Backdraft (1991)

 

Backdraft is the story of two brothers in Chicago who go into the family business, firefighting. Kurt Russell plays the older brother, Stephen McCaffrey, who’s quite the impetuous hero at times. However, his recklessness has cost him his marriage to Rebecca De Mornay’s Helen and the respect and trust of his fellow firefighters. He’s also an alcoholic who’s living in his father’s old boat, now in dry dock. William Baldwin plays Brian, the younger brother who’s fresh from the fire academy and assigned to work in the same firehouse as his brother. Brian has had several unsuccessful careers, and Stephen doesn’t think his brother is ready to be a firefighter. Of course, given that when he was a boy, Brian witnessed his father die in a fire, you’d be right to question his abilities to be a firefighter. This certainly begs the question of whether or not you would become a firefighter if you had watched your firefighter father die in a fire, but the film doesn’t allow for such questions to be examined too deeply. Naturally, Stephen (who has acquired the nickname “Bull”) and Brian clash a lot, and sure enough, Brian leaves the firehouse to join arson investigator Donald Rimgale (Robert DeNiro). They have a series of mysterious deaths to figure out in terms of both method (how were they killed) and motive (why were they killed). You’d think that would be enough to fuel a plot, but Brian also wants to reconnect to an old flame of his, Jennifer (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who’s an assistant to an alderman who wants to be mayor and may have a connection to the series of arson deaths. You’re supposed to accept that even though Stephen and Brian fight, they truly love each other even if you don’t get a lot of evidence to support that idea in the film itself. Russell is reliably good; he’s always been rather underrated as an actor, to be honest, if well-liked as a movie star. Baldwin isn’t much of an actor, to be fair, and his facial expressions seem rather limited. He often looks like he has smelled something unpleasant although he’s supposed to be amused or happy. (His character also has a rather expensive, stylish wardrobe, rather unexpected for someone who’s been unsuccessful at so many jobs.) The cast includes a lot of great character actors, such as Scott Glenn as “Axe,” a firefighter who worked alongside the boys’ father and now with them; Donald Sutherland as an arsonist up for parole who provides Baldwin’s Brian with some guidance on the arson cases; and Jason Gedrick as Tim, Brian’s fellow firefighter candidate who serves as a cliched sacrifice. This being a film directed by Ron Howard, Backdraft also has a brief appearance by his brother Clint Howard as a morgue attendant. Clint does sometimes get fun cameos like this one. This being a Ron Howard film, there’s also egregious use of several movie cliches: slow motion, manipulative music, and cutesy montages, for example, none of which truly furthers the narrative much. I mean, why do we have to watch firefighters trying to catch a bunch of loose chickens? Backdraft features some spectacular scenes of fires, and those sequences are the best aspect of the film overall. It also features some remarkable stunt work. Once the film has ended, it’s not the arsons or the other aspects of the plot that linger; it’s the visual effects. The film was nominated for Best Visual Effects and two other awards for its sound, but interestingly, it lost all three of them to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I wouldn’t disagree with the Academy voters on any of the three, frankly. 

Oscar Nominations: Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Sound

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

 

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the third entry in the Indiana Jones series, and it manages to present a couple of interesting wrinkles in the ongoing saga. First, we get a far-too-short sequence starring River Phoenix as young Indy, and it provides us with explanations for why he hates snakes, why he wears a fedora and carries a whip, even how he got that scar on his chin. It’s only about twelve minutes, but it is a real adrenaline rush to start the film. I know there was television program in the early 1990s called The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles that attempted to capitalize on the fun of this opening sequence with Phoenix. Unfortunately, it wasn’t successful, but perhaps there is more of the tale of young Indy to be told. The other benefit of this entry into the Indiana Jones universe is the introduction of Sean Connery in the role of Professor Henry Jones, Indiana’s father. Harrison Ford, of course, is back as Indiana, and he and Connery are delightful in their characters’ father-son bickering. Connery doesn’t actually appear until about a third of the way through the plot, but when father and son are reunited, the movie ramps up the humor and action. The senior Jones was never particularly interested in his son’s activities while Indy was growing up, but now the younger Jones (who hates to be called “Junior”) has to rescue his father, who has disappeared in Venice, Italy, while looking for clues to the location of the Holy Grail. A rich American, Walter Donovan (Julian Glover), finances a trip to locate Jones Senior, but later we learn the real reason is his own desire to obtain the Holy Grail for himself (since the myth is that it can provide immortality). There’s lots of stuff here about the Crusades, but I don’t think an understanding of historical events is necessarily important, and you shouldn’t want a fiction film to learn a history lesson anyway. Much of the film is set in 1938 and there are Nazis everywhere—the film travels to Italy, Austria, Germany, even the Republic of Hatay—so you get a clear sense that Germany was already beginning to dominate many countries before World War II had started. As for clues to the whereabouts of the Holy Grail, there’s a broken stone table that’s missing significant information and Henry Jones’s diary (which he conveniently mailed to his son before being kidnapped) has a very cryptic map and some very elliptical instructions for how to find the Holy Grail. All of these items are just an excuse for a series of chases and shootouts and adventures across Europe and Asia. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade includes boat races, motorcycle escapes, a ride on a zeppelin, a biplane air battle, tanks, horses, some camels, and lots of broken stuff and quite a few fires. Alison Doody plays Dr. Elsa Schneider, who was assisting the elder Jones in his research in Venice and who has apparently bedded both father and son, something that the film really doesn’t comment upon very much, perhaps for good reason. Denholm Elliott plays Marcus Brody, a colleague who runs a museum and who seems too ill-suited for adventures like this. Sadly, John Rhys-Davies’s Sallah doesn’t get as much to do here as he had in Raiders of the Lost Ark. None of this really matters, though, because much of the film is devoted to the interplay of Ford and Connery as the two Dr. Joneses. Watching the two of them having so much fun as action movie stars is the greatest highlight of the film. 

Oscar Win: Best Sound Effects Editing

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Sound and Best Original Score

Death Becomes Her (1992)

 

Death Becomes Her is a wry commentary on aging in Hollywood, particularly as it pertains to women. Overall, the film seems pretty misogynistic to me since it suggests that women will go to any length, no matter how risky or dangerous, to remain attractive (while men are more reasonable or rational about the consequences of aging). That doesn’t mean that it didn’t deserve its Oscar win for Best Visual Effects. Aside from a few laughs, mostly at the expense of the two primary characters, it’s the visuals that stick with you after viewing the film. Goldie Hawn plays Helen Sharp, an aspiring writer whose fiancé gets stolen by her long-time rival, Madeline Ashton (played by Meryl Streep). Madeline, an egotistical actress (is there any other kind in the movies?), doesn’t really find Dr. Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis) attractive physically; she just knows that having a plastic surgeon like him will help her stay younger looking. Their marriage isn’t a happy one. After losing Ernest to Madeline, Helen gains a lot of weight and becomes very vengeful. Seven years later, when they arrive at a party celebrating Helen’s new book, Madeline and Ernest find her transformed into a beautiful, youthful woman, quite a difference from the somewhat dowdy woman she was in the past. Madeline, now desperate to look younger herself, goes to a strange mansion and obtains an expensive magical potion from a woman named Lisle (Isabella Rossellini) who claims to be 71 years old, but who appears to be in her late 20s or early 30s. Of course, Lisle doesn’t really share all of the relevant details until after Madeline has downed the potion; one of the side effects is that you become, in essence, a zombie once you die. You only get about ten years to look youthful before you’re expected to disappear from public view. Hawn’s Helen tries to steal Willis’s Ernest back from Madeline, but to be honest, I kept wondering why these women are interested in him. He’s not particularly attractive, but his talent for making corpses look alive must be sufficient. The real appeal of Death Becomes Her is the masterfully done special effects. The transformation of Madeline to a younger version of herself is shot in a mirror, and it’s amazing. However, when Madeline falls down a flight of stairs, her body gets twisted and she has to walk backwards because her head is now on backwards. During a fight, Madeline blasts a hole in Helen’s stomach. (That’s when we learn that she, too, has taken Lisle’s potion—if we hadn’t already figured it out, that is.) Seeing through Hawn’s stomach is revelatory; that effect alone must have taken some time to accomplish. The film also has a few funny moments at the expense of the stars. For example, Helen calls Madeline a “bad actress” at one point, a nod to Streep’s reputation even then for possessing a singular talent for acting. And Madeline warns Ernest about what happens to “soft, bald, overweight Republicans in prison,” so knowing that Willis, who was already balding at the time, is a Republican only makes the joke funnier. Of course, as I stated earlier, the film treats men and women quite differently in terms of aging. Women are more obsessed with youthfulness and more inclined to do whatever they can to look younger, but when Ernest is offered the same potion as the two women, he refuses because he doesn’t want to live forever even if it would mean that he looks young. I realize that this film has become a cult favorite since its release, and some of the performances veer quite readily into camp, but it’s tough to watch this movie and not sense that it treats its female characters very badly overall.

Oscar Win: Best Visual Effects

Pepe (1960)

 

Pepe takes almost three hours to tell a somewhat simple story. Pepe (played by the great Cantinflas) is a ranch hand in Mexico whose prized horse is a beautiful white stallion named Don Juan. Everyone wants to purchase Don Juan, but Pepe tricks everyone into backing out of buying him except for Hollywood director Ted Holt (Dan Dailey), who plans to make money off the horse to fund his comeback picture. Pepe, following the advice of Greer Garson, tracks Holt down and looks after Don Juan in Holt’s crumbling Beverly Hills mansion. He also meets and starts to fall in love with Shirley Jones’s Suzie Murphy, whose parents were never appreciated by the movie business despite their years of hard work. She acts as if she hates Hollywood, but of course, she really wants to be a star herself. Pepe convinces her and Holt that she could be a star in a very foggy dream sequence performed to “Faraway Part of Town” by Judy Garland, one of the few stars who doesn’t make a cameo appearance in the film. In truth, one of the most interesting aspects of Pepe (perhaps the only interesting one, to be honest) is the seemingly endless series of cameos by famous performers: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charles Coburn, Jay North (who played Dennis the Menace on TV), Hedda Hopper, etc. Some stars get a bit more than just a line or two. Bing Crosby autographs Pepe’s tortilla and sings a little of “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way).” Jack Lemmon shows up in his drag costume from Some Like It Hot a year after the earlier movie was released. Maurice Chevalier gets a full production number with both Cantinflas and Dailey. Kim Novak even helps him to pick out an engagement ring. A sequence set at the Sands Hotel, where Pepe wins enough through gambling to get financing for Holt’s film, allows us to see most of the members of the Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. Even Jimmy Durante shows up in the Las Vegas portion of the film. There’s also a bizarre sequence involving Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, who were married at the time, thinking that Pepe is a Mexican movie official. That scene does allow Cantinflas to demonstrate his talent for physical comedy, though, as he drunkenly dances first with Leigh and then with Curtis and even with Dailey. Edward G. Robinson is often listed as making a cameo appearance, but even though he’s playing himself, his part is integral to the plot. Cantinflas is a very charming screen presence, and it’s a shame that this film was his American follow-up to Around the World in 80 Days. He had such talent—a bullfight sequence at the start of the film shows just how impressive he can be—but Hollywood didn’t really seem to know what to do with him. For example, Pepe traffics in stereotypes that should have been cringe-inducing even in 1960. When Pepe first shows up at a Hollywood movie studio to see Holt, he’s mistaken for a shoe repairman and then for a parking attendant. He’s also prone to misunderstanding some idioms in English, and some of his explanations, such as how he considers Don Juan his “son,” confuse lots of other characters. Then there’s his penchant for rubbing a bull’s ear on himself for good luck, an odd take on the lucky rabbit’s foot, I suppose. His character is meant to be the innocent in a corrupt world, so it’s not surprising that he doesn’t always understand what’s happening. He wants to believe that everyone is good and that you have to protect the ones that you love. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking cannot last even in a Hollywood movie, especially one where the lovely young white woman should end up with the delightful Mexican man (but doesn’t). Aside from such racist depictions, one of the other weaknesses of the film is how long and strange some of the musical numbers are. Before she starts work on Holt’s movie, Jones’s Suzie works as a waitress and dancer in what can only be described as a beatnik café. Bobby Darin shows up to sing “That’s How It Went, All Right” while Jones and a couple of male dancers perform something akin to what the lyrics say. It seems to go on forever. Likewise, Jones does a huge production number of the title song that involves what seems like hundreds of extras dancing through the streets of a Mexican town. Cantinflas and Debbie Reynolds emerge from a wine bottle to perform a strange dance to “Tequila” as tiny versions of themselves atop Holt’s desk. None of these numbers really advance the plot, but they certainly lengthen the movie unnecessarily. Pepe received no Academy Awards despite tying with The Alamo and Sons and Lovers as the second most nominated film of 1960. Interestingly, some of the performers making cameos were having success in other 1960 films: Greer Garson in Sunrise at Campobello, Janet Leigh in Psycho, Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry. All of them were Oscar nominated, and Jones won an Academy Award for a much better performance than the one she gives here.

Oscar Nominations: Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Color Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song (“Faraway Part of Town”), Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, and Best Sound

Come to the Stable (1949)

 

The plot of Come to the Stable is certainly meant as a testament to the power of faith to make things happen. Throughout the film, what seems impossible or unlikely tends to occur, sometimes far too easily, thanks to the beliefs of the central characters, two nuns (played by Oscar nominees Loretta Young and Celeste Holm) who have come to America from France after the end of World War II with the goal of opening a children’s hospital. They wind up in a small New England town called Bethlehem; the state isn’t specified, but it has to be within driving distance of New York City (more on that later). Sister Margaret (Young) and Sister Scholastica (Holm) locate Miss Amelia Potts (Elsa Lanchester, also Oscar nominated) because they have received a postcard with an image of one of her religious paintings on it, which they take as a sign that they should seek her out in the United States. Miss Potts gets easily flustered and can’t quite say “no” when the nuns ask to stay with her. The nuns visit the bishop of a neighboring town, who initially balks at their assertion that all they need is “land and money,” but he allows them one month and provides them with a small amount of money to work on their project. A lot of people impose rather arbitrary deadlines on the two women, but they always (or almost always) seem to make it in time. They choose a hill near Miss Potts’ home as their ideal location, but it’s held by a bookie named Luigi Rossi. However, much like everyone else in the film, even New York City criminals cannot resist helping Sisters Margaret and Scholastica in their quest. Then they put a down payment on an option for a former witch hazel bottling factory even though the “for sale” sign is only just going up. After the arrival of eleven other nuns and a priest from their Mother Church in France, they begin making money by selling stuff that they make, such as lace and pottery and cheese. Really, they seem to keep on succeeding almost by accident; they just keep maintaining their faith that they can establish a hospital. It’s difficult to know if they’re just incredibly naïve or amazingly skillful although, as I’ve already stated, I’m certain that the film is trying to make a point about how a strong sense of faith can make anything happen. One of the obstacles that the nuns face is the composer Bob Mason (the always reliable Hugh Marlowe); he lives next to the hill where they want to locate the hospital, but he wants to have a quiet residence in which to compose. Mason writes a song entitled “Through a Long and Sleepless Night” that is performed twice during the film, and while it may be odd to include a secular song in such an overtly religious film, it becomes relevant to the plot later in the film. Of course, it’s also odd that Marlowe appears nude at one point (you can only see his bare chest) in a film so concerned with religious matters. To be fair, Come to the Stable is much more light-hearted overall than I’ve probably made it sound. It does have quite a few moments of levity, such as when eleven French nuns and a priest emerge from one taxicab or when people keep giving the Sisters Margaret and Scholastica money thinking that will make them go away. The most fun, though, is watching Loretta Young drive Mason’s jeep with such reckless abandon. I wouldn’t want to be a passenger in the jeep with her, but her driving skill is hilarious. One of the cleverest performances in the film is by Dooley Wilson of Casablanca fame, who has the thankless and stereotypical role of playing Mason’s servant Anthony. However, Wilson manages to emit such charm as the servant who knows more than the man for whom he works, and he shows quite a strong sense of support for the nuns and their goal. He finds them fascinating, and the audience can’t help but find him fascinating too. The Academy certainly liked Come to the Stable in 1949 as the film tied with All the King’s Men for the second most Oscar nominations that year. However, it received no Oscars despite those numerous nominations.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Loretta Young), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Celeste Holm and Elsa Lanchester), Best Motion Picture Story, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration, and Best Original Song (“Through a Long and Sleepless Night”)

Victoria & Abdul (2017)

 

The makers of Victoria & Abdul claim that it is “mostly” based on real events. I don’t think you should rely on non-documentary films for history lessons, but even if the details aren’t particularly accurate historically, the plot is still interesting and the locations are spectacular. A young prison clerk in India gets chosen to travel to England to present a mohur, a gold coin, to Queen Victoria, the Empress of India who has never actually visited the country that England rules. He’s chosen because he picked out some carpets that she particularly admired. Well, and he’s tall. That seems to be an important factor even though the other Indian chosen to go to with him is rather short by comparison. Even though he is told not to make eye contact with the Queen, their eyes do meet, and he gets asked to be her personal servant. The reason seems to be a simple one; she thinks he’s “terribly handsome.” The actor who plays Abdul, Ali Fazal, is indeed handsome and certainly deserves the looks that he receives from her (and some other women as well). The film never quite addresses the question directly of whether or not Victoria (Judi Dench) was in love with Abdul or perhaps “smitten,” but given how long it had been since the death of her beloved husband, Prince Albert, being attracted to someone as lovely and generous and even enthusiastic as Abdul makes perfect sense to me. Plus, he seems to be the only one who still thinks of her as his ruler. The rest tend to take her for granted. When she names him her Munshi (teacher) and she starts learning Urdu and the Quran, her circle of advisors begins plotting how to get rid of him. Dench has, of course, played Queen Victoria before, having earned her first Oscar nomination in the role for 1997’s Mrs. Brown. Victoria & Abdul even makes a veiled reference to Mr. Brown, a Scottish servant she had a relationship with, a friendship that was ruined by gossip. Abdul is a Muslim Indian, and no one in the queen’s household supports their friendship or relationship. Neither does the Prime Minister (Michael Gambon), particularly given the tensions being raised by the Indian resistance to British rule. The worst behavior, of course, is from her eldest son, Bertie, the Prince of Wales (Eddie Izzard). He threatens to have her declared insane so that he can assume the throne before her death. Dench is in good form here, and her Victoria certainly knows how to put an end to that attempt. She is, as she puts it, “anything but insane.” The relationship between the queen and her Munshi naturally has some misunderstandings at times, and she’s rather surprised to learn that he has a wife, for instance. The plot might not break any new ground in terms of its depiction of the racist British attitude towards its colonies, but it’s refreshing to have Dench’s Victoria and Fazal’s Abdul demonstrate how friendship can potentially cross some pretty powerful racial and age and class barriers. Sure, it’s simplistic, but a simple sense of hope can provide us with some comfort at times.

Oscar Nominations: Best Achievement in Costume Design and Best Achievement in Makeup & Hairstyling

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

 

The 2017 version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast has the same basic plot as the more famous and more fully animated 1991 version. It also contains many of the same songs as the earlier film version, just performed by different singers. This version still contains a lot of animation—the CGI version of the Beast, for example—so calling it a live-action film is a bit of a misnomer. However, unlike Disney’s unneeded attempt at remaking The Lion King, the newer version of Beauty and the Beast provides a different experience by having actual humans in several roles. In particular, Emma Watson’s performance as Belle, the “beauty” of the title, allows for a greater range of facial expressions than the animated version. (Is it just me or does she look momentarily disappointed when the Beast transforms back into a prince?) The plot, as I mentioned, is relatively familiar. An enchantress puts a spell on the prince (played by Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey fame) and the other inhabitants of the castle, and unless he finds true love, the spell will become permanent. A beautiful magic rose (also CGI) loses a petal from time to time, and when the last petal falls, the changes cannot be reversed. Belle’s father mistakenly winds up in the castle and is imprisoned, and she offers to take his place in order to protect her aging dad (Kevin Kline, not given a lot to do, actually, although we do get more backstory about what happened to his wife, Belle’s mother, in Paris). Based just on the names I’ve already mentioned, you can tell that Disney certainly spared no expense in assembling an all-star cast and a very multicultural cast for this version. Emma Thompson takes on the role of Mrs. Potts, the housekeeper who has become a teapot. Ewan McGregor plays Lumiere, the candelabra antagonist to Ian McKellan’s Cogsworth, the head of the staff who is now a clock. The great Audra McDonald plays a wardrobe but used to be the opera singer Madame de Garderobe, and Stanley Tucci plays her husband, a composer named Maestro Cadenza who becomes a harpsichord after the transformation. Seeing the animated versions of such famous performers is a treat, and they seem to be enjoying taking on these roles. A couple of changes to the original plot did stand out to me. For one, LeFou (an enthusiastic Josh Gad, less antic and yet more spirited than usual) seems to know just how bad a person Gaston is and even tries to get his friend to tone down some of the words of his characteristics. LeFou is much cleverer in this version, to be honest, and it’s Gad’s performance that really makes it work better. We also get a bit more information about what the prince was like before the transformation into the Beast, and it wasn’t good, certainly, but what really matters to the film’s narrative is the slowly developing relationship between him and Belle. Well, that and the increasing jealousy that Gaston (Luke Evans, ratcheting up the narcissism of the character to delightfully remarkable heights) feels about not getting Belle to agree to marry him. Every remake of a famous and beloved film is going to be subject to criticism, and one of the stupid criticisms of this remake was the inclusion of a so-called gay subplot. It’s really not more than a couple of seconds at two points in the movie. When the villagers attack the castle in an attempt to kill the Beast, the wardrobe swathes three men in dresses to scare them away. However, one of them actually seems to enjoy being in a dress; at least, the look on his face would suggest so. Later in the film, during the obligatory musical number signaling a happy ending, LeFou dances with another man for a brief time after they change partners. I doubt that the younger viewers of the film would even notice such moments, which seem more like substandard pandering to the large and faithful gay audience for Disney films. You need a few changes to make a remake worth doing, and if that means trying to have a wider audience feel included, so be it. The most challenging issue for the remake, though, had to be how to depict the dress. You know which dress I mean, the one Belle wears when it has become clear that she truly loves the Beast. The animated version is a stunner, and to put your fears to rest, it’s quite beautiful in this version as well. Overall, the 2017 reimagining of Beauty and Beast is like slightly altering a beloved family recipe. It’s comfort food with just enough changes to be distinct and up to date.

Oscar Nominations: Best Achievement in Costume Design and Best Achievement in Production Design

True Grit (1969)

 

The 1969 version of True Grit is beautifully shot. It features some lovely location shooting in Colorado and California (standing in for Arkansas and Oklahoma), and the cinematography should have received some recognition from the Academy Awards. Instead, it’s primarily known for the Oscar-winning performance of John Wayne as Marshall Rooster Cogburn, who is hired by teenager Mattie Ross to locate the hired hand who shot and killed her father. Ross (played by Kim Darby with great precision of language and body movement) wants to join Cogburn as he looks for Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), and like she does with everyone, she wears the marshal down until he relents. Cogburn has a reputation for being good at his job but not especially concerned with what others think of him or with following the strictures of the law. They are joined by a man named “La Boeuf,” a Texas Ranger who wants to bring Chaney to justice for killing a state senator in Texas. He’s played by Glen Campbell, who also sings the Oscar-nominated title song over the film’s opening credits. Campbell and Darby are both fine actors, but the showy part is certainly Wayne’s, and except for the moments when Darby’s Mattie Ross is brokering a deal with someone, True Grit is really a showcase for Wayne’s performance. He can be gruff and short, touching at times, and quite funny when he plays drunk. It’s a performance unlike most of the roles he played in his very long career, and the award was an acknowledgement not only of this particular role but for his entire body of work and what it represented. In addition to Darby and Campbell, True Grit features some supporting performances by some famous actors. Robert Duvall plays Ned Pepper, the outlaw Rooster has been tracking for a long time and with whom Chaney has joined. Duvall was already making a name for himself in roles like this, starting with his portrayal of Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Dennis Hopper plays another of Ned’s associates, marking quite a contrast from his other famous movie from 1969, Easy Rider. Strother Martin also has a fun couple of scenes as a horse trader who winds up on the losing side of a bargain with Mattie. True Grit is a classic Western in many ways, featuring lots of action, but it has more than its fair share of dialogue during the times that Rooster, Mattie, and La Boeuf are riding horses on their way to find Ned or stopping to rest for the night. Much of the script follows the outlines of the Charles Portis novel upon which it is based, and a 1975 sequel (simply titled Rooster Cogburn and costarring Wayne and Katharine Hepburn) and a 2010 remake featuring Jeff Bridges as Marshall Cogburn don’t quite compare to the original film’s beauty.

Oscar Win: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Wayne)

Other Nomination: Best Original Song (“True Grit”)

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

 

I can’t quite decide if Chitty Chitty Bang Bang truly qualifies as camp or if it’s just bad. It is most certainly bad, though. Allegedly, this is a musical aimed at children, yet I can’t imagine a child being entertained by the almost 2.5-hour running time with all of the confusing characters and plot lines. And much of the music, including the dreadful title song that was inexplicably nominated for an Oscar, is already quite bad without adding the choreography of several production numbers to the mix. Even the names of most characters are silly. The title car, whose name derives from the noise its engine makes, won Grand Prix races for three years in a row before exploding in its final race. The two Potts children convince their poor unsuccessful eccentric inventor father, Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke), to buy the car and fix it up. It becomes quite an amazing vehicle, capable of converting into a sort of pontoon boat and into a flying machine. Given that the father is prone to devices that look positively Rube Goldbergian in nature (his complex machine for cooking eggs and sausages, for example), it’s kind of amazing that it can even run, much less float or fly. The carelessness of the children, Jemima and Jeremy, brings the daughter of the local candy-maker (played by the lovely Sally Ann Howe) into their father’s life; she almost hits them with her car and then takes them home to chastise their father for his poor parenting. Her name, Truly Scrumptious, is a nod to the ridiculous names of female characters preferred by the author of the book on which this film was based, Ian Fleming, perhaps better known for the series of James Bond novels. When Caractacus, Truly, and the two children enjoy a picnic on the beach, the father spins a bizarre tale about Baron Bomburst of Vulgaria and his desire to steal Chitty. The Baron kidnaps Grandpa Potts by mistake, hauling him off inside a “shed” that really looks more like an outhouse. When Caractacus and the rest chase the Baron’s zeppelin back to Vulgaria, they discover that there are no children there because the Baron’s wife hates them and has gotten them declared illegal. The Baron even employs a Child Catcher, portrayed by talented ballet dancer Robert Helpmann, and his role is the stuff of nightmares. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is all rather supremely silly, to be honest, and the music doesn’t help much. If you want to see how truly awful a production number can be, how one number can truly drag a movie to a halt, watch the big scene for the song “Toot Sweet,” a song about a new kind of candy. Thankfully, a large number of dogs interrupt the performance at the candy factory, just not quickly enough. The worst song, though, may be “Chu-Chi Face,” which primarily serves as a way to learn how much the Baron (Gert Frobe, better known as Bond villain Goldfinger) hates his wife (Anna Quayle, who comes closest to giving a truly campy performance, and the film is all the better for that). And I’ll need quite some time to forget the singing of Heather Ripley (Jemima) and Adrian Hall (Jeremy) about how, well, truly scrumptious Truly truly is. That song, in particular, is cringe-inducing, and young children tend to be poor singers anyway. To be fair, the movie does have a couple of good numbers. “Me Ol’ Bamboo” is a fun number that showcases Van Dyke’s dancing, but it’s really just a plot device that isn’t all that necessary and mostly just adds to the film’s length. And the staging of “Doll on a Music Box,” which manages to highlight Howe’s lovely voice and her ability to perform some elaborate choreography, works well until Van Dyke shows up to start singing another version of “Truly Scrumptious.” Oddly, Van Dyke doesn’t perform with an English accent, which is very puzzling given that almost everyone else in the cast is British, including Benny Hill as a toymaker in Vulgaria. And poor Howe’s character of Truly suffers the indignity of driving her car into a duck pond three times during the course of the movie, a sure sign that the filmmakers have exercised very little creativity. The insertion of an intermission only serves to make us endure more time waiting for this nonsense to end. I’ll resist the temptation to use a word that rhymes with Chitty to describe this film, but it certainly fits.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”)

King Kong (2005)

 

The second (better but still unneeded) remake of King Kong lasts more than three hours, yet it tells what is, essentially, the same basic story as the original version from 1933, which clocked in at a comparatively terse 100 minutes. Director/cowriter Peter Jackson, fresh from his success with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, seems to have decided that what the first King Kong needed was more time on each element of the plot. We all know that Jackson does like to think of film as long-form entertainment. Thus, it takes almost twenty minutes for movie director Carl Denham (Jack Black, tamped down a bit from his usual boisterousness) and his potential star, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), to board the ship that takes them to Skull Island and their encounter with Kong. We spend another thirty minutes aboard the ship before we get to the island itself, and it’s almost an hour into the film before we first hear Kong’s roar and another ten minutes before he himself appears onscreen. That’s a long time for an audience to wait in order to see the star of the movie. Thankfully, about half of King Kong takes place on Skull Island as we intercut between two storylines. One has us watching as Ann initially tries to escape from Kong, who seems bewitched by her blonde hair when he first captures her, only to have her turn to him as her protector from three rather acrobatic dinosaurs intent of having her as a snack. The other plotline follows Denham, playwright/screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), and other men from the ship trying to find Ann to rescue her from Kong. Ann’s relationship with Kong is, of course, complicated by the weird idea that this is all some sort of metaphor regarding interracial relationships – although this is somewhat less emphasized here than in the original and the horrid 1976 version. Still, it’s fun to watch Watts performing some of Darrow’s familiar vaudeville tricks to entertain Kong, and it’s certainly breathtaking to watch the carefully choreographed extended sequence involving Kong protecting yet almost failing to protect Ann from what appear to be three Tyrannosaurus Rexes. Seeing two of the dinosaurs and Kong and Ann entangled in vines and swinging to catch or avoid each other is a highlight of the film, and I laugh aloud each time I watch as one of the dinosaurs chases after Ann, who is rather tiny by comparison, when he has a huge dead dinosaur in his mouth already. Does he want some sort of small appetizer or after-dinner treat? Finish your dinner before you go hunting for more food. As for the men trying to find Ann, well, they’ve picked a crazy island to visit. A stampede by a group of brontosauri and what appear to be velociraptors, a valley filled with nasty bugs, including giant spiders that are meant to be inspired by those in a sequence that was removed from the original for being too gruesome – it’s an astonishing series of encounters with more than a few sad deaths along the way. You should be familiar with the outline of the story already if you’ve seen either of the earlier versions. Kong get captured (this time with the help of chloroform) and taken to New York where he is put on display as the Eighth Wonder of the World. He escapes, finds Ann, and climbs to the top of the Empire State Building. The last line of the 2005 King Kong is the same as the one from 1933: “It was beauty killed the beast.” So why does it need to be twice as long if we’re going to hit the major plot points and end the same way? Perhaps it’s so you can have a lovely sequence in New York after Kong and Ann are reunited, involving him sliding around a frozen river with her in hand, and so you can perhaps spend more time on Skull Island, which is, as Ann says to Kong, quite beautiful when you aren’t about to be devoured by a dinosaur or attacked by enormous (hungry) crickets or being hoisted aloft by what appear to be giant bats. We also get to see more of the development of the relationship between Ann and Jack aboard the ship before they land on the island, so there is more of a sense of his desire to protect her. Sadly, having more time to tell the story doesn’t mean that this version of King Kong does a better job in its depiction of the natives of Skull Island. They’re just as dangerous and scary as they have been in previous versions, and even the performers who portray the “natives” in Kong’s New York show are stereotypically “savage” (and, it appears, in blackface, at least some of them). Watts and Brody are, of course, talented actors and do fine work here, and Black does allow us a few moments of levity, just as you would expect. Kyle Chandler shines as the vain Bruce Baxter, an actor who seems to believe he’s really the center of everyone’s attention. It’s all very entertaining, but it does beg the question as to whether or not we need more of a story (albeit expertly filmed) that we already know. Why not just watch the original again? By the way, the original did not receive any Oscar nominations. None, not even for its groundbreaking visual effects. Meanwhile, the 1976 version, as bad as it is, chalked up three nominations and one win, and this version received four nominations and three wins. Astonishing, really, when you consider it.

Oscar Wins: Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, Best Achievement in Sound Editing, and Best Achievement in Visual Effects

Other Nomination: Best Achievement in Art Direction

Foul Play (1978)

 

Foul Play is a bit of a cross between a romantic comedy and a thriller/suspense movie featuring repeated references to (much better) Hitchcock movies. It’s also a bit of a mess, frankly. Goldie Hawn plays Gloria Mundy (the pun on “worldly glory” doesn’t get used to full advantage here), a librarian who is recently divorced. Thanks to encouragement from a friend who tells her to take more chances in life, the normally shy Gloria picks up a guy whose car has broken down. Scottie, the guy she picks up, hides a roll of film in a pack of Marlboro cigarettes that he leaves with Gloria, promising to meet her for a date later that night. A group of criminals wants the film, and after killing Scottie, they make Gloria the object of repeated kidnapping attempts and apartment break-ins to retrieve the film. Chevy Chase plays a police lieutenant who helps her (and who falls in love with her, of course – this is a Hollywood film, after all). However, he is initially unable to be much help because the bodies keep disappearing. It takes a while before he and the other police and even Gloria’s friends begin to believe her. The film is set in San Francisco, much like Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and the climax occurs at the San Francisco Opera House, circumstances similar to the climax of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Foul Play never reaches the artistic heights achieved by any of the Hitchcock films it references, though. In fact, Mel Brooks does a better and funnier homage in his High Anxiety from 1977, just one year earlier. Foul Play doesn’t even restrict its allusions to Hitchcock. In another twist, Chase and Hawn have a rough fast drive through the streets of San Francisco that is reminiscent of the centerpiece chase in What’s Up, Doc? from six years earlier (although that film does it better). The plot unfolds a few clues at a time, and aside from the romantic relationship between Hawn’s and Chase’s characters, it winds up being about some weird, convoluted plot by a group called the Tax the Churches League to kill the Pope during a performance of The Mikado. However, the plot is rather beside the point. It’s the performances here that are key to whatever success the film has. In addition to Hawn and Chase (was he really this cute back then?), the cast includes top-notch actors such as Burgess Meredith at Gloria’s landlord with a rather unbelievable past and some amazing martial arts skills for an old guy, Rachel Roberts as one of the leaders of the Tax the Church League who matches Meredith’s martial arts skills pretty well, Brian Dennehy in an early role as Chase’s police partner “Fergie,” the great Billy Barty as a Bible salesman in a very funny sequence, and character actress Marilyn Sokol as Stella, Gloria’s coworker who’s prepared for any male-initiated crisis (mace, brass knuckles, etc.). However, it’s Dudley Moore who almost steals the movie as Stanley Tibbetts. Hawn’s Gloria picks up Stanley in a singles bar, hoping to escape from her potential kidnappers by hiding out at his place. Stanley, though, thinks he’s about to get lucky and starts revealing some ridiculous “modifications” to his apartment, including a Murphy bed with lights and sound effects and a cabinet with a couple of fully inflated sex dolls. He’s almost down to just his heart festooned boxer shorts before Gloria catches on to what’s been happening while she’s been looking for her potential kidnappers through Stanley’s window. Moore gets two more scenes, one of them in a massage parlor, the other at the opera, and he’s hilarious in each one. He would star in 10 the following year and in Arthur three years later, achieving superstar status. It’s hard to forgive the use in Foul Play of language like “dwarf” or “albino” to describe people, and the portrayal of a couple of Japanese tourists is both unnecessary and teeth-grindingly offensive. I know that these terms and depictions were not as heavily criticized in 1978, but they should have been. And I can’t quite forgive the film’s pretending that the famed Nuart Theatre is in San Francisco since any resident of Los Angeles knows better. Foul Play marked Chase’s first leading role after he left Saturday Night Live for movie stardom and Hawn’s first movie in two years. They do have a fun chemistry, but all I could recall from having seen it in the theaters during its initial release was Barry Manilow’s “Ready to Take a Chance Again” playing over the opening credits as Gloria drives her yellow convertible Volkswagen Beetle along the coastal highway. That was fun to revisit. The rest of the film? Aside from Moore’s standout performance, not as much.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“Ready to Take a Chance Again”)

Varsity Show (1937)

 

Varsity Show is an Oscar nominee thanks to just one musical number that lasts about ten minutes. Its finale was nominated for Best Dance Direction, a category honoring choreographers that lasted for just three years (1935-1937). Of course, the finale is spectacular given that it was choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley. To get to the film’s end, though, you have to go through a very tepid narrative that keeps throwing somewhat ridiculous obstacles in the path of a group of students who just want to have a great annual show for the Quadrangle Club at Winfield College. The show they’ve been working on is very old-fashioned and dull, thanks to their faculty director, Professor Biddle (Walter Catlett, hamming it up to the film’s detriment). He doesn’t want any contemporary (i.e., swing) music in the show, so the students turn to a famous alumnus, Chuck Daly (Dick Powell, much the same as he was in almost every other film). Daly, now a theatrical producer, has just had one of his shows flop miserably in New York, and his friend/manager (Ted Healy, providing a few strong comic moments) convinces him to return to campus for a promised thousand dollar payday. Let the complications begin. First, naturally, they need to get rid of Biddle so that Chuck can take over direction of the show. Healy’s William Williams contracts mumps from a night with a coed, and he agrees to spread the mumps to Biddle. He shows up at the professor’s home, asking, “Can’t we kiss and make up?” Biddle’s reply is “I’ll make up. That’s as far as I’ll go.” They enter the home for a cup of tea, and we next see them in side-by-side beds. It seems like Biddle (and Williams) will go farther after all. The college then schedules a bunch of exams with the condition that any students who don’t pass cannot participate in the show. So everyone has to study hard in order to stay in the show. And so it goes… Even when the students get the bright idea to take over a theater in New York in order to make a hit for Chuck—perhaps the silliest plot turn of them all—the obstacles keep coming. The theater owner keeps going up the city’s and state’s hierarchy to get the students thrown out, but two waves of police officers and even the National Guard wind up being more interested in watching the rehearsal than in stopping the show. There are a couple of romances, just as you would expect in a musical from this time period, but they truly aren’t essential to the plot or even depicted organically. Chuck falls in love with Babs (Priscilla Lane), a college senior with a lovely singing voice, and even Williams gets a romance with a glasses-wearing female nerd, Cuddles (Mabel Todd, matching the hamminess of Healy as much as she can). Varsity Show features Sterling Holloway, later to be famous as the voice of Winnie the Pooh, in a supporting role, but he and the other players really don't add very much to the film. Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians provide lovely musical accompaniment to the various numbers throughout the movie, particularly shining in the finale. And about that finale? It’s ten minutes of marching band music, baton twirlers, synchronized dancing, and performers spelling out the insignia of various famous colleges, among them Yale and the University of Southern California (one of my alma maters). The finale also includes one of two performances by the singing-and-dancing duo of Buck and Bubbles. They are great, but then you realize that their numbers are shot so that they could be excised for showings in Southern theaters, which often did not permit scenes with talented African American performers except in servile roles. How sad that some moviegoers were not able to see these numbers, truly some of the best parts of the film overall. You can just watch the finale below, and you’ll truly see the highlight of Varsity Show.

Oscar Nomination: Best Dance Direction

RoboCop (1987)

 

RoboCop has a lot of villains. Set in a future dystopian Detroit, the film reveals a city filled with criminals and crime, a dangerous and deadly place to be a police officer. On his first day in a new precinct, Murphy (Peter Weller) gets brutally killed by a gang of criminals led by Kurtwood Smith’s Clarence Boddicker. (Yes, the guy who played the father on That 70s Show is a criminal mastermind/crime boss.) Murphy’s body is modified by OCP, a corporation that has taken control of the police department, and he becomes the cyborg RoboCop. He proves to be remarkably effective at police work, stopping a liquor store robbery, an attempted rape, and a tense hostage situation involving a political loser. Given that he’s a cyborg whose body is mostly metal and machine, he also can’t be easily hurt or killed either; he just needs to recharge now and then. During one of those recharging sessions, he has a series of flashbacks; his makers apparently didn’t erase everything. He remembers his wife and son, and more importantly, he remembers his murder. That sends him off on a quest to capture Boddicker and his accomplices, one of whom is played by Ray Wise before the TV shows Twin Peaks and Fresh Off the Boat, another of whom is played by Paul McCrane after the movie Fame but before the TV show E.R. The film actually includes quite a few reliable actors, including Nancy Allen as Murphy’s partner who witnesses his murder and tries to connect to him personally after he becomes RoboCop and Ronny Cox as the OCP executive whose failure to create a mechanical cop leads to the RoboCop program’s success, a move that makes him incredibly bitter and prone to a desire for revenge. In other words, he’s another villain. With all of its emphasis on crime, RoboCop is a very, very violent movie at times, and we aren’t spared from watching the grisly demise of several characters. Murphy’s death, for instance, is quite gruesome. It’s little wonder that the movie initially received an X rating due to its violent content; what we have now is the “softer” version, and it’s still quite shocking. The film is also much campier than I remembered from the last time I saw it decades ago. Weller’s deadpan reading of the line “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me!” alone is laugh-inducing each time he states it. The director, Paul Verhoeven, isn’t known for his subtle touch; his later films include Basic Instinct, Showgirls, and Starship Troopers, none of them exactly masterpieces of keeping their moments from being laughable. On a side note, RoboCop shares with Starship Troopers the use of commercials that are sometimes funnier or more interesting than the rest of the movie. The one for a vehicle called the 6000 SUX is especially hilarious. I will admit that it’s a bit surprising that the film wasn’t nominated for Best Visual Effects, especially in a year with only two nominees in the category: Innerspace and Predator. (You might still be surprised to learn that Predator was NOT the winner.) If there’s a “deeper” message to RoboCop, it might be the warning against corporations taking control over police departments, the military, hospitals, etc. Of course, we haven’t heeded that warning at all, given how much those functions have become increasingly privatized since 1987. You’d think after watching OCP’s first attempt at a fully mechanized robot cop (Cox’s invention), we’d know better. Watching the ED-209 malfunction and kill a OCP executive is what actually provides the opportunity for Miguel Ferrer’s Morton at OCP to create RoboCop (and become a higher-ranking executive and turn into yet another villain and be targeted by his former boss and…). Maybe it’s also trying to suggest that no matter how mechanized or mechanical we might become, it’s our humanity or whatever is left of it that might save us. I doubt many viewers gave the film’s narrative a great deal of deep thought; they just enjoyed the fun of watching Weller as the former cop who can’t be stopped now that he’s a cyborg. It is a shame that the actor’s face and those hypnotic eyes are covered up for most of the film.

Oscar Win: Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing

Other Nominations: Best Film Editing and Best Sound

U-571 (2000)

 

The first ten minutes of U-571 are gripping and claustrophobic as we watch German sailors aboard a submarine enduring an attack of depth charges from a British destroyer. Their submarine gets disabled, and they are unable to defend themselves. It’s quite tense watching this opening sequence; it’s vaguely reminiscent of the great German film Das Boot from 1981. Unfortunately, after those initial moments, the plot starts to become rather preposterous. The Americans intercept the German sub’s distress signal and plan to get to the disabled sub before the Germans do. The goal is to capture an enigma code machine so that they can translate the messages being sent by the Germans. The plan involves using a submarine that’s been disguised to look more like a German one, including a Nazi emblem, and the sailors will also disguise themselves as Germans, putting on black leather jackets and carrying German guns. However, just as they capture the sub (far too easily, by the way) and get the German prisoners transferred to the American submarine and find the enigma machine (which looks very much like a plain typewriter, frankly), a German torpedo destroys the American sub. So the remaining American survivors (and one German prisoner, who you just know is going to try to sabotage their escape attempts) plan to use the disabled German sub to escape. They get into a torpedo fight with the resupply submarine that destroyed their American sub, and of course, in traditional Hollywood fashion, the German torpedoes miss (one of them just scrapes the hull), but the Americans destroy the German sub even though the firing mechanisms for torpedos on the disable sub were… well, disabled. The villains always are such bad shots in the movies made in America. As the Americans try to get the submarine to England, a German destroyer shows up and they have to dive to unsafe levels in order to avoid the potential danger from multiple depth charges. You should know how this ends, given that it’s an American movie about American sailors facing the Germans in World War II, and it’s already proven itself to be unrealistic. Both of the Oscar nominations for U-571 were for its sound achievements, and it really is a movie indebted to quality sound. The moments of fearful silence punctuated by the explosions of depth charges (punctuated by the visuals of those explosions) only enhance the power of those moments. Overall, the film is engrossing even though it stretches one’s disbelief. The plot also doesn’t help the actors much, though, putting them into situations whose resolutions are easy to anticipate. Matthew McConaghy plays Lt. Tyler, who at the film’s start is still upset over being denied command of his own submarine by his superior, played by Bill Paxton, because Lt. Commander Dahlgren doesn’t think Tyler is ready to risk the lives of the sailors he commands even if he has to do so for the greater good of the American effort during the war. You know what that means? Yes, he’ll have to take command of the submarine and he’ll have to quiet the resistance to his command and he’ll be awesome at commanding the submarine because he’s willing to risk the lives of the men under his command. If the rest of the movie were as compelling as the first ten minutes, which manage to avoid typical cliches of movies about submarines and war, U-571 would be a better film.

Oscar Win: Best Sound Editing

Other Nomination: Best Sound

Ad Astra (2019)

 

Visually, Ad Astra is quite a stunning film. It has been beautifully shot; the cinematography is superb. The film has been art directed to hell and back again, so the production design is also topnotch. However, watching Ad Astra is an exercise in tedium. I fell asleep while watching it in a theater, and I’ve fallen asleep both times I’ve watched it at home. It’s just a slow, boring movie. Maybe it’s time to stop making space films for a while, especially after this and First Man. Perhaps we just need a break until someone comes up with something more interesting to say about space travel? The plot of Ad Astra (Latin for “to the stars”) is rather straightforward. Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) has been asked to contact his father, the legendary astronaut H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) about whether his Lima Project near Neptune has been causing some sort of bizarre power surges. This is, naturally, a mission with a lot of emotional resonance for Pitt’s younger McBride because his dad always was more excited about journeying into space rather than staying with his family. Yes, he’s got “daddy issues” because, of course, his father abandoned the family when Roy was a kid, and a lot of the film features Pitt’s voice-over discussing his feelings about his father and about his own fears over repeating his father’s patterns of behavior. Roy has to go to Mars to send a message to his father since that’s the closest communications system to Neptune—and why wouldn’t it be? The film does have a few moments of intense action that interrupt the boredom. When Roy lands on the moon to catch a transport to Mars, he and Col. Pruitt (Donald Sutherland), an old friend of his father’s, get attacked by some sort of weird space pirates who kill their military escorts. The trip to Mars gets interrupted by a distress signal from a Norwegian ship, where Roy and the captain face attacks from some murderous baboons. No, you read that right: murderous baboons. However, these kinds of moments are too rare and too brief. McBride spends an extended period of time on Mars trying to make contact with this father and learning that his father killed everyone on board his ship when they wanted to return to Earth rather than follow the elder McBride’s deranged ideas about his mission. The director of the facility on Mars, Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), helps him to get onto the ship that’s going to try to stop his father. Sadly, the three other astronauts die within minutes of his arrival on board—not through him killing them, no. They die from a series of rather stupid mishaps. People disappear in this movie very quickly. Part of the problem with Ad Astra is that it takes remarkably talented performers like Sutherland and Negga and even Jones and relegates them to minor roles (almost cameos at times) with only a limited amount of screen time. Instead, we get a lot of time listening to Roy’s inner thoughts. While Pitt is always a welcome presence to gaze upon, his character is well known for his ability to control his emotions and never get upset. That’s tough to watch for almost two hours, no matter how high the quality of the cinematography or art direction or visual effects.

Oscar Nomination: Best Achievement in Sound Mixing

Romancing the Stone (1984)

 

Romancing the Stone is a great hybrid of romantic comedy and action-adventure film. It’s a sexy film with lots of gunfire, some physical comedy, and even a few crocodiles. It also marked the first movie pairing of Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas (with Danny DeVito along for the ride, as usual). They would later appear together in The Jewel of the Nile and The War of the Roses, but Romancing the Stone set a template for their future film interactions. They don’t like or even trust each other at first, but they begin to fall in love, and the film is as much about their relationship as it is the outline of the major plot. Turner plays Joan Wilder, a romance novelist living a pretty dull life with her cat. She’s not having any actual adventures; she just writes about them. Douglas is an actual adventurer, the perfectly named Jack Dalton, who smuggles exotic birds; he’s making his way through the jungle, one small town or village at a time. When Joan’s sister is kidnapped and taken to Colombia by the hapless brothers Ira (Zack Norman) and Ralph (DeVito), she crosses paths with Jack and attempts to enlist his help in rescuing her sister. She has to promise to pay him what she has left in traveler’s cheques once they’re both stranded in the jungle. Throughout the film, there’s a clear example of a McGuffin (one of Hitchcock’s favorite devices) in this treasure map to the location of a large emerald called El Corazon (“The Heart”), but really what matters here is the interaction between Turner and Douglas. It’s somewhat incidental that the map came from her murdered brother-in-law, and now everyone, including another drug lord named Col. Zolo, keeps looking for Turner because she’s in possession of it. Turner is very sexy here, and she becomes looser as the movie progresses and her inhibitions around Douglas’s Jack lower. She’s so delightful when she finds one of her fans in a small village, a local drug lord named Juan who helps them escape capture. Douglas, by comparison, was always a bit of a lech in his movies during this period. A look at his facial expressions seems to tell you his intentions with Joan. And that raises one of the central concerns of the film’s narrative: Does he love her, or is he just an opportunist? Has he started to have feelings for her, or does he just want to find the treasure of El Corazon himself? Romancing the Stone likes to tease viewers with the nature of their relationship, and it’s a delight to watch them bicker ruthlessly and then enjoy each other’s company.

Oscar Nomination: Best Film Editing

Jurassic Park (1993)

The most important factor in making Jurassic Park a huge success is how realistically the dinosaurs appear to be. If it weren’t for Steven Spielberg and the rest of the film’s crew using the best of computer-generated imagery, the film wouldn’t be as powerful as it is. Sure, we want to see imperiled humans—and if there’s a little bit of romance and perhaps some competing ideas for how to survive, so much the better—but if those humans are running from dinosaurs that look fake, then we’re going to be less invested in their outcome. And Jurassic Park didn’t win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects for nothing. Was it even a contest against Cliffhanger? Maybe The Nightmare Before Christmas had a shot, but it should have had the opportunity to be named Best Animated Feature, a category the Academy Awards wouldn’t create for another eight years, but that’s getting off topic. Jurassic Park is rather canny in its revealing of the first onscreen dinosaur, a brachiosaurus, about twenty minutes into the action. From that moment on, our attention is most enraptured when we get to see the dinosaurs in action, no matter the human cost involved. The plot is relatively simple, actually. Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond has populated a remote island near Costa Rica with dinosaurs. He and a team of scientists have extracted dinosaur DNA from insects preserved in amber and hatched a lot of dangerous beasts (and a few gentle ones). However, he has to demonstrate to the park’s investors that the island will be a safe location for a sort of amusement park. Hammond enlists the aid of Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant, a paleontologist, and Dr. Ellie Sattler, a paleobotanist, to help him support his vision. The investors’ attorney brings along Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum being his most frustratingly Goldblum-ian), a mathematician in love with chaos theory. They’re amazed by what they see but also fearful of what could happen when humans and dinosaurs start to encounter each other. It doesn’t take long for a tour of the park, now including Hammond’s two grandchildren along for the ride, to go badly awry. The park’s chief computer programmer, Dennis (Wayne Knight, just as wonderfully unctuous here as he was Seinfeld), plans to steal some DNA samples for one of Hammond’s rivals, and he sabotages the security systems, and then the fun begins. The attack by the Tyrannosaurus rex is justifiably famous, a masterpiece of editing that places the viewer in a series of uncomfortable positions, sometimes as witness, sometimes as victim, sometimes as attacker. I’ve used it multiple times in my film studies classes. However, as scary as the T-rex is, the velociraptors are truly the stars of this first film of what became a hugely successful franchise. The raptors are clever and dangerous, and their attacks are relentless. They pop up at the most surprising of times, and it’s a visual delight to see them square off against the T-rex at the film’s end. Jurassic Park does feature a couple of moments of gentle sweetness. Neill’s Grant winds up caring for the children as they make their way back to the safety of headquarters even though he didn’t much like children at the film’s beginning. Yet those kinds of moments are overshadowed by ones like the scene where three raptors track down the children in the kitchen of the visitor center. Jurassic Park was Spielberg’s “other” film from 1993, his more famous artistic achievement being the Best Picture winner Schindler’s List. Pairing the two films does allow us to see the range of his talents, from well-crafted popular entertainment to serious-minded and thoughtful dramas.

Oscar Wins: Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, and Best Visual Effects 

Casino Royale (1967)

 

The film version of Casino Royale from 1967 is most definitely not the serious-minded film with Daniel Craig from 2006. This adaptation is much sillier, a goofy parody of the four Bond films (with Sean Connery) that had already appeared during the 1960s. Sir James Bond (played with his usual debonair air by David Niven) has retired from service as 007, but spies from various countries—Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and France—have been disappearing, so he’s pressed back into service. What follows is a series of explosions, killings, quirky gadgets, and the usual barrage of other spy movie stereotypes, just what you might expect in a Bond film. However, Casino Royale also features some trippy psychedelic visuals and cameos by such movie luminaries as George Raft, Peter O’Toole, and Jean Paul Belmondo. Even a young and already stunning Jacqueline Bissett (billed as “Jacky Bissett”) gets a brief scene where she seduces one of the several James Bonds the film includes. Casino Royale also has extended performances from some great stars. My favorite performance is by Deborah Kerr, who plays M’s widow with the thickest of Scottish brogues and lots of homicidal daughters. Her part of the story involves an attempt to kill Bond after a night of drinking and haggis-eating and dancing and physical competition—pretty strange stuff overall—and that’s even before the day-after-the-funeral grouse hunt. In fact, many of the film’s narrative elements make no sense other than as a way to lampoon the more serious Bond films. For example, when Niven takes over Britain’s spy agency, he thinks they need to find a Bond who can resist women as a way to counteract the image being perpetuated by the “other” Bond films – well, actually, the weakness for sexy women seems to be linked to the disappearance of the spies. This moment does give a lot of beautiful women the opportunity to earn the title of “Bond girl” and for Terence Cooper to kiss a lot of them. Arguably, the most famous Bond girl of them all, Ursula Andress of Dr. No fame, gets recruited by Niven’s Sir James to get the author of a book on how to play baccarat, Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) to help defeat Orson Welles’ Le Chiffre at the title casino. Welles’ character, you see, is funding SMERSH, the group responsible for kidnapping all of the spies from around the world. He’s also, inexplicably, performing magic tricks at the baccarat table, much to the amazement of the assembled crowd. Andress and Sellers seem to be having the most fun among the actors, Andress winking at her iconic status here as a rich and extravagantly wardrobed double agent who’s always a step ahead of the men she encounters and Sellers getting a couple of moments to wear costumes much like his famed character Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther movies. The film does add a nice touch in its inclusion of a younger actors to link characters to the more famous Bond franchise. Miss Moneypenny’s daughter (Barbara Bouchet) is now the new Moneypenny, and Sir James recruits his daughter with Mata Hari, Mata Hari (Joanna Pettet), to help him infiltrate the German school that trains female spies. Most important to the plot, though, is Woody Allen as Sir James’ nephew Jimmy. He only has a few minutes on screen, but his role is integral to tidying up as best it can the convoluted and scattered threads of the plot. By the time the American cavalry—on horseback—shows up, followed by a group of dancing Native Americans, a viewer might be exhausted from having watched an abduction by a spaceship and a gang of gun-toting women in minidresses. The visual overload is quite astonishing. Casino Royale could have easily been nominated for its costume design, which is gloriously mod, or its production design, which is spectacular, but it had to settle for just one nomination: Best Original Song for “The Look of Love,” which plays as the romantic theme when Sellers and Ursula Andress are seducing each other. (Well, to be fair, she’s doing more of the work.) It’s sung in the film by one of the greatest singers of all time, Dusty Springfield, and its inclusion is a true highlight. By the way, the instrumental theme, written by Burt Bacharach and performed by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, is also amazing.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“The Look of Love”)

The Lion King (2019)

 

Remaking The Lion King, the Disney classic from 1994, was a completely unnecessary exercise. While Disney has been very successful in recent years in presenting live-action remakes of some of its animated hits, this subpar version of The Lion King is all CGI, so now we really have two animated versions of the same film. The later version’s depiction of the animals is an amazing feat, no doubt, because the animals certainly look realistic (even though everyone knows that not to be the case). The 2019 version has the same plot as the original, and it even seems to follow the original shot-by-shot most of the time. A young cub runs away from his home because he thinks he has caused the death of his father, and he must return years later to save the pride from his uncle’s destructive behavior. The voices are different from those of the earlier actors, except for James Earl Jones, of course, and more members of the cast were people of color this time, thankfully. To be fair, though, John Oliver as Zazu the hornbill, Seth Rogan as Pumbaa the warthog, and Billy Eichner as Timon the meerkat almost steal the film, probably because they serve as the comic relief and it’s easier to look for laughs when the rest of the movie is so mind-numbingly similar to its earlier iteration. Beyonce, who voices Nala, contributes some new songs, but much of the music is from the original Oscar-winning score. I’m sure younger audiences unfamiliar with the 1994 version enjoyed this remake, but anyone who has seen the charming and entertaining original is left wondering what the point of the remake is—other than to make more money, that is.

Oscar Nomination: Best Achievement in Visual Effects

Breakthrough (2019)

 

Breakthrough is one of the better faith-based films in recent years, and that’s saying something substantial given how narrowly focused and rather simple-minded many other entries have been. Chrissy Metz (best known for her role on TV’s This Is Us) portrays Joyce Smith, a mom whose Christian faith brings her adopted son back to life after he falls through the ice covering a lake in St. Louis, Missouri. Her son John (played by Marcel Ruiz, who spends much of the film in a coma in a hospital bed, so not the most challenging of roles) is a 14-year-old aspiring basketball star, but he has quite a lot of baggage that makes him resistant to the love that his mother offers. He was abandoned as a baby in Guatemala, and the Smiths (Josh Lucas plays husband and adoptive father Brian Smith) rescued him while on a mission to South America. John is also rescued from the frozen lake but not until he’s been submerged for more than twenty minutes. Attempts to revive him at the first hospital fail, but when his mother shows up and prays over his body, he regains his pulse after being pronounced dead. From the religious perspective of the film, she obviously prays him back to life. He’s transferred to another hospital in order to have Dr. Garrett (Dennis Haysbert, a reliable and welcome presence in many TV shows and movies), who is a specialist in drowning cases—whatever that means—assist in reviving John. Garrett offers little hope that John will survive or even be close to normal if he does survive given the likely damage to his brain and other major organs. Joyce, however, believes that her faith and prayer can bring her son back, and other prayers follow from John’s classmates and teachers, everyone at the family’s church, and even people who hear about John’s story on the news. You can easily figure out the ending without any help, but that doesn’t necessarily detract from the movie’s various strengths such as the performances by Metz and by Topher Grace from That 70s Show as Pastor Jason, a more “contemporary” Christian than Joyce would like to have as the leader of her church (but who she warms to, naturally, as she sits by John’s bed in the hospital). The film does suffer from some of the clichés that weigh down many faith-based films. For example, the firefighter who rescues John, Tommy Shine (Mike Colter), admits that he doesn’t really know if he believes in God, and the non-believer comes around to accepting the power of faith before the end credits begin to roll. Even Joyce has to admit her failings and submit fully to God in order for her prayers to work. And, of course, there are lots of tears. Breakthrough is a very weepy movie with tons of crying, but all of the tears are earned honestly. The story is based upon Joyce Smith’s book about what truly happened to her son, and the real-life counterparts to the film’s characters appear at the end. It’s very inspiring to see them all well and happy.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“I’m Standing with You”)