Sunday, February 01, 2026

My 1972 Oscar Ballot

All right-we are ready-set-cook for another My Ballot!  We did the 1972 Oscar Viewing Project a few weeks ago (I do not know why there is a warning there, but I promise there's nothing salacious if you are apprehensive about clicking the link), and though it's been a while since we last did one of these (and 1972 took WAY too long), I am proud that I am getting these out relatively quickly in succession.  For those unfamiliar, for the Oscar Viewing Project, I discuss the films chosen for Oscar in their feature-length, narrative-film categories, seeing every single nominee, but with the My Ballot it's my turn, picking my own nominees and winners.  If you are curious how I've done this in the past, this is our 31st such article, and links to all 30 past contests are at the bottom of this article.  I love writing these, and so I hope you enjoy!

1972 is the first of the 1970's we've done (for a blog that focuses a lot on pre-1975 cinema, we've only done a couple such years so far as we largely focused on finishing off the 21st Century), maybe my favorite decade of movies (give or take the 1940's).  But I struggled a bit in terms of the year over how to differentiate from Oscar, because the Academy largely got this year right-this WAS the year of Cabaret & The Godfather.  If anything, I'm more indulgent of these two films than Oscar was.  But I do feel like I found some touches that Oscar wasn't quite ready for (like some more inventive SciFi films or the early comedies of Woody Allen, who wouldn't really become an Oscar mainstay for another 5 years), and some of my own personal flair (you will notice plenty of westerns here, though neo-noir wasn't nearly as good in 1972 so I don't have as much of that to distinguish myself).  Hopefully you enjoy-we'll be going to 1964 for our next set (my hope is to get back into a once-a-month cadence so OVP in February and My Ballot in March), but for now-take a look!

Notes about categories: As always, I have Visual Effects (in 1972 only an honorary statue) and Makeup (not a category until 1981), even though Oscar doesn't because they both have been around since the dawn of movies, and I also have the category of Dance Direction, at this point long-retired by Oscar (this will be the last chronological year I'll do it, keeping it a 1934-72 category as choreography rarely showed up in a major way after this).  I also only have three films eligible for Dance Direction & Scoring (as always), but the rest (save Best Picture) are five-wide.

Notes about eligibility: Two notes here.  First, The Emigrants is one of the only films to be nominated for multiple Oscar ceremonies, being cited for the 1971 Oscars for Foreign Language Film and for four additional awards the following Oscars.  My rule is always to go with Oscar eligibility if the film is nominated (for an apples-to-apples approach), and given The Emigrants was cited in more categories in 1972, that's where I'm going with, but we will obviously talk about it when we get to the 1971 OVP for Best Foreign Language Film (even though it will not be eligible for any My Ballot's that year).  Additionally, in the case of some films that are commonly-associated with multiple years (one of them being Duck, You Sucker, which you'll see shows up relatively often and is a 1971 or 1972 film depending on how you think of it), I made a judgment call and included it here.  There are other films I'm saving for later, so if you have questions as to why I didn't include a movie, I promise to address it in the comments (it could be I didn't see it, it could be I didn't like it, or it could be it's eligible a different year...only way to find out is to ask!).  Otherwise-enjoy (and share your picks as well!).

Picture

Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Cabaret
Duck, You Sucker
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
The Emigrants
The Godfather
The New Land
Play It Again, Sam
What's Up, Doc?
The Working Class Goes to Heaven

Gold: I am hopeful we will one day have all of these years done for the My Ballots (if I live that long, it's one of my bucket list goals), but I cannot tell you how excited I am to officially call The Godfather not just the greatest film of the 1970's, but possibly the most perfect film ever made.  From start to finish, a true landmark.
Silver: In most years, Cabaret would be a film that would be hard to beat.  Only against the behemoth that is The Godfather could it possibly get silver.  The movie's incredible musical numbers, paired with a legendary pair of performances from Joel & Liza, and the dawning fascism that happens amidst the backdrop of decaying glitter...bienvenue indeed.
Bronze: With this competition, the battle is for bronze, and in a tight race between Leone's least-celebrated (but still wonderful) western and the Bringing Up Baby shenanigans of Streisand & O'Neal, I can't help but stick with What's Up, Doc?, one of the funniest things I've ever laid eyes upon.

Director

Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather
Bob Fosse, Cabaret
Sergio Leone, Duck, You Sucker
Jan Troell, The Emigrants
Jan Troell, The New Land

Gold: Francis Ford Coppola would have what would be considered the peak of his career two years later, with The Conversation & The Godfather, Part II both coming out and winning him dual Best Picture nominations.  But the greatest moment of his career is surely The Godfather, a movie that would define quality movie-making in every aesthetic for the remainder of the cinema.
Silver: Bob Fosse's vision for Cabaret is truly special (and like The Godfather, would profoundly influence future musicals).  The way that we see the rise of fascism amidst the glittering twinkle of entertainment is a lesson that not just needs to be taught, it needs to be screamed in a modern era where this happens every single day on Fox News.
Bronze: Sergio Leone might be the most consistently excellent director this side of Stanley Kubrick.  It's hard to imagine that Duck, You Sucker is considered one of his "lesser" masterpieces given how wonderfully inventive the film is, using two unlikely heroes and a massive wall of explosions & comedy to make one of the best westerns of the 1970's.

Actor

Marlon Brando, The Godfather
Ryan O'Neal, What's Up, Doc?
Al Pacino, The Godfather
Rod Steiger, Duck, You Sucker
Max von Sydow, The New Land

Gold: I am not one of those people that tries to cheat my way into Brando being supporting, and certainly am not going to adopt Oscar's position that Pacino is supporting-this is a two-man, father-and-son lead film, and one where I will have to choose one over the other to stay true to this project.  And of the two, it is Brando's towering, defining achievement that feels just a little more immobile and cinematic for the gold medal.
Silver: Pacino's work, though, is more cerebral, and more of the New Hollywood than Brando's method performance.  The way that his Michael becomes his father's heir, simultaneously resisting it and succumbing to its luxurious decadence, is one of the great screen turns.  If you ranked all of the lead actors of the 1970's, this would probably still be the Top 2.
Bronze: Rod Steiger is not name-checked as one of the great actors of his era now, but was in his actual era, and you see why the reviewers in the moment got it right with something like Duck, You Sucker, having effortless chemistry with James Coburn & genuinely solid comic bits amongst the action.

Actress

Liza Minnelli, Cabaret
Barbra Streisand, What's Up, Doc?
Cicely Tyson, Sounder
Liv Ullmann, The New Land
Joanne Woodward, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Gold: Liza Minnelli, in many ways, is terrible casting for Sally Bowles.  Sally Bowles is not supposed to be a great talent-she's forever supposed to be stuck at the Kit Kat Klub, never leaving it because she's too mediocre and just dreams big.  It's a testament to her ability to make us believe that we don't care that she's being played by one of the singular talents of her generation, a consummate song-and-dance queen born who only (let's be honest) got one real film truly worthy of her.
Silver: Speaking of generational talents, Barbra Streisand is maybe at her most natural and alluring (damn is she sexy in this film) playing opposite Ryan O'Neal in What's Up, Doc?.  I can't quite get past how good her timing is here-she lands every punchline, making sure you know why she's driving O'Neal crazy...and he can't get enough.
Bronze: Joanne Woodward has a reputation amongst actors as one of the most underrated performers of her era, her romance with Paul Newman sometimes getting in the way of real recognition.  That happens in Effect of Gamma Rays, a movie about the ways we desperately try to avoid the mistakes of our parents (and yet fall for them just the same).  That Woodward did this with her real-life daughter playing her fictional one just adds another level of meta to a forgotten classic.

Supporting Actor

Eddie Axberg, The New Land
James Caan, The Godfather
Robert Duvall, The Godfather
Joel Grey, Cabaret
Abe Vigoda, The Godfather

Gold: In a similar way to how Liza Minnelli would honestly never have a movie role that measured up to her in Cabaret, Joel Grey, a storied stage actor, would never have a movie role that could compare to the Emcee, one of the most delicious and nasty creations in the history of the movies.  His villainous demonic imp doesn't need a backstory or anything about him to understand that he is the evil lurking the in the fabric of this picture.
Silver: With Pacino out of this field & in lead where he belongs, we are given the chance to properly recognize James Caan in his own right.  If Vito is wisdom and Michael deliberation, then Sonny is a fiery impetuousness.  Sexy (and endowed) with a temper that will be his doom, he still brings an eldest sibling energy that feels ingrained in the picture.
Bronze: For much of his latter career, Abe Vigoda would become a punchline, the source of a joke website wondering if he was still alive or not.  Lost in that pop culture cache is that he gave an outstanding performance as the intelligent Tessio in The Godfather.  The isolation in his final scene with Al Pacino is maybe even more indicative of Michael's dying innocence than what would come next.

Supporting Actress

Marisa Berenson, Cabaret
Madeline Kahn, What's Up, Doc?
Diane Keaton, The Godfather
Talia Shire, The Godfather
Shelley Winters, The Poseidon Adventure

Gold: In a weekend where we lost Catherine O'Hara at what feels like a far too young age, we need to remember another zany, singular comedic actress that went well before she had been appreciated enough, and that would be Madeline Kahn.  Showing up and stealing every scene she is in in What's Up, Doc? as Ryan O'Neal's buttoned-up love interest with such confidence...how is this her feature film debut?
Silver: Speaking of comedic actors that we lost far too soon, Diane Keaton shows in The Godfather something that I've always known: she's just as good at drama as she is comedy.  The way her Kay is brought in, "knowing" Michael better than anyone, and leaving with a closed door as she understand she has no concept of the man that she has wed, forever trapped in the grasp of her mistake-she is the heart of The Godfather that needs to be taken out in order to show Michael's destiny being fulfilled.
Bronze: Thankfully Marisa Berenson is still with us, and even more thankfully, she was able to bring her high-fashion beauty to Cabaret, a movie that shows within its confines a really tragic love story (in much part alien to Sally & Brian's romance), about Berenson's frequently silly, but all-too-real figure who is rich...and thanks to her being Jewish, about to suffer the film's most terrible fate in the wake of the rising Nazi tide.

Adapted Screenplay

Cabaret
The Emigrants
The Godfather
The New Land
Play It Again, Sam

Gold: Nearly a carbon copy of the Best Director lineup (I usually try to spread the wealth a bit more than this, having all five of these be Best Picture nominees), I will also pick the same gold medalist.  I have actually read the original Godfather novel, and so I know there's huge swaths of it (particularly involving Sonny's mistress) that are fascinating but unnecessary for a tighter plot.  But even as good as that book is, it pales in comparison to the impossibly quotable, no extra scene involved approach the film takes.
Silver: Musicals usually get the fuzzy end of the lollipop when it comes to screenplay awards, and I'm hardly innocent of such things.  Which is why I think it's important to point out when one lands beautifully-Cabaret expands the world beyond the stage version (particularly in the "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" scene) to scary effect, giving us a true story next to the beautiful music.
Bronze: One of the very few times that Jan Troell's epic pairing is going to get mentioned here (despite a mountain of nominations), The New Land takes the original Emigrants (much more claustrophobic than the original picture) and turns it into an expansive look at the way that life can speed by as decades roll by in instants.

Original Screenplay

Aguirre, the Wrath of God
The Candidate
Duck, You Sucker
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask
What's Up, Doc?

Gold: One of the funniest movies I've ever seen, What's, Up Doc? is a masterpiece, and somehow an original (even if it borrows pretty liberally from Bringing Up Baby...I had to make a judgment call on that one).  The Buck Henry screenplay has just constant one-liners, giving Barbra Streisand the best showcase of her acting talents with little music in sight.
Silver: Action films or westerns, like musicals above, don't usually get their due in a category like this, but Duck, You Sucker is so clever and so fun that I can't deny it.  You can feel the build of the film, the way that it keeps repeating certain motifs while still moving forward-it doesn't have the grandeur of his Dollars trilogy or Once Upon a Time in the West, but it makes up for it by having a genuinely strong friendship story at its center.
Bronze: The Academy would fall in love with Woody Allen a few years later, and the world would fall out of love with him in the decades that followed, but it's hard to watch his movies at their best and not appreciate the unique stamp he would give that no other filmmaker could ever duplicate.  Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask should probably be the title of Allen's Wikipedia Personal Life page for fans of his work, but it's a very funny film, particularly the bits involving John Carradine.

Sound Mixing

Cabaret
Duck, You Sucker
Frenzy
The Godfather
What's Up, Doc?

Gold: Come to the Cabaret...and take a listen.  Musicals are the bread-and-butter for Oscar in the sound categories, but I am not so easily bought.  You need to find ways to show off your music, giving us personality like an over-used cymbal to get above the chatter of a nightclub crowd or the way that each musical number in this feels tailor-made to the story it's trying to tell.
Silver: I mean, think of just the scene where Michael's first kill happens.  In The Godfather, details always matter, and you can hear the way that that Nino Rota score is creeping in alongside gun shots and clinking metal and breaking glass.  It's like one of Chopin's piano concertos...every note is in place.
Bronze: The detailing in What's Up, Doc? is what has made it stand the test of time.  The work that they do during those Looney Tunes-style action sequences (especially the famous chase sequence) work so well because we're hearing the bikes & cars whirling by.

Sound Editing

Duck, You Sucker
The Godfather
The Poseidon Adventure
Silent Running
Solaris

Gold: Silent Running is an odd movie, partially because it's not a particularly good one...but it looks like a good one, and it sure as hell sounds like a good one.  Before prestige SciFi films were really a thing, Silent Running gives us a movie with space station backgrounds, explosions, and robots to give us a very necessary realism in this environmental tale.
Silver: The Poseidon Adventure, on the other hand, does not do subtle, and god bless for it.  The gushing water, the way that we hear the constant presence of a sinking ship, and the fiery furnace of the final scenes all combine to be an audible treat, one that the audience will be gripping their armrests for throughout.
Bronze: And speaking of explosions, I'm not going to nominate a movie that is alternately called A Fistful of Dynamite for Best Picture and totally ignore it in the sound medals.  The best parts of this are the way that they combine action and comedy, and well, not to give away the ending, but sound plays a huge part in that equation.

Score

The Cowboys
Duck, You Sucker
The Godfather
Jeremiah Johnson
Sleuth

Gold: Okay, so this is where I confess that I don't always play by Oscar's rules.  The Academy famously declared that The Godfather was far too similar to a previous score Nino Rota had done (1958's Fortunella) to be nominated but I think that's a bit nit-picky (particularly given this is the same Academy that would eventually nominate the score to Wicked), and I'm not going to miss giving "The Godfather Waltz," one of the most perfect pieces of music ever written for the cinema, a gold medal.
Silver: That being said, Oscar chose really well (better than any of their other nominees) when it chose its replacement in Sleuth, as John Addison's jumpy, cheerfully mysterious score is an absolute pleasure to listen to, and is maybe the sort of score I wouldn't have come across had it not been for Oscar thinking outside the box.
Bronze: Put Ennio Morricone with Sergio Leone, and you've got magic.  The two would make some of the best pairings in the history of the movie western, and that's true with Duck, You Sucker, a more playful score than we usually get from these two, but Morricone's signature dramatic flourishes are still there in the film's expansive runtime.

Scoring

Cabaret
Jeremiah Johnson
Super Fly

Gold: I mean, if Cabaret is for most intents-and-purposes the last truly great traditional musical until the early 2000's (which, let's be honest, it pretty much is until Moulin Rouge! and Chicago come to town), you can't deny it a gold medal here.  The best parts of this are the way that it takes songs like "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" and "If You Could See Her" and uses the audience itself as a way to react to the lyrics (something usually not possible outside of a stage show).
Silver: Film scoring in the 1970's & 1980's had to take on a different look with less-and-less musicals to use as inspiration, and so as I approach these decades in these My Ballots, you're going to come across movies like Super Fly, which used a largely original song score to give us a sense of the film itself, with us feeling like we have actually stumbled into 1970's Harlem, and can hear music playing from open windows.
Bronze: A backhanded compliment, admittedly, but the score to Jeremiah Johnson and the dulcet sounds of Tim McIntire's voice throughout imply a much better movie than what we actually get.  Jeremiah Johnson is one of those films I have to continually remind myself I didn't like...mostly because the tech elements, and particularly the music, is so fine.

Original Song

"The Ballad of Jeremiah Johnson," Jeremiah Johnson
"The Harder They Come," The Harder They Come
"Mein Herr," Cabaret
"Money, Money," Cabaret
"Superfly," Super Fly

Gold: It is insane to me that Oscar made a list of the best songs of 1972, and skipped all five of these songs (and I even like the song they picked!).  The battles I had with myself to have to skip a song as good as "Across 110th Street" on this list...and they pick "Strange are the Ways of Love"...I just can't.  In terms of the win, it's going to be one of the two original numbers from Cabaret, in this case "Mein Herr," a great character introductory piece, and one of the best "new" songs in a musical Hollywood ever put together.
Silver: The jazzy R&B tune of "Superfly" is insanely infectious (again, a year after Isaac Hayes "Theme to Shaft" won an Oscar, there should've been room for another classic blaxploitation crime drama), and lyrically really cool, with Curtis Mayfield cooing out lines like "the man of the hour has an air of great power, the dudes have envied him for so long."
Bronze: The staging on "Money, Money" is what breaks the tie against the other two songs (in my opinion this is my biggest upgrade on Oscar-all of these feel very worthy of medals)-the way that we get to see Joel & Liza play off each other, highlighting the similarities in their performances which we need to make the ending land is why it feels the worthiest.

Dance Direction

1776
Cabaret
Man of La Mancha

Gold: As I said above, we will retire the category of Dance Direction after 1972, only having it from the mid-1930's through the early-1970's, and part of the reason I ended it here was because they just stopped making movies as sensational as Cabaret after a while.  The way that we have the Kit Kat Klub dancers, combining an exotic layer to their "unchoreographed" routines, adds so much.  Also love Joel & Liza's spectacular toe-tapping in "Money, Money."
Silver: Man of La Mancha is honestly more of a traditional musical than Cabaret, with bigger production numbers and fun dance routines.  The standout for me is "I, Don Quixote," where Peter O'Toole & James Coco (hardly what you'd think of as natural hoofers) both do a choreographed gallup with a horse.
Bronze: Finishing this off is 1776, something of a cheat here (let's be honest-this is hardly a "dancer's" musical), but there are simple romantic moments like "He Plays the Violin" where we get a beautiful waltz (and yes, I considered putting The Godfather in just for the waltz alone, but thought that was indulgent) along some later in the film dances at Constitution Hall that fill up the movie with patriotism.

Art Direction

Cabaret
The Godfather
The Poseidon Adventure
Silent Running
What's Up, Doc?

Gold: It's not often in this article you see a film other than The Godfather or Cabaret come out on top, but credit where it's due-the remarkable staging in The Poseidon Adventure is hard to deny.  The meticulous details like the way that it feels like we've stumbled into the Queen Mary (in some cases, we actually have), particularly as the ship turns upside down gives us such a specific aesthetic to play with as the film continues.
Silver: That said, I'm not going to ignore The Godfather.  The detailing in some of the scenes here are really special.  Look at the over-the-top luxury of the Corleones' house, with him trying to display the wealth he came to America to capture, or the recreations of New York restaurants and streets that feel like you've stumbled exactly into another time & place.
Bronze: And I'm not going to ignore Cabaret either.  Here it's less about decadence or luxury, and more about quantity-the way that we see every little knickknack out at Sally's apartment, or the claustrophobic feeling of the Kit Kat Klub, where the audience is almost spilling onto the stage it's so crowded with tables and chairs

Cinematography

Cabaret
Duck, You Sucker
The Godfather
Jeremiah Johnson
The New Land

Gold: The golden hues of The Godfather are what makes it so timeless (and Coppola borrowed from himself when he brought them to the sequels).  It feels like we're looking at an oil painting throughout, the framing and coloring washed with age as we are transported back to a different era, perhaps one that only exists in memory.
Silver: The glitzy glamour of Cabaret with us covered in clouds and night life lights keeps you drowned in stardust, always wanting to kick back, relax, and forget your troubles...and the fact that the cinematography team only had two scenes ("Tomorrow Belongs to Me" and the wedding sequence) feel like it's truly seeing something approaching realism shows how intentional this approach becomes.
Bronze: So here's where Oscar & I are kindred spirits, because we are both such a fool for a beautifully shot, in-nature film like Jeremiah Johnson, which in every sequence looks and acts like we're actually going into the frontier and carving up the west alongside Robert Redford.

Costume

Cabaret
Duck, You Sucker
The Godfather
Jeremiah Johnson
What's Up, Doc?

Gold: I talked about this with Art Direction, but part of the tale of The Godfather is that they are trying to create an aura, a "new money" sheen with old-world respectability (it's in fact the plot of all three movies).  That comes across in the decadence of the tailoring (perfectly-draped suits, showing off how sexy a 1972-era James Caan & Al Pacino are), and it makes people who don't fit in (like Diane Keaton's Kay with her more established, less-to-prove red dress) feel all the more out-of-place.
Silver: Everything that Liza wears as Sally is fascinating, because it is always toeing the line between chic and ridiculous.  Sometimes, when she's singing (in that black bowler hat and plunging neckline black dress), everything works fabulously.  But more often it's too much, emulating a glamour that she can't master.  Costume design should be about pretty costumes, yes, but they should also be about building a character and Charlotte Flemming's work in Cabaret achieves that.
Bronze: It only brings me a touch of pleasure that I (completely unintentionally) gave Peter Bogdonavich a sole nomination in this article, while his under-sung ex-wife Polly Platt gets two.  But Platt's work in What's Up, Doc? deserves two nominations-look at the gorgeous way that she clothes Barbra Streisand in every scene, that fabulous plaid newsboy cap and a string of effortlessly glamorous shirts, coats, & one big dress.  This is a character who is already cool-she doesn't spend time being fashionable, she just is.

Film Editing

Cabaret
Deliverance
Duck, You Sucker
The Godfather
The Poseidon Adventure

Gold: The category that is most synonymous with Best Picture, and given that I have given The Godfather a grand total of 18 nominations (well, I haven't but I will when you get to the next paragraph), more than any other movie we've done in 31 profiles for the My Ballot...of course it's winning this award.  But it deserves it-the Michael kill scene, Sonny getting shot at from the toll booth, the scene where James Caan kicks his brother-in-law...every moment in this movie feels like it's cut with sophistication and intention.
Silver: And yes, I'm going with the cliche once more of Cabaret getting the silver to The Godfather's gold.  The ingenious framing device of using the audience against the musical numbers is really something-I loved the way that they cut together the splashes of this throughout each of the Kit Kat Klub musical numbers, and the way that what is happening in the film is so effectively juxtaposed to the songs at-hand.
Bronze: But in proof that I can truly see beyond just my favorites for this category, we're going to do something rare and pick a film that was nominated in no other categories for the bronze.  Deliverance is a movie about anticipation, throughout the film it feels like we're seeing ahead, always thinking ahead, and it makes the one scene (you know the scene) that is truly in-the-moment and not trying to get to what will happen next all the more terrifying.

Makeup & Hairstyling

Cabaret
Duck, You Sucker
The Godfather
Jeremiah Johnson
Roma

Gold: I mean, it inspired a generation of Halloween costumes for a reason.  The gaudy heavy eye shadow, plastered mascara, and coiffed wigs of Cabaret are something else.  The best part of this is the way that you rarely see most of the characters (save for Sally) outside of this makeup, with it feeling almost tattooed onto Joel Grey's Emcee.
Silver: If you ever doubt how effective the makeup work in The Godfather (done by one of the, well, godfathers of that genre Dick Smith) is in this picture, watch this movie back-to-back with Last Tango in Paris (which I did in college), and you'll notice how shockingly young Brando still looks in the latter film, and suddenly realize how advanced the old age makeup was in what he did as Vito Corleone.
Bronze: The unrecognizable furry mountain man look of Rod Steiger (not to be confused with the unrecognizable furry mountain man look of Robert Redford) is paired with the faded boy band haircut of James Coburn in Duck, You Sucker, just getting this one ahead of Jeremiah Johnson for the bronze.

Visual Effects

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Duck, You Sucker
The Poseidon Adventure
Silent Running
Solaris

Gold: The only category field of the entire article that nominated neither The Godfather nor Cabaret (and yes, I did consider The Godfather)!  When it comes to special effects, I tend to like beautiful more than large special effects, and coming just a few years off of the Grand Teton of pre-1975 Visual Effects movies (2001: A Space Odyssey), Douglas Trumbull's sophisticated (and shockingly low in budget) Silent Running creates modern-looking, realistic space effects that are just impossible to ignore.
Silver: That being said, I do have a sense of fun, and surely you can't go wrong with the big-wave pleasures of The Poseidon Adventure.  The practical effects on display during the giant wave sequences, as well as the impressive stunt work needed for some of the water flooding moments are just extraordinary-you see why this film set off a trend.
Bronze: We're going to end this article with a movie that, by-and-large, most people consider one of the greatest of 1972 that I liked, but don't know if I understood properly.  But what I did understand of Solaris was its beauty, clearly inspiring the hyper-realism that would take place in movies like Gravity, Passengers, & Interstellar even decades later.

Other My Oscar Ballots: 1931, 19481957198119992000200120022003200420052006200720082009201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024

1 comment:

Patrick Yearout said...

God bless you, John, for the recognition of "What's Up, Doc?" It's my favorite film.