. Tripper befriends Rudy, a loner camper who has trouble fitting in. As Tripper inspires his young charges to defeat rival Camp Mohawk in the annual Olympiad competition, Rudy plays matchmaker between Tripper and Roxanne, a female counselor at Northstar.

Based on the 1973 rock opera album of the same name by The Who, this is the story of 60s teenager Jimmy. At work he slaves in a dead-end job. While after, he shops for tailored suits and rides his scooter as part of the London Mod scene.

In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.

After Drax Industries' Moonraker space shuttle is hijacked, secret agent James Bond is assigned to investigate, traveling to California to meet the company's owner, the mysterious Hugo Drax. With the help of scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead, Bond soon uncovers Drax's nefarious plans for humanity, all the while fending off an old nemesis, Jaws, and venturing to Venice, Rio, the Amazon...and even outer space.

While doing a series of reports on alternative energy sources, opportunistic reporter Kimberly Wells witnesses an accident at a nuclear power plant. Wells is determined to publicize the incident, but soon finds herself entangled in a sinister conspiracy to keep the full impact of the incident a secret.

A real estate agent leaves behind his beautiful wife to go to Transylvania to visit the mysterious Count Dracula and formalize the purchase of a property in Wismar.

A Hollywood songwriter goes through a mid-life crisis and becomes infatuated with a sexy blonde newlywed.

As he approaches manhood, Ben Meechum struggles to win the approval of his demanding alpha male father, an aggressively competitive, but frustrated marine pilot.

After Rocky goes the distance with champ Apollo Creed, both try to put the fight behind them and move on. Rocky settles down with Adrian but can't put his life together outside the ring, while Creed seeks a rematch to restore his reputation. Soon enough, the "Master of Disaster" and the "Italian Stallion" are set on a collision course for a climactic battle that is brutal and unforgettable.

The Muppets gather to watch their newly-finished big-budget rich-and-famous feature film: a talent agent persuades Kermit the Frog to leave the swamp to pursue a career in Hollywood. On his way there, he meets a bear, a pig, a whatever (his future muppet crew), and some special celebrity guest stars, while being chased by the desperate owner of a frog-leg restaurant!

Dave, nineteen, has just graduated high school, with his three friends: the comical Cyril, the warm hearted but short-tempered Moocher, and the athletic, spiteful but good-hearted Mike. Now, Dave enjoys racing bikes and hopes to race the Italians one day, and even takes up the Italian culture, much to his friends' and parents' annoyance.

San Francisco Bay, January 18, 1960. Frank Lee Morris is transferred to Alcatraz, a maximum security prison located on a rocky island. Although no one has ever managed to escape from there, Frank and other inmates begin to carefully prepare an escape plan.

After discovering he's not really black like the rest of his family, likable dimwit Navin Johnson sets off on a hilarious misadventure that takes him from rags to riches and back again. The slaphappy jerk strikes it rich, but life in the fast lane isn't all it's cracked up to be and, in the end, all that really matters to Johnson is his true love.

Brian Cohen is an average young Jewish man, but through a series of ridiculous events, he gains a reputation as the Messiah. When he's not dodging his followers or being scolded by his shrill mother, the hapless Brian has to contend with the pompous Pontius Pilate and acronym-obsessed members of a separatist movement. Rife with Monty Python's signature absurdity, the tale finds Brian's life paralleling Biblical lore, albeit with many more laughs.
The Monty Python troupe reaches the peak of their irreverent powers with this razor-sharp deconstruction of religious fanaticism and bureaucracy. It manages to be both profoundly silly and intellectually daring, proving that nothing is too sacred for a perfectly timed punchline.

Joe Gideon is at the top of the heap, one of the most successful directors and choreographers in musical theater. But he can feel his world slowly collapsing around him - his obsession with work has almost destroyed his personal life, and only his bottles of pills keep him going.
Bob Fosse turns the lens inward to create a jagged, self-immolating musical that dances on the edge of the grave. The film’s frenetic editing and unapologetic ego provide a searing, kaleidoscopic look at the heavy price of creative obsession.

Prominent gang leader Cyrus calls a meeting of New York's gangs to set aside their turf wars and take over the city. At the meeting, a rival leader kills Cyrus, but a Coney Island gang called the Warriors is wrongly blamed for Cyrus' death. Before you know it, the cops and every gangbanger in town is hot on the Warriors' trail.
Walter Hill transforms a street gang odyssey into a stylized, neon-lit comic book epic. Its lean narrative machinery and rhythmic pacing create a heightened reality where the urban landscape becomes a surreal gauntlet of tribal warfare.

Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.
Rendered in breathtaking monochromatic vistas, this love letter to urban neurosis captures a specific moment of intellectual vanity and romantic disillusionment. The visual grandeur of the cinematography provides a sharp contrast to the messy, complicated morality of its protagonists.

Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.
Andrei Tarkovsky crafts a meditative, soul-aching odyssey through a landscape of metaphysical ruin. It is an unparalleled exercise in atmospheric tension that challenges the viewer to confront the heavy silence of faith and desire.

A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television.
Peter Sellers delivers a masterfully restrained performance in this chillingly relevant satire about the emptiness of political discourse. The film’s quiet, rhythmic irony exposes how easily vacuum-like simplicity can be mistaken for divine wisdom.

Ted Kramer is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna cannot take this anymore, so she decides to leave him. Ted is now faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of himself and their young son Billy.
This devastatingly precise portrait of domestic dissolution pivots away from Hollywood artifice to find the raw, agonizing truth in a custody battle. Its emotional intelligence and nuanced performances elevate the family drama into a profound cultural touchstone.
In the ravaged near-future, a savage motorcycle gang rules the road. Terrorizing innocent civilians while tearing up the streets, the ruthless gang laughs in the face of a police force hell-bent on stopping them.
George Miller’s high-octane vision of a crumbling society is a masterclass in kinetic momentum and low-budget ingenuity. It strips the action genre down to its barest, most visceral elements, heralding a gritty new era for global cult cinema.
During its return to the earth, commercial spaceship Nostromo intercepts a distress signal from a distant planet. When a three-member team of the crew discovers a chamber containing thousands of eggs on the planet, a creature inside one of the eggs attacks an explorer. The entire crew is unaware of the impending nightmare set to descend upon them when the alien parasite planted inside its unfortunate host is birthed.
Ridley Scott weaponizes negative space and industrial claustrophobia to redefine the horror genre. By blending high-concept science fiction with a primal, biomechanical nightmare, it creates a sense of dread that is both sterile and terrifyingly intimate.
At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
Francis Ford Coppola translates the psychological rot of war into a hallucinatory fever dream that dwarfs every other cinematic achievement of the decade. Its sensory overload and sheer operatic scale demand a total surrender to the madness of the jungle.
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