92%  Winner:   The Godfather: Part II  202 min,  R,  [Crime, Drama]  [Francis Ford Coppola]  [20 Dec 1974]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 90%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 97%,   Metacritic: 90%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 6 Oscars. Another 11 wins & 20 nominations.
Actors:  Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall
Writer:  Francis Ford Coppola (screenplay by), Mario Puzo (screenplay by), Mario Puzo (based on the novel by)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb  Website     Language:  English, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Sicilian    Country:  USA
Plot:  The continuing saga of the Corleone crime family tells the story of a young Vito Corleone growing up in Sicily and in 1910s New York; and follows Michael Corleone in the 1950s as he attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Francis Ford Coppola's legendary continuation and sequel to his landmark 1972 film, The Godfather, parallels the young Vito Corleone's rise with his son Michael's spiritual fall, deepening The Godfather's depiction of the dark side of the American dream. In the early 1900s, the child Vito flees his Sicilian village for America after the local Mafia kills his family. Vito (Robert De Niro) struggles to make a living, legally or illegally, for his wife and growing brood in Little Italy, killing the local Black Hand Fanucci (Gastone Moschin) after he demands his customary cut of the tyro's business. With Fanucci gone, Vito's communal stature grows, but it is his family (past and present) who matters most to him -- a familial legacy then upended by Michael's (Al Pacino) business expansion in the 1950s. Now based in Lake Tahoe, Michael conspires to make inroads in Las Vegas and Havana pleasure industries by any means necessary. As he realizes that allies like Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) are trying to kill him, the increasingly paranoid Michael also discovers that his ambition has crippled his marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) and turned his brother, Fredo (John Cazale), against him. Barely escaping a federal indictment, Michael turns his attention to dealing with his enemies, completing his own corruption. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

90%  Nominee:   Chinatown  130 min,  R,  [Drama, Mystery, Thriller]  [Roman Polanski]  [20 Jun 1974]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 82%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 98%,   Metacritic: 92%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 1 Oscar. Another 20 wins & 24 nominations.
Actors:  Faye Dunaway, Jack Nicholson, John Huston, Perry Lopez
Writer:  Robert Towne
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb  Website     Language:  English, Cantonese, Spanish    Country:  USA
Plot:  JJ 'Jake' Gittes is a private detective who seems to specialize in matrimonial cases. He is hired by Evelyn Mulwray when she suspects her husband Hollis, builder of the city's water supply system, of having an affair. Gittes does what he does best and photographs him with a young girl but in the ensuing scandal, it seems he was hired by an impersonator and not the real Mrs. Mulwray. When Mr. Mulwray is found dead, Jake is plunged into a complex web of deceit involving murder, incest, and municipal corruption all related to the city's water supply.
Rotten Tomatoes:   A private detective, Jake Gittes, hired to investigate an adultery case, stumbles on the plot of a murder involving incest and the privatization of water through state and municipal corruption, land use and real estate. If he doesn't drop the case at once he faces threats of legal action, but he pursues it anyway, slowly uncovering a vast conspiracy.

77%  Nominee:   Lenny  111 min,  R,  [Biography, Drama]  [Bob Fosse]  [01 Dec 1974]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 76%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 95%,   Metacritic: 61%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Nominated for 6 Oscars. Another 7 wins & 10 nominations.
Actors:  Dustin Hoffman, Jan Miner, Stanley Beck, Valerie Perrine
Writer:  Julian Barry (play), Julian Barry (screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Interview-style biography of controversial and pioneering stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce. The film traces Bruce from his beginnings as a Catskills comic to his later underground popularity based on his anti-establishment politics and his scatological humor.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Adapted by Julian Barry from his own Broadway play, this film manages to be both brutally frank and highly romanticized in detailing the life and career of influential, controversial stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce. The chronology jumps between Lenny in his prime and the performer in the twilight of his life.

87%  Nominee:   The Conversation  113 min,  PG,  [Drama, Mystery, Thriller]  [Francis Ford Coppola]  [01 Jun 1974]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 79%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 98%,   Metacritic: 85%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Nominated for 3 Oscars. Another 14 wins & 13 nominations.
Actors:  Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest, Gene Hackman, John Cazale
Writer:  Francis Ford Coppola
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Harry Caul is a devout Catholic and a lover of jazz music who plays his saxophone while listening to his jazz records. He is a San Francisco-based electronic surveillance expert who owns and operates his own small surveillance business. He is renowned within the profession as being the best, one who designs and constructs his own surveillance equipment. He is an intensely private and solitary man in both his personal and professional life, which especially irks Stan, his business associate who often feels shut out of what is happening with their work. This privacy, which includes not letting anyone into his apartment and always telephoning his clients from pay phones is, in part, intended to control what happens around him. His and Stan's latest job (a difficult one) is to record the private discussion of a young couple meeting in crowded and noisy Union Square. The arrangement with his client, known only to him as "the director", is to provide the audio recording of the discussion and photographs of the couple directly to him alone in return for payment. Based on circumstances with the director's assistant, Martin Stett, and what Harry ultimately hears on the recording, Harry believes that the lives of the young couple are in jeopardy. Harry used to be detached from what he recorded, but is now concerned ever since the deaths of three people that were the direct result of a previous audio recording he made for another job. Harry not only has to decide if he will turn the recording over to the director, but also if he will try and save the couple's lives using information from the recording. As Harry goes on a quest to find out what exactly is happening on this case, he finds himself in the middle of his worst nightmare.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Made between The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), and in part an homage to Michelangelo Antonioni's art-movie classic Blow-Up (1966), The Conversation was a return to small-scale art films for Francis Ford Coppola. Sound surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is hired to track a young couple (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest), taping their conversation as they walk through San Francisco's crowded Union Square. Knowing full well how technology can invade privacy, Harry obsessively keeps to himself, separating business from his personal life, even refusing to discuss what he does or where he lives with his girlfriend, Amy (Teri Garr). Harry's work starts to trouble him, however, as he comes to believe that the conversation he pieced together reveals a plot by the mysterious corporate "Director" who hired him to murder the couple. After he allows himself to be seduced by a call girl, who then steals the tapes, Harry is all the more convinced that a killing will occur, and he can no longer separate his job from his conscience. Coppola, cinematographer Bill Butler, and Oscar-nominated sound editor Walter Murch convey the narrative through Harry's aural and visual experience, beginning with the slow opening zoom of Union Square accompanied by the alternately muddled and clear sound of the couple's conversation caught by Harry's microphones. The Godfather Part II and The Conversation earned Coppola a rare pair of Oscar nominations for Best Picture, as well as two nominations for Best Screenplay (The Godfather Part II won both). Praised by critics, The Conversation was not a popular hit, but it has since come to be seen as one of the artistic high points of the decade, as well as of Coppola's career. Its atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion, combined with its obsessive loner antihero, made it prototypical of the darker "American art movies" of the early '70s, as its audiotape storyline also made it seem eerily appropriate for the era of the Watergate scandal. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

69%  Nominee:   The Towering Inferno  165 min,  PG,  [Action, Drama, Thriller]  [John Guillermin]  [01 Jan 1975]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 69%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 71%,   Metacritic: 69%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 3 Oscars. Another 9 wins & 13 nominations.
Actors:  Faye Dunaway, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden
Writer:  Richard Martin Stern (novel), Thomas N. Scortia (novel), Frank M. Robinson (novel), Stirling Silliphant (screenplay)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Doug Roberts, Architect, returns from a long vacation to find work nearly completed on his skyscraper. He goes to the party that night concerned he's found that his wiring specifications have not been followed and that the building continues to develop short circuits. When the fire begins, Michael O'Halleran is the chief on duty as a series of daring rescues punctuate the terror of a building too tall to have a fire successfully fought from the ground.
Rotten Tomatoes:   On the day of its grand opening, the world's tallest building becomes victim to an electrical mishap and a subsequent huge fire on its upper floors, causing all of the city's rescue teams to converge upon the scene and attempt to fight against what is a raging monster.