My 1990 Oscar Ballot

After doing the Oscar Viewing Project (our 34th!) a few weeks ago for 1990, we are already tracking to have our latest round of the My Ballot (again, our 34th).  For those that are new here (links to all past contests at the bottom of this article), I have two waves to the Oscar Viewing Project.  In the first, I take a peak at all of the Oscar-nominated films in every single full-length, Oscar-nominated category, and pick who I would want.  In the second, I pick my own nominees, watching not just the films of Oscar, but other notable films from the year (whether they be precursor-laden, box office hits, critical darlings, or just movies that looked interesting to me).  Both of these are done in a vacuum, meaning I am picking this solely based on my thoughts, not taking into account whether I've already honored someone, whether or not someone I like is giving a career-best performance (but still is in sixth place), or the personal/political views of the nominee.

As we close 1990, I'll own (and I don't mean this an overall slight on the honors I'm about to give out) that this is one of the weakest years we've seen so far (2020 is always going to be the worst given what cinema had to go through that year, but this is in the Bottom 5).  I don't entirely know why.  It's not that my own personal genres aren't being honored; I tend to like westerns, film noir, and romantic epics, and all of these are oddly present for 1990 when not all of these were super in-fashion.  I think it might be a bit of a transition year, from the action-adventure and giant epics of the 1980's that were my favorite part of that decade to the blockbuster-laden romances, animated classics, & gigantic movie star-fronted effects films of the 1990's.  This year just doesn't have a lot of that oomph, and as a result you're seeing some fields (like Best Actor, and to a lesser degree Best Picture and the screenplay categories) that would not stand up to some of their neighbors as we went forward in the 1990's.  But as you'll see, we still have time for some big moments here, and the Best Picture winner is to die for good; it's also a way to guarantee that a film director who only won statues for Oscar in a year I already cover gets a statue...this might be in a vacuum, but there is a sigh of relief when big names are not going to end up being my "Glenn Close" or "Stanley Kubrick."

Note About Eligibility: First off, I'll start with my caveat that I did not see every film from 1990.  I saw every Oscar-nominated, narrative feature, but it would be impossible (and not worth my time) to see every film from the year...hell, I didn't even see all of the films that looked interesting.  I focused instead on movies of significance, movies that trusted sources recommended, and movies that I figured would be a threat for a nomination.  If you have a film that you think should've made it that you don't see at all (and wasn't nominated for an Oscar), sound off in the comments & I'll give my rational (or excuse for not seeing it).  I would also like to note that a few films (specifically Sweetie, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down, Life and Nothing But, and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover) were deemed to be 1989 films, not 1990, and so they are not eligible here but will be when we (eventually) get to 1989.  That won't be for a while, though we will head to the 1980's with our next contest, specifically 1985.  And now-the nominees!

Picture

Cyrano de Bergerac

Edward Scissorhands

GoodFellas

The Grifters

Mermaids

Misery

Mr. and Mrs. Bridge

Paris is Burning

Postcards from the Edge

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Gold: Leading off our list today will be the film we picked as Best Picture for the OVP, so Oscar got close for me, Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas.  Given we recently finished 1972 for this series, it feels appropriate that we have bookends for those two with the films that have long-defined the gangster flick, and prove that you can support both films as amongst the best of all-time.

Silver: Next up is a close race between two different types of films, and I'm going with the one a bit more steeped in Hollywood lore.  The way that Mike Nichols fizzes the complicated relationship between mother and daughter in Postcards from the Edge is so moving.  Yes, they're playing fictionalized versions of Debbie Reynolds & Carrie Fisher, but they're also playing every parent-child who struggles with what happens once both are fully-entrenched in adulthood.

Bronze: Occasionally it's good to remind you that these are my choices.  Sometimes that means that I'm sitting here defending a guilty pleasure (check out the 2008 Best Picture lineup below for the best example of this), and sometimes I'm defending a critically well-reviewed film that has fallen on some disrepair in the decades that followed. That's the case with The Grifters, which I think is a splendid, dark neo-noir about a family of conmen, one with one of my favorite film endings, which was Oscar-celebrated in 1990 but most people don't count it as their favorites in retrospect.

Director

Tim Burton, Edward Scissorhands

Stephen Frears, The Grifters

Mike Nichols, Postcards from the Edge

Rob Reiner, Misery

Martin Scorsese, GoodFellas

Gold: We are duplicating the gold medals here with Scorsese taking another.  Really, it's hard to find another contender in 1990 that even comes close.  The much ballyhooed scene through the nightclub is one thing, but the entire film has a kinetic energy, where it's leading to somewhere.  We know this doesn't end well, and we know that we're subverting a genre that goes all the way back to the 1930's...even with all of the copycats since, it still crackles.

Silver: I'm swapping the remaining two, though, with Frears coming into second place.  I generally like but do not love his movies, finding that they say something interesting, but don't know how to stick the landing. That's just not the case with The Grifters, though, where we have a (mildly) miscast John Cusack being our only fault, but the way the camera catches the different lights of Los Angeles (I love how much of the seedy nature of this happens in daytime) truly feels like it's at the heart of film noir.

Bronze: The phrase "actor's director" sometimes means they don't get the love that they should here, but Mike Nichols thankfully got his laurels in life (unfortunately that wasn't the case for Rob Reiner, who was also an actor's director I'm thrilled we're able to include in a directorial lineup, something Oscar never managed to achieve).  I love the softness of his approach here, sometimes with great humor (that bit with Meryl hanging off the building always gets me), but that we're being welcomed into this family.

Actor

Macauley Culkin, Home Alone

Danny Glover, To Sleep with Anger

Richard Harris, The Field

Ray Liotta, GoodFellas

Al Pacino, The Godfather, Part III

Gold: This is maybe one of the weirdest choices I've made in this series, but I did a rewatch for a reason, and I'm going to pick Al Pacino (getting his first statue two years chronologically earlier than his only one with Oscar).  I love the choices he makes to make Michael angrier, more volatile, his impending old age & obsolescence creeping into the performance as he tries to stake his claim in the same way Brando did in the first film.  As I said in the OVP article, I am in the middle on Godfather III, but I love Pacino in this (worth noting he now has a Silver and Gold for the series...we'll do 1974 next year so you won't have to wait too long to know his final medal count for the trilogy).

Silver: With me selecting Pacino (again, one of the weirdest Best Actor selections I've made), we'll pick another star of a Best Picture nominee with AMPAS that didn't make their lineup otherwise, Ray Liotta.  I love the sexy danger that he brings here.  He's charming, he is able to find himself in the early scenes, and yet as the film progresses we both never lose sight of that in-awe kid, and we also understand what happens when you don't truly mature when you grow up.

Bronze: Speaking of kids, we're concluding with one of the best child comedy performances I've ever seen, one that would become a holiday classic for a reason.  Macauley Culkin (joining both his brothers Kieran and Rory as nominees for this series...see 2022 and 2000 below for the other citations) is impish, selling this scalawag of a little boy, and all the physical comedy that ensues, with aplomb.

Actress

Kathy Bates, Misery

Anjelica Huston, The Grifters

Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman

Juliet Stevenson, Truly, Madly, Deeply

Meryl Streep, Postcards from the Edge

Gold: I said this when we did the Oscar lineup, but the Academy's choices here were sensational, and honestly Joanne Woodward (the only Oscar nominee we missed) was in sixth place for me.  I'm going to repeat myself then a bit by going with Anjelica Huston in a very slim lead over Kathy Bates.  I think Huston's interiority, the sophisticated way that she plays someone who is always thinking but never sharing, is one of the best femme fatales in film history, and she nails that dynamite ending.

Silver: It's a good reminder (probably not the last of this article), that I choose these in a vacuum, as Bates missing for her Annie Wilkes may well mean I never give her a first place finish in this project.  But that's just proof that the nomination is the true reward (which it is if you do this right), and oh how grand she is as the woman who crafted stan culture FAR before that term became a thing.

Bronze: We'll finish with another Oscar nominee, and this time Oscar's favorite lady, Dame Meryl.  I think the added bonus of her being able to truly sing is a highlight, but it's not the only one here as she seems to have genuine fun with Shirley MacLaine (what a treat to get to see her act opposite another woman after a decade of playing romantic leads).

Supporting Actor

Robert de Niro, GoodFellas

Joe Pesci, GoodFellas

Joe Pesci, Home Alone

Harry Dean Stanton, Wild at Heart

John Turturro, Miller's Crossing

Gold: I'm going with Joe Pesci for the gold, but which performance?  While I think his wet bandit in Home Alone is a comic delight, it's his "don't call him funny" hoodlum in GoodFellas that is not just the winner, but the best performance in a career of an actor who rarely worked, but when he did it always felt like an event.

Silver: I am a fervent fighter of category fraud, and part of the reason for that is you get grand character actors like John Turturro (and, it's worth noting, Harry Dean Stanton just missing the medal table here) who make certain movies so much better.  The way that his Bernie is both pathetic and a traitorous, debauched weasel is something to behold.  I don't know that I've seen a queer character played quite like this in a crime film before.

Bronze: That said, I'm willing to nominate movie stars in this category when they are actually supporting, and that's the case for Robert de Niro's James Conway.  De Niro may be above the title, but he's more a background figure making everything click, the one constant that you can measure the mistakes made by Henry & Tommy against.

Supporting Actress

Annette Bening, The Grifters

Whoopi Goldberg, Ghost

Shirley MacLaine, Postcards from the Edge

Virginia Madsen, The Hot Spot

Catherine O'Hara, Home Alone

Gold: Pacino & Huston are actors who when I started this project, I was curious if I might end up skipping them from the gold medal list when all is said and done as they did their best work in years that others did their best work (they're now covered-whew!).  For our final acting gold medal, we'll have the woman who was at the top of that list: Shirley MacLaine.  MacLaine is, collectively, my favorite actress of all-time, and so not giving her a statue felt blasphemous, but she's got stiff competition in her best years.  Still, you cannot deny the comic gold that is happening in this movie (inexplicably she was skipped by AMPAS), especially her "I'm Here" number.

Silver: Speaking of comic gold, very close behind her is Whoopi Goldberg giving us the definition of a movie star turn in Ghost.  Everything about her in the (better-than-I-remembered) fantasy romance is delightful-she aces her Oda Mae, and steals every scene so that you care about her just as much as the parted lovers.  The scene where she first encounters Swayze is my favorite.

Bronze: We're ending our acting medalists with the best "watch a bunch of movies from the year, see what sticks" performance of the 1990 lot with Virginia Madsen's nasty, hardened femme fatale in Dennis Hopper's demented (even for Hopper) The Hot Spot.  Madsen aces the ending, and makes an icicle-veined harlot that even Phyllis Dietrichson would've avoided.

Adapted Screenplay

An Angel at My Table

GoodFellas

The Grifters

Mermaids

Postcards from My Table

Gold: Nicholas Pileggi's GoodFellas is a brilliant writerly work in a film oftentimes thought of as a director's achievement.  It unfolds through (surprisingly well-used) narration, and gives us one man caught up in a world designed to drown him.  It's super effective, and ends in a way that feels true-to-life (which of course it is), while still being properly cinematic.

Silver: That said, the best ending of a 1990 movie isn't in GoodFellas, it's in the sunny streets of The Grifters.  Critics of the film have noted that, it well, contains very little grifting (or maybe that's just Abed Nadir), but what it does do is show a range of raw emotion, and more pertinently, the way that raw instinct will ensure we survive even when we are backed into a corner.

Bronze: Well, I guess Picture/Director/Adapted Screenplay will all contain the same three films, as I'm not leaving Postcards from the Edge behind (which means that, unlike Oscar, I will have nominated Carrie Fisher in this project).  The humor, the humanity, the insider Hollywood secrets, they all come together to really craft a beautiful story that feels both relatable and dishy.

Original Screenplay

Edward Scissorhands

Ghost

Miller's Crossing

Pump Up the Volume

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Gold: With all of the Best Picture medalists highlighted in adapted, we have the opportunity to welcome some new blood, and our Original Screenplay medalist will be Best Picture nominee Edward Scissorhands.  Caroline Thompson's great trick here is giving us something that feels weird but grounded, which is true of the best of director Tim Burton's work-it starts at the heart, even if it also chills on the way up.

Silver: This means Oscar's winner get the Silver, but Ghost isn't far behind here (a lot of supernatural love in this group).  The best parts of Ghost are honestly way that it feels so romantic from the beginning-this is many things at once (a love story, a thriller, a comedy, a ghost story), but it all stems from the romance of love, wherever it may come.

Bronze: The weirdly similar Truly Madly Deeply takes its approach less from romance, and more from a place of grief, and the way that moving on when someone dies feels impossible (and something like a betrayal), but honestly is the only way you can truly keep living (and is properly honest about how some people sometimes don't want to move on after).  I picked Ghost because it's more quotable, but they're both really close.

Sound Mixing

Back to the Future Part III

Dances with Wolves

Days of Thunder

GoodFellas

Total Recall

Gold: GoodFellas basically changed the game when it came to soundtrack work in a movie.  The film, features period-appropriate songs from musical luminaries like Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, & Eric Clapton alongside guns, cars, and death scenes to give us something that feels authentically of its time, and yet totally singular.

Silver: That said, it's a close call between GoodFellas and Dances with Wolves (one of only two times on this list that Oscar's top films of 1990 will face off, and not to spoil it too much, but they swap the gold/silvers in both to end up with a draw).  I love the way that the film not just uses John Barry's luminous score, but also the way it uses the expanse of a long-lost west for battles and pioneering.

Bronze: Oscar was just starting to get into action flicks in 1990 for this category (before that it was more likely to feature prestige or just default to Best Picture), and so we're both supporting Total Recall, a movie that leans in hard with Jerry Goldsmith's electrical score and plays it alongside a futuristic (eventual) hellscape of a world to get you totally embedded into the picture.

Sound Editing

Back to the Future Part III

Days of Thunder

GoodFellas

The Hunt for the Red October

Total Recall

Gold: Proving that my Al Pacino win isn't my sole "totally out of left field" 1990 gold medal, I am going to go with the third installment from the Back to the Future franchise for the Sound Editing victor.  The big thing (for me) driving this is the way that it seems to blend the old and the new, all alongside Alan Silvestri's score, consistently paying homage to the futuristic and the past in this lovely western adventure.

Silver: A more traditional selection would be the submarine claustrophobia of The Hunt for Red October, using consistent, immersive sound design to have us shuttled into this water-entombed vessel.

Bronze: I'll close out this category with the planet-erupting wonder of Total Recall, a movie that uses chases and adventure in its sound work, but ultimately it's the dying Mars giving us one giant gasp for survival that makes this medal-worthy.

Score

Avalon

Dances with Wolves

Ghost

Home Alone

Misery

Gold: As I've said many times, the question frequently when it comes to the Best Score category is "to John Williams or not to John Williams."  In 1990, I...will not John Williams (at least in the gold).  But in his place we'll go with a different of my all-time favorite composers, John Barry, who probably wins this alone on the romantic majesty of "The John Dunbar Theme" (and gets his first and surely not last gold medal from this project).

Silver: That said, John Williams was very close, and I think Home Alone will stand apart as one of the best of his scores never to top the podium (Harry Potter is the best, though).  I love the playfulness of this composition, keeping grand (and Christmas-y) while also adding in a bit of mischief for a film brimming with it.

Bronze: In third is another Oscar favorite doing one of the most atypical film scores of his career.  Randy Newman brings a sort of nostalgic grandeur to Avalon.  Even in its opening scenes, it's clearly borrowing from a memory that doesn't really exist, and he gives that sort of ephemeral quality to the music.

Original Song

"I'm Checking Out," Postcards from the Edge

"King of Wishful Thinking," Pretty Woman

"Show Me Heaven," Days of Thunder

"Somewhere in My Memory," Home Alone

"Sooner or Later," Dick Tracy

Gold: We're getting a very strong repeat of Oscar's choice here, with our gold medalist matching the OVP winner in "I'm Checking Out."  Shel Silverstein (yes the guy who wrote both The Giving Tree and "A Boy Named Sue") gives us a perfect musical moment for Postcards, where Meryl Streep is given the ability to come into her own after spending the whole movie in her mom's shadow.

Silver: As I said, though, John Williams is close by.  Here we have a chorale arrangement that has kind of taken on a life of its own in the decades after this film, becoming a true Christmas classic as it wistfully evokes the timelessness of that holiday's songs.

Bronze: Had Roxette's "It Must Have Been Love" (a BIG song for a young gay John) been eligible, it would've threatened to disrupt my Oscar-y pedigree here, but without it the other two pop hits can't quite top the 1940's lounge act that Stephen Sondheim (and Madonna) bring to "Sooner or Later."

Art Direction

Avalon

Dick Tracy

Edward Scissorhands

The Godfather, Part III

Hamlet

Gold: It's hard to watch the ingenuity of Dick Tracy and not laugh at where the comic book genre eventually went.  It's not just the gigantic, gaudy colors or the beautiful almost Edward Hopper-esque tones of it.  It's also that it reads like an actual comic book, you jumping in and feeling like you're stuck in the pages you pored over as a kid chewing Bazooka Joe.

Silver: Don't get me wrong, though, realism has its place, and the ways that Hamlet uses actual locations (filmed across a series of castles in the British Isles) transports you back in time, it feels so storied (and beautiful).

Bronze: And then of course there's the realism & magic of Avalon.  A largely now-forgotten film (which was huge with Oscar at the time) gives us a bit of wonder as it recreates Baltimore and its industrial majesty (and decline) through the decades, giving us homeyness as we look at the shattered dreams of our parents through the eyes of a child.

Cinematography

Dances with Wolves

Days of Being Wild

The Godfather, Part III

GoodFellas

Miller's Crossing

Gold: The second-and-last time that Oscar's favorite films (Dances with Wolves and GoodFellas) faced off, and here we have Oscar's choice taking the top prize.  The expanse of the American West, with its mystery and the allure that knew it was dying before it began (something Costner's film doesn't capture as well as his camera) is extraordinary-a beautiful vision of a myth.

Silver: That said, the incredible camerawork in GoodFellas would surely be at home in this category, and would've made a proper gold medalist.  It's not just the frenetic way that the film captures Henry's descent into doom, but it's also the way that we get to see into this world, quite literally in the famous extended shot that walks Lorraine Bracco into a place she couldn't have dreamed.

Bronze: The films of Wong Kar Wai are always drenched in atmosphere and beauty.  Days of Being Wild does that marvelously, giving us a film of interchanging loves and motives, all shot with precision and gorgeous care.  You feel transported to another place & time.

Costume Design

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

Cyrano de Bergerac

Hamlet

Mermaids

Pretty Woman

Gold: Yes, Glenn Close is playing Gertrude, but look at the costumes-she's clearly desperate for this role to be Eleanor of Aquitaine.  Every time she's onscreen in a various crown or headpiece, it's an event, something that is bound to draw the eye, and remind you that despite this being Mel Gibson's movie (and it pains to admit, but man is Mel hot with that ridiculous blonde hair, brown beard, & those fetching monk outfits), Glenn Close's wardrobe in Hamlet is the true star.

Silver: For the silver, we move to France, and the spectacularly decadent looks sported by the entire ensemble, including Gerard Depardieu's (lot of problematic men leading movies I liked in 1990) fetching red cape and blue shirt.  The film's costuming sort of feels like the definitive take on Cyrano, doesn't it?  When you think about him in your head, don't you pick this movie?

Bronze: Contemporary costuming is a blindside for Oscar, but it ain't for me, and when you have something like Pretty Woman coming to the forefront, truly there's a reason for that.  Not only are some of these looks effortlessly chic and largely omnipresent (I distinctly remember my mom owning a version of that polka dot dress, minus the hat), but you also learn about Vivien...where she's come from, and what she aspires to be...through her increasingly chic wardrobe.

Film Editing

Edward Scissorhands

GoodFellas

Miller's Crossing

Misery

Postcards from the Edge

Gold: Thelma Schoonmaker has long been the wizard of Martin Scorsese's movies, making seemingly long and huge stories feel fast-paced and wonderfully-structured.  GoodFellas works not just because Scorsese is trying to imbue a sense of the time (notice how exacting even the music choices are), but also in the way she uses new, advanced cutting techniques and an omnipresent narration.

Silver: Listen, some cliches are worth mentioning, and the fact that a good horror movie is made in the editing room is one of them.  Misery gives us true stakes, with the claustrophobia of Annie Wilkes' house and how we're trapped there alongside Paul Sheldon, and the growing sense that we'll never escape (which makes the escape scenes all the better).

Bronze: The third here is another genre that is made in the editing room (the noir), one that has the great benefit of feeling like it is told mid-story, but not in a bad way.  There are moments in Miller's Crossing where we're catching up into this world, but we also then feel flung the whole film, as if we're racing alongside all of the characters to the finish.

Makeup & Hairstyling

Cry Baby

Dick Tracy

Edward Scissorhands

Total Recall

The Witches

Gold: There's sometimes a hard line to strike between "most" and "best" when it comes to the tech categories, no more so than in the Makeup & Hairstyling category, but it's also important to recognize when they might be synonymous.  The comic book creations of Dick Tracy are sometimes grotesque, sometimes absurd, but they're all spectacular, totally inviting us into Beatty's heightened world.

Silver: In most years, you'd be hard-pressed to beat Tim Burton's glorious feats in Edward Scissorhands.  Not only is this a category where the craft is actually part of the story (Edward has these beautiful abstract sculptures in a sea of noted character actresses' hair), but it's also one that feels like you see the beauty of Depp in his alabaster face.  He's odd, but you understand the draw (also the case with our nominated but medal-less Cry Baby).

Bronze: We finish up with Total Recall, a film where it's sometimes hard to tell how much of the craziest moments in the film (particularly the eye-popping ending) is being done through special effects and how much are the demented brilliance of the makeup team, totally turning everything about the Mars scenes up to 11.

Visual Effects

Back to the Future Part III

Dick Tracy

Ghost

The Rescuers Down Under

Total Recall

Gold: We conclude with the last time that Oscar didn't have nominees for Best Visual Effects, and with them they only gave out a statue, though in this case it was to the correct film as I am also picking Total Recall.  There are moments in this that feel more so like we're celebrating makeup effects, and taken in comparison to Arnold's next feature (Terminator 2, which would change the game for VFX), this feels sophomoric by comparison, but it's still SO much fun, and honestly the entire sequence on Mars is deliciously entertaining.

Silver: A landmark in animation, The Rescuers Down Under became the first animated film to be done entirely digitally, not requiring hand-drawn sequences.  It also found a way to use CGI in a way we hadn't really seen in animated films before it, particularly the incredible sequences of Wilbur flying in the movie, and McLeach's truck that reads like they're actually being filmed with a camera.

Bronze: On the flip side, we have something like Dick Tracy which is honestly working to make the very best of existing technology.  Look at the matte paintings in this movie (they're both modernist and intentional to the viewer as that's the point...we're in a comic strip), the way that it uses scale models to showcase the studio backlot aesthetic, and of course these effects combined with the fantastic makeup work really bring everything together.

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

Rocky II (1979)

Film: Rocky II (1979)

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Carl Weathers, Burgess Meredith

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Oscar History: No nominations

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 Sylvester Stallone: click here to learn more about Mr. Stallone (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Sylvester Stallone's early life & career are interesting enough that they're literally releasing a biopic about it in the next year.  Born the son of an astrologer and hairdresser (both of whom, if their later outbursts on talk shows & reality television appearances were any indication, were probably not the most fit parents you could imagine), he grew up in a working class background.  Due to a mistake during his birth, he was left with some paralysis on his lower face, meaning that he consistently looked like he was grimacing, which he was mocked for in school.  This would've probably deterred most young people, but Stallone dreamed of being an actor & director, and so he headed to Hollywood.

Stallone's early years in Hollywood are honestly pretty bleak.  He struggled to find work, and at one point has admitted that he literally was homeless, sleeping in bus stations.  He got work in a softcore pornography film (you read that right) called The Party at Kitty and Stud's (Stallone would play Stud), and pursued extra work, eventually getting some in MASH, Bananas, & What's Up Doc?.  Stallone's big break happened through his own hard work-he wrote a script for the film Rocky, with the intention of him playing the lead part given Hollywood was not giving him these kinds of roles.  The film got the attention of producers Irwin Winkler & Robert Chartoff, who were making a name for themselves at the time by producing crime & action pictures starring established leading men like James Caan & Charles Bronson.  Stallone refused to sell the script, even with an offer of over $350k (over $2 million today) and the recent memory of homelessness on the line, unless they let him star in the film.  The producers relented (eventually having to cut the budget without someone like Robert Redford or Burt Reynolds as box office insurance), but Stallone's gambit paid off.  The film made over $200 million, and was not just the highest-grossing film of 1976, but (after Star Wars) out-earned every other film from 1977 the following year.  The movie would win the Best Picture Oscar, and Stallone would get nominations for both Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay (ultimately losing both to Network).  Just a few years after sleeping in bus depots, Sly was now one of the biggest names in Hollywood.

(Spoilers Ahead) I have seen Rocky many times because my parents had cable in the 90's, and to be fair, I've probably seen chunks of all of the first five Rocky movise thanks to the marathons TV stations would run of it during this era ad nauseum, but I believe this is the first time I've ever sat down and truly watched Rocky II cover-to-cover.  The film takes place immediately after the events of the previous film, when Apollo Creed (Weathers) has just defeated Rocky Balboa (Stallone) in a tight contest, which has put a chink into Creed's armor even if he lost (given Rocky came out of nowhere).  The film starts with Creed demanding a rematch, but given that Rocky has promised Adrian (Shire) he won't fight anymore, he won't give into one.  But the film shows the pitfalls in one's 15 minutes of fame, and after a while Rocky can't get a job, and is broke with a kid on the way.  He realizes that the only way that he's ever going to provide the kind of life he wants for his newborn son and young wife is to fight, even if it's putting his life at risk due to injuries from the first film.  Rocky begins training again with Mickey (Meredith), and in a climactic final scene, does what he couldn't do in the first film-he wins, defeating the heavyweight champion of the world (and thus becoming it himself).

Rocky II, here directed & written by Stallone himself (something that he would do throughout his career with other films-Stallone directed more of his own movies than he gets credit for in conversations about his work), is not Rocky, and it's not nearly as well-regarded as some of the other follow-ups in the series.  Part of that problem is because the film itself is not well-made, being too repetitive of problems from the first film, and too ridiculous about trying to convince the audience that the fight (and the redemption from it) won't result in Rocky defeating Apollo Creed.  Stallone, as we'll find this month, is a more talented actor than Schwarzenegger was last month (it helps that English is his first language), though not as versatile as, say, Sean Connery.  There's a naturalism to his Rocky that almost makes it feel like he's playing himself, which isn't really fair given he'd play against this type repeatedly, including in our movie next week.  But the script here is too paint-by-numbers, and it takes too long to get to the (thrilling) final scene.

Saturdays with the Stars: Sylvester Stallone

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we spoke about Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who dominated the box office throughout the 1980's with violent, explosion-heavy action thrillers.  This month, we're going to talk about a man who, if you were alive during Arnold's heyday, you pretty much always referenced him with.  While not as successful (something he would later admit), there was a time these future friends would have a combative, sometimes shockingly so, relationship in the press, which would be good for both of their careers, but would, for this star, feel like a step down to the type of roles he once felt capable of playing.  This month's star is Sylvester Stallone.

Stallone's early childhood honestly reads like one of his movie's, with his mother being a famed wrestling promoter (and astrologist) and his father Frank a hairdresser.  During delivery, Stallone had to be removed from his mother with forceps, which pinched a nerve that would cause the lower side of his face to be seen in a snarl, something that would become the actor's signature look in years that followed, and caused him to have a ready-made tough guy aesthetic.  Stallone, unlike Schwarzenegger, was a fairly good student, briefly attending Notre Dame, before he started to work in movies as an actor.

Stallone's early career is famous to anyone who read tabloid newspapers, but he appeared in a soft-core porn film called The Party at Kitty and Stud's (later titled Italian Stallion, capitalizing on Stallone's famous nickname), and got extra work in movies like MASH, Bananas, and Klute before writing himself the role that would make him a legend, as Rocky Balboa.  In the 15 years that followed, Stallone would become a household name, associated with both Rocky and Rambo, as well as occasional forays outside of the action hero ring that weren't nearly as successful.

Stallone today is not a particularly well-regarded actor, in many ways reducing his talent (he is, lest we forget, a two-time Oscar-nominated actor, something that Schwarzenegger never came close to achieving) to an asterisk compared to a series of crap (and political choices like endorsing Donald Trump) that would make him unpalatable to a new generation of moviegoers.  This month we're not going to ignore the unsavory aspects of Stallone's celebrity, but we're also going to look at what might be neglected in his filmography, with me seeing one of his most critically-acclaimed roles, as well as watching a Rocky film I've never caught before, and somehow introducing myself to John Rambo for the first time.

OVP: True Lies (1994)

Film: True Lies (1994)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton, Art Malik, Tia Carrere, Eliza Dushku, Charlton Heston

Director: James Cameron

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Arnold Schwarzenegger: click here to learn more about Mr. Schwarzenegger (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Today we're going to talk about a film that was made at the peak of Arnold Schwarzenegger's career, and arguably (definitely after Terminator 2) one of his best films.  But the 1997 release of Batman & Robin, a movie considered so bad at the time that it seemed like it might end the Batman movies (side note: young, gay John loved this movie, mostly because of Chris O'Donnell) seemed to cause a different chapter in Arnold's largely teflon career.  End of Days barely turned a profit (only making that because it did so well overseas but tanked domestically), and The 6th Day was a financial disaster, and called into question Schwarzenegger's then exorbitant salary of $25 million per picture.  Followed by Collateral Damage (which also tanked), not even the solid box office of Terminator 3 could've really saved what seemed unthinkable-after twenty years of record box office, Arnold Schwarzenegger's career as a bankable movie star was coming to an end.

But here's where Schwarzenegger had a career second act as a movie star that only Ronald Reagan & Hedy Lamarr could really top: he went into politics (me now shifting to the other side of this blog to tell this story).  In 2003, California Gov. Grey Davis was wildly unpopular.  He had won reelection in 2002 by only 5-points, and hadn't reached 50% due to the strength of a Green Party candidate.  For all of the talk about Claire McCaskill largely inventing the "help elect the worst opponent in the opposite party's primary technique" that is still used today (just look at Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan), Grey Davis used it in 2002, running ads calling Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan "too moderate" to take advantage of the newly closed primaries for the GOP.  Riordan was seen as a moderate, and would've beaten Davis, but against businessman Bill Simon (son of President Ford's Treasury Secretary William E. Simon) Davis was able to win based off of the (at that point) relatively blue California electorate (the state got bluer in the next two decades).  But California's recall laws were relatively easy to push, and Schwarzenegger was the kind of candidate (flashy, moderate, and likable) that the GOP couldn't pull off in 2002.  Against Davis, who was mired in controversy thanks to raising auto fees in the state and a huge budget spurred by the dot-com bust that hit California especially hard, someone like Schwarzenegger who could announce his run on The Tonight Show with millions of Americans watching in awe, Arnold was unstoppable.  He would be elected Governor and serve as a (relatively...until the latter half of his second term, which happens to most governors) popular incumbent who could still win in 2006 as a Republican even though it was a blue wave.

(Spoilers Ahead) What does this have to do with True Lies?  Honestly, nothing, but I chose the film because I didn't want to watch The 6th Day or End of Days because they're famously terrible (and because I've not only seen Terminator 3 already, I saw it before I saw the first two movies in the franchise on a weekend where I otherwise spent time ordering pizza & beer while playing Grand Theft Auto with my cousin's boyfriend...the closest I may have ever come to successfully being a straight man), and then Arnold really didn't work in movies when he was governor.  So we're going to end our month with him on the high-note of True Lies, a really fun film about Harry (Schwarzenegger) who lives a conventional, in some ways autopilot life with his wife Helen (Curtis).  She thinks he's a computer hardware salesman (despite him looking like, well, Arnold Schwarzenegger), but he's actually a top agent for a counterterrorism unit.  When Harry suspects Helen of having an affair with a man named Simon (Paxton), he tracks her down, realizing Simon is pulling the opposite con (he poses as a spy but is actually a used car salesman), and he instead tricks her into doing a "job"...but then she gets pulled into the actual job that he's doing when Juno Skinner (Carrere), a terrorist organization leader, kidnaps them both.

True Lies is obviously a big, flashy action movie (and it looks good, this is James Cameron we're talking about-the man can't make a bad-looking picture), but it gets its flair from being a comedy first, and an action movie second.  This is probably the only true comedy that James Cameron has ever made, but he's quite adept at it, and has the good sense to hire a gifted comedic actress in Jamie Lee Curtis as his lead.  She does a wonderful job opposite Arnold (not a gifted comedian, and while fine, seemingly bad by comparison because Curtis is outacting him so well) totally selling this bored, sexually-frustrated housewife just wanting some adventure & attention in her marriage.  There are moments toward the middle where you actually feel her pain, that she really might leave him and touch the third rail of a comedy by having an actual affair, and Curtis plays it organically in a movie of heightened reality.  She would get Golden Globe & SAG nominations that year, and given the dearth of strong lead actress performances, probably was close to getting her first Oscar nomination decades before Everything Everywhere All at Once had there not been some category confusion over where to put her (she's a lead for the record, for whenever we get to the 1994 OVP).

Schwarzenegger returned to acting after his time as governor, but by 2011 the movie star landscape had changed, and the glowing world of the 1990's where they ran Hollywood like deities had evaporated into a world of comic books and intellectual property.  He would find himself largely just doing work in established franchises like Terminator and The Expendables.  His attempts at original films either missed expectations (Escape Plan) or basically no one saw (Sabotage, Maggie).  By the 2020's, Schwarzenegger's acting career, once big enough to demand the largest salary in Hollywood, had been reduced to making a comedy series for Netflix that got cancelled after two seasons.

Next month, we're going to talk about an actor whose career has been inextricably linked to Schwarzenegger's despite them not working together during their initial heyday.  But to link the two is to compare the two, and depending on your approach...it's hard to tell which one ends out the champ.

Dolly Parton (1946-2026)

I never know whether to call myself a "crier" or not when someone asks.  I think I cry relatively regularly, but not excessively.  What I am, though, is consistent with my tears.  There are certain pop culture moments that pretty much always do it.  The finale of Lost.  The scene where they sing "Le Marseillaise" in Casablanca.  Every time I read the last ten pages of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.  All of them do it to me.  But one of the most consistent ways to make me cry?  Put on the opening notes of "Coat of Many Colors."  It's almost comical how, though it sometimes takes a second into the song, I will surely have started to tear up by the end of "back through the years, I go wandering once again, back to the seasons of my youth."  There's something about it that captures me in a way that few other things do.

But that makes sense, because, honestly Dolly Parton, more than any other singer, has been the soundtrack of my life.  On any given day, she'll have competition from Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, & Edith Piaf for the title of "my all-time favorite vocalist" but at the end of the day-Dolly is the singer who has mattered the most in my life.  It's not just "Coat of Many Colors."  Back when iTunes tracked such things, "Jolene" was unmatched for decades as the "most-listened to" song on the app for me.  The first time I sang karaoke in college, it was of course a duet of "Islands in the Stream."  Pretty much every breakup I've ever had, at some point I start driving around in my car blasting "Dumb Blonde" as loud as is humanly possible, singing that man out of my (brunette) hair.  Even as a child, the CD I would steal regularly from my mom was The Bodyguard, to the point that it eventually became mine.  Dolly didn't sing it, admittedly, but "I Will Always Love You" became my first favorite song for a reason-her brilliant lyrics.

But that's the thing about Dolly Parton-she felt personal to everyone.  My mom, who lost her Dolly-penned CD to her son, would tell my brother & I stories about dancing in the halls of her dorm room with all of her classmates singing "Here You Come Again."  "9 to 5" has become an anthem for an entire nation that's overworked and underpaid.  What other musician could've launched not just one of the most successful music careers of all-time, but side hustles as a movie star, TV host, baked goods entrepreneur, and the namesake of one of America's most beloved theme parks?  Dolly Parton's music allowed us all to dream, to love, to cherish, and occasionally to kick that scoundrel to the curb.  But Dolly Parton the person was so kind, generous, and beautiful that she felt like a beacon of a time gone by, someone that everyone could rally around.  I got to see her just once in concert (the Backwoods Barbie tour of 2008), and it was awe-inspiring going into that concert.  I sat in a row of gay guys in cowboy hats, but behind us were a group of middle-aged women, and in front of us a family with some young kids.  There was no specific cross-section or profile to her fans, and everyone felt like family as she sang.  Like puppies, ice cream, and payday...everyone loved Dolly Parton.

OVP: Total Recall (1990)

Film: Total Recall (1990)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Michale Ironside, Ronny Cox

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best sound, Sound Effects Editing, Visual Effects*...I didn't make a mistake there, the statue for Visual Effects was technically an honorary statue, the last time to date a film has had that happen rather than nominating Visual Effects contenders for a competitive field)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Arnold Schwarzenegger: click here to learn more about Mr. Schwarzenegger (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I said last week, Schwarzenegger's career is too big to fit into one month, and honestly the films he made only play so much of a part.  Schwarzenegger, in a lot of ways like figures such as Marilyn Monroe & James Dean, ended up being an outsized icon, bigger as a celebrity idea than his actual films.  You see that in the 1990's.  We start out with Total Recall, a film that made a huge impact (it was in the Top 10 finishes of the year, above Die Hard 2 with his competitor Bruce Willis), but his successes were not as consistent in the 1990's, as the type of action-hero flick that had made him a superstar in the 1980's began to go out of vogue (this wasn't just true for Schwarzenegger-men like Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude van Damne also suffered a similar fate as the decade would continue).  For every True Lies there seemed to be a Last Action Hero or End of Days.  Schwarzenegger was helped, pretty dramatically, by international box office, justifying his gigantic paydays against increasingly lousy domestic grosses because he made so much overseas, particularly in a growing Asian market, and he always had the Terminator to fall back on, but it's worth noting as we head into our last week of Arnold next Saturday, by the time a different type of opportunity rolled around in 2003, he was in a position very different than someone like Bruce Willis or Tom Cruise (who had diversified their standing in the 1990's with other genres, something that, kindly, Schwarzenegger probably didn't have the range to pull off), and was ready for a new challenge.

(Spoilers Ahead) But let's back up and talk about Total Recall, one of the movies that is most-remembered from Arnold in the 1990's, and maybe one of his most interesting performances?  The film is about a world where there are literally people living on other planets, specifically Mars (though apparently also, defying all laws of physics, humans can also inhabit Saturn now), and Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger) is a construction worker who wants to see Mars, because he keeps having bizarre dreams about a brunette woman there.  He eventually goes to a place that simulates a visit to Mars, and he requests that it be him as a spy, trying to save the planet as part of the vacation.  Before they can imprint the memory, though, the machine malfunctions, and it turns out that Quaid is a spy, and his wife Lori (Stone) is a secret agent, one who is working for Cohaagen (Cox), the ruthless governor of Mars who is basically having the people there living in poverty because he holds the keys to making the atmosphere habitable.  Quaid, whose actual name is Hauser, goes to Mars, and realizes the woman in his dreams is real, and part of a resistance on the planet to try and overthrow Cohaagen.

This is just part of the plot.  The best things about Total Recall are that they almost completely throw reality or sense or any sort of logical consistency in the script to hell (it backs up the fan theory that all of the scenes after Quaid is put in the chair are a false memory, one he doesn't wake up from before the credits).  This is partially because of Verhoeven's bananas filmography (he was inches away from making Sharon Stone, who is the best performance in this movie by a country mile, into a bonafide movie star in Basic Instinct), but mostly because it's way more fun.  At this point, we've seen a lot of violence from Arnold, but we haven't seen his playful side, and here we get a bit of that.  Schwarzenegger is not a good actor, and even with a decent director like Verhoeven, he can't perform miracles.  But this is a fun performance, one that leans in on the crazy ride and supporting cast of the movie (there's so much double-crossing you'll need a flow chart by the end of it to keep track), and I have to tip my hat to Schwarzenegger for pulling this off.

The film's makeup and visual effects are really what make it famous (how it didn't get a Makeup nomination in 1990, the world will never know).  The film leans in on the mutant freak aspect of the Martians (they look like humans who have been sent through burn makeup...except one woman is a stripper with three breasts because why not), and the effects use that makeup to their effect.  Honestly, this is weird to frame against Terminator 2, which would come out a year later, win the same Oscar (with the same leading man) but would revolutionize the industry while this would only be a good example of it, but the scenes on Mars, particularly the climactic creation of the atmosphere, is funny & thrilling.  I liked it.

Predator (1987)

Film: Predator (1987)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elpidia Carrilo, Carl Weathers, Richard Chaves, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura

Director: John McTiernan

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Arnold Schwarzenegger: click here to learn more about Mr. Schwarzenegger (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, like most movie stars, has had his love life pretty well-chronicled, but for most of his time as a movie star, it was largely linked to one woman.  He had dated English teacher Barbara Outland (who would eventually write a rather scathing memoir about their time together when he was running for reelection as governor in 2006) before he started acting regularly, but other than a brief fling with Eleanor Mondale in the late 1970's (when her father was vice president), his primary romantic partner was Maria Shriver, the daughter of Sargent & Eunice Shriver, and the niece of President Kennedy (meaning that Schwarzenegger, a future Republican Governor, did in fact date the scions of two major Democratic families).  Shriver & Schwarzenegger's romance was unconventional, but seemingly happy for much of its run.  They had four children, and their political views (while commonly-known) were largely kept quiet given that Shriver was a journalist at NBC at the time.  There was the fun juxtaposition of Arnold campaigning for George HW Bush in 1988 while Maria's senator uncle Ted was stumping for Michael Dukakis, but by-and-large they presented as a solid couple even though Schwarzenegger was repeatedly cheating on his wife (the unkind maxim about Kennedy women looking the other way on their philandering husbands definitely feeling accurate in this case), until it was outed that Schwarzenegger had father a love child with a maid (a story that conveniently happened when Schwarzenegger's political career was coming to a close).  The couple remained married for a decade after this, though, until 2021.

(Spoilers Ahead) The start of their marriage was happening when Schwarzenegger's film career 

was hitting a new height.  Freed of his contract with Dino de Laurentiis, he was able to start making major action films in the vein of someone like Sylvester Stallone, who at the time was a bigger star than Schwarzenegger in the genre even if that wouldn't last very long.  A big part of that was Predator in 1987, which featured Arnold as Major Dutch Schaefer on a rescue mission in Guatemala.  The film, like much of Arnold's movies of the 1980's, is short on actual plot.  All you need to know is that they are on a mission that will soon be deterred because they are being hunted by an extraterrestrial being that is not really referred to (the title word "predator" is never uttered in the movie).  His crew, one-by-one, is picked off, and it's left to Dutch to try to hunt the Predator largely solo, doing so through covering himself in mud (that disguises the creatures vision), eventually resulting him trapping the creature (and it then exploding itself in hopes of killing them both...which he doesn't).

Let's start with the movie and my thoughts before we talk about two oddities about this film in relation to Arnold's career.  First, it's a pretty good.  This is not Celine and Julie Go Boating or any such intellectual exercise as a picture, but it's solidly constructed and has a terrific special effects-driven bit of construction when it comes to the actual creature, both the invisibility effects and then (when it's revealed) the fantastically gross alien practical effects & makeup.  I also loved the film's Deliverance-style vibes, which honestly the further I get into this season, the more I realize that Deliverance had as much of an influence on action films as The Godfather did on mafia movies or Star Wars did on science-fiction.  The film also has one of my all-time favorite closing credits, which has all of the (mostly now dead) characters showing up again in title cards with the actors' names, all of them grinning cheesily like they're in a Mentos commercial...except Arnold who totally botches the concept by just being stoic.

Two things I want to note before we go here.  First, this stars Jesse Ventura in addition to Arnold Schwarzenegger-he plays heavy gunner Blain Cooper, one of the men who fall victim to the Predator in the film's first hour.  This is one of three films starring the two men, along with The Running Man and Batman & Robin.  Ventura would be elected the Governor of Minnesota in 1998 in one of the biggest upsets in American political history, five years before Schwarzenegger, and while they did not mirror each other stylistically in politics (Arnold was much more successful in the job & won reelection, Ventura was so unpopular he couldn't even run for a second term) they both represented a level of "entertainment being crucial in politics" that would come to a shocking result in 2016 on a national scale.

I will also end with this-the Predator films five sequels/prequels...none of which would feature Schwarzenegger.  Schwarzenegger refused to make the sequel due to a salary dispute.  This was also a deterrent in sequels to Conan the Destroyer, Eraser, Total Recall, and Kindergarten Cop, as well as a long-gestating sequel to Twins.  Not all of these are totally attributable to Schwarzenegger's salary disputes (Twins 2 was lost in development hell for decades and eventually crashed with the death of Ivan Reitman), but it's a testament to Schwarzenegger's ability at the box office that he could forego solid paychecks like this, as well as his alleged difficulty offscreen that would result in studios walking away not thinking he was worth the money (or the effort) even with probable hits on their hands.  Compare this to some of his contemporaries like Steven Seagal, Dolph Lundgren, & especially Sylvester Stallone, when sequels were being made, they tended to feature in them and take the easy paycheck (Jean-Claude van Damme, like Schwarzenegger, tended to not make it through negotiations).  This ended up being a blessing for Schwarzenegger for a while, we'll find with our final two movies, as going for an original concept (and with better directors) made him a much hotter property as a movie star than always needing to go back to the Rocky or Under Siege well.