1990 Oscar Viewing Project

"It's the nineties, for God's sake," and indeed it is as we encounter our 34th Oscar Viewing Project (see links to the other 33 below).  The Oscar Viewing Project is now in its 2nd third (we'll likely never be below that at this pace, as I try to get through 5-7 of them a year), and we're entering the first year of what my brother & I refer to as our "wilderness period" of movie watching.  I was born in the 1980's, but the movies didn't become my life until the mid-1990's.  This was driven by a series of events, specifically watching my first Oscars at the 1995 ceremony (i.e. the Braveheart Oscars) on repeat after my brother & I taped it, the inclusion of AMC (and eventually TCM) in my parents' cable package, the advent of the AFI 100 Years TV specials, the discovery of Entertainment Weekly at our school library, the opening of a standalone video rental place in my town, my parents letting me watch PG-13 movies, and my mom instituting Tuesday night movies, where she would take my brother & I (regardless of what was showing) to the 7 PM showing (i.e. the G/PG/sometimes PG-13 slot) while my dad had golf night, and so pretty much every week in the summer from roughly 1995 to 1998 we would watch a movie.  This gave me a pretty extensive vernacular with what was going on in the world of movies, and generally meant I had seen 20-30 films from the calendar year by year's end.

From 1990-1994, though, it's a weird spot because these are not "classics" that I had to seek out or have no memory of watching in real-time, but were really when movies were still just a "normal" thing for me, not something I was obsessed with and made my entire personality.  In 1990, I definitely watched at least two movies (The Rescuers Down Under and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) in theaters, and so I have at least some context for this year in real-time, even if the bulk of these movies are me watching them later at home.  By 1995, Oscar-related films like Apollo 13 & Babe I'd seen in movie theaters, and had known they were going to be Oscar nominees beforehand, and so the early 1990's feel like a weird time of catchup for me as a teenager, a feeling that has stretched well into adulthood.

I give you this preamble in part because this is a personal journey of Oscar exploration, and in part because I think it's good context.  The early 1990's are a time where I see some of these movies from a child's eyes (I remember my parents' VHS copies of films like Ghost & Pretty Woman, and secretly watching them when I was too young to understand what they were wholly about), and revisiting them as an adult has shifted some of my perspective on them, but in other ways they are immobile.  As always, to ground you in the films of the year, the domestic Top 10 at the box office in 1990 was:

1. Home Alone

2. Ghost

3. Dances with Wolves

4. Pretty Woman

5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

6. The Hunt for Red October

7. Total Recall

8. Die Hard 2

9. Dick Tracy

10. Kindergarten Cop

I have actually seen all of these movies, and to underline my point about growing up with them, I had seen 70% (save for #7-9) by the time I turned 16.  Honestly, you have to go Another 48 Hours at #14 on the domestic box office list to find a movie I haven't caught from the top box office that year.  While I have seen all of the Oscar nominees below, there are a couple of precursor contenders that I haven't seen yet, namely The Russia House, White Palace, and Q&A that I haven't caught yet, but plan on doing so before we get to the My Ballot.  

But now, it's time to go back to a time when Nelson Mandela was being freed in front of the world, the Hubble telescope was having us reach for the stars, Roseanne Barr was teaching us new ways to never sing on national television, and the entire nation was mourning the loss of Jim Henson.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Note: For the last time (likely ever) the Visual Effects category was not a competitive category, but instead was given to Total Recall as a special prize.  We'll have a proper category for this when we get to it for the My Ballot with five nominees, and it's worth noting that it's relatively accepted that Dick Tracy, Ghost, and Back to the Future, Part III were shortlisted for this but none of them got nominated (all of which I've seen as well), but I want to note that Total Recall was seen by me for this project, and I generally was impressed with the visual effects, particularly the way that they used makeup effects toward the end of the picture. 

Picture

1. GoodFellas

2. Ghost

3. The Godfather, Part III

4. Dances with Wolves

5. Awakenings

The Lowdown: Let's begin with me saying that 1990 is, collectively, one of the first years I ever saw all five of the Best Picture nominees (I've had this lineup completed since before I graduated high school, which was a while ago), and also a year where (both for Oscar and in general) I don't love the movies themselves as much as others.  The glossy movie star-driven blockbusters that would become the decade's calling card hadn't started yet, and we don't have some of the best prestige work that I enjoyed in the 1980's.  Of these films, it's an easy call for GoodFellas, one of the best films of Martin Scorsese's career.  Ghost ages better with reappraisal, and Godfather 3 is not as bad as its critical reputation allows, but GoodFellas is an easy champion.

Director

1. Martin Scorsese (GoodFellas)

2. Stephen Frears (The Grifters)

3. Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Part III)

4. Barbet Schroder (Reversal of Fortune)

5. Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves)

The Lowdown: It's weird to think about now, but at one point in time Martin Scorsese was basically the Hitchcock or Kubrick of his era-a man who was constantly nominated for Academy Awards but never was able to win any of them.  Meanwhile, I'm giving him his third statue for the OVP (again, links below) for the really incredible way that he upended the gangster flick after decades of hero-worship of it through the Godfather pictures (which of course in this case he competed alongside).  I will also acknowledge I have some respect for Dances with Wolves, but you're going to find out they do not extend to Kevin Costner's involvement in the film (and this ain't its final 5th place finish).

Actor

1. Richard Harris (The Field)

2. Jeremy Irons (Reversal of Fortune)

3. Gerard Depardieu (Cyrano de Bergerac)

4. Robert de Niro (Awakenings)

5. Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves)'

The Lowdown: A very odd lineup, and not a strong one (this isn't Oscar's fault...my My Ballot for 1990 is going to be very weird unless I start discovering some stronger stuff in the upcoming viewings...this is much more a year for actresses).  Oscar went with Jeremy Irons, and honestly this wouldn't be the worst thing that ever happened for the OVP-Irons is a really good actor, one who somehow only got one Oscar nomination despite being in the AMPAS wheelhouse (British, handsome, classy, constantly in prestige fare), but I'm going to go with Harris over him.  Harris's part is a bit more theatrical, but it also has a stronger build, and he's also batting in a lesser movie while still excelling.  The rest, even Robert de Niro, don't really need mention.

Actress

1. Anjelica Huston (The Grifters)

2. Kathy Bates (Misery)

3. Meryl Streep (Postcards from the Edge)

4. Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman)

5. Joanne Woodward (Mr. and Mrs. Bridge)

The Lowdown: While I will own that I'm not inspired by 1990 as a whole, that doesn't mean that I don't have moments, and this is one of the best Best Actress lineups Oscar ever pulled together.  Any of these women would be a winner, and I wouldn't be stunned if my My Ballot looks a lot like this-even Woodward in fifth place is doing a lot of strong work.  I ended up going with Huston over Bates (a controversial choice, I know) not because Bates isn't splendid (one of the best Oscar upsets), but because Huston nails this part so well that I have long been obsessed with it.  The interiority in her work, the way that she nails the animal instinct of that final scene...she's honestly never been better.  I'm aware this means that Bates may never get an OVP statue from me, but...that's why we decide this in a vacuum, and I prefer Huston in a vacuum.

Supporting Actor

1. Joe Pesci (GoodFellas)

2. Andy Garcia (The Godfather, Part III)

3. Bruce Davison (Longtime Companion)

4. Al Pacino (Dick Tracy)

5. Grahame Greene (Dances with Wolves)

The Lowdown: Joe Pesci is one of those truly spectacular actors who rarely works...but when he does, it always felt like an event.  In 1990 you've got him not just nailing the fiery persona behind GoodFellas but also playing the funniest henchmen outside of a DC Comic in Home Alone.  Davison is subtler than I would've expected given the subject matter (his final scene is the best in the movie) and I actually think Andy Garcia brings a hot-headed style to Godfather III (and no, this is not just because I palpitated every time he was onscreen...Andy Garcia in Godfather III was a formative experience for a teenage John watching this on VHS for the first time), but they just aren't in the same hemisphere as what Pesci brings to his doomed mob hitman.

Supporting Actress

1. Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost)

2. Annette Bening (The Grifters)

3. Lorraine Bracco (GoodFellas)

4. Diane Ladd (Wild at Heart)

5. Mary McDonnell (Dances with Wolves)

The Lowdown: While I didn't go with the consensus choice for Best Actress, that won't be the case here.  Whoopi Goldberg owns Ghost, giving us a lesson in comedy, and totally nailing the frequently cliched role of "best friend to the leading lovers" that has long been the bread-and-butter of the romantic genre.  I do really like Annette Bening, particularly the glossy over-her-head feeling she gets the further The Grifters goes (without ever totally telegraphing it), and Lorraine Bracco has strong moments even if she's pitched a little to the hilt in some scenes of GoodFellas, but like Oscar said-this is Whoopi's year.

Foreign Language Film

1. Cyrano de Bergerac (France)

2. The Nasty Girl (Germany)

3. Ju Dou (China)

4. Journey of Hope (Switzerland)

5. Open Doors (Italy)

The Lowdown: For me, this is a pretty tight contest between France & Germany.  I liked elements of Ju Dou, but honestly Raise the Red Lantern a year later leaves a much longer shadow.  Cyrano is more conventional, a space we've gone to before, but this is also my favorite adaptation of Rostand's story, and it doesn't have the not-always-successful narrator tricks of The Nasty Girl, even if the latter has a more compelling story (and honestly, a better lead performance).

Adapted Screenplay

1. GoodFellas

2. The Grifters

3. Reversal of Fortune

4. Dances with Wolves

5. Awakenings

The Lowdown: Adapted Screenplay goes to the crooks, and the two films I pretty much universally love of this bunch: GoodFellas and The Grifters.  There's something wonderful about The Grifters, a movie I find I champion more than most do, as it strips down some of the best elements of the neo-noir (the sex, the deceit, the ability to have a non-Hays Code ending) and creates something that feels fresh and calculating, but I can't deny GoodFellas in the end, the extremely rare screenplay so well-written it even makes the narration work.

Original Screenplay

1. Ghost

2. Metropolitan

3. Avalon

4. Alice

5. Green Card

The Lowdown: A pretty middling field, even if none are objectively bad.  I'm picking Ghost not just because it's the best, but also because it takes a really challenging genre to make without it turning camp or cloying (the romantic drama-fantasy) and really makes it sell (it's also genuinely funny).  Metropolitan is the most sophisticated (I was stunned to find out it's not based on a play or novel), and part of me wants to go with it but I think its ending doesn't work at all, and neither Avalon nor a weak default nomination for Woody Allen really compare to the Unchained Melody of Ghost.

Sound

1. Dances with Wolves

2. Total Recall

3. Days of Thunder

4. The Hunt for Red October

5. Dick Tracy

The Lowdown: We're shifting into the Oscar era for Best Sound where we are very much valuing the big, action-film even over the prestige fare of the giant epic (Dances with Wolves is the only epic in this bunch, and it's not without its battle scenes).  I actually really like what the team does with Dances with Wolves, between the Civil War beginnings to the way that it adds elements of "the last western" realism to the scenes with Costner off finding himself, all while beautifully bringing in that lush John Barry score.  Total Recall and its futuristic & impressive battles would also have been a good idea, but I think I'm ready to give a statue to Oscar's Best Picture winner here.

Sound Editing

1. The Hunt for Red October

2. Total Recall

3. Flatliners

The Lowdown: It's a running joke with Oscar that he tends to, when it was a separate category, always think first of submarine movies when it comes to Sound Effects Editing (look at the history of the category-it pops up way more than you'd think), and to some degree I agree with him.  The water effects, constant claustrophobia, & many buttons & levers of The Hunt for Red October are really done and a large part of what builds the suspense, even if the space age adventures, and especially some of the final scenes in the dying planet of Mars in Total Recall hold their own.

Score

1. Dances with Wolves

2. Home Alone

3. Avalon

4. Ghost

5. Havana

The Lowdown: I feel like a lot of these OVP Score contests from the 1970's through the 2020's is a battle of "to John Williams or not to John Williams" and this is a particularly tough one as I adore the score to Home Alone (and honestly Avalon or Ghost would be a good winner here too...there's only one true dud in this lineup).  But John Barry's score to Dances with Wolves is just a perfect piece of music, and adds the best parts to a movie I really did not care for overall.  It deserves the W.

Original Song

1. "I'm Checking Out" (Postcards from the Edge)

2. "Somewhere in My Memory" (Home Alone)

3. "Sooner or Later" (Dick Tracy)

4. "Blaze of Glory" (Young Guns II)

5. "Promise Me You'll Remember" (The Godfather, Part III)

The Lowdown: You know that line that I said above about how movies have connections to your childhood you can't really escape.  For me, one of the few true memories of childhood, specifically around Christmas, that I need to bring back every year is hearing "Somewhere in My Memory" playing in the background.  It's also a movie that reminds me, more than maybe any other, of my little brother as I know how much he loves Home Alone, which gives it a nostalgic necessity I really cherish.  I'm judging on a scale (and honestly all of these movies are good), and for me "I'm Checking Out" is better (and better-used in the film) so I'm giving it the trophy, but it's tight and you should expect both to end up in the My Ballot.

Art Direction

1. Dick Tracy

2. Hamlet

3. The Godfather, Part III

4. Cyrano de Bergerac

5. Dances with Wolves

The Lowdown: Honestly, a really solid lineup (there are no losers in this bunch, even if I won't repeat all of them with my My Ballot).  I tend to like the Mel Gibson Hamlet more than most (for the record, people turned on this one well before they turned on Gibson), and I think the castles & work here is really beautiful.  But Dick Tracy is so inventive, it's impossible to deny-the comic book lights, the way that it feels at once like it's springing from a dime novel AND a 1940's Hollywood set, despite relatively modern makeup & visual effects surrounding it-and all that color!  Glorious!

Cinematography

1. Dances with Wolves

2. The Godfather, Part III

3. Avalon

4. Dick Tracy

5. Henry & June

The Lowdown: Leave it to those crazy pervs in the Cinematography branch to totally go for a film as banal as Henry & June just because they tastefully shot most of the sex scenes so well.  That random silliness aside, this is really a battle between the increasingly aged & sepia-hued glories of The Godfather, Part III and the gorgeous expanses of Dances with Wolves (points are due for the way that Avalon feels of another time though).  I would not be opposed to giving it to the third Godfather film (and lord knows Gordon Willis deserved a competitive Oscar at some point), but it's hard to argue with the glories of the West.

Costume Design

1. Hamlet

2. Cyrano de Bergerac

3. Dick Tracy

4. Avalon

5. Dances with Wolves

The Lowdown: Hamlet has been cited three times (to date) for Best Costume Design, and like 1948 (see link below), we are giving it the gold medal here (1996's version with Kenneth Branagh is still unseen, but don't worry...we'll get there eventually-every one of these contests I do I become more & more determined to truly finish this project...also fun fact within a fun fact-I have been to Elsinore in my world travels, and thought it was breathtaking).  For me, the biggest competition is the period costuming in Cyrano.  I think some of the comic book costuming in Dick Tracy is a bit silly, and Avalon doesn't stand out, but the gorgeous 17th Century decorations of France were on-par with 14th Century Denmark, but not quite enough to conquer to the monologuing Dane.

Film Editing

1. GoodFellas

2. The Godfather, Part III

3. Dances with Wolves

4. Ghost

5. The Hunt for Red October

The Lowdown: I feel at this point like a broken record-GoodFellas was the best, and somewhere behind it is Godfather III and Ghost.  I will own, given its really rough reputation as a movie, that Godfather III being in second here is no accident.  I think a lot of the problems with it are casting (Sofia Coppola, apologies, but you are the weakest link...and George Hamilton is not a strong substitute for Robert Duvall), but the editing works-we get a really strongly-structured story, one that feels inline with the originals even if it isn't that level of classic (like, say, GoodFellas, which basically invented a new type of editing with its cocaine-inspired manic nature).

Makeup

1. Dick Tracy

2. Edward Scissorhands

3. Cyrano de Bergerac

The Lowdown: It feels weird to end in Makeup, not Visual Effects (I believe this is the only time we'll do this as we're alphabetical and Makeup has been a category for a much shorter time than Visual Effects), but I'm glad we're doing it with two icons of the category.  There are only winners between the garish brilliance of Dick Tracy and the transformative genius of Edward Scissorhands (honestly, Cyrano ain't bad either), but I'm going with Dick Tracy both because there's more characters to be in awe of and because it feels so in-tune with the glorious silliness of a comic strip, rather than needing to take itself too seriously.

Past Oscar Viewing Projects: 1931-32, 1948, 1957, 1964, 1972, 1981, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

OVP: Supporting Actor (2019)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2019)

The Nominees Were...

Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes

Al Pacino, The Irishman

Joe Pesci, The Irishman

Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

My Thoughts: Conversations about category fraud are rampant if you follow blogs, podcasts, or social media about the Oscars (and I suspect if you're reading this article you probably do).  In general, I tend to side with those that take a firm stance against it, even if I'm aware that this is a losing battle (principles are hard to hold intact when you feel they're caving, but I like to stand my ground as long as I can).  As a result, I knock down a point from an overall performance for the OVP if I feel it is a lead work masquerading as a supporting (I don't do the same if it's supporting in lead as I think they are already at a disadvantage, and also because that's less common).  That determination is subjective, though, as we'll see here-four of these performances are bordering on leads, and I could see the argument for them being actual leads, but I don't consider all of them actual lead performances (even if they take up much of their movies).

The one indisputably supporting performance in the bunch is Joe Pesci, so we'll start there.  Pesci came out of retirement to play this part, and doesn't get the showiness of his nominated costar Al Pacino.  However, Pesci, an actor made famous for his vitriolic or even outlandish work in films like GoodFellas and Home Alone here adapts to an introverted character.  There's a sense of calm upon his Russell, someone who is always in control even when others around him think he's not in the loop.  This is a hard role to play & standout, but Pesci shows that retirement has not made him rust-a truly calculating turn, and one that compliments the film nicely.  I left the film curious, not frustrated, by his conflicting motives.

His costar Al Pacino, for me, is also a supporting player (by my measure, despite this being a big part, he is not the lead-that's completely the titular Robert de Niro).  Pacino gets a showier part than Pesci, which is usually followed by a "but," when critics say this, however that's not the case here.  Pacino is terrific in The Irishman, full stop.  His Jimmy Hoffa is meant to be both true-to-life (Hoffa bent & broke the law throughout his time in the sun), while also staying the moral compass of the film, the one character who seems to have his arrow pointed as close to north as you can find in Scorsese's epic.  Pacino could've overplayed him (he's done that often in the past few decades), but here his calibration is fully-locked.  A brilliant casting move for Scorsese to finally bring Pacino into his fold.

The other character I can't really fault as being a "category fraud" situation is Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, another case of a supporting player portraying a big & important part, but a supporting one nonetheless.  Hanks is an ideal choice to play Mr. Rogers, and honestly I wondered if this might be boring as Hanks has mined this well frequently in his career.  But he plays Rogers compellingly, and more surprisingly, with layers.  Hanks doesn't canonize Rogers, but he also doesn't shy away from the fact that he was simply a good man, driven by his religious principles & a want for equality.  That's hard to do in a movie, and to make your character worth watching for two hours when you don't have an obvious flaw to connect the audience to, but Hanks does it with a late career role I think is his most challenging part since Saving Mr. Banks.

Anthony Hopkins, one could argue, is not entirely the lead in The Two Popes, as it is more Pope Francis's story than Benedict's, but I don't really buy that.  Skirting the line, but it's over the threshold for me personally.  That said, while I know others didn't love this movie, I thought Hopkins was quite good in it (similar to Hanks, he's an actor who has been churning out under-appreciated work for much of the past decade after dominating the awards circuit throughout the 1990's).  He gives us a rage & an anger that we need from Benedict, who is haunted by not only his remote connection to God, but also the burden of his earthly legacy, clearly in shambles as Francis becomes the beloved figure Benedict never could aspire toward.

Brad Pitt is the one case of category fraud I'm not buying any arguments for.  Just because Leo's character is the headliner doesn't mean that we have to buy that Pitt is suddenly supporting here, and I don't.  Docking him for that, Pitt's great here (Pitt is always great, in fact-while not a list of my favorite performances ever assembled in this category, this might be one of the best lists of talents the Academy has ever come up with in Supporting Actor).  He is a man who has spent his life in second fiddle, knowing that any dreams of stardom went out long ago & he is best left enjoying what's left in his time alongside bigger names.  Pitt might be playing a version of himself as a handsome, sun-bleached California dude, but the best actors know how to bring themselves into each character to make the part completely theirs.

Other Precursor Contenders: Oscar & the Globes were in lockstep this year, both in terms of their winner (Pitt) and their nominees (every single performer carried over from this star-studded lineup).  SAG got a little bit different, but not much-they kept Pitt as their winner, while putting in Jamie Foxx (Just Mercy) in place of Tom Hanks.  BAFTA also awarded the trophy to Pitt, and was exactly the same as Oscar's lineup.  In terms of sixth place, we knew at the time that Hanks might miss (he'd been on a long Oscar draught), but it was hard to tell who was in sixth.  Foxx isn't a bad guess (it does feel like he's in that spot in his career where a third nomination will probably come about), but I kind of wonder in retrospect if love for Parasite would've put Sang Kang Ho into contention.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: There are no bad performances in this lineup, and it is (for my money) the best cumulative acting lineup that Oscar assembled in 2019.  That said, I would have included both Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit) and Tommy Lee Jones (Ad Astra), both of whom added nice compliments to their film's stories and are undoubtedly true supporting parts.

Oscar’s Choice: It was decided pretty early on that this was Brad Pitt's year, and it was made clearer when he was competing against four men who already have an Oscar (this argument didn't work for Amy Adams in 2013, but it was a sound one for Pitt).

My Choice: I'm going to go with Pesci in a very slight nod over Pacino (I have said differently on other days), as I think it lingers better.  For third, it would be Pitt without the category fraud, but with the category fraud points docked, the bronze will go to Tom Hanks, with Pitt & Hopkins coming behind.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you with me siding with Joe Pesci or are you standing behind Brad Pitt finally getting his Oscar?  How much should category fraud matter when deciding whom to vote for in these contests?  And seriously-who was the sixth place finisher?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2019: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2019

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

OVP: The Irishman (2019)

Film: The Irishman (2019)
Stars: Robert de Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Harvey Keitel
Director: Martin Scorsese
Oscar History: 10 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor-Joe Pesci, Supporting Actor-Al Pacino, Production Design, Visual Effects, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Scorsese.  De Niro.  Pacino.  Pesci.  Keitel.  The Irishman is the sort of film that feels, as you peruse its trailers, like the kind of movie that both should have existed already and that could never exist.  How could you possibly shove this many legends into one film-how is it possible that this many icons of 1970's cinema are still alive decades after they emerged as almost godlike figures in movies, titans of a certain kind of filmmaking?  These are all questions you should have going into The Irishman, and about ten minutes in you'll forget them.  The Irishman is meant to be seen on the big-screen-it's titanic, gargantuan filmmaking that one should at least appreciate Netflix for making (though it's hard to imagine another studio would have turned Scorsese down), but perhaps should be more appreciative that it's in theaters despite that hurting Netflix's cache.  It's also a movie of great scope, magnitude, the kind that isn't made anymore, and the kind that even Scorsese himself has struggled to create despite a 21st Century filled with masterful ambition (Silence, The Departed) and middling effect (Gangs of New York, Shutter Island).  The Irishman is, to use an overused phrase, "an instant classic" but it's also a movie that serves as a career capper for so many people-a sign that giants of the movies, despite wandering through the desert for years, could still pull off the roles that made them icons, but has a finality to so many careers you can't help but look at it with instant nostalgia.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film clocks in at 209 minutes, so trying to summarize the plot into one neat paragraph like we usually do is a bit of a stretch, but here goes.  Frank Sheeran (de Niro, playing one of many true-to-life characters in a movie that never feels like a biopic, but technically is one) is a truck driver who moonlights as a mafia hitman.  Initially he is the right-hand man of Russell Bufalino (Pesci), but Russ wants to assign him to be essentially the bodyguard & confidante of Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), the head of the Teamsters union and someone whose connection to the Teamsters pension fund frequently will be used to fund projects within the mob.  As the film progresses, we see these men, but particularly Hoffa, start to evolve, eventually going from a powerful leader to someone who is a shadow of his former power after prison-time, attempting to claw his way back to the top, back to relevance.  As the film moves, we see Frank have to choose between staying with the mob bosses who made him, or give himself over completely to Hoffa & his ambitions, a life more traditionally reputable for his family, including daughter Peggy (Paquin), who idolizes Hoffa and is distant to her own father.  Ultimately, Frank chooses the mob by assassinating Hoffa, which leaves him with a self-chosen family, but also makes his flesh-and-blood family view him as a distant killer.

The Irishman is possibly the longest film I've ever seen in theaters for the first time (Lawrence of Arabia, another biopic of a complicated man I saw in theaters last year, is slightly longer though it's aided by an intermission but I've seen that at least a dozen times), and it's one that I'm glad I saw in theaters, but particularly one I saw in one sitting.  The movie takes a while to develop-it's instantly engrossing (Thelma Schoonmaker will be winning her fourth Oscar for this movie-how anyone could make a 3.5 hour movie where you don't look at your watch once is beyond me), but it takes a while to see where Scorsese is going.  This is why it's a pity that Netflix is going to be the home to the movie for most of its lifetime since people will watch it in a binge-style like they would Kimmy Schmidt or The Crown (i.e. in pieces over a week) negating some of the build-up, though I'm thankful that they expanded the theatrical run of the movie for more people to enjoy it on the big screen.

This is because The Irishman is something special, and not just in the way that all of Scorsese's films are special.  Marty in many ways created a more accessible sister piece to Silence (my favorite film of his since Raging Bull), but one that comes closer to the movies that he has perfected over the decades.  I've read a lot of comparisons of this film to The Godfather, but in more ways it's really Scorsese's Unforgiven.  He takes a character that would have been a side figure in another film (The Irishman is essentially what The Godfather would have been if Clemenza had been the main character) and puts him front-and-center, showing both the romanticism of this world that we've glorified for decades on the big-screen, but in the process pulling it apart, slowly but steadily dismantling our idols within the world of mob movies.  Scorsese is probably the only person who could do this in the same way Clint Eastwood was the only person who could bury the western by creating a final, gargantuan bookend for the genre-he helped to create this world in the minds of so many filmgoers, and now he's putting his final stamp on the genre.  It feels like the last great chapter in a career of wise guys and dons.

Finality is what makes this movie so special, in my opinion, because while thankfully all of these actors are still with us, Pacino, de Niro, & Pesci haven't been this good in years, decades even, and show why they became icons in the first place.  De Niro gets the least showy role, but there's something so complete in his man who is hired to deliver death, someone who can't contemplate his life too hard or it shall destroy him, and he doesn't lean into any mugging to have us recall his lifetime of work.  The same can be true for Pesci, who frequently felt like a parody of his brilliant GoodFellas character in later work, playing Russ as a cool, silent villain-someone whom we understand has a double meaning to every sentence he states, and is always looking out for himself first, but is loyal because that's the best type of self-protection.  Lastly there's Pacino, who has seemed incapable of not mugging in previous efforts on the big screen, and probably hasn't delivered a performance this succinct since the 1970's.  Pesci & de Niro play subtler characters-Pacino has a megaphone on his Hoffa, and I honestly expected the worst considering he's spent most of my lifetime eating the scenery, but there's nothing of that in his Jimmy.  He plays him as a live wire, but someone who slowly realizes that his only way to stay in power is to coast on his own memory, weaponizing nostalgia as a tool to try to stay important...a strategy that fails to work as the picture carries on.  All three men are at the top of their game, and considering the showy nature of the character along with his legendary status, I wouldn't be stunned if Pacino waltzed to a second Oscar in the same way Gene Hackman did for Unforgiven.

The only complaint I really have about the movie (if you can't tell, I was enamored), is the de-aging and visual effects on display.  In a similar way to Captain Marvel earlier this year, Scorsese smartly avoids comparison between the de-aged versions of Pesci, de Niro, and Pacino with actors that aren't digitally-enhanced, giving us undoubtedly the best use of the technology so far on the big-screen, but the uncanny valley rears its ugly head in a number of sequences.  There are times where you're stunned that you see a young version of Robert de Niro on the big-screen, other times where he feels washed out (like the World War II flashback), and Pacino in particular doesn't do well with the technology, his face feeling flat or like his flashback sequences are just him with a facelift.  Pacino, so handsome in his youth, can't really recapture that same essence here onscreen, and because Scorsese uses actors who we know what they looked like at 30, 40, 50, etc, the comparison is too easy to make.  Unlike other films that have used this technology, it doesn't exactly pull you out of the picture, but it does invite confusion (the film is 90% flashbacks, and every time they switched time frames I had no idea when we were because I couldn't tell from de Niro's digitally-altered face).  I still think makeup or using a younger actor would have been better, but I'm not so much of a hypocrite to dismiss that Scorsese hits a new plane with this technology.  It's just that the real genius on display here is a master filmmaker that, at nearly 80-years-old, can still make one of his best pictures.

OVP: The Good Shepherd (2006)

Film: The Good Shepherd (2006)
Stars: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Robert de Niro, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Joe Pesci, John Turturro, Billy Crudup, Tammy Blanchard, Lee Pace, Eddie Redmayne
Director: Robert de Niro
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Trying to recreate The Godfather is a fool's errand.  One of the truly perfect cinematic masterpieces, it hangs as a shadow over so many movies since it's creation, with really only one man (Francis Ford Coppola) able to duplicate it, and that was as a sequel (and that was only once-just ask any film fan).  A quiet, introverted epic about one family's journey, the movie is legendary for a reason-no one else has been able to achieve such a towering, studied look at an organized syndicate.  But that doesn't mean that people don't try, and perhaps few people should be allowed more leeway to pursue such a venture as Robert de Niro.  De Niro has only directed two films in his career, the first being the commercially-dismissed but critically-praised A Bronx Tale, and the second being this movie, a three-hour (fictionalized) look at the earliest days of the CIA.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie, at 167 minutes in length, is expensive, but it's main focus can be summed up in a few lines.  Essentially, we have Edward Wilson Sr. (Damon) who is working for the government during the Cold War in the 1960's during the Bay of Pigs invasion.  We alternate back to his present day, where we learn about his life, his early romances with a deaf woman (Blanchard) and the sister of a friend at Yale, where he's in the Skull-and-Bones, whom he gets pregnant (Jolie).  We also see as he happens, through luck and skill, to eventually be recruited into government channels not available to regular people, in counterintelligence that will eventually become the CIA.  While this is happening, we see others in his web betray him or be subsumed by scandal, and he watches as his wife and son (a very young Eddie Redmayne) struggle with his stoicism, eventually ripping his family apart in pursuit of his career.

This is all very, very similar to The Godfather, with Edward Wilson becoming our Michael Corleone, and while there's no Don (kind of William Hurt, but not really), it's interesting to see just how similar the films are considering that A) de Niro is a major component of that film series and B) how the film fails when it has so many of its components borrowed from a filmmaker who saw the original made first-hand.  The problem with The Good Shepherd is first that it never really justifies its length-the movie is overstuffed with oftentimes repetitive points (how many times can we see Damon's Wilson be betrayed), as if de Niro is trying to shove all three Godfather movies into the same movie.  The film becomes meandering, and while that is likely how it won its sole Oscar nomination (getting to cover decades of furniture, offices, and interiors we get at a "most art direction" sort of citation without ever getting into a traditional British costume drama or fantasy film, which is where "most art direction" is usually used as a criticism), but it makes the picture pretty dull, and takes away the few moments of intrigue it generally lays out.

The second problem is the acting.  Damon is one of those movie stars who has natural charisma, but does better work in lighter films as he confuses serious with lifeless, and his Edward Wilson is without personality in the worst way possible.  It's unfair to compare any performance to Al Pacino in The Godfather, but as they are so similarly structured it's hard not to see that while Pacino lets us into Michael's world and then slowly closes the door, Damon just keeps it closed shut, so all we see is this person whom we don't really care about for three hours.  Jolie's performance is bordering on terrible as his wife, her fight scenes becoming hyperbolic & she seems to have no connection to her other than "this scene I'll play her happy" or "this scene she should be sad."  It's underwritten, but it's hard to imagine that both of these people are Oscar winners based on just this movie.  The best part of the movie is arguably Pesci as a mobster in one single scene.  Pesci came out of his prolonged retirement to make this film, and it was worth it, showing he has lost none of his ability to land a scene.  But the rest, even de Niro himself, are underwhelming in a movie that just sits there, trying to be important but instead is a snooze.