The year 1977 was one of the greatest for cinema and now that our 33-film series ’77 has begun, critics have been buzzing about the highlights of the series.

The Village Voice‘s Melissa Anderson featured the retrospective in last week’s cover story: “Sometimes the best counter-programming happens forty years after the fact.” The piece continues to note that the year was largely informed by “the culture wars” which “animate many of the titles in the program.” Specifically, Looking For Mr. Goodbar‘s “sexual freedom of its protagonist,” and Saturday Night Fever‘s “unstable signifier of outer-borough machismo.”

The Village Voice also shared top 10 film lists from ’77—from Andrew Sarris, J. Hoberman, and more, which included many of the films in our series.

RogerEbert.com calls the series “an ambitious retrospective that offers a eye-opening look at the surprisingly diverse array of films that was available to moviegoers during what would prove to be one of the great years for cinema.” Robert Altman’s 3 Women is described as “utterly unique, defiantly obscure and absolutely mesmerizing,” while John Cassevetes’ Opening Night boasts Gena Rowlands in “one of the very best performances of her career.” Writer Peter Sobczynski continues on to call David Lynch’s Eraserhead as “perhaps the most significant of all the year’s debuts.”

“Summer is a ripe time for great repertory cinema in New York,” says The New York Times‘s Glenn Kenny as he shares his highlights from the line-up, including our week-long run of 3 Women.

In Interrobang‘s recent weekly roundup of their recommended things to do, it’s noted as “a great series that shows Hollywood bursting at the seams of creativity, excess and everything in between.”

“I’ll be spending my month digging into Film Society’s ’77 programming,” says Mashable‘s Angie Han in her piece on the best in film this August.

“There are many gems not to be missed,” Screen Slate‘s Cosmo Bjorkenheim says, “and the gesture of compiling a series around a more or less arbitrarily chosen year is an interesting exercise in itself.”

’77 celebrates “a seminal cinematic year in proper fashion,” says The Film Stage‘s Nick Newman in a weekend round-up for repertory screenings.

Art News selects a special highlight from the line-up: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s “surreal and psychedelic” House, screening this Sunday.

In the latest Film Comment Podcast, the diverse cinematic year is discussed in a conversation by Maitland McDonagh, author of Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento and publisher of 120 Days Books, longtime Film Comment contributor Margaret Barton-Fumo, and FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca. Listen below:

As a bonus, we’ve also created the ultimate playlist of 1977 singles and Billboard hits, which can be heard below:

See the full lineup for ’77 and get tickets here.

As more coverage of the series comes along, we will continually update this writeup so stay tuned!