1990 Oscar Viewing Project

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

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

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

1. Home Alone

2. Ghost

3. Dances with Wolves

4. Pretty Woman

5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

6. The Hunt for Red October

7. Total Recall

8. Die Hard 2

9. Dick Tracy

10. Kindergarten Cop

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

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

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

Picture

1. GoodFellas

2. Ghost

3. The Godfather, Part III

4. Dances with Wolves

5. Awakenings

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

Director

1. Martin Scorsese (GoodFellas)

2. Stephen Frears (The Grifters)

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

4. Barbet Schroder (Reversal of Fortune)

5. Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves)

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

Actor

1. Richard Harris (The Field)

2. Jeremy Irons (Reversal of Fortune)

3. Gerard Depardieu (Cyrano de Bergerac)

4. Robert de Niro (Awakenings)

5. Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves)'

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

Actress

1. Anjelica Huston (The Grifters)

2. Kathy Bates (Misery)

3. Meryl Streep (Postcards from the Edge)

4. Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman)

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

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

Supporting Actor

1. Joe Pesci (GoodFellas)

2. Andy Garcia (The Godfather, Part III)

3. Bruce Davison (Longtime Companion)

4. Al Pacino (Dick Tracy)

5. Grahame Greene (Dances with Wolves)

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

Supporting Actress

1. Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost)

2. Annette Bening (The Grifters)

3. Lorraine Bracco (GoodFellas)

4. Diane Ladd (Wild at Heart)

5. Mary McDonnell (Dances with Wolves)

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

Foreign Language Film

1. Cyrano de Bergerac (France)

2. The Nasty Girl (Germany)

3. Ju Dou (China)

4. Journey of Hope (Switzerland)

5. Open Doors (Italy)

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

Adapted Screenplay

1. GoodFellas

2. The Grifters

3. Reversal of Fortune

4. Dances with Wolves

5. Awakenings

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

Original Screenplay

1. Ghost

2. Metropolitan

3. Avalon

4. Alice

5. Green Card

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

Sound

1. Dances with Wolves

2. Total Recall

3. Days of Thunder

4. The Hunt for Red October

5. Dick Tracy

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

Sound Editing

1. The Hunt for Red October

2. Total Recall

3. Flatliners

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

Score

1. Dances with Wolves

2. Home Alone

3. Avalon

4. Ghost

5. Havana

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

Original Song

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

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

3. "Sooner or Later" (Dick Tracy)

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

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

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

Art Direction

1. Dick Tracy

2. Hamlet

3. The Godfather, Part III

4. Cyrano de Bergerac

5. Dances with Wolves

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

Cinematography

1. Dances with Wolves

2. The Godfather, Part III

3. Avalon

4. Dick Tracy

5. Henry & June

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

Costume Design

1. Hamlet

2. Cyrano de Bergerac

3. Dick Tracy

4. Avalon

5. Dances with Wolves

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

Film Editing

1. GoodFellas

2. The Godfather, Part III

3. Dances with Wolves

4. Ghost

5. The Hunt for Red October

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

Makeup

1. Dick Tracy

2. Edward Scissorhands

3. Cyrano de Bergerac

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

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

OVP: The Conversation (1974)

Film: The Conversation (1974)

Stars: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 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 Harrison Ford: click here to learn more about Mr. Ford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Harrison Ford's public persona has long been of a man who didn't really want to be a movie star.  A lot of this, I have long-suspected, is at least partially untrue (otherwise why do it, especially when he became bonkers rich & didn't really need to do it anymore...after all, his wife is also a talented actor who now rarely works).  But it is interesting that Ford's fame came relatively late.  The role that made him a movie star was Star Wars, which was released just days before his 35th birthday. For comparison's sake with some of his 1970's peers, Al Pacino at that age had several Oscar nominations and the Godfather franchise, Dustin Hoffman had been Ben Braddock & Ratso Rizzo, and Jack Nicholson & Peter Fonda had both boarded a motorcycle into legend.  Ford spent much of the 1970's balancing his time between small roles in movies and making furniture for people like Joan Didion, Valerie Harper, & George Lucas.  Ford's movie career, though, is really interesting because he appeared in a lot of interesting movies, among them Michelangelo Antonioni's controversial Zabriskie Point, and three Best Picture nominees: American Graffiti, Apocalypse Now, and today's film The Conversation.  For all of the talk about Ford at one point before Han Solo nearly quitting the industry to work as a high-profile carpenter, the more intriguing idea might be what he did in this film: taking on the role of distinctive, very handsome character actor in important auteur-driven features.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Conversation is a movie best headed into with you knowing as little as is humanly possible, so while I provide a spoiler alert on all of my reviews because I generally want to know as little as possible about all movies I'm going to, this one in particular it helps to go in blind so I'll reiterate that now.  The movie follows Harry Caul (Hackman), a man who runs a service that essentially follows people and records them for money (it is not lost on me that The Conversation, which competed with Chinatown for Best Picture in 1974, bears a striking resemblance to the Roman Polanski film as both are about private investigators who uncover more than they expected from a routine case).  Unlike Jake Gittes, Harry Caul does not advertise and is not well-known for his work.  He is, instead, anonymous to the point of unhealthy, keeping everything about him at a distance to the point his girlfriend (Garr) doesn't ever visit his apartment and he doesn't even have his own phone.  This is driven by wanting to avoid retribution, but also the very real threat of violence in his career.  Similar to Chinatown (again) there are allusions to a previous case throughout the film that the audience only understands to be too horrific to mention, and that haunt both detectives to the point they are constantly in fear of repeating it.

The Conversation is considered a landmark film, but because Francis Ford Coppola had it come out the same year The Godfather, Part II (one of the greatest movies ever made), it always feels like it doesn't get its due, and so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect headed into this-would it be a really handsome movie, one that stands up but can't compare with a picture as perfect as Godfather II, or would it be just as exceptional.  Again, similar to Chinatown, it's not clear until the last moments what's happening, and it's also not clear where The Conversation will land in that comparison.  But as the movie concludes, you realize it's also a true masterpiece.  We understand as the film ends that Harry has no idea what he's walked into, and what he's helped cause.  He assumes that the conversation between Frederic Forrest & Cindy Williams at the beginning of the movie is of a couple that might be having an affair, and becomes concerned when he uncovers (while listening to the clips that he initially won't hand over to a man known as "the Director's" assistant without first meeting the Director himself) that a part of the clips that he couldn't initially hear says "he'd kill us if he got the chance."  When he meets the Director (played by an uncredited Robert Duvall) he becomes worried for the young couple's safety as it's clear Cindy Williams is the Director's wife.  But as we learn in the waning moments of the film, he's missed something on the tapes-the emphasis in Forrest's reading of the word "us."

Because as the film ends, it's a case where Frederic Forrest has murdered Robert Duvall's husband with help from his lover, leaving all of the money (and secret organization he has) to Cindy Williams, and leaving them the opportunity to end up together.  The movie's sound work is legendary (and Oscar-nominated) for a reason, as not only is the entire setup with Hackman's Harry filled with us getting whirs & blurs from the recording equipment, but also the film tells in flashback narrative things the audience will have missed.  The film clearly inspired everything from The Usual Suspects to Severance (which borrows heavily from The Conversation's score), and you see why-this is a movie that shows paranoia is justified...and cannot be resolved.  We end the movie with Harry knowing he is being watched, knowing that he can't escape or be safely private...and having to give in to that to not go mad.

Harrison Ford's role is a key component & a crucial part of this story, even if he's only in about three scenes.  He plays the Director's assistant, and plays him with a level of bureaucratic cool that you kind of just assume he's a jackass (also according to most reports, Ford played him as gay which kind of comes across in the way he's super bitchy in a way you don't find a male character in the 1970's, even if there's no hint of this other than him wearing a stylish green suit in one scene that Ford bought with his own money), one who has gotten to this position through being absurdly handsome and honestly it's the sort of character you assume you don't need to pay attention to as the movie progresses.  Because I am writing this about Ford, though, I was paying attention, and it gives you a whole other angle here.  Ford's Martin Stett is the only figure in the film who 100% knows everything that's going on we learn as the film goes by-he works for the Director, but he's also clearly aware of the affair, and given that he's still working for Frederic Forrest & Cindy Williams in the end, it's possible he orchestrated all of this in connection with them.  The paranoia seeps into the actual film...was this all a setup to use Harry, kill the Director, and give the young couple everything they wanted?  Only Ford's Stett, who calls Hackman in the end to tell him he's being watched, knows for certain, and makes him the true antagonist of the picture.  Ford is good in this, and as we'll talk about next week, that layered acting ability didn't totally diminish when his visage started to adorn the postered walls of teenage boys, but as I said above-it's hard not to think of Ford in the same way we think of someone like Robert Duvall or John Cazale, someone who added extra layers to already great movies, as a supporting character actor, while watching The Conversation.

My 1964 Oscar Ballot

We are officially hitting our 33rd My Oscar Ballot, which given that we just had the 98th Academy Awards, I am officially also a third done with this project (for the uninitiated, there are links to all of my past contests at the bottom of this article).  If you missed it, we already did the 1964 Oscar Viewing Project, where I see all of the films that Oscar nominated, but this is my turn-where I turn the tables and pick the films that I most liked from 1964, seeing dozens of films above-and-beyond the Oscar Viewing Project.  While I see all of the Oscar-cited films, I don't (and can't) see all of the films (I'd never finish the project if I did...hell, I'd never finish 1964 if I did), and so if there's one title missing below, make sure to ask in the comments before assuming I'm committing a massive snub.

This is the first year of the 1960's I've done (we now only have the 1920's & 1950's left in terms of decades I haven't hit, the former a year I suspect we won't get to for a very long time as I plan on ending the series with 1927-28, so 1929 is my only option, and the latter we should get to later this year after I complete our next two years, 1990 & 1985).  Given the 60's is a transitional decade for Hollywood, I'm kind of glad I'm leading with one of the quintessential transition years for Oscar, with sturdy studio system fare like My Fair Lady competing against chic, groundbreaking work like Dr. Strangelove.  Overall, I like both of these styles, and free from the shackles of having to prove myself either cool or supportive of the system (I always make these decisions in a vacuum, as that's the whole point of the My Ballot project-to pick solely based on who is best without consideration of spreading-the-wealth or taking into account an artist's personal life), I ended up nominating both.  This is definitely a list that I feel is cooler than Oscar; you'll see films from filmmakers as cutting edge at the time as Sergio Leone, Masahiro Shinoda, & Jean-Luc Godard), but also features some Hollywood fare, including genre pictures (horror, westerns, & even rock-n-roll show up below).  You also will see first-time nominations for several major Hollywood stars like Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, & Jimmy Stewart, starting off their My Ballot run but undoubtedly not getting their only citation.

Note about eligibility: Oscar played far faster and looser with his rules in the 1960's & 70's, which resulted in several movies being nominated in two separate years, including several in 1964: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg & Women in the Dunes.  The rule when this happens (in place by me) is that I will nominate the year that they received the bulk of their nominations, which in both cases is 1965.  So while both of these movies (today) feel more like "1964" movies in common parlance, they will not show up below because they're 1965.  The same is true for other films that sometimes feel like 1964 movies, but were nominated exclusively in 1965 (The Train & Kwaidan being the examples that stick out most in my brain).  On the flip side, a film like Marriage-Italian Style which was cited in 1964 for Best Actress but for Foreign Language Film in 1965 at the Oscars is eligible in 1964.  For films that don't have Oscar nominations (so I match up to the OVP as much as possible), I stuck with the year they're associated most with, not necessarily their Oscar eligibility window (a good example of this is A Fistful of Dollars, which was not released in the United States until 1967, but is by pretty much everyone's definition a 1964 movie).  As ever, I largely stuck to Oscar's categories, but I didn't include a breakout of Black & White films, and I also have categories for Makeup & Dance Direction because I think both feel relevant so that my My Ballot as consistent as possible.

Picture

Band of Outsiders

Diary of a Chambermaid

Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)

A Fistful of Dollars

Goldfinger

A Hard Day's Night

Mary Poppins

My Fair Lady

Pale Flower

Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Gold: In a year where a lot of these films were just as much about mood as they were about plot or ideas, an unlikely picture fit that path more than anything.  A Hard Day's Night is indescribable, filled with four artists in their pop star god mode, forever untouchable and filled with youth and energy.

Silver: The surprisingly beautiful Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick's legendary, black-as-pitch comedy made at the height of the Cold War, is a testament to the follies of male supremacy (and the realities of male fragility).

Bronze: The start of Sergio Leone's most famed trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars, is as good as pretty much anything he's done (which is to say, yet another masterpiece in a career with an impossibly high batting average), a gorgeous western with an unknowable Clint Eastwood smack-dab in the center.

Director

Luis Bunuel, Diary of a Chambermaid

Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove

Sergio Leone, A Fistful of Dollars

Richard Lester, A Hard Day's Night

Masahiro Shinoda, Pale Flower

Gold: One of the things about making these in a vacuum is you get the sense of which people are going to get a LOT of medals, when you might have otherwise spread the wealth.  Of course, then you cannot properly identify the legends, which is what Stanley Kubrick (now on his third Director medal already, and his first gold...and he's only been eligible three times) is, giving us a taste of the paranoia (both ridiculous and terrifying) that ravaged the world in the 1960's.

Silver: Sergio Leone is also a favorite, and man is his work here exceptional.  The way that he crafts the legend of the west into an Italian setting, making you forget about the dubbing the visuals and storytelling are so compelling, is a miracle, and something he'd spend much of the rest of his career duplicating with success.

Bronze: The one director on this list I knew the least about is Masahiro Shinoda, but after Pale Flower you can bet  I added a half dozen of his films to my Letterboxd Watchlist immediately.  A sinful, seductive look at gambling and the criminal underworld in Japan in an era where their filmmakers were not just borrowing from film noir but sometimes eclipsing it.

Actor

Richard Attenborough, Diary of a Chambermaid

Richard Burton, Becket

Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady

Peter O'Toole, Becket

Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove

Gold: I mean, in some ways Peter Sellers is not playing with a fair deck.  Against a very good (and very Oscar-y, especially for this category) lineup, he has the advantage of not just playing one memorable character, but three.  But his comedic genius is so essential to the core of Dr. Strangelove, and its bizarre otherworldliness that even with just one role, he'd surely be at the top of this heap.

Silver: Becket features our first outing in the My Ballot with two of Oscar's most noted bridesmaids, and of the two I think I favor Peter O'Toole, who has a slightly bigger range as the King clearly in love with another man, but whose pride (and belief in his divinity) ensures that they will never be together as friend or more.

Bronze: Close behind O'Toole is Burton, though (I really liked Becket, way more than I was initially expecting).  Burton's work here is extraordinary; it's hard to nobly and convincingly play a doomed man as if he's not doomed, but he does it with an enormous, Shakespearean grace.

Actress

Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins

Ingrid Bergman, The Visit

Audrey Hepburn, My Fair Lady

Jeanne Moreau, Diary of a Chambermaid

Kim Stanley, Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Gold: There's always an internal wager I have about whether Best Actor or Best Actress will have the better lineup, and in 1964 I have to give it (slightly) to the ladies.  And so the actor that comes out on top is also the world's most famous nanny (or at least in that contest she's competing with herself), the charming and practically perfect Mary Poppins, played by the truly perfect Julie Andrews.

Silver: This means that in one of the most famous Oscar matchups that never was, I do pick Andrews over Audrey Hepburn's Eliza Doolittle, and yes it's the singing that probably breaks the tie.  But unlike Oscar I had the good sense to at least nominate her, as her charming, eventually enchanting flower girl is the stuff of breezy, effervescent movie magic.

Bronze: In a complete departure from these two musicals, we have Kim Stanley with the bronze.  Seance is one of those 1960's horror films that is truly creepy even today, and a big part of that is Stanley, who starts the film with us so confidence in our expectations of her, and then subtly moves away from them, us not knowing all that is beneath the surface until she's ready to reveal.

Supporting Actor

Georges Geret, Diary of a Chambermaid

Sterling Hayden, Dr. Strangelove

Stanley Holloway, My Fair Lady

George C. Scott, Dr. Strangelove

James Stewart, Cheyenne Autumn

Gold: He might not be willing to accept, but George C. Scott gets the gold here for his totally unhinged portrayal of bravado and machismo in Dr. Strangelove.  I love the way that the film is perpetually poking fun at him, but he never lets on, making the joke that much better (and more realistic).

Silver: In one of the weirdest nominations I've done, we have Jimmy Stewart's first citation (coming from a movie that is almost never name-checked as one of his best.  But while the rest of Cheyenne Autumn is just okay, the way that he plays his hilarious, fumblingly awesome Wyatt Earp steals the picture (and contains the promise of a better one).

Bronze: The political underbelly of Diary of a Chambermaid is where its genius lies, and you can't have that genius without the work of Georges Geret in the critical role of Joseph, the fascist chauffeur who is treated by those around him as a joke...even though he seems himself as very real.

Supporting Actress

Diane Baker, Marnie

Glynis Johns, Mary Poppins

Angela Lansbury, Dear Heart

Ann Sothern, The Best Man

Ann Sothern, Lady in a Cage

Gold: Unlike Oscar (used to), I actually allow myself the ability to give actors multiple nominations in the same category, and in this case that double nominee comes out on top.  Ann Sothern's work in Lady in a Cage is something else-a woman who has "seen it all"...but she's never seen this.  

Silver: Diane Baker, decades before Hannibal Lecter loved her suit, is the quintessential definition of a Supporting Actress nominee, playing a woman on the edge of a relationship, one with secrets & ulterior motives, yet as trapped as anyone in Marnie by what's to come.

Bronze: At the time, there was a lot of Oscar buzz for Sothern in both of these roles-it's bonkers she didn't get in for one of them.  We're finishing the acting field out with her here, with The Best Man in a showy role (that, weirdly enough, I saw her fellow nominee Angela Lansbury play on stage), one that gets her a look at both the unusual role that women were (and weren't) allowed to play in politics of the 1960's.

Adapted Screenplay

Becket

Diary of a Chambermaid

Dr. Strangelove

Mary Poppins

Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Gold: I tend to favor plotting, which this film admittedly has, more than simply dialogue or quotes when it comes to deciding which scripts I'm going to favor.  But man, you can't deny the endlessly quotable lines of Dr. Strangelove.  Whether it's "you can't fight in here...it's the War Room!" or Sterling Hayden's deranged monologues, it's a movie you can always trot out at dinner parties.

Silver: But if we're going to go with plotting, you can't go wrong with Diary of a Chambermaid.  Years before the (very different) Cabaret, the movie inspires it (and borrows to some degree from Rules of the Game) to create a taut, sophisticated mystery that is also a cautionary tale.

Bronze: Seance on a Wet Afternoon gets much of its power from its twists, the way that it plays with our expectations of these two kidnappers, and what they are up to as the picture moves us into uncomfortable conversations about grief, greed, and the power balance in marriage.

Original Screenplay

A Hard Day's Night

The Naked Kiss

One Potato, Two Potato

Pale Flower

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Gold: By 1964, film noir had basically drowned in Hollywood, and we were a few years away from Arthur Penn & Roman Polanski creating it for a new generation of moviegoers.  So it was left to the international cinema, and in particular Japan, to carry that torch, which it does beautifully in the dreamy Pale Flower.

Silver: On-paper A Hard Day's Night is no one's definition of a writerly film.  Indeed, the movie at times reads like a quasi-documentary, following John, Paul, George, & Ringo around as they are mobbed by screaming fans.  But that's the greatness of Alun Owen's script-he makes you feel like you're actually spending time with a charming, engulfing rock band...so much so that it feels like it's not scripted.

Bronze: A now-forgotten look at biracial marriage in the 1960's, One Potato, Two Potato eschews many of the pitfalls of an "issues" film by giving us realistic depictions of love, acceptance, race, and the cruelties of having a child who can't understand any of them...even if she has to live them.

Sound Mixing

Fail Safe

A Hard Day's Night

Mary Poppins

My Fair Lady

Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Gold: I say this too often in these write-ups for it to feel true anymore, but I don't just automatically default to musicals when it comes to this category (something Oscar frequently did), but with these nominees (and medalists) we're going to get a shocking amount of musicals.  The first is My Fair Lady, which has not only grand orchestral work, but also perhaps the most seamless case of dubbing in the history of cinema with Marni Nixon.

Silver: Blending the screaming hoards & classic pop ballads, A Hard Day's Night is able to craft something truly magical.  We get a sense of them performing this both in person and clearly in recording, which is not an easy task, and it feels authentically true even in the comedic bits, where you are organically pulled in through the sound of the era.

Bronze: We're finishing with one more musical (I wasn't kidding), and of course in this case it's a situation where we're putting sound on top of visual effects on top of the sounds of a studio lot London, all to bring the magic together for Mary Poppins.

Sound Editing

Dr. Strangelove

Fail Safe

Goldfinger

A Hard Day's Night

Mary Poppins

Gold: The tech gadgetry in all James Bond movies is a large part of why 007 has stayed iconic long after Sean Connery's heyday.  You see that in the action set pieces, and the most thrilling of scenes (such as the laser work) that couldn't be possible without the sound editing team carrying the day in the background.

Silver: As I said above, the genius of A Hard Day's Night is the freshness of the film, the way that it blends in pre-existing recordings (like these brilliant songs), to make something that resembles at once a musical and a pioneering music video.

Bronze: Nuclear explosions, tense plane conversations, and Slim Pickens riding a warhead into oblivion, Dr. Strangelove is heightened by what it's aurally putting into the viewers ears.  The omnipresence of sound in some scenes while we get a pin-drop in others mirrors the world's thoughts on the Cold War...that it's always there, but could stop at any moment (and not in a good way).

Score

A Fistful of Dollars

Marnie

Mary Poppins

The Pink Panther

Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Gold: Being iconic doesn't automatically equal that you are good.  A lot of icons are middling (just look at a good chunk of the history of pop music).  But in the case of Henry Mancini's delicious, smooth-as-silk jazz odes in The Pink Panther, it's a case where the hype is quickly lived up to-an absolutely outstanding mix of playfulness and mystery.

Silver: The music of Ennio Morricone in the westerns he made with Sergio Leone are amongst some of the best ever committed to celluloid, and that doesn't end in A Fistful of Dollars.  Glorious, paired with the wide expanse of the cinematography, everything about this film is creating its own mythology.

Bronze: Like Oscar, I'm occasionally a bit of a snob when it comes to musicals in this category-I have a Best Scoring category we can get to in a minute, and let's face it-most scores borrow so heavily from the original tunes that it's hard to really justify them getting into this category.  But color me delighted that Mary Poppins has a wonderfully spry, winsome bit of music to bridge all of those ditties.

Scoring

A Hard Day's Night

Mary Poppins

My Fair Lady

Gold: Maybe the most inevitable trio I've ever pulled together (certainly in this category), we have three all-timers just jockeying over position on the medal stand.  In this case, I'm going to give the gold to My Fair Lady, the only one without an original ballad, mostly because I think it does such a ravishing job of incorporating the music, and we have two iconic, juxtaposed singing styles between the heavenly Marni Nixon and the speak-sing cleverness of Rex Harrison.

Silver: That said, you'd be hard-pressed to have a movie with the kind of soundtrack that A Hard Day's Night pulls together.  Seriously-pulling out just an endless litany of Beatles' classics, most of them coming onto your screen for the first time in this picture...it's musical heaven.

Bronze: We conclude with what is surely the strongest bronze medalist in this article.  The thing about the songs of Mary Poppins is that they feel filled with wonder and wisdom.  Wonderful tunes like "Tuppence of a Bag" and "A Spoonful of Sugar" have the element of observation, something that sets Mary Poppins apart as a character.

Dance Direction

Mary Poppins

My Fair Lady

Viva Las Vegas

Gold: Mary gets her revenge in this one, though, as she glides to a gold medal.  The dance direction here isn't just Julie Andrews & Dick van Dyke sailing across a smoky English skyline, but also the insane visual effects on display to get them realistically dancing with animated penguins and plopping along through Disney's imagination.

Silver: My Fair Lady isn't a musical you'd automatically name-check as filled with a lot of dance numbers.  Harrison & Hepburn are not Astaire & Rogers.  But that doesn't negate the moments of whimsy here as Hepburn floats from room to room (as she could've, indeed, "danced all night"), or her signature ballroom moment-of-triumph later in the picture.

Bronze: We're getting back to that word "iconic" with our bronze medalist, and the gloriously choreographed dancing between Elvis Presley (who is pretty good) and Ann-Margret (who is revolutionary and basically inventing a new generation of swinging hips and thrusts that even Elvis can't compete with) in Viva Las Vegas.

Original Song

"Can't Buy Me Love," A Hard Day's Night

"Goldfinger," Goldfinger

"A Hard Day's Night," A Hard Day's Night

"A House is Not a Home," A House is Not a Home

"If I Fell," A Hard Day's Night

Gold: This category is CRAZY.  I mean-I have original tunes by Elvis Presley AND an entire classic Disney score I'm somehow leaving out, but whom do you cut?  Certainly not "If I Fell," one of the best and most gorgeously melancholy love tunes that ever came from the Fab Four.

Silver: Only peak Beatles could disrupt Shirley Bassey, ensuring you know there are a lot of notes out there and she's going to sing them all, in the opening medley of the signature Bond tune, "Goldfinger."  It's an unending crescendo, going up, up, up until it erupts with "he loves GOOOOOOOOOOLD!"

Bronze: We end with a second Beatles song, in this case me picking "Can't Buy Me Love" over A Hard Day's Night's title track, mostly because I feel like, even more than that song, it captures the fizzy youth of the picture, and what sets it apart as the most celebrated of the Beatles' multiple movies.

Art Direction

Becket

Dr. Strangelove

My Fair Lady

What a Way to Go!

Zulu

Gold: Realism is overrated.  It's pretty clear that My Fair Lady is shot on a soundstage, and that scenes like the Ascot Opening Day or Eliza walking down the streets of London are not actually being constructed in the real-world.  That they feel that way, that heightened sense of discovery, is because of the art directors, giving us exquisite detail and color to transport us into Eliza's universe.

Silver: I mean, when you have Cecil Beaton constructing towering odes to different men, you're going to end up with something spectacular.  The design and scale of What a Way to Go! is what makes it stand apart-sure it's funny, but it also has a marvelous sense of space & scale, reflecting each character succinctly because that's the only way the picture will work.

Bronze: The iconic war room is honestly enough to nominate Dr. Strangelove on its own.  The cold, impersonal use of space here is really an achievement-it's meant, even in its funniest moments, to remind you that we are closed off (think of how often these scenes, save for the war room, seem small in comparison to its scale).

Cinematography

Cheyenne Autumn

A Fistful of Dollars

I Am Cuba

Marnie

Red Desert

Gold: A Fistful of Dollars changed the way that we looked at westerns (and you can see that in comparing it to the nearly-as-strong bronze medalist here, the latter very much a product of the studio system lensing of the new frontier).  It doesn't really matter that this is very visibly not Mexico, but instead Spain.  The wide Techniscope expanses, giving us endless landscape, alternating with the close-ups on Clint Eastwood's enigmatic visage...it's perfect, and created the spaghetti western.

Silver: Maybe the tightest contest this year between Gold & Silver, I Am Cuba is a film that kind of has to be seen to be believed.  Gorgeous, ethereal looks at Havana and the rest of the Cuban countryside, the film's propaganda origins do not bely the fact that the camerawork (daring, modern, singular) is amongst the best of the 1960's.

Bronze: Cheyenne Autumn is not just the last grand-scale John Ford western, but it's also the last really important look at the Monument Valley-adorned view of the west.  After this, everything would modernize, and so it's wonderful to see the homages to classic westerns like Stagecoach here against a glowing testament to location shooting and the gigantic way that Ford's films would inform movies.

Costume Design

Marnie

Mary Poppins

My Fair Lady

What a Way to Go!

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Gold: It's not just about Audrey Hepburn's big hat...though that's not not what it is.  My Fair Lady is a gorgeous tapestry of Cecil Beaton masterpieces, taking the most glamorous movie star of her era, and putting her in an endless series of perfectly designed, sample size dresses that inform her ascension...all the way to that giant hat.

Silver: Again, it's not just the scene where Shirley MacLaine shows up in a gigantic hot pink fake fur with matching hair...though that is the best outfit in this movie.  Indeed, Shirley has never looked more sensational, and the way that she uses her character's assimilation into the lives of men while still keeping some sense of herself, it's yet another example of how good at this Edith Head was.

Bronze: Another film where the lead actress had a signature look, but it's only part of the conversation.  I mean, you have that perfectly tailored blue suit, but you also get a sense of Mary's attitude toward (regimented) fun with her white-and-red dress to go into a world of make-believe, or the lovely looks of all of the Banks family, carefully-constructed but exterior.

Film Editing

Band of Outsiders

Fail Safe

A Fistful of Dollars

A Hard Day's Night

Pale Flower

Gold: The manic energy of A Hard Day's Night is what makes it work.  The film intersperses fictionalized versions of real people, singing the real songs that made them famous, while also giving us characters that don't really exist.  All of that has to be spliced together with a series of great musical numbers, ones that will inspire countless radio plays & record sales.  That no one else has done this this well is a testament to how tight this movie plays.

Silver: Were it not for the dubbing (which is not great), A Fistful of Dollars probably lands the top spot here.  The movie takes an absurdly handsome & rugged Clint Eastwood, and has him in near constant crescendo, even if (in terms of characterization), we learn next-to-nothing about him as a human being.

Bronze: For me, the biggest reason to love Pale Flower are the gambling scenes.  The movie's editing is what's driving that, with us genuinely wondering not just who is going to win.  Even if you know none of the rules of Hanafuda (which I didn't), you're still glued to what's happening, and letting the cutaways tell you exactly who is winning.

Makeup & Hairstyling

7 Faces of Dr. Lao

Lady in a Cage

Marnie

The Night Walker

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Gold: I have long said that I am totally open to giving this award to pretty people being pretty if it's unique & interesting (unlike Oscar, who tends to favor prosthetics and making things ugly), and that's definitely the case with Marnie.  The movie's hairstyling, overly-done and obsessively perfect patrician looks for actors like Tippi Hedren & Diane Baker gives it one of Hitchcock's most heightened aesthetic.

Silver: Sophia Loren, forever glamorous, inhabits three different women in Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, and while she's always Sophia, the makeup team informs so much about the way that her characters treat themselves, giving her a strong chance to actually distinguish between the three.

Bronze: I''m ending a bit more in Oscar's wheelhouse, and very much in the world of prosthetics and actorly transformations.  The racial politics of this movie makes giving it a medal a bit problematic, I will own, but in terms of creation, you have truly stupendous figures (like Medusa) that are spellbinding makeup effects.

Visual Effects

7 Faces of Dr. Lao

First Men in the Moon

Goldfinger

Mary Poppins

Robinson Crusoe on Mars

Gold: Mary Poppins wasn't the first film to use a sodium screen (The Birds had done it the year before), but it's definitely the film that perfected it, giving us a new technology that continued to keep Disney (already the best game in town for visual effects) at the forefront of technology, with Julie Andrews & Dick van Dyke blending beautifully into animated worlds.

Silver: If Mary Poppins was a down payment on the future of this category, Goldfinger was showing what it could do at its peak in 1964.  A combination of miniature work, and practical effects (think of the laser sequence with Sean Connery pinned to the table, inches away from death both literally and figuratively without the men behind this category), it's one of the best action films of the 1960's for a reason.

Bronze: Our final medalist is here both because of the shocking realism of the effects, particularly toward the end of the film (though they are throughout), but also because of the way that Ray Harryhausen's creations & characters litter through First Men in the Moon with impressive stature.

Other My Oscar Ballots: 1931, 1948, 1957, 1972, 1981, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025