OVP: The Rock (1996)

Film: The Rock (1996)

Stars: Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, David Morse, John Spencer

Director: Michael Bay

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sean Connery: click here to learn more about Mr. Connery (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned in our last entry on Saturdays with the Stars, Sean Connery's career got a new life in the late 1980's when he won an Oscar for The Untouchables and followed that up with a mammoth hit in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  These two films set up the course for the remainder of his career-Connery would still star in major action films, but would take on an advisory role, frequently the vaunted elder who would mentor younger, more "age-appropriate" leads like Richard Gere, Wesley Snipes, and in today's film, Nicolas Cage.  These movies were hits.  Much was made (we'll get there in a second) about how Connery really ended his career with a sluggish slump into retirement, but this ignores that during the late 1980's, 1990's & into the 21st Century, when Connery was being knighted and being named the oldest man ever to achieve the title of "Sexiest Man Alive" from People Magazine, Connery starred in a number of smash hit movies like The Hunt for Red October, First Knight, The Rock, and Entrapment.  While other actors of his generation like Paul Newman and Marlon Brando had, by-and-large, been relegated to old man dramas (and in more cases than not, cemetery plots), Connery was a box office draw in the way that men decades younger than him were and was talked about as a still-relevant movie star.

(Spoilers Ahead) Perhaps this is best boiled down by talking about The Rock, the biggest hit he had during this era (the film would make $335M, adjusted for inflation that'd be $709M, which is basically impossible to do today without it being established IP).  The movie itself is made by Michael Bay, who at the time would've been short-hand for crap (or at least was headed in that direction), and in the past decade, has been saved by Millennial film fans (nostalgic for an era when IP wasn't the only way to make a movie) as being more worthy-of-praise than he was at the time.  The movie makes little sense, and not just because its politics so closely resemble Bay's rather sketchy takes on Libertarianism.  We have Brigadier General Frank Hummel (Harris) holding Alcatraz hostage in hopes of securing $100M for the families of those who died in top secret missions.  He is holding dozens of hostages on the island (tourists who have visited it), and the government sends in a team of agents, though they're quickly boiled down to just two: Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Cage), a chemical weapons expert with little field experience, and retired Captain John Patrick Mason (Connery), the only man to ever successfully escape from Alcatraz.  The two team up to not only stop Hummel from detonating a chemical weapon that could destroy tens of thousands, but also to see if Mason can get his freedom, which is dangled as incentive but all involved know is just a ruse to get his help.

The real enemy in this movie, it's worth noting, isn't Harris's general, but instead FBI Director James Womack (played by John Spencer), and that's because you don't get a government that wants to help the people in a Michael Bay picture.  Even more so than Clint Eastwood, Bay's films are quintessentially glorious, tech-savvy propaganda for government incompetence.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing (lord knows there's a case to be made that government incompetence dominates our collective consciousness in the Trump Era, and has to a degree in every administration), but it also means that The Rock is a movie you don't really want to think about too much, as it becomes too ridiculous & frequently too absurd to consider it technically.  A lot of your mileage with the movie will depend on your take on Connery & Cage's unlikely friendship, and your tolerance for gratuitous violence.  The violence here is less artful and more just disgusting, and I will own that I don't think Cage & Connery work at all.  Connery's performances with Costner & especially Ford in the late 1980's worked better because there was a subtlety, a clear driving friction with which they can find common ground.  But Cage is not a subtle actor, and Connery can't seem to find any sort of chemistry with him...it just feels like they're making two different movies.

Connery would continue making films regularly until 2003.  He ended his career with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a bad superhero movie that made a lot of money, which hadn't been the case for some of Connery's most recent endeavors like Playing by Heart and The Avengers (for the record, not a superhero movie).  He retired, and with the weird exception of an animated adventure film, never made another movie despite entreaties to join later installments in the Indiana Jones & 007 franchises, dying in 2020 at the age of 90 from a combination of pneumonia & dementia.  Despite decades of trying to escape it, the first line of his New York Times obituary of course included the words "James Bond."

Next month we're going to talk about one of Connery's peers, someone who would dominate action films in the 1960's and especially the 1970's.  Like Connery he wouldn't really get the credit for being the fine actor that he was, but unlike Connery, he didn't seem to care, finding "selling out" a bit more palatable when one gigantic smash hit that changed his career's trajectory captured the public consciousness (and divided critics, both cinematic & political).

City of Angels (1998)

Film: City of Angels (1998)

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

Director: Brad Silberling

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

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

OVP: Actor (2002)

OVP: Best Actor (2002)

The Nominees Were...

Adrien Brody, The Pianist

Nicolas Cage, Adaptation

Michael Caine, The Quiet American

Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York

Jack Nicholson, About Schmidt

My Thoughts: We are hitting the Top 5, and one of the rare races in Academy history that featured five winners (four previous, one on Oscar night, and one guy who'd win two more in the years that followed).  I've talked a lot about the Oscar ceremony in 2002 for a couple of reasons.  First, I remember it vividly (we're still in the era where I was hyper-aware of the Oscar race and religiously reading magazines & articles about it online).  Second, we're going to hit a time relatively soon (probably in 2024 based on the pace of these articles) where I didn't actually watch the Oscars because I wasn't old enough (my first Oscars was 1994, my first completed Oscars where I was genuinely following along was 1995) and so I want to get out my first-hand knowledge while I can.  But the biggest reason is that 2002 was one of those rare years where pretty much everything was up-in-the-air...and on Oscar night, surprises abounded.

One of those surprises happened in this race, when Adrien Brody stunned everyone in the Kodak Theater (particularly Halle Berry) when he won the Oscar.  As you'll see in the precursors, Brody wasn't the favorite here (it was thought to be a battle between Daniel Day-Lewis & Jack Nicholson).  Still, the Academy had good taste.  Brody, for all of the career setbacks that happened after this, gives an astounding, lived-in performance in The Pianist, the way that he takes this gregarious, charming man at the onset and continually has to look inward as the world takes & takes away everything that he has to give.  He truly makes the film.

Nicholson was clearly hoping to get that fourth Oscar and tie Kate Hepburn in 2002, and I suspect was close to victory.  His work here is not reminiscent of much of the "Wacky Jack" that we came to expect in the 1990's (culminating in his third Oscar win for As Good As It Gets), and it pays off, giving us a complete performance of an incomplete man.  I love the way that he internally wrestles in the earlier half of the movie between feelings he knows are wrong and feelings that he can't help but share...it feels realistic to show a brittle man, only capable of a modicum of change.

All of these men have Oscars, but only Michael Caine doesn't have one for lead actor, a point he made in 2002 when he was pushing hard for this citation.  I think Caine is very good here (I honestly think this is the best Oscar lineup in a year that's sprinkled with them-2002 is a vintage that has held up), playing a deeply complicated man trying to fight for the affections of one woman.  What makes Caine's acting so specific (I'm a fan) is the way that he can switch so evenly between a calming demeanor and destroying a man's soul in the blink of an eye.  In some ways I liken him to Anthony Hopkins, where he's miraculous at one skill-set, and knows just how to use it in each character, which he does here.

Nicolas Cage's performance in Adaptation to some degree marked the end of Cage's career as a serious actor for the next couple of decades (countless direct-to-video movies, a weird feud with Sean Penn, and eventually parodying himself on film would ensue), but it's a nice swan song to one of the more inventive actors of the 1990's.  Cage suffers the most at the hands of Charlie Kaufman's wandering typewriter, but in the first half he's really excellent as two men, one fictional, one real, and does a good job deciphering the two figures for the audience.

Our final nomination is for Daniel Day-Lewis, in what might have been his most immersive role-to-date.  Bill the Butcher, where he literally covered his eye with glass to simulate having a glass eye (what?!?) might be something he hopefully took up with a therapist (I'm sorry, I love him, but that's too method for me), but the work stands for itself.  Day-Lewis is astounding, stealing every scene he's in, and honestly saving the movie himself.  No one else is doing what he's doing here, creating the kind of Travis Bickle-style figure that Scorsese specializes in, but putting him in the middle of Civil War-Era New York City.  What results is one of the best pieces of work from one of our most committed thespians.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  Drama went with Nicholson atop Brody, Caine, Day-Lewis, & Leonardo DiCaprio (Catch Me If You Can), while Comedy/Musical gave their statue to Richard Gere (Chicago) atop Cage, Kieran Culkin (Igby Goes Down), Hugh Grant (About a Boy), and Adam Sandler (Punch-Drunk Love).  The SAG Award went to Day-Lewis, and was nearly the Oscar lineup except Caine was skipped for Gere.  BAFTA also went to Day-Lewis, and they had the Oscar lineup verbatim.  Gere almost certainly was sixth place, and in a similar fashion to Dennis Quaid & Alfred Molina in supporting, his best shot (to that point) for Oscar glory didn't result in any nominations in the years that followed.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: As I said above, this is a terrific lineup-no bad performances, no even middling performances, all ranging from brilliant-to-very-good.  But there's room for improvement.  Specifically Leonardo DiCaprio's best bit of acting (in Catch Me If You Can) deserved some sort of inclusion here-he's never been this natural & movie star charismatic in the years since.

Oscar’s Choice: Brody, likely due to the strong movement toward The Pianist (and the fact that everyone else in the lineup already had Oscars), pulled off an iconic win that would be impossible for his career to top in the decades that followed.

My Choice: Brody gets it.  In a strong lineup, he gives physically & emotionally the most captivating performance of the quintet.  I'd follow him with Day-Lewis, and then Nicholson, Caine, & Cage.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is everyone here on Team Brody (a win that looks pretty strong in retrospect) or does someone want to advocate for the other legends?  Who came closer to the victory-Jack or DDL?  And will Richard Gere ever find his way into this mix again?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2002: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2002

Past Best Actor Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

No Globe? No SAG? No Problem!

This morning, we officially got our SAG Award nominations, which means that we are now able to write one of my favorite annual articles on this blog.  We don't have a lot of traditions here about the current Oscar season (frequently we are stuck in the past in that regard), but we have written every year for the past ten years an article about the weird phenomenon involving the Golden Globes & SAG Awards.  Oscar, particularly predictable in the past twenty years or so, generally will pick most of his nominations from these two award shows.  However, awards followers always forget that Oscar will pick at least a couple of nominees that are not contenders for either of these major shows.  The last ten years have produced this crew of nominees that weren't mentioned at the Globes or SAG Awards:

2020: Paul Raci & LaKeith Stanfield

2019: Florence Pugh

2018: Marina de Tavira & Yalitza Aparicio

2017: Lesley Manville

2016: Michael Shannon

2015: Charlotte Rampling, Tom Hardy, & Mark Ruffalo

2014: Bradley Cooper, Marion Cotillard, & Laura Dern

2013: Jonah Hill

2012: Quvenzhane Wallis, Emmanuelle Riva, & Jacki Weaver

2011: Gary Oldman & Max von Sydow

You actually have to go back to 2006 to find the last year where all of the Oscar nominees were cited for either the Globes or the SAG Awards.  As you can see from this lineup, the list generally falls into two camps.  Most of the nominees are from films that were being nominated already for Best Picture or one of the major acting nominees.  People like LaKeith Stanfield, Paul Raci, & Florence Pugh in recent years fall into this camp, where they managed to impress in a movie that was already being screened, and the Academy went for it.  Occasionally we get someone like Gary Oldman or Charlotte Rampling who get on this list without such a citation, but in that case they almost always have to be famous (preferably screen legends or former winners/nominees).  Below, I have assembled a list of ten actors that have not been nominated for the Globes or SAG Awards this season, and ranked them based on the likelihood that they will join the list above, becoming Oscar nominees against the odds.  I will state that the below list is predominantly focused on the supporting categories, which feel far more influx than the leads do (we don't normally have this imbalance, but I feel like the supporting categories aren't nearly as defined as they usually are by now).

10. Kathryn Hunter (The Tragedy of Macbeth)

For Her: Hunter is generally getting the best-in-show citations for Macbeth, even as Denzel Washington is scoring most of the nominations.  Though Hunter isn't all that famous, it's easy to see people watching this movie, which just opened (and might not be at the top of the screener list), and nominating her-it's the sort of performance where if you see it, it stands out.  You don't have to be super famous to make the cut in this regard (look at Lesley Manville above, who would be a very similar scenario to Hunter).

Against Her: Obviously, she's not all that famous, and it's easier to get into the race if you're a big name.  I also wonder if she's got some internal competition from 3-time Oscar Winner Frances McDormand, who is by all rights a lead, but is in a small enough portion of the film that I'd totally buy some people putting her in supporting.  For a film this small, that will matter.

9. Penelope Cruz (Parallel Mothers)

For Her: Though her film isn't a threat anywhere else, Cruz is a famous, Oscar-winning movie star...that gives you a crib sheet when it comes to getting into the Oscar ballots.  More importantly, she's in a movie that's opening late...but Oscar voting is also happening later than we typically see for the Globes & SAG Awards.  Could Cruz break late ala Marion Cotillard in 2014...word is she's superb in this movie, which could definitely help.

Against Her: Two things.  First, she has no momentum at this point because her studio opened the film too late & you'd think that Cruz (and Pedro Almodovar) would have been enough to get her into some of the precursor DVD players...that she wasn't is a telling sign.  More importantly, Best Actress feels, very, very wrapped up with Stewart, Kidman, Colman, Chastain, & Gaga all feeling about right, and if they are getting kicked out wouldn't Rachel Zegler (Globe-winning & in a Best Picture nominee) or Jennifer Hudson (SAG-nominated & in a biopic) make more sense?

8. Judi Dench (Belfast)

For Her: For starters, she's Judi Dench, which for a while there was literally all the answer you needed for something like this.  Dench is also in a prominent role in a likely Best Picture nominee (I still think it's one of the three films that is contending for the actual win, all the more reason to endorse it), and she's good in the movie.  She's one of the emotional centers of the film, gets a lot of fun scene-stealing, and if you like the movie enough to cite it as your best picture, it's easy to see someone sparing room for Dench...

Against Her: ...so why is she missing so many citations?  Honestly, Judi Dench is not a new name to the Globes & SAG Awards (she's been nominated plenty of times), and they clearly saw Belfast cause they're nominating her costars.  Is it possible that the Academy has moved beyond the "Grand Dame" route for their nominations-Dench, Helen Mirren, & Maggie Smith have all had plenty of major films in the past decade, but the last time any of them were cited was Dench's nod for Philomena.  It's possible that the Academy feels they've been given enough.

7. Jon Bernthal (King Richard)

For Him: One of the ways that you get in, as I mentioned above, is by being a major part of a serious Best Picture nominee.  Bernthal definitely has that in King Richard, which is a surefire Best Picture nominee and a near-certain winner for Best Actor (sorry, SAG nominations are out, I'm using word like "near-certain" for people like Will Smith at this point).  He's been in the business forever (they like giving character actors like him a random nomination if they can), and he's a highlight in the back-half of King Richard.

Against Him: Is it possible that King Richard is really just the Will Smith show?  The miss this morning for Aunjanue Ellis makes me think that in a year where there appears to be a lot of favored films for acting (the nominations are kind of all-over-the-place save for Best Actress), that giving a win to Smith will be enough for King Richard.  Bernthal would've been higher if Ellis hadn't missed, but I do wonder if the reception to King Richard might be more appreciative than celebratory.

6. Ann Dowd (Mass)

For Her: Dowd started out the year relatively strong.  She got lots of citations for her work in Mass from critics, got a Critics Choice nomination (generally a good indicator of a nomination), and she was singled out by a number of critics as the best-in-show of the stellar cast of Mass.  She's also been working toward this nomination for a while.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a character actress who has dominated more prestige film & television projects in the past decade than Dowd...shouldn't Oscar give her her due?

Against Her: Dowd is the only person on this list who is neither a known movie star or featured in a legitimate Best Picture threat.  She's famous, but probably not famous enough to get through this on her own.  I do wonder if Mass might've been too heavy for an Academy that is favoring a lot of escapist fare this year...or if the Academy thinks that the Emmy she got for The Handmaid's Tale was good enough.

5. JK Simmons (Being the Ricardos)

For Him: Few films this season have exceeded expectations quite like Being the Ricardos (in terms of precursors...its reviews feel, if anything, more-than-generous based on my humbled opinion).  Both of the leading stars of the film (Kidman & Bardem) scored nominations from the Globes AND SAG, and I now have moved this into a probable Best Picture nominee.  Simmons gets a plum part, he's the most famous supporting player in this movie, and a former Oscar winner.  The question is less why Simmons, and more why he doesn't already have traction?

Against Him: It's a good part (alcoholic actor trying to stay afloat), but it's not the center of the story.  Honestly if Simmons misses he can blame Aaron Sorkin for ripping out a lot of the best parts of the I Love Lucy story that might've worked for someone playing William Frawley (his struggles with booze are somewhat glossed over, and his brutal feud with Vivian Vance only gets tertiary importance).

4. Meryl Streep (Don't Look Up)

For Her: She's Meryl f-ing Streep.  Streep has a very, very short list of performances that she was in that fit the term Oscar bait that she didn't score for, and an even shorter list that were nominated for Best Picture that she didn't get in for (basically the only time they've crossed before this is The Hours).  As a result, Streep is in a plum role in a film likely to score a Best Picture nomination, and yet she hasn't been dominating all year.  It's possible, though, that Oscar will default to his regular ways & give her a nomination for her vulgar president in Don't Look Up...after all, if they're into it enough for Best Picture, it'll probably get an acting nod.

Against Her: There's a reason that Streep isn't scoring for Don't Look Up-she's terrible in it, which is honestly not something that Meryl Streep ever gets accused of.  The lack of nominations from especially the Golden Globes, who normally are on her side, makes it seem like no one really wants to shine a light too brightly on this performance (I honestly think Streep would be embarrassed to get this nod).

3. Rita Moreno (West Side Story)

For Her: She's a screen legend, an icon really from the Golden Age of Hollywood, in a year that we lost a lot of links to that era.  She's also a great trivia question, as she was cited for West Side Story before, and gets a major emotional moment late in the film that could help get her attention.  She'd be the oldest Oscar nominee ever...what more do you want in terms of narrative, AMPAS?

Against Her: If last year's snubs of Ellen Burstyn & Sophia Loren are any indication, Oscar is not feeling as sentimental as he once was.  The SAG Awards were probably Moreno's best shot at gaining steam (Disney totally screwed up by not giving out screeners), considering they love to honor older actors, but her missing there might make you think that Oscar only has room for one Maria this year.

2. Nicolas Cage (Pig)

For Him: Part of me wonders if Nicolas Cage is the "Charlotte Rampling" of this year-someone who kept showing up in critics lists to the point where their nomination materialized simply because the people who had seen him in the movie kept putting him #1.  Cage is obviously famous enough to get by on his big name, and the people who love him in Pig really love him.  Also the Academy might want to remind the public that Cage was once considered one of the best actors of his generation before he became something of a Steven Seagal-style punchline.

Against Him: You've got four locks in the Best Actor category (Smith, Cumberbatch, Washington, & Garfield all fell pretty sewn in), and only one slot remaining.  Cage could make it (he's #2 on this list for a reason), but he needs to hold back the very serious threats of Leonardo DiCaprio, Javier Bardem, & Peter Dinklage, the former two both Oscar winners & the latter a major TV star in a film that could break late.  The flip side of the Charlotte Rampling coin is Ethan Hawke in First Reformed, which could be where Cage lands.

1. Marlee Matlin (CODA)

For Her: Let's examine the evidence.  Best Picture nominee? Almost certainly, and it comes by it honestly rather than it feeling manufactured.  Other nominees from her film nominated?  Yep, it looks probable that Troy Kotsur gets in.  Is she famous?  I mean, Marlee Matlin is an Oscar-winning actress who has worked steadily in a Hollywood that has not often had a lot of great roles for deaf actors.  This feels like the sort of late-breaking campaign that should be able to materialize in the coming weeks, and with a lot of chaos happening in Supporting Actress (I don't buy that anyone other than Kirsten Dunst is safe), there's lots of options for Matlin to make it.

Against Her: I'm confused why this campaign doesn't have more traction, particularly after Kotsur scored some major precursors even without being as famous as his costar.  That, and the fact that competition is fierce for this field (five of the women on this list are trying to make it in this lineup, and it's possible they all miss if Dunst, Ellis, Balfe, DeBose, & Negga all get in) are her biggest deterrents.  But I do think she's a serious threat, and honestly (as of today), I'd be predicting her for the fifth slot.

Raising Arizona (1987)

Film: Raising Arizona (1987)

Stars: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, Trey Wilson, John Goodman, Sam McMurray, Frances McDormand

Director: Joel Coen

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

As you might be aware I tend to write these articles a bit in advance of when they actually go live, and so I'm writing this before today's Academy Award nominations came out.  Inevitably, people on social media have critiqued what happened this morning pronouncing the Oscars "out of touch," "obsolete," and said they have committed "unforgivable sins"...it's possible even I said something like that (though I don't feel super strongly this year about most of the nominees so I doubt I'm that excitable).  This happens every year-hyperbole goes hand-in-hand with the Oscars.  So today I thought it'd be nice to have for our review a film that is considered by many to be a modern classic, one that features a number of up-and-coming actors in early roles, and one that, well, received no Academy Award nominations, a reminder that Oscar having fickle taste is not new, and that just because he doesn't provide his stamp on a film doesn't mean it won't have legs.

(Spoilers Ahead) Raising Arizona is about a couple, Hi (Cage), a convenience store robber, and Ed (Hunter), a police officer who takes his mugshots repeatedly & falls in love with him in the process.  They find out that they cannot have children, and in their despair, they decide to steal a baby from a couple they don't think can handle all of their children.  The reward that the biological parents put up for the child result in a lot of hijinks & people trying to steal the baby (known as Nathan Jr) for money, for themselves, or for some sort of combination thereof.  In the end, the young couple know that the right thing to do is to give back the infant even if they may never have their own kids (since they'll have each other), though it's heavily implied in the end that they will raise their own family despite the odds.

Made several years after Blood Simple, Raising Arizona is during the period where the Coen Brothers were on the critical map, celebrated by cinephiles everywhere, but before Fargo, when they crossed over into more mainstream awards success (and broke out with mainstream audiences).  It is quirky, sometimes to the point where you might roll an eye or two, but as the film goes by it earns that quirk.  Holly Hunter & Nicolas Cage are both terrific in their lead roles, as newlyweds who cannot have children of their own and therefore kidnap one of a set of quintuplets whom they fall in love with deeply even if they know he can't stay there's forever.

The supporting cast is great, of course (Coen Brothers staples like Frances McDormand & John Goodman appear in key roles), but Hunter & Cage are where it's at.  This is before Hunter took on The Piano (becoming an acting icon) and Cage became something of a national punchline with his indiscriminate choice in scripts.  In the hands of less-gifted actors these roles wouldn't work-Cage would be played as a joke rather than genuinely sweet, and Hunter's crying jags would be ridiculous instead of having the requisite amount of caring to make the movie's final moments, when Hi sees a future where they'll eventually have children of their own but never stop loving Nathan Jr, work beautifully.  The film isn't perfect (the renegade biker bit feels tacked on, as does the cheap jokes about swingers), but it's yet another testament to the Coen Brothers ability to find the emotionally felt in the absurd.

OVP: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Film: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Stars: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Lily Tomlin, John Mulaney, Nicolas Cage, Brian Tyree Henry, Liev Schrieber, Kimiko Glenn, Chris Pine, Oscar Isaac
Director: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman
Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Animated Feature Film*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We close out our look at the animated feature nominees of 2018 (if you missed our other articles click this link to peruse past nominees in the category & past discussions of this specific Oscar race) with the movie that actually won the trophy.  In the year where Black Panther broke ground and became the first proper superhero movie to win an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, the animators' branch also broke ground and gave out their first Oscar to a traditional superhero (technically Big Hero 6 was the first comic book film to win this award, but it didn't do so as a well-known tentpole).  Spider-Man may be the most oversaturated Marvel character in the movies (give or take Wolverine), and so seeing such a character win the Oscar either meant that the Academy was crying "uncle" & giving in to the hoards, or it was a nod that we'd finally found a movie that was worthy of such an honor.  Thankfully for us, it was the latter as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has things to say, and does them beautifully.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on teenager Miles Morales (Moore), an "average" teenager who fights with his father (Henry) and worships his cool, seemingly harmless uncle Aaron (Ali).  One day, while hanging out with his uncle, Miles is bitten in the subway by a radioactive spider and becomes, well, you know the story of Spider-Man.

This is, however, where the story of Spider-Man retreats from the "Uncle Ben/Aunt May/Gwen Stacy/Mary Jane Watson" story so well-known that only Martha & Thomas Wayne can feel the same level of nausea for having had to live through the Groundhog Day of a situation over-and-over again.  Instead, we get a relatively complex (especially for an animated film that is at least on-the-surface targeting younger audiences) introduction to a multiverse, where multiple different people are playing some version of Spider-Man (Johnson, Steinfeld, Mulaney, Glenn, Cage, Pine, & Isaac all take on the role in various guises ranging from the traditional Peter Parker to Peter Porker, a porcine version that is voiced by Mulaney & is probably the film's greatest comedic highlight).  We also get a host of different villains (including Kingpin, Prowler, Scorpion, & Green Goblin), with Kingpin serving as the big baddie of this film, but unlike almost any other comic book picture that has too many villains and too many heroes, it doesn't crush under its own weight.

This is because there are two true threads in the film that continue to carry it forward.  The first is the relationship between Miles & his father, complicated but filled with unspoken love, Henry & Moore both play this relationship with a realism that is so alien to animated features.  I loved the reality of a teenage Moore, who had clearly adored his father just a few short years ago, trying to reconcile his relationship with himself and his new idols with that of his old one, his police officer father.  That he chooses, in his own way, to pursue a similar line-of-work is handled in a way that never borders into cliche, and actually ends up being a cool story.  This "accept the world you live in" message is abundant throughout the film, but it perhaps comes across best with Miles realizing the family he has is the one he needs to swear to protect, and it genuinely feels fresh rather than a retread.

Perhaps the more fascinating element of the picture might be the visual feast we're given throughout the movie.  Gorgeously animated (hats off to the trio of directors who pulled this movie together), the picture combines multiple different animation and drawing styles to create a sumptuous banquet of colors and characters.  I was obviously partial to Cage's Spider-Man Noir, but the battle with Kingpin with a swirling vortex of color and sound is splendid, and even in a year where Pixar put out a movie & Wes Anderson was crafting very distinct cities in Isle of Dogs, it's hard to argue that the film wasn't the most breathtaking animation we saw on screens in 2018.

Teen Titans Go! to the Movies (2018)

Film: Teen Titans Go! to the Movies (2018)
Stars: Greg Cipes, Scott Menville, Khary Payton, Tara Strong, Hynden Walch, Will Arnett, Kristen Bell, Nicolas Cage
Director: Peter Rida Michail & Aaron Horvath
Oscar History: Not even in weak year for Animated Feature
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I don't have a lot of guilty pleasures that I indulge in about which I actually feel guilty.  As a general rule people throw the phrase "guilty pleasure" around for things like The Bachelorette, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, or the Transformers movies, and I don't have time for that (though thanks to the OVP I have seen three of the Transformers movies).  However, one of the few guilty pleasures I do, and arguably the most "bachelor, straight guy thing" I do for a guy who is Kinsey-6 gay is that I love, love, love Teen Titans Go!, to the point where my default channel on my TV is Cartoon Network.  The silly, ridiculous, but always clever adventures of these five teens as they occasionally save the world but usually get distracted by food are a joy, and as a result, Teen Titans Go! to the Movies is the first franchise movie in a very long time that I genuinely could not wait to see, and so as a result I actually went to the movies on a Wednesday night (arguably my toughest night to get to the movies) and finally got to catch where the gang went when they had a chance at the big screen.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows our friends Starfire (Strong), Raven (Walch), Cyborg (Payton), Robin (Manville), and Beast Boy (Cipes) as they initially are mocked for not being able to defeat the villain destroying Jump City because they want to finish their well-choreographed dance number on a rooftop, and then we watch as Robin attempts to become a movie star like so many of the other DC Characters.  Robin's attempts to break into cinema are classic Titans, with them first doing several unsuccessful attempts (the best being going back in time to try and stop superheroes from becoming famous), and then eventually Robin getting his own movie without the Titans.  As you can imagine, this doesn't turn out well, but the Titans save the day and foil the dastardly Slade (a wonderfully wry Will Arnett, who also produced the film), just in time for a post-credits scene featuring the original Teen Titans, fueling speculation that the defunct series could come back to the small screen if enough people see this movie.  After all, what is a superhero movie without a promised sequel?

The film, like the show, is at its best when it's getting self-referential or meta.  For my taste as a big fan, I wish there had been more winks to the actual series, as for me there's never enough (for all of the talk about waffles, a quick "WAFFLES, WAFFLES, WAFFLES" from Beast Boy & Cyborg surely wouldn't have been too much to ask, right?), but background appearances from Sticky Joe, Control Freak, and Silkie were all super cute, and the briefest of hints to Starfire/Robin and Beast Boy/Raven relationships were well-received.  Perhaps best were the meta moments, where we see the entire film skewer the DC Comic land-strip.  Occasionally these bits feel borrowed from another Will Arnett movie (The Lego Batman Movie arguably does this better, albeit with less heart and ribbing), but these are all received with aplomb, particularly the continued mockery of the Challengers of the Unknown (one of DC's lesser-known villains), the game cameo from Stan Lee (in a DC movie!), and the huge wink to comic book nerds everywhere when Nicolas Cage finally got to play Superman in a movie.  If nothing else, getting to see Cage say the stoic, stereotypical words of Kal-El on the big-screen was worth the ticket price.

I just kind of wish they'd had gone for more of the fun of the series.  Don't get me wrong-I liked the movie, but more winks to the supporting characters and their nuances (Raven, in particular, feels underwritten) in favor of the most easily identifiable of these five characters (Robin), felt a little bit underwhelming.  The movie also occasionally struggles in pushing what is usually a 12-minute cartoon into 90 minutes, and as a result it never quite has the cleverness of The Lego Batman Movie, its most obvious counterpoint.  Still, though, in a landscape overwrought with predictable, tired superhero movies, this is a treat and well worth it for any fan of the series.  Now if only we could get a Gumball movie going, we'd be set!

OVP: The Croods (2013)

Film: The Croods (2013)

Stars: Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Cloris Leachman

Director:

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It is now December, and as it is December, I find my Netflix queue has become filled with 2013 releases.  I like to see as many OVP films as is possible preemptively, so that I can jump into 2013 as soon as I get through the difficult-to-see foreign film nominees (last year I was only missing a pair of English-langauge movies if I remember correctly).  Therefore, based on its box office, critical standing, and in particular the weakness of this year’s animated film lineup, it seemed appropriate to watch The Croods.  It’s not a guarantee to make the race like Frozen is, but there’s a good shot, and at the very least, it feels like an essential movie to tackle when considering 2013’s cinematic output.

A surprise smash hit earlier this year, The Croods is the story of Eep (Stone), a fire-haired young cavewoman who, like all women in animated films, dreams of a life full of adventure, one bigger than her own.  She’s held back by her overly cautious father Grug (Cage), whose sheltered existence has allowed for their family to survive while all of their neighbors have vanquished (in a cute, if morbid sequence, we see all of their colorful deaths).  One day, she escapes from the cave and comes across a prehistoric Abercrombie model named Guy (Reynolds) who has “ideas” and is intent on reaching Tomorrow, a place where they have multiple suns and everything is magical.  The earth is experiencing a splintering (you get the sense that Pangea is occurring, even though we’re way later than that time chronologically).

The film takes a pretty traditional route after this, with Grug having trouble both letting go of his role as leader of the family (slowly everyone starts to fall under Guy’s cool dude attitude, particularly his daughter) and Eep slowly falling for Guy (and vice versa).  The film has a few great action sequences toward the end, with Grug coming to an understanding with Guy, his family, and the dangers of nature, as well as the final earthquake that provides the “destruction” of their old world in favor of the new coastal paradise they’ve encountered.

With animation, part of the appeal is usually the look of the movie, and this film has a pretty outlandish balance between gaudy and breathtaking.  I loved the way that Eep was drawn, for example-stocky, muscular, but still very attractive, while Guy’s narrow torso and jeans (seriously-I’m pretty sure he was wearing jeans) were not only period inappropriate but anatomically impossible (it says something when you can say he’s leaner than the guy who voiced him, and he’s voiced by the physical perfection that is Ryan Reynolds).  The lighting is very strong-Roger Deakins was part of the art department, and you can see his trademark work with lighting every time they contrast the landscape with the overly bright sun, which is dizzying and quite realistic in a film that doesn’t strive for that.

The film makes little mention of why we have so many creatures that never actually existed.  While we have saber-tooth tigers, and sure, why can’t they be green, we also have monkeys with tails connected to each other and a host of other creatures that never actually existed (unless you get pretty creative with fossils).  The film doesn’t lose much by this (we’re talking about cavemen who understand the concept of the brain and manned flight), but it’s a weird aesthetic choice nonetheless.

The central story is one you’ve heard a thousand times before, and gets a little tiring-is there a more over-utilized plot in animation than a father and a daughter fighting over her newfound sexuality?  Seriously-would it kill them to just once do an animated film about a mother and a son?  Emma Stone, pure charisma in her role, sells the clichés solidly, though, and when the inevitable sequel comes about, I hope that she takes on a more central role than Cage’s Grug, who is borrowing far too much from the real-life actor’s “dudeness.”

As for its role in the animated feature race, it probably shouldn’t be nominated, but with such a thin field I can’t say that definitively.  There are a number of Studio Ghibli and GKids productions I’m dying to see (The Wind Rises and Ernest & Celestine both at the top of the list), but The Croods is at least better than the tired Despicable Me 2.  It didn’t quite make that kind of money, but Dreamworks lands its original productions nominations on a frequent basis, so I stand by my prediction that The Croods is one of the final five movies to make this list.

But what about you-do you think that The Croods will score with Oscar, and more importantly, should it?  Did you find the lighting enchanting or a bit, well, bright?  And between Stone, Reynolds, Cage, the forgotten Catherine Keener, or the outlandish Leachman, who gave the best and worst in the vocal cast?