OVP: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Film: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, OJ Simpson, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, Susan Flannery, Jack Collins

Director: John Guillermin

Oscar History: 7 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-Fred Astaire, Art Direction, Cinematography*, Film Editing*, Score, Song, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen's career hit its financial peak in 1974, when he starred with Paul Newman in today's film The Towering Inferno.  At this point, Newman & McQueen were two of the biggest names in movies, and there were quite a few arguments over who would get top billing in the picture (ultimately it was a draw, with McQueen's name first but Newman's name higher), but after this both would suffer career lulls.  Newman would rebound eventually in the 1980's with films like The Verdict and The Color of Money, the latter winning him his only competitive Oscar, but McQueen would never regain this position.  He'd make an ill-fated Ibsen film in 1978 (one that would basically disappear from public consciousness), and then a pair of pictures in 1980 (Tom Horn and The Hunter), both decent-sized hits that might have hallmarked a comeback, but that wasn't to be.  Just over three months after the release of The Hunter, Steve McQueen would be dead.

(Spoilers Ahead) But before we get into that, let's get into the height of his career, at least commercially.  The Towering Inferno was a landmark movie in terms of its box office in 1974.  In the previous years, films like Airport and The Poseidon Adventure had found a formula for success-put a bunch of famous stars, including at least a few studio system legends that can scoop up a supporting acting Oscar nomination, and place them in an insane disaster situation, one that will have at least a few of them die, but the audience can look on in horror as we wonder who from this insanely-stacked call sheet might be safe.  This film is no less than these, and arguably has the starriest cast  of the bunch, but is much more in the vein of Airport (which I did not enjoy) than The Poseidon Adventure (which I did enjoy, in large part due to Shelley Winters' solid work).  The film has the tallest building in the world on fire, and all of our characters, including architect Newman and firefighter McQueen, fighting to stay alive as more-and-more paths to the ground floor are forfeited.  Along the way, some live (including, surprisingly, conman Fred Astaire), and some die, most shockingly Jennifer Jones, who in a morbid twist would be flung from the top of a giant building in the movie two years before her daughter would commit suicide in exactly the same way.

If only the movie was any good.  Technically, this is impressive-the set design, effects, and especially the stunt work are out-of-this-world, but the film spends no time trying to develop the characters, giving us two-dimensional feats from genuinely talented actors.  It's not like someone like Faye Dunaway or Paul Newman can't add a bit of three-dimensionality to their work, but there's no call for it.  Our star of the month, Steve McQueen, feels almost ancillary to the plot of the picture even as he's supposed to be the hero.  Fred Astaire would receive his only competitive acting Oscar nomination for this movie, and man is it unnecessary-he barely has anything to do, other than shout for a dead Jennifer Jones toward the end of the picture.  It feels weird to live in a world where Fred Astaire (whom I love) never got a competitive acting nomination, but, like...over John Cazale in The Godfather, Part II or John Huston in Chinatown...let's not be ridiculous here.

As I said above, Steve McQueen would disappear from movies after this, having a bit of a nomad period where he just went out into the country in a motor home, in the process turning down parts in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Apocalypse Now that might've dramatically changed his legacy.  But his health by the late 1970's was in terrible shape, and he developed mesothelioma (likely due to asbestos exposure from his time in the Marines).  The National Enquirer, at that point most famous for its ongoing coverage of the death of Elvis Presley rather than the right-wing attack ads that it would become known for to modern supermarket shoppers, broke the story that McQueen was dying shortly before his death (he'd been trying to keep it a secret), and McQueen attempted a number of experimental procedures, including a surgery to remove a tumor from his liver in Mexico, a procedure he couldn't have performed in the United States because no doctor would do it (since it would kill him).  12 hours into the surgery, the American doctors were proven correct, and Steve McQueen died at the age of only 50 from a heart attack.

Next month, we're going to talk about a man who was good friends with McQueen, even if they also had something of a professional rivalry during McQueen's early stardom.  Like McQueen, he also would die young, but unlike McQueen, that death would cement his legacy in a way that would in many ways outlast any films he made in life...and would become the source of near constant conspiracy theory in the decades to come, in ways that would haunt his family for generations.

OVP: The Reivers (1969)

Film: The Reivers (1969)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Sharon Farrell, Mitch Vogel, Rupert Crosse, Juano Hernandez, Burgess Meredith

Director: Mark Rydell

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Rupert Crosse, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen, fitting of a man synonymous with both a sex symbol persona and a cool guy elusiveness, had both a lot of romantic conquests in his life as well as not a lot of press about them, save for his marriage to 1970's superstar actress Ali MacGraw, whom he costarred with in 1972's The Getaway (which I'd already seen, hence why it's not the movie today) and which spanned most of MacGraw's time as a major box office draw post-Love Story.  McQueen, though, would marry three times, including model Barbara Minty very late in his life (they were married less than a year before his death), and would have affairs with Mamie van Doren & Lauren Hutton.  But fitting a man whose onscreen personas rarely are ones that a "woman can tame," none of these relationships really defined his career in the way that Joanne Woodward's relationship with his peer Paul Newman would (or Warren Beatty's legendary bed-hopping would until he married Annette Bening).  

(Spoilers Ahead) I bring this up because the movie we're watching today is something of an outlier in McQueen's career.  The Reivers, based on a work by William Faulkner, is a tale of the South (like all of Faulkner's stories), but one with very little complicated plot and were it not for the presence of McQueen (then a massive star in a way the studio couldn't afford) and the presence of a bordello, there are moments in this that have the vibes of a Disney film, with an unlikely parental guardian in Boon (McQueen) looking after young Ned (Vogel), taking him on an adventure through the countryside along with their friend Ned (Crosse) in a bright yellow 1904 Winton Flyer.  The film itself has multiple chapters, but not a lot of common thread, and is told through a rose-colored nostalgic narration by Burgess Meredith, who plays a grown Ned through voiceover.

McQueen's part here is really uninteresting.  He's not doing anything special-this doesn't have the direness of Cincinnati Kid or the sophistication of Thomas Crown, and doesn't have the gravitas of a western (which McQueen would make three of during his run as a leading man, most notably The Magnificent Seven which we covered for a past season of this series with Yul Brynner).  His Boon is a cad, a likable one, but one who treats his prostitute girlfriend Corrie (Farrell) like garbage, even though he does end up marrying her in the end.  There's nothing really here-it's just blank space, and like I said, were it not for the heavy subject matter, lends itself to the two-dimensional drift of a live-action Disney movie at this time.

The film is notable for its two Oscar nominations, which is a big reason why I picked this one.  Rupert Crosse would become the first Black man to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor for this film (Sidney Poitier at this point had gotten two nominations in the lead category, but no Black person had somehow gotten into Supporting Actor).  His performance is just fine though-he in many ways has a scene-stealing role, but his performance doesn't have enough presence to really steal the scenes away from McQueen even on easy mode, and he likely got the nomination based on a late scene in the movie where he faces off against a racist Southerner.  Crosse would die relatively soon after this nomination from lung cancer, and really this is his only notable role.

The other nomination is from John Williams for Best Score.  Williams' work here is really fun (in many ways it feels like it's paying homage to Aaron Copland, which is not something you would oftentimes say about Williams, and proof of his versatility as a composer).  Williams was still in his Oscar infancy here, getting only his second nomination, and he had yet to win (that wouldn't happen for two more years), but it's also fun to think about the pre-Spielberg years given between this and his even better work in The Cowboys, he was doing a lot more playful stuff onscreen.  He correctly lost to Butch Cassidy, but it's fun to finally see one of his earliest nominations.

OVP: The Untouchables (1987)

Film: The Untouchables (1987)

Stars: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Charles Martin Smith, Andy Garcia, Robert de Niro

Director: Brian de Palma

Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Best Supporting Actor-Sean Connery*, Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sean Connery: click here to learn more about Mr. Connery (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to cover two Connery films today as I missed last week, but didn't want to short-change him, so we'll talk through both his time in the 1980's and, this evening, the 1990's.  Connery was, by the early 1980's, a movie star but not a consistent box office presence.  While he had made hits (Time Bandits dwarfed its production costs in 1981), nothing he had done had, quite frankly, approached what he had achieved with James Bond, and as a result Connery was talked into making his final installment in the franchise in 1983 with Never Say Never Again.  This was something he did without Eon Productions (traditionally the production house for Bond films), and he did so in a head-to-head competition with Roger Moore, who had Octopussy out that year.  Both films were huge successes at the box office, though Moore's film ended up on top.  Connery hated the experience, and stuck to his commitment to "never again" after this one (he would never appear in a Bond film again), and indeed wouldn't even make a movie for two years after this.

(Spoilers Ahead) Connery probably could've played his types of middling, increasingly aging rogues & fictional knights forever for the rest of his career, the memory of Bond so appealing to nostalgic movie producers who grew up idolizing him, but it was today's film that truly changed the course of his career & legacy.  The Untouchables is a film where Connery gets second billing to Kevin Costner, not remotely as famous as him at the time, but it was a smart move to choose a supporting part.  The Untouchables is a highly-fictionalized look at Eliot Ness (Costner), the federal agent who led the efforts to take down Al Capone (de Niro), and features Connery in a role as a rogue cop, one who is brought in as part of Ness's operation, which is ultimately successful in beating Capone (or at least sending him to jail), but (because this is a Brian de Palma film) not without a lot of very bloody corpses along the way.  Like most of de Palma's films, I struggled with this.  Costner's one of the blandest leading men of his era, gorgeous but blank-faced and rarely a compelling figure in the lead (and if we're judging solely on looks, Andy Garcia is even prettier than him at this point), and Robert de Niro is actively terrible in this movie, a hint of the many cash-grabs the acting icon would have in the decades to come.  The best part of the movie, for me, was Ennio Morricone's score (and that flawless Giorgio Armani tailoring).

Connery is solid, though, not nearly as good as he is in, say, The Man Who Would Be King, but he's winning and very good at embracing the role of "aging sexy guy who mentors a younger star," something that he'd started with Christopher Lambert in 1986's Highlander, and which would become the bulk of the remainder of his career.  For much of the catty press he took back in 1983 for Never Say Never Again, about how he and Moore were far too old to be believable as aging action stars bedding women young enough to be their daughters, it did feel like Connery's place as an action star would soon fade.  But here, he showed how well he could fit in-he was a tough guy, someone who was grizzled but had "one last go in him" and this would be something he'd ride for the next 15 years or so, but also would carve out for others like him.  Action stars, because of Connery's work in this and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade a few years later, had a path for a second act, one with a lot of box office (The Untouchables was a massive hit, the sixth highest-grossing film at the domestic box office in 1987, and made 3x as much as de Palma's now much-obsessed Scarface), so the paydays (and movie stardom) could continue even as the stunt work became less intense.

It also would define Connery's career because it made him one of the only action stars to date to win an Academy Award.  In the 1980's, with a lot of Golden Age actors aging to the point where they were near death, we saw a lot of the leading actors of that era winning "sentimental" Oscars.  Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, Geraldine Page, Don Ameche, Paul Newman, & Jessica Tandy would all take home Oscars at the time, and with this movie, Connery would as well.  Connery's win is one that it's hard to fault the Oscars (it's cool that he won a sstatue, even if I don't know that I'm going to agree with them in the 1987 OVP), and certainly they did worse in the era, but it gave him a nobility that would become a trademark the remainder of his life, and gave him a further distinction over future James Bond actors none of whom (to date) have ever gotten so much as a nomination.

OVP: Ordinary People (1980)

Film: Ordinary People (1980)

Stars: Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Timothy Hutton, Judd Hirsch

Director: Robert Redford

Oscar History: 6 nominations/4 wins (Best Picture*, Director*, Actress-Mary Tyler Moore, Supporting Actor-Timothy Hutton*, Supporting Actor-Judd Hirsch, Adapted Screenplay*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

It's hard to express what a big deal The Mary Tyler Moore Show was when it was on in the 1970's.  The show wasn't a gargantuan-style Friends-esque behemoth in the ratings (it was a Top 20 hit for five of its seven seasons, so respectable, but was not once in the Top 5, peaking at #7 in Season 3), but it dominated the pop culture landscape.  The show would spawn three spinoffs, including the critically-acclaimed drama Lou Grant, and win more Emmys than any comedy until Frasier over two decades later.  Three of those would be for Moore as Best Actress in a Comedy Series.  As a result of playing Mary Richards, beautiful-but-talented, a single woman who didn't need a husband to be happy (or successful in life), she created a feminist icon.  Oprah Winfrey herself has stated she got into television because of Mary Richards, and the normally composed Winfrey openly wept when Moore made a surprise appearance on her show.  Coming off such a success would be daunting, but Moore chose pretty well for herself.  Being guided by Robert Redford in his directorial debut, Moore won the only Academy Award nomination of her career for 1980's Ordinary People, arguably the only significant film she'd make in her career in terms of passing into cultural relevance, a movie that won an Best Picture Oscar that is still discussed today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about the Jarretts, living in the suburbs of Chicago in an idllic house, but as you can imagine things at home are not idillic.  Their eldest son Buck has passed away from drowning, an accident on a sailboat that occurred while their younger son Conrad (Hutton) was on the boat, and since then Conrad has attempted suicide & gone to a mental hospital.  Conrad is now back-in-school but unsuccessfully readjusting, and his parents are not handling it the same.  His father Calvin (Sutherland) is amiable but largely hoping the problem will go away if he's kind to his son, while his wife Beth (Moore) wants to pretend nothing is different, and lives a sort of plastic Norman Rockwell-style existence, frequently trying to lift her problematic son out of her life completely.  Conrad is in therapy with Dr. Berger (Hirsch), a tough-talking psychiatrist who wants to get to the root cause of Conrad's problems, many of which he places at the feet of his parents.  As we learn, this is both true and an excuse.  Conrad has the ability to change himself, but not those around him, and when he suffers a breakdown, this comes to a head.  His father is willing to bend and be someone different to stay with the son he has left, but his wife is not, and leaves them before the end of the picture.  It's a hopeful, but bleak (and realistic) ending, and look at what grief can do to a family unit.

Ordinary People's best moments come from the prickliness that happens within a family unit, and how each person plays a part (and what happens when one of them is no longer there to play said part).  I think what's so smart about Redford's direction and the script is the way that it doesn't shy away from this.  It's very clear that Buck was Beth's favorite child, and that Calvin tried to compensate by favoring Conrad, though he wasn't as successful because Beth is the dominant figure in the household.  What is more intriguing is watching Beth & Calvin's own realities start to dissipate as we move into the movie.  It's clear that while Calvin loved both the boys, Beth might not have loved either of them, or at least not in a conventional way...she saw them as ornaments for her life, things to show to her friends.  There's an extremely uncomfortable but telling moment where Calvin wants to get a photo of Beth & Conrad together, and while Conrad is willing, Beth refuses, insisting she doesn't need it, and you see the look on Timothy Hutton's face as he understands in real time his mother no longer even wants to be seen next to him, he has strayed so far from what is acceptable as her ornament.  This is a very real type of mother (just look at all of the parents who abandon their children for being gay or trans), who only loves their child if they match the vision they have of them in their head.

And it's a testament to Moore (and the writers) that she doesn't get a redemption.  Part of what makes this performance so good is that Moore's Beth is not someone who is going to change, because she'll never see what she's doing as wrong.  She is the sort of person who has never considered that her worldview might be incorrect, and while Conrad & Calvin are capable of such introspection, she is not, which makes the ending work really well-you get a sense of her going back into her own life of golf, cocktail parties, & church fundraisers, everyone gossiping about how lonely she is behind her back but too afraid to reach out for fear of her slapping their hand.  All of the performers in this are good (Sutherland's blistered dad, Hutton's damaged son, even the least of the main quartet Hirsch's hipster doctor works more than he doesn't), but Moore is the best because she manages to play unlikeable so real.

The big controversy for any Oscar watcher (this is one of the very rare Best Picture winners I'd never seen) is that it beat Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, and so (for the record) I want to acknowledge that this is not as good as Raging Bull (few movies are).  That movie does more with form, and has a better central performance.  But it is strong, and I get why it has developed a sort of second battalion of defenders in recent years after being something of a How Green Was My Valley/Dances with Wolves-style punching bag for so many years.  It's a great movie...it just probably shouldn't have beaten a masterpiece.

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: Teacher's Pet (1958)

Film: Teacher's Pet (1958)

Stars: Clark Gable, Doris Day, Gig Young, Mamie van Doren, Nick Adams

Director: George Seaton

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Gig Young, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

Doris Day would never win an Academy Award in her career, and would only be nominated once, for Pillow Talk in 1959.  There are actresses we're going to profile this season who enjoyed genuine critical success (like Audrey Hepburn) and others who never got that kind of recognition (like June Allyson).  Day's Oscar nomination theoretically puts her in the middle, but to be honest-that's being charitable to the Academy.  Day's movies were not meant to be critically-acclaimed-they were meant to make money.  Her citation for Pillow Talk was considered to be something of a surprise, even to Day herself, and less about her acting & more an acknowledgement that she'd been the biggest actress of the decade (and should have an Oscar nomination to show for it).  But the next year, when she got actual buzz for Midnight Lace (a film, it's worth mentioning, that's not very good even if Day was lauded at the time), they felt she'd had enough praise.  This is true for most of the serious or seriously-considered films of Day's, including our film today, Teacher's Pet.  The movie got Golden Globe nominations for Clark Gable & Gig Young, Young got an Oscar nomination, and it was cited by the WGA & Academy for writing, as well as the DGA for its direction.  But Day-not a mention...proof that she was never really taken seriously by the powers-that-be as anything other than a way to make some money.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie honestly has a cute premise.  We've got James Gannon (Gable), a grizzled news reporter who grew up in a newsroom (and only knows that life) who writes a letter to the instructor of a journalism school saying he won't speak in her class because he doesn't believe in journalism school.  When he's forced to apologize, he finds the instructor, Erica Stone (Day) to be less mockable (and far prettier) than he had thought in his letter.  He assumes the guise of a student, one who shows intense promise, and the two start a professional (and romantic) relationship, one that falls apart when James's identity is revealed.  The movie then meanders a bit, both sides softening their stances, and ends with him respecting her and her ending up on his arm, both in love.

The movie's premise and first thirty minutes is really smart, and almost justifies the casting.  Gable & Day are professional movie stars, and both know how to sell a two-dimensional plot, and we get some really fun dialogue about the benefits of both education and real-world experience.  I liked seeing Day in smart woman mode, and not just "preaching from books" but it's clear the writers want her to actually be good at her job and not just "seems good" until Gable shows her the ways of the world.  That theme continues throughout the movie, but it fails once the two start being romantically involved.  Gable is too old for this part, and not necessarily the romance, but the idea that he's going to learn more from Day given his background.  He doesn't sell the transformation particularly well (the script doesn't help him there), and by the last thirty minutes they introduce a whole new topic (the economics of a newspaper) as a bizarre 11:00 number to the plot that feels tacked on because they didn't know how to end the picture.

Honestly, the Oscar nominations perplexed me here.  The film was a hit, so maybe that was the driving factor, but most of Day's movies were hits...I don't get why Teacher's Pet got all of this love when she'd also been in serious films like Julie and The Man Who Knew Too Much a few years earlier with little notice.  Anyway, the two Oscar nominations are quickly discarded.  The screenplay, as I said, suffers after thirty minutes (the movie is two hours long), and really doesn't know how to end this with the two of them both respecting each other AND falling in love AND staying in character (and so it doesn't).  The nomination for Gig Young is even more bewildering, not necessarily because he's bad, but because he's so ancillary.  He's meant, I think, to be a romantic rival to Gable but there's no actual rivalry, and honestly I think he'd 100% be the "gay best friend" if this was a 1990's rom-com.  He's meant to be the comic side piece, but only a couple of his jokes are funny, and there's nothing meaty or showy in his work, or even admirable in adding to the picture.  He's just sort of there-definitely one of the weirder Classical Hollywood acting nominations I've come across...the only way it makes sense is if Teacher's Pet was far closer to Best Picture or Director nominations than I'm giving it credit for (which given the DGA & WGA nominations, may have been the case).

OVP: Supporting Actor (2023)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction

Robert de Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon

Robert Downey, Jr., Oppenheimer

Ryan Gosling, Barbie

Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

My Thoughts: And now we officially are in the acting races!  I've noticed slightly less traffic to this series than normal, which I'm chalking up to this being right after the 96th Academy Awards, so you're all tired of the field and would prefer something more retro (don't worry, in June we're be going to do our first foray into the 1990's, so there'll be plenty of nostalgia for everyone).  But, I'm hoping that today and tomorrow will be a fun discussion.  The supporting races at the Oscars were such a foregone conclusion that, quite frankly, it feels like these lineups were under-discussed more than anything else.

For example, did it feel like we were having a moment for Robert de Niro last year?  Nearly fifty years after his first Oscar nomination for The Godfather, Part II, he got his ninth acting nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon, playing the unfathomably evil patriarch of a crime syndicate.  De Niro is giving his best performance...maybe in my lifetime, honestly?  It's spectacular stuff, with the way that he shows his hands repeatedly (this is a man who feels unexpected and yet doesn't have much of a poker face), and yet you are always caught off-guard by his ruthlessness.  Really good stuff, and surprisingly strong chemistry with DiCaprio.

Ryan Gosling gave what might end up being his most memorable role at the end of his career.  Gosling's winning celebrity combined with his lousy box office returns (save Barbie) means that he's been one of our most consistent actors and has done so in genuinely good movies.  That's true here, giving us the best version of his handsome goofball.  There was some press about how "Ken got nominated but not Barbie" in 2023, but that's because Gosling steals literally every scene in the movie he's in, embodying a himbo energy with a silly, broken man.  It's a masterclass in comedy.

This isn't the case for Mark Ruffalo.  Ruffalo was once the Ryan Gosling in movies (compare his work in You Can Count on Me with Gosling's in Blue Valentine...you'll find the similarities), but Gosling is better at over-acting.  Ruffalo's work here isn't enough.  I kind of liked some of his earlier scenes, where he plays a lothario who is just intent on getting into Emma Stone's pants, but when he's asked to play wide in the latter half of the movie, he whiffs more than he connects.  There's too much silly, especially compared to the more sophisticated "big" acting that Stone is doing next to him.

Robert Downey, Jr., like his Avengers costar (it should not be lost that 60% of this category has Marvel credentials given our next nominee was in Black Panther), can suffer from "too much" acting, but that's not the case with Oppenheimer.  I don't think this ranks amongst his best work (which, for my taste, is either Tropic Thunder or Ally McBeal), but it's also a very respectable way to give him an Oscar.  He plays his villain with a sense of entitlement (but also coordination) that feels like a DC creature, someone who is always ready to spring forward with his next line-of-attack, the next ploy for a promotion.  It feels custom-made for him, but that doesn't mean he doesn't ace it.

Our final nominee is the problem.  Sterling K. Brown is not just the worst of these nominees, he's the worst of all 20 acting nominees in 2023.  I am not someone who cares that much about if straight people play gay roles, but they do need to be believable as gay people, which he is not.  He plays this role as too stereotypical, frequently feeling like he has no sense of being attracted to men other than "it's in the script."  To be fair to him, this is the most phoned in character in Cord Jefferson's script, and is filled with a lot of really rough stereotypes about gay people (making him a man-crazy, irresponsible drug addict), but it's so flat, and truly, an egregiously bad performance that would feel more at-home at the Razzies.

Other Precursor Contenders: First off, I hate that the Globes expanded to six nominees per category, as it's such a copout due to a bunch of online whining (news flash: there are more than five good performances in a year...it doesn't stop being a good performance if they're not in the Top 5).  Downey won, besting de Niro, Gosling, Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe (Poor Things), & Charles Melton (May December).  SAG stuck with five, giving it to Downey over Brown, Dafoe, de Niro, & Gosling, while BAFTA also picked Downey atop de Niro, Gosling, Jacob Elordi (Saltburn), Paul Mescal (All of Us Strangers), & Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) (side note, but this is one of the best lineups I've seen from BAFTA in a while).  The sixth place was undoubtedly Dafoe, though I also think Dominic Sessa was probably on more ballots than his precursor run would let on...it's the kind of co-lead role that gets into this category.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: Both of the supporting men in All of Us Strangers (father Jamie Bell, boyfriend Paul Mescal) are spectacular.  In a year where we spent a lot of time discussing whether both Poor Things actor would get in, we should've been focused on the supporting men of Andrew Haigh's brilliant picture.

Oscar’s Choice: Downey won by so much, you honestly could make an argument for pretty much anyone (save Brown) in second...and no, it isn't automatically Gosling (de Niro is a legend who has been waiting for that third Oscar for 43 years, Ruffalo is clearly going to win at some point, and this was a big picture for him...either of them could've been the runner-up).

My Choice: Depending on the day, it'd be Gosling or de Niro, but more days I land on the latter, so I'm giving it to the villain of Killers of the Flower Moon (both are showing in my My Ballot, and either would've ranked amongst the best winners of this category).  In third is Downey, followed by Ruffalo and then Brown.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you want to attend Senate hearings with Robert Downey, Jr., or do you want to join Robert de Niro & I in Oklahoma?  Ryan Gosling & Mark Ruffalo both feel like inevitable Oscar winners at this point-who gets it first?  And was it Dafoe or Sessa in sixth place?  Share in the comments!

Also in 2023: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

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

OVP: Supporting Actor (2000)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2000)

The Nominees Were...

Jeff Bridges, The Contender

Willem Dafoe, Shadow of the Vampire

Benicio del Toro, Traffic

Albert Finney, Erin Brockovich

Joaquin Phoenix, Gladiator

My Thoughts: And we are back again today with 2000, moving into the acting categories today.  At the time in 2000, none of these men had won Academy Awards, but while we're writing it today, three of them have taken Oscars, one sadly died without one (not that he would've shown up for it), and the fifth probably just missed a nomination this year by inches.  All of this is to say, the Oscars are snapshots-in-time, but if you can get in once, you probably have a decent shot of getting in again (they love keeping people in the club).

We rarely start with the winner, so let's start with Benicio del Toro.  Del Toro's career since his Oscar win has been a mixed bag, from critical darlings like Che and Sicario to a mess of paycheck gigs (The Wolfman, whatever he's doing in the MCU), all of which is a bummer when you remember how sensational he is in Traffic.  He brings an unexpected sensitivity to a cop being forced into the world of crime, and not being given a chance to get out (until he forges one).  The monologues about baseball, and wanting a better life for himself...there's a reason a previously unknown character actor bested a screen actor who'd been waiting 40 years for his Academy Award in 2000.

Though Finney is not without points in his direction.  The reviews of Erin Brockovich usually center around Julia Roberts in her dynamic titular role, but she's not the only one doing bravura work here.  The interplay with Finney's good guy lawyer (who still needs to make a buck) is really strong.  I love the way he seems impressed with Erin largely from the start, but he has to temper that and the reveal is him showing he knew there was something there from the beginning.  It's good, earnest work from a man who had at that point been headlining films for decades, but slid perfectly into the number two spot.

The same could be said for Jeff Bridges, another reliable leading man-turned-character actor who in 2000 was still on the hunt for his Oscar.  Bridges' work here is solid.  The way that he plays a laid-back, Clinton-esque president who seems to not be in with the sharks like Gary Oldman, and instead proves to be just as cunning as them, using that guise to his advantage, is really strong stuff (kudos to the casting director here).  I will say that I wanted something more from Bridges, though that might not be fair because he's doing the part, playing well against the more scenery-chewing acting from Gary Oldman, but it doesn't quite feel complete-more a great idea than a great character.  Still good though.

Willem Dafoe is in a similar boat, though in a much lesser film.  Shadow of a Vampire sounds great on paper (an actual vampire cast to play a fictional vampire), but it doesn't deliver.  It's a horror film that plays like a staid drama, and the seams show throughout.  I think Dafoe's work here is good-he owns this part, but it does occasionally feel like his over-the-top attitude looks better because the film around him is such a snooze.  I don't think there's enough of Dafoe's trademark grace (for a man who plays villains a lot, he generally has some sort of decency in his best work like Platoon and The Florida Project), and I suspect he won this nomination because of the makeup design (which I also wasn't super impressed by) and the film's final scene (which I was impressed by).

Our final nominee is Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator.  Phoenix, I'd like to point out, is a very good actor.  I give him back-to-back gold medals in 2012 & 2013 for my My Ballot, the only actor other than Nicole Kidman to have done that to date in our 22 seasons.  I say that because two of his Oscar-cited works left me so cold, Joker and today's film.  His Commodus swings for the rafters in virtually every scene.  There's no baseline here, playing a sniveling, power-hungry figure without any depth.  I know I don't love Gladiator, but there are at least 2-3 better supporting actor performances happening in his movie alone...Phoenix got in because he had the biggest part.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went for exactly the same lineup as Oscar, giving the statue to Benicio del Toro, and del Toro won the SAG Award...but in lead actor (I can't remember if this was a filing error or not...the same thing would happen with Jennifer Connelly the following year, as this was a weird trend with SAG at the time).  Supporting Actor instead went to Albert Finney with SAG, besting the Oscar lineup + Gary Oldman in The Contender.  The BAFTA also went to del Toro, but with a much different lineup as Finney & Phoenix were joined by Gary Lewis (Billy Elliot) and Oliver Reed (Gladiator), which was a posthumous citation for Reed.  In sixth place, I'm guessing it was Gary Oldman or maybe Bruce Greenwood in the now-forgotten Thirteen Days, though there are a lot of supporting actors in the Best Picture lineup (Reed, Richard Harris, Michael Douglas, Johnny Depp) that could've gotten in as well...this being such a set lineup most of the season makes sixth place hard to guess.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: One of the primary reasons that Michael Douglas would become one of my favorite actors in high school was his work in Traffic, some of the best stuff of his career and a grand look at a rich white man who has to solve actual problems, not ones that just present themselves as opportunities.

Oscar’s Choice: Gone were the 1980's, when an aging actor would routinely beat an upstart for a sentimental Oscar win-del Toro bested Finney, and probably by a decent amount.

My Choice: Oscar made the right choice, picking del Toro over Finney (the two best nominated works).  Behind them I'd go Bridges, Dafoe, and then Phoenix.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are we all joining Team Benicio, or do you want someone else?  Should Albert Finney have won an Oscar, or was he correctly a bridesmaid (and if so, what)?  And in a pretty open-and-shut year for the final quintet, who was in sixth place looking in the window?  Share in the comments!

Also in 2000: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2000

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

OVP: Supporting Actor (2001)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2001)

The Nominees Were...

Jim Broadbent, Iris

Ethan Hawke, Training Day

Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast

Ian McKellen, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Jon Voight, Ali

My Thoughts: We are headed into the acting categories, and will be finishing all four of these acting races within the week.  After a couple of months (though, again, one of our faster ballots) of me saying this-it bears repeating heading into the acting categories that generally, 2001 had pretty good lineups.  Every category has at least 1-2 exceptional performances, and in some cases, an all-timer.  But of the four, I'll own that Supporting Actor is the least, and this isn't because there's not a lot of options.  We will get to it later with the My Ballot (next week) that concludes this season (where I pick the nominees in all categories), but Supporting Actor in genre films was popping.  With Oscar, though, only a couple of these make the grade.

A good example of Oscar going a little milquetoast is Jim Broadbent.  The longtime character actor scored his first (and to date, only) Oscar nomination in 2001 for Iris.  This performance is solid-he has strong chemistry with Judi Dench, and plays his John Bayley well.  Unlike Dench, who is suffering from dementia & therefore has more excuses to not match Kate Winslet's performance (though she does), Broadbent has to live within the world of Hugh Bonneville's portrayal of him as a young man.  Broadbent got his nomination, though, in part because of his other films in 2001-he played Renee Zellweger's dad in Bridget Jones's Diary and gave a career-best turn as Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge!.  The rules of the OVP clearly state, though, that I can only judge what's in front of me, not Broadbent's larger body of work in 2001, and with that, it's good...it's just not as good as it could've been had they gone with Moulin Rouge!.

Ethan Hawke runs into another rule we have for the OVP: category fraud.  I make a principle of docking a point for clear cases of supporting performances going lead, and this is maybe the most egregious example of that I've ever seen-Hawke is clearly the protagonist here, and saying otherwise is just telling on yourself.  Part of the reason that Hawke likely went supporting is because Washington is so much better than him.  While Denzel is giving a top tier piece of work, Hawke is just okay.  His LAPD cop isn't really believable-he feels like someone that they plucked out of a library and said "your lifelong dream is to be a police officer" he's so naive.  It makes the ending less compelling when it's clear that Washington's officer (whatever the script says) should be able to eat Hawke for breakfast.

We're going to, as we encounter the 1995-2001 era, run into several actors whose offscreen lives are pretty colorful to the point where they are a type of internet pariah, and the first of them is Jon Voight.  I want to point out, for the record, that I'm only judging actors based on their performances in front of them, and not, say, their maddening political beliefs.  That said, Voight is not very good in Ali.  His Howard Cosell is more stand out because A) Cosell was a colorful, distinctive figure in the world of sports (I'm gay, and even I can do a Howard Cosell impersonation) and B) the makeup team is doing some serious heavy-lifting.  This isn't really strong work (which, for the record, Voight is capable of), as much as it's a collective run of "wait...is that Jon Voight?" every time he's onscreen.

Like Voight, Ben Kingsley can also get into areas where it's a question mark why he's so acclaimed.  Lots of Kingsley's work is swinging for the rafters, over-the-top stuff.  But when he's good, you understand why he has the Oscar count he does.  That's the case with Sexy Beast.  This is the least of Jonathan Glazer's films to date (I'm usually enamored), but Kingsley is remarkable.  His high-energy acting matches the tone of the film, and he steals pretty every scene he's in.  One could argue if he's bordering on a lead performance here, but I think it's just because the energy is sucked out of the film whenever he's offscreen, not because he's actually in charge.  Really well done, and the best Kingsley's been this century.

We'll finish with Ian McKellen.  Similar to Alec Guinness in Star Wars, he served as a classic genre film's sole acting surrogate, and like Guinness he lost what many fans (in retrospect) feel was a slam dunk situation for him to win (unlike Guinness, McKellen seems to be fine with this being the role that will be on his tombstone despite both having long thespian histories).  Every corner of McKellen's performance is a vision.  He creates a Gandalf so complete from the opening scenes, you can never picture anyone else in the role.  I loved the command he gives, enigma in terms of his personal life (which is centuries old) and the way that he understands the gravity of this task before anyone else.  He plays the role straight, never winking, which makes it a far richer piece-of-work.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes surprisingly went with Jim Broadbent's turn in Iris, despite him not being a star, with him beating Kingsley, Voight, Steve Buscemi (Ghost World), Hayden Christensen (Life as a House), & Jude Law (AI: Artificial Intelligence).  SAG went with Ian McKellen, besting Broadbent, Christensen, Hawke, & Kinsley, while BAFTA preferred Broadbent (here, though, for Moulin Rouge!) against a completely different lineup of Colin Firth (Bridget Jones's Diary), Eddie Murphy (Shrek), Hugh Bonneville (Iris), & Robbie Coltrane (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone).  In sixth place, I kind of think it was Christensen.  At the time, he was being billed as the "next big thing" before the Star Wars films proved that he wasn't as versatile of an actor as many assumed he'd be given the hype, and there was pressure to "welcome him to the club" before he'd really proven himself.  If not Christensen, Buscemi is also a good guess, but as someone who lived through this-I think it was Christensen.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: Just a few years after breaking into mainstream film with Talented Mr. Ripley, Jude Law gives an equally strong piece-of-work as a literal boy toy in AI, and should've been included in a year that desperately needed a jolt of youth.

Oscar’s Choice: In a battle between Broadbent & McKellen, Oscar was a bit stodgy and couldn't bring itself to give a statue to McKellen, despite the latter giving the performance of a lifetime.

My Choice: McKellen.  I would've felt worse about it if Broadbent was up for Harold Zidler (that's what he'll get in for with My Ballot), but atop Iris...it ain't close.  Behind him will be Ben Kingsley, giving one of his best performances, and then (in order) Broadbent, Hawke, & Voight.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you want to stay in the Shire with Gandalf & I, or are you going to defend Oscar's choice of the literary Broadbent?  Is Ethan Hawke's performance maybe the worst example this century of category fraud (give or take Rooney Mara in Carol)?  And was it Christensen or Buscemi in sixth place?  Share in the comments!

Also in 2001: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2001

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