Things I Learned from My Europe Vacation: Britain, Ireland, & Scotland Edition

The past few weeks, I have been on what is increasingly becoming an annual tradition.  Every September, while everyone else is coming back to the real world with the close of Summer and the start of the school year, I tend to like going on vacation.  September is a really great month for childless people to do that, because the weather is still solid (it doesn't magically become Pumpkin Spice Latte season even if you start drinking them after Labor Day), and most people aren't traveling because it's too hard with the new school season.

This year, I went on a vacation with my parents to Europe, specifically Ireland, England, & Scotland for a total of about 16 days, for me the longest vacation I have ever taken in my life by at least one day (if not two).  I had been to England before, when I was a teenager on a school trip (it's always a little weird, but this is the most vivid memory I have of what it was like to travel before 9/11 as this trip which would've included a layover in both DC and Chicago in addition to flights into Paris & London would've happened just a few weeks before 9/11 and the upending of the TSA experience for American passengers), but Scotland and Ireland were totally new to me.  As has become something of a tradition on this blog, I wanted to share my observations (some old, some new) from this trip, and what I learned from this travel that I can maybe bestow onto you in a bit of a change-up from our usual cinema & politics chat.

1. Planning a Trip Like This Takes Time...and is Necessary

First and foremost, planning a trip like this takes a lot of time...in fact, many, many hours bordering on days (I probably spent an equitable amount of time planning this than I did on the actual trip).  Part of that is fiduciary-a trip like this is very expensive, and you don't want to leave feeling regrets over missing something.

But also, it's kind of overwhelming if you don't plan ahead.  Planning this with my parents, both of whom had never been to any of these three countries, I wanted to make sure they got to see everything...with everything being a loose term here given you can't actually see everything in 16 days (I have lived in the Twin Cities for over 20 years, and there are still things on my internal "I need to do that" list that I want to go to here...I can't possibly conquer three millennia-old countries in just two weeks).  But if you go to these countries, you go with an idea of what you want to do, and you have to sort of approach it like a gigantic marathon.  You want to see Big Ben, Loch Ness, Stonehenge, & Blarney Castle (don't give me the malarkey about wanting to see the "non-tourist" side of a nation...that doesn't ever feel authentic & that just means you leave behind the icons of the country you dreamed of seeing as a kid).  You want to try authentic sticky pudding and fish & chips.  And you want to shop for souvenirs to bring home and postcards to mail.  And for a country where I was frightened off of driving due to them driving on a different side of the road, that meant planning tours & transportation in addition to finding locations to go that felt like we had truly seen everything (no day of the trip was meant for rest, as you can do that at home which has been the case for me as I've taken repeated naps in the past few days...the closest we got was the transit day from Ireland to Scotland, and even that day I made sure to get most of the mandatory shopping items done for my parents).

I will also note that traveling with a group made things uniquely odd for me given that I couldn't do a bus tour group, which was my initial plan.  I'm not young, but I would definitely be young on a tour group (even on the day tours we did, I was almost always in the younger crowd even in my early 40's).  But learning about hotels there, where I assumed I could just stay with my parents but in reality would've had to room with a stranger (for non-Americans reading this, American hotels can easily fit four in virtually all circumstances, something not the case for most European hotels), I instead opted to be our own travel agent and for 7 of the days, be the tour guide as well, taking us around the cities on my own.  This resulted in a better trip, but is another sign of how hard it is (and more expensive it is) to travel by yourself, and why I was grateful that my parents were with me both because it was more fun to experience this with them...but also because I frankly couldn't have afforded the trip in its end state without getting to sleep in the same hotel room as them & splitting the cost.

2. Thoughts on England, Scotland, & Ireland

As I said, I'd been to England before when I was 17, and remembered it weirdly well.  The experiences I had at Stonehenge, Stratford, Bath, & the British Museum were quite similar-these institutions haven't changed a lot, and it's also a good thing to note because they are things that (while enjoyable) you probably only need to do once in your life.  New to me in England were the Victoria & Albert Museum (and the gorgeous Raphael cartoons), the National Gallery (and its host of terrific paintings), and Warwick Castle.  The rest was repetition for me, and it was mostly fun to just share with my parents, who are highly addicted to BritBox, and spend way more time with British culture than I do.

Ireland & Scotland were new for me, though, and of the two, while I liked them both, I came away desperately in love with Scotland.  There was a beauty to Ireland that was unexpected (it really is green in a way that feels plucked out of a Technicolor film), but it didn't call to me in the same way that Scotland did.  This was partially to do with me having the single best day of the trip there on a walking tour of Scotland looking at sites from the Harry Potter books and film series.  I spent a full-day in the Warner Brothers studios north of London, which was about as close as I'll get to pure bliss actually stepping into the Great Hall and Diagon Alley, but the Harry Potter tour was a treat getting to spot and pick apart things from my favorite book/film series, and honestly our redheaded tour guide was so cute (and I was so good at his trivia game) that I was hard-pressed not to just beam the whole time (he singled me out with a high five when I won the house cup for my group, the only time in my life I'll openly admit to being a Hufflepuff when I am very much a Gryffindor boy).  I am usually loathe to make unprompted travel recommendations of what to do, but if you are a fan of the boy wizard and have a few hours in Scotland, you should make a point of doing this.

3. Travel Like It's the Only Time You'll Go

Traveling in London more than 25 years after the last time I went, I was struck by the single most recurring piece of advice I ever give about travel (and at this point, I think it's fair to say that I travel a lot for fun so maybe you should listen to me): travel like it's the only time you'll go to this place.  And I think this is telling because this is the first international trip I've ever taken where I actually saw things I'd already seen; last year's trip to Paris was a city I'd been to before, but I didn't go to any of the spots in Paris I'd been before (instead solely focusing on Disneyland Paris whereas my first trip was a more traditional list of Parisian landmarks like the Eiffel Tower & the Louvre).

But with that, I felt like I had really done England before, and coming away, the breakneck speed at which I had approached it as a teenager (pushing always to do "one more stop, one more museum, you can be tired later") proved that I had seen all of these places before, and hadn't shortchanged them.  This isn't to say I didn't enjoy it, and all of these places were ones I had been to, but also-I didn't feel like (save for the new places) I had missed out on England.  Samuel Johnson famously quipped "if you're bored with London, you're bored with life" and it's impossible to be bored with London (I'd go back tomorrow if given the chance), but also from a realistic perspective, visiting it in this way, I realized that had I never gone back, I felt like I had gotten what I needed to from the country.  There are places in my life because they are less about seeing things and more about a feeling or experience of them (like Hawaii, Alaska, Broadway, Paris, and Orlando) that I intend to visit again and just be places I always hope for one more time until that's no longer possible, but this trip reinforced, because I made a point of seeing everything I could (we walked over 100 miles in total over the 16 days), that if I never get back, the only regret I'll have is that I didn't kiss more Irish & Scottish men (wow are there are a lot of good-looking guys in those countries).

4. Bucket List Travel Should Never Be on the Backburner

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with a crew of coworkers who talked about our respective bucket lists over lunch.  I am the firmest believer in bucket lists for all people, not just because it puts pressure on you to quantify reach goals, but also because it gives you a realistic path to knowing how long it'll take to reach those goals.  And so during this, I pointed out to one of my coworkers who felt like she had a lot of travel on there that 1) she didn't-travel should be the biggest part of any curious person's bucket list and 2) given her age of around 30, and that travel is much easier when you have the health & money of someone still working, that if she took a trip every year, she'd likely be retiring about the time she finished all of her goals...so she should take a trip every year to keep up.

This felt good for me because looking at my personal bucket list, while I have a lot of things left on it (some would argue too many...I need to pick up the pace on some of them), travel I'm timing pretty well.  If I want to retire largely having finished the international travel component, I have about 17 trips outside of North America that I want to still take in my lifetime...which will put me near sixty when I finish those trips (i.e. hopefully about one a year).  Traveling is something that is a huge highlight of retirement, and as someone who hopes to retire in their early 60's (knock on wood), I definitely want to do that...but I'm also aware that as you age it gets harder to do that.  It's more challenging to know the technology to plan these things (not just booking trips, but knowing how to use mass transit or Ubers has changed dramatically since I was 17), and physically it can be demanding to make this trip.  We don't know how long our lives will last, but generally our bodies don't last in top condition as long as our lives & minds.  I hope I can still travel internationally when I'm in my 70's and even 80's...but I'm aware that this might not happen, and so planning as if I won't feels comfortable (if financially scary) for me.  And so getting this trip (the third of ten total trips I'd like to do to Europe in my lifetime) done just a year after a Europe trip I had spent upwards of 7 years planning...it felt like the pace that felt right for me.  I like the way this has made me feel like I'm investing in my goals, and getting to do it alongside family members (not just my parents, but my brother & I are already eyeing a trip to Asia next year) who are conquering their own life's goals makes it even better.

The Kennedy Center: Trump's Attacks (and Why We Need to Fight Back)

All right, we are continuing on talking about some of the political articles that I wanted to write the past couple of weeks, but didn't because I was in trip prep mode (and then actually on the trip itself).  Today, we're going to talk about the Kennedy Center, the bizarre centerpiece of Donald Trump's second term attack on the arts.

Let's start with a little history lesson to ground ourselves.  First and foremost, in February of 2025, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he was taking over as Chairman of the Kennedy Center.  This seemed like an odd job for the leader of the free world; the president does serve as master-of-ceremonies for the annual Kennedy Center Honors, but usually this is the extent of his involvement in the organization given that he should have more pressing matters, but for Trump...this was the most important thing in the world.  It has to be noted that Trump has long had a weirdly earnest love of musical theater, producing a play called Paris is Out! in 1970 starring Sam Levene and Molly Picon.  Like most of Trump's business ventures, the play was a financial failure, and received no Tony nominations in a season where Frank McMahon's Borstal Boy and Robert Marasco's Child's Play were the dominant players.  I have often felt that this Kennedy Center move was in part Trump never getting over failing so enormously in something he actually put in an effort (a rarity in his world).

But Trump's move politicized an organization that had largely avoided that even in his first term, and had been relatively successful in its post-Covid recovery.  Artists as diverse as Issa Rae, Philip Glass, & Stephen Schwartz all cancelled planned appearances/performances, and ticket sales slid dramatically for the shows that stayed.  Trump then attempted to rename the building after himself and President Kennedy, which federal law bans (it takes an act of Congress to rename the Kennedy Center, which is seen as a living memorial to the late president), and drew great ire from Democrats, the artistic community, and even members of the Kennedy family including Maria & Tim Shriver (President Kennedy's niece and nephew, respectively).  All of this led to a shocking decrease in ticket sales, railroading of the board (highlighted by Rep. Joyce Beatty's very public outing of what was happening as she is an ex officio member of the board), and the now closure of the storied institution, right around the time the annual Kennedy Center Honors (which were able to be held last year with Trump president) would've normally been announced, marking the first time (other than a delayed Covid celebration) that the honors were not held since 1978.  The latest news happened in the past couple of weeks, when photos of Trump with FHFA Chairman Bill Pulte aboard Air Force One with a poster saying "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED" coincided with dozens of layoffs and an extended shutdown of the Kennedy Center.

This is a lot of information, and I say it because it's all deeply political.  The Kennedy Center has been political in the past, and not just under Trump.  Mel Brooks, for example, was offered the Kennedy Center Honor during the presidency of George W. Bush, but refused it, and wouldn't accept until a Democrat was in the White House.  But by-and-large, it's one of the more important cultural institutions in America, and generally both Republican & Democratic presidents have been apolitical about it as much as possible; Brooks was the exception-figures like Barbra Streisand, Clint Eastwood, Danny Kaye, & Charlton Heston all accepted under presidents that they likely wouldn't have voted for given their personal politics.  I have long talked on this blog about how it's bizarre that we don't have a Secretary of Culture (most democratic countries do) despite so much of our shared American experience (and tourist economy) comes from places like Hollywood, Nashville, Motown, Orlando, & Broadway.  The Kennedy Center is, alongside PBS & NPR, one of the few places where the government truly funds the arts, and it has hosted everyone from Aretha Franklin to Vladimir Horowitz to Jessye Norman to Mikhail Baryshnikov, all of whom have performed there at some point.  It is an important cultural touchstone, and one that is a major part of our American identity.  Along with the Reflecting Pool and the east wing of the White House, it's one of many landmarks that Trump has literally destroyed while he has metaphorically taken a jackhammer to countless other American traditions.

It makes sense, then, that there were gigantic protests about this, particularly from the residents of DC who view this as their theater.  Thousands of people were in attendance...and social media took note.  And like most things that social media took note of, there were many people, particularly on the Far Left, who thought that this protest was "inappropriate."  The theme of the posts were that while ICE arrests are ravaging the country and with wars waging in both Palestine & Iran, it felt "elitist" and out-of-touch to focus on something as "trivial" as the Kennedy Center closing, and not focus on these more life-and-death atrocities.

Here's the deal though-these criticisms seem to ignore the fact that people have been protesting ICE and the war in Iran.  I know this because I've been part of those protests, and have seen thousands (in some cases tens of thousands) of people marching the streets of my town chanting this; this is certainly also the case in DC, and I would be willing to bet money that the people who protested the closure of the Kennedy Center have protested, as well as actively helped in these efforts through phone calls to members of Congress & donating money to causes, to fight against these actions from the Trump administration.  It's hard for people to grasp, but a person is able to protest more than one thing at a time, and to be angry at Trump in more than one way at a time.  This has become increasingly an issue when it comes to conversations about Palestine, acting as if the only public conversation that should be happening right now is what is happening in Gaza.  This isn't because what is happening in Gaza isn't important (it is), but the world is complicated, and that means other things are also worth fighting for.  Pretending otherwise makes you look like you are the one who don't care about anything, including the one issue you're fighting for, because you're alienating people who are already on your side.

Protesting the closure of the Kennedy Center is a good thing, and it's worth noting it was done by local residents most impacted by its closure (i.e. the people who go to it every day), not part of a mass countrywide protest similar to what we've seen over ICE, Palestine, & Iran.  And it's also a good thing even if it's happening alongside other protests.  We are all trying to stop the Trump administration's paths of destruction, and that means fighting it on all fronts, not just on the one that you deem the most important.  Many things that Trump will have destroyed by 2029 will be beyond repair...multitasking with our attentions is the only way to keep that list as short as possible.

Cop Land (1997)

Film: Cop Land (1997)

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert de Niro, Michael Rappaport

Director: James Mangold

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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.

Last week we talked about Cliffhanger really serving as the last true blockbuster to Sylvester Stallone's name, but it was not the last time that Stallone made a film worth watching.  Cop Land is a unique movie in the pantheon of Stallone's pictures.  In 1997, it was released as a late summer film that was against-type for the actor, but it was well-received, the first time Stallone had starred in a movie that got truly good reviews in over a decade.  And given the film's tiny budget (only $15 million despite Stallone himself able to command that large of salary in other pictures on his own), it was a profitable hit, something that Stallone really hadn't been able to achieve since Cliffhanger.  But Stallone would later lament the film's only mildly good box office would cement the end of his time as a leading man (it's worth noting, in a month we're talking about Stallone & Schwarzenegger together, that both of them were decidedly out of fashion by 1997, and it was Arnold, not Sly who was getting a Razzie nomination that year).  In reality, given what would come next, it might have better served as a reminder of what could have been.

(Spoilers Ahead) Because Cop Land is a surprisingly good movie, and not just good in comparison to Stallone's other pictures.  The film focuses on Officer Murray "Superboy" Babitch (Rappaport), the screw-up nephew of Lieutenant Ray Donlan (Keitel), a corrupt police officer in the NYPD who, because of a loophole in the residency system, actually lives in a suburb dominated by police officers.  When Superboy kills a suspect he believes to have a gun (but doesn't actually have a gun), Donlan fakes Babitch's death to protect him, but in the process catches the attention of Internal Affairs, including Lieutenant Moe Tilden (de Niro).  Tilden focuses in on the sheriff of the small suburb that Donlan views as an extension of New York, Freddy Heflin (Stallone), as Heflin knows all of these men well, but because of an accident when he was younger where he was saving a woman from drowning, he is deaf in one ear and can't be in the NYPD proper.  This creates a standoff between Donlan, Tilden, and an initially weak-willed Heflin, all trying to figure out what happened to Superboy, and ends with Heflin taking a stand against him.

Cop Land is basically a Martin Scorsese movie not being directed by Scorsese, which feels like an insult in some ways, both because Mangold (a good if inconsistent director) is not as revolutionary in his vision as Scorsese would be even in his worst picture, and also because he robs Scorsese's slew of actors wholesale (not just Keitel, Liotta, & de Niro, but Cathy Moriarty is also in a small role in the picture).  But Cop Land works in a way that Scorsese probably wouldn't have achieved by minimizing the stylishness for something more barebones.  There's scenes in the movie that feel really impressive primarily because they acknowledge the lack of choices in these characters, particularly Stallone's Heflin.  I loved the way that he talks about how the best thing he's ever done (saving a girl from drowning while causing him to go deaf) is something he wouldn't do again, and the moral regret he has knowing he isn't the hero he once was because it cost him so much.  There's also the scenes at the end where Liotta (probably the best in the cast) who has felt like something of a moral compass, is exposed as just as corrupt as Keitel's Donlan, just in a greedier and more personal way.  No one is above the law here, and the final scenes where Stallone's moralistic-but-cowardly Heflin starts to shoot up this crime syndicate masquerading as law enforcement, is jaw-dropping because it feels like the only way the story can end-that crime can only be fought with crime.

Cop Land would not, as Stallone would say, mark the end of his time as a leading man...that had largely sailed at this point and this felt like a shining blip on a radar of doom.  But he would continue to make dreadful pictures like Driven, Avenging Angelo, & D-Tox which only exacerbated the vision of him as a joke, one that even international audiences wouldn't support any longer.  But even a surprise hit as a villain in Spy Kids 3-D couldn't prevent what was inevitable-that Stallone would spend most of the rest of his life latching onto former glory in additional Rambo & Rocky films (though the latter would get him a much-deserved Oscar nomination for 2015's Creed) and lucking into a gigantic "last gasp" action all-star franchise in The Expendables.  He would eventually even wander into the Marvel Universe, but his appearance would barely register as a special event at this point, the land of movie stars he once dominated now taken over by "IP as King" in action flicks.

Next month we're going to continue to focus on a man who (like Schwarzenegger & Stallone) would become a mainstay of successful action films of the 1980's, but unlike the two of them, he would thrive in the 1990's, and it would take a series of truly bizarre personal & professional scandals to have the public sour on his teflon image.  I'll tell you who he is on Thursday.

What Angie Nixon Says About the DSA in Democratic Politics

State Rep. Angie Nixon (D-FL)

I am getting back from a long vacation (my hope is to have an article about it in the next week), but in the meantime, I do want to wade back into the world of politics today, and talk about some of the stories that were of interest I missed in September.  It has been a brutal month for polls for Republicans across the country, with double-digit generic congressional ballots leads for the Democrats becoming the norm, and individual Governor & Senate polling showing huge shifts to the Democrats.  We're in a position where the GOP is considering triaging North Carolina & Georgia (both states that Donald Trump won two years ago), and are starting to shore up contests in states like Iowa, Kansas, & Texas, all districts that he won by double-digits in 2024.  This is all fodder for an article, and maybe I'll write it at some point...but today I want to focus on an under-the-radar contest, and something that is sort of happening in the background of the 2026 election season.

In the state of Florida, there is a special Senate election happening due to Marco Rubio's resignation last year to become the Secretary of State.  Florida was once a swing state, in fact it was the swing state, but it has become a Republican safe-hold in recent years.  Since 2012, when President Obama and Sen. Bill Nelson both won reelection there, only one Democrat (Nikki Fried for Agriculture Commissioner in 2018) has won statewide there, despite Democrats running major players for office, including Rep. Val Demings & former Gov. Charlie Crist (not to mention our presidential candidates).  It is not a state that you would name-check as an easy flip for the Democrats...but then again, neither were Kansas, Texas, or Iowa at the start of this year.  Florida was won by Trump by roughly the same margin as he had in Ohio, Texas, Alaska, & Iowa, and it was considerably closer than Kansas or Nebraska, and yet all of these races seem to be contests that outside interests are showering support upon, and polls show are very close races, potentially even flippable ones for the Democrats.  What makes Florida unique?

It's not because the Republicans have an electoral juggernaut on their hands.  Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) is not a bad candidate, but she's certainly not the natural talent that Marco Rubio is, nor the electoral juggernaut that Ron DeSantis appears to be.  She hasn't run a campaign that's worth writing home about (though it's hard to find a Republican Senate candidate who has this cycle), and she doesn't seem considerably better than Jon Husted or Dan Sullivan are, and they're both losing their races while Moody maintains a 5-6 point lead in polling aggregate.

And, on-paper, the Democrats didn't nominate someone without credentials.  State Rep. Angie Nixon is a sitting State Representative (just like Josh Turek and James Talarico), and she's quite impressive in interviews.  After she pulled off an upset against establishment favorite Alex Vindman in the primary, she received plaudits from people (including me) for doing well in interviews in left-friendly media.  She's polished, and feels like she can cater her message to Florida, going directly after some of the bread-and-butter issues of the day...there's a reason that Moody has publicly refused to debate her.  But while Turek & Talarico look like coin toss (in Talarico's case, better than a coin toss) contenders to become senators in January, Nixon is a huge longshot.

There are two answers as to why, and I think both will largely go along your political lines over which you believe.  Nixon is a Black woman, and to date no Black woman has ever won a statewide Senate race in the South.  The Democrats did run two prominent Black women in southern states in 2022 (Demings and Justice Cheri Beasley in North Carolina) with huge pockets, but neither of them were able to win.  This isn't a cause-and-effect, I want to be clear-we have not had enough Black women running for these types of offices to have a clear idea of what they are able to achieve.  This year we have more (Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia), so we'll get a clearer picture, but it's possible that Nixon's lack of support or lack of movement could be attributed to racism or the Democratic Party not backing a candidate because they believe racism is a hill that's too hard to climb...but I don't think that's it.

The biggest issue here is Nixon's association with the Democratic Socialists of America.  Despite other candidates having ties to members of the DSA (like Abdul El-Sayed, Troy Jackson, & Peggy Flanagan), Nixon is the only one that is openly a member of the organization.  Her viewpoints are decidedly further left than you would expect of a candidate in a red state, supporting universal healthcare, free childcare, and is a strong advocate for transgender students in sports.  She is far to the left of candidates like Turek, Talarico, and Mary Peltola (D-AK), all running in similar states.

This poses a dilemma for the Leftist movement, as they have a chance to prove an adage they have long pushed: that the reason that red states are red is because we don't run Far Left candidates that show a real difference between the two parties, and that a silent majority is there if we just run the right candidates.  With Nixon, they have that option-Nixon is not a candidate anyone could compare to, say, Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin...she would fit neatly next to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders.  This is a clear choice (for the record, I also feel Turek/Peltola/Talarico are a night-and-day choice for voters, but that's not really relevant to this article).  And they are being given a gift in the cycle being super blue and that Nixon is a talented candidate.  This is not a Paula Jean Swearingen situation where she comes across as a gadfly in a doomed cycle-Florida should have its best results for the Dems since at least 2018, if not 2012, and there's a real chance the top of the ticket for Nixon (i.e. David Jolly) can win his race, helping her.  Throw in a state with a high Latino population (and Latino sentiment toward the Republicans being at an all-time low), and you have a recipe for an upset in the way we're seeing in Kansas and Texas.

But the question becomes-why aren't we seeing this support in the polls, or in the DSA backing this candidate?  Nixon is a dream option (I don't think you could find a red state DSA candidate with an easier path to victory), but the DSA and Far Left isn't rallying around her.  They aren't donating to her in a way that would give her a stronger shot at a state with multiple expensive media markets.  Nixon is everything they've begged for-a quality candidate against a middling Republican...this is their chance to prove that that silent majority exists.  The fact that they're not makes me wonder if, well, even they know this is bullshit.

Because look at the polling this year.  The candidates that are underperforming (not just Nixon, but also Flanagan, El-Sayed, and Jackson) are candidates from the Far Left.  While these other three candidates appear on-track to win (certainly the first two are) they are also posting polling numbers that are embarrassing compared to what someone like a Peltola or Talarico are doing.  There is still time to prove the pundits (and me) wrong, but if these candidates notably under-perform the nation compared to candidates like Peltola, Turek, & Sherrod Brown, it might just be because the establishment is right-the nation is more moderate than what the Far Left believes.  I would truly love to be wrong (honest-to-goodness, I'd love to see Nixon have a big upset in Florida in November & beat Moody...I'd be ecstatic to say "I was wrong"...I know I'd be voting for her if I lived in Florida), but nothing in this race seems to be sending that message.  If anything, the fact that her base seems to have abandoned this race while the establishment base of the party have gone all-in on a half dozen Senate races that felt like pipe dreams a year ago, proves the point already: the DSA is not a realistic option to win purple/red states, and as we look to 2028 (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's presidential hopes), this message is going to be heard loud-and-clear by the people who matter.

OVP: Cliffhanger (1993)

Film: Cliffhanger (1993)

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, Michael Rooker, Janine Turner, Rex Linn, Paul Winfield

Director: Renny Harlin

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Visual Effects, Sound, Sound Editing)

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 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.

I don't mean to compare Stallone's career all month to Schwarzenegger's, but it's hard not to both because that's what the press did during their entire heyday and it's also hard when you look into the 1990's as they were on deeply different paths.  By the late 1980's, Schwarzenegger was regularly churning out hits in films like Predator, but the best was still to come.  For Stallone...the 1990's were a series of pitfalls.  It started with Rocky V, which made money but given the expectations after the last four films, was a disappointment.  But this would arguably be a high-point when you look at what would come next.  While Arnold was making mountains of money with Total Recall, Terminator 2, and True Lies (all films audiences adored), Stallone was working in truly crappy flicks like Oscar, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, and Judge Dredd.  Even his films that made money, like The Specialist or Daylight, were critically-lambasted and were largely only popular overseas.  Stallone at this point was to the Razzie Awards what Meryl Streep was to the Oscars (fun fact-Stallone gave Meryl her Oscar for Sophie's Choice).

(Spoilers Ahead) The one really bright spot from the first half of the decade for Stallone was in 1993.  Cliffhanger is not a critically-acclaimed film by any means (and Stallone got nominated for Worst Screenplay at the Razzies), but it had decent reviews, and made a fortune.  One could argue it was the last unequivocally successful blockbuster built off of Stallone as a leading man.  The movie is about Gabe Walker (Stallone), a mountain rescue ranger who is traumatized by his friend Hal's (Rooker) girlfriend dying in the opening moments of the film from an accident while ziplining through the Colorado Rockies.  Walker largely checks out of his life and wants to leave it behind, taking his girlfriend Jessie (Turner) with him, but she refuses.  Meanwhile, a group of hijackers, headed by Eric Qualen (Lithgow) steal a fortune of $100 million aboard a US Treasury plane, but a mishap in the hijacking causes them to crash in the Rockies.  After tricking Hal, Jessie, & Gabe into rescuing them, this causes an increasingly staggering standoff, as Hal, Gabe, & Jessie try to stay alive as these people attempt to escape with all of the money.

Cliffhanger is a movie that is, and I say this lovingly, dumb as a post.  The plot of the film rarely makes sense beyond a second grader's description of an action film, and it is impossibly repetitive.  We have the same standoffs between Stallone, Lithgow, Rooker, and Rex Linn for about 60 minutes in a row.  But that shouldn't confuse with it a bad movie, as Cliffhanger is not a bad movie.

For starters, some of the action scenes are really well done.  The opening scene with Stallone desperately trying to save a doomed Michelle Joyner from falling to her death thousands of feet below is nerve-gripping...I was actively clutching a pillow wondering what would happen.  And the film as it progresses lives up to some of the camp of its premise, mostly because John Lithgow (with an accent that kind of has to be heard to be believed) acting as over-the-top as is humanly possible to keep the audience amused between Stallone getting different elaborate killing scenes in.  This is, like many of Stallone's films, a clear paycheck role for a decent actor who regularly was selling out...but that doesn't negate that it works more than it doesn't, and Stallone's everyman appeal is there, especially in the first half.

First Blood (1982)

Film: First Blood (1982)

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy

Director: Ted Kotcheff

Oscar History: No nominations

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 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.

Last month we talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger, and this month with us approaching Sylvester Stallone, it's important to talk about them in conjunction.  While I could've picked an actual film they made together (the minor 2013 hit Escape Plan probably made the most sense) to frame this, it actually makes more sense in terms of a film from the 1980's when the feud was actually waging.  First Blood and the Rambo franchise really launched Sylvester Stallone away from some of the risks he was taking post-Rocky with films like Paradise Alley, Escape to Victory and Rhinestone (these films scripts might have also helped deter Stallone), but it also made him a quintessential action star of the 1980's.  The other quintessential action star of the 1980's was Schwarzenegger, and younger audiences might now know how intense their rivalry was.

Amongst other things that they did during the roughly 10-year stretch that the two would feud was Stallone marrying Schwarzenegger's ex-girlfriend (Brigitte Nielsen), and they would take a series of jabs at each other in movies like Twins, Tango & Cash, and Last Action Hero.  It's not clear, in retrospect how much of this was the press feeding into things (by all accounts Arnold's relationship with Nielsen was a momentary fling, and all of the jokes in those movies are clearly said as fourth well-breaking jest for the audience to chuckle at), but it's worth noting that Stallone seemed to take it more seriously than Schwarzenegger, purportedly helping to fund the legal fees of a reporter who had called Schwarzenegger's father a Nazi (which he was, though rumors about him committing war crimes or being involved in carrying out the Holocaust have long circulated but never been proven, and are likely untrue), probably the biggest escalation in the feud (and one Stallone initially did behind-the-scenes).

Why am I picking First Blood to be the movie we discuss the Arnold/Sly feud?  Because it probably wouldn't have been possible without First Blood.  Sly Stallone's career was made with Rocky, but while the film piled on successful sequels, most of the other movies that Stallone was making at the time were flops.  All of the movies I listed above didn't succeed, and while Nighthawks turned a profit, it wasn't enough to really notice in the way the Rocky films did.  The one bonafide box office performance during this time he turned in was Staying Alive, which made a fortune...but was only directed by Stallone, and instead it was John Travolta who got the box office credit for it.  Were it not for Rambo, it's arguable that Stallone would've spent the 1980's making movies like Chuck Norris & Charles Bronson did-middling, lucrative but barely registering straight-to-video style pictures that no one would remember.  But he did make First Blood, and it changed the trajectory of his career, making him a theatrical movie star for at least another decade.

(Spoilers Ahead) First Blood is the story of John Rambo (Stallone), a Vietnam war veteran who is basically a drifter, coming into town in a small city in Washington, and being chased out of town for not being "the right sort."  Rambo doesn't take this lying down, and gets into a war of wills with Will Teasle (Dennehy), a sheriff who abuses Rambo, and causes him to have flashbacks to Vietnam.  During the PTSD, he escapes, and essentially sets off a series of attacks that result in the deaths of multiple police officers, initially unintentionally, but eventually very intentionally.  They even bring in Rambo's supervising officer in the army Colonel Sam Trautman (Crenna) to try and deal with Rambo as the showdown escalates, and we see that only one man between Rambo and Teasle will survive...

...except both of them do.  In an interesting scene toward the end involving Stallone, Dennehy, & Crenna, we see Stallone admit that he felt confused by the public rejection of his service after Vietnam.  First Blood is really interesting as a cultural artifact because it represents (at the rise of the Reagan Era) a nail-in-the-coffin of the hippie liberalism that had existed in the late 1960's.  Read any discussion about the treatment of Vietnam veterans returning from the war (that they were spat upon and called "baby killers") and you'll find a host of different anecdotal and academic evidence online, the former insisting that it was relatively common while the latter pointing out that it was rare to the point of providing virtually no persistent evidence in terms of things like video or police records.  That all three of these men come together for Stallone's John Rambo to soliloquize about this treatment becomes a sort of fascinating case study of your political beliefs-conservatives see in John Rambo a fighter, someone who was rejected after he did his service to his country by anti-war protesters, while liberals see a man broken by a war who is still rejected by authority figures (it should not be lost on anyone that the men both terrorizing & supporting Rambo are leaders in a law & order organization, a longtime bastion of conservative reverance).  Stallone's sort of two-dimensional approach to the character, as just a "guy who is living his life" helps tremendously here-it makes you think First Blood is about what you want, and fighting against the other guy, while they see it the same way.  In terms of propaganda, it's honestly really impressive, and adding in the early scenes which have a John Boorman directing Deliverance vibe, it's a much better movie than you'd expect.

But First Blood's complicated politics did not continue in the very successful film sequels that would basically just make Rambo another Terminator (Bruce Willis would have this same issue with the Die Hard movies).  The next three films would all make north of $100M at the box office, and would become Stallone's life-blood as a bankable star along with Rocky.  But unlike Schwarzenegger, Stallone (despite, for my money, being the better actor) didn't have good enough taste in his scripts and cared too much about his paychecks to really win the war against Arnold.  It helped that Schwarzenegger had the good luck to find a proper talent (James Cameron) to make his two best films, but it's more than that-Schwarzenegger had better quality control (he actually said no to sequels when they didn't make sense), and ultimately came out on top.  Even Stallone would later admit (years later, when the two had become friends offscreen) "He wanted to be number one.  Unfortunately he got there."  We'll talk about why Stallone & Schwarzenegger fell off next week. and how both of their careers would change in the 1990's.

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