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 Actress (2002)

OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2002)

The Nominees Were...

Kathy Bates, About Schmidt

Julianne Moore, The Hours

Queen Latifah, Chicago

Meryl Streep, Adaptation

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago

My Thoughts: I frequently talk, both one-on-one and in Twitter threads, with other Oscar fans about various Oscar races, and 2002's Supporting Actress race is generally considered to be one of the "best" lineups for this category, certainly of this century.  This feels pretty accurate looking at it from the outset.  Some of these women are giving the best performances of their film careers, but even those that aren't are giving work that stands up well 20 years after the fact to scrutiny.  This year also stands apart as the first time for 15 years (it would be broken in 2017) that two actors from the same movie were nominated in the same category, something that used to be quite commonplace but now reads as an artifact of another era.

Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2002 was inarguably at the peak of her star power.  Having just come into public consciousness four years earlier in Mask of Zorro, she seemed to know her stardom would be brief (in the decades since, she is better known for being part of one of Hollywood's most enduring power couples than her movie roles), and she chose this year to give the performance of a lifetime, ensuring she'd have an Oscar to match Michael's.  It's hard to argue with it.  Though you can claim category fraud, that's pretty much the only thing you could go for and I honestly don't buy it-her being a backgrounded character is kind of the point, so I'm not knocking a star off for that.  Zeta-Jones nails every scene in this movie, stealing it wholesale from her costars, and landing Chicago's three best musical numbers ("All That Jazz," "Cell Block Tango," and "I Can't Do It Alone") with the tenacity of an orca hunting a seal.  There's no notes-this is one of the best musical performances in film history.

It's difficult to try to get nominated for the movie against a legendary performance, but Queen Latifah does at least get her musical number & makes an impression.  "When You're Good to Mama" landed her this nomination wholesale.  While Latifah has always been a winning presence onscreen (one of those singers who so seamlessly went into film you sometimes forget that music is where she got her start), most of what she does in this movie is fun rather than great acting.  But her musical number kind of sells everything you need to know about Matron Mama Morton & she juicily indulges every one of Kander & Ebb's saucy lines ("she deserves a lot of tat, for what she's got to give").  This isn't a nomination I'll repeat on my My Ballot, but it's one that I don't remotely care that Oscar gave out, particularly given it was the only citation she'd ever receive from AMPAS.

Kathy Bates, in a similar fashion, is more fun than great acting here.  Bates is one of the best character actors of her generation, frequently taking on the place of someone like a Thelma Ritter or Maggie Smith before her, and she knows what she's expected to bring to her hippie mama in this is a sense of bawdy comic relief, and that's what she does.  This isn't her best work, and I think much of this nomination came from a lack of vanity, as Bates famously did a full frontal nude scene in a hot tub at the age of 54, but like Latifah, she understands the assignment and does what the script is asking her to do...it's just not asking a lot.

The same cannot be said for Meryl Streep, who gives one of the best performances of her long career in Adaptation.  While Streep has been strong since this (particularly in Julie & Julia, The Devil Wears Prada, and The Post), this might be the last time we saw her as a great dramatic actor, free of a lot of the "look, I'm Meryl!" posturing that would creep into some of her later work.  Susan Orlean is a complicated part, and she doesn't shy away from the grandeur of a writer who is good (but maybe not quite as good as she should be), and has a specific type of erudite attitude toward the world that I love.  In Streep's hands, she's the queen of a very small kingdom, and she's encountering a place she didn't know before in Adaptation-it's complicated, meticulous stuff, and really well-done.

Julianne Moore, like Streep, was giving two sensational performances in 2002.  Unlike Zeta-Jones, I cannot pretend that Moore isn't clearcut category fraud here.  It's being done nobly (Academy rules dictate she can't be nominated for both films, a rule I ignore when I craft my personal ballots), but I knock down a star as The Hours is a three-lead film.  That said, this is a great performance, and one that folds perfectly in with Streep & Kidman's versions of the same story.  Moore is the woman trapped in a world that Virginia Woolf understood well-a housewife trying to find something more.  There's something so breathtaking in the dawning realization of what she needs to do as the day progresses, what she'd need to do to escape the doldrums of her life...that killer monologue at the end where she admits she regrets nothing is Moore doing what few other actors of her generation could pull off (and is why she's one of the best).

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes put Zeta-Jones in lead instead of supporting, giving them room to give the trophy to Meryl atop Bates, Latifah, Cameron Diaz (Gangs of New York), and Susan Sarandon (Igby Goes Down).  SAG went all-in on Chicago, awarding Zeta-Jones and citing Latifah, Bates, Moore, & Michelle Pfeiffer (White Oleander), while BAFTA also gave their trophy to Zeta-Jones and kept Oscar's lineup largely intact, just skipping Bates in favor of Toni Collette (About a Boy).  Similar to Supporting Actor, I think this is a close contest for fifth place.  I'm inclined to think it is Michelle Pfeiffer, who was still in the throes of "she'll win eventually" sorts of stardom, though that never came to pass, though Patricia Clarkson had serious buzz for Far from Heaven and might've gotten in a year earlier than she actually did if Oscar had pushed Moore or Zeta-Jones into lead.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I would've included Clarkson for sure.  Clarkson is also a noted character actor and a great one, but her Oscar nomination being for Pieces of April is an indictment of bad taste on AMPAS's part (kind of like Stanley Tucci's Oscar nod being for one of his worst performances).  Her turn in Far from Heaven as the casually-bigoted best friend whose loyalty only goes so far is really good stuff, and fits the motif perfectly-this is when she should've gotten her career nod if she was getting one.

Oscar’s Choice: Given Chicago's misses in the evening and the fact that we had well-started the "give Meryl a third Oscar campaign" (which really had its origins in 1995), I think Zeta-Jones was probably a closer victory than you'd think in retrospect.  But she still took it.

My Choice: Like I said, I'm not counting Zeta-Jones as category fraud even if you could totally make the case (which I did at the time) that she's a lead.  As a result, there's no qualms here-she gets an easy victory.  Category fraud will affect silver though, which I'm giving to Streep atop Moore, even if my adoration of the latter's performance might be slightly higher.  Bates and then Latifah finish off the category.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Does anyone dare defy Velma Kelly in this lineup, and if so, with whom?  Do you think of Zeta-Jones or Moore as supporting as lead (be honest!)?  And was it Clarkson or Pfeiffer that was the sixth place option for us?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2002: Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2002

Past Best Supporting Actress Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Supporting Actress (2019)

OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2019)

The Nominees Were...

Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell

Laura Dern, Marriage Story

Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit

Florence Pugh, Little Women

Margot Robbie, Bombshell

My Thoughts: The Best Supporting Actor race we discussed on Monday (links to all past contests below) was pretty stagnant throughout the cycle-the winner was the same everywhere, and the nominees virtually were as well.  This was not the case for the 2019 Best Supporting Actress race, though.  While the winner remained the same (we'll get to her in a second), it's worth noting that there were some curveballs amidst the precursors, and considerably more names mentioned than we otherwise would've gotten from this slate of actresses.  But one name, our winner, remained constant and we'll start with her.

Laura Dern's work in Marriage Story was, like Brad Pitt, the culmination of a longtime star getting her "this is the time" awards run, and everyone latched on.  These runs sometimes are perplexing even if you like the stars ("really-for that performance?") but I think for Dern this feels about right.  This isn't her most iconic work, and in fact it borrows generously from Renata Klein (for my money her most singular role), but she gives so much with this characterization, casually heartless but never apologetic & willing to play with the dynamics of being a woman in a male-dominated field.  Occasionally the role feels out-of-place against the more humanistic work that Driver & Johansson are bringing to the screen, but this is a small complaint for an enjoyable bit of scene-stealing.

Margot Robbie might have gotten more love in a different year (she is right in that sweet spot of an actor who is going to get an Oscar in the next few years or never get one), and she completely steals Bombshell from her costars.  This is a weird compliment since one of Bombshell's best traits is how the makeup team ensures the actors inhabit their real-life counterparts (and Robbie is playing the only fictional character), but she makes Kayla both confident & realistically naive.  It's a tough role, possibly the toughest in the film, but she gives it her all.  And while the OVP only focuses on the film at hand (we don't take into consideration an actor being "overdue" or having a "good year"), I have to say I enjoyed her small part as Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Scarlett Johansson finally ended her Oscars drought (she regularly showed up before this year on "Best Actors Never to Be Nominated") with a pair of nominations, and while this is very different from what she's doing in Marriage Story, I think it fits well with the Jojo Rabbit part.  Caring mother is a trope that Oscar latches onto, but this is a tricky role to play, as we have to see her character through the eyes of her young son Jojo, but also with enough hints about her real feelings & her concerns about herself & her son.  The red shoes scene wouldn't work in such a shocking way if she hadn't grounded us in what was taking place internally.

Florence Pugh, like Robbie & Johansson, was having a banner year in 2019, but we can only judge her on her work in the nominated film.  That's to her advantage, though, because while Midsommar was delicious, her scene-stealing work in Little Women might be a better testament to her skill set, finding complicated, ambitious women, and redefining them repeatedly as we watch their film.  Her Amy is the real reason that Little Women became such a touchpoint in 2019 for so many people-she shows the dignity of being the character defined by circumstance, not by passion, and moralizes a part that would've been very easy to just play as an antagonist or even soft villain.

Kathy Bates is an actress who has spent much of her career defying convention in a similar way to what Pugh does with Amy, which is why it's so disappointing that her Bobi Jewell is two-dimensional.  Bates is incapable of giving straight-up bad work, but if the script isn't demanding she give us someone super challenging, she occasionally just relies on her charisma & natural abilities without stretching the story.  That's what happens here-Bobi is sympathetic, and her big moment during the press conference is well-played, but she's too carbon copy, too cookie cutter, for me to really be invested in her arch.

Other Precursor Contenders: As I said up-top, there are more names here than we got in Supporting Actor, though Laura Dern wins everything.  The Globes skipped both Pugh & Johansson, here in favor of Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers) and Annette Bening (The Report).  SAG bumped Bates & Pugh, here picking Lopez & Nicole Kidman (Bombshell...the only time the Nicole-loving Globes have ever skipped a Kidman film performance that SAG went for), while the BAFTA's threw out just Bates in favor of Margot Robbie (who got a double nomination for both Bombshell and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood).  Lopez is famously the sixth place here, and I think that's probably right...but as that performance is so out-of-character for Oscar, I do wonder if Kidman might've been closer than what we're giving her credit for here.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I considered Lopez a lead for her performance, so we'll talk about her in this field next week for Best Actress.  One name I definitely would've included in this lineup, though, was Cho Yeo-jeong, whose work in Parasite is specific & my favorite in the film (though really all of the women of Parasite getting a collective trophy would've gotten no argument from me).

Oscar’s Choice: Dern was an easy win-Big Little Lies helped create a fanbase that might not have rallied in a different year, and she was able to best Robbie & Johansson, who I think would've been battling it out in a different season.

My Choice: With no category fraud to speak of (well done Academy!), I can go solely on performances here.  I'll give the trophy to Pugh as I think her work stands out best & brings the most to her film, with Dern, Robbie, Johansson, & Bates coming behind her in that order.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you with the consensus that this was Laura Dern's time, or are you willing to be contrarian over on Team Pugh?  Was ScarJo closer to winning this trophy or Best Actress last year?  And do you think Lopez would've gotten this nomination if she'd won the Globes (I still think her missing there was the sign we all ignored about how tenuous this citation would be)?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2019: Supporting Actor, 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 Actress Contests: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

OVP: Richard Jewell (2019)

Film: Richard Jewell (2019)
Stars: Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde
Director: Clint Eastwood
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Kathy Bates)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I have said in the past that I think that Republican politics can properly be put into movies, even if I disagree with them, if the movie is well-made and written.  I think that film is truly a universal artistic medium, and one that should be able to encompass even angles that I don't believe in, and perhaps no person is better-suited for such an argument as Clint Eastwood.  The most-talented conservative director (at least outwardly conservative) in Tinseltown today, Eastwood has made truly great pictures, including his masterpiece Unforgiven.  However, Eastwood's latest films, pretty much every picture since Letters from Iwo Jima, have struggled to combine the clear Libertarian message he's trying to portray within their confines.  American Sniper came very close, but royally botched its message in the ending (otherwise this was a great character study).  Today, we see what happens when everything goes wrong for Eastwood.  When the director's best instincts disappear and he indulges all of his worst traits as a director in order to fit in politics even when they don't work.  Today, we're going to get to Richard Jewell.

(Real Life Doesn't Have Spoilers...But There's Quite a Bit of Fiction Here So Maybe You Need the Alert Regardless) The film focuses on Richard Jewell (Hauser), a security guard at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.  For those who were too young or don't remember, there was a bomb that went off in Centennial Park during a concert that killed one woman (and another person indirectly) and injured over 100 people.  Jewell was lauded initially as a hero, and then was considered one of the prime suspects at the time, particularly after an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitiution listed him as a person-of-interest despite the evidence connecting Jewell to the crime being pretty much nonexistent.  Jewell would successfully, after being exonerated, receive compensation from media organizations such as NBC News and the New York Post for defamation, and even receive a public apology from then-Attorney General Janet Reno.

This is all a very interesting story, and would make for a good movie.  There are more twists in this tale than you can remember at the time (perhaps mostly because it took nearly a decade after the attacks to find the true culprit, Eric Rudolph, at which point most people had forgotten about the bombing).  However, Eastwood doesn't craft that.  He instead creates a movie that takes what could be a decent conservative argument for media overreach and government interference into the life of an innocent man & tries to insinuate that this is the only goal of these two bodies.  In doing so, his politics over-reach and become bombastic rather than compelling.

He does this through two of the ugliest performances I saw all year onscreen, those given by Olivia Wilde (as journalist Kathy Scruggs) and Jon Hamm (as fictional FBI agent Tom Shaw).  Wilde's performance has already been under intense scrutiny, both because she's playing a real person (as a result, there's more responsibility to ensure that who she's portraying is given a modicum of accuracy, particularly considering the real-life Scruggs died in 2001 so she's not alive to defend herself), but it's a gross performance.  She plays Scruggs as a party girl who seems to constantly be drunk and yelling in the newsroom, and who is willing to sleep with Hamm's Shaw in order to get a story.  Considering there's no evidence this actually happened, it's a lazy trope that the beautiful woman in the newsroom can only get a story by putting out to the man in charge, and Hamm, Wilde, & Eastwood should be ashamed of putting such a sexist cliche into the picture.  One kind of wonders why Wilde, who is famous enough to not need to say yes to such a potentially damaging role, was willing to take on such a part.  She's also to blame for making her Kathy a scenery-chewing cartoon.  Hamm is her equal (and equally terrible) as Shaw, an angry Snidely Whiplash-style figure who is using his government power to tie innocent Richard Jewell (and his sweet old mother) to the train tracks.

Eastwood fills out most of the (too long) movie by having other instances of Jewell acting like a fool, trusting authority that doesn't trust him (sort of brushing past the fact that Jewell, as portrayed onscreen, had behaved quite inappropriately when given some form of power, harassing students & even assaulting one on a college campus).  But he also makes sure everyone else is an idiot save for Sam Rockwell's anti-government attorney Watson Bryant, who is clearly the Eastwood proxy in the picture, and gives multiple tirades about the evils of the media & the government.

I wouldn't have seen this movie (I'm not an Eastwood completist, though I do end up seeing a lot of his movies) were it not for the Oscar buzz surrounding Kathy Bates.  We're a week away from the nominations, so we don't know yet whether Bates will get her fourth citation for her work here, but she did score a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.  Bates isn't really that special here.  She's Kathy Bates so she's not bad, and probably the film's best performance (that might also be Rockwell, and if you know me at all you know that's saying something as Rockwell isn't really my cup-of-tea), but that's not saying much.  It's a showy role (I could totally see this getting a nomination considering the nature of the performance and how she gets some big moments in the back half of the picture), but it's more sympathetic than great acting.  Her Bobi is the only character that you can embrace easily without getting covered in the film's politics.  The rest of the movie is not so lucky.

On the Basis of Sex (2018)

Film: On the Basis of Sex (2018)
Stars: Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux, Kathy Bates, Sam Waterston
Director: Mimi Leder
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Liberals have few living superheroes quite as beloved as Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Though there are complicated aspects of her legacy (namely the risk she put her seat in by not resigning in 2012), it's impossible to look at the actual substance of her career and not marvel at what she has meant for women.  Watching On the Basis of Sex I was reminded of this fact, not just from the multitude of women of all different walks of life sitting with me in a darkened theater (one of those rare non-premiere films that got applause after the film ended), but also looking at my own mother next to me, sobbing uncontrollably as she witnessed the final moments of the picture unfold.  On the Basis of Sex isn't nearly as groundbreaking as its subject, but it is very much a populist hit that's harder to make than you'd think-Leder's film is interesting, swiftly-paced, and proof that biopics don't have to be awards bait to still be fun to watch.

(Do you need a spoiler alert for a movie like this?) The film follows Ginsburg (Jones) during the earliest days of her time as a Harvard law student through her first major gender-discrimination case in the early 1970's.  The film does a pretty decent job of balancing out Ginsburg's professional woes (and successes) with her family life, with a lot focused on her storybook marriage to Marty (Hammer).  The movie's central case involves Charles Moritz, a man who was denied caregiver's rights because the law presumed only a woman would want to be a caregiver for an ailing parent.  Along the way, Ginsburg butts heads with the ACLU (despite them teaming up), with Justin Theroux's Mel being a leery ally of her movement, and properly fights former Solicitor General Erwin Griswold (Waterston) in court.  The film ends with her winning this case, and a very moving transition from Jones as a young Ginsburg walking up the Supreme Court stairs to be followed briefly by a present-day Ginsburg wearing the same outfit, a bit of a shock I'll admit as I had no idea she had blessed the film in such a way.

It's good to see Leder behind-the-camera here in general, considering that sexism played no-small-part in how her career eventually capsized.  Leder, who received a bum's rush after the disastrous performance of Pay It Forward (this is her first theatrically-released film in the United States in 18 years), surely would have been given a second chance were she a man considering she also had the successful Deep Impact on her resume (Andrew Stanton, Tim Johnson, & Guy Ritchie still work, and unlike Leder, their films were proper bombs...Leder's at least turned a profit if you don't count publicity, plus it's not like she wrote the damn thing).  You can see in the way she approaches this film a lack of a distinctive touch, playing it safe with Ginsburg's story and letting it be the central focus.  This may make some critics snooze, but I found it oddly refreshing.  Too often we see something dreadful like Vice, where the director's instincts are consistently missing the point or Bohemian Rhapsody, where a jumble of approaches to the film's lead results in a messy picture.  On the Basis of Sex isn't breaking ground (this is the sort of film that just as easily could have been made with Barbara Stanwyck or Ali McGraw or Ashley Judd...it works in any era), but it is eminently watchable.  Leder's approach is to give the audience story beats that are familiar, but with strong acting from the leads that makes up for the fact that you know this story by heart.  In an era where every director requires their individual stamp on a movie, this feels retro.

The leads are really fun in these roles.  Hammer, in particular, stands out as the supportive spouse.  His Marty borders into manic-pixie-dream-guy (from stories they have told about their lives, this might have just been the truth), but you can see his struggles to be a modern man with a wife who will overshadow him, while only occasionally falling into the trappings of his privilege.  It feels authentic to show him as someone who genuinely adored his wife, something we don't really see onscreen enough-there are countless people who love and admire each other and have relatively successful marriages, but it's not something that makes for compelling drama.  Here it feels truly watchable, though, and hats off to Hammer & Jones for being able to pull this off.  It's easy to sigh knowing the film is trying to curtail sexism, but were the roles reversed, it's impossible to imagine Jones not getting Supporting Actress heat for such a supportive spouse, but since it's a man playing this role, AMPAS isn't going anywhere near the film.  Even in 2018, we still have a long way to go when it comes to sexism.

Five Thoughts on Feud

Yes, I'm aware I'm two weeks late on this, but if you knew what my actual life was like, you'd be expressing nothing but sympathy this morning for me.  I'll be honest here-I haven't been to a movie in weeks.  Quite frankly, I haven't seen a movie in weeks-I can't actually remember the last time that I've gone this long without catching a movie either in theaters or at home (literally, cannot remember), which if you can tell, messes a bit with my head.  That's how insane my work life has been in the past few weeks.  But I'm trying to be back and write a bit more on the blog (and gain control over other facets of my life in the process), and timely or not, I want to share my thoughts on the now finished first season of Feud.  Boiling below are the five main takeaways from the series.

1. This Was a Really Cool Concept...That Didn't Really Work

The problem for me with complaining about Feud is that it's a miracle that the show was made at all. In a sign that Ryan Murphy is now so powerful he can get anything greenlit (joining the likes of JJ Abrams and Shonda Rhimes in that regard), we managed to somehow get a story about two major film stars of the 1940's in their twilight years made for television, despite neither of them having a major cache with younger audiences in the way that, say, James Dean or Marilyn Monroe have today.  It's a miracle that the show was made at all, and really cool.  I love the idea that we can venture into a slice-of-life biopic for a television miniseries in such a way, and in particular about two of my favorite actresses.

I just wish it had been better made.  I haven't, admittedly, seen The People vs. OJ Simpson (which I hear just marvelous things about), but biopics are tough for television.  We know how they're going to go, so there's few surprises, and particularly with Murphy there, you can't stray that far from the ostentatious nature of the series into flights-of-fancy, which has been his raison d'être.  Love or hate shows like American Horror Story or Glee, but they don't let reality get in the way of a bold idea, and I frequently felt like he either repeated himself as a creator on Feud, or he made the series too muted. Take the constant back-and-forth between Crawford and Davis throughout the show.  What initially was trashy fun became boring after so many weeks-it would have helped, perhaps, if we'd occasionally gotten out of their cocoon (seen other relics of Hollywood from their era and what was happening to them at the time like Greta Garbo or Loretta Young), but the tight lens on Crawford (and to a lesser extent Davis) got boring after a while, and you mostly wanted to see where things landed rather than enjoy the ride.

2. The Leads are a Big Part of the Problem.

One of the biggest problems in the show may have been the two leading ladies.  For a while I thought the show might get around the age gap (Crawford and Davis were both considerably younger than Lange or Sarandon in real life, making it seem more urgent for them to keep working), and largely it wasn't a problem, but other things got in the way instead with this specific casting.

For starters, Lange played Joan Crawford the same way she played Fiona Goode or Elsa Mars-a woman looking back on the regrets of her life through the lens of lost youth.  The way she played Crawford, it was hard to fathom that at one time she was at the top of her field and a major movie star force.  This is partially the writer's problem-Crawford as written seemed to only get her power through her movie star beauty, not through talent or sheer determination, but that wasn't true in real life, and more importantly it doesn't really work with some of the things she demands later in the picture.  Forget for a second that she doesn't look or sound or act anything like the meticulous but always glamorous Crawford (the scene where she tells off a fan stuck in my craw as Crawford was unusually devoted to her fans to the end), and think instead about how she's constantly struggling with vanity, and yet has the audacity to march into Jack Warner's office or meet with her agents and tell them all to go to hell.  It's an easy out to blame it on her drinking, but she's hardly a believable figure, someone who has to be constantly reassured of her worth, and Lange plays her the same as she plays every other Ryan Murphy creation.  She's giving a good performance (Lange is a very good actress, and Murphy has stumbled upon an aspect of her talents that I hadn't expected based on her cinematic work), but we've been here before-this is not Lange stretching any muscles.  I won't quibble with an Emmy nomination, but the idea that she's doing something that's anywhere as close to what Reese Witherspoon or Nicole Kidman were doing in Big Little Lies is absurd.  If she beats either it will be a travesty.

Sarandon, on the other hand, is not giving a great performance.  I admittedly am sour on her after the election, and don't know if I'm going to gain back the respect I had for her, but only a fool would say the woman can't act-in the 1990's she was consistently mesmerizing.  But here she can't quite find Davis-she alternates between actually playing her (doing the voice, the walk, the very distinctive Davis persona) and then randomly throwing it out the window.  She, again, isn't helped by the writers (I didn't like her relationship with BD Hyman, and Kiernan Shipka has been better before...not to mention the writers' really want this to be the Joan Crawford Story so her screentime is oddly inconsistent), but this is more on her than them.  She can't seem to find her opinions of her daughter, herself, her costar-Sarandon is a movie star whatever else may be said about her, and that sometimes carries the day, but most of the time she was just dull in the role.  Also, the role really hinges on Davis being the talent, but not the beauty, and, well, Sarandon at 70 is still intensely attractive and foxy in a way that Davis, though lovely, never was.  It hurts your argument when she's repeatedly being called "not the glamorous one" when Sarandon herself always looks glamorous.

With neither she nor Lange really carrying the show to a special place, and the writers' slacking off during stretches of time, the show is difficult to save.  However, there is one special performer who will deserve the plaudits coming her way...

3. Judy Davis is the Best Thing about Feud

This is hardly a revelatory surprise, but man is Judy Davis so much better than pretty much everything else happening in Feud.  Davis at once gets the weird balancing problem between straight drama, melodrama, and camp that Murphy is unsuccessfully juggling, and says "to hell with that" vamping onto the screen and making Hopper into an actual character by playing her initially as a cartoon.

Seriously-the best structured scenes of the show are around Davis's Hopper instigating mischief.  It's a pity that the show didn't use that, quite frankly, as a framing device, or simply made a Hedda Hopper miniseries instead, as Davis's character seems to have enough skeletons and delusions come out that Murphy's initial idea about the cruelty of Hollywood could have been filmed through her lens (plus, her legendary feud with Louella Parsons would have gone along with the title).  We get hints from Davis that Hopper is aware that her glory days are over, that she can no longer compete with the teenybopper set and is instead using the fall of her former friends to stay in the limelight, but unlike Lange or Sarandon, she knows what Hopper's public and private faces look like, and is always keeping them separate.  She hasn't survived in Hollywood all of these years giving out information like chewing gum, or not being willing to stab a friend in the back one day and ask them for a favor the next.

No one else approaches Davis.  I quite liked Alison Wright's Pauline, even though she felt underwritten and only came out as a convenient plot point to move Joan Crawford along in one direction or the other.  Dominic Burgess was initially aces as Victor Buono, giving us perhaps the most Ryan Murphy moment of the show (the XXX theater where he says that Dylan Wittrock has "loads of potential" made me do a spit take...and also start following Dylan Wittrock on Instagram), but he's never as fun or saucy as he was in that initial appearance, and the writers quickly forget about him when he isn't feeding plot change ideas to Davis.  Stanley Tucci and Alfred Molina have their moments, but neither win you over quite like Davis does-there's not enough fire or time spent with them for us to see something special happening.  That being said, no one is as bad as a pair of actresses who should know better.

4. The Interview Aspect of the Show Was Abysmal

Interviews as narrational devices are lazy, and have become aggravating in recent years (The Office was an actual documentary, something they acknowledged within the confines of the plot, unlike Parks and Recreation and Modern Family).  Here it's a part of the plot, but totally unnecessary.  All it did was frame up the story, which the writers could have done anyway, and took away from building on supporting players like Buono or Pauline that might have made the experience a little bit fuller.

It has to be said, as well, that Kathy Bates and Catherine Zeta-Jones (playing Joan Blondell and Olivia de Havilland, respectively) are dreadful in their parts.  Bates seems to have become contractually obligated to appear in all Murphy shows, but what was the point of having Joan Blondell even in the series other than to show off that the writers have heard of her?  We never get a background look at her, she's not in Baby Jane or Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte-hell, why not have Bates play Agnes Moorehead instead?  It made zilch sense, and she phones in the role, never really breathing any extra life into it even though you can hardly blame her since the writers don't seem to care.

CZJ at least has a character that factors into the plot, but man is she out-of-practice.  She's beautiful, and arguably the only person playing someone relatively age appropriate of the leading ladies (de Havilland and Zeta-Jones both being in their mid-to-late forties for pivotal scenes in the picture), but she finds nothing in de Havilland other than what is on the paper.  It gets so bad that when she does her Lady in a Cage impression it's hard to tell whether or not she's acting poorly on-purpose to mock the film or whether this is her actually acting.  For someone who has (and earned) her Oscar, this is a travesty-if she wants to continue working, I'd honestly recommend a tune-up with an acting coach of some sorts.

It wasn't all bad in this department-some one-scene-wonders played quite well within the context of the show.  I liked Sarah Paulson's work as Geraldine Page, even if she played it a bit too naively for a woman who had been working in Hollywood for a decade, and Serinda Swan nailed Anne Bancroft's "serious actress" bit with Crawford, in what I'd argue was the best scene featuring Lange outside of the finale. But these weren't consistent roles, and felt necessary to the writing.  The fact that Bates and Zeta-Jones had so many extra lines was infuriating, and made me wonder if they were cast before Murphy had an idea of what he was going to do with the show.

5. The Show Never Solves the "Biopic Problem"

I have never been a fan of a biopic, and that's because only the best of biopics can overcome the "I know what will happen" angle.  The finest biopics, in my opinion (think something like The Social Network and Wild) aren't afraid of making their subject seem more human, more flawed, and manage to be so interesting you forget that you know how this is going to end.  Most biopics, however, don't achieve this and simply strive for accuracy and imitation, but to me that's not interesting, particularly when it comes to television where "what comes next" is so vitally important to keep you tuned in week after week.

With the exception of Judy Davis's comic relief, this problem is never overcome.  You can claim that most audience members aren't going to know the minutia of whether or not Davis won that Oscar or if Crawford would stay on at Charlotte, but let's be honest here: me (gay, cinema-loving me) was Ryan Murphy's intended audience here, and I knew what was coming.  Despite this, the film never focused enough on things I wouldn't know the resolution to when it came to its cliffhangers and plot points.  Even when it fudged with the truth (Davis and Aldrich's imaginary affair), it didn't do so in a way that helped add drama or tension to the actual plot.  Putting more unknowable things (perhaps making Pauline's struggle a bigger part of the show) would have solved this problem, but mostly I felt listless, knowing that Crawford's film Trog would be a huge black-eye on her career, or that neither of these women would ever really have a major comeback chance after Baby Jane.

All-in-all, then, I left Feud underwhelmed.  I can't say I disliked it, because I would have given up on it if I had, but the intrigue factor (and the occasionally light moments) were really all that kept me going.  When Murphy next season tackles the Charles/Diana feud (a more recent affair, and one that has a lot more chances to be needlessly tacky and controversial considering how Diana died and how many people featured in it are still alive) I'll be sitting that one out, as the show didn't have me hooked.  But I'd still like to discuss if you have thoughts-share them below in the comments section!