1979

Academy winner Kramer vs. Kramer poster

Kramer vs. Kramer

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Should have won Apocalypse Now poster

Apocalypse Now

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The Academy's ballot

🏆Kramer vs. Kramer#675.89 🎬Apocalypse Now#183.11 🎬All That Jazz#1172.71 🎬Breaking Away#1670.14 🎬Norma Rae#1867.58

Your #1 was Apocalypse Now (#1).

The full slate

Apocalypse Now (1979)

🎬 Nominee⭐ Top-rated🏛️ All-time great💰 Box office #3

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Dir. Francis Ford Coppola · Martin Sheen · Marlon Brando · Frederic Forrest · Albert Hall

IMDb 8.4 (771,945 votes) · TMDB 8.269

At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.

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Alien (1979)

⭐ Top-rated🏛️ All-time great💰 Box office #7

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Dir. Ridley Scott · Tom Skerritt · Sigourney Weaver · Veronica Cartwright · Harry Dean Stanton

IMDb 8.4 (1,066,570 votes) · TMDB 8.2

During its return to the earth, commercial spaceship Nostromo intercepts a distress signal from a distant planet. When a three-member team of the crew discovers a chamber containing thousands of eggs on the planet, a creature inside one of the eggs attacks an explorer. The entire crew is unaware of the impending nightmare set to descend upon them when the alien parasite planted inside its unfortunate host is birthed.

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Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Terry Jones · Graham Chapman · John Cleese · Terry Gilliam · Eric Idle

IMDb 8.0 (434,307 votes) · TMDB 7.763

Brian Cohen is an average young Jewish man, but through a series of ridiculous events, he gains a reputation as the Messiah. When he's not dodging his followers or being scolded by his shrill mother, the hapless Brian has to contend with the pompous Pontius Pilate and acronym-obsessed members of a separatist movement. Rife with Monty Python's signature absurdity, the tale finds Brian's life paralleling Biblical lore, albeit with many more laughs.

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Stalker (1979)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky · Alisa Freyndlikh · Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy · Anatoliy Solonitsyn · Mykola Hrynko

IMDb 8.0 (156,332 votes) · TMDB 8.093

Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.

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Manhattan (1979)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Woody Allen · Woody Allen · Diane Keaton · Michael Murphy · Mariel Hemingway

IMDb 7.8 (152,890 votes) · TMDB 7.714

Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.

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Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

🏆 Winner⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #6

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Dir. Robert Benton · Dustin Hoffman · Meryl Streep · Jane Alexander · Justin Henry

IMDb 7.8 (166,778 votes) · TMDB 7.6

Ted Kramer is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna cannot take this anymore, so she decides to leave him. Ted is now faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of himself and their young son Billy.

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Being There (1979)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Hal Ashby · Peter Sellers · Shirley MacLaine · Melvyn Douglas · Jack Warden

IMDb 7.9 (82,063 votes) · TMDB 7.596

A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television.

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The Warriors (1979)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Walter Hill · Michael Beck · James Remar · David Patrick Kelly · Dorsey Wright

IMDb 7.5 (119,790 votes) · TMDB 7.672

Prominent gang leader Cyrus calls a meeting of New York's gangs to set aside their turf wars and take over the city. At the meeting, a rival leader kills Cyrus, but a Coney Island gang called the Warriors is wrongly blamed for Cyrus' death. Before you know it, the cops and every gangbanger in town is hot on the Warriors' trail.

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Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Don Siegel · Clint Eastwood · Patrick McGoohan · Roberts Blossom · Jack Thibeau

IMDb 7.5 (164,818 votes) · TMDB 7.503

San Francisco Bay, January 18, 1960. Frank Lee Morris is transferred to Alcatraz, a maximum security prison located on a rocky island. Although no one has ever managed to escape from there, Frank and other inmates begin to carefully prepare an escape plan.

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#10

Gol Maal (1979)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Hrishikesh Mukherjee · Amol Palekar · Utpal Dutt · Bindiya Goswami · Dina Pathak

IMDb 8.5 (22,106 votes) · TMDB 7.494

A man's simple lie to secure his job escalates into more complex lies when his orthodox boss becomes suspicious.

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#11

All That Jazz (1979)

🎬 Nominee⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Bob Fosse · Roy Scheider · Jessica Lange · Ann Reinking · Leland Palmer

IMDb 7.8 (40,691 votes) · TMDB 7.509

Joe Gideon is at the top of the heap, one of the most successful directors and choreographers in musical theater. But he can feel his world slowly collapsing around him - his obsession with work has almost destroyed his personal life, and only his bottles of pills keep him going.

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#12

Rocky II (1979)

⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #2

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Dir. Sylvester Stallone · Sylvester Stallone · Talia Shire · Burt Young · Carl Weathers

IMDb 7.3 (250,638 votes) · TMDB 7.3

After Rocky goes the distance with champ Apollo Creed, both try to put the fight behind them and move on. Rocky settles down with Adrian but can't put his life together outside the ring, while Creed seeks a rematch to restore his reputation. Soon enough, the "Master of Disaster" and the "Italian Stallion" are set on a collision course for a climactic battle that is brutal and unforgettable.

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#13

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro poster

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Hayao Miyazaki · Yasuo Yamada · Kiyoshi Kobayashi · Eiko Masuyama · Makio Inoue

IMDb 7.6 (35,983 votes) · TMDB 7.506

After a successful robbery leaves famed thief Lupin the Third and his partner Jigen with nothing but a large amount of expertly crafted counterfeit bills, he decides to track down the forgers responsible—and steal any other treasures he may find in the Castle of Cagliostro, including the 'damsel in distress' he finds imprisoned there.

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#14

The Muppet Movie (1979)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. James Frawley · Jim Henson · Frank Oz · Jerry Nelson · Richard Hunt

IMDb 7.6 (42,735 votes) · TMDB 7.215

The Muppets gather to watch their newly-finished big-budget rich-and-famous feature film: a talent agent persuades Kermit the Frog to leave the swamp to pursue a career in Hollywood. On his way there, he meets a bear, a pig, a whatever (his future muppet crew), and some special celebrity guest stars, while being chased by the desperate owner of a frog-leg restaurant!

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#15

Hair (1979)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Miloš Forman · John Savage · Treat Williams · Beverly D'Angelo · Annie Golden

IMDb 7.5 (44,326 votes) · TMDB 7.258

Upon receiving his draft notice and leaving his family ranch in Oklahoma, Claude heads to New York and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to boot camp.

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#16

Breaking Away (1979)

🎬 Nominee

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Dir. Peter Yates · Dennis Christopher · Dennis Quaid · Daniel Stern · Jackie Earle Haley

IMDb 7.7 (27,613 votes) · TMDB 7.138

Dave, nineteen, has just graduated high school, with his three friends: the comical Cyril, the warm hearted but short-tempered Moocher, and the athletic, spiteful but good-hearted Mike. Now, Dave enjoys racing bikes and hopes to race the Italians one day, and even takes up the Italian culture, much to his friends' and parents' annoyance.

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#17

The Jerk (1979)

💰 Box office #9

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Dir. Carl Reiner · Steve Martin · Bernadette Peters · Catlin Adams · Mabel King

IMDb 7.1 (68,867 votes) · TMDB 6.89

After discovering he's not really black like the rest of his family, likable dimwit Navin Johnson sets off on a hilarious misadventure that takes him from rags to riches and back again. The slaphappy jerk strikes it rich, but life in the fast lane isn't all it's cracked up to be and, in the end, all that really matters to Johnson is his true love.

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#18

Norma Rae (1979)

🎬 Nominee

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Dir. Martin Ritt · Sally Field · Beau Bridges · Ron Leibman · Pat Hingle

IMDb 7.3 (14,085 votes) · TMDB 7.218

Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.

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#19

Mad Max (1979)

💰 Box office #8

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Dir. George Miller · Mel Gibson · Joanne Samuel · Hugh Keays-Byrne · Steve Bisley

IMDb 6.8 (245,351 votes) · TMDB 6.683

In the ravaged near-future, a savage motorcycle gang rules the road. Terrorizing innocent civilians while tearing up the streets, the ruthless gang laughs in the face of a police force hell-bent on stopping them.

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#20

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

💰 Box office #4

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Dir. Robert Wise · William Shatner · Leonard Nimoy · DeForest Kelley · James Doohan

IMDb 6.4 (101,439 votes) · TMDB 6.481

When an unidentified alien destroys three powerful Klingon cruisers, Captain James T. Kirk returns to the newly transformed U.S.S. Enterprise to take command.

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#21

Moonraker (1979)

💰 Box office #1

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Dir. Lewis Gilbert · Roger Moore · Lois Chiles · Michael Lonsdale · Richard Kiel

IMDb 6.3 (117,965 votes) · TMDB 6.191

After Drax Industries' Moonraker space shuttle is hijacked, secret agent James Bond is assigned to investigate, traveling to California to meet the company's owner, the mysterious Hugo Drax. With the help of scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead, Bond soon uncovers Drax's nefarious plans for humanity, all the while fending off an old nemesis, Jaws, and venturing to Venice, Rio, the Amazon...and even outer space.

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#22

10 (1979)

💰 Box office #5

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Dir. Blake Edwards · Dudley Moore · Julie Andrews · Bo Derek · Robert Webber

IMDb 6.2 (19,220 votes) · TMDB 5.755

A Hollywood songwriter goes through a mid-life crisis and becomes infatuated with a sexy blonde newlywed.

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#23

1941 (1979)

💰 Box office #10

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Dir. Steven Spielberg · Dan Aykroyd · Ned Beatty · John Belushi · Lorraine Gary

IMDb 5.7 (39,136 votes) · TMDB 5.8

In the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, panic grips California, where a military officer leads a mob chasing a Japanese sub.

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How scoring works: films are ranked by a composite of a weighted (Bayesian) IMDb rating — the same method as the IMDb Top 250, so a high score from few voters can't outrank a strong score from many — blended with TMDB. Box office is a tiebreaker and a badge, never part of the score. Raw IMDb ratings and vote counts are shown on each card.