Readers’ Choice: The Essential Boomer Movies

Readers' Picks: 11 Movies Boomers Love

En español | AARP asked our readers to come up with their top flicks. Here's the list you picked, starting with the 11th place selection …

11. Saturday Night Fever

A 23-year-old John Travolta strutting his stuff to a pulsating Bee Gees soundtrack fueled the disco craze in 1977. The movie's dance scene with a white-suited Travolta taking over the discotheque floor spawned a multitude of parodies cementing its status as an iconic film classic. 

10. 'Dirty Harry'

Critics remain divided over the politics of Don Siegel’s 1971 cop drama, but you can’t argue with the enduring power of Clint Eastwood’s Magnum-toting detective; he’d reprise the role in four sequels.

9. 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'

Steven Spielberg’s 1977 follow-up to Jaws showcased the director at his Spielberg-iest — it’s an eye-popping fable of benevolent aliens meeting wonder-struck earthlings.

8.' Jaws'

A sensation in 1975, Steven Spielberg’s shark saga of three men in a too-small boat ushered in the age of the summer blockbuster.

7. 'MASH'

Robert Altman turned an autobiographical novel about Army surgeons in the Korean War into an anarchic black comedy that spoke to Vietnam-era America.

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6. 'American Graffiti'

Where were you in ’62? Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and the girl in the white Thunderbird star in George Lucas’ rock ’n’ roll ode to teenage rites in small-town Southern California.

5. 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest'

Milos Forman’s film of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel swept the Oscars in 1975 and gave Jack Nicholson one of his most iconic starring roles.

4. 'Star Wars'

George Lucas’ 1977 space opera launched one of the most profitable franchises in film history and left a Death Star-sized dent in popular culture.

3. 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'

Paul Newman and Robert Redford, later to star in The Sting, make an affable pair of outlaws in director George Roy Hill’s revisionist Western from 1969.

2. 'The Godfather'

Francis Ford Coppola’s soaring gangster epic made audiences an offer they couldn’t refuse in 1972. It’s now ranked behind only Citizen Kane in the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest U.S. films.

1. 'The Graduate'

Plastics! Mike Nichols’ second film became a touchstone of the emerging youth culture. Little-known fact: Burt Ward, TV’s Robin, was considered for the Dustin Hoffman role.

Boomers@50+

• Readers pick: 10 essential boomer albums
• Readers pick: 10 essential boomer books
• Boomer generation turns 50!
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