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Movie of the YearAuthor: YourPopFilter.com
["Movie of the Year is on the hunt to find the best film of each and every year, in the only way that matters: brackets. Join Greg, Mike, and Ryan, as they discuss what makes a film matter now vs when it came out. There will be games. There will be drinks. There will be points. There will only be one Movie of the Year. ", "Movie of the Year is on the hunt to find the best film of each and every year, in the only way that matters: brackets. Join Greg, Mike, and Ryan, as they discuss what makes a film matter now vs when it came out. There will be games. There will be drinks. There will be points. There will only be one Movie of the Year."] Language: en Genres: Film History, Film Reviews, TV & Film Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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1971 - The Finale, Part I
Thursday, 30 April, 2026
Movie of the Year: 1971The Finale, Part IThe Movie of the Year 1971 Podcast Reaches Its ReckoningThe Movie of the Year 1971 podcast has arrived at its moment of reckoning. Ryan, Mike, and Greg — the Taste Buds — open the three-part finale with a full awards ceremony, a frank assessment of what 1971 means to cinema history, and the first wave of bracket eliminations. Sixteen films entered this season. Not all of them survive Part 1.This is a different kind of episode. There is no single film to defend or dissect. Instead, the Taste Buds are doing something harder: accounting for an entire year, making choices that cannot be unmade, and sending some of the finest films ever made home without a championship. The bracket is merciless. So, it turns out, is 1971.Part 2 continues the eliminations next week. Part 3 crowns the champion the week after. However, before any of that — the awards begin.About This Season: Sixteen Films, One ChampionThe Movie of the Year podcast runs a bracket-style competition each season, selecting the best film from a given year. This season, the Taste Buds covered sixteen films from across the full spectrum of 1971 cinema — studio blockbusters, guerrilla filmmaking, European art cinema, and Hollywood at its most unguarded. The field represents not just a great year in film, but an ongoing argument about what movies are for.The sixteen contenders are:A Clockwork Orange — Stanley KubrickSweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song — Melvin Van PeeblesThe Devils — Ken RussellDuel — Steven SpielbergHarold and Maude — Hal AshbyStraw Dogs — Sam PeckinpahDirty Harry — Don SiegelMcCabe & Mrs. Miller — Robert AltmanWilly Wonka and the Chocolate Factory — Mel StuartWanda — Barbara LodenThe Conformist — Bernardo BertolucciThe Panic in Needle Park — Jerry SchatzbergThe French Connection — William FriedkinBrian's Song — Buzz KulikThe Last Picture Show — Peter BogdanovichKlute — Alan J. PakulaFor every episode from this season, visit the Movie of the Year podcast archive on PopFilter.What Does 1971 Mean to the Movies?Before any film is eliminated, the Taste Buds take a step back and ask the question the whole season has been building toward: what does 1971 actually mean to the history of cinema?The short answer is that 1971 is the year movies stopped asking permission. The Production Code was dead, and New Hollywood was at full velocity. The studios were desperate. The filmmakers who had spent the late 1960s learning a new visual language were suddenly free to use it without restraint. Consequently, the films of 1971 are not polished products. They are arguments — about violence, about sexuality, about power, and about who gets to survive.Moreover, 1971 is uniquely international in its ambitions. Bertolucci's The Conformist brought a European grammar of fascism and desire to mainstream audiences. Meanwhile, Melvin Van Peebles made Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song entirely outside the studio system — financing it with his own money and changing the economics of Black independent filmmaking permanently. These were not films that happened alongside American culture. They actively reshaped it.Furthermore, the year produced an unusual number of films that resist a single reading. Dirty Harry is simultaneously a fascist power fantasy and a critique of one. Straw Dogs refuses to let its audience off the hook. The French Connection makes a hero out of a man who may not deserve the title. As a result, 1971 is defined not by its answers but by the quality of its questions.Above all, the Taste Buds argue that 1971 matters because it remains unresolved. These films are still being debated, still being taught, still being felt. That is the mark of a year that did something real — and the reason a bracket this competitive is so hard to close.Movie of the Year 1971 Podcast Awards: Best Supporting ActressThe first award of the finale is Best Supporting Actress. The nominees represent five performances that each, in their own way, stole scenes from films that were already remarkable. Notably, two nominees come from the same film — a testament to how fully The Last Picture Show populated its world with fully realized human beings.The nominees for Best Supporting Actress are:Ellen Burstyn — The Last Picture ShowCloris Leachman — The Last Picture ShowJulie Dawn Cole — Willy Wonka and the Chocolate FactoryVivian Pickles — Harold and MaudeStefania Sandrelli — The ConformistHistorically, the Academy nominated both Burstyn and Leachman at the 1972 Oscars — and Leachman won. However, the Taste Buds are not the Academy. Their winner reflects their own criteria, their own arguments, and a full season of watching these performances in context. Who walks away with the award? Listen to the episode to find out.Movie of the Year 1971 Podcast Awards: Best Supporting ActorThe second award is Best Supporting Actor — a category that reads, in 1971, like a catalog of actors doing the most demanding and least comfortable work of their careers. The nominees include debut-level performances and career-defining turns alike. The competition is, by any measure, extraordinary.The nominees for Best Supporting Actor are:Dudley Sutton — The DevilsMichael Gothard — The DevilsJeff Bridges — The Last Picture ShowBen Johnson — The Last Picture ShowGastone Moschin — The ConformistBen Johnson's Sam the Lion is among the most quietly devastating performances in American film — a man who embodies everything a dying town loved and then lost. Jeff Bridges, in his first major role, announced his entire career in a single film. Gastone Moschin made fascist complicity feel not monstrous but ordinary, which is considerably more frightening. The Devils, meanwhile, sent both its nominees into material that demanded everything an actor has. To find out who wins, listen to the episode.The Eliminations: The Bracket Does Not ForgiveThe awards are only half of Part 1 of the Movie of the Year 1971 podcast finale. The other half is the bracket — and the bracket is not sentimental. In this episode, the Taste Buds make the first wave of cuts. Films that have defined the conversation all season, films that generated genuine argument and genuine love, are sent home.This is the nature of the format. Nevertheless, that does not make it easy. 1971 is not a year with obvious fodder. Every film in this bracket earned its place. Consequently, every elimination in this finale is a real loss — and a real statement about what the Taste Buds believe cinema can do at its best.Which films survive? Which ones go home in Part 1? That, you will have to hear for yourself. Parts 2 and 3 continue the process — and by the end of the three-part finale, only one film from 1971 will be left standing.Why the Movie of the Year 1971 Podcast Finale MattersA season finale is never just a conclusion. It is an act of criticism — a declaration about what mattered, what lasted, and what deserves to be remembered. The Movie of the Year 1971 podcast finale is doing that work for one of the most important years in the history of film.Furthermore, the bracket format makes that work visible in a way that traditional film criticism rarely does. The Taste Buds cannot hedge. They cannot say everything is great and leave it there. They have to rank, eliminate, and ultimately choose. In doing so, they reveal something true about how they experience cinema — and they invite every listener to push back.Above all, this three-part finale is a love letter to a year that refused to behave. 1971 did not make comfortable films. It did not offer easy consolations. It asked audiences to look directly at things they would have preferred to avoid. The Taste Buds have been doing the same thing all season. Now, in three parts, they are going to decide which film did it best — and which one deserves to be called the Movie of the Year.Related Episodes from Movie of the Year: 1971
