City of Angels (1998)

Film: City of Angels (1998)

Stars: Nicolas Cage, Meg Ryan, Dennis Franz, Andre Braugher

Director: Brad Silberling

Oscar History: No nominations, though its Best Original Song Golden Globe nomination for hit song "Uninvited" surely got it close

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Meg Ryan: click here to learn more about Ms. Ryan (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We've talked frequently throughout the past few weeks about Meg Ryan, her pretty effortless-looking stardom, and the way that she struggled to be taken seriously.  We've also compared her quite a bit to last month's star, Julia Roberts, and noted that the press was far-kinder to Ryan than they were to Roberts.  In 1998, when both of these women were arguably at the peak of their respective fames (Roberts was in the middle of a storied comeback, Ryan starring in two mammoth hits, You've Got Mail and our film today, City of Angels), it was pretty clear as to why.  While Julia Roberts had spent the 1990's with tabloid-friendly romances, her relationships with Benjamin Bratt, Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, & Lyle Lovett were all messy enough to inspire reams of gossip, but Meg Ryan was the perfect counter to her as what a true "girl next door does"...they marry the boy next door.  Ryan wed actor Dennis Quaid in 1991, and while Quaid wasn't nearly as famous if you look at his movie output during the era, he was well-known, and they were billed as having a storybook marriage by the press.  A son (future Scream hottie Jack Quaid) was born from the union, and Ryan largely avoided the tabloid press, getting to be a movie icon in the vein of her frequent costar Tom Hanks that everyone could love without any sort of guilt.  As we'll talk about next week, that would soon collapse, but in 1998, there were few actors you wanted to be more than Meg Ryan.

(Spoilers Ahead) The first of her two big movies in 1998 was City of Angels (I only watch new movies for this series, and I have seen You've Got Mail, which I love, more times than I can count, which is why we picked this one), a retake of the film Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders.  The movie follows Seth (Cage), a type of angel-of-death who escorts people who are dying onto the next life.  He becomes smitten with a doctor named Maggie (Ryan), who cannot get over the fact that a man died during her surgery on him (this is what Seth is doing when he meets her), and Seth soon becomes obsessed with Maggie, and particularly that she can see him (which most people cannot).  He wanders around, trying to learn everything about her, while she questions the truth, and realizes she's falling in love with him.  After meeting another former angel named Nathaniel (Franz) who chose to live a mortal life, he decides to "fall" for Maggie, choosing to be mortal, but quickly afterward, Maggie dies in a car accident, and Seth, after initially becoming angry with God, chooses instead to embrace the joys of a mortal life, and living his fullest in the way that Nathaniel has done.

Wings of Desire is one of the great movies of the 1980's, a profound look at the meaning of life in a world that was becoming increasingly cynical and generic.  City of Angels, on the other hand, looks like a movie that is cynically and generically ripping off Wings of Desire.  The movie goes from misguided to being just plain bad pretty quickly.  Cage comes across as a stalker creep, acting erratically in some scenes and overacting in others, something common in his omnipresent movie stardom (he can be great...but more often he's not).  There are moments in the film where both Franz and Andre Braugher, playing another angel, are able to use their unique styles (both were big TV stars at the time this came out) to maybe approach something interesting, but Cage is giving them nothing.

This is true when he's acting opposite Meg Ryan.  Ryan's wide-eyed earnestness is no match for Cage, and honestly feels a really bad fit for a world-weary doctor.  Playing someone lost-in-love at a crossroads is where some of Ryan's best work comes from as an actor, but she can't seem to ground Maggie in something special, something that matches the cerebral beauty of what Wenders' did in the original.  Honestly the best part of City of Angels was the soundtrack, which is incredible (if you owned a radio in 1998, you will know the tunes by Alanis Morisette, the Goo Goo Dolls, and Sarah McLachlan by heart), but the movie itself never justifies its existence-see the original instead.

Urban Legend (1998)

Film: Urban Legend (1998)

Stars: Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Joshua Jackson, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Loretta Devine, Tara Reid, Robert Englund

Director: Jamie Blanks

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

We are in the middle of our trio of "sexy twentysomethings doing a Scream ripoff" horror trilogy this month, and unlike The Faculty, this one was a proper success at the box office.  This period of moviemaking was huge, as horror was seeing a resurgence after much of the early 1990's was relegating it to straight-to-video releases, but we also saw stars beginning to emerge from these franchises who would become a big deal in the coming years.  While Jared Leto & Alicia Witt were the leads of this movie (and both were coming off of noted series My So-Called Life and Cybil), the names that would matter more in the coming years would be Joshua Jackson & Tara Reid.  Jackson had just completed the first season of Dawson's Creek, which for any Xennial at the time, was the most important show on television, and Reid was about to become one of the stars of the American Pie franchise, a series that would gross nearly a billion-dollars before it was over.  Both stand out here, albeit in different ways, as does honestly a cast that feels at-home with the silliness of this movie (and understanding the "let's just have fun" assignment that this movie required to work).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with a girl named Michelle getting killed by a man hiding in the backseat of her car as she speeds away from a gas station run by Oscar nominee Brad Dourif (best known to horror fans as the voice of Chucky).  We soon learn that we're at a college, and the connecting thread of all of the students thrown together is they're taking a class on urban legends taught by Professor Wexler (Englund, and yes, Freddy & Chucky are both in this movie if you go solely by the call sheet).  As the film progresses, death continues coming into contact with our protagonist Natalie (Witt), who keeps seeing her friends and acquaintances killed associated with different famous urban legends.  Natalie eventually discovers that the accidental vehicular homicide she committed years earlier has resulted in revenge, as the man she killed had a girlfriend, her best friend in the movie Brenda (Gayheart), who attempts to kill her by removing her kidney (one last urban legend), but in the process fails...or does she?  The final stinger of the movie is Brenda in a college commons area, discussing the murders, and saying "here's how the story really goes," implying she's continuing to carry on her own urban legend.

Urban Legend did not get great reviews at the time, with most critics claiming it was a Scream ripoff, and it is (Scream is much better)...but I still liked it.  The best part of it is the cast.  Rebecca Gayheart is a blast at the end of the movie.  Gayheart is one of those actresses only a very specific age group will be familiar with (her scandalous relationship with Brett Ratner and her 2001 DUI ruined her career, and she spent much of the 21st Century in semi-retirement while her now ex-husband Eric Dane had huge success on Grey's Anatomy), but she's awesome in this, totally eating up the scenery and stealing the movie away from most of her castmates.

Not that they aren't trying.  Reid, for example, is really good in this as a sex talk shock jock on the college radio station, and you spend a lot of the time hoping she'd somehow live.  She has the vibes of a less boring final girl than Witt's Natalie, who is a bit of a downer, particularly given that she's going after Jared Leto rather than Joshua Jackson.  In 1998, that might've been a closer call (not just because Jared Leto looked a lot different then, but he was generally considered to be a Manic Pixie Dream Guy after My So-Called Life), but looking back on this now, I would've let Jared Leto fall out the window, and 100% would've ended the movie twenty minutes in by sleeping with Jackson in my car rather than let him die in the woods like Natalie did.  To each their own!

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Flatliners Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, An American Werewolf in London, The Changeling, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, The House on Sorority Row, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Pet Sematary, Poltergeist, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, Sleepaway Camp, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, The Faculty, Flatliners, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Interview with the Vampire, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

The Faculty (1998)

Film: The Faculty (1998)

Stars: Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Usher Raymond, Jon Stewart

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

In the late 1990's, in the wake of Scream, horror movies hit a bit of a pattern.  You'd assemble a group of sexy, young actors (some of whom would grow up to be movie stars, others basically nobodies), maybe throw in a musician that could add in an additional fanbase, and from there you just start killing them off slowly in the picture and see what happens.  This was such a common trend in this era that it's actually going to be what our next three movies for our horror movie month are about.  The first we're going to get to is The Faculty, a 1998 thriller that initially promises to be more than that-a movie that will focus on the adults in addition to the teens in the movie...though the film as it unfolds really only cares about the young people crowding the poster.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie opens with Principal Drake (Neuwirth) telling a group of teachers that budget cuts are hurting all of their programs...except for the lucrative football program, much to their chagrin.  Drake is attacked by football Coach Willis (Patrick), and nearly escapes until Mrs. Olson (Laurie) also attacks her, and infects her.  You see, there's a group of alien pod people who are infecting everyone at the school, and working their way through the faculty.  The only group who can stop them is a crew of unlikely friends, led by Casey Connor (Wood), a nerdy guy who is in love with the resident pretty girl Delilah (Brewster) and Zeke (Hartnett), a drug dealer who is actually quite scientifically savvy.  Zeke has created a drug combination that can actually kill the infected, and they work to try and kill the mother alien, which it turns out is the sweet new girl Marybeth (Harris).  Once she's destroyed, everything returns to normal, with Casey now the hero of the country, and officially dating Delilah.

One of the things that I liked about The Faculty is they play around a bit with some of the tropes that Scream made sacrosanct.  The "final girl" here is not Brewster or DuVall, but instead Elijah Wood, fitting a lot of the tropes of this part (virginal, cute, sweet but over-his-head), except, of course, he's a boy.  This isn't the only time they do this.  Josh Hartnett's casting as the hot guy who is also really smart, and actually creates the way to kill the monster is something you'd never see-he was born to be a character that dies maybe third in the film, but instead lives through the picture & is generally not a jerk.

The problem with The Faculty is that it doesn't lean into the title character.  The teens can only do so much, but with a solid cast of actors for the teachers, I think it would've been more fun if we'd spent time focusing on the faculty themselves.  Piper Laurie is so campy, and has such strong horror movie bonafides from Carrie, you want her to be the big baddie rather than Marybeth.  Jon Stewart & Salma Hayek are at once marvelously cast (they play their tropes of nerdy science teacher & secretly sexy nurse) and silly choices (Stewart is not a good actor, and while Hayek is, she is so gorgeous that her playing someone that other people don't notice is far too attractive to be a normal human being is genuinely funny) that I wanted to hear more from them.  The film also has a really questionable relationship between Famke Janssen's nerdy teacher and Josh Hartnett's student (it's strongly implied they had a sexual relationship at some point, and this is condoned within the context of the film, which even in 1998 probably should've raised an eyebrow or too).  All-in-all, the faculty section is underwritten, even if the overall movie itself is pretty decent and a good spin on Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Flatliners Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, An American Werewolf in London, The Changeling, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, The House on Sorority Row, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Pet Sematary, Poltergeist, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, Sleepaway Camp, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, Flatliners, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Interview with the Vampire, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

OVP: The Horse Whisperer (1998)

Film: The Horse Whisperer (1998)

Stars: Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Dianne Wiest, Scarlett Johnasson, Chris Cooper

Director: Robert Redford

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"A Soft Place to Fall")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Robert Redford: click here to learn more about Mr. Redford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked a little bit about how Robert Redford was getting beyond his pretty boy roots, and beyond acting all-together by founding the Sundance Film Festival, today the most important film festival in the United States.  But Redford quickly went from highlighting the films of others to making his own in 1980, with the premiere of Ordinary People, his landmark debut which won the Best Picture & Director actors, making Redford one of the only directors to win for his film debut.  Redford would continue acting in the decades that followed, but many of his most remembered films from this time period were movies he directed like A River Runs Through It (which I love) and Quiz Show.  Because he didn't star in these movies, this is not my opportunity to watch Ordinary People for the first time (somehow, it is one of the only Best Picture winners I've never seen, and the most critically-acclaimed gap in my viewings), but instead we will talk today about the first time that Redford directed himself, in 1998's romantic western The Horse Whisperer.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with tragedy, as Grace MacLean (Johansson), the teenager daughter of a posh Manhattan couple Annie (Thomas) & Robert (Neill), is in a shocking accident with her horse, where she loses her leg, and her best friend & her horse are killed.  Annie, though an Anna Wintour-style magazine editor at the beginning of the film, starts to believe that saving Grace's horse Pilgrim is somehow connected with her daughter finding a zeal for life again, and so she goes to Montana to meet with a "horse whisperer" named Tom Booker (Redford), who runs a ranch and while initially hesitant, also sees that Pilgrim & Grace are connected.  He begins to train Pilgrim, but in the process he starts to win over not just a recuperating Grace, but also a smitten Annie, with whom he begins to have an affair.  Their love from two worlds is pretty clearly not going to last, but it is a moment where Annie begins to ponder her responsibilities to herself, her identity, and her family...and the man she is falling in love with.

In 1998, romantic dramas like The Horse Whisperer were not uncommon (see also Hope Floats, Meet Joe Black, and City of Angels), and so it isn't noted as a success in the way it would be today (a straight drama grossing almost $200 million in 2023 would be a guaranteed Best Picture nomination).  But looking back on it, it's so refreshing to watch the film from a modern lens, knowing this type of film would go out-of-fashion just a few years later as studios lost their minds over the X-Men and Spider-Man box office receipts.  The movie doesn't apologize for being complicated, giving us a woman who shouldn't be falling in love (she's married), but she is, and it doesn't give us easy answers.  In the end, it's not clear Redford-the-director knows if Redford-the-actor should end up with Annie or not, and that's kind of the point.  Love doesn't always have right answers, and to see that in a movie without any winking, comedic relief, or need to infantilize adults by pretending this is the first time either has fallen in love would read as bold today, and it's expertly handled by Redford as a director.

I will say that I don't think the movie succeeds in terms of chemistry between the two leads.  This is a weird situation as I think both Redford & Thomas give strong performances (both are very good actors) in their own lanes.  Redford's Tom is played as a romantic who clearly was too burned to end up with another woman after he lost his last wife, and Thomas gives Annie a three-dimensional look at motherhood, and being willing to sign up for more adventures as you age.  But the two don't have romantic inclinations to each other.  This isn't the age gap (though it's hard not to think about that since it's the only thing Gen Z audiences are capable of talking about in romances), but more so their acting styles.  Redford is such a naturalistic, California boy against Thomas stage-trained British beauty, and they don't really jive even as an opposites-attract pairing.  Good movie, good performances...weirdly not a compelling romance (though the Oscar-nominated song definitely tries on that front, giving us a lovely, lonely country ballad that they dance to at a critical moment in the picture).

With that, we're going to retire Robert Redford, who at 87 is still acting semi-regularly acts.  After the combined star wattage of Redford & Clint Eastwood, two of the great living movie stars of the 1970's, we're going to move next month into the work of a man who got his career start doing some of the independent westerns of the 1970's, before eventually moving into character actor roles in Hollywood films starting in the 1980's, including a turn in one of the most noted westerns of the 1990's. 

OVP: The Thin Red Line (1998)

Film: The Thin Red Line (1998)

Stars: Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte, John C. Reilly, John Travolta

Director: Terrence Malick

Oscar History: 7 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Score, Sound, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

As part of our month-long celebration of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, I am completing all of the remaining gaps in my Terrence Malick filmography (one of my favorite film directors) with what we're calling "Terry Tuesdays" throughout June.

Terrence Malick took 20 years between Days of Heaven and his next picture.  During that time, he wrote a number of screenplays that were never produced, including one called Q that would later serve as the basis for two of his films, The Tree of Life and Voyage of Time.  He finally returned, after two decades of time off to film an adaptation of James Jones' classic novel about World War II, The Thin Red Line.  Malick at this point had not entirely abandoned the concept of a truly linear plot, but it was obvious that was where he was headed.  You could make a legitimate argument that this is the last movie with characters that really seem to run together, with actual spoken dialogue that grounds together a story (though The New World and The Tree of Life have this to some degree, even though they become more-and-more abstract).  The film, though, would become legendary given it would establish Malick's strange reputation as someone who could assemble a gargantuan movie star lineup...and then become distracted by a parrot in the cutting room floor.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with Private Witt (Caviezel) stuck on an island in the South Pacific after going AWOL.  After being captured, he's allowed to return to the military rather than face certain imprisonment, but he must do so as a member of the 25th Infantry Division as a stretcher bearer, as they are invading the island of the Guadalcanal.  The days that follow are a series of attacks on the island against the Japanese, as they come face-to-face with death, intimately seeing the perils & pitfalls of war.  One soldier (played by Woody Harrelson) dies not from enemy fire but from accidentally pulling the pin out of his grenade and blowing himself in half.  Throughout this time, we see personifications of the glory of war in Nick Nolte, the glory of peace through Caviezel's Witt, the glory of humanity in Elias Koteas loving Captain Staros, and the reality of survival through Sgt. Welsh (Penn).

The movie has about a 50/50 split between spoken dialogue and narration, and there are moments when this is confusing.  The movie hires a number of well-known actors, some of whom are easily identifiable as narrators (Sean Penn & Nick Nolte are difficult to mistake), but because there's so little traditional character-buildling outside of Nolte, Penn, Koteas, & Caviezel, when they aren't the narrators (which is often) it's sometimes hard to distinguish who is who.  Similar to The Tree of Life, which was overwhelming the first time I viewed it, I suspect I'll find that it's easier to decipher upon repeat viewings.

Because there will be repeat viewings of this.  We are 3/3 in masterpieces out of Malick, as I see the last "important" film of his career (we have one more late stage Malick next week that I haven't seen that will cap this collection).  The movie is probably the most-lauded of Malick's epics, getting seven Oscar nominations, and while part of that is the subject matter (war films tend to do well with AMPAS), it's also deserved.  The film's alternating perspectives on different characters gives it a sense of balance while sticking to its central thesis that war is tragic, no matter one's views on the merits of the conflict.  We see young men, barely into the prime of life, torn apart.  There's a terrific bit of dialogue late in the picture where a young man says something along the lines of "I've had a long life even if I'm young" and while in another movie that would've read as "proud & brave...imagine what these men have been through" here it reads as pablum.  This man is ready to give up his life, but he hasn't even lived it yet & has no concept of what he's saying, sacrificing his youth for ivory tower figures like those played by John Travolta who has no concept of the early days of war anymore it is such a distant memory they only believe the pablum.

The cinematography, by Oscar winner John Toll, is stupendous.  Malick & Toll underline their script not just with grand looks at the ocean & tall grass providing these men minimal cover for their lives, but also with throwaway shots like a panning look across a rocky cliff, the only sign of these men's sacrifice a littered pile of bullet casings that may sit on this island in the middle of the Pacific for the next 50 years without movement, the entire lifetime of the men who shot them...had they not died.  Combined with an iconic Hans Zimmer score (some of his best work) and realistic movie makeup (the dying-and-blood feels very real, particularly by the standards of 1998 with only traditional visual effects on display), and you have one of Malick's most proficient technical films.

The editing, apparently cut down from a five-hour runtime, is the stuff of Hollywood legend at this point.  George Clooney has laughed about this in interviews, saying how much he was basically trimmed out of the story to only appear onscreen for about 90 seconds.  Adrien Brody found it less funny.  In the book, his character is central to the story, and so for Brody, who was a young actor who  hadn't struck it big yet (unlike Clooney, then in his ER heyday), it was a big deal.  But at the premiere of the film, Brody supposedly found out that he was not only not the lead, but had been trimmed down so much that he was barely in the movie.  Indeed, if there was an actual line spoken by Brody directly onscreen as opposed to just talking in a group shot, I missed it...his wide eyes more a prop to help him standout in a crowd shot than the lead part, which is delegated to Caviezel in particular.  This would become something of a refrain for Malick, who would increasingly see major stars trimmed from his movies, some deeply upset about it even when they're still in a large chunk of the movie like Christopher Plummer (whom, it's worth noting, I would've cited for the Oscar for his work in The New World).  Next week we will conclude our look at the films of Terrence Malick as I watch my final gap in his filmography.

OVP: One True Thing (1998)

Film: One True Thing (1998)
Stars: Meryl Streep, Renee Zellweger, William Hurt, Tom Everett Scott, Lauren Graham
Director: Carl Franklin
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Meryl Streep)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I've been really loving the theme weeks for reviews-we've done it twice now, and so I'm gonna make that official, at least as long as we're quarantining and I'm able to keep up the current pace I have of watching so many movies, particularly focusing on Oscar nominees.  Each weekday afternoon we'll have a movie that's based on a theme for the week, all five movies having nothing (intentional) in common other than a year or Oscar category or something else connecting them.  We'll still do regular articles in the mornings & on weekends (and possibly throw in the occasional review for a film that I can't find a theme for), but I like the idea of trying to link together some of my recent viewings during the week to keep you guessing on what might come next (and to keep me focused as I'm overcoming a mountain of movies while on quarantine).  This week, we're going to return to the theme of Best Actress, and have all five of our reviews come from that particular category, and what better way to kick off such a category than with the queen of Best Actress, Meryl Streep, in one of her less-remembered nominated performances, One True Thing.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is set in the late 1980's, and Ellen (Zellweger), is home for her beloved father George's (Hurt) birthday.  Ellen is trying to be just like her father-he's a well-known novelist and literature professor at Princeton, and she's now an ambitious journalist at New York magazine.  Her mother Kate (Streep) is the antithesis of Ellen, and Ellen doesn't do much to hide her disdain for her mother, a homemaker who gets great joy from her group of "Minnies" (they decorate and plan town events for holidays & charities).  We soon discover that Kate has cancer, and that George wants Ellen to move home to take care of her mother, as he cannot with his job as a professor (and while he's writing his long-dormant second novel).  While home, Ellen learns more about her mother, and has an appreciation for what she has done through the years for her family, and has a growing animosity for her father, whom she learns eschews responsibility, has a drinking problem, and frequently has cheated on her mother.  We watch this change-of-heart as Kate becomes sicker & sicker, eventually succumbing to her illness but during an autopsy report we learn that she died not of cancer, but of a morphine overdose, which the closing scene of the film let's us know was self-inflicted (Kate no longer wanting to suffer).

The film is fascinating to me in a narcissistic way as it takes a look at the relationship that you develop with your parents if you're lucky enough to live to know them in your thirties.  At that point in your life you realize that you're both adults, and while there is always a sense of "parents wanting to take care of you" the discipline/disappointment aspect has likely disappeared in some of your life choices, and you get to know each other not only as friends, but as people.  You get to learn that your parents are human beings with not only faults & foibles, but also ones who have different tastes & interests that aren't, well, you.  This is an under-explored topic in movies, and I liked that it felt fleshed out in the film.

The movie's central calling card, though, is Meryl Streep.  I love Meryl always, but I will admit that I prefer straight-up dramatic Meryl, a version of the actress that basically disappeared the second she became a box office icon with The Devil Wears Prada.  Meryl is always good, but I think since 2006 her performances have either needed some sort of wink or gimmick in order for Streep to sign on, and it's fascinating to watch her explore a character like Kate, seemingly simple without many layers, and not abandon that character as we learn that, like all people, there's something under-the-surface.  The great monologue late in the film, where she admits that she knows about her husband's infidelities and her daughter's antipathy toward her is dynamite, but it wouldn't work if she hadn't set us up with intrigue, about questions about a bright, open character.  It's a reminder of why Streep became a legend in the first place-she was really, truly that good.

The rest of the movie pales in comparison.  Zellweger & Hurt are both good actors, but neither of them bring the homework that Streep does to their portrayals, and with Zellweger that's a problem since she's really the "screen-time" lead (even though it's a two female lead film-today Streep might well have gone supporting in an era of category fraud).  There's not enough in-depth look at this character-for a character with a lot of intellectual curiosity, it seems odd that she waited this long to learn more about her mother, and the final sequences between she & her father don't have enough punch (the film flits away after Streep dies) because we aren't vested in these characters.  But this is still a terrific, earned nomination for Streep, one that is forgotten but really shouldn't be in her long pantheon with Oscar.