OVP: The Rock (1996)

Film: The Rock (1996)

Stars: Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, David Morse, John Spencer

Director: Michael Bay

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound)

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 Sean Connery: click here to learn more about Mr. Connery (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned in our last entry on Saturdays with the Stars, Sean Connery's career got a new life in the late 1980's when he won an Oscar for The Untouchables and followed that up with a mammoth hit in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  These two films set up the course for the remainder of his career-Connery would still star in major action films, but would take on an advisory role, frequently the vaunted elder who would mentor younger, more "age-appropriate" leads like Richard Gere, Wesley Snipes, and in today's film, Nicolas Cage.  These movies were hits.  Much was made (we'll get there in a second) about how Connery really ended his career with a sluggish slump into retirement, but this ignores that during the late 1980's, 1990's & into the 21st Century, when Connery was being knighted and being named the oldest man ever to achieve the title of "Sexiest Man Alive" from People Magazine, Connery starred in a number of smash hit movies like The Hunt for Red October, First Knight, The Rock, and Entrapment.  While other actors of his generation like Paul Newman and Marlon Brando had, by-and-large, been relegated to old man dramas (and in more cases than not, cemetery plots), Connery was a box office draw in the way that men decades younger than him were and was talked about as a still-relevant movie star.

(Spoilers Ahead) Perhaps this is best boiled down by talking about The Rock, the biggest hit he had during this era (the film would make $335M, adjusted for inflation that'd be $709M, which is basically impossible to do today without it being established IP).  The movie itself is made by Michael Bay, who at the time would've been short-hand for crap (or at least was headed in that direction), and in the past decade, has been saved by Millennial film fans (nostalgic for an era when IP wasn't the only way to make a movie) as being more worthy-of-praise than he was at the time.  The movie makes little sense, and not just because its politics so closely resemble Bay's rather sketchy takes on Libertarianism.  We have Brigadier General Frank Hummel (Harris) holding Alcatraz hostage in hopes of securing $100M for the families of those who died in top secret missions.  He is holding dozens of hostages on the island (tourists who have visited it), and the government sends in a team of agents, though they're quickly boiled down to just two: Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Cage), a chemical weapons expert with little field experience, and retired Captain John Patrick Mason (Connery), the only man to ever successfully escape from Alcatraz.  The two team up to not only stop Hummel from detonating a chemical weapon that could destroy tens of thousands, but also to see if Mason can get his freedom, which is dangled as incentive but all involved know is just a ruse to get his help.

The real enemy in this movie, it's worth noting, isn't Harris's general, but instead FBI Director James Womack (played by John Spencer), and that's because you don't get a government that wants to help the people in a Michael Bay picture.  Even more so than Clint Eastwood, Bay's films are quintessentially glorious, tech-savvy propaganda for government incompetence.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing (lord knows there's a case to be made that government incompetence dominates our collective consciousness in the Trump Era, and has to a degree in every administration), but it also means that The Rock is a movie you don't really want to think about too much, as it becomes too ridiculous & frequently too absurd to consider it technically.  A lot of your mileage with the movie will depend on your take on Connery & Cage's unlikely friendship, and your tolerance for gratuitous violence.  The violence here is less artful and more just disgusting, and I will own that I don't think Cage & Connery work at all.  Connery's performances with Costner & especially Ford in the late 1980's worked better because there was a subtlety, a clear driving friction with which they can find common ground.  But Cage is not a subtle actor, and Connery can't seem to find any sort of chemistry with him...it just feels like they're making two different movies.

Connery would continue making films regularly until 2003.  He ended his career with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a bad superhero movie that made a lot of money, which hadn't been the case for some of Connery's most recent endeavors like Playing by Heart and The Avengers (for the record, not a superhero movie).  He retired, and with the weird exception of an animated adventure film, never made another movie despite entreaties to join later installments in the Indiana Jones & 007 franchises, dying in 2020 at the age of 90 from a combination of pneumonia & dementia.  Despite decades of trying to escape it, the first line of his New York Times obituary of course included the words "James Bond."

Next month we're going to talk about one of Connery's peers, someone who would dominate action films in the 1960's and especially the 1970's.  Like Connery he wouldn't really get the credit for being the fine actor that he was, but unlike Connery, he didn't seem to care, finding "selling out" a bit more palatable when one gigantic smash hit that changed his career's trajectory captured the public consciousness (and divided critics, both cinematic & political).

Courage Under Fire (1996)

Film: Courage Under Fire (1996)

Stars: Denzel Washington, Meg Ryan, Lou Diamond Phillips, Michael Moriarty, Matt Damon

Director: Edward Zwick

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Meg Ryan: click here to learn more about Ms. Ryan (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Meg Ryan's pretty intense breakout fame for When Harry Met Sally... came with something of a price.  Unlike other "America's Sweethearts" actresses like Audrey Hepburn & Julia Roberts who got box office receipts AND the ultimate stamp-of-acclaim from the industry (a Best Actress Oscar nomination) early on in her career, Ryan was left off of the list by the Academy in 1989 (I suspect she was in the conversation, and one wonders if she would've had a different career if she'd gotten that sort of credibility at some point during her peak movie star years).  The early 1990's had Ryan alternating between rom-com hits like Sleepless in Seattle and French Kiss with edgier fare, meant to expand Ryan beyond her cutesy "girl next door" routine which had made America fall in love with her.  By-and-large, this was not successful.  She worked with Oliver Stone in The Doors (which bombed), starred in the Oscar-winning period drama Restoration (which also bombed), and played opposite her husband Dennis Quaid in the thriller Flesh and Bone (which, you guessed it, bombed).  Ryan's two successes getting out of the romantic-comedy trope were When a Man Loves a Woman (which won her a SAG Award nomination, though that didn't mean she was "close to Oscar" in the way it would now...SAG used to be WAY more individualistic with their choices) and today's film Courage Under Fire, the first major movie to talk about the Gulf War in Hollywood, and would pair her opposite one of the biggest leading men of the era, though like several of her outings with Tom Hanks...that didn't mean they would share much screen time.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Lt. Col. Nathaniel Serling (Washington), an alcoholic who is getting past a mistake he made during the war where he (accidentally) shot friendly fire on his fellow soldiers during an intense battle.  This was covered up by the American military, with him instead getting an award for bravery.  He is now on desk duty, though, and is investigating whether Captain Karen Walden (Ryan) has earned the distinction of being the first woman to win the Medal of Honor for combat.  His investigation, held alongside his doubts about the military & medals in general given he has won one that he feels he has not earned, turns up several inconsistencies, as the men who served with her, particularly Staff Sergeant John Monfriez (Phillips) & Specialist Andrew Ilario (Damon) have such varied opinions on Walden, and her actions in battle.  As the film progresses (recalling Rashomon) we learn that Walden's actions, like Serling's, are grey, as is much of battle, and those haunted by it.

Courage Under Fire is the kind of movie that doesn't really exist anymore-a star-driven drama, released in the summer almost exclusively as a box office play.  Today, the only angle the studios would have for a picture like this would be "Oscar bait"...even though the Academy in 1996, a year when they were pretty allergic to major studio flicks like this, wouldn't have touched it (it's worth noting it was in enough of the conversation circa 1996, though, that Entertainment Weekly predicted Washington would be cited for Best Actor).  That's a pity, because there's something here.  The storytelling is easy, but riveting, and the way that it handles the unusual twists in the plot recall some of the best John Grisham adaptations of the era.  I liked it, and was also impressed by Lou Diamond Phillips & a young Matt Damon (looking gaunt in a role where he lost over 30 pounds, and was so impressive he'd eventually get his roles in The Rainmaker and Saving Private Ryan from directors admiring this turn) in diametrically-opposed roles in the investigation (yet both men that are haunted by their actions in wartime in different ways).

Ryan, though, is not very good.  I feel this needs to be said at this point (especially because I don't get much kinder the further I go)-I love Meg Ryan.  Her work in Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail is hallowed ground in my house, and I do like her in literally everything I've seen her in in the sense that I like spending time with Meg Ryan.  But in the most dramatic and heaviest lifting of her career, I don't think she's able to get this part across-the-finish line.  It doesn't help that she's not actually sharing any screen-time with Washington (I think they would've paired well, but she's dead the entire time that Washington's character is aware of her), but she also can't land her southern accent properly, and the film's views on feminism (insisting that she's the one who cries on the mission) are pretty lazy.  As we'll talk about over the next couple of weeks, Ryan, an actress who once turned down the lead in The Silence of the Lambs because it was "too violent" would never get another role this traditionally meaty again in a prominent studio film; she'd star in dramas, but never of this pedigree.  You have to wonder if part of the reason she didn't get it was because people saw this, and wondered if she could carry a film like that without someone more "actorly" like Washington helping her.

Mary Reilly (1996)

Film: Mary Reilly (1996)

Stars: Julia Roberts, John Malkovich, Michael Sheen, George Cole, Glenn Close, Michael Gambon

Director: Stephen Frears

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Julia Roberts: click here to learn more about Ms. Roberts (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about The Pelican Brief, which capped off an incredible run of near-constant hits for Julia Roberts following Pretty Woman.  But by 1994, the public was losing some of its initial infatuation with Roberts.  Part of this was due to the public feeling like her romantic life was too flighty (this was not a new criticism when it started to be levied at another global superstar, Taylor Swift, in recent years), with her reportedly jilting Kiefer Sutherland days before their wedding (something Roberts has claimed was not the case, and that their relationship was done long before the scheduled nuptials), and a short-lived marriage with country singer Lyle Lovett, ten years her senior (and not conventionally attractive in the way that Roberts is, something I only point out because it was a source of fascination at the time in the way that Arthur Miller & Marilyn Monroe was during their courtship).  Roberts was a mainstay on the front pages of supermarket tabloids, and everyone in America had an opinion on the actress in the way that Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor had endured decades earlier.

But celebrity always invites scrutiny of your love life, and studios would've been fine with this had Roberts been able to deliver cinematic hits during this era, but that didn't happen.  Her headlining work in Something to Talk About, Michael Collins, & I Love Trouble were all greeted with yawns by the public (there's a famous clip that recirculates every few years of Roberts talking to David Letterman where she discusses an anonymous leading man who has a tirade against a director, threatening to run him over with a car, that pretty much everyone agrees is Nick Nolte in I Love Trouble...a film whose legendary production where the two leads were at each other's throats is far more discussed than the actual movie itself which is weirdly the first Julia Roberts movie I think I saw in theaters).  Even all-star pictures like Pret-a-Porter and Everyone Says I Love You (directed by Woody Allen, who was practically getting his actresses Oscar nominations annually at this point) didn't make a peep with the public or awards bodies.  None felt more like a five-alarm fire more so, though, for Roberts than today's film Mary Reilly.  A notorious flop, perhaps the biggest of her career (it'd win her her second of three Razzie Award nominations to date, and the only one for an outright box office loser, likely only being spared a "win" because this was the year of Demi Moore in Striptease), it had people questioning her as a bankable leading woman, particularly as actresses like Meg Ryan & Sandra Bullock were rising to be far more consistent box office champs.  Today, before she gets her comeback, we have to talk about Mary Reilly.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Mary Reilly (Roberts), the young maid of Dr. Henry Jekyll (Malkovich), a kindly-but-enigmatic doctor who runs a quiet household staff and largely keeps to himself.  Dr. Jekyll takes an interest in Mary, particularly her scars which we learn later are a symbol of the sexual and physical abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her father (Gambon).  Dr. Jekyll has taken on an "assistant" and because she is in his confidence, Mary starts to run errands for him, frequently to a brothel owned by Mrs. Faraday (Close), which shocks but also arouses young Mary.  We soon learn that his assistant Edward Hyde (also Malkovich) is causing murder-and-mayhem all over London, eventually killing Mrs. Faraday when she attempts to blackmail him, but because of a curiosity (and lust) toward Mary, he has spared her, and she witnesses first-hand his destructive nature, and eventually learns the truth that both men are one-and-the-same, a science experiment gone horribly wrong (in a really weird CGI scene where a baby is seen crawling underneath Malkovich's skin).  The film ends with Mary, after confronting her father and realizing she can be freed of her own accursed childhood, leaving behind these two men, both dead at their own hands, possibly inspired by Mary's goodness, and going out keeping their horrible secret.

For those who are familiar with the classic novella by Robert Louis Stevenson (one of my favorites), you'll notice only a few similarities with the source material.  There are a few characters from that that stay here (not just the title characters, but also the stern butler Mr. Poole and Sir Danvers Carew, here played by future Oscar nominee Ciarin Hinds), but this is instead a direct adaptation of Valerie Martin's bestseller of the same name (in Stevenson's original tale, the maid character isn't even named, though in both film & novella she knows the true nature of Danvers Carew's murder).  This disappointment will be evident if you're hoping for something ghastly like that, as this movie is rarely scary, though it is grotesque.  It functions more as a melodrama in parts, with Mary never feeling particularly in danger, and more a pawn in a boring game of chess between dual melodramatic performances from Malkovich.

Roberts is badly miscast here, though one could argue not the worst performance in the film (that would be given by 8-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close, in a role so horrible you would be forgiven for thinking she was being blackmailed into undertaking it).  Roberts' Irish accent here sits alongside Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York, Tom Cruise in Far and Away, and Chris O'Donnell in Circle of Friends as one of the worst in cinematic history (that she did another Irish film in 1996, Michael Collins, proves her agent deserved to be fired).  She is dour, one of those dramatic actors who think that playing an introverted character means that you lose all charisma & grace, and plays Mary as if she's on novocaine.  It's a really bad performance, one I suspect Roberts undertook because she wanted Hollywood to take her more seriously as an actress and stop forcing her to do rom-com's, but as a result of doing this part, she basically would have to go back to playing the types of comedic roles that made her a star...but in a nice twist, this would work, and finally win Roberts the respect she felt the industry had denied her.  While other actresses that rose to fame alongside her like Demi Moore & Andie MacDowell couldn't seem to get their careers together in the wake of a mid-1990's slowdown, Julia Roberts was about to have one of the most impressive career comebacks in Hollywood history.

Flirting with Disaster (1996)

Film: Flirting with Disaster (1996)

Stars: Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Tea Leoni, Alan Alda, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Lily Tomlin, Richard Jenkins, Josh Brolin

Director: David O. Russell

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Mary Tyler Moore: click here to learn more about Ms. Moore (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Despite starring in a Best Picture winner (and nearly taking an Oscar herself), Mary Tyler Moore was never able to have the kind of success in film that she had in television outside of Ordinary People.  She'd make just two movies in the 1980's, and would largely stick to stage work, here as a producer rather than an actress (she would win a Tony in 1985 for Best Revival for A Day in the Death of Joe Egg), and she'd have continued sporadic success on television (she'd get nominated for acting in four TV Movie/Miniseries, winning for 1993's Stolen Babies), but film work simply didn't happen for Moore.  The most significant film she made was in 1996, one of David O. Russell's earlier pictures, called Flirting with Disaster, which was a surprise hit for Miramax at the time, during an era where Miramax still meant edgy new voices in cinema rather than plush Oscar prestige projects.  So we will end our discussion of Moore with this movie, where she plays a supporting part as Ben Stiller's adoptive mother.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Mel (Stiller), who has recently had a son with his wife Nancy (Arquette), but is unable to know what to name the baby until he knows where he comes from.  Mel was adopted as a baby by Pearl (Moore) & Ed (Segal), but has always wanted to know his birth parents.  He is trying to find this through Tina (Leoni), an adoption agent who is also clearly sparking a romantic connection with Mel, exacerbated by him seemingly not finding his wife attractive as she has not lost her baby weight yet.  This leads to a series of mishaps, including Tina incorrectly getting the birth parents wrong twice before finding out that it's Mary (Tomlin) & Richard (Alda) who are his birth parents...but they're also drug producers who after accidentally drugging one of the ATF agents that have started following Mel, Nancy, & Tina around, go on the run from the law.  Mel decides in the end that he didn't need to find his birth parents to find his identity, and ends up naming the baby Garcia after Jerry Garcia.  The end credits shows he and Nancy now happy after the anguish of finding his family.

I will own that I don't like the movies of David O. Russell as a rule (the one exception being Silver Linings Playbook).  I find the films too mean, the characters so irredeemable that I don't want them to get happy endings.  This is true for Flirting with Disaster.  Mel is an awful man, basically mistreating his wife because he thinks she's too fat, and actively trying to have a relationship with Tina even while he is putting his wife through hell.  That he gets a fully happy ending feels like a Woody Allen movie, and indeed, that's what Russell is attempting to do here without the sophistication.  All of the supporting parts, including Moore, are played as caricatures.  The best of the bunch is Josh Brolin as the world's most adorable gay ATF agent, smitten with Nancy, though clearly also gay, but he's not in enough of the movie for you to care.  A waste of your time, even if I get that this might've read as fresh still in 1996.

Moore would work sporadically in TV guest spots throughout the rest of her life, and write two memoirs.  She'd also reunite with all of the Mary Tyler Moore ladies briefly on Hot in Cleveland (which starred her sitcom costar Betty White), a bittersweet moment because at the time their former costar Valerie Harper had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and wasn't expected to live much longer.  It was Moore, though, who would die first of the five women on the show.  After years of liver & kidney complications driven by diabetes and issues with alcohol, she passed away in 2017 at the age of 80 from pneumonia.  Next month, we're going to talk about another woman who, like Moore, would get her start in TV sitcoms in the 1960's, but unlike Moore, would graduate into proper movie stardom (and Oscar glory) in the years that followed.

Mother (1996)

Film: Mother (1996)

Stars: Albert Brooks, Debbie Reynolds, Rob Morrow

Director: Albert Brooks

Oscar History: Reynolds was favored to get a nomination for Best Actress (she got one for the Globes), but was one of several high-profile snubs that year.  Reynolds, ever a sport, spoofed this expectation at the Oscars in a hilarious bit written by her daughter you can watch here.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we mentioned last week, Debbie Reynolds' film career dissipated at roughly the same time frame as our last two stars (Audrey Hepburn & Doris Day), with The Unsinkable Molly Brown being one of her final major hits.  Reynolds was best in the types of romantic comedies and musicals that had both gone out of fashion & that she was too old for by the mid-1960's, when she was in her thirties (a much different sentence at that time than it would be now).  She did a television show, but foolishly quit it (she would later claim it was the biggest mistake of her life) amidst arguments with NBC over whether they would allow cigarette advertising (which was soon after made illegal anyway).  Her marriage to Harry Karl ended in scandalous divorce, one that basically left her broke, and she spent much of the 1970's & 80's working in stage and concert acts, trying to rebuild her fortune (with mixed results-much of Reynolds' story is the tale of bad investments, both in her finances & in men).  She very nearly got a real comeback, though, in 1996, winning a Golden Globe nomination for Albert Brooks' Mother, a movie that most (including Entertainment Weekly) at the time assumed would lead to her finally getting a second Oscar nomination, perhaps even a win.  But in a bold move, the Academy chose to largely ignore studio pictures that year and that meant that Reynolds' (it would turn out to be last) chance at a competitive Oscar went the way of the dodo.  To close our month with her, we're going to look at that film, and see if Oscar missed out.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about John Henderson (Brooks), who is a successful science fiction writer who has just gone through his second divorce, and doesn't understand why he cannot have a successful relationship with a woman.  He decides to go to the source, and moves in with his mother Beatrice (Reynolds), who is a widow, far closer with his younger brother.  Beatrice is confused by the experiment, and also doesn't understand John's life choices, putting him down to strangers, talking about his divorce and how he's living with her temporarily, but as the film progresses, he begins to understand her as a separate person.  Brooks film ends with him realizing that his mother had given up her goals of becoming a writer herself to raise her two sons, which had led to some animosity to her eldest son getting to live the dream she'd given up for him.

Albert Brooks' films are always gentle, and usually quite introspective, and this is the case with Mother, his most successful directorial effort in terms of the box office.  I think he shares a lot about the way we don't understand our parents.  The way he nails the need for Reynolds' Beatrice to always have to "correct a narrative no one asked about" (bringing up subjects that make her uncomfortable before other people do so she gets to decide what they think)...we've all seen our mothers do that.  It's not breaking a lot of new ground in terms of Brooks himself (I like his Defending Your Life better), but it's quite knowing and enjoyable.

The best part of this movie is Reynolds.  You know it's a pet peeve of mine to complain about snubs when I haven't seen all of the contenders (which I haven't-I'm missing one of the Oscar nominees and a bunch of the also-rans in 1996), but know that Reynolds will be on my For Your Consideration page for that year's Best Actress contest.  This is the best performance I've seen of hers outside of Singin' in the Rain.  The knowing way that she understands not just Brooks script, but seems to know things about it that even he doesn't catch (like the way that parents never stop compartmentalizing what they tell their children) is so smart.  This is considerably better than the film she actually got a nomination for, and had she been nominated, this would've been the kind of performance that could've won her the Oscar she long coveted.

But Reynolds would never win a competitive statue, though she would get the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2015, though at that point she wasn't well enough to pick up the statue herself (her granddaughter actress Billie Lourd accepted on her behalf).  Lourd would note in her speech that she'd "never seen her miss a show" and indeed Reynolds would continue working until the end of her life, most notably in the Halloweentown movies on Disney Channel, introducing her to a new generation of moviegoers.  Reynolds died in 2016, just one day after the shocking demise of her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher.  The two, basically inseparable toward the end of their lives, according to her son Todd, couldn't bear to be apart.

Next month, we are going to move fully into the 1960's, and talk about a woman who would not just serve as America's Sweetheart, but also fill in an unusual prototype that would become a cliche in the half century that followed: the girl-next-door...who rebelled against that image when she wanted to start a new chapter in her career.  You'll find out who this is on Monday!

OVP: Lone Star (1996)

Film: Lone Star (1996)

Stars: Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Pena, Kris Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey, Miriam Colon, Frances McDormand

Director: John Sayles

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Kris Kristofferson: click here to learn more about Mr. Kristofferson (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned last week, Kris Kristofferson's acting career never really recovered after the failure of Heaven's Gate, and he spent much of the 1980's alternating between forgettable movies like Songwriter and Trouble in Mind (the latter being a well-reviewed neo-noir that made zilch at the box office and is definitely going on my Letterboxd Watchlist as that feels up my alley) while having more success in music, forming the supergroup Highwaymen with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, & Waylon Jennings.  By the end of the decade, he had moved to a point where he was playing second fiddle to Paul Reubens in Big Top Pee-wee (which didn't even have the good sense to be a hit like its predecessor).  But in the 1990's, Kristofferson starred in his last important film, and appropriately enough, it's a western to close our series.  Made by noted independent filmmaker John Sayles, Lone Star was a modest hit in 1996, and a critical gem that has only grown in stature in the years that followed.  Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, while Kristofferson has worked for decades since, it feels a good way to close his career, and our fifth season of Saturdays with the Stars.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie alternates between two different time frames, focusing on a father-and-son, both of whom are lawmen in the border community of Frontera, Texas.  The son is Sam Deeds (Cooper), who is investigating the appearance of a dead body in the desert, which we learn after a while is the skeleton of Charlie Wade (Kristofferson), a corrupt sheriff who decades earlier disappeared, and was succeeded by Buddy Deeds (McConaughey), who would become famous for his straight-laced and honest approach to his work, reshaping the town for the better.  Sam has a complicated relationship with his father, who was a womanizer & not a strong father figure, and we also learn more about Sam's romantic life, including meeting his troubled ex-wife Bunny (McDormand) and watch as he embarks on a relationship with Pilar (Pena), a girl he loved in his youth but both of their parents wanted to keep them apart.  It turns out they did so with good reason, with two secrets leaking in the waning moments of the film.  We find that not only did Buddy help with the coverup of Charlie's death (he had been killed in a form of self-defense when he was going to kill an innocent man & say it was for "resisting arrest"), but we also learn that Buddy is Pilar's father, having had an affair with her mother years earlier.  In an inversion of the plot of Chinatown, which the film bares a strong resemblance toward, Sam & Pilar decide that, since she can no longer have children, that they should continue to see each other even though they are half-siblings.

Lone Star is the sort of difficult, cerebral film that could only be a hit because it's good, and that's the case.  We see a lot of the tropes of the west that we saw throughout this year-the honorable lawman, the tough-as-nails woman who survives in a world that wants to tear her down, and the corruption of the system in the form of Kristofferson's Wade, holding the West back from modernity.  But it also looks beyond that, which makes it interesting.  Much of the modern scenes with Cooper's Sam talk about the ways that the racism that happened during Wade's reign-of-terror was substituted for a "they're replacing us" mentality.  We get a number of moments where we understand the politics of this community will continue to give more power to the growing Latino population, and even Sam is likely to lose his position as Sheriff soon because a Latino lawman will be elected to replace him.  It's a fascinating dichotomy here that was usually ignored in the Western, where we knew that white men would ultimately control all of the power over the Native American populations they're fighting with, the ones that originally held these lands.  Lone Star smartly talks about how, eventually, the West will always be made by those who come to it, and no one holds sway there forever.

And that ends both our month with Kris Kristofferson and our season of "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood."  Kristofferson is still alive, and in the decades after Lone Star made films, though almost all of them supporting roles in lukewarm franchises like Blade and Dolphin Tale.  The western continues to survive, and every few years pops up with another classic like Brokeback Mountain, No Country for Old Men, Gran Torino, and The Power of the Dog, with Yellowstone the closest it's come to consistent mainstream success in television.  As I mentioned last week, we'll start our new series looking at the concept of America's Sweetheart through twelve actresses who embodied that title in the 20th Century, but tomorrow we'll have a proper sendoff to our season with one last cattle call of the best of our twelve western stars this year!

Scream (1996)

Film: Scream (1996)

Stars: David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy, Drew Barrymore, Henry Winkler

Director: Wes Craven

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 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.

By the mid-1990's, the slasher/horror film had largely been relegated to the dustbins of the film industry.  While years before movies such as Halloween and Friday the 13th could make mountains of cash, a decade later their sequels were basically direct-to-video features, the VHS cassettes that you'd find buried in the back of your gas station (for those too young to know this, it used to be pretty much every gas station in America would rent out VHS copies of movies in the era before DVD's and Netflix).  Slasher films seemed destined to end up in the same place as musicals & westerns in the pop culture mind...until Scream came along.  It's hard to grasp that there was once a time before Scream considering its perch in the present pop culture pantheon, its knowing gaze engrained in pretty much every aspect of the self-aware genre since.

(Spoilers Ahead-Proceed with Caution) The movie, after a shocking first killing that we'll get to in a second, is about Sidney Prescott (Campbell), a popular high school girl whose mother was killed the year before and who provided testimony for the man who allegedly killed her mother to stand trial (a pre-fame Liev Schreiber).  Prescott is shaken by the killings, and the way they come so soon after her mother's death, and seems to be unable to be intimate with her boyfriend Billy (Ulrich).  When Sidney becomes the target of the killer, her narrowly escaping with her life, she becomes something of a joke, with people claiming she made up the attack for attention.  Despite a mounting body count, the townspeople seem to treat the murders as a joke, with the high schoolers wanting to watch horror movies to "solve" who the killer is using horror movie cliches, and a local tabloid reporter named Gale Weathers (Cox) intent on using the murders to advance her celebrity through a tell-all book about the film.  In the end, it is revealed that Billy, despite initially seeming to be innocent (to the point where Sidney sleeps with him), is indeed the killer, and has been working with his manic friend Stu (Lillard) to kill everyone, initially Sidney's mother because she had an affair with Billy's father, breaking up his family, and then as a way to frame Sidney's father for all of the subsequent crimes.  Sidney & Gale are able to save themselves, killing Billy & Stu, and that's where the movie ends...until the sequel, of course.

The most startling thing about Scream from the get-go is its confidence.  Even coming from Wes Craven, who had already established himself in the horror movie genre, this is an impressive feat & one that has to be commented on.  Craven borrows from many horror films in the movie, but in the opening shots he is clearly cribbing from Psycho.  According to production notes I read about the film afterward, Barrymore was originally considered for the Sidney Prescott role (she was, in 1996, the biggest name in this movie), but when scheduling conflicts got in the way, she was recast in the smaller role as Casey, the first person killed.  This works sublimely in the film, particularly if you only know from the posters that Barrymore is one of the stars, because you don't realize that the film's biggest headliner is going to die (quickly breaking one of the most important taboos of a horror movie-the biggest star has to make it until the end).

Scream's self-aware universe is so commonplace today, I worried watching it decades after-the-fact would dull that, but it totally holds up.  Craven smartly includes references to a dozen other horror movies, including his own Nightmare on Elm Street, but plays around with these cliches by saying them out-loud, keeping the audience in suspense.  When Sidney loses her virginity to Billy, we are meant to worry about her dying (because in previous movies, girls who lose their virginity will always die as a "punishment" for their "sin"), but because they said it out loud, will she die now?  Scream turns that on its head, particularly in the opening scene where we try to understand the rules of this "game"-what's real, and what do we do in a horror movie that refuses to play by some rules but sticks to others?  Particularly in killing the biggest star off in the first fifteen minutes, we understand there are no rules, and suddenly it becomes a fresh new take on the genre.  While there are things to quibble over (Lillard's acting is actively atrocious even if that's the point of the character, and it's hard to imagine that Billy would put up with him that long unless they were obviously meant to be having sex with each other...you don't need much queer-coding to understand that Billy & Stu are fucking), incredible pacing, a smart screenplay, and good work from most involved (particularly Cox & Barrymore), Scream is a modern classic for a reason.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Mummy's Ghost, The Uninvited, House of Dracula, She-Wolf of London, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Revenge of the Creature, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Village of the Damned, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead, The Wicker Man, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, The Amityville Horror, When a Stranger Calls, Friday the 13th, The Evil Dead, Poltergeist, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play

Citizen Ruth (1996)

Film: Citizen Ruth (1996)

Stars: Laura Dern, Swoosie Kurtz, Kurtwood Smith, Mary Kay Place, Kelly Preston, MC Gainey, Tippi Hedren, Burt Reynolds

Director: Alexander Payne

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Tippi Hedren-click here to learn more about Ms. Hedren (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

After Roar, Tippi Hedren occasionally made films, but largely settled into a world outside of proper stardom, working definitely but never in serious projects.  She made appearances on TV shows (including Hart to Hart and Chicago Hope), and worked alongside her daughter a couple of times.  She made a cameo in The Birds II, which she later regretted doing, and had a memorable role in David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees.  She also had a small part in yet another significant director's career.  While with Chaplin, Hedren got a much-discussed (within the film) character who ends up a cameo in A Countess from Hong Kong, the director's final film, we saw the inverse in Citizen Ruth, where Hedren plays a much-discussed (within the film) character in the first movie of an Oscar-nominated director, Alexander Payne.  Today we're going to close out our month-long look at Tippi Hedren with a peak into this movie, which announced the career of the man who would make Election, Sideways, and Nebraska.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is the story of Ruth Stoops (Dern), a mother of four with substance abuse problems who becomes pregnant with a man she barely knows in the opening scenes of the movie.  After finding out she's pregnant, she's scolded by a judge, who recommends that she get an abortion to avoid jail time.  When Norm (Smith) & Gail (Place) find out about this, they tell their anti-abortion group & start to sponsor Ruth's life, insisting she have a baby.  Ruth initially doesn't like this, and nearly gets the abortion when it turns out one of the members of the group, Diane (Kurtz) is actually a pro-choice advocate in disguise, but when each group offers her $15,000 to go through with the decision, she is caught in a national firestorm over whether or not she should have the child, bringing in major leaders of both sides (played by Reynolds & Hedren).  When Ruth, in the middle of a drunken stupor, miscarries, she ends up tricking them into giving her the money, running away from the spotlight with little resolution as to what happens next.

Citizen Ruth is a biting commentary, and one that doesn't shy away from skewering both sides of this political hot button.  One would assume that the anti-abortion crowd would be rife for a politically liberal director like Payne, but he's just as ruthless in taking on the pro-choice group, particularly the way that neither side is particularly interested in what Ruth wants, seeing her as an easy pawn in this debate.  Dern plays Ruth perfectly so that the audience struggles to have sympathy for her.  It's clear from the onset that Ruth would make a horrible mother (she has far too many personal demons to responsibly take care of a child), and that she won't be able to carry this baby to term without doing drugs, putting the child at risk...but no one seems all that interested in that reality.  The film is perhaps too broad at times (Ruth doesn't show a lot of personal growth, and while that might be in-character, it hurts the script which is asking for some growth in her), but it's fascinating, pull-no-punches stuff from a debate that oftentimes feels like everyone is coming with no understanding for the other side's position.

Tippi Hedren, like many of her films post-Hitchcock, only gets a small part here.  She and Reynolds are both fun as late-breaking movie stars brought in to add a certain cache to the debate.  We don't need background from these figures, and Payne knows it-the audience understands that these genuine celebrities (in real life) translate their personas in this world onscreen.  As a result, though, I leave Hedren's month a bit melancholy.  The actress gave two incredible performances onscreen for Hitchcock, and while she worked with major directors afterward, it's fair to say she never really escaped his shadow, and certainly never made anything as good as The Birds and Marnie.  Considering the truly horrible nature of their relationship (based on Hedren's later statements), this is a pity for such a distinctive star.  Next month we will finish off our year devoted to Hitchcock with one last leading lady, one who would be something of an antithesis to many of the women we've discussed this season (and the Hitchcock prototype).

OVP: The English Patient (1996)

Film: The English Patient (1996)
Stars: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth
Director: Anthony Minghella
Oscar History: 12 nods/9 wins (Best Picture*, Director*, Actor-Ralph Fiennes, Actress-Kristin Scott Thomas, Supporting Actress-Juliette Binoche*, Art Direction*, Cinematography*, Adapted Screenplay, Costume*, Sound*, Film Editing*, Original Score*)
(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Stating a favorite movie has gotten harder as I've gotten older.  For years, it was a de facto answer (Casablanca), as sure as I could tell you my name is John or that I would definitely have sex with Colin Farrell if given the option.  But recently I've started to poke holes in that facade, realizing that as I've seen more movies than the average person will see in their entire lifetime at this point that it's okay to bring up Chinatown or Call Me By Your Name or Once Upon a Time in the West as potentially my favorite film ever made.  One of the movies that most strongly comes up when I decide to stray away from Casablanca as the Grand Teton of movies is The English Patient, a movie I was blessed enough to see at a "secret movie night" recently.  The English Patient is so ingrained in me that not only did I know it from literally the opening chord of the score (I literally squealed to my mom, sitting next to me, "it's my favorite movie!"), but also I have seen this film so often that I could literally mouth along to the words, as if I was at a rock concert and suddenly a favorite anthem began to play.  Since the film is arguably the movie I have the most arched eyebrows for when I mention it as potentially my favorite movie ever (even my mom who has known of my obsession with the film since I used to watch it alone in my bedroom every two months or so in high school, didn't quite get it after watching it with me for the second time), I figured I should rescue it today from the annals of being a Seinfeld punchline and talk about my English Patient.

(Spoilers Ahead) Okay, so the plot of The English Patient is somewhat hard to summarize as it's essentially two stories told chronologically and concurrently, so you're getting back story to one tale (about our present-day "English Patient" who has suffered terrible burns in a plane crash, and what happened to him before he was burned), and our current-state tale of Hana the Nurse (Binoche) who keeps losing everyone that she loves in horrible accidents toward the end of World War II.  The first half follows Almasy (Fiennes), the "English Patient," as he has a torrid affair with Katherine Clifton (Scott Thomas) who is married to Geoffrey (Firth).  All of them are helping to create maps of Northern Africa, which initially just feels like a past-time for bored and wealthy Europeans, but becomes crucially important as World War II breaks out, and increasingly battles are being fought between the Allies and the Axis powers in Africa.  Meanwhile, we learn seemingly contradictory things about Almasy in present-day, with him claiming to have been married to Katherine, and having him be accused of betraying the Allies (and his team, including the Cliftons) to the Germans, and in the process causing a thief named Caravaggio (Dafoe) who has traced down Almasy to come seeking his revenge, as Caravaggio blames Almasy for him being maimed (he had his thumbs cut off during illegal torture) during the war.  The film even has time for a second romance in the modern-day, between Hana and a young Sikh named Kip (Andrews), who disarms bombs and mines for a living.

The movie functions at once as a melodrama, a pair of doomed romances, and a mystery.  The first time you see it, it's not entirely clear what to do with our misleading narrator, who lies frequently in the present, so you don't know until the end that he's been telling the truth in the past.  The film kind of has something for everyone in this regard-if you don't really love the romances, you can always latch onto the "war is hell" portion of the story, as well as the central mystery, and of course there's two romances to point you toward, both of which feel fully-fleshed out (that's not a nudity joke, though there is ample nudity in the picture).

What I love about The English Patient (and this could honestly be a book, so for your own eyes I'll try to keep this relatively brief) is the way that it feels like a complete, epic story.  Frequently when a director like Minghella were to shoot for a big-picture sweeping tale there would be sluggish, potentially even ancillary aspects to the movie that don't keep it going; look at Minghella's impressive but less successful Cold Mountain for an example of a movie that can occasionally be spellbinding but gets lost along the way, never quite justifying its run-time.  The English Patient doesn't do that-it leaves layers for future viewings (it's impossible to get the depth of Binoche's Hana, and her misery the first time you see it, realizing what she has to go through while still maintaining a relatively caring-and-cheerful demeanor), but it's also a complete story all on its own.  It's not an epic that is long for the sake of being grand-it's long because the story demands it, and there isn't a lot of "spare" in the picture.  Unless you truly hate, say, the romance between Hana/Kip (and how could you do such a thing?), The English Patient is that rare movie that justifies heading into 3-hour territory without ever being dull.

The performances are brilliant.  All three of the Oscar-nominated leads are giving their best work here, and considering we're talking about Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, & Kristin Scott Thomas, that's saying something.  I can never quite decide my favorite performance in the picture, though I'd probably lean toward Fiennes on most days; he finds a thoroughly caddish rogue, someone we shouldn't sympathize with, and makes him a Heathcliff of the 20th Century.  Almasy is a brute, and probably not worthy of Katherine (or Hana, for that matter), but you understand the attraction here, and why he'd be the great love of her life.  Binoche finds an openness in Hana that is her trademark, but I love the quieter moments in her performance, the way that she is genuinely curious about the man she's caring for (always falling in love again), upon reflection.  Scott Thomas is in full-on glamour mode, never looking lovelier, but also is a woman who understands how to toe the line between being in a man's world, where she's frequently dismissed because of her gender and beauty, and someone who still manages to get things she wants, the way she wants them.  Along with sensitive portrayals from Dafoe & Andrews, the film's acting is just as good as the costumes, cinematography, and scoring, something you can't claim for a lot of romantic epics.

All-in-all, this is a movie I will always love, and that pretty much every age (even as I am now the age of the characters onscreen falling madly in love, rather than just someone imagining being so) of my existence will latch onto.  I am self-aware enough to know this isn't a picture for everyone-the dialogue is highly-stylized ("the heart is an organ of fire," "find that plant-cut out its heart,") but watching it in a packed theater, where the sparing jokes still land and the tender walk up to the Cave of Swimmers still had a number of wet eyes, I am reminded of why I love the movies-the very best ones unite us and captivate us in their stories.  The English Patient is a melodrama, one brimming with romantic tragedy, but it's also the very best of what the cinema can encapsulate-it's an escapist but all-too-human look at the lives of ordinary people put into extraordinary circumstances.

OVP: Fargo (1996)

Film: Fargo (1996)
Stars: William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, Frances McDormand
Director: Joel Coen
Oscar History: 7 nominations, 2 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actress-Frances McDormand*, Supporting Actor-William H. Macy, Original Screenplay*, Cinematography, Film Editing)
(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

I am currently doing something I never thought I’d do again-I’m taking a college course.  I studied film quite a bit in college through independent studies, but it was focused primarily on the history behind films, and not as much on the specific vernacular of movies, and I wanted to try something new (I’m currently on a bit of a “shake up your life” kick that involves a college course, writing a memoir, and starting a strict diet regimen-if all three go well, I’ll probably post about it on the blog-let me know if you’d be interested).  As a result, I’ll be watching a movie (some for the first time, some for the 70^th) each Wednesday night, and I figured as a way to get my thoughts out about the movies, I’d write reviews of the films here.

Fargo was our first flick (an appropriate choice for a Minnesota-based school), and this was probably the first time I’d seen the movie in a decade.  Fargo, for those who don’t know, is a Coen Brothers movie about a quartet of characters, lead by the affable Marge Gunderson (McDormand) and the weasel-y, out-of-luck Jerry Lundegaard (Macy).

The movie focuses on Jerry, lacking funds and hoping to move up in a single scheme, who decides to have his wife kidnapped and get his wealthy father-in-law to pay the ransom.  Because this is a movie, the kidnapping goes horribly, horribly wrong, as Jerry is greedily trying to double-cross everyone (his father-in-law, the kidnappers, his collectors), and one starts to wonder if Jerry is just a moron or if he is Job with a sinner's heart, because absolutely nothing seems to work for him.

Fargo is one of those movies that I feel it's so repetitive to discuss the remainder of the plot, as almost everyone in the art house world has seen the movie, and I've seen it multiple times so I don't have the pontificating spirt that comes with newness that I did when I saw The Color Purple or Ben-Hur for the first time.  The film, as you know, progresses in a twisty, uncomfortable film noir way, with all of our protagonists, save Marge, falling deeper and deeper into a wintery abyss, never to escape.

One of the things I noticed this past time working through Fargo is how odd the actions are in relation to the characters in the film.  Perhaps because I'm a Minnesotan and was projecting a bit, I found myself previously assuming that these characters have lived relatively run-of-the-mill lives, which is likely what the Coen Brothers are hoping I'll assume. And yet, you get the sense that they haven't-Gaear Grimsrud (Stromare) in particular seems like a character from a dozen other movies, and seems like a phantom in the film.  Perhaps because I was distracted by the other big names in the film I never noticed how his motivations are so odd-is he just a sociopath, or is he in control all along?  Jerry and Carl (Buscemi) are constantly bungling, clearly in over-their-heads, but Gaear, when he's in the car with Marge-you half expect that she, far more confident and assured than she seems, may have met her match.

The rest of the performances are sublime-William H. Macy nails the bumbling, foolish man drawn in by dreams of a better life than he can imagine, somehow thinking that his wife being kidnapped won't affect his future.  McDormand is even better as Marge Gunderson-a comic, assured woman who nails Minnesota Nice, even as she's out enforcing the law and dealing with murderers and blackmailers.  It's a wonder that McDormand managed to win this Oscar, though-one of the strangest wins ever.  She wasn't necessarily up against any big "princess" starlets (1996 being the year of the independent feature), but her role is relatively short (one could make a legitimate claim that she's a supporting player in the film with Buscemi and Macy the leads), and Brenda Blethyn or Diane Keaton make more sense on paper.

But win she did, and Fargo remains the most beloved of 1996's Best Picture nominees.  I'll let this be a time to head into your thoughts on the movie, but ponder these questions as you get there-what was your favorite film of 1996?  Do you think Blethyn, Keaton, Scott Thomas, or Watson was the biggest competition against McDormand (and would Madonna have scored if Frances had gone supporting)?  And if you were teaching a film class, which movie would you kick it off with?