Saturday, April 27, 2024
1983 - Terms of Endearment
Our next 1983 Best Picture Oscar nominee is...
Terms of Endearment
Director:
James L. Brooks
Screenplay:
James L. Brooks
(based on the novel by Larry McMurtry)
Starring:
Debra Winger, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, Danny De Vito, Jeff Daniels, John Lithgow, Lisa Hart Carroll Academy Awards:
11 nominations
5 wins, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (MacLaine), Best Supporting Actor (Nicholson)
After her father dies, flighty Emma Greenway (Winger) struggles to deal with her stuffy and controlling mother Aurora (MacLaine) as they live together in suburban Houston. However, once she's old enough, Emma moves out to marry Flap (Daniels), an indolent ladies' man of whom Aurora wholeheartedly disapproves. She objects even further when the couple move to Iowa for Flap's work.
After many years, Emma and Flap have three children and their marriage is far from rosy. Emma suspects Flap is having an affair, so she begins one herself with mild-mannered Sam (Lithgow). Meanwhile, Aurora has begun an unlikely relationship of her own with her next-door neighbour, Garrett (Nicholson), a gregarious former astronaut who helps to bring Aurora out of her sanctimonious shell. Through it all, despite their volatile relationship, Emma and Aurora remain close ... until tragedy strikes. (Get your tissues ready.)
With a title like Terms of Endearment, you can't be surprised that this film is sentimental. However, it skilfully avoids becoming bogged down in clichés and instead presents a very funny and, dare I say it, endearing story that feels naturally tender, not overly saccharine. Similar to the praise I heaped on The Big Chill, it's the characters (and the performances) that make Terms of Endearment so captivating. Each one is a fully realised human being with fears and fantasies and foibles, so even though parts of the plot feel a tad inevitable, it's nonetheless exciting to watch.
In the past, when thinking about this film, I always pictured Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson (pictured) as old. Indeed, the script clearly intends to place them in the latter stages of life, but in a sobering twist, it turns out that MacLaine was about my age when she shot this and Nicholson was a few years younger. Blergh. In any event, both deliver spectacular performances and both earned Oscars, for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. Nicholson, in particular, is charmingly naughty and surprising. Debra Winger also greatly impresses as the awkward and flighty Emma, as does John Lithgow as the passionate but neurotic other man. Both Winger and Lithgow also received Oscar nominations but were beaten out by their aforementioned castmates. Four acting nods is quite the achievement, but it realistically could have been five. Jeff Daniels' stunning portrayal is likewise worthy of Academy recognition. In fact, the entire cast is sublime. This batch of Best Picture nominees is certainly a great one for acting ensembles.
Keep an ear out for Albert Brooks as the voice of Aurora's husband in the opening scene. And The Big Chill's Mary Kay Place also provides a dubbed voice for a small role. Along with all those acting nominations, James L. Brooks won three Oscars for himself, as producer, director and writer.
Sunday, April 21, 2024
1983 - The Big Chill
So, let's continue our review of the Best Picture contenders from 1983 by discussing...
The Big Chill
Director:
Lawrence Kasdan
Screenplay:
Lawrence Kasdan & Barbara Benedek
Starring:
Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, JoBeth Williams
Academy Awards:
3 nominations
0 wins
Seven close friends from college are reunited for the funeral of the eighth member of their group, Alex, who just committed suicide. Along with Alex's young girlfriend, Chloe (Tilly), the gang spend a few days at the South Carolina home of the only married couple of the bunch, Sarah and Harold (Close and Kline), reminiscing about their accomplishments and failures over the last fifteen years.
On the surface, The Big Chill may feel a little thin, plot-wise, but that's the magic of this film. Apart from the catalyst at the beginning of the film, most of the major plot developments are internal to the characters themselves. This is a character study at its finest. In fact, it's not just one character study - it's eight! This group of dreamers from the 1960s, who all compromised in one way or another, are now grappling with those choices while also dealing with the confusion and guilt that comes with their close friend's suicide. Ultimately, all the characters end the film in a different place than they started, no action sequences required. Instead, the character development comes from how these people talk to each other and work through their individual or relationship struggles. And the result is utterly captivating. These characters feel like our own friends.
Much of our connection to these people can be credited to the effortless acting from a stellar cast. There's not a weak link among them. We can see exactly what they're thinking even when they don't say anything. Granted, they talk plenty, but as Carol Littleton explained during the Q&A I mentioned in my intro above, the silences are just as important, if not more so, than the dialogue itself. Indeed, there are specific moments where we can see the exact decision a character has made, due to the perfect synthesis of the script (which has earlier laid the ground work for a particular plot point), the acting (which provides only a subtle shift in facial expression) and the editing (which cuts from one character's informative POV back to her own close-up as the decision is made). Genuinely, it's a perfect lesson in collaborative filmmaking.
Littleton also gave us the skinny on what happened with Kevin Costner, who was cast as the dead friend Alex. In the original script, the final scene was intended to be a flashback, allowing us a glimpse of the good times these characters had talked about so much. In theory, it sounds to me like a very intriguing and satisfying conclusion to the film, a sort of nostalgic button, particularly since the actual ending feels slightly abrupt. But Littleton explained the reasons why the scene was ultimately left on the cutting room floor. While it worked well on paper, it became clear, after filming it and many different attempts at editing it, that it just didn't work, partly because it felt like a costume piece with all the characters suddenly appearing in psychedelic 1960s garb after being in contemporary 1980s gear the whole time, and partly due to the strangeness of Costner who looked naturally much younger than the others who were all made up to look more youthful - though in actuality Costner is only 8 years younger than Glenn Close, the oldest member of the core cast. Still, that's Costner's arms, legs and body that can be seen being dressed for the funeral at the beginning of the film.
Speaking of Close, she was the only performer to receive an Oscar nomination for this film, but in my estimation, the entire cast is so terrific that it's impossible to single anyone out. (One imagines that if the SAG Awards existed at that time, this would have been a shoo-in for Best Ensemble.) Along with that Supporting Actress nod, the movie was also cited for Original Screenplay and, of course, Best Picture, but failed to win any of them.
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
1983 - Tender Mercies
For now, we begin our look at the 1983 Best Picture contest with...
Tender Mercies
Director:
Bruce Beresford
Screenplay:
Horton Foote
Starring:
Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Betty Buckley, Wilford Brimley, Ellen Barkin, Allan Hubbard, Lenny von Dohlen, Paul Gleason
Academy Awards:
5 nominations
2 wins, including Best Actor (Duvall)
Ex-country singer Mac Sledge (Duvall) finds himself in a small town motel in remote Texas after a drunken binge. The widowed owner, Rosa Lee (Harper), takes pity on Mac and accepts his offer to work for her in exchange for room and board. The two soon fall for each other and later marry, but his idyllic new life is disrupted when his ex-wife, Dixie (Buckley), also a country singer, tours nearby. Old wounds are reopened and Mac struggles to determine what he really wants out of life.
Tender Mercies is certainly not afraid to take its time. It's a slow-paced slice-of-life story, and since it takes place in a slow town, that leisurely pace feels somehow comfortable, never gratuitous. The beautiful scenery doesn't hurt, either. All in all, it's a sweet story, though it could be argued it's a little too simple. Not that nothing happens. The plot moves forward just fine, but the conflicts aren't quite as profound as they could be. We never really see Mac's worst alcoholic behaviour since he sobers up near the beginning of the film. And the tension he previously caused with his ex-wife when he was at his worst is not explored deeply enough, for my liking.
Winning the Best Actor Oscar for this role, Robert Duvall impresses not just with his acting chops but, holy crap, he has a nice set of pipes, too. Plus, he wrote a couple of the songs that he sings in the movie! The supporting cast are also expertly natural and subdued, matching the overall tone (with the possible exception of the child actors). Some standouts are Wilford Brimley as the exhausted music manager and a young Ellen Barkin (pictured) as Mac's estranged daughter. There's also a brief appearance by character actor Paul Gleason, famed for playing everybody's favourite 1980s movie assholes.
Monday, April 15, 2024
Best Picture of 1991
- Beauty and the Beast
- Bugsy
- JFK
- The Prince of Tides
- The Silence of the Lambs
Thus, the showdown is between one of the most seminal films of my adolescence and one of the most seminal films of the 1990s in general. JFK was an obsession of mine as a teenager. I was engrossed in its mystery as well as the incredible artistic achievement of its cinematography and editing. However, I can acknowledge now that much of its three-hour runtime is spent in perpetual exposition. Consequently, in agreeance with the Academy, The Silence of the Lambs, a paragon of the thriller genre with its disturbing tension and gripping misdirects, will be officially named my favourite Best Picture nominee of 1991.
Best Picture of 1991
| |
Matt's choice:
The Silence of the Lambs |
Your choice:
Feel free to let the world know your opinion using the poll above or the comments below. And now we travel back in time just a few years earlier to land on what might be one of the most homogeneous shortlists the Academy has put together. With its myriad relationship dramas, it's the nominees from 1983, a year I've chosen for what seems to be the most common reason I ever choose a review year: there's a local screening of one of the contenders.
- The Big Chill
- The Dresser
- The Right Stuff
- Tender Mercies
- Terms of Endearment
Saturday, April 13, 2024
1991 - The Prince of Tides
As I write this, I'm again in Los Angeles. I'm about to finish off this current year of review, which ironically began in this very city two years ago when I saw Bugsy on the big screen. Indeed, no visit to LA is complete without at least one trip to one of the many revival cinemas here, so I have my sights set on a few potential Best Picture nominees that are screening.
For now, though, we come to the final movie in the 1991 Best Picture race...
The Prince of Tides
Director:
Barbra Streisand
Screenplay:
Pat Conroy & Becky Johnston
(based on the novel by Pat Conroy)
Starring:
Barbra Streisand, Nick Nolte, Blythe Danner, Kate Nelligan, Jeroen Krabbé, Melinda Dillon, George Carlin, Jason Gould, Brad Sullivan
Academy Awards:
7 nominations
0 wins
In a somewhat strange turn of events, I watched this movie with the genuine conviction that it was my first time seeing it. However, after checking my movie diary (yes, I maintain a spreadsheet, tracking every movie I've seen since 1994 - don't judge!), I noticed I had in fact watched The Prince of Tides over 20 years ago. Yet, I had absolutely no recollection of it. Usually, even for a film I haven't seen for many, many years, I would at least feel some slight pangs of familiarity with certain scenes, or even a line or an image, but nope, I got to the end of the movie and was still utterly convinced that was the first time I'd watched it. In a way, I suppose it means I got to enjoy all the twists and turns all over again. I wish I could watch The Sixth Sense or Fight Club or Psycho the same way.
Based on the novel of the same name, The Prince of Tides centres on high school football coach Tom Wingo (Nolte) and his South Carolinian family's struggles. His childhood was marred by an emotionally manipulative mother (Nelligan) and a physically abusive father (Sullivan), and he also seems to be in a rut with his current home life, barely caring that his wife, Sallie (Danner), is having an affair.
In New York City, Tom's sister, Savannah (Dillon), has attempted suicide, and her psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein (Streisand), has requested some help from the family. Despite loathing New York, Tom goes to meet with Dr. Lowenstein, initially remaining tight-lipped about his family's past trauma. But as he eventually opens up, he and Lowenstein begin falling for each other, complicating things further.
It would be easy to be fooled into thinking this film was based on a play, instead of the novel from which it was actually sourced. The locations are mostly static and there's an abundance of dialogue, often melodramatic. Barbra Streisand's direction doesn't shy away from that melodrama, to the point that it seems to be the main driving force behind the production. In fact, if it weren't for the headlining movie stars, you'd be forgiven for confusing this for a TV movie. Along with cheesy lines from clichéd characters, the score cements the film's melodramatic vibe. Consider the stereotypical training montage sequence. Instead of a fast-paced rock song soundtrack, à la Rocky, this one has slow classical music.
But hey, I love movies, even melodramatic ones, so regardless of that previous paragraph, this film is still very entertaining. I found myself invested in all the characters, clichéd or not. The scene where Tom finally tells the story of the family's secret definitely packs a very large emotional punch. I can also forgive the fact that the film struggles to decide whether it's a family drama or a romance flick. For the majority of the story, I would have assumed it was the former if it weren't for the film's poster inexplicably giving away the two protagonists' eventual union. Mind you, there's more to the film after that point, so thankfully, it doesn't reveal everything.
The cast all do a superb job of elevating the material. For me, the gold star goes to Blythe Danner (pictured), who not only missed out on an Oscar nomination for this moving portrayal of a frustrated wife, but has sadly never received one for any of her brilliant work. Barbra Streisand also delivers an affable performance, sans Oscar nomination. Nick Nolte as the dissatisfied family man hiding his pain with humour, and Kate Nelligan as the bitter, controlling mother were the only two cast members to receive nominations, both well deserved. In total, the film received seven nods, but walked away empty-handed on Oscar night.
Friday, March 8, 2024
Oscar Winner Predictions 2023
Well, my Oscar nomination predictions turned out to be my worst showing in about ten years. On the plus side, I correctly picked all 10 Best Picture nominees, which seems like it should be worth something. I also aced Best Costume Design for the third year in a row ... I'm not sure what that says about me.
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Oscar Nomination Predictions 2023
Time for me to put on my Nostradamus hat and see if I can predict who's going to wake up to an Oscar nomination on Tuesday morning. Only 24 hours to go!
This year has been a strange one to predict. There's a small handful of films that have dominated my picks, which always makes me nervous. I've included the same four films in eight different categories and three of those films are together in a further three categories. In total, I've cited Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon and Poor Things 13 times each, followed closely by Barbie with 11 nods. Such domination by such a small selection of movies seems unlikely to come to fruition, but then again, lots of things have been changing over the last few years, so you never know.
In any case, for better or worse, here are my predictions for the nominations of the 96th Academy Awards.