The 25 most notable films turning 50 in 2026

“Taxi Driver” is the movie that made Martin Scorsese’s name, and it remains one of the defining films of the 1970s. Not that it is a breezy watch, though! The film grapples with the fallout of the Vietnam War and the era of New York City when it was reasonably called “crime-riddled.” Robert De Niro’s chilling Travis Bickle is a cultural touchstone, even if a lot of people haven’t seen his “You talkin’ to me?” speech in the proper, unnerving context.

“Grey Gardens” is one of the most acclaimed documentaries ever made, but again, it’s not exactly a breezy watch. The Maysles brothers, directors of the so-called “cinema verite” school of documentary, turned their camera on “Big Edie” and “Little Edie.” This mother and daughter came from a socialite family, but chose to live a reclusive life in squalor in a rundown mansion in New York. “Grey Gardens” is so iconic that the first episode of “Documentary Now” spoofed it.

David Bowie was already an acclaimed musician known for his showmanship and propensity to concoct characters to inhabit. It was perhaps inevitable he would eventually start acting. Nicolas Roeg directed this adaptation of “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” a sci-fi story about an alien who comes to Earth but whose mission is hindered when he succumbs to the vices of his new world. It’s not a great movie, but it has a lot of compelling imagery and it is now regarded as a cult classic.

Even the movies about kids playing baseball in the 1970s had some cynicism to them. “The Bad News Bears” is one of those movies they “wouldn’t make today,” and to be fair they did make a sanitized remake in 2005. Walter Matthau plays an alcoholic roustabout who takes over coaching a wayward youth baseball team of ne’er-do-well kids. It’s kind of like “The Mighty Ducks,” but with a lot more swearing and anti-social behavior.

We mean, could any movie more embody the film of this era than “All the President’s Men” For starters, many would argue Alan J. Pakula’s movie is the best film of 1976, and that is a reasonable assessment to make. It’s also, of course, so definitively of the moment. “All the President’s Men” stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, as the “Washington Post” works to unravel the Watergate conspiracy. Never has a film about making phone calls and writing articles been so compelling.

No, “Family Plot” is not Alfred Hitchcock’s best film. It is, however, his final film. Yes, this darkly-comedic thriller would prove the last movie made by the “Master of Suspense.” Fortunately, “Family Plot” is also not his worst film. Famed directors have certainly gone out on a lower note.

Speaking of directors who went out on low notes, Mel Brooks’ last directorial effort will go down as “Dracula: Dead and Loving It,” but fortunately, it’s many years until that one turns 50. “Silent Movie” did suffer, to a degree, from being Brooks’ first film since the double-whammy of “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” coming out the same year. It’s, you know, a Mel Brooks movie. The whole thing is a spoof of silent films loaded with jokes and cameos. That includes famed mime Marcel Marceau in a speaking role.

Even when Hollywood has a sea change, it’s not like everybody gets on board. In 1976, they still made movies that decidedly felt like a different era of Hollywood. “Midway” is a Technicolor war movie starring Charlton Heston, which is about as 1950s as a 1970s film can be. This chronicling of the Battle of Midway doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but that was kind of the point. Clearly, there was still an audience for movies like “Midway,” given that it was one of the highest-grossing films of the year.

Some classic ‘70s sci-fi here, especially since this was the year before “Star Wars.” It’s your usual dystopian future one finds in sci-fi. To keep society functioning, the powers that be quietly kill everybody when they turn 30. One of the “Sandmen” in charge of doing that, Logan, rebels when his time is up, thereby ripping the fabric of this fragile world open.

“The Omen” was a big hit and it spawned a franchise. Not bad for a movie about a dude who “replaces” his baby who died in childbirth for his wife and accidentally chooses the Antichrist. It helped sell “The Omen” that the father is played by Gregory Peck, who oozed gravitas while evil little Damien got up to no good.

Clint Eastwood made one of the quintessential “Revisionist Westerns” in “Unforgiven,” but he was doing the Revisionist Western thing all the way back in the 1970s. Eastwood also stars as Josey Wales, who becomes a vengeful gunfighter after his family is killed during the Civil War. It’s just that, um, he does it for the Confederacy. However, that’s part of the point and part of what makes Josey Wales, and this movie, thornier than your traditional Western. He’s an anti-hero, so how do you view his actions throughout the film?

Yes, this is a delightfully overstuffed movie title, but “Bingo Long” is also a fun film. Billy Dee Williams stars as Bingo Long, who rallies a group of dissatisfied, quirky Negro League ball players to become a barnstorming baseball team to have fun and more freedom. We agree with many of the contemporary reviews, which is to say the movie is paper-thin in terms of depth, but it’s a pleasant watch, especially for fans of sports movies.

This is more of a traditional Western, but “The Shootist” has quite a cast. The reason to note its 50th anniversary, though, is the lead of that cast. John Wayne, the icon of the Western genre, made his final film appearance in “The Shootist.” Say what you will about him as a person, but he’s a legendary movie star, and this was his swan song.

Few movies are weirder than “Bugsy Malone” that didn’t intend to be weird. This is a musical comedy starring children. Oh, and it’s a gangster movie. It’s about a bunch of kid gangsters and is largely indebted to Prohibition Era gangsters. And instead of bullets, guns shoot whipped cream. Also, Jodie Foster is in it. You know, the same year she was in “Taxi Driver.” Cinema is strange sometimes.

They weren’t just dealing with the fallout of 1970s political turmoil in 1976. Sometimes, you get a throwback to the 1940s as well. “Marathon Man” is a gritty, grim thriller in which the legendary Laurence Olivier plays a Nazi war criminal looking for diamonds that, well, let’s just say his family didn’t come by them honestly. Maybe not the movie for people who are skittish about the dentist, by the way.

One more famed, acclaimed documentary for you, think of an Oscar winner. It speaks to a good documentarian that Barbara Kopple pivoted her focus after the miners at Brookside Mine in Harlan County, Kentucky, went on strike. She spent years with the miners and their families (many of the miners’ wives ended up on the front line) and emerged with a compelling, complex documentary.

And, in terms of the inverse when it comes to seriousness, we follow “Harlan County, USA” with “Car Wash.” You’ve potentially heard the theme song to “Car Wash” even if you haven’t seen this silly comedy. It’s a low-budget comedy about, you know, a car wash, the kind of movie where the director seemed to say to a bunch of semi-notable actors, “Hey, can you give me like five minutes and do one or two funny bits?” That yielded a cult favorite with an award-winning soundtrack.

The first Stephen King novel became the first Stephen King adaptation, with Brian De Palma stepping up into the role. There is a lot of De Palma in the movie, which is to say it’s stylish, prurient, and sometimes you’re watching a quiet dialogue scene and thinking, “Why is the score so insanely over the top right now?” However, “Carrie” is also a very good film bolstered by excellent performances from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie.

This is, for all intents and purposes, John Carpenter’s first film. “Dark Star” did come first, but it’s basically a glorified student film that got enough behind-the-scenes juice to get a limited theatrical release. That’s not to say “Assault on Precinct 13” breaks the bank. It’s a wonderfully cold low-budget film, though. The film is basically a zombie movie but with L.A. gang members instead of zombies. That means you get the violence of a zombie movie without the cheat of most of the violence being visited upon the undead.

A movie about an underdog became an underdog story in and of itself. Sylvester Stallone wrote the script for “Rocky” and stuck to his guns about wanting to star in it, regardless of what that meant for the movie’s budget or studio backing. It turned out well for all parties involved. “Rocky” was comfortably the highest-grossing movie of 1976 and won Best Picture at the Oscars.

That being said, our choice for Best Picture would have been “Network.” It’s not like the Academy was down on this acidic slice of social commentary. “Network” won Best Original Screenplay and three acting Oscars, one posthumous for Peter Finch. If you were trying to define 1976 America in one film, it’d be this or “All the President’s Men,” and to be fair the latter is about an actual thing that happened a couple years prior.

The third of the (to date) four versions of “A Star is Born,” this is the first one to pivot from actors to musicians. This, of course, paved the way for the Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga version. In 1976, though, we got Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand. It’s quite indulgent, but of course it is. Just as unsurprising as that fact is the fact it won the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Sometimes it behooves you to remember where you came from. In the wake of the legacy sequel “Freakier Friday,” let’s not forget that the Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle was a remake. The original version of this body-swap comedy starred Barbara Harris and, hey, Jodie Foster. Foster had quite the 1976.

Speaking of remakes. There had been King Kong movies after the iconic original, but this was the first attempt to modernize the original RKO movie with a proper remake. Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, and Charles Grodin stepped into the key human roles. While the original used stop-motion, and Peter Jackson used CGI, in 1976 what you got for giant ape special effects was a dude in a mechanical suit and an animatronic Kong that apparently barely worked. Let’s just say you can tell, but it’s not like you can’t tell the original Kong is animated.

On Christmas Day 1976 we got an old-school epic. John Sturges directed “The Eagle Has Landed,” which proved to be his final movie. The ensemble cast includes Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, and Robert Duvall. A work of historical fiction, the movie concerns itself with a (fictional) plot by the Nazis to kidnap Winston Churchill during World War II. It’s overstuffed, to be sure, but one imagines sitting in a theater on Christmas in 1976 and enjoying the spectacle of it all. Now, you can enjoy it 50 years later.