Taxi Driver (1976)

A masterpiece. Robert De Niro is utterly transfixing as Travis Bickle, a New York cabbie who becomes obsessed with cleaning up the city – whatever the cost. 

Cybil Shepherd and Jodie Foster are excellent as Betsy (the campaign volunteer for a presidential candidate) and Iris (a child prostitute), while Harvey Keitel is suitably creepy as Iris’s long-haired pimp. 

It’s beautifully filmed: you could freeze almost any frame and make a poster of it. And Martin Scorsese’s subtle handling of tension was never better judged. 

The original score by Bernard Herrmann makes a compelling, noirish film even more so. 

You can interpret it as a film about PTSD or a story about isolation and loneliness. 

Disturbingly, this classic was an influence on John Hinckley Jr., who in 1981 attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in order to impress Jodie Foster.

Silver Bears (1978)

In this mildly amusing banking thriller adapted from a novel by Paul Erdman, Michael Caine stars as a monetary wizard who creates a Swiss bank to finance a silver mine in Iran. But all is not as it seems and he ends up having to out-scam the crooks who are attempting to scam him. 

It’s flawed but entertaining. On the down side, a couple of the characters are misjudged and could have been cut completely – for example, Jay Leno is awkward and almost entirely pointless as Albert Fiore. It’s also a little slow to get going, and for a so-called comedy it could have been a lot funnier. 

On the plus side, Cybill Shepherd is excellent as the kooky wife of an accountant. The film improves from the moment she steps into it. And Charles “Blofeld” Gray is easy to like as a millionaire precious-metals dealer. Louis Jourdan and Joss Ackland are also fairly strong. The Swiss locations look good, and there’s a nice soundtrack by Claude Bolling.