Cinema of the 70s: 101 Iconic Movies, by John H Foote, is an excellent overview of the major films of the decade. As list books go, this one is very good.

People will always think some film was shortchanged by being left off, or that some shouldn't have been included. They are neither right nor wrong, it is simply the usual way we view lists. It is what makes them both infuriating and fun. I could think of a few I would have considered putting in and a few I would take out. But this isn't my list and I can't really argue with what is included, so...

The brief (it has to be if you're going to write about 101 films in a reasonably size book and include some pictures) description of each movie is informative, gives a basic plot outline and discusses why (or who) makes it worthy of being on the list. Some nice lesser-known tidbits but mostly information we've seen before. That is not a negative, the point of the book is the list, how these films speak to what happened in the cinema world during the 70s and not an in-depth analysis of each film. Again, book length alone prohibits such an approach.

When I got the book there were several films I had not seen and thanks to Foote I have now whittled it down to one that I haven't been able to easily get my hands (eyes?) on. Just as important is being reminded of these films, both the films themselves and the personal nostalgia associated with many of them.

I would recommend this to readers who enjoy books that are mostly for fun, whether that fun is generating debate and discussion or just taking a trip down memory lane, remembering when you sat in a theater and watched these first run. Or maybe discovered them later on whichever format was common at the time. If you simply like lists that make you think about what yours would look like, this will be a lot of fun. You'll discover that not every film here seems to be liked a lot by Foote but qualifies under his umbrella of iconic.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )