Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock” is a mystery with no answer. It’s 1900 Australia and a group of girls from an elite finishing school leave for a picnic at Hanging Rock, a chunk of mountain with a near-supernatural magnetism. It looms as a god, setting visitors in a daze. Watches stop. People sleep. Four girls wonder for no reason but curiosity. Three disappear, one returns panicked. The vanished girls drop the perfect façade of the school and town into hysteria, order and etiquette shattering. People don’t fear the girls’ deaths, they fear their “violation.” The unknown expands. Weir uses glowing cinematography and pan-flute music to portray the perfection that we all desire to build us for the fall. Life is unanswerable, we cannot escape it reciting poetry or meeting dinner time. The only innocent free girl throws herself to death. The grand head mistress (Rachel Roberts) loses her glory to reality, her fate leads back to that Rock. Honestly, “Picnic” is perfect, as defined as what we are not shown, by as what we are. It is art that cannot be explained or crunched into a few sentences, it must be seen. On repeat. Endlessly fascinating. A+

Rollerball (1975)

In 2018 super-corporations rule the world in a soulless oligopoly as every need is served by nameless businesses. Government and freedom of choice is dead. Citizen-consumers are told to do their part and buy, buy, and obey, making the corporations even wealthier. It’s the dream world of the modern Koch Brothers, Consumers United, and right-wing GOP greed. I digress, but that’s the world behind 1975’s “Rollerball,” a futuristic nightmare flick that focuses on a roller rink blood sport that’s like basketball on wheels, with spikes, motor bikes, and death. James Caan is Jonathan, the Michael Jordon of the sport, a long-time veteran at the top of the game. Until the Corporate Gods tell him to stop. Why? No man can rise against the Corporate Elite. Damn, this is a fine premise. It’s predictions are crazy eerie. The film itself, directed by Norman Jewison? A dud. Caan -– who can deny his screen power? -– appears bored, the pace glacial, and the cheapo imagery amateurish. Oh, there’s a fantastic bit that foresees the rise of the ’Net and the fall of books, but like the Koch Brothers warning, it belongs in a better movie. C+

Jaws (1975)

“Jaws” is the “Godfather” of beach movies. There is nothing better or scarier, even with all the sequels (3-D!) and rip-offs and homages (“Piranha” and even “Alien”). All the “Gidget”-like fun flicks from before? “Jaws” killed ’em. New to BluRay, “Jaws” is better than ever in crisp, glorious widescreen with sound racketed up so every thump of John Williams’ score booms inside your gut. The picture is so clean one can see the horizon miles past the shaken trio of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw as they battle a killer shark in the waters of New England. I need not discuss plot, right? Everyone knows it. And no wonder: Steven Spielberg, in his mid-20s, out of his league, and working with physical special effects that barely functioned, pulled out a masterpiece that can never be duplicated. Not with all the CGI in the world. The panic and confusion off screen spills onscreen where anything can happen. The shark doesn’t appear for an hour, but by then Spielberg has pulled us in with brilliantly drawn characters and intense trickery. Shaw rules as the doomed shark hunter and has the best intro ever in a movie. A+

Rocky (1975)

“Rocky” is near religion to me. No, it is religion. I grew up in Philly, and Rocky Balboa, played by Sylvester Stallone, was our god. These were not just “movies” to us kids back then. They were documents of our home. Rocky was one of us. Enough sentimentality, onto the film itself: Rocky is 30, piss poor, working for a “second rate loan shark” in Kensington, boxing on the side to make a couple bucks. He hates his life. Then he’s plucked from his rut to box Heavyweight Champ Apollo Creed for a set-up, bullshit New Year’s Day 1976 fight to marks the U.S.’s 200^th anniversary. The fight is fixed. Rocky does not stand a chance, and knows it. He cares not. He wants to prove to himself, his shy pet shop girlfriend Adrian (Talia Shire), and anyone who is ignorant of where Kensington is, that he matters, that he can go the distance, as he says. It’s hilarious that conservatives see “Rocky” as their film, when in fact this story is about the people left out of the American dream, pushed and punched around a boxing ring in a match where the rich always win. Always. One of my favorites. A+

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

In the opening seconds of Sonny Wortzik’s daring daylight robbery of a Brooklyn bank, it all goes wrong. Sonny – played by Al Pacino, when his legend was unbeatable – can’t even get his rifle out of a flower box correctly. He fumbles. Then one of his two accomplices flees, and then Sonny finds out the truck already picked up the money. Dude is left looking at less than $1,500. This is the start of Sidney Lumet’s classic drama-thriller “Dog Day Afternoon,” a film about a damned lost soul, so desperate to change, for a chance, that he destroys the thin string he hangs by. Based on an incredible true story, “Dog” is Pacino’s acting showcase -- a maladjusted Vietnam vet in a sexual pickle too riotous to explain. Just watch. His Sonny seems closer to real criminals, as we call them, than 99 percent of the flicks out there. (I covered enough crime at newspapers to know.) Lumet’s clockwork precision plays well, the movie seems to spin out in real time, in a throbbing, sweating, raging New York City long gone. John Cazale plays Sonny’s hard-case accomplice, an unhinged guy not afraid to kill or be killed. One of the best films from the 1970s. A+

The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975)

The “Apple Dumpling Gang” is the equal of a sick beagle. You can’t not go, “Awww,” and smile. I must have seen this film a dozen times as a child, back when there was a “Disney Sunday Night Movie” on network TV, pre-cable. We have the Disney essentials: A trio of adorable orphans, an exasperated father figure (Bill Bixby), two bumbling thieves (Don Knotts and Tim Conway) who couldn’t steal bark from a tree, and a bad guy (Slim Pickens) so harmless, he’s huggable. The story: Bixby’s all-for-me gambler is hoodwinked into taking custody of the children, who in turn find a massive gold boulder in an abandoned mine. The gold brings much attention, but all the kids want is a dad. There’s a scene where Pickens says he’ll “blow a hole” in somebody “so big, you can throw a mule through it,” and that describes the plot. But this is harmless fun and still entertaining. Disney films from this era had amazing casts, hands down. B+

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975)

Following “The Producers“ (Broadway), “Blazing Saddles” (western) and “Young Frankenstein” (classic horror) -- all made by Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder starred, wrote and directed the spoof “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” on his own. Some veterans of the prior films, mainly Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise and Madeline Kahn, appear in supporting roles in this story about a case too lowly for the pipe smoking great detective. Sherlock instead kicks it to his kid brother, Sigerson Holmes (Wilder), a musical-loving wannabe who ought to be in the same therapy class as Leo Bloom. What the case is all about is irrelevant. The gags count here, none better than a Moriarty (Leo McKern) who must commit an evil act every 24 minutes, cannot add and has a height issue. McKern steals the film, even from the likes of the great cast. There are solid laughs all around, but as a whole this falls short of Brooks gold. The ending is choppy, as if Wilder couldn’t decide how to roll credits. B