Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Dog Day Afternoon, a movie portraying the level of stress that two people experienced and their way of showing the world that enough is enough. Al Pacino plays as Sunny, who, with his friend Sal, decides to rob a bank. Once inside the police respond and a standoff ensues. Although Sunny never wants to hurt anyone, he is pushed to a point where he feels this is the only thing that he can do. Jobless because he is not in a union, married to a man and a woman, and now having to keep a group of trigger-happy police officers at bay, Sunny makes his move and tries to resolve peacefully what he started with force.

I personally loved this movie. I think it really shows the extent of what some people were driven to during this time. The movie also portrays the ignorance of people against gays and also the normality of it. As wrong as Sunny was, I think that many people would have liked to see Sunny go free at the end.

I will definitely watch this again.  

Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Saturday Night fever with John Travolta as Tony Manero depicts a time when disco was a way of life for some. The movie shows how even though many people move away from their home and try to be something that they are not, they still have a piece of where they are from in them. Tony never really tries to pretend that he is something that he is not and the only thing he lives for is Saturday nights at the Odyssey. In the end he decides that this is not the only thing in life and wants to expand his horizons.

I loved this movie. Hands down. It really kept the audiences attention with the constant flow of the story with very few uneventful times, it seems as though everything in the movie was necessary and I cannot recall any scene that I found irrelevant. The soundtrack is amazing and most of the music even to this day is still recognized even by generations that did not grow up during the time. Even though the movie has its low notes and shows the ignorance of men and how mistreated women were at the time, the movie is a staple in american history about a time that cannot and should not ever be forgotten.

I look forward to the day that I get to see this movie again.

Taxi Driver (1976)

Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle, Cybill Shepherd as Betsy, and Jodie Foster as Iris play in Taxi Driver. This movie is about a war vet who comes back to New York and gets a job as a taxi driver and sees the city as a disgusting cesspool of filth and degenerate people. As he tries to find out what his role in the world is he decides to take out a corrupt politician but is thwarted and goes vigilante to take out a group of pimps.

I found the movie hard to follow and throughout the movie I do not know what to think about Travis. At first I thought of him as a creep and all around uneducated idealist. To this day I do not know what to think of him even though towards the end he is depicted as a vigilante hero who saved a young girl from the downward spiral of becoming a prostitute. Once again, in a lot of movies from this time, there are many scenes that have a deeper meaning that is left to the viewer to determine what the director is trying to convey. I am not a fan of this because there can be so many different things that the director can be trying to say and I like to think that they do it for their own personal reason and us as an audience just need to accept it and move on, it is, after all, their opinion and message about a confusing time. I like the movie, but like I said, I am still confused about the main character.

I would definitely watch this again.