1969

Showing 7 films from 1969

Western

The Wild Bunch

Directed by Sam Peckinpah

1969

Peckinpah showed at once what the new ratings system had licensed: slow motion, six cameras firing together, and a body count that made every western before it look polite.

★ 8.6

Western comedy · Western

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Directed by George Roy Hill

1969

Two men have never been better company on screen: Newman and Redford spend the film running out of frontier and enjoying each other far too much to panic.

★ 7.3

Drama · Buddy movie

Midnight Cowboy

Directed by John Schlesinger

1969

The only X-rated film that ever took Best Picture: a Texas hustler and an ailing con man share a condemned New York apartment, and the friendship is the whole thing.

★ 7.2

Drama · Road movie

Easy Rider

Directed by Dennis Hopper

1969

New Hollywood found its proof here: two bikers ride east on drug money, a four-hundred-thousand-dollar film outgrossed studio pictures, and the men who had run the studios for forty years lost the argument.

★ 6.5

Political thriller · Thriller

Z

Directed by Costa-Gavras

1969 · France

Banned by the Greek junta it was made to indict: Costa-Gavras films a political assassination and its cover-up as a procedural thriller, and the pace never lets the outrage go abstract.

★ 6.4

Drama · Coming of age

Kes

Directed by Ken Loach

1969

Loach cast a Barnsley schoolboy with no acting experience and shot in his own town: a kid with nothing going for him trains a kestrel, and discovers he is good at it.

★ 6.2

James Bond · Action

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Directed by Peter R. Hunt

1969

George Lazenby played Bond once and quit, and it took decades for anyone to admit how good this is: the ski chases are the best in the series, and Diana Rigg is extraordinary.

★ 2.6