1990 Oscar Viewing Project

"It's the nineties, for God's sake," and indeed it is as we encounter our 34th Oscar Viewing Project (see links to the other 33 below).  The Oscar Viewing Project is now in its 2nd third (we'll likely never be below that at this pace, as I try to get through 5-7 of them a year), and we're entering the first year of what my brother & I refer to as our "wilderness period" of movie watching.  I was born in the 1980's, but the movies didn't become my life until the mid-1990's.  This was driven by a series of events, specifically watching my first Oscars at the 1995 ceremony (i.e. the Braveheart Oscars) on repeat after my brother & I taped it, the inclusion of AMC (and eventually TCM) in my parents' cable package, the advent of the AFI 100 Years TV specials, the discovery of Entertainment Weekly at our school library, the opening of a standalone video rental place in my town, my parents letting me watch PG-13 movies, and my mom instituting Tuesday night movies, where she would take my brother & I (regardless of what was showing) to the 7 PM showing (i.e. the G/PG/sometimes PG-13 slot) while my dad had golf night, and so pretty much every week in the summer from roughly 1995 to 1998 we would watch a movie.  This gave me a pretty extensive vernacular with what was going on in the world of movies, and generally meant I had seen 20-30 films from the calendar year by year's end.

From 1990-1994, though, it's a weird spot because these are not "classics" that I had to seek out or have no memory of watching in real-time, but were really when movies were still just a "normal" thing for me, not something I was obsessed with and made my entire personality.  In 1990, I definitely watched at least two movies (The Rescuers Down Under and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) in theaters, and so I have at least some context for this year in real-time, even if the bulk of these movies are me watching them later at home.  By 1995, Oscar-related films like Apollo 13 & Babe I'd seen in movie theaters, and had known they were going to be Oscar nominees beforehand, and so the early 1990's feel like a weird time of catchup for me as a teenager, a feeling that has stretched well into adulthood.

I give you this preamble in part because this is a personal journey of Oscar exploration, and in part because I think it's good context.  The early 1990's are a time where I see some of these movies from a child's eyes (I remember my parents' VHS copies of films like Ghost & Pretty Woman, and secretly watching them when I was too young to understand what they were wholly about), and revisiting them as an adult has shifted some of my perspective on them, but in other ways they are immobile.  As always, to ground you in the films of the year, the domestic Top 10 at the box office in 1990 was:

1. Home Alone

2. Ghost

3. Dances with Wolves

4. Pretty Woman

5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

6. The Hunt for Red October

7. Total Recall

8. Die Hard 2

9. Dick Tracy

10. Kindergarten Cop

I have actually seen all of these movies, and to underline my point about growing up with them, I had seen 70% (save for #7-9) by the time I turned 16.  Honestly, you have to go Another 48 Hours at #14 on the domestic box office list to find a movie I haven't caught from the top box office that year.  While I have seen all of the Oscar nominees below, there are a couple of precursor contenders that I haven't seen yet, namely The Russia House, White Palace, and Q&A that I haven't caught yet, but plan on doing so before we get to the My Ballot.  

But now, it's time to go back to a time when Nelson Mandela was being freed in front of the world, the Hubble telescope was having us reach for the stars, Roseanne Barr was teaching us new ways to never sing on national television, and the entire nation was mourning the loss of Jim Henson.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Note: For the last time (likely ever) the Visual Effects category was not a competitive category, but instead was given to Total Recall as a special prize.  We'll have a proper category for this when we get to it for the My Ballot with five nominees, and it's worth noting that it's relatively accepted that Dick Tracy, Ghost, and Back to the Future, Part III were shortlisted for this but none of them got nominated (all of which I've seen as well), but I want to note that Total Recall was seen by me for this project, and I generally was impressed with the visual effects, particularly the way that they used makeup effects toward the end of the picture. 

Picture

1. GoodFellas

2. Ghost

3. The Godfather, Part III

4. Dances with Wolves

5. Awakenings

The Lowdown: Let's begin with me saying that 1990 is, collectively, one of the first years I ever saw all five of the Best Picture nominees (I've had this lineup completed since before I graduated high school, which was a while ago), and also a year where (both for Oscar and in general) I don't love the movies themselves as much as others.  The glossy movie star-driven blockbusters that would become the decade's calling card hadn't started yet, and we don't have some of the best prestige work that I enjoyed in the 1980's.  Of these films, it's an easy call for GoodFellas, one of the best films of Martin Scorsese's career.  Ghost ages better with reappraisal, and Godfather 3 is not as bad as its critical reputation allows, but GoodFellas is an easy champion.

Director

1. Martin Scorsese (GoodFellas)

2. Stephen Frears (The Grifters)

3. Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Part III)

4. Barbet Schroder (Reversal of Fortune)

5. Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves)

The Lowdown: It's weird to think about now, but at one point in time Martin Scorsese was basically the Hitchcock or Kubrick of his era-a man who was constantly nominated for Academy Awards but never was able to win any of them.  Meanwhile, I'm giving him his third statue for the OVP (again, links below) for the really incredible way that he upended the gangster flick after decades of hero-worship of it through the Godfather pictures (which of course in this case he competed alongside).  I will also acknowledge I have some respect for Dances with Wolves, but you're going to find out they do not extend to Kevin Costner's involvement in the film (and this ain't its final 5th place finish).

Actor

1. Richard Harris (The Field)

2. Jeremy Irons (Reversal of Fortune)

3. Gerard Depardieu (Cyrano de Bergerac)

4. Robert de Niro (Awakenings)

5. Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves)'

The Lowdown: A very odd lineup, and not a strong one (this isn't Oscar's fault...my My Ballot for 1990 is going to be very weird unless I start discovering some stronger stuff in the upcoming viewings...this is much more a year for actresses).  Oscar went with Jeremy Irons, and honestly this wouldn't be the worst thing that ever happened for the OVP-Irons is a really good actor, one who somehow only got one Oscar nomination despite being in the AMPAS wheelhouse (British, handsome, classy, constantly in prestige fare), but I'm going to go with Harris over him.  Harris's part is a bit more theatrical, but it also has a stronger build, and he's also batting in a lesser movie while still excelling.  The rest, even Robert de Niro, don't really need mention.

Actress

1. Anjelica Huston (The Grifters)

2. Kathy Bates (Misery)

3. Meryl Streep (Postcards from the Edge)

4. Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman)

5. Joanne Woodward (Mr. and Mrs. Bridge)

The Lowdown: While I will own that I'm not inspired by 1990 as a whole, that doesn't mean that I don't have moments, and this is one of the best Best Actress lineups Oscar ever pulled together.  Any of these women would be a winner, and I wouldn't be stunned if my My Ballot looks a lot like this-even Woodward in fifth place is doing a lot of strong work.  I ended up going with Huston over Bates (a controversial choice, I know) not because Bates isn't splendid (one of the best Oscar upsets), but because Huston nails this part so well that I have long been obsessed with it.  The interiority in her work, the way that she nails the animal instinct of that final scene...she's honestly never been better.  I'm aware this means that Bates may never get an OVP statue from me, but...that's why we decide this in a vacuum, and I prefer Huston in a vacuum.

Supporting Actor

1. Joe Pesci (GoodFellas)

2. Andy Garcia (The Godfather, Part III)

3. Bruce Davison (Longtime Companion)

4. Al Pacino (Dick Tracy)

5. Grahame Greene (Dances with Wolves)

The Lowdown: Joe Pesci is one of those truly spectacular actors who rarely works...but when he does, it always felt like an event.  In 1990 you've got him not just nailing the fiery persona behind GoodFellas but also playing the funniest henchmen outside of a DC Comic in Home Alone.  Davison is subtler than I would've expected given the subject matter (his final scene is the best in the movie) and I actually think Andy Garcia brings a hot-headed style to Godfather III (and no, this is not just because I palpitated every time he was onscreen...Andy Garcia in Godfather III was a formative experience for a teenage John watching this on VHS for the first time), but they just aren't in the same hemisphere as what Pesci brings to his doomed mob hitman.

Supporting Actress

1. Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost)

2. Annette Bening (The Grifters)

3. Lorraine Bracco (GoodFellas)

4. Diane Ladd (Wild at Heart)

5. Mary McDonnell (Dances with Wolves)

The Lowdown: While I didn't go with the consensus choice for Best Actress, that won't be the case here.  Whoopi Goldberg owns Ghost, giving us a lesson in comedy, and totally nailing the frequently cliched role of "best friend to the leading lovers" that has long been the bread-and-butter of the romantic genre.  I do really like Annette Bening, particularly the glossy over-her-head feeling she gets the further The Grifters goes (without ever totally telegraphing it), and Lorraine Bracco has strong moments even if she's pitched a little to the hilt in some scenes of GoodFellas, but like Oscar said-this is Whoopi's year.

Foreign Language Film

1. Cyrano de Bergerac (France)

2. The Nasty Girl (Germany)

3. Ju Dou (China)

4. Journey of Hope (Switzerland)

5. Open Doors (Italy)

The Lowdown: For me, this is a pretty tight contest between France & Germany.  I liked elements of Ju Dou, but honestly Raise the Red Lantern a year later leaves a much longer shadow.  Cyrano is more conventional, a space we've gone to before, but this is also my favorite adaptation of Rostand's story, and it doesn't have the not-always-successful narrator tricks of The Nasty Girl, even if the latter has a more compelling story (and honestly, a better lead performance).

Adapted Screenplay

1. GoodFellas

2. The Grifters

3. Reversal of Fortune

4. Dances with Wolves

5. Awakenings

The Lowdown: Adapted Screenplay goes to the crooks, and the two films I pretty much universally love of this bunch: GoodFellas and The Grifters.  There's something wonderful about The Grifters, a movie I find I champion more than most do, as it strips down some of the best elements of the neo-noir (the sex, the deceit, the ability to have a non-Hays Code ending) and creates something that feels fresh and calculating, but I can't deny GoodFellas in the end, the extremely rare screenplay so well-written it even makes the narration work.

Original Screenplay

1. Ghost

2. Metropolitan

3. Avalon

4. Alice

5. Green Card

The Lowdown: A pretty middling field, even if none are objectively bad.  I'm picking Ghost not just because it's the best, but also because it takes a really challenging genre to make without it turning camp or cloying (the romantic drama-fantasy) and really makes it sell (it's also genuinely funny).  Metropolitan is the most sophisticated (I was stunned to find out it's not based on a play or novel), and part of me wants to go with it but I think its ending doesn't work at all, and neither Avalon nor a weak default nomination for Woody Allen really compare to the Unchained Melody of Ghost.

Sound

1. Dances with Wolves

2. Total Recall

3. Days of Thunder

4. The Hunt for Red October

5. Dick Tracy

The Lowdown: We're shifting into the Oscar era for Best Sound where we are very much valuing the big, action-film even over the prestige fare of the giant epic (Dances with Wolves is the only epic in this bunch, and it's not without its battle scenes).  I actually really like what the team does with Dances with Wolves, between the Civil War beginnings to the way that it adds elements of "the last western" realism to the scenes with Costner off finding himself, all while beautifully bringing in that lush John Barry score.  Total Recall and its futuristic & impressive battles would also have been a good idea, but I think I'm ready to give a statue to Oscar's Best Picture winner here.

Sound Editing

1. The Hunt for Red October

2. Total Recall

3. Flatliners

The Lowdown: It's a running joke with Oscar that he tends to, when it was a separate category, always think first of submarine movies when it comes to Sound Effects Editing (look at the history of the category-it pops up way more than you'd think), and to some degree I agree with him.  The water effects, constant claustrophobia, & many buttons & levers of The Hunt for Red October are really done and a large part of what builds the suspense, even if the space age adventures, and especially some of the final scenes in the dying planet of Mars in Total Recall hold their own.

Score

1. Dances with Wolves

2. Home Alone

3. Avalon

4. Ghost

5. Havana

The Lowdown: I feel like a lot of these OVP Score contests from the 1970's through the 2020's is a battle of "to John Williams or not to John Williams" and this is a particularly tough one as I adore the score to Home Alone (and honestly Avalon or Ghost would be a good winner here too...there's only one true dud in this lineup).  But John Barry's score to Dances with Wolves is just a perfect piece of music, and adds the best parts to a movie I really did not care for overall.  It deserves the W.

Original Song

1. "I'm Checking Out" (Postcards from the Edge)

2. "Somewhere in My Memory" (Home Alone)

3. "Sooner or Later" (Dick Tracy)

4. "Blaze of Glory" (Young Guns II)

5. "Promise Me You'll Remember" (The Godfather, Part III)

The Lowdown: You know that line that I said above about how movies have connections to your childhood you can't really escape.  For me, one of the few true memories of childhood, specifically around Christmas, that I need to bring back every year is hearing "Somewhere in My Memory" playing in the background.  It's also a movie that reminds me, more than maybe any other, of my little brother as I know how much he loves Home Alone, which gives it a nostalgic necessity I really cherish.  I'm judging on a scale (and honestly all of these movies are good), and for me "I'm Checking Out" is better (and better-used in the film) so I'm giving it the trophy, but it's tight and you should expect both to end up in the My Ballot.

Art Direction

1. Dick Tracy

2. Hamlet

3. The Godfather, Part III

4. Cyrano de Bergerac

5. Dances with Wolves

The Lowdown: Honestly, a really solid lineup (there are no losers in this bunch, even if I won't repeat all of them with my My Ballot).  I tend to like the Mel Gibson Hamlet more than most (for the record, people turned on this one well before they turned on Gibson), and I think the castles & work here is really beautiful.  But Dick Tracy is so inventive, it's impossible to deny-the comic book lights, the way that it feels at once like it's springing from a dime novel AND a 1940's Hollywood set, despite relatively modern makeup & visual effects surrounding it-and all that color!  Glorious!

Cinematography

1. Dances with Wolves

2. The Godfather, Part III

3. Avalon

4. Dick Tracy

5. Henry & June

The Lowdown: Leave it to those crazy pervs in the Cinematography branch to totally go for a film as banal as Henry & June just because they tastefully shot most of the sex scenes so well.  That random silliness aside, this is really a battle between the increasingly aged & sepia-hued glories of The Godfather, Part III and the gorgeous expanses of Dances with Wolves (points are due for the way that Avalon feels of another time though).  I would not be opposed to giving it to the third Godfather film (and lord knows Gordon Willis deserved a competitive Oscar at some point), but it's hard to argue with the glories of the West.

Costume Design

1. Hamlet

2. Cyrano de Bergerac

3. Dick Tracy

4. Avalon

5. Dances with Wolves

The Lowdown: Hamlet has been cited three times (to date) for Best Costume Design, and like 1948 (see link below), we are giving it the gold medal here (1996's version with Kenneth Branagh is still unseen, but don't worry...we'll get there eventually-every one of these contests I do I become more & more determined to truly finish this project...also fun fact within a fun fact-I have been to Elsinore in my world travels, and thought it was breathtaking).  For me, the biggest competition is the period costuming in Cyrano.  I think some of the comic book costuming in Dick Tracy is a bit silly, and Avalon doesn't stand out, but the gorgeous 17th Century decorations of France were on-par with 14th Century Denmark, but not quite enough to conquer to the monologuing Dane.

Film Editing

1. GoodFellas

2. The Godfather, Part III

3. Dances with Wolves

4. Ghost

5. The Hunt for Red October

The Lowdown: I feel at this point like a broken record-GoodFellas was the best, and somewhere behind it is Godfather III and Ghost.  I will own, given its really rough reputation as a movie, that Godfather III being in second here is no accident.  I think a lot of the problems with it are casting (Sofia Coppola, apologies, but you are the weakest link...and George Hamilton is not a strong substitute for Robert Duvall), but the editing works-we get a really strongly-structured story, one that feels inline with the originals even if it isn't that level of classic (like, say, GoodFellas, which basically invented a new type of editing with its cocaine-inspired manic nature).

Makeup

1. Dick Tracy

2. Edward Scissorhands

3. Cyrano de Bergerac

The Lowdown: It feels weird to end in Makeup, not Visual Effects (I believe this is the only time we'll do this as we're alphabetical and Makeup has been a category for a much shorter time than Visual Effects), but I'm glad we're doing it with two icons of the category.  There are only winners between the garish brilliance of Dick Tracy and the transformative genius of Edward Scissorhands (honestly, Cyrano ain't bad either), but I'm going with Dick Tracy both because there's more characters to be in awe of and because it feels so in-tune with the glorious silliness of a comic strip, rather than needing to take itself too seriously.

Past Oscar Viewing Projects: 1931-32, 1948, 1957, 1964, 1972, 1981, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

2024-25 Saturdays with the Stars Recap

Debbie Reynolds & Audrey Hepburn, two of
our stars this year

It took longer than I expected, but we have finished up our sixth season of Saturdays with the Stars.  I will be honest-I don't entirely know whether or not this will be our final season.  I have two ideas rolling around my head for a theoretical seventh season (I do love this series...along with the My Ballots, it's my favorite thing I do here), both of which would be interesting, but I also am respecting that I chose to step away from longer-term blog commitments for a reason, and to some degree I'm making more of that time (exercising more, watching more OVP movies, reading considerably more), while other writing projects I've not yet gotten a good routine around in the way I used to have for this blog.  If we do do another season, it won't be until January, so we will for sure be getting a few months off regardless as I attempt two writing projects in the meantime.  I am unequivocally glad that I decided to finish this season up, though, regardless, as I don't love an unfinished project, and this had been bugging me.

One of the things that I'm struck by this season is that, for a large part, the movies this season were not as well-received by me as our past five years.  Part of this is my self-imposed rule that I don't repeat films I've already seen.  Some of these women have been in great movies, occasionally (like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill) in movies that I would happily name-check as all-time favorites.  But I will also own that the title of being "America's Sweetheart" means that, even more than our second season focusing on sex symbols, the public limits how much risk the studio is willing to take on you.  With the exception of Sally Field, none of the women we talked about this month were able to have the same level of financial success when they were America's Sweetheart as they would after they would free themselves of that title, and thus while there are definitely good performances...they aren't as frequent.  I did still see some great work (and great movies), but I will own that none of the 12 films that I saw this year looks like a future medalist in our My Ballot Best Picture category (at best, it'll be one of the other titles that fill up the ten-wide Best Picture field), and only a couple of the performances will likely end up as My Ballot nominees for acting.  Still, there's more to life than awards, and there's lots of fluff & fun to recommend here.  Below, find my superlatives from our sixth season of Saturdays with the Stars.

Favorite Performance from Each Star 

January: Mary Pickford, Sparrows

February: Shirley Temple, Curly Top

March: June Allyson, The Glenn Miller Story

April: Audrey Hepburn, The Nun's Story

May: Doris Day, The Pajama Game

June: Debbie Reynolds, Mother

July: Annette Funicello, Beach Party

August: Sandra Dee, Gidget

September: Mary Tyler Moore, Ordinary People

October: Sally Field, Norma Rae

November (but really August 2025): Julia Roberts, Mystic Pizza

December (but really September 2025): Meg Ryan, Joe Versus the Volcano

5 Favorite Performers (Alphabetical, and based solely on the films we watched as a collective & not on the rest of their careers)

June Allyson

Doris Day

Sandra Dee

Audrey Hepburn

Julia Roberts

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Sally Field, Norma Rae

Audrey Hepburn, The Nun's Story

Mary Tyler Moore, Ordinary People

Debbie Reynolds, Mother

Mary Pickford, Sparrows

12 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Babes in Toyland

Beach Party

Courage Under Fire

The Glenn Miller Story

Love in the Afternoon

Mystic Pizza

Norma Rae

The Nun's Story

Ordinary People

The Poor Little Rich Girl

Sparrows

Two Girls and a Sailor

Top 12 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Stars...and Yes, Alphabetical)

Frankie Avalon, Beach Party

Josh Brolin, Flirting with Disaster

Jimmy Durante, Two Girls and a Sailor

Timothy Hutton, Ordinary People

Tommy Kirk, Babes in Toyland

Hattie McDaniel, The Little Colonel

Jimmy Stewart, The Glenn Miller Story

Donald Sutherland, Ordinary People

Elizabeth Taylor, Little Women

Bobby Van, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis

Denzel Washington, Courage Under Fire

Ed Wynn, Babes in Toyland

Who is the Next AFI Life Achievement Honoree?

Francis Ford Coppola winning the AFI statue
from past winners George Lucas & Steven Spielberg

With the recent passing of Robert Redford, an interesting trivia topic comes up, one we've talked about on occasion on this blog but not in a few years.  Redford, screen luminary, movie star extraordinaire, film festival pioneer, & Oscar-winning director, has always felt like the oddest person to never win the AFI Life Achievement Awards, one of the highest honors for an actor or director, to the point that I have long-wondered if he just didn't want to accept (it's hard to imagine it was never offered to him).  With his death, though, it invites the question of who will be the next person to win the AFI Life Achievement Award, and I thought it'd be fun to make a Top 10 list of the people I think are likeliest to be next.  Before we get to the list, I came up with a list of criteria that usually hint at who will be the next AFI Life Achievement Award winner.

Age: The average age of a winner is roughly 70, though that's definitely an average and we have seen a pretty wide range of ages winning this (i.e. don't count someone out like Francis Ford Coppola, the  most recent winner, who took it at 86 in April).  19 of the winners have been in their 70's, which is by far the most common age group to have won in, and no victor has been older than 90 (top in age was Lillian Gish) or under 46 (Tom Hanks was the youngest, and that win was criticized enough that I doubt they go for someone that young again).  As a result, bonus points to anyone somewhere between about 65 and 79, though obviously they could and have leaned outside that age range.

Occupation: The award is open to anyone in the film industry, but like most honors, it's more geared toward movie stars.  70% of the winners have been principally known for acting, and all but one of the remaining victors have been film directors (the sole person who was neither was John Williams, and there's really no living behind-the-scenes person who could rival Williams in terms of public perception, so it's going to be a movie star or a director).  The film directors who did make it are extremely well-known, just as famous to the public in recent years as a movie star (think George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg), so don't count on aging directing superstars like Mike Leigh or Ridley Scott, as they likely aren't famous enough.  They're also not American which brings us to...

Geography: This is the American Film Institute Award, and while that title doesn't preclude anyone, it sure helps if you're American.  92% of the winners were Americans upon the time they won (this includes people who enjoyed dual citizenship like Elizabeth Taylor, Nicole Kidman, and Sidney Poitier), which is potentially why foreign-born icons like Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, & Laurence Olivier never won, and likely why figures such as Anhtony HOpkins or Sophia Loren (who otherwise would have been shoo-ins) haven't taken the honor yet.  The four foreign-born figures who did win (Sean Connery, David Lean, Julie Andrews, and Alfred Hitchcock) don't really have a lot in common, so it's hard to find some commonality to one person getting in if they aren't American other than a lot of fame.

Oscar History: If you're going to be taking the AFI title, it helps (a lot) if you're an Oscar winner.  78% of all of the honorees were at the time of their victory winners of at least one competitive Academy Award, and another ten were nominees (two of which, Henry Fonda & Martin Scorsese, would win competitive Oscars post their AFI ceremony).  The only person to have never been nominated for an Oscar and still win the AFI is Steve Martin, someone you'd be hard-pressed to find an obvious corollary to today.  This pattern has gotten even stronger in recent years-85% of the past twenty recipients were Oscar winners (excluding Martin, George Lucas, & Harrison Ford).  So it's likely that the next person to take the AFI will have won a competitive Oscar.

Gender: The ceremony seems to be trying to correct this in recent years, but it's still very much a boy's club at the AFI.  78% of all winners have been men, and the ceremony has never honored a woman who was solely or principally known as a behind-the-scenes figure (women like Shirley MacLaine, Barbra Streisand, and Diane Keaton have all directed films and won the AFI, but all three made their names in movies as actors).   I also wouldn't read a lot into the last winner being male...it doesn't feel like a tradeoff situation as a rule (i.e. the next could also be a man).

DeMille/Kennedy: There are at least two other awards (other than Oscar) that are a strong indicator of whether or not someone will take the AFI trophy-the Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Kennedy Center Honor.  58% of all winners of the AFI were also DeMille winners and of those who were alive to receive it (the Kennedy Center Honors started last of the three honors, in 1978, so John Ford was dead by the time they rolled around despite having already won the AFI), 70% of the AFI Award victors also won the Kennedy Center Honor.  24 people have pulled off all three.  While the AFI has occasionally led the field (ie someone won it there before they picked up other honors, like Steven Spielberg or Elizabeth Taylor), it's a pretty strong indication if you're primarily known for film and you win one of these trophies that you're going to win one (or both) of the others.  One could make a sincere argument that the list of people who have taken the DeMille or Kennedy Center Honor without also having an AFI is particularly short right now, so AFI may be forced to add a new name to the roster next year.  Of the 16 living DeMille and/or Kennedy Center victors (without an AFI) who have meaningful cinematic contributions, almost all of them have something stopping them from taking this leg of the Cinematic Life Achievement Triple Crown (I started calling it that years ago...and it has not caught on).  There is one non-American (Sophia Loren) and one American more commonly known for citizenship in a different country (Anthony Hopkins).  There are figures with major contributions to cinema but who are more known for TV (Dick van Dyke, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, Billy Crystal) and music (Cher, Bette Midler), and then there are a few figures due to health or antipathy to such things might not show up at all (Joanne Woodward, Woody Allen).  There's also the new stain on the Kennedy Center Honors due to the heavy involvement of President Trump that might make it hard for Sylvester Stallone to get this award given he won with that asterisk next to his name.  That actually only leaves five figures who could be considered real contenders that AFI hasn't picked yet, four of which I'll list in my Top 10, and the fifth of which I'll cite in the Honorable Mentions.

Fame: This is a hard one to quantify, but all of the winners have to be famous, and tend to still be extremely well-known when they won.  This has become even more pertinent in recent years.  Arguably the last time someone who wouldn't have been a household name still the year they won was Robert Wise in 1998, and in the past few years we've seen actors who are very active in modern filmmaking like Diane Keaton, George Clooney, and Denzel Washington take the trophy, so I suspect that the winner next year would either be still revered or quite frankly be someone whom you'd expect to be getting top billing on your local marquee still.  This means that names like Ellen Burstyn, Sissy Spacek, Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, or Goldie Hawn, names that probably have earned this kind of distinction but aren't really household in the same way as Clooney, Streep, & Washington, are going to struggle to get a citation without some sort of revival.  This ceremony is funded by advertising revenue, and as a result they need a bigger name for ratings.

With all of that said, here are my guesses as to who the Top 10 contenders for the trophy are.  Sound off in the comments if you have predictions as well!

Honorable Mentions: Lots of options here, but seven names that come to mind are Anthony Hopkins, Robert Downey, Jr., James Cameron, Ron Howard, Eddie Murphy, Ralph Fiennes, & Jessica Lange.  All of them have debits, ranging from a curmudgeonly persona off-screen that might preclude such an honor to not having a strong enough filmography to not being American, but these are names I wouldn't be shocked get into contention.  I will note that in the past when I've done this prediction list I missed future winners because I didn't know they'd be having a moment (i.e. I had Coppola as someone whose time had likely passed until Metropolis came out and he seemed to make a point of wanting to get these honors on his resumé before he died or to remind people that movie won't be his epitaph), so some of these might be contenders, but I don't see them being immediate threats.

10. Tim Burton

It feels weird not to list a single person primarily known as a director on this list, even though directors rarely win this award, and the concept of the celebrity-director is increasingly passé, but more than Cameron, Howard, or even Quentin Tarantino, it feels like Tim Burton is the kind of guy that gets in with AFI.  Inevitably, he's going to get an Oscar moment at some point, and that will invite conversations about his singular filmography.  In many ways Burton's personality feels at-home here.  He's a California-born director, and similar to someone like Mel Brooks (a past winner) he has made or advanced the careers of a lot of stars (such as Johnny Depp & Winona Ryder) who haven't really had a moment with the AFI, and this would be a way of acknowledging that very successful segment in Hollywood.  Call it a hunch that he could win this.

9. Sally Field

A more conventional choice would be Sally Field, a recent Kennedy Center Honoree, and an actress who has been doing a lot of the "I'm a legend" rounds in recent years (not just taking the Kennedy Center Honor, but also the National Medal of Arts and the SAG Life Achievement Award).  Field is also well-regarded (it helps if you're popular), and has had a diverse career as a two-time Academy Award winner who has gone back-and-forth between populist hits and art-fare.  Also, and most critically, she is one of the rare stars of the 1970's & 80's who still works regularly in major projects and is known to a new generation of moviegoers in a way that, say, Faye Dunaway would not be that hasn't won this yet.  In some ways Jessica Lange makes more sense (she also has had television success in recent years), but for some reason she doesn't seem to be getting these types of awards (and with Trump in office, it's doubtful she'll get help from the Kennedy Center), so I will continue to bet on Field.

8. Viola Davis

You could make a sincere argument that Davis shouldn't be on this list.  In terms of leading work in films, she has  the most recent and arguably most scant filmography of these artists.  But there's a sense that Davis, one of the great talents of her generation, was cheated out of a longer career due to Hollywood's inability to give leading roles to Black women, and one wonders if that contributed in part to her recent Cecil B. DeMille Award (don't look at me like that-name another actor with as short of a filmography as Davis has had as a leading star that has won that award).  Only three Black actors have ever won the AFI Life Achievement Award (Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, & Denzel Washington), and none of them have been a woman.  I think Davis makes sense here, particularly with the recent passing of Cicely Tyson, and it's more a question of if, not when, she'll win.  But she's rated lower as I think they make her wait just a few films more before they give her this statue (but it's coming).

7. Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt's wildly successful F1 (can you believe it made over $600 million?!?) earlier this year confirmed what we all know about him-he's one of the last movie stars of his era, someone who can still actually open a movie without creative IP attached (albeit he had the world's largest sport attached, but that's another story).  Pitt's problem is going to be less about his filmography (given his stature in the industry and his long career, it's hard to begrudge him this statue) and more so that Pitt is a bit of an online pariah right now.  That doesn't matter as much in Hollywood (see how he starred in a massive hit movie earlier this year), but advertisers don't want to touch him in an era of a boycott-heavy electorate, and the thorny allegations in his divorce with Angelina Jolie make me think that they might wait a few years to see if things cool down with him (this could also be the case with Johnny Depp & Ben Affleck, who I didn't list on this countdown, but obviously feel in the wheelhouse of someone who would win this).

6. Matt Damon

Pitt's Ocean's Eleven costar Matt Damon feels far more likely to win.  One wonders if they'd consider doing a pair between Damon and his childhood best friend Ben Affleck, but of the two I think that Damon, with his squeaky clean off-screen persona would be an easier sell.  Damon is actually old enough to win one of these statues now (for those wondering if I'm crazy for putting him on here), just a few years north of potential future contenders like Reese Witherspoon and Leonardo DiCaprio, and I think is a serious threat to take this, though I partially believe that he'll get the DeMille first, mostly because they tend to like younger and they love getting movie stars to show up.

5. Jeff Bridges

Robert Redford for many years was my go to answer for "who is the weirdest living person without an AFI Life Achievement Award."  With his death, that title passes to Jeff Bridges.  Bridges is such an odd exclusion from this list I constantly have to remind myself he's never won-he's a movie star from way back (and further back still if you remember he's a NepoBaby), an Oscar winner, and has a fame that means different things depending on how old you are, which is also the sign of someone with a robust filmography.  Bridges is certainly the type of person who should have an AFI Life Achievement Award (it will be a miss, similar to Redford, if he never wins), and if I was asked to unilaterally give this out to someone next year, he'd be my choice.  But his inability to win even when he could've gotten it 10-15 years ago makes me wonder if he's demurred, or isn't really on their radar.

4. Samuel L. Jackson

Bizarrely, Samuel L. Jackson has never won any of the three major Triple Crown Awards, though he did recently get an Honorary Oscar.  Jackson is a ubiquitous movie star, perhaps not to his credit (it's worth noting that Michael Caine never won any of these three prizes either, mostly because he had so much crap to go with the jewels in his filmography), but Jackson is such a big star it feels wrong that he doesn't win this award.  In many ways, between his forays into countless major franchises (Star Wars, MCU, Jurassic Park, XXX) to his position as a muse for both Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee he is the prototype for how to navigate the IP era, so you have to believe they know they should pick him, particularly given the embarrassingly low number of Black actors who have won this prize.

3. Tom Cruise

The Top 3 are not a question of if, but when, for the victory.  All three are 1990's movie stars who have stayed relevant into the 2020's (sometimes for television, sometimes in the case of #3 for mining his filmography for legacy sequels), but they are all too famous to never win this award.  Cruise is third both because he is about to win an Honorary Oscar (and in my opinion, likely to win a competitive one next year too, which makes the Honorary statue feel like a waste when it could've gone to, say, Catherine Deneuve who needs it more), but Cruise has graduated beyond the tabloid toxicity that once nearly wrecked his career (i.e. another reason they'll likely wait on Brad Pitt), and has become the savior of the movie theater industry.  The ageless screen star probably doesn't like that he's now at the age where you win lifetime achievement awards, but it'd be nice if he won it while some of his earliest costars (like Dustin Hoffman & Jack Nicholson) are still around to give it to him.

2. Julia Roberts

Another ageless movie star that feels like she's too young to win this, but has entered that era is Julia Roberts (our Star of the Month last month!).  There's more urgency around Roberts to win, in part because she's clearly the Queen of the 1990's movie stars (you could see a world where, say, Sandra Bullock or Demi Moore also win this statue at some point, but not before Julia), and also because she seems to be itching to do this again.  In recent years she's been working more regularly, appearing in films that might gain a reputation (even if it's a bad one) like Luca Guadagnino's latest, and clearly wants to cement her place as one of the last great movie stars before IP took over Tinseltown.  Roberts, in a similar fashion to Cruise, also wants to get this statue while all of the actors whom she starred opposite early in her career are still with us (as sad as it may seem Richard Gere is 76, Dustin Hoffman in 88, & it's unlikely most of her older costars in Steel Magnolias stay around much longer)...this would be the time to give it to her.

1. Jodie Foster

But I'm going to put someone who has the DeMille (unlike Julia & Tom) at #1.  Jodie Foster doesn't have as plentiful of a filmography as Roberts & Cruise (and isn't famous in the same way anymore), but her two Oscars and recent successful run on True Detective add a timelessness to her star persona that you can't really rust.  I also think it's noteworthy that she's a feminist icon, and a film director (and would be the first openly queer person to win the award).  As I stated above, no woman has ever won this award primarily for being known for directing, but several have histories with directing, and Foster would add to that list.  She's also 62, so just a few years shy of the prime age that wins this award, and giving it to her early is hardly a moment that will age poorly (no one really focuses on winning too early if it was someone who was always destined to win).  If I had to bet on who wins next, I'd put my money on her.

Eat Pray Love (2010)

Film: Eat Pray Love (2010)

Stars: Julia Roberts, James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis, Billy Crudup, Javier Bardem

Director: Ryan Murphy

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 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 Julia Roberts: click here to learn more about Ms. Roberts (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In Notting Hill, there's a memorable scene (possibly the best scene) of Julia Roberts saying "one day, my looks will go, they will discover I can't act, and I will become some sad middle-aged woman who looks a bit like someone who was famous for a while."  In real life, Roberts got a happy ending (and her looks will likely never go-movie star beauty has more endurance than us mere mortals), marrying her husband of 20+ years Danny Moder in 2002.  But her career would never have the same sort of sparkle that it did in the years after her unmatched 1997-2002 run.  Roberts would get $25 million for Mona Lisa Smile in 2003, but the film didn't live up to the giant grosses of Notting Hill and Runaway Bride, and she would spend much of the next two decades alternating between forgettable mid-sized vehicles (Larry Crowne, Duplicity, Mother's Day, Money Monster), and attempts at prestige that went nowhere for her in terms of a return to the Oscars (Charlie Wilson's War, Secret in Their Eyes, and the best of her films/performances during this era, Closer).  While she did get an Oscar nomination in 2013 (for August: Osage County), Roberts, at one point the biggest star in the world, had to resort to category fraud to secure her nomination since it was felt she couldn't compete with costar Meryl Streep, an actress in a different lane than her in the 1990's, but by 2013 Streep had become a far more consistent box office presence.  Just two live-action films during this era can be called "true" hits, ones that would have fit in with her 1990's runs, both out in 2010-the much-maligned Valentine's Day, and our final movie with Roberts, Eat Pray Love, which would set off enormous conversation about the film itself, and would become shorthand for a specific type of "rich white woman finding herself" motif in the years that followed.

(Spoilers Ahead) Eat Pray Love is about the spiritual awakening of Liz Gilbert (a real-life journalist played by Roberts) who decides that the unrest she feels in her marriage to Stephen (Crudup) is too much, and as part of the divorce (and a recent breakup with an actor, played by Franco), she leaves her life in New York City, upending herself financially, and moves to a series of destinations (Italy, India, & Indonesia) where she can try to find meaning in her life.  In these places, she finds friendship, life, adventure, experiences, and food (so, so much food), but until Bali, when she finally opens herself up to a man named Felipe (Bardem), she doesn't admit that what she needs is a willingness to take a risk again, to feel open with another person.  In doing so, and getting married to Felipe, she finally resets the clock, and lives more fully.

You'll notice that I didn't write as much about the plot of Eat Pray Love as I normally do in these reviews, and there's a reason for that-for a film that is 140 minutes long, not a lot really happens.  Sometimes this isn't a bad thing-there are moments in this that are just about watching the simple pleasures of life like a thoughtful meditation or eating a plate of pasta with friends, that gives you a sense of what Liz is trying to get out of this travel.  As someone who is going to go on a trip to Europe in a few weeks (and am, like Liz, both really hopeful that it will give me some new perspectives as well as honestly terrified about taking a leap, by myself, into a place I don't know and into locales where I don't speak the languages), I can understand this.  One of the hallmarks of Eat Pray Love was that it did market a sort of romance about travel that you still see today in lifestyle shows on Netflix and Food Network.  The movie frequently plays with the concept of "cultural appropriation" without really acknowledging that as a concept, but it also does so in a way that at least feels celebratory of those cultures...this is truly about trying to learn about yourself by seeing (and respecting the world).  Liz does not pretend she is an expert in the lives of any of the people she meets, just that she's better for having met them...which feels less like cultural appropriation to me (which this movie has been accused of) and more like cultural appreciation, which I think is a fairer categorization.

But the movie doesn't have much to do beyond that, and in being so long (and in making Liz's journey so central to the story) it falls flat.  Roberts, in her early forties here, looks and acts as beautiful-as-ever, radiant in every moment, but no one else matches that charisma (including the dialogue).  In a sea of potential leading man, neither Franco, Crudup, nor Bardem seem worthy of Roberts herself (even if they might be good enough for the less impressive Liz, who is unusually indecisive for a woman headed into the fifth decade of her life).  Not even a short part for Viola Davis (just off her first Oscar nomination and about to become a movie star in her own right) makes much of a difference here.  The film looks great (putting 3-time Oscar winner Robert Richardson behind the camera can have that effect), but it's empty when you think about it for longer than a minute.

Roberts, as you will know, is still working.  In 2022, she starred in her first non-ensemble romantic comedy since 2011 with George Clooney in Ticket to Paradise (another movie that looks great but needed a much better script), and will be taking on her most interesting-looking role in years in Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt later this fall.  What's in store is a question mark for an actress that perpetually redefines herself (even though she'll always be the exact same Julia Roberts to some audiences, that twinkling waitress they fell for in Mystic Pizza).  Next month, we're going to conclude our sixth season with the woman that spent all of the 1990's as Roberts' chief rival for the title of America's Sweetheart, one whom the media was far kinder too, but unlike Roberts, when she fell from grace, she wasn't able to recover.

Conspiracy Theory (1997)

Film: Conspiracy Theory (1997)

Stars: Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, Patrick Stewart

Director: Richard Donner

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Julia Roberts: click here to learn more about Ms. Roberts (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

You'll notice above that Mel Gibson got top billing over Julia Roberts, and that's not a mistake, nor is it sexism.  Headed into 1997, Gibson was the far bigger star of the two.  Gibson was finishing up a decade-long run as one of the biggest stars in America, including nabbing a pair of Oscars for the box office smash Braveheart, and was indisputably one of the most bankable actors in Hollywood.  Julia Roberts, as we discussed last week, had not had a proper hit since 1993's The Pelican Brief.  But that was about to change in 1997, when Roberts would stage one of the most impressive runs in Hollywood history.  You could argue, quite frankly, that Conspiracy Theory isn't a good enough example of this era, but because these movies are so ubiquitous it's the only one that qualifies for this series because it's the only one I haven't seen.

It started out with the romantic scheming of My Best Friend's Wedding, a huge comeback vehicle that out-earned the far more expensive Speed 2: Cruise Control which opened a week earlier (starring Roberts' then rom-com rival Sandra Bullock).  In the years that followed, she would continue to invest in the bread-and-butter that had launched her stardom, alternating between female-driven dramas and romantic-comedies like Stepmom, Runaway Bride, Notting Hill, and 2000's Erin Brockovich which finally won her an Oscar.  Roberts would come out swinging after securing an Academy Award with a trio of hits in 2001 (The Mexican, America's Sweethearts, & Ocean's Eleven).  Nine hit movies, most of them liked by critics, in the span of five years...America's Sweetheart had come back from potential footnote status and was once again the most bankable (and highest-paid) actress in Hollywood.

(Spoilers Ahead) But we have a movie to discuss, and it's a weird one in this list, though it does put Roberts in a romance with a big-name leading man.  Jerry Fletcher (Gibson) is a taxi driver who spends his days spouting crackpot theories to his ambivalent customers, and then goes home to a claustrophobic apartment filled with locks, newspaper clippings, and countless copies of The Catcher in the Rye (side note-I am in love with what they do with Gibson's apartment in this movie, and think it does SUCH good work in helping you get to know a sometimes underwritten character...kudos).  His only friend is Alice Sutton (Roberts), a Justice Department lawyer who has a soft spot for him because he once saved her life.  But a third of the way through the movie, he's kidnapped and tortured by Jonas (Stewart), a man channeling Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man who works for some covert organization we (along with Jerry & Alice) try to understand.

Here's the thing about Conspiracy Theory-it doesn't make a lot of sense.  The twists aren't particularly interesting decades later, when the idea of a man making up lies about the government feels less like that one uncle at Thanksgiving everyone tries not to sit next to and more like your congressman talking on Fox News.  Combine that with the role being played by Mel Gibson, an actor that, even if you're a fan of his (separate-the-artist-from-his) work, it's hard not to see the real life parallels that 1997 audiences wouldn't have caught yet, and you have a film that flirts with unlikable and convoluted for stretches of its (too long) runtime.

But I did like it, and I think that has to do with the way that the film centers around Roberts & Gibson's ample chemistry.  In a modern film like this, they'd be friends, but because a thriller starring two attractive people in the 1990's is going to have them kiss, we get a romance, and this makes it far more enjoyable.  Even if you struggle to root for Jerry, cheering on Alice is easy, and you learn to love that Jerry is the good kind of bad-for-her.  This is the sort of movie that doesn't get made today because it doesn't have established IP and we don't really cultivate brand name movie stars like Roberts & Gibson (not to mention that in a very sexless cinema, we've stripped out proper romance in everything from Snow White to Twisters unless absolutely necessary), but you watch this and understand why movie stars used to rule Hollywood: they provide an insurance policy for a script that doesn't really work (something that Iron Man or the Human Torch is never going to be able to do).

Mary Reilly (1996)

Film: Mary Reilly (1996)

Stars: Julia Roberts, John Malkovich, Michael Sheen, George Cole, Glenn Close, Michael Gambon

Director: Stephen Frears

Oscar History: No nominations

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 Julia Roberts: click here to learn more about Ms. Roberts (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about The Pelican Brief, which capped off an incredible run of near-constant hits for Julia Roberts following Pretty Woman.  But by 1994, the public was losing some of its initial infatuation with Roberts.  Part of this was due to the public feeling like her romantic life was too flighty (this was not a new criticism when it started to be levied at another global superstar, Taylor Swift, in recent years), with her reportedly jilting Kiefer Sutherland days before their wedding (something Roberts has claimed was not the case, and that their relationship was done long before the scheduled nuptials), and a short-lived marriage with country singer Lyle Lovett, ten years her senior (and not conventionally attractive in the way that Roberts is, something I only point out because it was a source of fascination at the time in the way that Arthur Miller & Marilyn Monroe was during their courtship).  Roberts was a mainstay on the front pages of supermarket tabloids, and everyone in America had an opinion on the actress in the way that Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor had endured decades earlier.

But celebrity always invites scrutiny of your love life, and studios would've been fine with this had Roberts been able to deliver cinematic hits during this era, but that didn't happen.  Her headlining work in Something to Talk About, Michael Collins, & I Love Trouble were all greeted with yawns by the public (there's a famous clip that recirculates every few years of Roberts talking to David Letterman where she discusses an anonymous leading man who has a tirade against a director, threatening to run him over with a car, that pretty much everyone agrees is Nick Nolte in I Love Trouble...a film whose legendary production where the two leads were at each other's throats is far more discussed than the actual movie itself which is weirdly the first Julia Roberts movie I think I saw in theaters).  Even all-star pictures like Pret-a-Porter and Everyone Says I Love You (directed by Woody Allen, who was practically getting his actresses Oscar nominations annually at this point) didn't make a peep with the public or awards bodies.  None felt more like a five-alarm fire more so, though, for Roberts than today's film Mary Reilly.  A notorious flop, perhaps the biggest of her career (it'd win her her second of three Razzie Award nominations to date, and the only one for an outright box office loser, likely only being spared a "win" because this was the year of Demi Moore in Striptease), it had people questioning her as a bankable leading woman, particularly as actresses like Meg Ryan & Sandra Bullock were rising to be far more consistent box office champs.  Today, before she gets her comeback, we have to talk about Mary Reilly.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Mary Reilly (Roberts), the young maid of Dr. Henry Jekyll (Malkovich), a kindly-but-enigmatic doctor who runs a quiet household staff and largely keeps to himself.  Dr. Jekyll takes an interest in Mary, particularly her scars which we learn later are a symbol of the sexual and physical abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her father (Gambon).  Dr. Jekyll has taken on an "assistant" and because she is in his confidence, Mary starts to run errands for him, frequently to a brothel owned by Mrs. Faraday (Close), which shocks but also arouses young Mary.  We soon learn that his assistant Edward Hyde (also Malkovich) is causing murder-and-mayhem all over London, eventually killing Mrs. Faraday when she attempts to blackmail him, but because of a curiosity (and lust) toward Mary, he has spared her, and she witnesses first-hand his destructive nature, and eventually learns the truth that both men are one-and-the-same, a science experiment gone horribly wrong (in a really weird CGI scene where a baby is seen crawling underneath Malkovich's skin).  The film ends with Mary, after confronting her father and realizing she can be freed of her own accursed childhood, leaving behind these two men, both dead at their own hands, possibly inspired by Mary's goodness, and going out keeping their horrible secret.

For those who are familiar with the classic novella by Robert Louis Stevenson (one of my favorites), you'll notice only a few similarities with the source material.  There are a few characters from that that stay here (not just the title characters, but also the stern butler Mr. Poole and Sir Danvers Carew, here played by future Oscar nominee Ciarin Hinds), but this is instead a direct adaptation of Valerie Martin's bestseller of the same name (in Stevenson's original tale, the maid character isn't even named, though in both film & novella she knows the true nature of Danvers Carew's murder).  This disappointment will be evident if you're hoping for something ghastly like that, as this movie is rarely scary, though it is grotesque.  It functions more as a melodrama in parts, with Mary never feeling particularly in danger, and more a pawn in a boring game of chess between dual melodramatic performances from Malkovich.

Roberts is badly miscast here, though one could argue not the worst performance in the film (that would be given by 8-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close, in a role so horrible you would be forgiven for thinking she was being blackmailed into undertaking it).  Roberts' Irish accent here sits alongside Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York, Tom Cruise in Far and Away, and Chris O'Donnell in Circle of Friends as one of the worst in cinematic history (that she did another Irish film in 1996, Michael Collins, proves her agent deserved to be fired).  She is dour, one of those dramatic actors who think that playing an introverted character means that you lose all charisma & grace, and plays Mary as if she's on novocaine.  It's a really bad performance, one I suspect Roberts undertook because she wanted Hollywood to take her more seriously as an actress and stop forcing her to do rom-com's, but as a result of doing this part, she basically would have to go back to playing the types of comedic roles that made her a star...but in a nice twist, this would work, and finally win Roberts the respect she felt the industry had denied her.  While other actresses that rose to fame alongside her like Demi Moore & Andie MacDowell couldn't seem to get their careers together in the wake of a mid-1990's slowdown, Julia Roberts was about to have one of the most impressive career comebacks in Hollywood history.