Citizen Ruth (1996)

Film: Citizen Ruth (1996)

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

Director: Alexander Payne

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

OVP: 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: Little Women (2019)

Film: Little Women (2019)
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothee Chalamet, Meryl Streep
Director: Greta Gerwig
Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Actress-Saoirse Ronan, Supporting Actress-Florence Pugh, Costume Design*, Score, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Confession time-I've never read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.  Another, weirder confession-I've never seen any of the onscreen iterations of the film.  Not the one with Kate Hepburn.  Not the one with June Allyson.  Not even the one with Winona Ryder.  Somehow, despite all being "OVP" (we'll get to them all eventually), I'd never seen this story onscreen until I saw Greta Gerwig's recent iteration.  This also presents something of a challenge, because while I know enough about the story to be dangerous (weirdly due to that one Friends episode where Joey & Rachel read this book and The Shining), I don't know it by heart, and based on some of the reviews I've read, Gerwig's film takes a lot of different directions that aren't typical for interpretations of Alcott's story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is not told in the traditional more linear fashion that past versions (and the novel) were told.  Instead, it jumps straight to the middle, and we get an array of flashbacks into the lives of the four March sisters.  We see Amy (Pugh) already in Paris with Aunt March (Streep), trying to pursue Laurie (Chalamet) after he's just been rejected by her sister Jo (Ronan), who is off trying to become a successful writer.  Meanwhile, Meg (Watson) is back home struggling to find a way to make ends meet with her poor husband, and we soon learn that she once had the opportunity to have a far wealthier end to her story.  And of course there's sweet, piano-playing Beth (Scanlen) off in the corner getting deathly sick.  Told back-and-forth, the film gives us backgrounds about these young women, as well as an indication of where they're going.

As I'm not familiar with the story, I was, while not confused, a bit perplexed.  Gerwig's film is clearly meant to be a companion piece to someone who is already a fan of this tale, not simply a "stand alone" story as if it's treated as such, it's kind of messy.  The film is charming, no doubt, and has enough of the original tale to make sense, but it has less impact when you are halfway to realizing Amy will marry Laurie and not Jo since that's the opening scenes for those characters, or that you have a strong indication that Beth is about to die from the film's beginning.  I am a firm believer that you shouldn't have to read the book to understand and enjoy the movie (they need to exist on different plains), so I am going to fault Gerwig's film a bit here even though others will claim this is totally acceptable.  As it is, the film is good, but it's not great, and that's because it feels kind of jumbled and without enough narrative stakes for the audience as written.

That said, she assembled an amazing cast and a slew of actors that likely saw Lady Bird and were willing to sign up for anything that Gerwig was willing to do after that.  Chalamet is sexy & spoiled as Laurie, but one has to assume that this is a character that feels pretty dismissible for fans of earlier iterations of the picture as you can't really root for such a man.  He re-teams here with his Lady Bird costar Saoirse Ronan, who plays Jo as an ardent feminist, someone who is more concerned to be what she said she's always wanted to be than, as the film progresses, who she might secretly wish to be.  The scene toward the end where she realizes that she might have made it work with Laurie is devastating, but I don't think Ronan does enough groundwork to make the rest of her character stick.  This is in contrast to Florence Pugh, who kind of steals the picture from the cavalcade of Oscar nominees as Amy.  She gives a character that could be easily discarded a verve and passion that you wouldn't expect, and along with Midsommar, shows that she's an actress that has arrived in 2019.

OVP: Marriage Story (2019)

Film: Marriage Story (2019)
Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta
Director: Noah Baumbach
Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Actor-Adam Driver, Actress, Scarlett Johansson, Supporting Actress-Laura Dern*, Score, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

In a different era, Marriage Story would have been a bigger deal.  In the 1970's through the late 1990's, films like Marriage Story, ones about complicated adults going through a real-life chapter, would have been a box office gold mine, not just a movie that seems intent on winning Oscars.  While I saw this film about two weeks ago, I wanted to let this simmer for a while, and perhaps that was a bad idea (in the cynical age of social media, everything, including something as hard-to-watch as Marriage Story, is rife for meme-ification).  But this is a complicated movie, one that's worth investigating even if it's not the cultural touchstone that it could've been, and might be the first time I saw Netflix get a "prestige" picture that could well have gotten lost in the cinematic shuffle, rather than just calling "dibs" on an Oscar contender that would have made it with AMPAS anyway (like Roma or The Irishman).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on the crumbling marriage of Charlie (Driver) and Nicole (Johansson).  The film opens with the two making a list about the things they like about one another, but Nicole doesn't want to read it & Charlie does.  This is a projection of where we're headed in the movie.  Charlie has been fine in their relationship for a year, focusing on his physical and emotional wants above Nicole (even having a brief affair), while Nicole has been trying to dampen her own passions, her own ambitions & career successes, to put her husband and son above her own dreams.

The film then shows what a divorce between two people who clearly loved each other at one point looks like.  It's filled with hate, and envy, and pettiness, but also it's filled with broken hearts over losing someone you clearly once loved.  Marriage Story is hard to watch, because it doesn't shy away from how tough it is to admit defeat after taking a vow of "forever."  There are scenes where Nicole has the upper-hand, and then later where Charlie does, using the confidences they had for each other, the trust they had in each other, against one another.  The film's most famous scene is the fight they have in Charlie's new apartment, where they start screaming their hatreds at each other, eventually trying to hurt one another in the biggest way possible, and perhaps yelling more at themselves & the fact that they hate that they still feel for each other because it would make this entire process easier.  It's a fascinating movie, and one that feels personal & universal, something difficult for such a subject.

The acting in the movie is uniformly good, though the two leads steal the show.  Dern, Alda, & Liotta all get showy parts, but they're playing hilarious caricatures more than they are flesh-and-blood human beings; Dern is the best of the three (I could totally see her winning the Oscar for this), but they are inconsequential to the emotional crux of the film.  It's Driver & Johansson's show, and two of my generation's best actors get full-range to explore Charlie & Nicole, giving us imperfect, real, genuine human creations for the screen.  Driver singing "Being Alive" and realizing that this chapter of his life is over, or Johansson's quiet realization of what she signed up for when Charlie doesn't get equal custody-it's breathtaking acting, and a true showcase for both performers.

OVP: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Film: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Stars: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Laura Dern
Director: Rian Johnson
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

In recent years, we have seen an influx in long-delayed sequels to movies.  Franchises such as Rocky, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, and Blade Runner have emerged from a long dormancy, all the while coming back with an updated storyline and a continuation of a tale we know so well.  Perhaps no film series has done this in as big and splashy of a way as Star Wars, which this month brought its eighth (or ninth, depending on how we count Rogue One) entry into the series.  These sequels, though, have something very much in common: the intense need for nostalgia to sell their stories.  It is impossible to look at The Last Jedi separate from the nostalgia that it feeds from, but that's a problem for a franchise that is so central to American cinema in the new millennium.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film itself is largely known to most of us, not least of which because it's already made a fortune ($600 million at the global box office and counting), but also because it's very familiar to previous tales of the Star Wars saga.  The movie is the second chapter of a new trilogy, so it's going to be dark, and indeed, we see conflicts with our leading characters such as Rey (Ridley), Kylo Ren (Driver), and to a lesser extent Poe (Isaac).  All-the-while we see the expansion of the world that George Lucas created decades ago, alien planets and epic battle scenes, and the smaller moments like those between Luke and Leia, as Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher have returned for another entry in the series.

It is in this latter attribute that The Last Jedi gleans most of its power.  What made The Force Awakens so fun was not its plot or the updated effects, but the sheer movie magic of watching some of the most iconic characters of all-time be revisited decades after they were retired.  Harrison Ford as Han Solo boarding the Millennium Falcon literally made me clutch my fist in the air the first time I saw it.  I'm not even a Star Wars nerd, exactly (though I've gotten closer through the years, at least in terms of appreciating it for its place in movie lore), but there's a joy in watching Luke Skywalker clutch a blue lightsaber again or catching Carrie Fisher's trademark sardonic spunk infiltrate Princess Leia.  It's the same thing with catching a weathered Sylvester Stallone as Rocky one last time in Creed or Andy Serkis fighting with himself again in The Hobbit.  It's not the intensity of the original, but these are such storied part of our cinematic universe that watching someone try to recapture this magic gives me goosebumps.  The best moments of The Last Jedi rest with Hamill and Fisher, particularly a shared kiss on the forehead late in the film, as we understand that Luke Skywalker is soon for the ether, and tragically Fisher's work here is her final portrayal of the princess-turned-general.  It's in these moments that, in the same way a series finale gets the easy tears, you forget you're watching a movie and suddenly are a younger version of yourself, seeing your heroes battle once again onscreen.

The problem here isn't that these moments aren't effective, it's that they're perhaps the only truly effective things happening in The Last Jedi.  While some of the visuals are interesting (I adored the red sand battle, a spectacular visual), and I thought finally introducing sex into a galaxy far, far away (Kylo Ren wasn't shirtless for nothing here) was a nice touch, nothing in the movie comes close to being as special as Leia meeting Luke again, or really much of anything that the first two films in the original trilogy achieved.  It's hard to invest in characters who are so obviously carbon copies of the original characters.  Luke's a girl now, Leia's black and male, and Han's Latino, but well-intentioned diversity isn't going to change the fact that we've already watched this trilogy before, and the formula is so intensely similar between A New Hope/Empire and Force Awakens/Last Jedi that it's hard not to think of this more as a remake than a sequel.

And that's bad for the crown jewel of our franchise-heavy cinematic universe, particularly one so celebrated by Disney, because the characters are dying off a wee bit too quickly.  Though obviously fate played a cruel trick on Episode IX (it's obvious Fisher was going to be a centerpiece of the final film in this trilogy), with Hamill and Ford's characters both dead, the nostalgia will be in short supply in our next iteration.  Sure, we will see the robots and Chewbacca, but it's just not the same without Luke, Leia, or Han (if Disney knows what's good for them, they've already sent a blank check to Billy Dee Williams to reprise Lando in Episode IX).  And without that, we're going to have a problem as Rey, Poe, and Finn just aren't distinctive enough to root for without the help of the originals.  It's not a fault of the actors (there is no universe where Oscar Isaac isn't a better thespian than Mark Hamill), but the writing doesn't allow for us to know them, instead smartly focusing on the characters we already have a proven track record with.  This shouldn't affect my score of Episode VIII too much (it's getting three stars as its own entity), but when a movie basically ends on a cliffhanger (which this one does), what comes after should directly affect its score, and it's very hard to see the next movie getting past the gargantuan mountain of not having Han/Leia/Luke to fall back upon, and getting us to root for characters who are just too unknown for anyone to care about without tricking ourselves into accepting a facsimile.

Stop Turning Everything Into a Franchise!

I am about at my wit's end when it comes to franchise culture in Hollywood.  I keep seeing sequel after sequel after sequel, followed by reboots and prequels and offshoots.  It feels like certain franchises refuse to die until they have exhausted all outcomes...and it feels terrible.  Even series that I genuinely like (say, Harry Potter) feel exhaustive and not as special as they once were because they cannot let those series die and exist on a shelf.  Part of me wonders if this is just the way it will be-series after series never ending but we're forced to endure until everything we loved about it is gone, and we can't even get a nostalgia high from the product.  I am reminded of this with investigations into two different series that, while seemingly disparate, both have fans calling for them to reinvest their time and energy into one last go-around: Community and Big Little Lies.  However, in my mind, only one of these two series should be allowed to continue.

Big Little Lies is the show that's been far more in the news, so I'll start there (spoiler alerts are coming if you're not caught up yet).  The show captured the Twitter zeitgeist, particularly toward the end, with brilliant pieces of work from Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, and a whodunit that stayed pretty well under-wraps despite being adapted from a popular mystery novel.  The final episode, in a rare circumstance, ended up being the finest of the series in my opinion, and a number of people were hoping that, considering its excellence, it should come back for a second season.

I think this is a moronic idea, and it's indicative of the foolishness of sequel/prequel culture.  The reality is that while a sequel can never really damage the original, a second season of a series can decidedly put a tarnish on the initial one.  Look at the jump in quality between the first and second season of Desperate Housewives.  I love that show, and will defend later seasons (particularly 4 and 7, which were both excellent), but one could make the argument that it was never better than its initial mystery.  The same could be said for Big Little Lies, a show that doesn't have a comedic crutchh (and the disadvantage of not being bound to a book) to lean upon.  Keep in mind that DH ended on a cliffhanger, but Big Little Lies tied up every major mystery on the show.  Yes, there are questions left ("what does Celeste do as a single mom?" "does Ed ever find out about the affair?" "how is it that everyone in Monterey can sing so well?"), but by-and-large the major mysteries had a satisfying resolution, something almost unheard of in modern television, which stretches and stretches in order to hang onto a hit show as long as possible.

We should treasure that, rather than hoping for lightning to continue to strike.  Look at series like The Big Bang Theory or Modern Family or Grey's Anatomy-once deeply relevant, now just hollow shells hoping to cash in with quantity rather than quality on syndication deals.  Have we gotten so bad that we've forgotten that a series can genuinely be good from beginning to end?  That having a vision for the end result of the series is the point of watching art?  Television is episodic in nature, but stories like Big Little Lies are meant to have a finish, just like a movie is meant to have a finish.  That we got a strong one, with solid resolution, is a testament to good writing and should be cherished and left alone-the show wasn't meant to be a series, and we shouldn't force it to be just because we love it.

The same cannot be said for Community, which despite six seasons never really got the ending that it needed.  Putting aside #andamovie for a second (and what that would mean), the show after Season 3 never quite gained its mojo back.  A quirky, smart, funny comedy that nevertheless had peaks and valleys, the show became about the unlikely families we form with strangers in college, and the unhealthy attachments we sometimes form in order to stop maturing or moving on.  The series revisited that briefly in the final moments of Season 6, when Abed and Annie depart for California, leaving Jeff, the Dean, Chang, and Britta all behind at Greendale, passing onto the next chapter.  It would be a fine ending, except that there are major, major plotholes still left unresolved, and the ending felt cheap compared to what you normally get from a series finale.

For starters, it's not appropriate in my mind to end the series without having a significant callback to Troy, Shirley, and Pierce.  I know Pierce "died" and such, and them leaving abruptly shows the harshness of life when people who are essential to your daily existence one day just leave without any connection to you again, but it felt inauthentic that, especially in the day-and-age of social media, these people didn't stay a part of each other's lives in a more meaningful way.  Closure, acknowledging that they would always remain friends even if they weren't always constantly connected, felt like a heartier ending.

Plus, the script is right there to discover-Troy, Abed, Annie, and Shirley return after enjoying success in their own lives, perhaps for a class reunion of sorts, and in the process, they start to notice phantom things happening around the campus, perhaps clues to Pierce, who died so strangely (dehydration?) being still alive.  The show could end with them discovering Pierce, still alive and crazy, and then having them realize that it's okay that they grew apart, but still will always have each other.  A few cameos from fan favorites, and you'd have a polished ending that felt truer to the actual series and its characters (it's hard to imagine Troy or Shirley letting Annie and Abed leave without coming back to say goodbye).  And it would be an ending, not an extension or sucking the faucet dry.

Because that's what we need, and what we need to acknowledge should happen in movies/TV.  Not every show is meant to be The Days of Our Lives, continuing until the end of time in an endless loop-no one wants their favorite shows to become hollow shells, almost insufferable.  We need to start inviting back the art to TV and movies, and only extending products that feel like they can naturally continue without risking alienating the original product.  And that doesn't include Big Little Lies, a wonderful miniseries that will stand up to rewatches if you're missing Renata or Madeline...but shouldn't need a second season for you to continue to adore it.

OVP: Supporting Actress (2014)

OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2014)

The Nominees Were...

Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Laura Dern, Wild
Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
Emma Stone, Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Meryl Streep, Into the Woods

My Thoughts: We move on from the supporting actors of yesterday and go from a relatively weak year for that category into a particularly strong lineup for Supporting Actress, though I'll admit not quite as magnificent as it could have been had the Academy thought outside the box a bit.  Here, though, we have five actresses, all strong, and even a surprise nomination that I didn't expect (and I'm guessing, coming 23 years after her first, she probably didn't think it was on the menu either).  Normally I'd use that as a segway, but instead I'm going to randomly start with the person who most improved what is easily the least of these five pictures.

Keira Knightley deserves a freaking medal for what she did in The Imitation Game (which may be the point of the Oscars...gold statue and all that).  After all, this is a film that is largely unsalvageable in my opinion-it's posh, but without any true feeling and reduces a brilliant, complicated man into something that you can easily sell to a mass audience at the most rudimentary level.  However, Joan Clarke is a woman who actually seems to challenge the film and the people watching it in a darkened room.  Her Clarke, the victim of sexism and educational oppression, is still someone who has a fire to learn and exhibit her strength in mathematics, particularly in a way to save her country.  Knightley fills her performance with this nuance, like in the way she matter-of-factly disregards any hope of romantic entanglements in the future in hope of pursuing her current career.  So many actresses would have played this with outer-turmoil that showed during the speech, but Knightley keeps a guarded woman continually guarded.  It's a marvelous, CPR-like performance for the film, trying to keep it awake even when everyone else around her is letting the movie sink.

Patricia Arquette doesn't have this kind of heavy-lifting, as she's in a movie that is already terrific, but that might just be because it has Arquette at its center.  A longtime character actress who hadn't been given the opportunity to do something this extraordinary at the movies in at least a decade (in many ways we lost her to television during the run of Boyhood, and she returned soon after), Arquette finds her moment as a woman that has dreams outside of just her children and her failed relationship, but the world doesn't really want her to have those opportunities.  There's that great scene toward the end where she "thought there would be more," a protestation we all have as we get older and realize that life doesn't always imitate the most inspiring of art, but really every moment of this film is informed by a well-rounded, occasionally imperfect human being.  Arquette breathes life into her Olivia, making the twelve years that go by seem truly like she has lived within them.  It's a wonderful achievement and proof that when you give good, underrated actors a chance, they step up to the plate.

Meryl Streep is hardly what you'd consider an underrated actress, so unlike Arquette the bar is higher for her to surprise, and while she's fine in Into the Woods, the surprise isn't really there.  Streep gets a plum role in the Witch (playing this trope, considered a rite of passage for "women of a certain age"), but while she's a wonderful singer, there's very little nuance in this performance.  Perhaps it's time to acknowledge that while Streep still can turn in terrific work, her dramatic chops occasionally feel out-of-practice, and aside from "Last Midnight" and the campier moments in the film, she borders on over-the-top and doesn't quite bring the nuanced realism that this musical is trying to bring, even to fairy tales.  She's a fine singer, and ever-watchable, but this is hardly the woman that we were mesmerized in in a film like Kramer vs. Kramer or Silkwood or even The Devil Wears Prada.  Here she's more of a diva and a bit of a scenery-chewer, but we forgive because she's Meryl Streep.

I also wasn't super impressed with Emma Stone's work in Birdman.  Stone came onto all of our radars in Easy A, still her best piece of work in my opinion, but while she's eternally watchable and usually more fun than her film, she's never really gotten "there" with a performance in the way that her peers like Keira Knightley or Kristen Stewart have.  Her Sam is obviously a play off of the petulant celebrity child that we've come to worship in the press (everyone from Paris Hilton to Suri Cruise has become a walking poster-board for a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous internet culture), but she doesn't find enough humanity in her to feel like anything less than a caricature.  She doesn't seem so vapid that she enters the brilliance of Emma Watson in The Bling Ring, and aside from that great speech to Michael Keaton about how he's obsolete, she doesn't get enough strong moments in the film, certainly not to justify her crucial position at the film's finale.  I'm glad she's an Oscar nominee now, as I think there's still potential for genius there and the nod will get her better parts to show it, but I wish she'd done something to earn this first shot at the gold.

Finally, we arrive at the surprise nominee of the bunch.  Few people anticipated that Laura Dern would be the shock nominee of this quintet, as Wild had largely under-performed, but a year after her dad landed a longtime comeback nomination for Nebraska, it was her turn for playing an ailing parent.  While the role itself may have been the hook that landed her the Oscar-loving, it's the performance that got to me as this is the best Dern has been cinematically in years, possibly ever.  Her Bobbi is such a lived-in, heartfelt performance-the sort of woman who cannot quite admit that certain parts of her life are over, and that she's good with her decisions but might have some regrets.  It's a relatively small part (it's a truly supporting one, unlike say Streep or Arquette who border on the "lead"), but it's so effective-you feel her pull the rest of the film as we watch Reese come to grips with grief and letting go of the great love of her life.  Seeing the way that she approaches her daughter, whom she knows is still growing up emotionally and physically, Dern plays her Bobbi as someone we can all relate toward, even if we haven't lived in her final shoes.

Other Precursor Contenders: Unlike the Supporting Actor category, here we have at least something resembling variety, particularly in the slot that went to Dern.  At the Globes, it was all but the Jurassic Park star, with Jessica Chastain's blonde mob wife in A Most Violent Year making the cut, while at the SAG Awards we saw a surprise inclusion of Naomi Watts in St. Vincent (Arquette won both trophies). The BAFTA Awards skipped both Dern and Streep (they're not as wild about her as some other voting bodies), going with Rene Russo in Nightcrawler and (in a lovely surprise) Imelda Staunton in Pride (again, Arquette won).  In terms of the sixth place finisher, while it seemed obvious at the time that Chastain was the one to beat, considering the film's tepid overall response from the Oscars, I wonder if another surprise was also in store like Russo or Carmen Ejogo (Selma)

Actors I Would Have Nominated: This is the best of the four lineups that Oscar pulled together for 2014 (as you might be able to tell I wasn't wild about any of these lineups-none of them are "the five" or anything close to that), but it could have been an all-time greats list.  I surely would have included Chastain, who was remarkable in Most Violent and showed off her true movie star potential, as well as Russo's morally-compromised news executive and Tilda Swinton's ridiculous villainy in Snowpiercer.

Oscar’s Choice: 2014 was one of those years where the stampede to the Oscars were the same four people every step of the way, so Arquette easily bounced Knightley and Stone out of the winner's circle.

My Choice: It's a tough race, but I'll go with Arquette on top as I feel like her performance is the most-informed of the five.  Follow that with Dern, Knightley, Streep, and Stone.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are we all (like the awards bodies, including the OVP) in agreement for Patty Arquette taking this trophy, or is there someone else who should have been in the cards?  Anyone with me on the Streep needs to do a straight drama idea?  And who was sixth place here-it seems like a very open-ended answer?

Also in 2014: Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Previously in 2014

Past Best Supporting Actress Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

A Mother's Day Celebration: Hollywood's Best Mother-Daughter Pairs

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought it would be fun to look at my five favorite mother-daughter pairs in Hollywood.  Below I have ranked the best mother-daughter pairs at the movies:

5. Diane Ladd and Laura Dern

Laura finally started to catch up with mama Diane at the Oscars this past year.  The Rambling Rose costars have had a long history with Oscar, with Ladd nominated three times versus Dern's two nominations.  Both are brilliant performers who also costarred on HBO's Enlightened.

4. Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher

Debbie was one of the biggest stars of the 1950's, headlining dozens of romantic comedies, and is still celebrated today (she recently won the SAG Life Achievement Award), while Carrie Fisher would have enormous success in front of the screen in the Star Wars films (she'll be in Episode 7 later this year) and behind the screen as a comedian and screenwriter.

3. Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson

Goldie Hawn is perfect, and I've always LOVED these two together whenever they do interviews or talks on the red carpet.  Kate hasn't had the career her mom has, but she's always insanely fun and I constantly wish she'd pull her mom out of retirement for some sort of mother-daughter comedy (who wouldn't want that?).

2. Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli

Both legends in their own-right, two of Classic Hollywood's biggest stars both won Oscars (Judy a juvenile award, while Liza emerged victorious with Cabaret), and both became immortal for their singing prowess and stage presence.

1. Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis

Janet's a Hollywood icon, starring in three of the best films ever made (Touch of Evil, Psycho, and The Manchurian Candidate) while Jamie Lee Curtis has headlined films as diverse as Halloween, True Lies, and Freaky Friday.  Together they're not just Scream Queens of different generations-they're my favorite mother-daughter pair in Hollywood.

Those are my favorites-how about yours?  Who else would you add to this list?  Share in the comments!  And Happy Mother's Day!

OVP: Wild (2014)

Film: Wild (2014)
Stars: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski
Director: Jean-Marc Vallee
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Reese Withersoon, Supporting Actress-Laura Dern)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

It seems fitting that a film about the rockiness of a journey star Reese Witherspoon, doesn't it, since we've been on a bit of a ride with her for the past couple of decades?  She's gone from standout parts in teen films like Cruel Intentions and Election to America's Sweetheart in Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama to an Oscar winner in Walk the Line to a series of really awful movies in the wake of that win, and finally that demure mugshot which led to her finally deciding that it was time to rehabilitate her onscreen image, leading to supporting (gasp-a movie star in supporting, it must be serious!) roles in Mud and Inherent Vice, and finally an onscreen triumph here in Wild.  She might always have a few naysayers taking her on, but if something this wonderfully-realized and affective doesn't catch your attention, I doubt you were much of a Reese-enthusiast to begin with; this is too good to say anything other than "Reese is back!"

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, based on the best-selling memoirs by Cheryl Strayed, looks on the surface to be a tale of survival, and it is, but not in the conventional sense.  Most films where a person takes on the wilderness is rarely just about that fight, but here it truly isn't.  The reality is that aside from figuring out a way to carry around her backpack and running into occasionally awful human beings on her path, we see little of the struggles that Cheryl actually experiences in terms of fighting against nature.  The fighting is more internal, her struggles to come to grips with her life in the wake of incredible tragedy and a series of horrible decisions.

The film cuts back-and-forth from the present to the past, with Cheryl's mother Bobbi (Dern) being an integral part of Cheryl's initial upbringing.  Cheryl has an incredible amount of love for her mother, though she rarely understands her motives, and there's something sort of beautiful and subtle about the way that Jean-Marc Vallee (who redeems himself almost universally from the dreadful Dallas Buyers Club with this film) slowly reveals to us that Cheryl also doesn't understand her own actions at first.  There's something completely authentic in that-the way that we judge others quite regularly but rarely have time to judge ourselves in the same sort of fashion.  This entire movie, though, is crowded with these types of touches.

You see that in the way that love is portrayed in the film.  We see, for example, a man that clearly Cheryl deeply admires in her husband Paul (Sadoski) but whom she's never really loved in a proper way.  You also see that in the way that Cheryl reacts to her mother's cancer, finding in that the complete unfairness of growing older.  The thing I absolutely adored about these conundrums is that it deals with something that we rarely see onscreen: worry about love ending when we have no say in the matter.  Not just love with one person, but love in general, that you're about to be done.  When the film commences Cheryl is without the love of her life (her mother), has shown a complete lack of connection to any other people, including her best friend and her husband, and it may be safe to say that she doesn't love anyone, and that no one loves her in a way that matters to her.  This is something that we saw a bit of in The Homesman earlier this year, but by-and-large we don't get it very often, and that's a shame because for many people, the first people they end up loving (their parents) may be the only ones they get that privilege with, and it's a terrifying thought when that parent disappears before you have another person (a spouse, a child) that you can count on to say those three little words.

You see Cheryl explore that loneliness in the way that she is so fiercely independent onscreen.  We see her most at-home with strangers.  Even sex scenes lose all of their allure as she seems completely isolated (there's a very nice, handsome man whom she makes love to in the middle of the film that in ANY other picture we would have heard back from, but here it's just another stop as she figures out what the hell her life is going to mean with her mother no longer a part of it) from the intimacy of them.  This is a story that I haven't seen before onscreen, particularly with a female lead, and I can instantly see why this was such a major bestseller as a book.

Before I go, I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention that Dern is very much Witherspoon's equal onscreen, though she's far subtler than I expected and I kind of get why the awards love hasn't been able to land for her in the way it seemed on-paper (comeback star, former nominee, dying of cancer, martyr with a heart of gold).  There's this absolutely perfect scene after Dern realizes that she's about to die that just sank into me.  She starts mumbling to her daughter, who cannot handle what has just happened and is making the news about her, which her mother has enabled for years.  Dern's Bobbi talks about how she's always been a mother, a wife, a daughter, but never been herself.  She always thought she'd have time.  Most of these types of scenes result in a large change in behavior, but she doesn't do that, never chastising her daughter for being selfish in focusing on herself.  Instead, she just sort of has her brief moment of "what did my life mean?" with her daughter trying to focus on something more present.  These brief interactions are wonderful, and I have to say that it's incredibly affecting because it's very rare to see a maternal sort of bond of this nature with a daughter-usually these sorts of stories revolve around men's issues with their fathers rather than the tales lacking a Y-chromosome.

The film ends with a bit of an uplifter, and we thankfully get a bit of a reprieve from Cheryl's loneliness and Bobbi's regrets, but they sit there as you drive home in your car.  This is a movie that you'll learn something new from as you get older, and your worldview shifts from that of Cheryl to that of Bobbi, but the sense of isolation and wonder at where you'll head next and when the journey will end, that's universal.  The movie may look like Into the Wild or 127 Hours, but that's just the scenery.  Wild takes you much, much higher.