12. Point Blank

"I'm Lee Marvin, it's 1967 and you're gonna get yours!"

Watching Point Blank will always make me think of this. A bit like if your twelve you'll be thinking of this, rather than the second best action movie of all time. But I guess that is just down to what decade you are born in (sadly).

John Boorman frames every shot with sniper eye precision but for me I just can't get over the crumpily, head locking struggles in the fight scenes - I can't quite make out if the protagonist wants to strangle said bad guy or give him a lovely fat kiss on the neck piece. Awkward.

It also has a brilliantly ambiguous ending - all the characters kind of go their own way without feeling the need to kill everyone off or explicitly reward the hero. Which is kind of mind blowing when comparing it to a modern genre flick.

8. The Conversation

Did Gene Hackman ever have hair? Well not in 1974 that's for sure.

Written and Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Gene Hackman I was expecting big things from The Conversation.

It pretty much delivers but in an unremarkable way- this seems mainly due to the technology at hand, both narratively speaking and how the film is shot, edited and scored. At times it is painfully slow but Hackman's central performance is top notch as the paranoid and introspective Harry Caul.

The film actually seems longer than it's 113 minutes running time and features a nice turn from Harrison Ford as the head honchos mysterious assistant. Overall, a quality thriller.