Wie houdt nou niet van lijstjes? Ieder jaar worden we rond de jaarwisseling platgebombardeerd met lijstjes van het grootste nieuws, de beste films, en ga maar door. Nu iets eerder, want acteur George Clooney, die zelf in menig toplijst aanwezig is, onthulde tijdens een interview zijn top 100 beste films uit de periode 1964-1976.

Clooney koos bewust enkel voor dit decennium, omdat het volgens hem "the greatest era in filmmaking by far" is. Zijn vijf favoriete films zijn All the President's Men, Network, Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Carnal Knowledge en Harold and Maude.

Daarnaast legt hij uit waarom deze jaren volgens hem de besten waren. There were great filmmakers—Mike Nichols, Hal Ashby, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese—you go down the list of these insanely talented filmmakers all working at the top of their game and kind of competing with each other. Pakula, Sidney Lumet—I mean, you can just keep going down the list of these guys. And they were all doing really interesting films… That era [1964 to 1976] was a reflection of the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the sexual revolution, the drug counterculture. All those things were exploding at the same time. And these films were reflections of it. Movies are really good when they do that. They give us a sense of what was going on in our psyche.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Alfie (1966)
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)
All The President’s Men (1976)
Alphaville (1965)
American Graffiti (1973)
The Bad News Bears (1976)
Badlands (1973)
Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Blow Up (1966)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Bound for Glory (1967)
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (1969)
Cabaret (1972)
The Candidate (1972)
Carnal Knowledge (1971)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Catch-22 (1970)
Chinatown (1974)
Clockwork Orange (1971)
The Conversation (1974)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
The Day of the Jackal (1973)
Deliverance (1972)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Don’t Look Back (1967)
Don’t Look Now (1973)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Easy Rider (1969)
The Exorcist (1973)
Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (1972)
Fail-Safe (1964)
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
The French Connection (1971)
The Front (1976)
The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
The Graduate (1967)
The Great Gatsby (1974)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Harold and Maude (1971)
The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
High Plains Drifter (1973)
The Hot Rock (1972)
I Am Cuba (1964)
In Cold Blood (1967)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Jaws (1975)
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)
Klute (1971)
The Ladykillers (1955)
The Last Detail (1973)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
The Last Tango in Paris (1972)
Lenny (1974)
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
Little Murders (1971)
The Long Goodbye (1973)
The Longest Yard (1974)
A Man and a Woman (1966)
Marathon Man (1976)
MASH (1970)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Mean Streets (1973)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
My Fair Lady (1964)
Nashville (1975)
Network (1976)
The Odd Couple (1968)
The Omen (1976)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
Paper Moon (1973)
The Parallax View (1974)
The Party (1968)
The Passenger (1975)
Patton (1970)
The Pawnbroker (1964)
The Producers (1968)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Serpico (1973)
Seven Days in May (1964)
Shampoo (1975)
Sleeper (1973)
Smile (1975)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1975)
The Sting (1973)
Straw Dogs (1971)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Taxi Driver (1976)
The Way We Were (1973)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Wait Until Dark (1967)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1968)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Z (1969)

Nu rest natuurlijk enkel nog de vraag: zijn jullie het eens met Clooney?