All That Jazz (1979)

An autobiographical musical drama directed by Bob Fosse. It’s a noble failure – high on ambition, low on satisfaction. 

The “story”, what there is of one, deals with a character supposedly based on Fosse himself. Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is a theatre director and choreographer. He’s a womaniser, chain-smoker and drug user whose health is getting worse by the day. When he’s eventually hospitalised, the remainder of the film plays out as a sort of fantasy/dream sequence that blends scenes from his life with high-concept showbiz production numbers. These take place in an imaginary nightclub with the angel of death played by Jessica Lange. 

The problem is that Joe's character is established in the first five-to-10 minutes and is left with nowhere to go. It’s never explained how he got to be who he is, why he behaves like this, why his family put up with him, and why we should care. A brief bit of back story (Joe as a teen) is quickly abandoned, and way too much of the film is taken up with him hallucinating while in hospital. That time could have been used for character development. 

The impressionistic scenes are a spectacle, but there’s an ugly quality to the visuals that’s off-putting. Ultimately it becomes wearying.

Alien (1979)

Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror masterpiece still looks fantastic and is just as chilling as ever. 

Sigourney Weaver plays Ripley, a warrant officer on the cargo ship Nostromo. The ship picks up a signal from a moon, indicating unexpected life. While investigating, the crew accidentally adopt an alien creature that threatens not just all of them but humanity itself.

Weaver is great in the main role – tough but compassionate, and smart and intuitive in a way that her colleagues aren’t.

It works because it’s mostly about the suspense rather than the monsters, although what you do see of the aliens is terrifying enough.

A long line of sequels and prequels would follow as Alien developed into a franchise, but none of them came close to this original.

The Rose (1979)

Drama loosely based on the life and death of Janis Joplin. 

Bette Midler plays Rose, a troubled singer who enters a downward spiral of addiction and self-hate. Alan Bates plays her promoter, but not very well. 

I found it strangely compelling despite it being overwrought. Bette Midler cries and shouts a lot. The onstage song performances are probably the best aspect of the film, and Midler really puts everything into them.  

It’s set in the late 1960s but the period detail is muddling and everything looks very 1979. Worth seeing – if only once.

Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

Superb escape drama directed by Don Siegel. 

Clint Eastwood plays Frank Morris, who plans to escape from the maximum-security prison island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. 

It’s tense and atmospheric, but also compassionate. Eastwood doesn’t say much, as usual, but he conveys a lot with his eyes and face. Patrick McGoohan plays the sadistic warden.

It’s based on a true story, making it more fascinating. And I really like the open-ended nature of the ending.

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) puts his career first and neglects his wife Joanna (Meryl Streep) and son (Justin Henry). When Joanna walks out, Ted is left to juggle his job with the demands of parenting. And just as he seems to be getting the hang of the latter, a custody battle begins. 

It’s a powerful drama. To the credit of director Robert Benton, it’s not really about the end of a marriage. It’s more about the parent–child relationship and how that is affected by a divorce. 

Hoffman is his usual mannered, nervy persona with little self-awareness. You can see hints of his autistic Rain Man character in all his roles and this one is no exception. Streep's character is undeveloped – the main flaw of the film. It would have been good to see more of it from her point of view, but she's denied much screen time, which limits her character development.

Moonraker (1979)

The usual plot: a bad man wants to take over the world, and James Bond – aided by weapons, gadgets and beautiful women – has to stop him. The “twist” this time is that some of the action takes place in space. 

It’s difficult to believe Roger Moore can be running around on a space shuttle and in a space station, but that’s exactly what we see.

The pros:

• There are some genuinely funny moments.

• Roger Moore is as charming as he ever was.

• Lois Chiles is appealing as space scientist as Holly Goodhead.

• The special effects are fairly good – especially when you see the shuttles taking off.

• The Shirley Bassey theme is one of the better Bond songs.

• M (Bernard Lee) and Q (Desmond Llewelyn) are reassuringly excellent.

• Jaws (Richard Kiel) is terrifying when he poses in costume at the Rio de Janeiro carnival.

The cons:

• It’s plain silly when Jaws gets a girlfriend (Blanche Ravalec as Dolly), falls in love at first sight and instantly changes personality.

• The moment when the film briefly becomes a western (Bond wearing a poncho and riding a horse to silly music) seems misjudged.

• It’s not clear why any of this needs to have taken place in space. Surely the billionaire villain Drax (Michael Lonsdale) could have just protected his “master race” specimens in some kind of bunker and poisoned Earth from ground level. It suggests that the success of Star Wars (1977) meant they just wanted to make a film with sci-fi elements, no matter how far-fetched.

Manhattan (1979)

Woody Allen plays a 42-year-old TV writer who is dating a 17-year-old girl (Mariel Hemingway). But when he meets his best friend’s mistress (Diane Keaton), he falls for her. 

It’s shot in black and white, so the shots of New York (often at night) look stunning – elegant vistas of architecture and light. These scenes are given an additional stately grandeur by the music of George Gershwin. 

There are funny lines, as you’d expect, and the usual, masterfully handled tangle of interconnected relationships. Given the various allegations about Woody Allen’s private life, the age-difference narrative stands out as being awkward. It appears that he’s deliberately playing with taboo. And to his credit, he certainly doesn’t write a very nice character for himself. 

All of the acting is remarkable. Meryl Streep is excellent as one of Allen’s two ex-wives. Keaton is funny as a self-conscious intellectual. And Hemingway is quietly magnetic as the emotional centre of the film – the one character you really care about and who seems motivated by love rather than personal gain.

The Jerk (1979)

Wildly original comedy starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters. It brilliantly parodies the familiar rags-to-riches life story that makes up so many conventional narratives. There are some extremely funny moments, but for such an absurd story it’s also unexpectedly touching. The scene on the beach in which Navin (Martin) and Marie (Peters) sing to each other is hugely romantic, and the latter is particularly strong in this film.

There are many hilarious moments but my favourite is probably when Steve Martin reads out the “farewell” letter from Marie. It has got wet from the bathwater and the ink has run, so what he reads out is total gibberish.

A timeless gem that still seems fresh almost 40 years on.

The Main Event (1979)

The goodwill built up by Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal in the hilarious What’s Up, Doc? is quickly dispersed in this lame “comedy” that reunited the two stars. Streisand plays Hillary Kramer, a businesswoman who made a fortune through perfumes – only to have her profits embezzled by her accountant. O’Neal is a financial asset she inherits – a retired boxer who has to fight again to win back the money she is owed. This ludicrous scenario might not be a problem in itself but a bigger issue is that the film simply isn’t funny. Countless scenes fall flat. Often you’re not even sure if they are supposed to be funny. How much did the producer – Barbra’s boyfriend, the hairdresser Jon Peters – have to do with this mess? (While Peters is credited as Producer in the opening titles, Streisand appears to take all the credit for the film in the commentary on the DVD. This is especially ironic as she should have been washing her hands of the whole debacle. Elsewhere on the DVD menus she is credited as co-producer. But if she was, why wasn’t that made clear when this first showed in cinemas?)

Failed humour is one problem, but there are also dodgy themes about race and gender that really don’t feel right. At points there’s a prominent feminist theme, but at other times Streisand seems to be angling her bottom at the camera and showing off pointless costume changes far more than the plot requires. What exactly is this film trying to say?

The boxing narrative is fairly weird and never rings true, but then the inevitable love story (or “glove story”, as they call it) doesn’t seem to work either. Whereas Streisand absolutely sparkles in What’s Up, Doc?, here she cannot transcend the limitations of the script. And that script is so muddled and unconvincing that you’re left baffled rather than entertained.