Image Credit: ©20thCentFox/Everett Collectionīoth a funny and heartwarming coming-of-age story and an inspiring underdog sports film, Breaking Away follows a quartet of friends seeking direction in their lives in the year after graduating high school. To quote a wise man: “It’s showtime, folks!” You won’t agree with all of these choices, but hopefully you’ll revisit every single film on this list and find something new in these documents of a wild, wacky, weird decade of movies. Here are our picks for the greatest movies to come out of that fertile era of filmmaking, from godfather-led family businesses to tales in a galaxy far, far away. (Forget it, Jake - it’s a deadline thing.) Our only regret is that we didn’t take this list up to 200, or even 300 titles. Looking back at the second golden age of Hollywood while this group of writers attempted to wrestle with the notion of the 100 best movies of the 1970s, it’s mind-boggling to think so many of what we now consider the high points of a still young-ish art form came from this small pocket of time. There’s a reason that the 1970s are idolized, fetishisized and consistently namechecked by several generations of cinephiles: the sheer abundance of great movies that came out during that 10-year span, especially (but not exclusively) from American filmmakers.

(In all fairness fair to Regan MacNeil, the devil made her do it.)

These were the years when we learned to be scared of sharks, masked slashers and pea-soup-spitting youngsters. Later, boxers, biking teens, baseball kids and broken-down hockey players would prove that sometimes, the underdogs win even if they don’t actually win. The “Film Brats” were in full bloom, and after the studio system had let the bearded barbarians in through gate, audiences were gifted with what seemed like some new beautiful, bleak vision of American life on a weekly basis. It was the decade that gave us midnight movies, modern blockbusters, Blaxploitation epics, neo-noirs and the cream of the New Hollywood crop.

Tank Girl by Alan C. Martin