The Mosquito Coast (1986)

Film: The Mosquito Coast (1986)

Stars: Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Andre Gregory, River Phoenix, Martha Plimpton

Director: Peter Weir

Oscar History: No nominations, though both Ford and composer Maurice Jarre got Golden Globe nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Harrison Ford: click here to learn more about Mr. Ford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Harrison Ford was not the first actor associated with a specific role or being unable to escape from it.  But in the modern era of filmmaking (i.e. post-Jaws) he really personified the actor whose characters ended up being too popular for him to stop doing them. In the 1980's, this meant that Ford made a number of films as both Han Solo & Indiana Jones (from 1980-84, he made four of them alone, and only took a break for Blade Runner, a rather difficult shoot for the actor despite its later cult status).  But unlike the 1990's, when Ford's dramatic attempts outside of action-adventure would become something of a source of ridicule (and not inspire a lot of critical hosannas), in the 1980's he had a lot of acclaim on this front, particularly in the movie of Peter Weir.  In 1985, he starred in the blockbuster hit Witness, which won him his first (and to date only) Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.  In 1986, he appeared in another dramatic departure from Weir, but unlike Witness it was a flop (he'd recover pretty quickly two years later with the massive success of Working Girl, a movie which got pretty much everyone in the cast but him an Oscar nomination).  The Mosquito Coast is a unique film though (and Ford has frequently cited it as his favorite) given how well it captured a certain type of toxic masculinity, and how brittle & unrelenting Ford's portrayal of the main character is right up until the end credits.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Allie Fox (Ford), an inventor who hates the American Dream, capitalism, and a global economy that relies upon foreign industries to keep it afloat (there's an early scene where he eviscerates a shop owner for carrying products made in Japan, which in the 1980's you can't entirely tell if this is just him leaning in on Reagan conservatism or makes him truly xenophobic).  After yet another employer being disappointed with his impressive inventions (in this case a house that can make ice), he decides to move his family to the jungles of Belize, where he buys a village in the rainforest.  Allie, his wife Margot (Mirren), whom he constantly calls "Mother," and their four children, including eldest son Charlie (Phoenix) initially find success introducing his impressive inventions to the jungle.  But his paranoia starts to settle in.  He convinces his family that a nuclear war has struck America, destroying the country, and when a group of rebels take over his camp, he murders them (not in the way he planned, initially wanting to freeze them to death but instead having them burned to death in an explosion that pollutes the river).  Eventually he drives his family mad with loyalty tests, and is shot by a missionary whom Allie is convinced is running a Christian concentration camp, killing him as his family finally finds freedom.

It's easy to see, watching the film, why it didn't resonate with Reagan America, even with (or maybe especially because of) Harrison Ford in the lead.  The movie is dark, and shows a toxicity in the male ego that you don't usually find here.  In the 1980's, with Reagan promising a return of the American Dream for white families (and in particular white men) while widening income gaps and unsteady unemployment numbers took its toll on Middle America figures like the Fox family.  Huey Long had said that "every man is a king" and in the 1980's that was the reigning theology for conservative men, and while Allie Fox presents as being anti-capitalist, he is deeply conservative about gender & family life, and that shows in the way that he blames women and people of color for his failures to be truly successful the way he trains his children to think he should be.  It's hard not to watch this film, and in particular the way that he treats his wife Margot (not physically abusing her, but clearly indulging in what we'd now consider emotional abuse) and think of the MAGA movement, and the way that it tries to get back to this era...knowing full well that it is filled with angry men who still blame the world for their failures.

Ford's portrayal of Allie Fox is really good, and it's in part because he doesn't let up on him.  Most actors, particularly ones who are super reliant upon audiences wanting to root for them, wouldn't have allowed their characterization to be so unsympathetic.  They would've given him redemption, or an apology scene with Helen Mirren at the end of the movie.  But thankfully Weir doesn't do that, and we get with Ford's performance a broken man, one you might understand where he's coming from because he's the product of his environment (capitalism can tear us all apart in the end), but who is also so egocentric he doesn't acknowledge the harm he's doing because it's his harm.  In a year where men like Graham Platner (who put so much of the blame for their failings on others rather than himself) are being celebrated by the left (and Donald Trump, doing the same thing, is a deity for the right), it's hard not to think that Mosquito Coast and Ford's layered performance aren't ahead of their time.

Murphy's Law (1986)

Film: Murphy's Law (1986)

Stars: Charles Bronson, Carrie Sondgress, Kathleen Wilhoite, Robert F. Lyons

Director: J. Lee Thompson

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Charles Bronson: click here to learn more about Mr. Bronson (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

After Death Wish, Charles Bronson would spend the remainder of his career making, for lack of a better word, schlock, most of these movies for Cannon Films, a production company that produced our picture today Murphy's Law.  Cannon would make some notable films, including Runaway Train with Jon Voight & Eric Roberts, as well as Street Smart which featured a breakout role for Morgan Freeman (all three of these actors would get Oscar nominations for their parts), but it was best known for producing lucrative action flicks that would play really well in the emerging home video market.  In many ways it was a predecessor to the direct-to-video trend of the 1990's (and the later phenomenon of RedBox movies featuring fading action stars like Mel Gibson & Bruce Willis), and the two actors they were most well-known for working with were Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson.  Outside The Indian Runner with Dennis Hopper & Patricia Arquette, after 1980 Bronson would work pretty much exclusively on the 1980's equivalent of Poverty Row movies, making a fortune in the process, but largely eschewing any sort of acting legacy as none of these films post-Death Wish have really lasted in the public's memory.

(Spoilers Ahead) This doesn't mean that all of these films were bad, exactly, but they were formulaic and they were decidedly not Sergio Leone or John Sturges.  Murphy's Law is about a man who essentially feels like he's on autopilot (or maybe that's just Bronson's blasé performance).  Jack Murphy (Bronson) is a cop who spends the film's opening scenes arresting Arabella McGee (Wilhoite), a young carjacker with a foul mouth.  We see intercuts of a mysterious woman we later learn to be Joan Freeman (Snodgress), who is bent on revenge against Jack for imprisoning her years earlier, and frames him for murder, which means that he and Arabella must go on the run as he tries to solve the case.  The film involves a series of dead bodies stacking up, along with some nudity, drugs, and (because this is a 1980's action film with a female lead under the age of thirty) sexual assault, and a variety of character actors getting killed, including Bill Henderson, who you may recognize as the Cop in the movie Clue (or at least that's how I recognized him, though perhaps more learned people will know he was an accomplished jazz musician).  The movie ends with Arabella & Jack injured but clearly friends (and maybe more), while Joan is flattened on a pavement after a fall.

The movie almost works on a camp level, even if it's not remotely any actual good.  Wilhoite, whom you might know from either her years of voicing the title character in the cartoon Pepperann or from playing Luke's sister on Gilmore Girls, has some of the most ridiculous dialogue I've ever heard in a film.  She is asked to insult someone every 15 seconds, frequently with profane or even offensive (this movie is CRAZY homophobic, though notably there is in fact an actual surprise gay couple to at least make one of the insults feel accurate if still offensive), in a schtick that would basically suffocate your kidneys if you turned it into a drinking game.  We learn virtually nothing about Snodgress other than (as she goes) she's clearly mentally insane, but she tries her best to instill a sense of fun into these proceedings, but all-in-all, this film fulfills its purpose: it's fast-paced, feeding your baser instincts, and disposable.  That it isn't particularly good doesn't feel like Cannon (or Bronson's) concern since they already got your money.

This is where I put in that it's disappointing what Bronson would do with his later career, because he would never get a post-fame reassessment like some of his peers (I'm thinking specifically of Clint Eastwood & Burt Reynolds, both of whom would eventually become Oscar-nominated actors) would in the years that followed.  This wasn't for a lack of trying.  Bronson turned down the role of The Shootist (John Wayne's final role, and one of his best) because the main character was dying of prostate cancer, and Bronson didn't want to play that onscreen.  Ingmar Bergman was fascinated by Bronson, and tried to work with him, but Bronson didn't like Bergman's films & wasn't interested.  He tried out for a number of major movies of the era, including Capricorn One, Escape from New York, and bizarrely the lead in Superman, but wasn't "right for the part" and it went nowhere.

The most famous role, and one that would've changed his legacy that Bronson would turn down was of Curly in City Slickers.  Initially the role went to Jack Palance, but Palance had a scheduling conflict, and so they brought in Bronson for the part.  But at the time, Bronson's beloved wife Jill Ireland was dying of breast cancer, and Bronson wouldn't allow himself to work while she was suffering.  Bronson turned down the role, the City Slickers producers found a way to get Palance into the schedule...and Palance would go on to win an Academy Award for the role.  Bronson would never have a role of that caliber offered to him again, and would work irregularly until a hip surgery eventually made it impossible.  Toward the end of his life, before his death from lung cancer in 2003 at the age of 81, Bronson would walk with a cane, one that contained the ashes of Jill Ireland, whom he couldn't bear to be apart from, even in death.  The cane would be buried with him.

Next month, we're going to talk about a contemporary of Bronson's, and a frequent costar (they would make three films together), but one whose legacy post-fame was decidedly more critical-friendly...though his life would be considerably shorter than Bronson's which would have an even bigger impact on that legacy.

OVP: Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

Film: Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

Stars: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Heather O'Rourke, Zelda Rubinstein, Will Sampson, Julian Beck

Director: Brian Gibson

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

If you look below, when you get past all of the Universal Monster pictures (which I've seen every single one of), we have not done any sequels in these write-ups.  That's on purpose.  While I have seen horror movie sequels (I am an ardent fan of the Scream movies at this point, for example, even taking off work to watch the sixth one so I didn't get it spoiled), I wanted this series to be about newness, and it felt a little cheap to just fill it up with franchises rather than lots of new ideas.  We are making the only exception to that this month with Poltergeist II, and we're doing this because the film was nominated for an Oscar, which has been an undercurrent of this year's theme of highlighting the rare horror films to be cited for Academy Awards.  The movie was nominated for Best Visual Effects, back when films like this could get cited for Best Visual Effects, though it (correctly) lost to Aliens.  The movie itself, though, never really justifies existing after the gemlike first picture in the series so surprisingly became American shorthand for 1980's horror.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place a year after the events of the first movie, and honestly part of it starts out promising.  We see the Freelings, including parents Diane (Williams) and Steve (Nelson) both dealing with the stress of the events, both practical (they can't get their insurance company to pay for their downed house) and psychological (they both are struggling with what to do next...basically PTSD abounds).  Psychic Tangina Barrons (Rubinstein) is back, now looking at their old home, and discovers that the spirit of an insane preacher named Henry Kane (Beck) is on the loose, and in this case, once again trying to get young Carol Anne (O'Rourke), pulling her to the Other Side.  A fight between the family, aided by Tangina and their new friend Taylor (Sampson), over whether or not Carol Anne will be brought to the Other Side once-and-for-all, or whether or not they can finally defeat it (until, of course, the third film in the series comes about).

I will not be seeing the third film, though.  Freed of the Oscar Viewing Project (the third film received no Academy Award nominations), I would only watch it if I'd liked the second one, and I decidedly did not.  The first movie, guided by producer Steven Spielberg, was an indictment of the Reagan Era, a spooky look at how consumerism and the pursuit of the white picket fence & life in the suburbs covers up the darker sides of the American Experiment, how it was built on the backs of other people's dreams.  It was littered with strong performances, and a wonderfully-tight script.

This film, on the other hand, is just a mess.  Gone is any sense of purpose-we get consumerism, but also fractured marital relations, an expanding (and nonsensical) mythology, and the same story we got in the first one with Carol Anne's soul being in the balance once again.  The movie wastes much of its cast.  Williams is front-and-center, but not given enough to do like in the first movie, and the distinctive Rubinstein just stays in the background for much of the movie, only being trotted out to read a line or two with high-pitched severity.  The visual effects, the main reason I watched this, aren't bad, but they also don't have the groundbreaking nature of the first film, and are more showy than actually aiding the film or making it pretty (or scary).

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, An American Werewolf in London, The Changeling, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, The House on Sorority Row, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, Sleepaway Camp, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

OVP: The Fly (1986)

Film: The Fly (1986)

Stars: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz

Director: David Cronenberg

Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Makeup*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

I have come a long way when it comes to horror, especially in the past year.  Films like Nightmare on Elm Street and Child's Play that I avoided for years because I assumed they would be too scary for me, I'm now able to handle.  But the one subgenre of horror I don't know that I'm ever going to actually enjoy is body horror.  This is a type of horror that deals with disruption of the human body that is, to be frank, too much for me, to the point where I don't find it enjoyable even when it's done well.  I didn't like this about me as a film critic (I often say, "all genres are capable of making good movies"), and so I wanted to throw a couple of the biggest body horror films in this month, and we're going to get to two in the next couple of days.  We'll start with one of the rare horror films to not just get an Oscar nomination, but to win one.  The Fly won Best Makeup (which weirdly the Oscars are stingy about handing over to horror despite this being a genre perfect for the category), and is generally considered to be a classic of the body horror genre (some even consider it to be David Cronenberg's best movie), and so with the OVP giving me a "just watch it, you have to eventually anyway" boost I got sucked into the world of Jeff Goldblum's The Fly.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is relatively short, and pretty simple (it's actually a remake of a 1950's horror film starring Vincent Price).  It's about Seth Brundle (Goldblum), a quirky scientist who takes a woman named Ronnie (Davis) back to his lab, and later learns she's a reporter.  She wants to write a story about the incredible invention he's created-a machine that can transport matter from one end of the room to the other.  Inevitably, he starts to move onto live-action matter, first a baboon, and then in a drunken stupor, himself.  When he does this, he's not smart enough to realize that there is a housefly in the chamber with him.  Initially, the change is incredible-he has super strength & his virility increases to the point where he exhausts Ronnie sexually (you gotta love the implied joke that it's Science Fiction if a man can last longer than a woman in bed).  But he starts to change for the worst, craving sugar & showing fits of anger.  Eventually he grows intense amounts of body hair, and drives Ronnie away.  When he finally calls her, he's transformed, now a grotesque mutant figure.  What's worse, Ronnie is pregnant (possibly from post his transformation), and could be carrying a mutant baby.  He kidnaps her to prevent her having an abortion (which given the situation, even Ted Cruz would've told her was the best course-of-action), and tries to fuse them together in a mutant state, before she eventually kills him, the film ending with the man she loves shot by her own hand.

The film itself is impressive.  Borrowing in a lot of ways from Franz Kafka's The Metapmorphosis (shut up, I've read the book, I'm allowed to reference it without it being abysmally pretentious), the movie shows the ways we are willing to give up our own humanity if it means feeding our ambition.  Jeff Goldblum & Geena Davis are both good in their roles.  This is about the most "Jeff Goldblum-y" performance the actor has ever put to screen, and other than Jurassic Park, is where most of the impressions of him come from.  And the makeup design is impressive-the realism isn't quite what it'd be in 2023, but in 1986...it feels appropriately grotesque.

I am not a fan, though.  I'm willing to admit at this point that really well-done body horror will probably never be my thing, because even if this is good...I never want to see it again.  The way that Goldblum's face looks when Geena Davis pulled off his jaw with her bare hands...I've been clutching my chin multiple times since to ensure it's still there.  I also think there are some gaps in the story, perhaps a little bit too much of an ode to the 1950's horror film in that they allow for serious plot holes.  For example, isn't Davis at all concerned about the woman that Goldblum had a one-night stand with also being pregnant...like, is no one thinking that that might be a different kind of horror moment for that poor woman (or is that the plot to the sequel?)?  It's a good movie, I fully acknowledge that...please never put it in front of me again.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream

OVP: That's Life! (1986)

Film: That's Life! (1986)

Stars: Jack Lemmon, Julie Andrews, Sally Kellerman, Robert Loggia

Director: Blake Edwards

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Life in a Looking Glass")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Film is oftentimes a reflection of its creators; writers, actors, and especially directors infuse themselves into their movie.  This is the entire basis of auteur theory.  But there are limitations to that, particularly when it comes to the film being largely autobiographical.  Oftentimes when you encounter a film that is deeply personal, especially from a filmmaker you like, there's a pressure to give them the benefit of the doubt-they're sorting through feelings & experiences that they have been reluctant to put onto the big screen.  This is the case for Blake Edwards' That's Life!, a movie where Jack Lemmon takes on the surrogate for Blake Edwards, but Edwards literally casts both his real-life wife Julie Andrews and his real-life children in major roles within the film.  The problem here lies in that the movie, by looking too much at real-life, cannot live up to the zany & madcap adventures we normally expect from Edwards, and it feels a bit rundown as he turns the camera around.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Harvey Fairchild (Lemmon), a wealthy architect who is a hypochondriac of sorts, about to celebrate his 60th birthday party.  Except, of course, Harvey doesn't want to celebrate his 60th birthday party & is instead going through a crisis, which is causing him to lash out at his wife, children, & pretty much everyone around him.  His wife Gillian (Andrews) is a famous singer who is going through a health crisis, as she has a lesion on her throat that might be cancerous.  As the film continues, the movie shows them both coming to terms with their health problems (one mental, one physical), and going to some dark places with it (Harvey even has an affair with Madame Carrie, a fortune teller played by Lemmon's real-life wife Felicia Farr), before coming out the other end better & cancer-free for both of them.

The movie is a bit slow-paced, even if it's well-constructed.  I thought that the biggest problem for the film, weirdly enough, was the plotting (considering that's not usually a problem in a Blake Edwards picture, this is a surprise).  The film is too repetitive, the kids too undifferentiated (it's a neat gimmick hiring Lemmon & Andrews' real life children, but they don't stand out in a significant way), and Lemmon's journey too odd.  We are meant to take his casual adultery with a cheeky bit of good humor, unable to understand if this is simply a midlife crisis or something that he's done for decades.  As a result, the interesting bits (like watching a clearly strained marriage where the two people still love each other), fall along the wayside, even if there's definitely something to offer here.

The film won one Oscar nomination, for Best Original Song for the Henry Mancini number "Life in a Looking Glass."  This is a strange nomination not just because it was the last in a long line of Mancini nominations (18 in all), but because it is one of only three songs to be nominated for both the Oscar and the (now discontinued) Razzie Award for best Original Song (the other two being from Con Air and Armageddon).  Usually these types of nominations land somewhere in the middle, but here I'm siding with the Razzies.  The song is arguably the worst part of a movie that toys with quality but can't get the seal-it's a treacly, maudlin number that even Tony Bennett can't get past the saccharine lyrics (plus, it's sung over the end credits...in a movie with Julie Andrews that could've used a musical number).  That arguably the worst part of a rather forgettable movie got an Oscar nomination is proof that occasionally AMPAS just does its own thing.

OVP: Crimes of the Heart (1986)

Film: Crimes of the Heart (1986)

Stars: Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard, Tess Harper, Hurd Hatfield

Director: Bruce Beresford

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Actress-Sissy Spacek, Supporting Actress-Tess Harper, Adapted Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The 1980's are a weird time for me cinematically.  I was alive in the 1980's, but the movies I was obsessed with were Lady and the Tramp and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day...I was not really concerned with the kinds of films that Oscar was acknowledging.  As a result, I don't have any nostalgia to surround myself with from the decade, and am left with kind of a bad feeling every time someone brings it up with reverence...as the 1980's is easily my least favorite decade cinematically.  The acting is a bit too involved, the headliners are not my favorites, the scripts are too indulgent and anguished...it was a decade where people seemed to be totally oblivious to how awful Ronald Reagan was as president.  I had this sense of apprehension heading into Crimes of the Heart, even though I genuinely like all three of the leading ladies in it (even with my 1980's allergy), as I was curious what a film like this would feel like, and if it would rise above the 1980's trappings.  What I didn't expect, however, was how weird it would be.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about three sisters, all of whom have very different natures.  Lenny (Keaton), is a spinster who has spent much of their life taking care of their dying grandfather (Hatfield), while Meg (Lange) is a struggling singer in Hollywood who has left behind her family.  They are both home immediately following Babe (Spacek), their youngest sister, having had an affair with a black teenager & shooting her husband who regularly beats her senseless.  As the film progresses, we learn more about the trio, specifically the shocking trauma they endured when they were children (that their mother hanged herself and her cat, making them national news).  As the film ends, it looks like Babe will kill herself in a fashion similar to her mother, but is unsuccessful in repeated attempts to commit suicide, and the film ends with the three sisters finally acknowledging their need for one another, despite their differences.

The movie is bizarre not in its approach (it actually kind of works for a theatrical adaptation, even if you can see the strings of it being a play from a mile away), but in its strange tonal inconsistencies.  It is a tender film, one about three sisters who love each other despite deep differences & genuine animosities. But it also runs rampant between comedy-and-drama, oftentimes in ways that you can't really tell what the director is trying to accomplish.  The cat hanging comes as a total surprise during a felt scene, and while it is a spit-take moment, it also feels kind of cheap.  There's something to be said for telling the story of people who endure 15 minutes of fame in the lens of comic tragedy (we've all seen headlines like that "Woman Hangs Self & Cat" feels ripped from the back pages of a tabloid newspaper), but the movie itself never successfully lands on what its purpose is, and when it tries to turn Babe's suicide into an equally comic moment (after seeing what it did to these women as children)...I just didn't like it.  It felt like a parody, and not in a good way.

The film won three Oscar nominations.  As I mentioned, the stage-to-screen translation is good even if you can tell its a play, but weirdly that can be accredited to the art directors.  I loved the lived-in sense of Lenny's house, the way it is bursting with too much stuff, quilts & photo albums & boxes that you've "meant to throw out but have been collecting dust for twenty years."  So often in films we don't see this attention-to-detail, but it's very real-look at your house, and notice things that have sat on counters or on closet shelves for a decade without having been moved in all that time.  Adding this sort of personality makes it feel less like a stage.  The script, though, doesn't do that kind of legwork, and its issues with tone & strange shock value felt off-putting.

Sissy Spacek is the best member of the cast, by a lot in my estimation, even if she also gets the best part.  Keaton is the pro at comedy, but has never done well with films that tread across genres (she's a good dramatic actress, but she needs to play that drama completely straight otherwise it comes off sarcastic), but it's Spacek who best encapsulates the black humor of the film.  She plays her part as someone who lives a more spontaneous life than her sister Lenny, but one more sporadic than her sister Meg, and she's very good when she's pitting her two older sisters against one another (as if she's done it her whole life).  The nomination for Tess Harper is weird.  Harper had just had a breakout part three years earlier for Tender Mercies, but that hardly explains her shrill, blink-and-you'll-miss-it role in Crimes of the Heart, a totally one-note performance that lacks any of the nuance that Spacek is bringing.  It's honestly bad acting, and totally runs aground the rest of the picture.  It's hard to imagine Oscar couldn't have done better.

OVP: The Morning After (1986)

Film: The Morning After (1986)

Stars: Jane Fonda, Jeff Bridges, Raul Julia, Diane Salinger

Director: Sidney Lumet

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Jane Fonda)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

It's not often I give back-to-back 1-star reviews  (we gave out one yesterday for Bombardier if you missed it...there's a lot of articles on this blog, peruse at your leisure), but I haven't had the best luck with my random Oscar-watching in the past two weeks, and so well, here we are.  The Morning After is a movie that you might not have heard of if you didn't live through the 1980's.  Despite being a hit at the time, it hasn't really wandered into pop culture in the way we usually assume films of the 1980's that made this kind of cash have.  In fact, despite this receiving a Best Actress nomination, the phrase "the morning after" elicits pictures of a turned over boat to me rather than Jane Fonda & Jeff Bridges.  But the movie's Oscar nomination makes it mandatory viewing on this blog, so let's jump into it, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place on Thanksgiving (if you want tertiary connections to random holidays in a movie which is all the rage on Twitter, this is a "Thanksgiving" movie), where Alex Sternbergen (Fonda), a washed-up actress, wakes up with a dead man in her bed, but she remembers nothing about him from the night before.  She calls her agent Jackie (Julia), who turns out to also be her estranged husband, and he advises her to go to the police.  She doesn't, and goes on the run, where she meets Turner (Bridges), a former police officer, and the only person who believes she's innocent.  Strange things continue to happen to Alex, though, as the body shows up again at the next place she visits, and she starts to doubt Turner's motives.  It's actually Jackie, though, who wants out so he can marry a wealthy socialite Isabel (Salinger), and they framed her for the murder.  In the end, Jackie is arrested (but not Isabel, who seems like she'll get away scot-free) and Alex & Turner seem like they will maintain their romance as the final credits fall.

The Morning After is the kind of movie you almost want to like it's so bad.  It has a few camp factors that in theory should work, after all.  Fonda (legend) scenery-chewing as an alcoholic movie star caught in a murder reads as fun.  The HBO series The Flight Attendant kind of took this plot wholesale, but with that series they were able to lead into the more delicious aspects of the story, and also made the main character (played by Kaley Cuoco) a blast by leaning into her quirks in a way that they don't seem to understand in The Morning After.

As a result, this movie is a trainwreck.  The mystery makes no sense (Alex is famous enough to make it on the front page of the paper in LA, but somehow doesn't get indicted in the clear evidence tampering she's doing throughout the movie?), and the score is weird-way too many sharp tonal changes that telegraph what's going on (and in some cases, telegraph to nothing-the score is aggressively unhinged).  All of the acting choices are bizarre as well.  Raul Julia is maybe the best, even if his character's motives are sporadic, and Jeff Bridges plays his cop like a serial killer for no apparent reason.  Worst of all is Fonda, neither convincing as an alcoholic nor as a washed-up actress.  She's too fit & too glamorous to play this role, and she doesn't understand it at all.  Not only is this the worst nominated performance she has on her Oscar scorecard, it might be the worst performance I've ever seen from her.

OVP: Aliens (1986)

Film: Aliens (1986)
Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton
Director: James Cameron
Oscar History: 7 nominations/2 wins (Best Actress-Sigourney Weaver, Art Direction, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound, Sound Effects Editing*, Visual Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

This week we are randomly taking a look at Best Actress nominees from films I'd never seen before and am catching for the first time on quarantine (if you follow this blog more for politics, I'm aware we've been a little film heavy lately but know that I'm going to be restoring balance next week once my life settles down a bit more-the past two weeks have been a challenge and I'd already committed to this mini-project, and want to ensure I finish it but I'll be back in election analysis quite soon).  Today we go in a truly different direction entirely from our previous entries of a mother-daughter melodrama and a romantic Technicolor epic into a 1980's action blockbuster, one of the only films of this nature to actually secure a Best Actress nomination.  Women like Charlize Theron and Linda Hamilton have gotten some buzz for Oscar for action films, but it's extremely rare to get a citation like what Sigourney Weaver secured in 1986, and it was for her first round with Oscar (unlike someone like Sandra Bullock in Gravity, who was already AMPAS-blessed).  In order to get this kind of nomination, you have to be extraordinary, so I was pumped to finally catch this movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a follow-up to the 1979 film Alien, which I had seen many years ago but re-watched in anticipation of this particular picture (are Weaver and Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's the only two women who have been nominated for Best Actress for a sequel?).  The film shows Ripley, 57 years later (but in some form of stasis), being rescued after being the only people to survive the last attack.  She is convinced to go back to the colony of the alien attacks under the condition that they kill the aliens.  Once they arrive, though, it turns out that one of the crew members, Burke (Reiser) has been instructed to bring back the aliens at all cost, even if that means killing or impregnating some of his crew (specifically Ripley).  The aliens, of course, have other ideas, and we witness multiple different standoffs between the depleting human population and the aliens, including a particularly amazing sequence between Ripley and the alien queen (which encompasses Weaver's legendary line reading of "Get away from her, you bitch!").

Aliens doesn't really break a lot of new story ground.  Forgetting for a second that this is largely a retelling of the original movie, this is also a story that has been done repeatedly since the dawn of Science Fiction in movies.  But like most of James Cameron's films, it's not the story that you're coming for-it's the picture itself.  In a way that almost no other filmmaker can, Cameron can take the most basic of filmic readings and make them feel fresh, new, and inventive.  He does that with Aliens, better than its predecessor in virtually every way.

For starters, there's Weaver, who feels more confident in her Ripley.  She doesn't play her as an action hero (at least not until the very end), but instead as someone who wasn't intended for this life, but has learned from it.  So often with action-adventure sequels, they forget that the original person wasn't meant to be a superhero, and that one or two experiences isn't going to turn them into one (I'm not going to call out which franchise I'm subtweeting here, but I'm sure one came to mind).  As a result, this is still a performance, one that is well-felt and coming with some much-needed nuance.

The other Oscar categories were equally well-deserved (honestly, even though it gained a hefty 7 nominations, that feels a bit light from my perspective).  The Visual Effects are groundbreaking and game-changing, still impressive-looking some thirty years after-the-fact.  The sound work is marvelous; Cameron used the sound effects to keep us tense even when we shouldn't be, employing jump scares with caution & skill, but also genuine terror through the battles and alien cries.  The same can be said for the swiftness of the editing-the film doesn't feel rushed, but it also rarely skimps on the action.  The sets are so strong they became prototypical not just for the copycat films that would follow, but also what we'd see in movies like Gravity and Ad Astra decades in the future.  About the only nomination I might raise an eyebrow over is the score, but even there it's more James Horner being taken for granted (and using similar motifs to most of his other work) than it being bad.  All-in-all, Aliens is a terrific experience, and proof that Oscar should think outside-the-box more often, as it pays off with a classic performance being included in his annals.

OVP: Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Film: Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Stars: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, Barbara Hershey, Maureen O'Sullivan, Max von Sydow, Lloyd Nolan, Carrie Fisher
Director: Woody Allen
Oscar History: 7 nominations, 3 wins (Picture, Director, Supporting Actor-Michael Caine, Supporting Actress-Dianne Wiest, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Woody Allen movies, at least those made prior to the past ten years, always remind me of my adoration for New York.  There are few things that I love more than that city-always alive, always a bustle.  Paris, London, San Francisco-I've been to (and adored) a lot of "eternal" cities, but New York inspires me in a way nowhere else does.  I feel energized, alive, electric, and since I can't always get there for inspiration, it's nice that Woody Allen and his magical filmography can so easily transport me to the streets and neighborhoods I just adore in the City that Never Sleeps.

Hannah and Her Sisters is one of those movies that truly transports you to New York.  I sort of wonder if the art direction nod was just as much to the actual city streets as it was to the beautifully-furnished apartments (an Allen staple-you have to love the shelves bristling with books, the cramped kitchens, the minute touches that litter his upper-middle class world).  I kept going-oh, they're in Chelsea or the Upper West and being struck how recognizable everything is 25 years later.  It's romantic and dreamy, just like New York.

But I digress (Woody Allen's New York is my New York, so I always have to take a moment to stop and appreciate).  We should be getting to the film at hand, his classic 1986 movie Hannah and Her Sisters.  The film, up until Midnight in Paris, was his highest-grossing movie, and it's easy to understand why-it's one of Allen's most accessible films.  I don't know if the inspiration was Anna Karenina, but you could see the touches of that novel everywhere in the incestuous cheating going on in the family.  The film is about three sisters (Hannah, Holly, and Lee, played respectively by Farrow, Wiest, and Hershey), and how they are constantly trying to find themselves romantically and occupationally throughout the film.  Farrow's Hannah is the together one-she has four children, is on her second marriage to Elliot (Caine), but is still on good terms with her first husband Mickey (Allen), and has it all-great apartment, a successful career, and a seemingly wonderful home life.  Her sisters are not nearly as together-her sister Lee doesn't work, and is constantly trying to find herself, and lives with a much older man (von Sydow, in a smallish role, but he does his best with it-and in a side note, why can't Blogger figure out a way to have more than 200 characters in the labels, as I had to cut poor Max to fit everyone?).  And the middle child is Holly, who is a struggling actress constantly borrowing money from her sister and switching occupations.  Just so I don't forget later, their parents are well-played in small roles by Lloyd Nolan and Farrow's real-life mother, Maureen O'Sullivan, a twinkling bit of casting.

(Spoilers to come) The film progresses with Elliot confessing his love for Lee, and they start an affair, with her eventually moving out of her love nest with von Sydow's Frederick and going to Columbia.  The affair doesn't last long, but lasts long enough for Hershey to have a terrific breakup scene with von Sydow and for Caine to have some hilarious crises-of-conscience (Caine is playing the Woody surrogate almost better than Woody is playing the Woody character in this film).  Wiest's Holly eventually meets a man (Sam Waterston) that she falls for, but he dumps her for her frenemy April (Fisher), but uses that inspiration to eventually write a great screenplay, and she discovers finally the talent she has been searching for the whole movie.  And Mickey ends up being the film's comic relief-after he spends the first half of the movie in a tailspin because he thinks he has cancer (which turns out not to be the case), he tries to find the meaning to life, quits his job, and in the film's most hilarious scenes, tries out other religions (including Catholicism and exploring the world of the Hare Krishnas).  Eventually, because this is an Allen movie and what you expect can't come to pass (that he'll end up with Farrow, seemingly the lead though she's definitely part of an ensemble here, despite being the title character), Mickey ends up going out with Holly, and in the final scenes (and in an uncharacteristically happy ending), Mickey marries Holly and despite him being pronounced infertile earlier in the film, they have a child.

That's a lot to take in in one paragraph, and it makes the movie seem busy, but it really isn't.  It also takes time to really explore these characters in a way that Allen's films don't seem to do anymore (I'm not going to start yapping about how Woody's latest films aren't as good as they used to be, because that's what every critic who discusses Allen's films in retrospect does, but there's something to be said for the way that you are able to not only see all of the big cast, but truly feel their lives in this film).  Mickey, Hannah, Holly, Lee, and Elliot are all very realistic people-imperfect, lying, bargaining with their inner selves, and that's what makes them so interesting.  Allen's film unfolds as you get to see the dynamics between the characters, how it truly mirrors the way people's personalities change based on whom they are with, and how we are constantly trying to find something that might not exist, or perhaps we already have but just aren't willing to admit it.

The screenplay, and the wonderful camerawork (constantly panning over New York like someone gazing helplessly at its beauty), are the film's best attributes, but it would be foolish to ignore the rich acting on display throughout.  One of the odd things for me was that, despite Caine and Wiest getting the lion's share of the praise for the film, the movie truly is an ensemble piece, and every actor has their moment-Wiest gets probably best in show, but just barely.  You could tell me that it was Allen/Farrow or Hershey/von Sydow who received the nominations, and it'd be just as believable.  I have decided in these write-ups not to focus too much on the comparing and contrasting with the actors they competed with for the awards (as that will ruin the anticipation when we count down 1986 in the official ballot writeups), but I will say that both Caine and Wiest will be in the positive end of the write-ups.

I don't have too much more of a snap judgment to say-Allen's films tend to unfold on you, and you realize later the excellence on display in the film and the little nuggets and goodies he hid in the interplay between the characters (like how Hannah is both her parents favorite child, but clearly for different reasons), but I would love to hear from you (I know the comments button worked I checked it this morning)-what did you think of Hannah and Her Sisters?  Where does it rank on your personal Woody list?  Who was "best in show" in this ensemble film?  And on the subject of Oscar nominations, how many of the seven were deserved, and how many of them should have been kicked to the curb?