OVP: Ordinary People (1980)

Film: Ordinary People (1980)

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

Director: Robert Redford

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

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't Look Now (1973)

Film: Don't Look Now (1973)

Stars: Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland

Director: Nicolas Roeg

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90'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.

"Elevated Horror" is generally considered to be a new concept, or at least a concept that has gained fame in the past decade.  Films like The Babadook and Hereditary are considered to be classic examples of it, to the point where the movies were mocked in Scream V largely because they were seen as being "too fancy."  But "elevated horror" (I know some people hate that term, and it is pretty insulting to the movies that it clearly is trying to distinguish are "not as good") has been around for decades, as is evidenced by our movie today Don't Look Now.  Made in 1973, it was a horror-thriller that would score a series of BAFTA nominations across all major categories.  It was initially well-received, but in the decades since is considered to be a classic of the genre, and one of the best non-slasher horror films of the 1970's.  It also has maybe the most famous sex scene of the decade this side of Last Tango in Paris.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about John Baxter (Sutherland), an architect and his beautiful wife Laura (Christie) who are in Italy after the tragic drowning of their daughter Christine.  Both of them are grief-stricken, but they're trying to handle it in different ways, with John throwing himself deep into his work, while Laura is attempting to find ways of communicating with her daughter.  She does this through a blind medium that she meets, and slowly becomes enamored with this world, to the point where it puts a strain on her marriage.  Meanwhile, her husband has been seeing visions, possibly of his dead daughter Christine (who wore a red cloak).  As the film progresses, his visions increase, where he's even seeing Laura, who is supposedly in England, throughout the city of Venice.  He starts to suspect that it's his daughter trying to contact him, but when he goes to the medium, she warns him, but it's too late.  The visions that John has been seeing are not of his late daughter or of his grieving wife, but of his own future.  When he confronts a hooded figure in a cloak, it isn't Christine but a killer dwarf, likely the serial killer that they've been mentioning in background scenes throughout the picture.

I'll be totally honest here-the first hour or so of this movie I was in the middle.  The film was kind of slow, and while it was fascinating, I could feel my attention waning.  The look at grief, and how it either becomes an obsession or it becomes something you can no longer ignore is interesting, and Christie & Sutherland were both very good, but I was wondering why this was considered a classic.  However, in the last twenty minutes you realize the investment you've had.  You start to understand that John has basically been trying anything to avoid confronting his own mortality, the fact that his daughter will never return, and that his marriage can never be the same.  That he does this while also getting hacked to bits, ignoring everything everyone around him has said in hopes of avoiding his grief is twisted...made even more so by the fact that with him gone, Laura will undoubtedly never really escape her grief, giving herself over to the existing-between-worlds path of the medium.

The sex scene is unusual not just because of the graphic nature of it and how long it works, but because to begin with, it doesn't have a lot of connection to the plot (Gen Z would have a field day with this if it was released today).  But it looks glorious (Sutherland & Christie look gorgeous...glad they caught that for posterity), and it also gives us a lot of insight into these characters.  They were once a scorching hot, sexy couple, ones who had hours-long sessions in the sack.  By the end of the film, that passion has been replaced by despair, and it shows that they can never get back.  All sex scenes in movies are necessary because sex is part of our lives & should be seen onscreen as a result, but this one is impressive because it informs us about the characters themselves.

Past Horror Month Reviews

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, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream

The Burnt Orange Heresy (2020)

Film: The Burnt Orange Heresy (2020)
Stars: Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debicki, Mick Jagger, Donald Sutherland
Director: Giuseppe Capotondi
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Genre is a strange thing.  With film we see it in most movies.  Westerns, musicals, comedies...with these subjects we have some sort of expectation of where the movie might lead us.  I don't entirely remember when The Burnt Orange Heresy came onto my purview; I believe it was one of the movies that was playing in the Landmark Theaters that I love so much right before the movie theaters closed but after I was too scared to go to a theater (Emma, which we profiled recently, would also meet this classification), and its cast intrigued me.  However, I was under the impression for some reason that the movie was a straight-forward drama, perhaps a coming of age film about a jaded young man who is taught a life lesson in the arms of a beautiful woman & by a wise old man.  While watching the trailer gives a bit more clues as to what the film plays into, it definitely has enough trappings of one genre (drama) to trick you into ignoring that it's really another (thriller).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around James (Bang), an art critic with clear talent, but who spends most of his days giving lectures to tourists about the importance of art criticism.  He meets in one of these lectures Berenice (Debicki), a beautiful but enigmatic woman with whom he starts an affair (one of those "we won't speak about our pasts" style ones that only exist in the movies).  They are invited to the splashy home of Joseph Cassidy (Jagger), a ludicrously wealthy art dealer who has a proposition for James.  He knows that James, already a pariah in some circles of the art world due to embezzlement, has certified & forged a Modigliani painting that Cassidy recently sold to the Tate.  If James can't procure a painting from the reclusive but storied Jerome Debney (Sutherland), who lives at the edge of Cassidy's property, Cassidy will out him to the world, ensuring he will never reclaim his status in the art world, and likely end up in jail.

This does sound like the set-up to a good thriller, potentially a caper if necessary, or a feel-good film where Debney eventually takes a shine to James & James gains redemption.  But these things don't happen, and the movie takes a dark turn.  Debney, it turns out, seems to have been an accidental genius, with his "empty frame" being something that everyone over-read into, similar to what James warns tourists about in the film's opening scenes.  He's been tricking Cassidy into letting him live on his property, but he has created nothing, the muse still there but not the urge to paint, so he just mentally sketches a canvass.  Berenice appreciates this, charmed by the old man, but James realizes without a painting he will be outed, and so he burns down Debney's studio, stealing one blank canvass that Debney has called "The Burnt Orange Heresy," and forges the painting, pretending it's an original Debney.  When Berenice discovers this, he murders her, first by drowning (and when she miraculously lives through that, by blunt object).  Drowned, his evidence is gone, and Debney soon dies (with us assuming Cassidy might have helped), and we get a true juxtaposition in the film's final moments, with Cassidy now owning the "only Debney" in the world, even though it's a forgery, while Berenice's mother, getting a painting as a present from Debney (that Cassidy assumes isn't signed, but in fact is), holds the only real painting, hanging with magnets on her fridge, a portrait of her daughter from memory.

This all sounds cool, and it kind of is.  The twists are welcome, upsetting the format, and giving us a genuinely scary thriller.  It just...doesn't gel.  None of the characters save for Jagger's Cassidy (Jagger is not a good actor, and it comes across in his stilted line readings, but he does embody a megalomaniac well) makes sense, and the remaining actors aren't able to make sense of the script.  Bang's James is too mysterious, not giving us enough hints of the cruelty underneath, while Debicki's Berenice doesn't give enough hints of the innocent.  I get the difference between the two-James is a forgery, someone who is more vested in the story than in authenticity, while Berenice, who doesn't lie about who she is (and thus Debney rewards her with a real painting), is an honest representation, but the script doesn't give us enough hints of these actors, and neither are able to land underwritten characters.  Sutherland's Debney feels rife with cliches about an aging artist, obsessed with the world & not the art that made him famous, but like the film itself, engages with intellectual exercises that don't work.  The movie is arguably at its best for shock value, and I can't say I didn't enjoy the twists, but when you examine the finished project it feels incomplete.

OVP: Ad Astra (2019)

Film: Ad Astra (2019)
Stars: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland
Director: James Gray
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound Mixing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

In recent years, we've seen a plethora of space epics that take place closer to home.  Gone are film franchises (well, not gone, but alongside of in this case) like Star Wars and Star Trek, where we are venturing into galaxies unknown, and instead we see movies like Gravity, The Martian, and First Man, films that take place right outside of our front door, and feel within reach.  Ad Astra is another installment in such a trend, but it still manages to take us to worlds' unknown.  A film whose focus is on finding ourselves as we venture into the furthest corners of the solar system, Ad Astra is a gargantuan movie, one that feels like James Gray has crossed paths between the best of Christopher Nolan and the most coherent of Terrence Malick, to come out a provocative case study of one man's obsession with the truth, and another's need to observe the world he's been given.

(Spoilers Ahead) Roy McBride (Pitt) is the son of space legend Clifford McBride (Jones), a hero of the space age who when Roy was young, went off into space to try and find extraterrestrial life, but ultimately was lost, never to return evidence of such an encounter.  Years later, his son has followed into his footsteps, and is convinced by the government that his father is not, in fact, presumed dead, but still alive, at the outskirts of the solar system.  His ship is potentially causing surges back on earth, which are threatening all human life.  Roy must go to Mars to launch communication to his father, in a vain hope to stop him (or let him know that he is still alive and needs to be stopped).  However, Roy decides to go all the way to Neptune to meet his father, in the process becoming part of a solo mission after all of the people onboard attack him on command's orders.  Once he reaches Neptune, he discovers that his father was not a hero, but a man driven mad by loneliness who killed his entire crew, and despite years at the periphery of space, has not given up hope of finding alien life in the universe.  Roy tries to rescue Cliff, but Cliff doesn't want to be rescued and face what he left behind, and admits he never really cared about any of it, including Roy.  Roy lets his father physically and metaphorically go, and stops the surges, with him eventually returning to earth to share his father's data, that there is no other intelligent life in the universe, and reconnects with his estranged wife Eva (Tyler).

This is the basic plot of Ad Astra, but it's a film that's hard to summarize into just simple pieces, as the best moments of Gray's epic are actually just tiny little chapters in the film that show what life is like in a world where Earth, the Moon, and Mars are actually connected, and not just three different rocks orbiting the sun.  The scene where lunar rovers try to kill Roy for simply driving over their share of the moon, seemingly for no other reason than territorial violence, speaks to man's need to constantly control, even in the most remote of places.  And the shocking, bloody sequence with the baboons literally floating around in space, having murdered & overpowered the astronauts of their scientific expedition, is jaw-dropping in its intensity (and scary as hell).  Gray's film is gorgeous, but it also gives us a look at how alien worlds will still be so distant from our own.  The film's central tenet, at least in terms of Tommy Lee Jones's character, is the question of whether life exists beyond our planet; Gray shows here that even if it does, it will still feel out-of-reach and alien, impossible for us to properly connect with it.

The final scenes with Pitt & Jones are probably the best.  Pitt, so good at letting his gorgeous, expressive eyes and face do the talking for him with introverted characters, watches as the man he has modeled his whole life around falls apart before him, his stony visage crumbling as we learn he's a person who couldn't handle failure, or at least the answer "no" to his life's mission.  Jones is only in a small scene, but he's perfectly cast as Cliff, a man who couldn't handle the idea that all of space was just vast & cavernous, not filled with other creatures like himself.  Gray's message with Ad Astra is ultimately one of hope in showing it is Roy, not Cliff, who must continue on after this journey, even though Cliff's is the quest we as humans are obsessed with knowing.  Roy is there to show us that what we have on earth is precious enough that we should protect that even if it means that we don't know the answers of the universe.  It's an optimistic moment for a man who has not allowed himself any sort of emotion; everything you want in life is right here, you just need to allow yourself the vulnerability to find it.  Ad Astra is a gorgeous, sumptuous feast, but it's also about two men's journeys into the unknown, and the strength to come back not knowing the answers to the questions you sought to learn.

National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)

Film: National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
Stars: John Belushi, Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert, Tom Hulce, Stephen Furst, John Vernon, Verna Bloom, Donald Sutherland, Karen Allen
Director: John Landis
Oscar History: Hardly, though it still regularly shows up on "greatest films of all-time lists" anyway.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

One of the strange things about being a film fan is that you don't really watch movies chronologically.  I can see a movie like Stagecoach now, for example, and think it's a run-of-the-mill western, albeit one with an A-Grade cast, and not realize that it set the stage for hundreds of westerns that followed, and essentially turned John Wayne into one of the truly great movie stars.  The reality is that some films get borrowed from so ferociously that it's impossible to see them anew the first time you investigate them, which was the case for me when this past week I caught Animal House for the first time.

(Spoilers Ahead) For anyone over, say, 40, that is reading this blog, Animal House needs no introduction, and for anyone under the age of 40, you probably have seen Animal House over-and-over anyway, as it spawned dozens of movie stars in its wake (it's hard to imagine Adam Sandler, Jack Black, and Will Ferrell having the long careers they've had without John Landis' much-beloved film as a forerunner).  If you don't know the film's plot, essentially it's about the Deltas, a group of motley college frat guys who don't live up to the posh, WASP-y ideals that their rivals the Omegas aspire toward.  Two new pledges, Larry (Hulce) and Dorfman (Furst), join and suddenly find themselves becoming accepted for the first time in their lives (they play the nerd and the fat kid in terms of college movie tropes).  The movie's plot is a series of elaborate stunts and pranks, followed by debauchery of most kinds, all-the-while the Deltas are a foil for the Dean.  The film ends in a similar fashion to American Graffiti, a movie that it clearly is parodying in some respects, but instead of the surprisingly bleak way the title cards show how quickly youth fades in American Graffiti, here that profound moment is played for laughs, implying that Bluto (Belushi), the most outrageous of the characters, became a US Senator while Greg, the sycophantic president of the Omega House, ended up being a Nixon aide who was raped in prison.

This sort of humor (rape jokes and all), show that the film is extremely dated.  Even an Adam Sandler comedy couldn't get away with some of the film's most shocking elements (there's a scene where Hulce's Larry debates whether or not to commit date rape on a girl who passes out at a party).  These elements are jaw-dropping in the wrong sense, and proves the adage that comedies don't ever age as well as dramas, but there's still some scenes in the film that probably fall into the classic level, even if they've been parodied to death.  The movie itself has some terrific site gags, every-so-often breaking the fourth wall, and the central performances are good, particularly from Matheson and Belushi.  Matheson, whom I'd never seen in a comedic role prior to this (I'm really more used to him as the dour Vice President Hoynes on The West Wing) is surprisingly good as the cocky, handsome ladies' man who seduces everyone, including both of his rival's love interests.  While he's hardly a feminist (something none of the film could be accused of), you can see why he was cast and for the most part his role works as keeping him likable, when a lesser actor would have had to make him more sympathetic in order to maintain the audience on his side.

Belushi, though, stands apart as the best part of the movie.  Played as a combination of a secret genius and a warthog, his Bluto steals virtually every scene.  He gets top-billing, even though he's really more of a supporting player at the end of the day (very little of the plot ever centers around him), but honestly-you can see why legions of comedy fans were devoted to Belushi from this performance.  He has a raw, live-wire act that is impossible to turn away from and he is by-far the best part of the movie.  I don't know if the film deserves its place in the pantheon of great films (it's still a frat movie with very little to say and is very dated), but if it does it's almost certainly because of Belushi's performance.

Those are my thoughts on this much-celebrated picture-how about yours?  Overall, I enjoyed it more than I expected (I try not to be a genre snob, but college frat movie is not in my wheelhouse at all), but don't quite think it passes into the realm of classic, just popular.  But try to convince me otherwise below!

OVP: MASH (1970)

Film: MASH (1970)
Stars: Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, Roger Bowen
Director: Robert Altman
Oscar History: 5 nominations/1 win (Picture, Director, Supporting Actress-Sally Kellerman, Editing, Adapted Screenplay*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Seeing a classic for the first time is something that is a sight to behold, and quite frankly something I don't get to do very often anymore, particularly if I know in advance it's already a classic.  Most of the classics I've actually had a chance to catch by now in my movie-watching.  In fact, looking at the famed AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list, I only have four movies left to see (all of which we'll have reviewed here before the year is up).  So I went into MASH (or M*A*S*H, if you so choose) with a bit of nervous anticipation.  Would I love it?  Would my expectations be too high?  Would it be one of those movies that I gush on and on about or would it be a film that I simply relegate to the "it was okay" pile of the cinematic conversation?  Let's find out, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The thing I think that first threw me about the film, after tangential relationships with the hit show starring Alan Alda (I've seen a couple of episodes, but not enough to know anything other than Hawkeye, Radar, and Hot Lips' character names), was that the film felt grimier than I was expecting.  Perhaps forgetting that it was the 1970's and was filmed by Robert Altman, I was expecting something a bit glossier, a bit more in line with TV Land and not with an independent film channel.  The film gains from this, though.  Unlike other major war films of the era (The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now), we don't necessarily get a look at the realism of the war, but MASH is hardly supposed to be realistic-it's a farce of sorts, a comedy that isn't mocking previous films (like, say, Spy) but is simply going for straight laughs in its own Altman-esque world.

The film is by Altman and has to be called classic for at least a reason, so I am not going to sit here and tell you there aren't a few redeeming qualities to the movie.  The Altman-flow of the script, with actors talking over each other and in different directions is always jarring at first, and blissful when you see it working so well (Nashville is forever my favorite example of this, but none of his films have that much trouble achieving it).  The film is filled with characters, most of them memorable.  If a film is going to have a long shelf-list of actors, it's nice to know that they managed to create interesting side avenues with people like Robert Duvall's Frank Burns having tons of depth and interesting nuance.  The film rarely stops having a sterling script, even if some of the subplots border onto the offensive.

That's probably where my biggest issue with the movie lies.  It's finely written and directed, this is true, but the movie itself celebrates the jackassery of Hawkeye (Sutherland) and Trapper John (Gould) a little too much for my liking, particularly at the expense of the main female character Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Kellerman).  The film constantly wants to take Hot Lips down a peg for no real reason other than her gender, not only by giving her the nickname after a romantic dalliance with Duvall's Frank Burns is broadcast over the camp, but by consistently objectifying her, eventually watching her reduced to a faux shower stunt (where she is exposed naked for the entire camp to see) and to being a bouncy, idiotic cheerleader at a football game.  Honestly, the performance isn't helped by Kellerman, who plays Hot Lips as shrill and both uptight and randomly horny without any explanation for either, but she didn't get much to go by.  It's weird that this performance was cited for an Oscar nomination over anyone else in the film-perhaps it was the nudity (which was a pervy reason for the Academy, but not the first time they had done such a thing).

The sexism and the complete lack of empathy toward the main characters causes a disinterest as the film progresses, something that no amount of fine direction and writing is going to fix.  You need to care about the main characters, and I found nothing to like or really even hate in the main protagonists, so in the end it becomes something like a series of stunts, and the gravity of Hawkeye leaving loses all of its meaning in the final scene.

So while I see why this is regarded as a good film, a classic is a big stretch.  The film has aged miserably, and the writing/directing has been on display in far better pictures that Altman has made like Nashville and McCabe and Mrs. Miller.  These were my thoughts at least-I suspect a number of you have seen this iconic movie-what were yours?

Golden Globe Nominations ≠ Oscar Nominations, Part 1

The above statement should be obvious to anyone who follows the awards season with even a hint of regularity.  After all, there are ten lead performances nominated each year at the Golden Globes while there are only five at the Oscars, and at least one supporting performance almost always gets skipped in favor of a different performer at the Oscars.

However, I recently undertook a project (ie I was bored while watching Big Bang Theory reruns) and decided to list out all of the cinematic performances that the Golden Globes have honored through the years that didn't get a subsequent Oscar nomination (for the sake of my sanity, I stuck to the six modern film acting categories, and not to the "Best New Star" awards of yesteryear).

What I found was really interesting.  While it is a frequent occurrence where a performer is favored by the Globes, sometimes getting 6-7 more nominations from the HFPA than the Oscars, it is extremely rare for someone to rack up multiple Golden Globe nominations without also getting at least one Oscar nomination.  In fact, only eight performers have been nominated for four or more Golden Globe awards without winning at least one Oscar citation.

This smelled like a list to me, and so I'll be listing out the ten performers that have received the most film Golden Globe nods without also getting an Oscar nomination.  In order to break ties, I gave three points to a lead-drama, two to a supporting performance, and one for a comedic lead performance (and winning a trophy broke the tie after that).  Later this week, we'll investigate the far more frequent list of performers who have received at least one Oscar nod, but considerably more Globe nominations.

Honorable Mentions: Thanks to my tie-breaking, some three-time nominees got left out, ranging from classic movie stars like Tony Randall and Glenn Ford to modern stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Hugh Grant.

10. Emily Blunt (Tie)
Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Supporting Actress-2006 (The Devil Wears Prada)
• Best Actress (Drama)-2009 (The Young Victoria)
• Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)-2012 (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen)

Got the Closest On: This is arguable between Prada and Victoria, but I have to assume considering its awards haul in 2009 that it was The Young Victoria, when her best shot was taking out Helen Mirren.
Reasons She Missed: Yes, this is a good illustrator of how rare this is for a performer to miss on multiple Globe nominations.  Emily Blunt, with only three quick nominations before she turned thirty, is now in the top ten.  While Salmon appears to be a throwaway nomination in a rather weak year for comedies, the other two were at least part of the conversation.  I wasn't super-impressed with Blunt in The Young Victoria, but considering Oscar's preference for younger actresses, it's a bit odd that Helen Mirren got so much traction in 2009 (especially considering her recent win).  Blunt also had a shot with Devil, but she was not well-known then and it was going to be tough to throw out the scene-stealing Abigail Breslin (the performer who missed with the HFPA).

10. Donald Sutherland (Tie)
Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1970 (MASH)
• Best Actor (Drama)-1980 (Ordinary People)
• Best Supporting Actor-1998 (Without Limits)

Got the Closest On: For certain it was Ordinary People, a truly bizarre on-paper snub.
Reasons He Missed: I can explain the Without Limits miss (the Globes have always liked Sutherland, and occasionally throw a star a bone even if their film tanked), and MASH (comedy always has a tough time, even with a film as iconic as Altman's), but the Ordinary People snub is weird.  Yes, he's overshadowed by Hutton and Moore, but this film was universally adored by the Academy, and he's the only major cast member to not pick up a nomination.  Instead, the Oscars went with one of the actors they consistently like better than the Globes, Robert Duvall (in The Great Santini).

9. Raul Julia
Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Supporting Actor-1982 (Tempest)
• Best Actor (Drama)-1985 (Kiss of the Spider Woman)
• Best Supporting Actor-1988 (Moon Over Parador)

Got the Closest On: My gut is telling me that Tempest might have been the closest.
Reasons He Missed: Julia is now a largely forgotten actor, cut down in his prime, and is known to most movie audiences as Gomez Addams in the big screen versions of The Addams Family series.  Julia, however, had a strong run in the 1980's in cinema.  His 1982 snub was due to a combination of Oscar's love of men in drag (John Lithgow) and Robert Preston moving from lead to supporting from the Golden Globes to the Oscars, therefore securing a nomination for Victor/Victoria.  Kiss of the Spider Woman would have almost certainly marketed Julia as supporting nowadways (category fraud is more prevalent now), and he probably could have taken out William Hickey or Robert Loggia.  His final nomination came in a weird year for the Supporting Actor race, and since I know little of this race, I cannot tell if he was near a nomination or whether this was a Globe-honoring-a-favorite sort of citation.  If one of our awards show aficionados would like to shed some light on that race, I'd appreciate it.

8. Danny Kaye
Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1951 (On the Riviera)-Won the Golden Globe
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1952 (Hans Christian Andersen)
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1956 (The Court Jester)
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1958 (Me and the Colonel)-Won the Golden Globe

Got the Closest On: Not sure...probably none of them.
Reasons He Missed: Kaye is cheating a bit to include, as he did pick up a pair of Honorary Academy Awards, but I did want to acknowledge him, as he's one of the rare performers to have gotten four nominations in the Comedy category without ever getting cited for Drama.  The Court Jester is by far his best-known of these four films, but part of me thinks that he wasn't close for any of these.  Again, I'd love some discussion on this post, so share away in the comments if you have thoughts.

7. Carol Burnett
Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)-1972 (Pete n Tillie)
• Best Supporting Actress-1978 (A Wedding)
• Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)-1981 (The Four Seasons)
• Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)-1982 (Annie)

Got the Closest On: I'm going with Pete 'n' Tillie over A Wedding.  I'll get to why below.
Reasons She Missed: I kind of wish it was the 1970's again so I could get a gage of how big of a star Carol Burnett was at the time.  She could sell out Broadway, Carnegie Hall, had a top-rated TV series, and was regularly working in motion pictures.  She landed a couple of late-in-the-game nominations at the Globes (including for the ill-fated big-screen version of Annie), but her best shots were her first two nominations.  1972 was a strong and wild year for Best Actress (I love that Joanne Woodward got nominated for a film called The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds), and Burnett, along with Goldie Hawn in Butterflies are Free were probably on the hunt for a nomination against Maggie Smith in Travels with My Aunt.  Smith also potentially cost her a nomination in 1978, when she and Penelope Milford both managed nominations without being first cited by the Globes, but it's hard to feel bad for Burnett that year when you compare her to Mona Washbourne, a woman who has probably more precursors than anyone ever to not also win an Oscar nomination.  Washbourne's performance in Stevie won the NYFCC, LAFCA, National Board of Review, and Boston critics prizes, as well as Globe and BAFTA nominations, but due to a weird release schedule managed to miss at the Oscars.

6. Cameron Diaz

Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)-1998 (There's Something About Mary)
• Best Supporting Actress-1999 (Being John Malkovich)
• Best Supporting Actress-2001 (Vanilla Sky)
• Best Supporting Actress-2002 (Gangs of New York)

Got the Closest On: My guess is that it was Being John Malkovich, where she was basically guaranteed as the sixth place position.

Reasons She Missed: Some people just have bad luck.  Diaz was surprisingly close in 1998, but the Academy was still smitten with Emily Watson (and felt the need to skip Susan Sarandon after honoring her three years earlier).  1999 was a year with six names in the mix, and hers was the one that got cut (though she did score SAG and BAFTA nominations, so you have to know she was damn close).  In 2001, the field was thrown asunder after the SAG Awards threw names like Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, and Dakota Fanning into the mix, and then the Oscars went with the Globe nominees almost verbatim (except that they nominated six people, and Diaz was once again cut).  Finally, there was Gangs of New York, which was a throwaway star-loving nomination by the Globes, and it was likely Michelle Pfeiffer who was tousling with Queen Latifah for the final nomination, not Diaz.

5. Richard Gere

Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Actor (Drama)-1982 (An Officer and a Gentleman)
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1990 (Pretty Woman)
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-2002 (Chicago)-Won the Golden Globe
• Best Actor (Drama)-2012 (Arbitrage)

Got the Closest On: Most certainly Chicago, where he was definitely the sixth place, and kind of stunningly not the fifth place.

Reasons He Missed: With the exception of Chicago, he likely never had a shot.  Officer was a hit with the Oscars, but the Academy doesn't seem to favor romantic male leads.  Pretty Woman was the sort of easy nomination that happens when you're in a hit romantic comedy.  And Arbitrage is the sort of nomination that happens in the rare year where one of the Comedy/Musical nominees (in this case, two) is certain to be nominated for the Oscar.  Chicago, however, was at first a rather odd fit for Oscar, but after the Globe win and the surprise SAG nomination, it looked like Gere would be able to make it and get the fifth slot, but the Oscars love them some Michael Caine, and so Gere just missed his shot (perhaps his only shot-he seems like the sort of actor who never makes it, doesn't he?).

4. Scarlett Johansson

Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)-2003 (Lost in Translation)
• Best Actress (Drama)-2003 (Girl with a Pearl Earring)
• Best Actress (Drama)-2004 (A Love Song for Bobby Long)
• Best Supporting Actress-2005 (Match Point)

Got the Closest On: Lost in Translation, though 2003 in general seemed like her best shot.

Reasons She Missed: Yes, ScarJo is technically the fourth most snubbed Globe nominee of all time, which seems weird because she picked up these four nominations over the course of three years.  It's hard to believe that she didn't get a nomination in 2003, and it was mostly because someone (the studio, her publicist, or perhaps ScarJo herself) decided to get greedy and campaign her for both films, and then tried to have it all by committing category fraud that the Academy just couldn't back by going supporting with Lost in Translation.  Considering the randomness of the Best Actress category that year, I suspect a unified front would have gotten her over Samantha Morton or Keisha Castle-Hughes.

3. Steve Martin

Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1981 (Pennies From Heaven)
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1984 (All of Me)
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1987 (Roxanne)
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1989 (Parenthood)
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1995 (Father of the Bride, Part II)

Got the Closest On: All of Me, where he managed to also win the NYFCC Best Actor trophy, but was one one of only two men in the past thirty years to not win an Oscar nomination after taking the top prize at the NYFCC honors.

Reasons He Missed: Father of the Bride Part II aside, one could make the argument that any of these was within the reach of Oscar, but just couldn't quite make it.  Martin was the rage in the 1980's, hailed as a comedic genius, but unlike some of his high-flying contemporaries (Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg), he didn't go dramatic to grab his Oscar nomination.  At this point, I think there's still room for him to do it if he wanted to (he's still well-liked in the film community), but he's lost that edge that his films in the 1980's had, and I doubt he'll be able to make it without going with a sentimental, dramatic supporting turn.  His best shot was besting Albert Finney in Under the Volcano in 1984, but the loss at the Golden Globes coupled with Finney's continued losing streak probably kept him out of the competition.

2. Mia Farrow

Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Actress (Drama)-1968 (Rosemary's Baby)
• Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)-1969 (John and Mary)
• Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)-1984 (Broadway Danny Rose)
• Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)-1985 (The Purple Rose of Cairo)
• Best Actress (Comedy/Musical)-1990 (Alice)

Got the Closest On: Oddly enough, her first shot was probably the best, and had the Oscars known the legendary Farrow was going to have the career she would have, they probably would have picked her over Vanessa Redgrave in Isadora.

Reasons She Missed: I don't have a clue.  It's hard to believe that Rosemary's Baby, one of the great horror films and one of the few to gain the Academy's favor, didn't garner her a nomination (perhaps she was too known as a tabloid fixture at the time, considering she divorced Frank Sinatra that year).  The weirder thing is that, considering she made thirteen films with Woody Allen through the years, she somehow missed out on being one of the sixteen actors who received nominations for Allen films.  At this point, she rarely acts and doesn't have Woody to push her to a nomination, and so probably will never get nominated, but she had quite a run.

1. Jim Carrey

Golden Globe Nominations:

• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1994 (The Mask)
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1997 (Liar Liar)
• Best Actor (Drama)-1998 (The Truman Show)-Won the Golden Globe
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-1999 (Man on the Moon)-Won the Golden Globe
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-2000 (How the Grinch Stole Christmas)
• Best Actor (Comedy/Musical)-2004 (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)

Got the Closest On: The Truman Show, for sure.  Carrey's miss at the Oscars was the first time in 33 years that the winner in the Drama race couldn't parlay that into a nomination (and fifteen years later, it hasn't happened since).

Reasons He Missed: One could make the argument that Farrow deserves the top slot, since she arguably had a shot for all five of her films, but based on sheer numbers, Carrey earns this.  While three of his nominations (The Mask, Liar Liar, and The Grinch) were the sort that randomly show up at the Globes, the other three all garnered Oscar's notice, but not a nomination.  Man on the Moon had to have been darn close, but Matt Damon's Tom Ripley was probably the sixth place trying to take out Sean Penn, not Carrey.  In 2004, there wasn't actually a strong shot that Carrey would win for his Joel Barish, even though he was better than anyone that actually got nominated.  However, 1998 is unforgivable for the Academy.  Somehow The Truman Show managed to score nominations for Director, Screenplay, and Supporting Actor, but Carrey couldn't get in over Edward Norton (I know Carrey blamed Benigni, but it was Norton that was in fifth place).

And those are the Top 10.  Julia and Kaye are obviously never going to have this rectified, but what are your thoughts on which of the remaining nine could actually pull off a nomination (my bet's on Blunt and possibly Johansson, but what's your guess)?