1972 Oscar Viewing Project

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OVP: Supporting Actor (1999)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Michael Caine, The Cider House Rules

Tom Cruise, Magnolia

Michael Clarke Duncan, The Green Mile

Jude Law, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Haley Joel Osment, The Sixth Sense

My Thoughts: The Best Supporting Actor field of 1999 is one of my favorites.  With one exception, I genuinely admire all of these performances.  I think that different styles of acting are being represented here in a really cool way, and we get a lot of famous actors at different stages of their careers.  It's a tough field, quite honestly, to pick a winner (even Michael Caine seemed a bit flummoxed as to how he had been the one to come out on top in this collection).  So to try and end with some happy, we'll start with the one performance that I didn't care for of the bunch.

Michael Clarke Duncan seemed like a nice enough guy (and based on the ceremony, had a blast being an Oscar nominee), but wasn't a good enough actor to really compete with this field.  His work in The Green Mile is quite one-note, sympathetic and sweet but lacking in a lot of depth, and not adding to the film itself.  I get why this was nominated (it's the type of scene-stealing role that Oscar falls in love with), but that's no excuse given how many really strong achievements were waiting in the wings for this field.

Beyond that, get ready for the superlatives.  I mean, look at Jude Law.  No, seriously, look at him.  Has anyone ever been as beautiful as Jude Law is as Dickie Greenleaf.  He doesn't need to be good in this movie-he is such a golden god that you wouldn't care if he wasn't grand, but he is.  His breakthrough role gives us a depth-of-range.  He is always about protecting himself, Dickie, even when he's trying to help someone else it's always on his terms.  Law does a good job of making his carefree attitude nasty whenever that paradigm is shifted.  Spoiled, petulant, but violent and irresistible.  It's a tour-de-force, and proof that he was going to be a big star, as Caine said in his speech.

Caine's win is ill-regarded, but it's hard for me to really join in on the pile-on, as I love what he's doing here.  This isn't a stretch like some of the other men (or as complicated as some of the other figures), but does that matter?  Not all great acting needs to come with a thesaurus, and he is carefree and effortless in the way he brings this doctor to existence.  I love the little details he puts in, the stubbornness borne out of both always being in charge and also knowing he's about to die.  The interactions with the children, teaching but caring in one breath-this is good stuff from one of our finest actors.

Haley Joel Osment's work in The Sixth Sense became the sort of textbook definition of great child acting so quickly, you can honestly be forgiven for forgetting how good he is.  But the way that his Cole unfolds, giving us so much knowledge from the opening moments, and how his monologues land every single time (particularly the late-in-film one to his onscreen mother Toni Collette) is magical.  I will admit that I don't think he's supporting here.  I don't buy that "but it's X's story" nonsense-he's in more than twice the movie compared to all four of his other nominees: he's the lead.  So I take a point off for that, but that's it-this is one for the ages.

Tom Cruise has, to date, only gotten three Oscar nominations, and while he got a My Ballot nomination in 2002, I feel like we haven't really talked about him yet in the Oscar Viewing Project.  I genuinely think Cruise is a great actor (but an even better movie star), and it feels weird to start that conversation with Magnolia, which is not only spoofing Cruise, but honestly spoofing L. Ron Hubbard (still not sure if Cruise realized that at the time).  The performance here is sensational, his take on crumbling toxic masculinity fully-felt and realized.  This didn't win an Oscar because it's a very prickly performance, but man is it good.

Other Precursor Contenders: Get ready for some repetition (except BAFTA)!  The Globes picked the same lineup as Oscar, but instead went with Tom Cruise for their winner.  SAG skipped Jude Law and put in Chris Cooper (American Beauty), but otherwise copied Oscar, and also gave it to Michael Caine.  The BAFTA's totally threw their hands in the air, picking Law as the victor atop Caine, Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill), Timothy Spall (Topsy-Turvy), and Wes Bentley (American Beauty).  You could maybe make the case for one of the American Beauty actors, but honestly...I think sixth place was behind two men who got no precursors, but whose films were well-liked by Oscar: John Malkovich (Being John Malkovich) and Christopher Plummer (The Insider).  Both are well-respected thespians, and make sense given who else got in.  If I had to pick who was in sixth I think Plummer's was more conventional (and thus an easier sell), but they both make sense.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: Oscar spent decades ignoring Christopher Plummer, but I am not such a fool.  His vain, driven Mike Wallace is one of the best aspects of The Insider.

Oscar’s Choice: In something of an upset, Michael Caine beat both Osment & Cruise (his chief competition) to win his second Oscar (neither of the other two men have been nominated since).

My Choice: Despite losing a point for category fraud, that's not enough to derail Osment, who is giving the best of the 20 performances nominated for Oscar in 1999.  Behind him are (in order) Cruise, Law, Caine, and then Duncan.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you want to hide under your bed with me, or would you rather extend a morphine drip with Oscar?  Is Tom Cruise ever going to be nominated for an Oscar again (or for that matter...is Jude Law)?  And was it Plummer or Malkovich in sixth place?  Share in the comments!

Also in 1999: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. 2023

OVP: Actor (2002)

OVP: Best Actor (2002)

The Nominees Were...

Adrien Brody, The Pianist

Nicolas Cage, Adaptation

Michael Caine, The Quiet American

Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York

Jack Nicholson, About Schmidt

My Thoughts: We are hitting the Top 5, and one of the rare races in Academy history that featured five winners (four previous, one on Oscar night, and one guy who'd win two more in the years that followed).  I've talked a lot about the Oscar ceremony in 2002 for a couple of reasons.  First, I remember it vividly (we're still in the era where I was hyper-aware of the Oscar race and religiously reading magazines & articles about it online).  Second, we're going to hit a time relatively soon (probably in 2024 based on the pace of these articles) where I didn't actually watch the Oscars because I wasn't old enough (my first Oscars was 1994, my first completed Oscars where I was genuinely following along was 1995) and so I want to get out my first-hand knowledge while I can.  But the biggest reason is that 2002 was one of those rare years where pretty much everything was up-in-the-air...and on Oscar night, surprises abounded.

One of those surprises happened in this race, when Adrien Brody stunned everyone in the Kodak Theater (particularly Halle Berry) when he won the Oscar.  As you'll see in the precursors, Brody wasn't the favorite here (it was thought to be a battle between Daniel Day-Lewis & Jack Nicholson).  Still, the Academy had good taste.  Brody, for all of the career setbacks that happened after this, gives an astounding, lived-in performance in The Pianist, the way that he takes this gregarious, charming man at the onset and continually has to look inward as the world takes & takes away everything that he has to give.  He truly makes the film.

Nicholson was clearly hoping to get that fourth Oscar and tie Kate Hepburn in 2002, and I suspect was close to victory.  His work here is not reminiscent of much of the "Wacky Jack" that we came to expect in the 1990's (culminating in his third Oscar win for As Good As It Gets), and it pays off, giving us a complete performance of an incomplete man.  I love the way that he internally wrestles in the earlier half of the movie between feelings he knows are wrong and feelings that he can't help but share...it feels realistic to show a brittle man, only capable of a modicum of change.

All of these men have Oscars, but only Michael Caine doesn't have one for lead actor, a point he made in 2002 when he was pushing hard for this citation.  I think Caine is very good here (I honestly think this is the best Oscar lineup in a year that's sprinkled with them-2002 is a vintage that has held up), playing a deeply complicated man trying to fight for the affections of one woman.  What makes Caine's acting so specific (I'm a fan) is the way that he can switch so evenly between a calming demeanor and destroying a man's soul in the blink of an eye.  In some ways I liken him to Anthony Hopkins, where he's miraculous at one skill-set, and knows just how to use it in each character, which he does here.

Nicolas Cage's performance in Adaptation to some degree marked the end of Cage's career as a serious actor for the next couple of decades (countless direct-to-video movies, a weird feud with Sean Penn, and eventually parodying himself on film would ensue), but it's a nice swan song to one of the more inventive actors of the 1990's.  Cage suffers the most at the hands of Charlie Kaufman's wandering typewriter, but in the first half he's really excellent as two men, one fictional, one real, and does a good job deciphering the two figures for the audience.

Our final nomination is for Daniel Day-Lewis, in what might have been his most immersive role-to-date.  Bill the Butcher, where he literally covered his eye with glass to simulate having a glass eye (what?!?) might be something he hopefully took up with a therapist (I'm sorry, I love him, but that's too method for me), but the work stands for itself.  Day-Lewis is astounding, stealing every scene he's in, and honestly saving the movie himself.  No one else is doing what he's doing here, creating the kind of Travis Bickle-style figure that Scorsese specializes in, but putting him in the middle of Civil War-Era New York City.  What results is one of the best pieces of work from one of our most committed thespians.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  Drama went with Nicholson atop Brody, Caine, Day-Lewis, & Leonardo DiCaprio (Catch Me If You Can), while Comedy/Musical gave their statue to Richard Gere (Chicago) atop Cage, Kieran Culkin (Igby Goes Down), Hugh Grant (About a Boy), and Adam Sandler (Punch-Drunk Love).  The SAG Award went to Day-Lewis, and was nearly the Oscar lineup except Caine was skipped for Gere.  BAFTA also went to Day-Lewis, and they had the Oscar lineup verbatim.  Gere almost certainly was sixth place, and in a similar fashion to Dennis Quaid & Alfred Molina in supporting, his best shot (to that point) for Oscar glory didn't result in any nominations in the years that followed.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: As I said above, this is a terrific lineup-no bad performances, no even middling performances, all ranging from brilliant-to-very-good.  But there's room for improvement.  Specifically Leonardo DiCaprio's best bit of acting (in Catch Me If You Can) deserved some sort of inclusion here-he's never been this natural & movie star charismatic in the years since.

Oscar’s Choice: Brody, likely due to the strong movement toward The Pianist (and the fact that everyone else in the lineup already had Oscars), pulled off an iconic win that would be impossible for his career to top in the decades that followed.

My Choice: Brody gets it.  In a strong lineup, he gives physically & emotionally the most captivating performance of the quintet.  I'd follow him with Day-Lewis, and then Nicholson, Caine, & Cage.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is everyone here on Team Brody (a win that looks pretty strong in retrospect) or does someone want to advocate for the other legends?  Who came closer to the victory-Jack or DDL?  And will Richard Gere ever find his way into this mix again?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2002: Supporting Actress, 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 Actor Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Tenet (2020)

Film: Tenet (2020)
Stars: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh
Director: Christopher Nolan
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Production Design, Visual Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Well, after six months (and literally 169 movies caught at home) I have finally seen a movie in theaters since the start of quarantine...well, sort of.  I am still debating, but am probably getting close to the point where I will want to see films in theaters again, even if I time it so I'm going on a day that is less trafficked (and will be pickier about what I catch in a stadium), but for Tenet I lucked out.  A drive-in movie (80 minutes from my house, so appreciate the devotion) was showing this and so I drove all the way and watched this for the first time from my car (I'd never done a drive-in movie).  While I loved getting back into theater mode and enjoying a movie on the big-screen, I will admit that I enjoy traditional theaters better (there's something more immersive than sitting in your car, where it's easier to grab your phone or let your thoughts wander).  Still, even if I'd been forced to watch Tenet with subtitles, I sincerely doubt that stretches of Christopher Nolan's stunning-but-convoluted new epic would've made complete sense.

(Spoilers Ahead) Tenet has a lot of plot, some of which doesn't make sense upon first viewing, and the characters don't all have names but I'll attempt to ground for a discussion.  We have the Protagonist (Washington, who doesn't warrant a real name apparently), who in the opening scenes is in a Russian opera house trying to deactivate a bomb, and in the process is nearly shot by a bullet that "un-fires" and after he grabs a strange artifact, and eats a cyanide pill in order to stop himself from giving secrets to his captors.  It turns out this is a test, and that he is being recruited into a secret organization, partnered with Neil (Pattinson), and together they have to essentially stop Andrei Sator (Branagh), a man who has the ability to commune with the future.  Soon Neil & the Protagonist are communicating with the past, moving back using a weapon to correct or change the past; aided by Sator's wife Kat (Debicki), they eventually stop Sator from destroying the world with a dead man's switch, and in the end it is revealed that Neil has known the Protagonist for some time...and was in fact hired by him, as we learn the operation (Tenet) was the Protagonist's in the future, and he is the actual mastermind behind the Tenet operation.

The movie sounds awesome (with all of the complimentary & pejorative associations of that word), and it is.  The fight scenes early on in the movie, especially the car chase sequence, is well-constructed & impressive, and Nolan knows how to open a movie (the opera attack is thrilling, and a good reminder as to why we should be rooting for movie theaters to work-as this will never play as well on a small screen).  The acting is mixed, with Pattinson taking best-in-show.  Debicki is a brilliant actress, but kind of gets sidelined with the "grieving wife/mother" role that is such a Nolan cliche, and I don't know if Washington is quite up to the movie star caliber that you need to play this part (this is unfair because his dad is one of the great stars, but man it would've been cool to see a young Denzel in this role).

The problems are the same, though, that you'd expect from most Nolan films.  His movies always have the same four issues: bad parts for women, expository plotting, strange sound mixing, and a sloppy final half hour.  All of these are here in Tenet.  We already mentioned Debicki's underwritten part, but the plotting is worse.  The film requires a lot of dialogue explaining the complicated theories in Tenet, a sign, perhaps, that Nolan didn't quite know how to handle even the logistics of a time travel movie (he fell into a similar hole with Interstellar, though I liked Tenet better than that picture).  When you have to have your characters explain every complicated move you watch, it's proof you aren't nailing down the logistics of your film.  This affects the final act of the movie the most, with multiple, repetitive action sequences (it's hard to tell entirely what Robert Pattinson's Neil is doing during this it gets so convoluted), and even an obvious payoff (it's clear that the Protagonist is going to be the mastermind from the first art heist), doesn't feel satisfying we've detoured so much.

Nothing, though, compares to how bad the sound mixing was (I toyed with a 2-star rating just as punishment for this, but decided the movie is too good for that).  Seriously-Nolan's hatred of his own dialogue is bizarre.  There are scenes in the movie where the explosions or action are so loud you wish that the theater had subtitles, and it takes away from the movie because you don't understand what the (helmet-wearing) Aaron Taylor-Johnson & John David Washington are even saying.  This particularly becomes bad in the final thirty minutes, and that's a problem because if you're going to have high-concept detailing in your movie, you've gotta let us hear the explanations & emotions.  I looked past this with Dunkirk because of the hyper-realism (also because other than some spots with the dialogue, this feels like a home run), but this was a serious issue with Interstellar and Tenet it gets worse.  Someone needs to take Nolan aside and just let Willie Burton do his damn job please, because his films are too rare & too visually intriguing to be ruined by something so fixable.

Cars 2 (2011)

Film: Cars 2 (2011)
Stars: Larry the Cable Guy, Owen Wilson, Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, John Turturro, Eddie Izzard
Director: John Lasseter
Oscar History: Cars 2 made history as the first Pixar movie not to receive an Oscar nomination in any category.  It did get nominated for the Best Animated Feature Film at the Golden Globes, though, so you know it was close.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We're going to move back to conventional animated films, and what says conventional animation better than Disney, or rather in this case, Pixar?  This could just be the kind of accounts I follow on Instagram, but a lot of people seemed to be trying to see all of the Pixar movies or all of the Disney movies over quarantine, and while I haven't done that, I do have it as a goal to at the very least someday see all of the Pixar and Disney films, and since I was two short for the former, I recently accomplished that task.  Today is the penultimate of those films (logic will dictate which one of the films was the last one, and thus which one we'll be getting to later this week), and anyone who knows the reputations of Pixar films will understand why this one was one I waited upon-it is generally considered the worst of the Pixar movies.  Going into it, I was curious just how bad it could be, and if perhaps its egregious reputation might save it based on lowered expectations.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place after the events of Cars, with Lightning McQueen (Wilson), now a champion, but still mourning the loss of his mentor Doc Hudson (Paul Newman had passed away since the first film was lensed).  However, being on the top always comes with those wanting to take down your throne, and he is challenged by Francesco Burnoulli (Turturro), to a new multi-city race, run by an organic biofuel company.  However, in different legs of the race, there are cars that are crashing, from some sort of sabotage from an evildoer who is unknown for the bulk of the film, and by mistaken identity, the main car that is trying to unveil the criminal mastermind is clumsy, mumbling Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), whom spies Finn (Caine) and Holley (Mortimer) have allowed into their covert operation.

The film is silly, but I'll be real here-I don't get the hate for this movie that it received on its first outing.  I think it might have been more a combination of Pixar having made four true masterpieces in a row (Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3) and thus not only having impossible standards, but also people tend to want to tear down successful enterprises.  We don't allow anyone to enjoy unencumbered success forever, and so if you're basically flawless outing-after-outing, when you make a mistake, it's going to become pronounced.  This is what happened here.  Had Cars 2, say, come out in 2015, when Pixar had already stumbled with Monsters University and The Good Dinosaur, it'd be greeted with a different reception.

That said, it's not great.  The decision to put the popular side character Mater front-and-center makes sense from a marketing standpoint (keep in mind that for a time there the Cars franchise rivaled Disney Princess in terms of ubiquity at your local Wal-Mart), but it doesn't work in the film.  Mater is too bumbling, his schtick gets old pretty quickly, and there's not enough to keep the film grounded.  In a lot of ways it's what would have happened had Frozen 2 made the film entirely about Olaf.  It's not great-there are funny moments in the film, but it's juvenile, and lacks the gravitas of Pixar's best outings, and the cuteness of its more sophomoric installments.  Despite the film's relatively low box office (compared to other hits of that era), it still was able to spawn not only a sequel, but in 2013 with Planes, an entirely different franchise.

Oldest Living Oscar Nominees

With the passing of Olivia de Havilland earlier this week, obviously we lost a film legend.  We also lost the answer to a lot of longevity questions when it comes to the Oscars.  De Havilland got her first nomination in 1939 for Best Supporting Actress (for Gone with the Wind), her first Best Actress nomination in 1941 for Hold Back the Dawn, and her first win for Best Actress in 1946 for To Each His Own.  This meant that de Havilland was the earliest (not to be confused with oldest, though she was that too) living Best Supporting Actress nominee, Best Actress nominee, and Best Actress winner.  With her death, I honestly didn't know the answer to who was next in line for these three titles (though I had a correct guess for Supporting Actress), and so I figured it was time to do some research, cause I don't let Oscar trivia questions go unanswered.  Below you will find for the directing and four acting categories who are chronologically the earliest (again, not oldest) living nominees and winners.

Best Actress

Nominee: Leslie Caron (1953) for Lili
--Runner-Up: Carroll Baker (1956) for Baby Doll
Winner: Joanne Woodward (1957) for The Three Faces of Eve
--Runner-Up: Sophia Loren (1961) for Two Women

As you can tell, de Havilland's death truly put an end to the 1940's in terms of Best Actress, as there were no nominees after her that are still with us until 1953 with Leslie Caron, who was nominated twice but never won (I feel like considering her place in especially Golden Age musicals, possibly alongside Mitzi Gaynor the only real figure left from that era's biggest films, that she should get an Honorary Oscar, and post-haste as she's 89).  Baker, who was just 25 when she was cited for Baby Doll, is next up, though you have to go to 1957 for a living winner with Joanne Woodward (who has been very ill health for quite some time now), and then Sophia Loren (who has another movie coming out later this year).

Best Actor

Nominee: Sidney Poitier (1958) for The Defiant Ones
--Runner-Up: Michael Caine (1966) for Alfie
Winner: Sidney Poitier (1963) for Lilies of the Field
--Runner-Up: Gene Hackman (1971) for The French Connection

Best Actor winners tend to be older than the other three categories, so it's not shocking to me that we have to go back further to find living recent winners here.  Technically Poitier is actually his own runner-up for Lilies of the Field, but I figured that wasn't fun to track so we're going with Michael Caine three years after Poitier's landmark win.  Unlike the Best Actress field, all of these men already have Oscars, though Caine is the only one that still works in film.

Best Supporting Actress

Nominee: Angela Lansbury (1944) for Gaslight
--Runner-Up: Ann Blyth (1945) for Mildred Pierce
Winner: Eva Marie Saint (1954) for On the Waterfront
--Runner-Up: Shirley Jones (1960) for Elmer Gantry

Scratch the above comment-Shirley Jones is also living and obviously in the same league as Caron & Gaynor in terms of classic Hollywood musicals (truly random aside, but I remember many years ago seeing an interview with Jones & her husband Marty Ingels where he let strangers that were there for a yard sale of some sort hold Shirley's Oscar-I can't have imagined this, but have never found the interview...any ideas internet?). Blyth actually ties Angela Lansbury for runner-up as Lansbury was nominated in 1945 for The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Up until quite recently Joan Lorring who was nominated that year for The Corn is Green was also alive (she died in 2014) and the other two women nominated that year both lived into the 1990's, so this field might have a record for longevity at the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actor

Nominee: Don Murray (1956) for Bus Stop
--Runner-Up: Russ Tamblyn (1957) for Peyton Place
Winner: George Chakiris (1961) for West Side Story
--Runner-Up: Joel Grey (1972) for Cabaret

There are no provisos here for runners-up.  Don Murray is not only one of the longest-lived Supporting Actors ever, he's also one of the rare ones to have been nominated for his screen debut.  Also, with Tamblyn alive, maybe I should stop pointing out a lack of classic actors from major Hollywood musicals not being alive, but that we should still consider Caron for an Honorary Oscar-who wouldn't want to watch her thank Fred and Gene in the same speech?  Looking ahead here, it's weird to think that just eight years behind Joel Grey is Timothy Hutton, who was so young when he won for Ordinary People that he's not even sixty yet.

Best Director

Nominee: Claude Lelouch (1966) for A Man and a Woman
--Runner-Up: Norman Jewison (1967) for In the Heat of the Night
Winner: William Friedkin (1971) for The French Connection
--Runner-Up: Francis Ford Coppola (1974) for The Godfather, Part II

Admit it-when I typed Coppola for Godfather II, at least half of you said "wait, what about the first one?" before you remembered Bob Fosse won that year for Cabaret.  Looking at this list, I had never put together that Lelouch was so young when he made A Man and a Woman (I loved this movie, and will surely have to see it again before we do the 1966 OVP, but when I saw it in college I found it intoxicating), being not even 30 when he was nominated for an Oscar for the film.  With the exception of Jewison (whose last film was 2003's The Statement with Michael Caine & Tilda Swinton), all three of these men have made movies in the past five years, though Coppola has threatened frequently to retire.

OVP: The Swarm (1978)

Film: The Swarm (1978)
Stars: Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, Jose Ferrer, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda
Director: Irwin Allen
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Typing up the call sheet for The Swarm, you're right initially to be perplexed by this film's reputation.  There are, in fact, seven Oscar winners in The Swarm, seven, making it one of the most decorated casts in the history of Hollywood (seriously-aside from stunt films like The Player or Around the World in 80 Days, you only really have the late-stage Marvel movies like Avengers: Endgame that can come close to a movie like The Swarm).  So seven winners, and that doesn't even count the nominated Katharine Ross & Richard Widmark and screen legend Fred MacMurray in his final role.  So, why exactly is it that The Swarm is considered by so many people to be one of the worst movies ever made?  And how exactly did it get nominated for an Oscar?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a group of killer African bees invading Texas.  That's the plot in one sentence, but if you want an expanded one, while the killer bees are invading Texas, initially focusing on one small town and then moving on to Houston, we have two men Dr. Bradford Crane (Caine), assisted by Dr. Walter Krim (Fonda), in a turf battle with a military commander General Slater (Widmark).  Dr. Helena Anderson (Ross) is also there, but naturally becomes nothing more than the romantic interest for Crane, and then we frequently cut to the town, which is focused on a senior citizen love triangle (between de Havilland, MacMurray, & Johnson), and Rita (Duke), who is having a baby.  Almost every one of these characters ends up dying, but in the end Crane (with his new girlfriend by his side) burns all of the bees in the Gulf of Mexico by using their mating call against them.

If you can't tell, this movie is kind of hilariously bad.  The plot is absurd, even in an era where murder hornets feel like they're about to add a true level of ridiculous onto 2020.  Forgetting for a second the sexist treatment of Ross' character, the loopholes and twists in the movie are bizarrely unsatisfying.  The movie has no sense of how a plot is supposed to work, and frequently introduces tension that would normally trigger to an audience "okay, this is something I should be emotionally invested in" without any sort of resolution.

Take, for example, the skepticism of Caine's character coming out of nowhere at the beginning of the picture.  Widmark is suspicious of him, and the ominous Jerry Goldsmith score agrees, but not only does he end being the good guy, we never have a moment where there is a bad guy-it just sort of skates into "we're all in this together" mode without any sort of friction between Caine & Widmark that doesn't last longer than three lines.  De Havilland's character is met with a love triangle, but unlike any other movie, all three characters die before she chooses or even tips her hat to which man she might marry.  And Patty Duke's pregnant mother just sort of shows up, has a baby, and then is never heard from again-what was the point of this character?!?

The movie won one Oscar nomination, and it's not, as you might expect, Visual Effects, but instead Costume Design.  I just don't get why.  The only costumes of any note in this movie are the hazmat suits that seem to be crossed with a beekeeper costume, but there's nothing special about this, and the action happens all in one day, to the point where most characters are wearing maybe 2-3 costumes at most (de Havilland probably has the most costume changes at I think three).  I don't have a problem with Oscar going subtle, but there is almost no precedent for a costuming choice this mundane getting an Oscar nomination, and there were certainly other options that would have been showier (California Suite, The Brink's Job, The Boys from Brazil, The Deer Hunter) and were in films that were Oscar-nominated already.  That The Swarm got in instead is kind of hilarious, but just another confusing aspect to this movie's tale.

No Globe, No SAG...No Problem?

Last year it was Bradley Cooper-who can get in
without the love in 2015?

This article has become a bit of an annual tradition here at The Many Rantings of John, and since I'm still relatively new compared to some other decade-old blogs on the internet, I feel like I have to carry out the few traditions that I have going.  Every year in the past ten, seemingly without fail with the strange exception of 2006 (which was largely due to the bizarrely robust nature of the Supporting Actor race that year where nine different actors were cited by the Globes and SAG Awards), at least one actor has managed to be nominated for an Academy Award without having previously been cited by the Globes or the SAG Awards for the same performance.  Take a look below:

2014: Bradley Cooper, Marion Cotillard, and Laura Dern

2013: Jonah Hill

2012: Quvenzhane Wallis, Emannuelle Riva, and Jacki Weaver

2011: Gary Oldman and Max von Sydow

2010: Javier Bardem

2009: Maggie Gyllenhaal

2008: Michael Shannon

2007: Laura Linney and Tommy Lee Jones

2006: Zero (let's pay attention people-we've already been over this)

2005: William Hurt

As is evidenced here, when you've missed at both awards it helps a ton to be in a film that people are actually watching.  Of these fifteen actors, six of them were in films that would also be nominated for Best Picture, and all but Jones and Cotillard had their films nominated in other categories.  It also helps to be a major player at the Academy Awards-only Wallis and Riva had never been nominated before, and they were nominated for leading a Best Picture, so it's quite unlikely at this point in the race for a nominee to pop up out-of-nowhere for a film people aren't discussing elsewhere.  With that being said, I've gone through and looked at the ten actors who haven't received any of the major precursor love yet, and ranked them by who is the most likely to be nominated for an Oscar anyway.  This year was particularly hard because of the erratic nature of the race, especially when you consider so many unexpected names like Bryan Cranston and Sarah Silverman ended up showing up at the awards prior to nominations, leaving a few contenders that were widely expected in the dust to new theoretical nominees.  Share your thoughts on this list and who was left out (and especially who you think will be left in) below in the comments!

Honorable Mention: I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the likes of Tom Hanks, Blythe Danner, Ian McKellen, Kristen Stewart, and Benicio del Toro would have normally made the cutoff, but I decided to go with ten per tradition-usually I'm scrounging for contenders, but this year it was a plethora of near-misses so hopefully we get some genuine surprises come Oscar morning.

10. Elizabeth Banks (Love and Mercy)

For Her: It's hard to deny Banks made a huge splash this year onscreen.  After all, her directorial debut in Pitch Perfect 2 went off extremely well, making a mountain of cash (even if the film itself was never quite as beloved as the fans of the first were hoping), while also getting rave reviews for her work in Love and Mercy.  With Paul Dano scooping up a number of awards, it's not like the screener isn't available to Academy members, and though she's never been nominated before you can sort of get the sense that she's about ready for some sort of industry acknowledgement.

Against Her: If they're seeing the movie and voting for Dano, why isn't she scoring at the Globes in particular?  Dano made it, and she's a big enough celebrity for HFPA, so where's the love for her?  Is it simply that they're responding to Dano rather than Banks, in which case she's a have-not in this situation?  The film is really only gunning for Supporting Actor based on precursors, and that's somewhat tenuous as can be evidenced by a film like Rush (where the Academy skips out if you aren't a player elsewhere).

9. Carey Mulligan (Suffragette)

For Her: She's a former nominee who spent most of the year at the top of Oscar prediction charts.  Suffragette is a movie that is clearly relevant and I suspect it's one the Academy would like to put a "me too!" on agreeing with at this point.  Period dramas are catnip for the Best Actress category, and she has to do a lot of deglam.  Plus, doesn't it feel like Carey Mulligan should have a second Oscar nomination by now?

Against Her: No one is talking about this film anymore, and it's mostly out of "really, she's not gaining traction?!?" that I kept this on here as it makes so much sense on paper, even though in reality Mulligan's opportunity seems to have all-but-disappeared.  That being said, I thought the same thing about Tommy Lee Jones in 2007 and he still won a nod so it's not totally out-of-the-question.

8. Michael Caine (Youth)

For Him: He's Michael Caine, beloved actor and Academy Award favorite.  Were he to be nominated, he would become the first actor ever to be nominated in six different decades, and he's a major movie star that has long been hungry for a lead Oscar and is willing to schmooze for it.  Caine's also in a movie that, if they see it, seems like the older Academy members would love as it's about, well, older artists and entertainers.  I suspect that those completely downgrading Caine in their predictions are missing what could be a great surprise opportunity.

Against Him: Since the Globes clearly saw the film (they voted for Fonda in the same movie), why not Caine?  They even went with him for The Quiet American, so you know they're fans.  Youth itself has gained almost no traction this season and may be too out-there for the voting community's tastes.  I think this could happen, but I have no evidence of it so one wonders if Caine will continue to have to find a shot at that sixth decade.

7. Michael B. Jordan (Creed)

For Him: He's a young up-and-coming actor, arguably the best American male actor under thirty in my opinion, and Creed continues to be a great word-of-mouth hit that could score with the Academy as it feels in their wheelhouse.  Let's not forget Bradley Cooper in American Sniper in all of this, as Clint Eastwood's picture went from being a non-entity in most of the precursor awards to being a huge deal at the Oscars, which could well be what's about to happen to Creed (though Stallone did score at the Globes).

Against Him: Jordan's not Bradley Cooper (who had two previous Oscar citations to rely upon), and this film isn't directed by Clint Eastwood-it's a boxing sequel.  Perhaps the Academy can't quite get over that hump (or they just don't love it) and are content to go with Stallone as their way of giving the film recognition.

6. Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road)

For Her: This is my annual, one-time-only mention of the BFCA Awards, as one might question why I don't include them on this list since they are a televised precursor and of course Theron got nominated there.  I don't mention them for two reasons: one, they have six nominees and that's cheating, and two (and much more importantly) they are far more intent on predicting the Oscars than actually rewarding what they like (compare Rotten Tomatoes scores with who actually gets nominated for a reference point), and that's not an awards show, it's just a Vegas betting board so I shall not mention them again for a year until I write this article again.  That being said, the nomination for Theron has to indicate something, and she's an Oscar-winning lead in a film that increasingly looks likely to be a Best Picture nominee-that's usually a recipe for a surprise nomination.

Against Her: It'd be a nearly unprecedented nomination (with the very glaring exception of Sigourney Weaver in Aliens), and can Theron actually do this without being a huge presence on the campaign trail?  It seems a bit telling that the Globes didn't go for this at all as it seems more in their recent wheelhouse (think Uma Thurman in Kill Bill) but there's clearly at least one very open slot in Best Actress so I wouldn't totally eye-roll here.

4 & 5. Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton (Spotlight)

For Them: I combined these two for two reasons, one of which is that they are both obvious contenders on-paper.  Both men are recent (like, last year recent) nominees who didn't win, which the Academy sometimes feels the urge to correct if you make enough good movies back-to-back, and they are headlining a major Best Picture contender, the only film to score nominations for Best Cast AND Best Drama Picture at the Globes.  That has to matter, and you can imagine these two being on a lot of ballots.

Against Them: The second reason I put them together, though is that they're clearly costing the other one their nomination.  With Keaton going supporting instead of lead (not the worst decision, but potentially costly for Ruffalo who has the more "big moment" role) that means that two men whom the Academy feel are "due" are competing for the same turf.  No film has been nominated for two supporting actors since 1991's Bugsy for a reason-it's because Academy members don't like voting for the same film twice for two male actors.  That's clearly causing some issues for these two as they are competing in a race that is starting to coalesce around other individuals.

3. Tom Hardy (The Revenant)

For Him: He's had an amazing year.  With dual roles in Legend, a title role in Mad Max, and now a significant role opposite the film that's probably going to win Leo his Oscar in The Revenant, Hardy has to be considered for this performance, which also is clear Oscar bait from the trailers (he plays the chief antagonist, a classic Supporting Actor part).  Hardy's been a rising star for years now, and if a year like this doesn't bring him into the fold, I don't know what will.

Against Him: "Why didn't he score at the Globes" is a recurring phrase this year (mostly because I have no idea WHAT was happening at the SAG Awards), but Hardy is hot and could have been an easy arm-candy presenter to Jennifer Lopez at the ceremony so one wonders what the hold-up was there.  Is it a case where he's just not compelling in "the Leo Show?"  He might also be too pretty for Oscar (they like to make the sexy guys wait until the wrinkles come).

2. Joan Allen (Room)

For Her: On-paper, almost everything.  If I was looking at the recipe above, I'd need someone headlining a likely Best Picture nominee (check), someone in a supporting role when everyone is gushing about a lead performance (check and check), and someone whom the Academy has shown a fondness for before but hasn't really been nominated in a little while (and three times-nominated check).  Allen is the sort of performer like Tommy Lee Jones or William Hurt whom the Academy might just want to say "we remember you!" to and her role in Room, while not particularly meaty, isn't without its big moments, and seems more Oscar-friendly than Globes or SAG Awards.

Against Her: It's not a particularly meaty role.  That hasn't stopped people in the past (hello, Jacki Weaver), but with so many lead performers making a play for this category it's difficult to tell whether or not there will be a room for a performance the size of Allen's against the likes of Mara and Vikander.

1. Charlotte Rampling (45 Years)

For Her: She's an acting god who did score a few critical citations so far, and it's worth noting scored a BFCA nomination when Theron was clearly the sixth place finisher in that list.  45 Years has gotten rave reviews, and screeners are a pretty good answer to people saying she won't make it because the film is small (which becomes less of an argument as years go by and the Academy doesn't reflect the Box Office like it used to do).  Rampling feels like she should get a nomination at least once in her career-this could be the moment.

Against Her: She's the exact opposite of Allen in predictive ways, though, and a nomination would be kind of unprecedented in recent memory as she's not in a film that will be nominated somewhere else, she's not a former nominee or winner, and no one thinks of this as a Best Picture contender.  Even Marion Cotillard, who seems most indicative for Rampling, was an Oscar winner when she came out of the blue for Two Days, One Night last year.  Still, records break every year, and I think Rampling is probably the one to do it in 2015.