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).

OVP: Apocalypto (2006)

Film: Apocalypto (2006)
Stars: Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Raoul Trujillo, Gerardo Taracena, Morris Birdyellowhead
Director: Mel Gibson
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Makeup)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Does anyone else remember when Apocalypto was being advertised for the first time?  How the trailers for it seemed confusing, as if Gibson wasn't willing to give any of the plot to the film?  It's weird to revisit this, and remember that at the time it was A) a big hit and B) Gibson was still a filmmaker who could command major box office (this was his followup to the gargantuan haul of The Passion).  Gibson, of course, has had a lifetime's worth of career problems in the years since, cancelled repeatedly (but still managed to get a Best Director Oscar nomination in the meantime-go figure), so revisiting him comes with a gigantic amount of baggage we might have had hints of in 2006, but would soon become central to his public persona.  Gibson doesn't appear in the movie (he hasn't appeared in one of his directorial efforts since Braveheart), but his fingerprints are all over it as you'll see below.

(Spoilers Ahead)  Apocalypto takes place during the Mayan empire, and is about one man, Jaguar Paw (Youngblood) who sees his entire tribe raped, destroyed, imprisoned, and murdered by a stronger tribe.  The captives are taken to a large city, though along the journey we see terrifying cliffs & a diseased girl who curses Zero Wolf (Trujillo), the leader of the tribe that imprisoned Jaguar Paw's people.  In the city, the women are sold into slavery, and the men are sacrificed on a bloody alter to the sun, though when Jaguar Paw is to be killed, a solar eclipse occurs, which stops him from being sacrificed.  Instead, he and the remaining men are used for target practice, and in the process Jaguar Paw escapes, headed back to his wife & son whom he left in a pit during the raid.  He is tracked as he goes back, but through ingenuity kills them by knowing the jungle better.  The climactic scene of the film, though, happens later when Gibson throws a curveball at the audience.

Before we discuss that scene, I want to talk through what we've seen already.  Apocalypto is the sort of movie that I would never watch again, even if I didn't hate it.  The film's acting is okay (too much two-dimensional emoting, especially from the villains), but the action sequences are impressively mounted, and Gibson definitely knows how to use every dollar in his budget by overcrowding and extending key shots in the film.  The movie, though, is upsettingly, nauseatingly violent.  This is the problem with all of Gibson's films post-Braveheart, where he is obsessed with human suffering onscreen.  He knows how to lens and construct a movie-his films, while basic in plot, make sense and this isn't just a cascade of fight scenes, but they're so gross to watch as they are just too indulgent in the human suffering angle, and I can only stomach so much of that, particularly when the film seems to be celebrating the violence.  The sound work here makes sense (it's the kind of film that would get nominated), but it's not impressive.  The mixing doesn't work for me-some of the dialogue is muffled in the crowd scenes to the point where it's difficult to hear, an unforgivable sin unless it's a key part of the plot, but the editing is better than the mixing (particularly during the marketplace scene).  The makeup might be realistic, but if the actual work is taking me out of the picture repeatedly, I'm not here for it.

That said, Apocalypto has one really unbelievable scene at the end of the movie that almost makes up for the rest of the picture.  Jaguar Paw is being chased by two more men in Zero Wolf's tribe, the last two, and as he keeps running he suddenly leaves the jungle, the first time we've really done that other than the scenes in the city.  Exhausted after having killed so many men, he collapses on the beach...and looks up in seeming shock.  The two men who are chasing him easily catch up, but also give up on their chase & look up at what Jaguar Paw is staring at.  In a great tracking shot, we see Spanish conquistadors on row boats, and in the distance billowy sales.  Jaguar Paw leaves to save his wife, while the other two men, so blown away by what is happening, forget their chase and just stare on into the suddenly populated sea.

This feels like the kind of shot that you'd want to build a movie around, and it almost makes Gibson's movie, had it not been for the abject violence of the first 90% of the movie, worth it.  It's a testament to how immersive Gibson makes the film that we don't see what is in hindsight an obvious twist coming, and the way that it's filmed, with the actors reacting in the same we would if we found aliens in our front yard (not in initial horror, but in sheer, utter shock) is smart.  It's a great scene buried in a paltry movie.

OVP: Director (2016)

OVP: Best Director (2016)

The Nominees Were...

Denis Villeneuve, Arrival
Mel Gibson, Hacksaw Ridge
Damien Chazelle, La La Land
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea
Barry Jenkins, Moonlight

My Thoughts: We are not going to do a full week devoted to directors like we did with Best Actress last week, but we are going to do something equally momentous-by Friday, we will have finished 2016, a project that we laid out as long ago as July of 2019 (still, sadly not the longest series we've done for an OVP ballot).  If you are curious about past contests, either from 2016 races or for past Best Director matchups, I have very kindly linked all of them below!  But now, let's get into these guys, and we're going to start with Kenneth Lonergan.  

Lonergan is, weirdly enough, the most-nominated person of these five directors (this is Villeneuve's only nomination, the other three nominees have been cited three times each), though it's his first time for directing.  Manchester we've talked about a lot over this series, but the direction isn't really where you initially head with the picture-it's more a writing or an acting triumph.  That said, the way that he lays out some of the scenes, and how he keeps certain scenes that would be "big" with a less subtle director back so he can have a bigger payoff later, shows how meticulous he is with his directing.  Manchester brings the stories of these people to life, making them feel flesh-and-blood but also sadly relatable, as if we project our own personal tragedies on them.  Lonergan's steady hand behind the camera might not cause this, but it certainly allows it to blossom.

Moonlight could also fall under the guise of an acting or writing triumph rather than one for its director, but it doesn't, and I don't think it even got those sorts of arguments during 2016 because of Jenkins' mesmerizing ability to keep the movie flowing.  Moonlight doesn't allow you to just sit back and wait for what happens next-it instead jolts you ahead, as life does, even when you're not ready for it.  Jenkins makes his elegant, introverted drama have the speed of a roller coaster, and it's a winning, risky combination that I'm glad the Academy paid tribute toward.

Jenkins chief competitor on Oscar night was young Damien Chazelle.  La La Land could never be confused as a writer's or actor's film-this is Chazelle's vision through-and-through.  It's just unfortunately messy.  Chazelle frequently borrows from movies like The Band Wagon and An American in Paris, but it feels more like copying than homage, as if he's presenting this as his own ideas he's giving so little spin on the originals.  Scenes in La La Land are choppy and unnecessary (the entire subplot with John Legend is weirdly off-beat for the movie), and it genuinely feels like an ode to musicals made by a guy who doesn't like musicals.  I've come around on Chazelle's talents with First Man, but here he whiffs badly-arguably the worst aspect of La La Land might be its misguided direction.

Denis Villeneuve is another director who I have had both hits and misses with, but Arrival is by-far my favorite of his films, and the one that I think he directs with the most confidence in what he's doing.  Villeneuve creates a gorgeous vision with Arrival-it has distinct flavors and moods that lend itself well to an auteur styling, even if it's in the trappings of a big budget SciFi adventure.  I love the way that he sells the big scenes, like Louise's first communication with the aliens, and the scenes toward the end where we realize the truth of the plot.  Villeneuve creates a sophisticated, sharp movie that leans into his best instincts.

And then we have Mel Gibson.  It's hard to talk about Gibson now considering his public persona has shifted from sexy family man to heavily-drinking anti-semite.  If this was a ranking of who I think is the better person or who I would want to have dinner with, Gibson would be an easy call for last.  But if we're going based on simply the film in front of us, Gibson is a director who understands story & how to bring a blockbuster to life.  Yes, the first twenty minutes are a snooze, but his action sequences are memorable and well-executed, as is how Desmond can live his pacifist truth, but it won't shield him from the tragedies of war.  There are a lot of problems with Hacksaw overall, but it's hard to fault Gibson in the director's chair so much as other decisions with the story.

Other Precursor Contenders: We get five nominees a piece from the precursors, a rare situation where all of the fields we look at match Oscar in their contender count.  The Globes gave their trophy to Chazelle, and bumped out Villeneuve in favor of Tom Ford for Nocturnal Animals (gotta love those celebrity directors!).  The DGA also went with Chazelle, but instead of Gibson they went with Garth Davis for Lion (who was my prediction for sixth place, for the record, even if Ford got higher profile nominations).  And finally at BAFTA, we saw both Gibson & Barry Jenkins sit out in favor of Ford and Ken Loach (I, Daniel Blake).

Directors I Would Have Nominated: I would have given a nomination for sure to Pablo Larrain, who has been so good so often lately, and had his best work so far in Jackie.  I also would lean heavily into two of my favorite directors working right now, Martin Scorsese (Silence) and Richard Linklater (Everybody Wants Some!).  Scorsese makes what might be his best film this century (give or take The Irishman) with Silence, and keeps a three-hour movie intoxicating, while Linklater gives you a bunch of hot baseball players & suddenly has you reconsidering your youth and its fleeting nature.
Oscar's Choice: While Best Picture was a nail-biter, I have to assume that Chazelle got this in a walk over Jenkins.

My Choice: Jenkins deserves the win here-he has not just a good movie, but one that is hard to craft & has a directorial vision.  Follow that with Villeneuve, Lonergan, Gibson, & Chazelle.

Those were my thoughts-how about yours?  I feel like more people have moved over with me on Team Jenkins than were on Chazelle's at the time, but anyone want to make the case for La La Land?  Am I crazy for not putting Gibson last here (based solely on the film's direction, not the man behind it)?  And who would Davis have bumped if he had made the cut?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2016: Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2016

Past Best Director Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015

OVP: The Year of Living Dangerously (1983)

Film: The Year of Living Dangerously (1983)
Stars: Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt
Director: Peter Weir
Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Supporting Actress-Linda Hunt*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I recently decided to get a little more aggressive at the Oscar Viewing Project (I've been promising myself "this is the year that I get the 'films remaining' list below 2000 for so long I've decided I need to just rip the bandaid off and make it happen), and as part of that I've been checking out movies from my local library system.  I will admit with a great deal of shame that I don't think I've actually checked out materials at my library in at least five years, despite the fact that they're a great resource both for articles on this blog (expect me to do a bit more of that, especially with Saturdays with the Stars research in the future), and for movies if you want to see them-seriously, your local library almost certainly has a plethora of great film options, including movies that aren't even available for rental on Netflix DVD anymore, including 1983's Best Supporting Actress winner The Year of Living Dangerously.  I figured I'd start this renewed friendship off with a bang (watching this means that I have officially seen 80% of all Best Supporting Actress-winning films), and so I caught this long-alluded Oscar winner.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Guy Hamilton (Gibson), an Australian journalist in 1960's Indonesia hunting for a "big story" (and with it, his big break).  He immediately meets Billy Kwan (Hunt), a Chinese-Australian dwarf (I googled, and based on what I found this is a politically correct term here-if this isn't the case, I mean no offense whatsoever and will take this as a learning moment, but just wanted to call that out so that I am being accurate in describing Hunt's character) who doubles as a photographer, and has multiple connections within the Indonesian government.  Billy takes a shine to Guy, and starts to elevate his work & credentials within the government, getting him closer to his big break.  He also introducers him to Jill Bryant (Weaver), a gorgeous assistant in the British Embassy whom it seems like Billy has a both friendship and an unrequited love thing for, and Guy starts an affair with her.  She gives him information that the Chinese government was arming the PKI, potentially putting in danger the lives of any foreign journalists in the country (read: Guy), but he is more concerned about getting the scoop than about saving his own life (and their romance).  He finally has an epiphany when Billy, who is the most moral character in the film, denounces Guy and tries to stop the Sukarno regime through protest, only to be murdered.  Guy eventually learns his lesson, fleeing the country after the failed coup attempt, not caring about the story but instead boarding the final plane out of the country with Jill.

The movie is...dated.  That's the best way to put it, quite frankly.  This is a problem for a lot of issue pictures of the late 1970's and into the 1980's, when you frequently cast impossibly gorgeous movie stars (Weaver has never looked more ravishing & while Gibson was pretty much sex-on-a-stick at the time, it's still absurd to see him in this kind of prime) as ordinary people, and inundate your audience with a lot of very specific cultural references.  This isn't entirely Weir or the screenwriter's fault-it's likely that in 1983 people would have been more aware of the Indonesian government's recent history, but coupled with antiquated ideas about career, it's harder to understand why, say, Guy going after a major story was such a betrayal to Jill & Billy.  After all, don't we want to value the truth?  Wouldn't caring about the lives of people in this country and bringing the truth about what is happening to them to the world stage be pretty noble?  Yes, Guy's also in it to advance his career, but this back-half thought that you need to prioritize your romance over your civic duty feels weirdly against type for either Classic Hollywood or Modern Hollywood, and the film's politics are muddied as a result.

The movie's sole Oscar nomination (and win) was for Linda Hunt's Billy Kwan (to date, the only nomination Hunt has received, though she still works regularly, currently one of the stars of NCIS: Los Angeles).  Hunt's nomination was historic at the time for being the first-time ever that the Oscars gave a trophy to an actor playing a different gender than they identified with in real life (John Lithgow had been nominated for playing a woman just the year before, but lost to Louis Gossett, Jr.).  What's more outrageous about it is that there's no wink to Hunt being a woman in the performance; at the time this was only her second movie, and so she wasn't at risk of being recognized, and it's entirely possible that audience members didn't know that she was in fact a woman until the end credits.

The performance is strong and measured, much like a lot of Hunt's work, informed by intelligence and inarguably the movie's acting highlight.  There are times, though, that Hunt's performance hedges into over-sentimalizing Billy or trying to understate him to make his complicated relationships with Guy and Jill (does he find them both attractive-is he in love with both of them?) as well as his career aspirations less complex to not steal focus from the leads.  It also has to be said that Hunt's nomination is as a Chinese-Australian man, but Hunt is white in real life.  The film's use of yellow face reads as problematic now, but honestly...it should have read as problematic then.  While we have seen in the past year (with incidents involving politicians like Ralph Northam & Kay Ivey) that blackface was still done in the 1980's, it's hard not to imagine that the team didn't know better in 1983.  Celebrating Hunt's sensitive work is more difficult to do knowing that it's still part of a history of discrimination against Asian people, and the fact that it doesn't appear any Asian actors (male or female) were on the shortlist for the role (white actors David Atkins, Wallace Shawn, & Bob Balaban were all considered for the part instead) makes it all the more insulting.  Still, this is a fine performance even if it's a problematic one, and I'll try to judge it as such when we eventually get to the 1983 OVP write-ups.

The Road Warrior (1981)

Film: The Road Warrior (1981)
Stars: Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Mike Preston, Max Phipps, Vernon Wells, Emil Minty, Kjell Nilsson
Director: George Miller
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I sometimes have to remember that while I am at heart a film fan more than a literary fan (it's just a fact), I do love books, and perhaps most importantly, came to them first.  As a result, I will probably always be a bit more driven by story than I am by visuals onscreen, more awash in what is happening that what it looks like.  Don't get me wrong-I'm as big of a sucker for visuals as the next guy, and occasionally there are people who can push me past narrative structure being loose or nonexistent (looking at you Terrence Malick), but if there isn't enough plot in a film, I tend to lose interest even if what's happening onscreen is arresting.  This was the case with The Road Warrior, a film that is impossible to deny its importance even if I must confess I didn't love it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in the wake of the previous film's events, with Gibson's Max (now armed with the memory of a dead wife & child) roving across the outback in a hyped-up death mobile, living off of scraps and whatever spare gasoline he can find (while still looking very much the impossibly handsome movie star).  He chances across a man who leads him to an oil refinery that is being watched by a group of nomads (because apparently in the apocalypse people largely forgot how to speak English), who are at war with the Marauders, headed by Lord Humungus (Nilsson) and his psychotic henchman Wez (Wells, who is clearly intended to be gay even if that's not mentioned as he's obsessed with his silent partner The Golden Youth, a leather-clad twink).  The film progresses with Max convincing the people to let him take on Lord Humungus, and in a series of battles we see him do just that, with Wez & Humungus both dying at his hands before he rides off into the desert, never to see the tribe again.

The movie itself has less narrative structure than the first film (as if that were possible), with Max getting little in terms of character progression other than what he came armed with from the first film.  This causes you to really just want to invest in the actual visuals of the picture, which are arresting.  Each character comes with a distinctive motif, but rarely do we learn anything in terms of back story, instead forced to fill in the story for certain characters.

This leaves us with a lot of surface-level pleasures, as there are wonderful car chases and inventive action sequences, and Wez in particular is a horrifying, unknowable villain in the best sense of the word.  But we also don't care enough about the main characters themselves.  Villains can get away with ambiguity, but you need someone to ground the film in some capacity, someone knowable for the audience to relate toward.  This isn't intended to be Max, though, as he has entered cinematic myth at this point rather than being a character we should understand (like Furiosa in the future Fury Road, still my favorite installment in the series, who grounds Hardy's unknowable Max).  Without that central figure, one who can appear human to the audience, I feel like this just becomes a visual feast, something that would almost work better as a silent film.  It's impressive, but I didn't really connect with the movie, so I'll land on 3-stars as I respect what is happening here even if it wasn't for me.

Mad Max (1979)

Film: Mad Max (1979)
Stars: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve Bisley, Tim Burns
Director: George Miller
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's unusual for me to see a sequel to a film without having seen all of its predecessors.  I generally like to think of a film series in the same way I do a television series, and even if I have a rough idea of where we started, I think it's important to see all of the installments.  However, when Mad Max: Fury Road came out I definitely upped this particular series on my Netflix list, and over the next few weeks I'll be catching both this and The Road Warrior as a way of finishing up the 1999 Entertainment Weekly "100 Greatest Films" list.  After watching the initial film, it's kind of shocking to see where this universe graduated to, as the first film, while definitely bizarre, has a grounded-in-reality aspect to it that disappears by the time we hit Fury Road, thanks in no small part to the low, low budget action that is on-display here.

(Spoilers Ahead) Between this and Fury Road, I am left to understand that the actual plots of Mad Max films are largely ancillary to what is going on on screen, but here goes.  We're in a post-apocalyptic future, one where motorcycle gangs rape and pillage the countryside, and where cops are the only line-of-defense for the people, most of which are not actually present for this film (it's the rare police film that doesn't show much of the actual people they're defending).  Max (Gibson) is one of the best cops, though he's one that wants to quit the force to spend time with his girlfriend Jessie (Samuel) and their infant son Sprog.  He eventually does quit after his partner is burned alive, but he and his girlfriend are pursued by a particular gang of roving motorcyclists, headed by the Toecutter (Keays-Byrne).  After the motorcyclists brutally kill Jessie and Sprog, the film becomes a revenge fantasy, with Max killing off every member of the gang one-by-one.

Gibson is the only actor in this cast who eventually became famous from these films (though Keays-Byrne did play the villain Immortan Joe in Fury Road, albeit one that is seemingly in no way connected to the Toecutter).  At the time he was a virtual unknown, with his only work of any note being on the soap opera The Sullivans.  This film made him a celebrity, and it's easy to see why.  Gibson today is easily dismissed because of his heinous offscreen politics, but for two decades he was a movie star for a reason-he is swaggering, game, and consistently magnetic with little character development as Max, and I can't wait to see him in The Road Warrior, by all accounts the superior of the two films.  It also has to be said that there's a strangeness to the fact that the eventually quite bigoted Mel Gibson almost certainly caused a sexual awakening in countless young gay men as Max, clad head-to-toe in leather and looking almost impossibly handsome with his pillowy lips and cold blue eyes.

The movie is violent, with brutal rapes happening at least twice in the picture (in what I'd assume would be odd for a movie made in 1979, the sexual assaults are perpetrated against both men and women), and it's a bit crude.  The budget for it was very light (which, with its $100 million gross at the time, made it the most profitable movie ever made until Paranormal Activity), with most of the sequences clearly involving mannequins or dummies, but Miller's prowess behind the camera cannot be denied, and the chases sequences are shockingly good for such a tiny amount of cash.  That said, the movie itself feels a bit strange to me, and not in the way I was hoping.  I always think when you're universe-creating that you walk a fine line into being indulgent, and frequently a movie that cares little for the plot veers into madness, with the bad guys becoming interchangeable and the violence being glorified.  The movie initially deeply polarized critics (as with most things that become popular, this has been white-washed through history and it's now hailed as a landmark film), and I kind of get it. The movie does, occasionally, seem to worship the rape and murder onscreen, and kind of glosses over Max's sadistic revenge options, eventually culminating in him killing one man in a Rube Goldberg-style device that involves him trying to outrun a lighter/pile of gasoline by cutting off his leg with a hacksaw (for real, this is how the movie ends).  As a result, I didn't like it even if I can admire the technical prowess Miller needed to have to get this movie made at all.

The Good, the Bad, and the Insane at Last Night's Oscars

Well, that was a show, huh?  In what will go down in history as the strangest Oscar finale of all time, we had not one but two Best Picture winners for a brief moment.  I know a number of people (including my father, who was tired and headed upstairs to bed once La La Land won), may be wishing that they had stuck around a bit longer, but man was that an ending.  As a result, let's get to the good, the bad, the WTF,  and undecided of last night.

The WTF

We'll start here because this is really what we all want to talk about, right?  Never, in my wildest dreams, could I have anticipated such a scenario as the wrong Best Picture winner being called.  My mom and I both stood up there aghast (we were both standing, anticipating that we'd quickly see a pithy aside about Donald Trump from Kimmel right before the credits rolled) and then suddenly Jordon Horowitz proclaimed Moonlight the winner.  At first, quite frankly, I thought what was happening was a Jack Lemmon/Ving Rhames situation, where the producers of La La Land wanted to bring their counterparts to the stage in an act of recognizing that, perhaps, more than one Best Picture is worthy each year.  But no, it was a staggering mistake of epic proportions.

Conspiracy theorists will postulate this was planned for the rest of time, but honestly I don't think that Dunaway or Beatty are that good of live performers (if they can still pull off something like that, why aren't more casting agents on them?).  No, based on what we're hearing this morning the wrong envelope got in Beatty's hands (you can see this in the pictures/video pretty clearly), he was confused, Dunaway just saw La La Land in giant letters and was assuming he was being cute, and then the catastrophe was set in motion.

Aside from proving once-and-for-all that Marisa Tomei did win that Oscar years ago (the real loser tonight is Judy Davis), this was both the best and worst of live television.  It was SO awkward and yet SO stunning, it ranks in the same sort of "can't look away" live television as the David Niven Streaker or Janet Jackson's half-time "wardrobe malfunction."  I feel truly bad for the La La Land producers (though I'm not going with the "grace and class" line so many are saying, as Jordan Hurwitz literally yanked that card out of Beatty's hands even though it clearly wasn't his fault; I'm not saying I would have behaved differently, but I probably wouldn't have had the gaul to rip anything out of a screen icon's hands).  I feel worse for Dunaway and Beatty, both of whom are going to be accused of having a "senior moment" when in reality there's a PriceWaterhouseCoopers accountant backstage who is updating their LinkedIn profile right now.  All-in-all, though, this was insane television, and thankfully it was La La Land to Moonlight, and not the other way around (or something involving Hacksaw Ridge).  And it led to arguably the first time I've seen Twitter erupt in chaos over something that didn't involve our president.  So that's a win in my book.  Either way, I won't forget about this for a looooong time.

The Good

Other than the Best Picture fiasco, the show had a number of great credits to its name.  I know that it's a popular past-time to mock the host, which Kimmel pointed out at the beginning, but honestly-I thought that Jimmy was aces and should become a regular.  He was edgy enough to keep the politically-inclined happy, several of his bits worked for me (I thought the potential trainwreck of the tourists coming in paid huge dividends, particularly Denzel marrying those two people and if nothing else it served as the soundest indictment of America to PUT AWAY YOUR FUCKING PHONES rather than recording things, as you're missing out on meeting movie stars by recording everything).  I loved a few jokes, and actually thought the Gibson jokes were just enough, and I was fine with the candy bits because the stars (particularly Meryl Streep, Octavia Spencer, and Taraji P. Henson) got into it in a major way.  I know he joked about never coming back, but that'd be a damn shame-he's clearly the most able host to take to the Oscars since Ellen, perhaps even Steve Martin.

Obviously I could celebrate a few of the wins (Moonlight taking Best Picture a decade after Brokeback Mountain is going to hit me at some point this morning, but my 20-year-old self is pretty proud right now considering I wore black for days of mourning after that), and I loved the way that The Salesman win was handled, though obviously having Asghar Farhadi there would have been better (Donald Trump is always on the "ugly" list).  Mahershala Ali gave a great speech, and the Hidden Figures section of the audience was by far the most fun (I loved "Cookie" aka Taraji P. Henson asking Octavia Spencer to share her cookies part in particular).  It wasn't superbly executed, but Katherine Johnson coming out was damn cool, and though it won't ever happen again at this rate, I loved the nod to Old Hollywood with Dunaway/Beatty.

One of the best bits of the night, one I wish I'd seen a bit more of, was the pairings of actors with their heroes (ie MacLaine/Theron and Fox/Rogen), as it nodded back to movies as culture, and it was a great way to show how actors inspire other actors.  Oh, and while I hardly wanted Hacksaw Ridge to win any awards, A) its sound mixing was better than La La Land's and B) Kevin O'Connell finally winning that damn Oscar and giving a beautiful ode to his mother made that moment worth it for me.  All-in-all, I think that while there were bits that I could have skipped, this was a very tight, strong Oscars, so anyone complaining this morning needs to state what they expect out of the Academy Awards...other than they hand the right envelopes out. #understandable

The Undecided

Viola Davis and Casey Affleck still have me undecided, to be honest, so let's start with Viola and work our way down.

I am glad Viola Davis has an Oscar.  Viola is one of the best actors in Hollywood, and this was a long time coming (I'd have given her two trophies by now).  But the category fraud thing has got to stop at some point.  Alicia Vikander and JK Simmons means it's three years in a row now, and if we don't end it soon, we're never going to get rare wins like Mahershala Ali's in Moonlight, a tiny gem that added SO much to Moonlight but in reality doesn't have the screen time to compete with someone like Davis in terms of sheer impact.  I'm usually one to look past that (it's easy to be calmed by one of your favorite actors getting a trophy), but can't we end this at some point?  Also, I have to say that while Davis is arguably the best orator in Hollywood right now when it comes to picking up awards, the "only" occupation to know what it is "to celebrate a life"-what about doctors, funeral directors, the white helmets, etc?  I think that this entered indulgent hyperbole even if I knew where she was going.  Still, it's a better world that we live in that Viola Davis now has an Oscar.

Casey Affleck I have no issues with his performance.  It's in my opinion by far the best of that category.  But I'm going to be honest here-I was hoping he'd lose.  I would have voted for Denzel, and part of me was hoping that this was that moment Ryan Gosling randomly picked up the trophy.  I could see in the lack of a proper standing ovation for him and the way that Brie Larson refused to clap that this is someone a lot of Hollywood doesn't believe in the charges against him, and I am a little confused about whether or not I will put a picture of him on my Facebook banner all year, as I do every year with the Oscar winners (apparently there's a few photos of just the other three winners circulating that would be a solid option, but then you get your conservative friends on Facebook who want to make an example of everything and...Facebook sucks, let's leave it there).  Either way, I'm going to remind myself that he almost certainly deserved this for his work even if he didn't deserve it personally.

The Bad

Since I'm not putting the Best Picture fiasco here (because it was fascinating if awful), there's not a lot to do here.  I have my most consistent complaint about the sound quality of the musical production numbers, which never seems to be as good as the Tonys and the Grammys.  I thought they might have it fixed after that well-launched opening number by Justin Timberlake (I loved the look at the lobby for the Oscars, which I'd never seen) as Timberlake sounded superb, but then the Moana singer came in and the balance felt off.  On a night where they correctly identified a La La Land weak spot (the sound mixing), you'd wish that they could address the same in their own telecast.

I will say that while Timberlake's opening felt a little too "the Grammys" for me, considering we weren't going to get a musical number from Kimmel this felt about right, though I could have done without Timberlake for the rest of the evening, greeting every person in La La Land as if he was in their movie, and that whole bizarre mugging thing when Kimmel was talking to him fell insanely flat.  I don't know-I don't like Timberlake personally at all and while I'll acknowledge there's talent there, it's more in the sense of live performance and less personality-based for me.  That, plus Sunny Pawar as The Lion King and the Donald Trump tweet sections were the only bits that really didn't work for me of Kimmel's, which is a solid track record but still worth pointing out.

Oh, and while the Meryl Streep bit was funny and took it a step further than usual, we probably need a new Meryl bit at this point, right?  We all know her routine of hiding behind Don (who clearly is completely over going to these things at this point), and part of me wondered if the producers were hinting at this when they chose such a slight clip from FFJ and not, say, a dying scene.  And don't go crying for a spoiler alert there-I don't know if you'd catch it, exactly, from the clips, but we saw serious spoilers from Fences and Hell or High Water in the acting clips last night.  I didn't want to say anything to my parents in the room with me during Jeff Bridges' clip as they haven't seen the movie yet, but Fences all three of us noted that "that's giving away something."  Probably better chose the clips next time.

Arguably the worst moment of the night was Vince Vaughn's weird, inexplicable Sal Mineo joke.  What was that about-was it meant to be homophobic?  I think that anyone with Vaughan's politics should probably resist cracking about slain gay actors, and while he somewhat recovered, he doesn't have the comic sensibility of a Whoopi Goldberg or even a Ricky Gervais to make inside baseball jokes that will land outside of the Kodak.

All-in-all, though, I had a great time-please share your thoughts below in the comments of what you thought of last night's Oscars!

OVP: Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Film: Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Stars: Andrew Garfield, Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Hugo Weaving
Director: Mel Gibson
Oscar History: 6 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Andrew Garfield, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing*, Film Editing*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's hard to remember now, but at one point Mel Gibson was a very big movie star.  Long before his drunken, anti-semitic rants, before his ultra-right political and religious views came out, and his bizarre divorce (after being one of the most devoted family men in Hollywood) followed by increasingly erratic romantic behavior, Mel Gibson was one of the best action stars in Hollywood.  Impossibly handsome (bordering on the beautiful back in the 1980's), funny, charming, and suave onscreen, he might not have always been the best actor, but he crossed that line into being a truly great movie star, one of those few people who could open any film and even make the bad ones enjoyable because they were watching Mel Gibson onscreen.  I couldn't help but think of this fact as I sat through the frustrating, occasionally intriguing but usually terrible Hacksaw Ridge.

(Spoilers Ahead...though it's real life so, you know, read a book) The film is the story of Desmond Doss (Garfield), the first man in American history to receive the Medal of Honor and be a conscientious objector, winning it for actions he took during the Battle of Okinawa.  Doss's story is one for the ages, and it seems kind of unthinkable that no one had made this into a movie before.  The film follows him from his early days in Virginia to eventually fighting in Japan, but as he was a Seventh-Day Adventist with deeply-held beliefs, he refuses to kill a man in war or to even hold a weapon.  As a result, he is ostracized by his fellow soldiers until his grit and devotion wear them down and he proves himself in battle, saving the lives of some 75 men who had been left for dead atop Hacksaw Ridge.

It's a riveting story, the kind tailor-made for the screen (one of those, it wouldn't be believable except it's true situations), and indeed as far back as Audie Murphy they've been trying to make this into a film, but somehow it was Gibson who eventually brought it forth.  The actual by-product of the movie never quite lives up to its promise, particularly since Gibson struggles in early scenes in establishing his characters, particularly Andrew Garfield, who plays Doss as, well, "simple" in early scenes that are excruciatingly bad.  This continues as Gibson, likely without his A-list recruiting talents, is stuck with relatively banal actors like Sam Worthington and the terrible Vince Vaughan (seriously-when he is not filled with bombast?).  All-in-all, though, Gibson is saved by that movie star mentality.

What makes conservative filmmakers like Gibson and Clint Eastwood such fine filmmakers even when they're gearing toward politics that don't always jive with the audience or what we expect out of Hollywood, is that they frame their films in ways that are structured for classic movie stars.  Being movie stars themselves, they end up frequently making movies that center so well around a central performance that it's hard not to cheer for the protagonist, which isn't as easy as it sounds.  We all are meant to like the good guy, but actually cheering for them takes some emotional investment, and Gibson and Eastwood both do that rather well.  Their films occasionally lack the nuance that would make them exceptional (Gibson, for example, seems to revel in the violence a little too much behind the lens to properly give Doss's religious and pacifist views a chance), but they know how to structure their movies well so that a central performance can come through.  In the end, you find yourself rooting for Doss even if you thought him ludicrous at the beginning of the picture.  Gibson smartly gives side characters enough due that you recognize them as they are saved by Doss later in the film (and even winks at the way his posterior was exploited continuously in the 80's/90's by having Luke Pegler nude for much of the film), but never really pulls away from his central hero.  If Garfield gets an Oscar nomination (which I suspect he will, even if he doesn't really deserve it), he'll have Gibson's direction, so focused on making his arch work, to thank for him as Garfield's actorly instincts have always relied more heavily on that of a character performance than a leading man.  Mel Gibson may never make a truly great movie (unlike Clint, who has), but it's hard to deny that there are effective, action movie moments in this film that work splendidly, even if it's dreadful in other patches of the film enough so that I can't properly recommend this picture.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  I know that I'm still leery that Gibson is back (especially in the same year as Trump), but since he is-what do you think of this as a comeback vehicle?  Do you think he should get another property again, or was this too indulgent?  And what other movie stars made fine directors for, well, movie stars?  Share in the comments!

10 Random Thoughts on the Golden Globe Nominations

Well, it's officially Oscar season, people, as the Golden Globes have issued their proclamations this morning, much to the delight and chagrin of pretty much everyone on the internet (there's always something to love and something to hate here).  I wanted to share my Top 10 thoughts on the film citations (the Globes are cray when it comes to TV and their bizarre category designations, though I'm surprised that Anthony Hopkins didn't get in for Westworld considering he has a significant role and he's so famous, usually prerequisite for such things).  Without further adieu, here are the ten things that stick out to me in particular about this year's Globe nods...

1. Mel Gibson is Back?

Okay, I know that 2016 is very, well, heinous and we shouldn't really say the phrase "did anyone actually expect?" anymore, but Mel Gibson is palatable in Hollywood again?  Really?  I mean, considering the rhetoric coming from PEOTUS you'd think that awards season would be shouting down Gibson to send a message to the world, even if the movie is good (haven't seen it yet, though the plan is to head there tomorrow), but he's factored both here and the BFCA's, and even won a Best Director citation over Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Ben Affleck, and Denzel Washington.  The Globes are more inclined to celebrity nominees (Clint won this award before he was even nominated at AMPAS), but Gibson has now done well at two major precursors to the Oscars.  I think Hacksaw Ridge is a nominee for Best Picture at this point, and Gibson is at least in the Top 7 for directing.

2. Is Sully Done?

A different conservative icon with a long history with awards season didn't fare quite as well, however: Clint Eastwood's Sully ended up completely absent from this morning's announcement.  While I'd like to think this is due to the film being terrible, I am curious why Mel and not Clint, particularly considering people forgave Eastwood quickly in 2012 after the RNC while Gibson has stayed a pariah to the point where he's barely made a movie in the past decade.  Eastwood's absence here is deeply telling, and more so Tom Hanks, whom everyone genuinely loves, not being able to score against underdogs like Viggo Mortensen and Joel Edgerton probably spells the end of his quest once again for a sixth nomination.  Hanks bizarre lack of awards love in the past few years despite ample titles that deserved the nominations (I, for one, gladly would have included him for Saving Mr. Banks), continues to be a head-scratcher for me.

3. Is Best Actor Done?

If Hanks is actually out (I could still see him resurfacing, but probably not), I wonder if we might have our five actors ready and available now, as there aren't many contenders to wrestle with here.  I personally think Ryan Gosling is headed to a win in Comedy/Musical, and should be able to transpose his spot in the Best Picture frontrunner into a nomination, but that means he has to bump someone in Best Actor in a Drama.  Of those five nominees, Washington, Affleck, and Garfield seem pretty set (all feel like nominees), which leaves either Edgerton or Mortensen to be snubbed.  My gut is saying that Edgerton will be done and that the edgier Mortensen sneaks in for AMPAS.  It's possible, of course, that Edgerton stampedes or that Hanks scores with SAG resurrecting his campaign or some Oscar pet (Matthew McConaughey, perhaps?) gets in at the last minute, but part of me thinks this might be settled on five actors already.

4. Best Actress-7 Women Enter...

Best Actress is also starting to solidify (in a year with fewer major populist films, the slates tend to settle pretty quickly), and I think we're looking at five of the following seven women being nominees: Ruth Negga, Isabelle Huppert, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Emma Stone, Natalie Portman, and Annette Bening.

Who gets snubbed is pretty much anyone's guess, but more and more I'm starting to think that this could be Bening and Negga that end up on the fuzzy end of the lollipop.  Negga's nomination, for example, is for a relative unknown in a film that relies on you noticing the subtle, which is going to be hard against showier work from Huppert.  With Bening, the problem is more along the lines of-will people see this movie in time?  It's a comedy that is getting solid reviews, but not to name-check Saving Mr. Banks again, but anyone else getting an Emma Thompson vibe here?  Longtime headliner gets a comedic comeback, and yet she gets bested by more recent Oscar pets Streep and Adams?  I mean, the similarities are all there, and while Thompson has an Oscar (and Bening doesn't, which makes her nomination more urgent), I think you underestimate Adams and Streep at your own risk.

5. Lily Collins-are you kidding me?

Nothing from yesterday morning, nothing, however made me eyeroll with ridiculousness more than seeing Lily Collins truly awful work in Rules Don't Apply get nominated.  I'll admit that I was half-expecting Warren Beatty to make it, him being an icon and all (I no longer think he has a shot at the Oscar nod, for the record, as he needed this to stay in the conversation), but Collins instead is just indefensible.  She's so bad in this movie, not to mention she's not even a famous actress, which would normally be what causes a situation like this.  The Globes actually had decent work from far-more-recognizable actors that they could have gone with here (Kate Beckinsale in Love & Friendship, Sally Field in Hello My Name is Doris), or at least could have gone with a headliner in a hit comedy (Melissa McCarthy in Ghostbusters, Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones), but to go with Collins-I can't even.

6. Supporting Actor-So, Where is this Headed?

I have been a strong defender of Supporting Actor this year, arguably the best field of the race, and have said I wanted some off-the-beaten path nominations, which the Globes delivered.  Alongside expected nominees Jeff Bridges, Dev Patel, and Mahershala Ali, we had the murderous sociopath of Nocturnal Animals Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Simon Helberg's terrible work in Florence Foster Jenkins.  Both are now part of the conversation, but this poses a challenging question of the morning for each film and their campaigns.

After all, now both films have two legitimate threats for the Best Supporting Actor field, as Hugh Grant (category fraud didn't apply today, as he was in lead for FFJ) and Michael Shannon (the one who got the lion's share of praise for Nocturnal and whose dogged determination to be in ten movies this year felt like something AMPAS might acknowledge) are also in the running, and the un-nominated ones are actually more likely to make it than the Globes' cited performances, which is rare.  The last time a film had one actor nominated for the Globes in Supporting Actor and then a different actor with Oscar was 1994 with Quiz Show (John Turturro for the Globes, Paul Scofield for the Oscars).  If these actors split the vote enough, it could lead to a different actor who wasn't part of the conversation at all yesterday morning (Lucas Hedges in Manchester by the Sea, perhaps?) getting in at their expense.

7. Octavia vs. Greta

While you could argue that Nicole Kidman getting in was default Globes stuff, it's a weak year here and everyone expects Kidman to make it into the race as it continues.  That likely means the quartet of Kidman/Harris/Davis/Williams is headed to a nomination, which leaves one more slot to be divided between two women: Octavia Spencer and Greta Gerwig.

I was starting to wonder whether or not Spencer would show in the race-after all, she missed entirely for Fruitvale Station, which I'll state was my favorite Supporting Actress performance of 2013, but she bested Gerwig here and that might be enough to get her Oscar's final slot.  Gerwig could still get in for SAG, and if enough people see the film this could transform, but Gerwig's miss is telling.  For one, Spencer made it despite Gerwig being a former nominee herself (Frances Ha a few years ago, in a big surprise), and her film made it into Best Picture and Best Actress, two categories Spencer's movie couldn't land despite a campaign for both.  That means there's support for Spencer, who has a showy role in a film that looks like it'll be a hit, rather than just people not having heard of Gerwig.  Spencer is also charming in interviews and will work for the nomination in a way, that, say, Michelle Williams might not have were she the fifth place position.  This could change (Gerwig could make it with SAG tomorrow, keeping her in the game), but Spencer scored a critical win this morning.

8. Nocturnal Animals-Globes Pet or Real Threat?

Every year there's at least one film that the Globes go gaga for that randomly doesn't factor anywhere else in the year.  This year, I am wondering if that might be the stylish, mega-star noir Nocturnal Animals.  Critics were mixed on the film, but it still managed a trio of nominations this morning (you have to assume it was darn near Best Picture).  It's stylish, and driven by a celebrity (Tom Ford got in for Best Director), but is it too much for AMPAS?  It's hard to imagine people making it three minutes into their screeners considering the opening credits, much less all the way through a very dark, violent, and cold thriller.  Still, the Globes did it a favor in terms of its FYC ads, and Ford wants to be taken seriously as a film artist-you know he'll work for it.

9. Is Justin Timberlake Going to be an Oscar nominee?

Argh-really?  I had to put up with Lady Gaga's terrible acting eventually lending itself to an Oscar citation-is Timberlake's terrible acting going to do the same thing?  Unless AMPAS goes gaga for one of the original musicals, nominating two songs, I'm thinking this tune's insane popularity all summer is going to be too much for Oscar to ignore.

10. Is Finding Dory lost?

It's very, very rare for the HFPA to go for a foreign language film in this category, and if it was going to, I half-expected it to be The Red Turtle.  Therefore My Life as a Zucchini getting in alongside Zootopia, Kubo, Moana, and Sing was wildly shocking.  It also was particularly eyebrow-worthy because this is only the second time ever (an even higher percentage than with AMPAS) that a Pixar film missed out here, Finding Dory.  Dory is still the highest-grossing domestic film of 2016, but its ho-hum reaction from critics and fans has left it at the edges of the Oscar conversation.  Oscar has never gone for a Disney film in Animated Feature without it also scoring a Globe citation-my gut says this isn't going to be the year to break that record, and instead we'll have a fourway battle between Red Turtle, Your Name, Zucchini, and Sing for Oscar's final two slots.

Mrs. Soffel (1984)

Film: Mrs. Soffel (1984)
Stars: Diane Keaton, Mel Gibson, Matthew Modine, Edward Herrmann
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Oscar History: While it wasn't nominated, Keaton landed a Globe nod for Best Actress in a Drama, so you know it was pretty close.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's hard to remember now (really, really hard), but at one point everyone in America loved Mel Gibson.  Like really and truly loved Mel Gibson, and it wasn't always because he was a major action star whose children always seemed to be getting kidnapped and the government was out to get him while he mooned the British.  No, it was because Mel Gibson was perhaps the prettiest man in the world circa 1984, and was a devastatingly romantic leading man.  The plot and progression of a film like Mrs. Soffel, of which I've always been curious because it was during that period where Diane Keaton was doing almost entirely straight dramas and yet only once got an Oscar nomination while dominating at the Golden Globes post-Reds.  I came away with perhaps a realization as to why they didn't like Keaton at the time, but also as to why it was so disappointing when Mel Gibson turned around and we all realized he was a bigot.

(Spoilers Ahead) For those unfamiliar, Diane Keaton plays Kate Soffel, the wife of a Pittsburgh prison warden who has in his jail two wildly celebrated outlaw brothers who have become cause celebre for the women of the town, all of whom seem to be in love with them after seeing their pictures in the paper.  Kate has been very ill for months (perhaps postpartum depression or some bout of mental illness, it's never quite clear what is the problem), but decides to start to read biblical verses to the two men and then slowly falls in love with the older brother Ed (Gibson) and plans a prison break for both brothers where she escapes with them, running out on her husband and four children.  The law catches up with the three of them, with Kate nearly dying in a shootout that takes the lives of Ed and Jack (Modine), and eventually she loses pretty much everything that she once held dear as her warden husband and children turn their backs on Mrs. Soffel when she heads to prison.

The film is dour and dark, and Keaton is oddly out-of-place in my opinion as the aging Mrs. Soffel.  We get some of the casting here, and I wish director Gillian Armstrong had played a little bit more on the way that self-esteem played into this (Keaton is a striking woman, but is less conventionally attractive than Gibson, and that's a part of the dialogue here as it's never completely clear if Ed is using her as a means-to-an-end or if he's actually in love with her until very late in the film), but that doesn't rear its head frequently enough in the movie.  Keaton is a fine dramatic actress, as witnessed by her powerful Louise in Reds, but here I feel like she tries too hard to simply present a dour-and-introverted face without enough outburst of feeling.  It's odd to see Keaton in this sort of environment, quite frankly, in the same way it's bizarre to be reminded of what Meryl Streep was like before Devil Wears Prada made her so much more wink-y in her dramatic work, but I do wish we'd seen some sort of relaxation in the performance, particularly earlier on in the film when she had the upper-hand on Ed.

Gibson is, I'm sorry to admit if you're a hater and I feel like I am at this point, quite good.  He's not a great actor but he's an insanely charming movie star and someone that is intense and expressive, which is what this role calls for; you get the sense that you too would leave your upper-class life and children behind just for a chance to see what he's like when you get rid of the prison bars, and it's hard to blame Diane Keaton (she should have pleaded temporary hormonal insanity-any judge that saw a photo of him would allow it).  Again, here it seems like a female director helped in a way that a male director would have sort of glossed over the situation, as Armstrong makes a point of showing that it was lust, and not just moral fervor or romantic adoration, that got Kate to free Ed.  This, plus the weird sexual power dynamic makes the film more than just a dismissible curiosity, even though the picture feels a bit drab and dusty thirty some years after its release.

There are my thoughts-how about yours?  Anyone a fan of Mrs. Soffel?  What are your thoughts on a pre-drunk driving Mel Gibson?  How about a straight-dramatic Diane Keaton?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!