The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

56. 1970 - Five Easy Pieces

Five Easy Pieces
Columbia Pictures

Honourable Mentions: Husbands, Patton, Ryan's Daughter

Another touchstone of the New Hollywood era (and also one of its most snubbed), Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces remains one of the most gutting and affecting films of the 1970s, and features one of the greatest performances in Jack Nicholson's illustrious career.

After blazing a trail with a supporting role in countercultural touchstone Easy Rider the previous year, Nicholson returned to embark on what would become a defining period in his filmography, starting with Rafelson's film of working-class crisis and the decay of the American Dream. Nicholson is typically electric, with Karen Black delivering a seminal performance as a small-town waitress yearning for something bigger.

 
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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.