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. 

The Mule (2018)

Film: The Mule (2018)
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Pena, Dianne Wiest, Andy Garcia
Director: Clint Eastwood
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I'll be writing an article about the reason why I saw this movie later this week, but today I figured since I'm on a 2018-movie tear that I should get to the what of seeing The Mule.  Regardless of your opinions of him as a director, actor, and person (mine are conflicted), it's certainly impressive that Clint Eastwood's career continues to chug along at the same clip that it does.  The actor, who has retired from acting more times than I can count, is back again as his own leading man in this film, also serving as director & producer, despite the fact that he is nearly 90-years-old.  He's older than almost every other aging filmmaker you can think of (Spielberg, Lucas, Scott, Coppola, Scorsese), oftentimes by more than a decade and they're rarely taking the lead in their films.  And he's continually a box office presence-The Mule crossed the $100 million mark domestically.  So whatever your thoughts on Eastwood, it's remarkable that The Mule exists at all.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is based in some respects on the true story of Leo Sharp (Eastwood's character is renamed Earl Stone here for some reason), the world's oldest drug mule who was featured in a New York Times article a few years back.  The film follows Earl, who has largely abandoned his family, including his ex-wife Mary (Wiest) and his daughter Iris (played by Eastwood's real-life daughter Alison) in pursuit of a career as a botanist (something that is kind of bizarre but serves mostly as a way for the aging people in the audience to grumble alongside Eastwood about the internet).  Earl chances upon becoming a drug mule when a random wedding guest at his granddaughter's groom's dinner invites him to become one (because who doesn't have at least one person connected to organized crime at all of their parties?), and starts becoming a successful drug mule since, as a nearly 90-year-old white man, who is going to suspect he's running cocaine?

There's a lot of leaps in logic here, though Eastwood does have the crutch that this is based on a true story.  Somehow Eastwood is a celebrity botanist at one point whose entire career is ruined by the internet, and while he is hip enough to regularly have threesomes (there are two in the movie) with women considerably younger than his daughter, but doesn't know how to text.  The movie has an entire subplot involving the DEA (headed by Bradley Cooper, clearly too big of a star to be taking such a stock, second-lead role, so you get the sense that he's doing this as a favor to Eastwood) chasing after Earl that feels mostly there to fill out a relatively thin story.

The movie functions largely as a fantasy piece, a way to support aging theater patrons about their life choices and habits.  Eastwood, who is vaguely racist but mostly racist to the "bad guys" than the good guys (at least in a way that people who don't read Mother Jones will be able to pick up on), spouts complaints about modern life, modern work ethic, and about how people don't appreciate things he likes (like VFW dances) without the sense of irony that he was a terrible father, and wasn't able to adapt to modern savings & business practices enough to make his business a success.  I was in an audience in a small Midwestern town, and the chuckles & nods I saw during these scenes showed why Eastwood is still a potent box office force even if most critics have moved on from him being the awards magnet behind Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.  The movie thankfully avoids a lot of the political commentary that made Sully impossible to watch, but there's also not enough conflict or action to make this all that interesting.  The Eastwood of thirty years ago would have surely gotten into a fist fight or two, perhaps even a chase in his truck, but at ninety the most we can expect is a slight roughing up done off-camera.

As a result, the most important scenes in the film should be Eastwood rediscovering his love of his family, with him finally admitting that he should have given them the attention his flowers deserved. Here we're reminded of why Eastwood has been a movie star for decades.  There's a beautifully-acted scene where he's essentially confessing to his ex-wife how he should have been a better father that works well, his weathered face still expressive.  Wiest, unfortunately, doesn't seem to have a clue how to handle Mary, going through the motions but occasionally having line readings that are just bad-it's not often you'd put Eastwood & Wiest in the same room and come away thinking the former is the better actor (perhaps the better movie star, but not the finer thespian), but that is the curse of The Mule.  Your patience and enjoyment of the film is entirely predicated on your tolerance for Eastwood, center stage even in a star-studded cast, refusing to go quietly into that cinematic night.

Sisters (2015)

Film: Sisters (2015)
Stars: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Ike Barinholtz, Dianne Wiest, James Brolin, John Cena
Director: Jason Moore
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are always funny.  It feels physically impossible for the two of them, when brought together, not to create some sort of massive humor and that's clearly on-display with Sisters, their rather lucrative (on what is purportedly a $30 million budget, the film has now made nearly $100 million, a tidy sum that will surely greenlight any project they want to do together in the future) new movie that is trying to coast off their mountains of goodwill from stellar performances at the Golden Globes and two massive bestsellers.  Whether or not Sisters was going to be funny was never in doubt, however, and that doesn't necessarily make it a good movie.  From the outset, the film's script is pretty sophomoric, and aside from occasionally trying to be interesting, it falls principally into cliche (look-adults can be crazy too!) and never reaches the sort of sharpness that Fey and Poehler's TV shows have so consistently achieved.

(Spoilers Ahead) Perhaps the biggest issue on display in Sisters is that its plot is exactly what you expect it to be.  On 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation, while the end result usually gave us something to anticipate, the middle would get into weird and oftentimes crazy areas, a combination that made for wry and endearing humor.  The shows intelligently commented on things like groupthink and the culture around us, but Sisters is far more likely to comment on cliche.  I loved the way that Fey/Poehler reversed what you'd expect from the casting department (here Fey is playing the loser while Poehler is playing the uptight planner), but that's pretty much the only way that the film actually stops our expectations.  Every single plot point is spelled out in the trailer, from the odd relationships the two sisters have with their lives, romances, and each other, to the fact that they don't want their parents to sell their childhood home despite having little connection to the place after so many years away from it.

This cliche causes the laughter to be kept at about the minimum possible between Poehler and Fey.  The actresses, along with the likes of Maya Rudolph and Samantha Bee, are too funny not to land a few of the gags, and in particular Rudolph's uptight suburban mom and her feud with Fey's Kate is probably the film's comic high-point as it shows the pettiness of high school and how far it carries, and in particular it gives Rudolph a moment to flex her histrionic side, which we know from years of watching Saturday Night Live is a forte for her.  Otherwise, though, it's a series of mishaps and misadventures that you see coming a mile away (you just know it'll be Bobby Moynihan's joking loser that will end up taking the cocaine and the Asian nail salon stereotypes border more on the racist than the amusing).

Honestly, if it weren't Poehler and Fey I'd be fine with settling for just funny.  After all, funny is what you're hoping for and I've been to comedies many times where they couldn't even make me laugh, much less give me time to complain about the plot (this movie made me laugh, there's no doubt about that), but these two are comic geniuses, and when given strong enough writing they truly create something magical.  Paula Pell did many years at Saturday Night Live and made memorable guest spots on both actresses' TV shows, but she lacks the sharpness that Fey brought to something like Mean Girls or 30 Rock.  In a year where Melissa McCarthy hit comedic heights in Spy and Amy Schumer became a star through Trainwreck, it has to be said that Fey/Poehler, the Matthau and Lemmon of their era, should have been able to bring more of their A-Game after so much anticipation.

Those are my thoughts on these two-what are yours?  Are you disappointed like I am in how Sisters turned out, or are my expectations too high?  Are you (like me) still hoping to see something truly special from these two on the big-screen?  And when is someone going to give Maya Rudolph the lead in a movie?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Film: Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Stars: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, Barbara Hershey, Maureen O'Sullivan, Max von Sydow, Lloyd Nolan, Carrie Fisher
Director: Woody Allen
Oscar History: 7 nominations, 3 wins (Picture, Director, Supporting Actor-Michael Caine, Supporting Actress-Dianne Wiest, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Woody Allen movies, at least those made prior to the past ten years, always remind me of my adoration for New York.  There are few things that I love more than that city-always alive, always a bustle.  Paris, London, San Francisco-I've been to (and adored) a lot of "eternal" cities, but New York inspires me in a way nowhere else does.  I feel energized, alive, electric, and since I can't always get there for inspiration, it's nice that Woody Allen and his magical filmography can so easily transport me to the streets and neighborhoods I just adore in the City that Never Sleeps.

Hannah and Her Sisters is one of those movies that truly transports you to New York.  I sort of wonder if the art direction nod was just as much to the actual city streets as it was to the beautifully-furnished apartments (an Allen staple-you have to love the shelves bristling with books, the cramped kitchens, the minute touches that litter his upper-middle class world).  I kept going-oh, they're in Chelsea or the Upper West and being struck how recognizable everything is 25 years later.  It's romantic and dreamy, just like New York.

But I digress (Woody Allen's New York is my New York, so I always have to take a moment to stop and appreciate).  We should be getting to the film at hand, his classic 1986 movie Hannah and Her Sisters.  The film, up until Midnight in Paris, was his highest-grossing movie, and it's easy to understand why-it's one of Allen's most accessible films.  I don't know if the inspiration was Anna Karenina, but you could see the touches of that novel everywhere in the incestuous cheating going on in the family.  The film is about three sisters (Hannah, Holly, and Lee, played respectively by Farrow, Wiest, and Hershey), and how they are constantly trying to find themselves romantically and occupationally throughout the film.  Farrow's Hannah is the together one-she has four children, is on her second marriage to Elliot (Caine), but is still on good terms with her first husband Mickey (Allen), and has it all-great apartment, a successful career, and a seemingly wonderful home life.  Her sisters are not nearly as together-her sister Lee doesn't work, and is constantly trying to find herself, and lives with a much older man (von Sydow, in a smallish role, but he does his best with it-and in a side note, why can't Blogger figure out a way to have more than 200 characters in the labels, as I had to cut poor Max to fit everyone?).  And the middle child is Holly, who is a struggling actress constantly borrowing money from her sister and switching occupations.  Just so I don't forget later, their parents are well-played in small roles by Lloyd Nolan and Farrow's real-life mother, Maureen O'Sullivan, a twinkling bit of casting.

(Spoilers to come) The film progresses with Elliot confessing his love for Lee, and they start an affair, with her eventually moving out of her love nest with von Sydow's Frederick and going to Columbia.  The affair doesn't last long, but lasts long enough for Hershey to have a terrific breakup scene with von Sydow and for Caine to have some hilarious crises-of-conscience (Caine is playing the Woody surrogate almost better than Woody is playing the Woody character in this film).  Wiest's Holly eventually meets a man (Sam Waterston) that she falls for, but he dumps her for her frenemy April (Fisher), but uses that inspiration to eventually write a great screenplay, and she discovers finally the talent she has been searching for the whole movie.  And Mickey ends up being the film's comic relief-after he spends the first half of the movie in a tailspin because he thinks he has cancer (which turns out not to be the case), he tries to find the meaning to life, quits his job, and in the film's most hilarious scenes, tries out other religions (including Catholicism and exploring the world of the Hare Krishnas).  Eventually, because this is an Allen movie and what you expect can't come to pass (that he'll end up with Farrow, seemingly the lead though she's definitely part of an ensemble here, despite being the title character), Mickey ends up going out with Holly, and in the final scenes (and in an uncharacteristically happy ending), Mickey marries Holly and despite him being pronounced infertile earlier in the film, they have a child.

That's a lot to take in in one paragraph, and it makes the movie seem busy, but it really isn't.  It also takes time to really explore these characters in a way that Allen's films don't seem to do anymore (I'm not going to start yapping about how Woody's latest films aren't as good as they used to be, because that's what every critic who discusses Allen's films in retrospect does, but there's something to be said for the way that you are able to not only see all of the big cast, but truly feel their lives in this film).  Mickey, Hannah, Holly, Lee, and Elliot are all very realistic people-imperfect, lying, bargaining with their inner selves, and that's what makes them so interesting.  Allen's film unfolds as you get to see the dynamics between the characters, how it truly mirrors the way people's personalities change based on whom they are with, and how we are constantly trying to find something that might not exist, or perhaps we already have but just aren't willing to admit it.

The screenplay, and the wonderful camerawork (constantly panning over New York like someone gazing helplessly at its beauty), are the film's best attributes, but it would be foolish to ignore the rich acting on display throughout.  One of the odd things for me was that, despite Caine and Wiest getting the lion's share of the praise for the film, the movie truly is an ensemble piece, and every actor has their moment-Wiest gets probably best in show, but just barely.  You could tell me that it was Allen/Farrow or Hershey/von Sydow who received the nominations, and it'd be just as believable.  I have decided in these write-ups not to focus too much on the comparing and contrasting with the actors they competed with for the awards (as that will ruin the anticipation when we count down 1986 in the official ballot writeups), but I will say that both Caine and Wiest will be in the positive end of the write-ups.

I don't have too much more of a snap judgment to say-Allen's films tend to unfold on you, and you realize later the excellence on display in the film and the little nuggets and goodies he hid in the interplay between the characters (like how Hannah is both her parents favorite child, but clearly for different reasons), but I would love to hear from you (I know the comments button worked I checked it this morning)-what did you think of Hannah and Her Sisters?  Where does it rank on your personal Woody list?  Who was "best in show" in this ensemble film?  And on the subject of Oscar nominations, how many of the seven were deserved, and how many of them should have been kicked to the curb?