Top 100 Movies of All Time, 71-80

80. 12 Angry Men (1957)

Directed by Sidney Lumet; Written by Reginald Rose

Starring Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb & Jack Klugman

Greatest Award/Nomination: Academy Award nominee for Best Picture

In Sidney Lumet's directorial debut, this film unleashes information like a dealer passes players their hands. The numbered and unnamed jury members are convinced that the defendant is guilty, however Henry Fonda's role is to assure them of his innocence. It's a fascinating view of our judicial system and how easy it is to assume.

79. Magnolia (1999)

Written & Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, Phillip Seymour Hoffman & Tom Cruise

Greatest Award/Nomination: Academy Award nominee for Best Original Screenplay

An intertwining story that braids several characters together in a film about love, death, addiction, and truth. The moral is that coincidence only exists to the people who do not believe and that frogs can fall from the sky. Nothing is impossible. Anderson sweeps you away, bringing and excellent script to the screen and directing an all-star cast. It's riveting, inspirational, and very creative.

78. Carrie (1976)

Directed by Brian De Palma; Written by Lawrence D. Cohen

Starring Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie & John Travolta

Greatest Award/Nomination: Academy Award nominee for Best Actress - Sissy Spacek

Based on an okay Stephen King novel, this cast - studded especially with Spacek and Laurie - creates an environment that's a combination of "Mean Girls," "The Exorcist," and "Seventh Heaven." I'm not sure if that makes sense, but it's true. Spacek delivers a frightening, disturbed performance as the loner Carrie and Laurie haunts me still as her Jesus-crazy mother.

77. Blazing Saddles (1974)

Directed by Mel Brooks; Written by Mel Brooks & Norman Steinberg

Starring Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens, Harvey Korman, Mel Brooks & Madeline Kahn

Greatest Award/Nomination: Academy Award nominee for Best Supporting Actress - Madeline Kahn

The most entertaining of Brook's films, "Blazing Saddles" pushes the race card past the limit and doesn't look back. A spoof on cowboy films when spoofs were good films and an upwoawious performance by the widiculous Madeline Kahn as Lili Von Schtupp. Though I prefer the British 70s humor of Monty Python, Brooks surely has a way of making the laughs constant and the plot unmistakably unpredictable.

76. There Will Be Blood (2007)

Written & Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring Daniel Day-Lewis & Paul Dano

Greatest Award/Nomination: Academy Award winner for Best Actor - Daniel Day-Lewis

The best film of last year, one of the decades greatest performances by Daniel Day, and a new breed of Anderson films, "There Will Be Blood" engrosses its audience in a tale of obsession, money, religion and family. Which of the four is more important? Only the film will tell.

75. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Directed by John Schlesinger; Written by Waldo Salt

Starring Jon Voight & Dustin Hoffman

Greatest Award/Nomination: Acadmey Award winner for Best Picture

In an era of sex, drugs, and rockin' music, Schlesinger's film was the FX of Hollywood in 1969. Voight brings an endearing quality to his gigolo character, while Hoffman brings a filthy rag of a man to become one of the most empathetic characters in cinema. If the film were made today, the ambiguities would probably be told straightforwardly, however the equivocal script is what makes this movie so damn good.

74. Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Directed by Clint Eastwood; Written by Paul Haggis

Starring Hillary Swank, Clint Eastwood & Morgan Freeman

Greatest Award/Nomination: Academy Award winner for Best Picture

In all its simplicity - both stylish and enticing, dark and humorous, honest and brutal - Eastwood's most recent award-winning film serves as a tribute to the hard-working Americans going for that dream. There's so much commonality in Haggis' script to an American, and the finality is that life throws the hardest punches of them all. Swank is stellar as the protagonist and is backed up by her more seasoned co-stars Eastwood & Freeman.

73. Cabaret (1972)

Directed by Bob Fosse; Written by Jay Allen

Starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Helmut Griem & Joel Grey

Greatest Award/Nomination: Academy Award winner for Best Director

"Cabaret" is much like "The Sound of Music" in that is fulfills a hunger for music and history, but Minnelli and her clan of "chums" bring a sexier, more hip idea to the screen - not to mention an incredible directorial job by Fosse, an innovator of style, jazz, and dance. Minnelli's Sally is the keystone to later eccentric, egotistical, eclectic female characters such as Annie Hall and Clementine Kruczynski and a memory of the life actresses like Marilyn Monroe brought to the screen.

72. Apocalypse Now (1979)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola; Written by John Milius & Francis Ford Coppola

Starring Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne & Marlon Brando

Greatest Award/Nomination: Academy Award nominee for Best Picture

A grueling war film that enhances the Vietnamese jungles to feel more like Elm Street. The structure of Coppola's writing and directing is truly brilliant, taking us on a journey to meet a man that puts Lucifer on the bench: Marlon Brando. Paranoia, obsession, and mental decadence travel through every shot as themes of the war and of human existence.

71. Finding Nemo (2003)

Directed by Andrew Stanton & Lee Unkrich; Written by Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson & David Reynolds

Voiced by Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Eric Bana, Elizabeth Perkins, Allison Janney, Geoffery Rush & Willem Defoe

Greatest Award/Nomination: Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature

Pixar paddles its way into success with an uplifting film about a father who loses his son and will stop at nothing to find him. The only problem is that they're clown fish, he befriends another fish with short-term memory loss, and he has the entire ocean to search around. This movie is fun and entertaining, especially with the greatest voiced performance by Ellen DeGeneres; without her wit and genius, "Finding Nemo" would never have been the success it is.