The Omen -- 1976 -- R

This quasi-religious horror movie succeeds on many levels. The movie asks the question: what if the Anti-Christ were living among us as a child? A woman gives birth and the baby dies. Another woman gives birth on the same night, but she dies. The priest attending asks the father of the dead baby if he would like to take the child of the dead mother and adopt it as his own, never telling his wife that her own child died. He agrees.

What follows is one bizarre series of events. The movie begs the question: are these events mere coincidence or is there a higher power at work here? Is the child causing these things to happen, or are we just convincing ourselves that he is? Is this child truly the son of Satan or is he just a little boy whose father lapsed into a paranoid fit and needs psychiatric evaluation? 

In beautiful fashion, the movie never answers these questions, but leaves it ambiguous ending in the audience's hands.

SPOILER -- I HAVE TO DO THIS.

Happy ending or not? On the one hand, if the child is the antichrist, the father did not complete his mission and evil won. On the other hand, if the father had lost his mind in a paranoid scheme and tried to kill an innocent child, then he was duefully stopped and the child lives. Which is it? Only the sequels will tell.

Taxi Driver -- 1976 -- R

In one of the top films of all time according to IMDB, Taxi Driver follows a well-meaning, and even naive, guy who drives a taxi. Simple as that. Along his travels, we run across a variety of different characters that serve to advance his own character, but really very little else. This is one of those movies that really exemplifies the importance of character over plot when it comes to great films.

Basically, we get this guy who comes to New York and decides to make ends meet (since he's up all night anyway), he'll drive a taxi. Along the way, he finds a girl he is attracted to, and though this situation was severly underused, it showed more of his naiveity in taking a girl to a movie -- a porn movie. He finds the young prostitute, Iris, and takes an interest in her as a person. He aquires some guns and such, but for reasons we are mostly unaware of, though likely protection.

His well-meaning nature shows through in nearly everything he does...except one. I do not, for the life of me, understand why he threatened the senator. I don't know if he was armed or not, but he looked threatening, and was chased off. It didn't make a lot of sense to me. Maybe I missed something.

Overall, it was an interesting character sketch of one guy and a slice of his life in a taxi. It's one of those that if they wanted to do a TV series, they probably could. Who knows, maybe the creator of the series "Taxi" that came out in 1978 was partly inspired by this film.