Patriot Games (1992)

Film: Patriot Games (1992)

Stars: Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Patrick Bergin, SEan Bean, Thora Birch, Samuel L. Jackson, James Fox, Richard Harris

Director: Phillip Noyce

Oscar History: No nominations

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 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.

The past two weeks we have focused on Harrison Ford as he might've been.  With The Conversation, we talked about his unique gifts for character work, giving us an important smarmy (but crucial) character in Gene Hackman's journey in the picture, and then with The Mosquito Coast we saw him attempt to escape the everyman hero that he personified in Han Solo & Indiana Jones to tremendous effect.  But Harrison Ford is not an actor you automatically name-check as a great actor-you think of him as a great movie star, and one who is relatively easy to imitate.  So this week, we're really getting into the era of Ford's "get off my plane!" level of ubiquity.  In the 1990's, Ford was a constant presence in movies and basically competed solely with Tom Cruise as the most invincible of stars at the box office.  Everything he touched would turn to gold, but while Cruise would occasionally challenge himself as an actor in these pictures, Ford didn't.  This isn't to say that Ford made bad movies during the era (ending in the late 1990's, which is where we'll close our month with him next week), but he wasn't racking up Oscar nominations like Cruise was, and most of his films are generic even if they would make buckets of money.  One of the best examples of them, and one of the few I hadn't seen yet (I was alive in the 1990's, and my mom loved Harrison Ford...I saw most of his stuff) is Patriot Games, the first of two outings that Ford would take as CIA analyst Jack Ryan, his other other franchise lead after the two I already name-checked.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Jack Ryan (Ford), a man who used to work for the CIA and is now teaching history at the US Naval Academy.  He, his wife Cathy (Archer), and daughter Sally (Birch) inadvertently witness an IRA terrorist attack on Lord William Holmes (Fox), in which Jack saves Lord Holmes life.  Several members, specifically Sean Miller (Bean) survive Jack's retaliation, though, and are on a quest for revenge against both Lord Holmes (who keeps having people around him dying) and against the Ryans, which escalates to kidnapping attempts on his wife & daughter.  This all ends with us realizing that Holmes' assistant has been a secret informant, and sets up Sean to kill both Lord Holmes and the Ryans in the same party...before Jack saves the day, killing the assistant and Sean Miller in the process.

It's worth noting that this is technically the sequel to another movie, honestly a better one: The Hunt for Red October, where the Jack Ryan character was played by Alec Baldwin (we'll actually discuss this movie a bit before the end of the month in the context of the 1990 Oscar Viewing Project, which I should be done with by next Saturday if all things go according to plan).  A lot of speculation from those in the know (and Baldwin himself) has been stirred about as to why Baldwin, sixteen years Ford's junior at the time and a much more logical choice for a new action franchise, was ousted, with everything from Ford being a bigger star (who had a host of contracts with the studio they were trying to pay off) to Baldwin's salary demands (and legendarily diva-like behavior during his leading man era) all contributing to this bump, but it did happen, and it changes the tenor of the movies.  Baldwin's screen persona was always a bit more seductive & (save for Han Solo) wrier than Ford's, and it shows that Patriot Games is kind of dull.

It's not that it's necessarily bad, because it's not.  The supporting cast (actors like Harris, Bean, & Jackson) are all made up of properly good actors, and Ford knows how to command a screen, but it's also generic.  There's nothing really special about Jack Ryan, nothing that we get to know-this feels like he's just playing Harrison Ford in the way that someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger would become famous for at the same time-not giving us anything beyond what's expected.  Ford, though, was a better actor than Arnold, and it's a pity this is what he has spent much of the latter part of his career doing.  It says something that while Ford was called upon decades after-the-fact to play both Han Solo and Indiana Jones, because no one could imagine anyone else playing these parts (apologies to Alden Ehrenreich), by 2002 when they were making the long-awaited sequel to Clear and Present Danger (Ford's second outing as Jack Ryan), it was Ben Affleck, not Ford, who ended up playing the part.  Had he not been going through one of the messiest Hollywood divorces of the era, Alec Baldwin might've enjoyed the karmic revenge of Ford finally losing out on his part to a younger actor.

Who is the Next AFI Life Achievement Honoree?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. Tim Burton

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

9. Sally Field

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

8. Viola Davis

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

7. Brad Pitt

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

6. Matt Damon

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

5. Jeff Bridges

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

4. Samuel L. Jackson

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

3. Tom Cruise

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

2. Julia Roberts

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

1. Jodie Foster

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

OVP: Ragtime (1981)

Film: Ragtime (1981)
Stars: James Cagney, Brad Dourif, James Olson, Mary Steenburgen, Howard E. Rollins, Jr., Elizabeth McGovern, Donald O'Connor, Pat O'Brien, Mandy Patinkin, Debbie Allen, Norman Mailer...as well as very early performances in small roles from the likes of future stars Jeff Daniels, Fran Drescher, & Samuel L. Jackson
Director: Milos Forman
Oscar History: 8 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Howard E. Rollins, Jr., Supporting Actress-Elizabeth McGovern, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Score, Original Song-"One More Hour")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

There are very few films remaining that have been nominated for 8+ Oscars that I haven't seen (the stats are harder to find than you'd think).  It's an even shorter list if you don't count movies that weren't cited for Best Picture...in fact, it's now a list that doesn't exist at all.  Only five films have received over eight nominations for the Academy Awards at the Oscars without a Best Picture citation, and with today's review I've seen them all: They Shoot Horses, Don't They (the only one to get 9 nods), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dreamgirls, The Dark Knight, and 1981's Ragtime.  Based on the celebrated novel by EL Doctorow, this movie is a gigantic, all-star extravaganza linking together historical figures with fictional characters so unknown they don't have names, and kudos have to go out to the casting director for putting a number of future superstars onto the call sheet.  But the question is-why did a movie get this kind of adoration but (despite having a very prestigious source material & director), didn't get a nod for Best Picture?  Let's take a look, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) I have never read Doctorow's novel (shame on me, I know), so I don't know if this is faithful or not, but the movie is largely a tangled historical web that eventually settles on one storyline in the back-half of the movie.  Essentially we have a lot of figures, some real-life (McGovern as famed model Evelyn Nesbit, Cagney as Fire Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo), and other characters, major characters in the film, who don't actually get names (Dourif plays "younger brother" while Steenburgen plays "Mother").  The film shows racism, as well as classism at the turn of the century, with newsreels featuring figures such as Harry Houdini, Teddy Roosevelt, and Stanford White (played by Mailer in the movie) to give us a sense of time (and its passage), while checking in on the lives of the main characters in the movie.  The back-half of the film, however, focuses almost exclusively on Coalhouse Walker (Rollins), a fictional figure who is a black man who has made something of a career for himself as a musician, but will not forgive a group of firefighters who destroyed his car while he was driving down-the-road.

The movie's focus on Coalhouse was probably inevitable, but arguably the wrong decision for the movie as it's more interesting in the first half of the movie.  The vignette-style stories almost have a Terrence Malick "figure out the plot" kind of coherence to them.  It's not remotely as arbitrary or abstract as Malick, but I quite liked the idea that we were getting a series of short stories rather than one larger narrative, but the Coalhouse plot, which ties together all of the loose figures in the film, almost feels anti-climactic compared to the looseness to Forman's approach to the movie.  It seems impossible that an anthology tale would have been greenlit in 1981, but it's where the movie works best.  When it focuses on Coalhouse it becomes more predictable, and more reliant on the actual figures at-hand, and the acting is a bit over-the-place here.

McGovern & Rollins got the Oscar nominations, and they do have the showiest parts (though it was Steenburgen who scored at the Globes, and it was Randy Newman's score that most deserved the AMPAS recognition), but Ragtime is a movie that doesn't really allow for standouts in the traditional sense, and I left wanting more from both actors.  McGovern plays Evelyn Nesbit as somehow a dope and a brainy girl, someone who knows how to manipulate every situation but doesn't always know that she's doing it (a girl too pretty to lose), but it only sometimes works when McGovern makes Nesbit in on the joke.  One wonders if this nomination was in part due to McGovern's shocking display of nudity about a third of the way into the picture, where she nonchalantly sits on a 100-year-old couch with her breasts on full-display.  It's better than the meek-and-mild Steenburgen (who adds little to her character) or Patinkin's overbearing director, but it's an ingenue part that probably needed a more seasoned actress to make it work.

Rollins grounds his character a bit more, but honestly I left this performance with something to be desired as well.  His righteous anger is warranted, but you can't quite compromise the man we initially meet who quickly becomes a doomed vigilante within Rollins work.  He seems to only know how to reason in Shakespearean speech, so often out-of-place with the rest of the cast's more naturalistic performances, and you don't leave understanding enough of his motives.  The Academy could have done worse here (considering it was the sentimental 80's, a nomination instead for Cagney's humorous but one-dimensional fire commissioner could so easily have been cited instead), but I left the performance wishing for more, and glad that ultimately the Oscars picked John Gielgud in Arthur, a more fully-realized creation.

Who Will Win the 2020 AFI Life Achievement Award?

A few weeks ago, we did a look at who might be the next American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and since I had a lot of fun creating the list, I thought it might be enjoyable to take a look at a different upcoming major career recognition honor, the AFI Life Achievement Award.  This past summer, Denzel Washington was the recipient of the distinction, arguably the highest career honor in American cinema, but the organization actually doesn't wait long to announce its next winner, and if history teaches us anything, the victor will be proclaimed in early October, so we're only a few weeks away from learning the winner of the 2020 trophy.  As a result, I thought it'd be fun to take a look at a Top 10 list of who might be selected as the next honoree.

Before we get to the list, it's worth name-checking a few things that previous winners have had in common, so as to deduce who might be most likely to win this year.  47 film luminaries, ranging from John Ford in 1973 to Washington last year, have taken the trophy, so we have a bit of data to mine for clues as to whom next year's honoree might be.

Age: The average age of a winner is 69, though that's definitely an average (Steve Martin is the only winner to have actually been 69 when he won).  19 of the winners have been in their 70's, which is by far the most common age group to have won in, and no victor has been older than 90 (top in age was Lillian Gish) or under 46 (Tom Hanks was the youngest, and that win was criticized enough that I doubt they go for someone that young again).  So this probably means someone like Olivia de Havilland is out, as is someone like Leonardo DiCaprio.  As a result, bonus points to anyone somewhere between about 65 and 79, though obviously they could and have leaned outside that age range.

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

Geography: This is the American Film Institute Award, and while that title doesn't preclude anyone, it sure helps if you're American.  94% of the winners were Americans upon the time they won (this includes people who enjoyed dual citizenship like Elizabeth Taylor and Sidney Poitier), which is potentially why foreign-born icons like Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, & Laurence Olivier never won, and likely why figures such as Julie Andrews or Sophia Loren (who otherwise would have been shoo-ins) haven't taken the honor yet.  The three foreign-born figures who did win (Sean Connery, David Lean, and Alfred Hitchcock) don't really have a lot in common, so it's hard to find some commonality to one person getting in if they aren't American.

Oscar History: If you're going to be taking the AFI title, it helps (a lot) if you're an Oscar winner.  77% of all of the honorees were at the time of their victory winners of at least one competitive Academy Award, and another ten were nominees (two of which, Henry Fonda & Martin Scorsese, would win competitive Oscars post their AFI ceremony).  The only person to have never been nominated for an Oscar and still win the AFI is Steve Martin, someone you'd be hard-pressed to find an obvious corollary to today.  This pattern has gotten even stronger in recent years-85% of the past twenty recipients were Oscar winners (excluding Martin, George Lucas, & Harrison Ford).  So it's likely that the next person to take the AFI will have won a competitive Oscar.

Gender: The ceremony seems to be trying to correct this in recent years, but it's still very much a boy's club at the AFI.  81% of all winners have been men, and the ceremony has never honored a woman who was solely or principally known as a behind-the-scenes figure (women like Shirley MacLaine, Barbra Streisand, and Diane Keaton have all directed films and won the AFI, but all three made their names in movies as actors).  The last two winners have been male, but history has shown that doesn't necessarily mandate that we'll be seeing a woman here in 2020.

DeMille/Kennedy: There are at least two other awards (other than Oscar) that are a strong indicator of whether or not someone will take the AFI trophy-the Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Kennedy Center Honor.  62% of all winners of the AFI were also DeMille winners and of those who were alive to receive it (the Kennedy Center Honors started last of the three honors, in 1978, so John Ford was dead by the time they rolled around despite having already won the AFI), 69% of the AFI Award victors also won the Kennedy Center Honor.  23 people have pulled off all three.  While the AFI has occasionally led the field (ie someone won it there before they picked up other honors, like Steven Spielberg or Elizabeth Taylor), it's a pretty strong indication if you're primarily known for film and you win one of these trophies that you're going to win one (or both) of the others.  One could make a sincere argument that the list of people who have taken the DeMille or Kennedy Center Honor without also having an AFI is particularly short right now, so AFI may be forced to add a new name to the roster next year.  Of the 16 DeMille and/or Kennedy Center victors (without an AFI) who have meaningful cinematic contributions, almost all of them have something stopping them from taking this leg of the Cinematic Life Achievement Triple Crown (I started calling it that years ago...and it has not caught on).  There are several non-Americans (Sophia Loren, Julie Andrews) or Americans more commonly known for citizenship in a different country (Anthony Hopkins, Angela Lansbury).  There are figures with major contributions to cinema but who are more known for TV (Cicely Tyson, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno), music (Cher), or the stage (James Earl Jones, Lansbury again), and then there are a few figures due to health or antipathy to such things might not show up at all (Joanne Woodward, Gene Hackman, Woody Allen).  That actually only leaves four figures who could be considered real contenders that AFI hasn't picked yet, and all four will be listed below so I won't spoil the fun just yet.

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

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

Honorable Mentions: Lots of options here, but Goldie Hawn, Robert Duvall, Spike Lee, Brad Pitt, Will Smith, Julie Andrews, and Michael Caine are all people that wouldn't surprise me, but all have at least some debits that would preclude them (age, geography, and fame being factors to at least some degree depending on the artist).  However, they're close enough to being real threats that I figured I needed to at least CYA myself by mentioning their names.

10. Ron Howard

Age: 65
Geography: American (born in Oklahoma)
Oscar History: 4 nods/2 wins
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Him: Howard is the rare American director who hasn't won this award that has the sort of name recognition (thanks to his previous years as an actor) and populist films (Cocoon, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind) that might win him a citation someday.  He's also well-liked by other directors who would have some influence in the selection such as George Lucas & Steven Spielberg (not to mention his movie star daughter could push for him & would make a glamorous, sentimental host for the evening), and he's nearly the right age for the win.
Why Not Him: Howard, though he does have a pair of Oscars, isn't really in the same pioneering league as the other directors from a critical perspective.  His closest corollary among the winning directors would be Lucas, and he's never made anything remotely as important to Hollywood as the Star Wars franchise (even though, ironically, he has made a film in the Star Wars franchise).  Howard makes a lot of sense in theory, but I wonder if they'd pull the trigger for him or wait for a director like Quentin Tarantino to be old enough before they pick another behind-the-scenes figure.

9. Glenn Close

Age: 72
Geography: American (born in Connecticut)
Oscar History: 7 nominations
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Her: Close recently had a bout of incredible press, first from her finally making a play for her Oscar trophy, and then a round of public sympathy for not actually winning an Oscar most assumed was in the bag.  She's well-known to audiences (everyone's heard of her) but still has critical hosannas in her corner to make this feel like a classy choice, and would be near the average age for a winner.  Could she be chosen as a way of the industry saying "yes, you're a legend" after she was denied that claim a few months ago?
Why Not Her: I mean, if she couldn't win the Oscar, it's hard to imagine that she'd take this trophy (like I said-it's very hard to win this if you aren't an Oscar winner).  Close seems a better fit for the Kennedy Center Honors considering she's nearly as well-known for television and stage as she is for film, and it's not like she has a lot of massive hits under her belt in the way that Denzel Washington or Tom Hanks does.

8. Jessica Lange

Age: 70
Geography: American (born in Minnesota)
Oscar History: 6 nods/2 wins
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Her: Lange has been having one of those great, late career renaissances that occasionally gets you to sweep awards like this.  In many ways it recalls Morgan Freeman, who wasn't particularly famous until much later in his career, and then suddenly he was greeted with an onslaught of awards. American Horror Story and Feud have earned her a new generation of fans, and if Keaton & Streep are going to win this trophy, it feels like Lange should join them as an 80's movie queen who stayed a household name decades later.
Why Not Her: Lange had a robust cinematic career, but other than Tootsie there aren't a lot of widely-remembered classics on the list.  More importantly, Lange's late-career renaissance has been for television, not for the movies in the way that Freeman's was.  She would get them ratings, and in some ways this might be what finally got Jane Fonda her trophy, but Fonda is way more iconic than Lange is in terms of her cinematic pedigree (even though they have matching Oscar counts), and Lange would be a harder sell for AFI without another great movie role.

7. Samuel L. Jackson

Age: 70
Geography: American (born in DC)
Oscar History: 1 nomination
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Him: Jackson is the highest-grossing actor in terms of Box Office draw ever.  He's worked with literally everyone (I wouldn't be stunned if even I've made a film with him at this point) and has been both a critical muse (Scorsese, Spielberg, Tarantino, & Paul Thomas Anderson have all worked with him), as well as the star of major franchises like Jurassic Park, Avengers, Star Wars, and The Incredibles.  He's almost exactly the average age for the honor, and few figures in the past thirty years have been in as much American film as Jackson.
Why Not Him: The problem is that Jackson's made a lot of tripe along with all of those major paychecks.  Notice that Michael Caine has also never won this trophy, and almost certainly Johnny Depp is going to struggle to take it as well.  This is because Jackson's ubiquity hasn't necessarily translated to quality.  Every AFI winner has made a couple of stinkers, but Jackson's name isn't necessarily synonymous with quality, but rather quantity.  That's a problem if you're going to get the highest honor in American cinema.  Plus, even with all of those movies he's still never won an Oscar.

6. Tom Cruise

Age: 57
Geography: American (born in New York)
Oscar History: 3 nominations
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Him: Cruise is a bit young for the award, but few actors can boast his consistent movie star appeal.  Nearly 40 years after he became a headliner, he's still a leading man in major blockbuster movies, and has made a lot of the people who regularly sit in the AFI audience rich beyond their wildest dreams.  He's had quality films (those three Oscar nominations), and has enough movie moments through Jerry Maguire, Mission Impossible, and Top Gun to guarantee a built-in audience for the awards show.  All-in-all, this is a pretty solid bet for someone the AFI will want to claim...one of the few undisputed modern movie stars who can always land a picture.
Why Not Him: Cruise is a bit on the young side, and hasn't won an Oscar (or the DeMille yet, and I think that would come first for him considering the Globes love of celebrity).  More importantly, Cruise's public behavior since his 90's heyday makes this award come with some controversy.  Forgetting the Scientology aspect for a second (and that's a big thing to disregard), he's been erratic as a public figure & his films have taken a serious detour in quality since the early-aughts.  At this point he's more Sly Stallone & Liam Neeson than he is Tom Hanks or Denzel Washington, and Stallone/Neeson aren't anywhere near an AFI Life Achievement Award.

5. Sally Field

Age: 72
Geography: American (born in California)
Oscar History: 3 nods/2 wins
DeMille or Kennedy?: Field will receive the Kennedy Center Honor later this year
Why Her: Field's recent Kennedy Center Honor is a big deal, as it elevates her to the same echelons of people like Lauren Bacall, Joanne Woodward, and Myrna Loy (three other actresses who got the Kennedy Center Honor but never AFI) rather than any number of 70-something actresses who were once headliners but now frequently come in as supporting players or in TV cameos.  The list of true film stars who get the Kennedy Center Honor and not the AFI is small, and Field comes with two Academy Awards, as well as a number of still iconic hits (Smokey and the Bandit, Steel Magnolias, Forrest Gump) and recent success (My Name is Doris, the Spider-Man movies) that could make this an easy sell from a fame perspective.
Why Not Her: Field probably wouldn't be a great choice in 2020, since she just won the Kennedy Center Honor (it's uncommon, though not unprecedented, for someone to get two such awards so close together).  One would think they'd wait a year or two before picking her.  That said, we're likely due for another female victor, and unlike the next two women, she's much closer to the age of the average recipient so I wouldn't discount her; Field represents a jump from "good guess, and maybe someday" to "I could truly see it happening in 2020."

4. Julia Roberts

Age: 51
Geography: American (born in Georgia)
Oscar History: 4 nods/1 win
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Her: Roberts is going to win this award at some point, as long as she lives long enough.  She's exactly the sort of figure who scores the AFI-popular, enduring, beautiful, a leading woman even when her star started to dim, and someone who scored an Oscar at the peak of her fame, so there's critical cache to go with the many, many hits.  Honestly, so confident am I that Roberts will win this, and win it soon, that I didn't even list Sandra Bullock on this list, despite me also thinking she could take this at some point as well (since Roberts will get this before Bullock, in the same way Meryl Streep was always going to win here before Diane Keaton).  It's not "if" but "when" for Julia Roberts.
Why Not Her: Roberts is the youngest person on this list, and while she wouldn't be the youngest victor ever (Hanks may have that record forever, unless the AFI goes for Leo DiCaprio in the next year or two), she'd be the third youngest after Hanks & Spielberg if she took it.  She regularly makes movies, and there's no rush.  Why not give it to her when she's approaching Clooney's age (he was 57)?  I think that will be the thought process for the AFI, at least.

3. Jodie Foster

Age: 56
Geography: American (born in California)
Oscar History: 4 nods/2 wins
DeMille or Kennedy?: Foster memorably took the DeMille at the 2012 ceremony
Why Her: Unlike Clooney, Foster is approaching Clooney's age (she'd be exactly his age if she was the 2020 victor), and she's one of only two people on this list who has taken the DeMille/Kennedy distinction AND has enough distance to that award that it wouldn't llok like they were copying the Globes.  Foster is an iconic star, iconic enough that even without a lot of recent film hits she could still feel like a relevant winner, and she's probably going to win this eventually.  The past two years have shown a propensity for picking actors that were a little young for the award, but were certainly going to take the trophy at some point-could that continue with Jodie?
Why Not Her: Aside from the age aspect, there's the lack of a lot of recent roles, and her tendency to be more political & press-shy than your average winner.  They have strayed in a way the Kennedy Center Honors have not (look at how Jane Fonda has the AFI but not the government-sanctioned Kennedy Center award), but her filmic resume in the past two decades is pretty thin for someone who would be winning a trophy that oftentimes comes at the tail-end of your cinematic career, not when it's largely been dormant for a decade.

2. Jeff Bridges

Age: 69
Geography: American (born in California)
Oscar History: 7 nods/1 win
DeMille or Kennedy?: Bridges took the DeMille earlier this year.
Why Him: He's exactly the right age for this, and like some other recent winners, he's been a constant movie presence for decades, but certainly a constant force in the last decade.  Bridges won his Oscar less than ten years ago, and has scored two citations since then, as well as a lot of renewed affection for being one of the best actors of his generation.  Everyone seems to love him (he'd have great speeches), and this has probably graduated to the "inevitable" at this point for AFI to pick him.  I can't really think of a better time to appreciate him with such a major honor, can you?
Why Not Him: The only thing holding me back from picking him is that he just won the DeMille.  Unlike the Kennedy Center Honors, the DeMille winner has to give a speech, so the AFI could risk all of their best material having gone to that Globes' speech that could still be in their memory rather than Bridges giving a fresher one at the AFI.  That's about the only reason I can think of not to pick him-he was my dark horse guess for this next year until he won the DeMille, and I suspect I'll be predicting him in 2021 if he doesn't take it next year.

1. Robert Redford

Age: 83
Geography: American (born in California)
Oscar History: 4 nods/1 win (as well as an Honorary Oscar)
DeMille or Kennedy?: DeMile in 1993 and Kennedy Center Honors in 2005
Why Him: One of the great mysteries of awards show nerddom, to the point where I always have to double check that I'm not wrong, is how Robert Redford hasn't won the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award.  He's a film icon with a number of classic movies under his belt (he's worked with everyone from Marlon Brando to Paul Newman to Jane Fonda to Meryl Streep), he's an actor-director (Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, & Orson Welles can all attest that's a good way to win this), and he's also well-known for his celebration of smaller American film through his work with the Sundance Film Festival.  Should he not win, he'd be one of the biggest names to never take the honor, and one of the more regrettable.
Why Not Him: I genuinely don't know.  He's considerably older than the average winner, and it's hard to imagine that someone hasn't pitched this idea before.  Is he refusing to accept (this doesn't seem like Redford-he showed up for the Honorary Oscar and the Kennedy Centers relatively recently so why refuse the AFI specifically)?  I've never gotten the impression he's a jerk off-screen (and it's not like that's stopped them before-I mean, Dustin Hoffman has won this award).  Honestly, I can't think of a real reason that he hasn't won, and will be perplexed by him not winning until he dies or finally gets the trophy-his recent retirement surely makes a strong case for giving him this, right?  As a result, I'm going with the obvious answer here even though I've predicted Redford before for this honor.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Film: Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
Stars: Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson, Zendaya, Cobie Smulders, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei, Jake Gyllenhaal
Director: Jon Watts
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It was probably a decent idea of Marvel to follow-up Avengers: Endgame, an exhaustive & emotional picture, with something a bit lighter like Spider-Man.  After all, of all of the late-breaking stars, one could make an argument that Holland's is the most similar to earlier Avengers hits that were focused on charm & fun rather than moving into a semi-serious role again featuring Doctor Strange or Black Panther.  The film, though, has some impossible weight behind it-it has to find a way to continue your attention after the megastar showing of Avengers: Endgame while also whetting our appetites for what's to come.  Based on the box office for the movie (about the only consistency in 2019 cinemas is that people do not appear to be tired of Marvel movies), the next phase of the MCU feels ready to attack our wallets, but I have stated before that I was considering whether or not it was time for me to end this franchise (in the way many have for The Simpsons or South Park after too many stories that felt too similar) or not after Far From Home.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers in the weeks after the deaths of Iron Man, Black Widow, & Vision (the public seems to think that Captain America is also dead, even though he was seen as an old man at the end of the last picture).  As a result, we're without a lot of obvious heroes, and Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man aka Tom Holland) is kind of done with the idea of being a superhero as well. He wants to go on a class trip with his friends, including the girl he likes MJ (Zendaya), and is ignoring calls from Nick Fury (Jackson).  Eventually Nick Fury finds him, and introduces him to a potential future leader of the Avengers, Mysterio (Gyllenhaal), and we see the two of them attempting to battle the Elementals who have come from a different dimension (which is also where Mysterio has come from), to take over this earth.  Again, we see the world under threat from an alien breed, with a reluctant hero at the center, and he has to team up with another hero to get the job done.

Except, of course, it's not that simple.  Marvel isn't going to just have their villains be CGI-blobs, two of which are almost completely forgotten in the course of the movie, and it turns out that Mysterio is in fact yet another neglected protege of Tony Stark, here to enact his revenge and megalomaniacally take over the world.  It helps that they cast Gyllenhaal, who always looks like a combination of a nerdy boy scout and a puppy as the villain, as he plays well with a bad guy that's clearly over his head. The scene where he toasts and reveals his plan could have been expository hell, but it's actually the best non-action scene in the whole movie as we see Gyllenhaal get his over-actor on.

The problem is that Spider-Man: Far From Home is all territory we've done dozens of times.  Having Peter Parker go after MJ (again) is a total snooze, and I say that with Tom Holland being my favorite of the live-action Spideys.  Of course he's going to get her, of course she's going to find out he's Spider-Man, and of course he's going to still rise to be the leader he was meant to be.  We've seen this story countless times, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to increasingly be a place with limitless budgets & decidedly narrow creativity.  The battle sequences are awesome (particularly the water creature fight in Venice), but there's a sense of, even with good actors and charming movie stars, that this is never going to rise above being dull anymore.

This is a problem for the MCU, and why I'm probably done with the series after this movie, in that the whole point of at least the Infinity Stones storyline was that it had a beginning, middle, and end.  There were stretches that were better (Winter Soldier, Black Panther), there were stretches we'd be better off forgetting (Dark World, Guardians 2), but it was all leading to the final scenes of Endgame, where we had characters like Iron Man, Black Widow, and Vision have real-world implications (they died, and for now appear to be staying dead).  Having yet another round of these stories with similar plot struggles and the same tones...it feels so lifeless and boring.  I've read the good reviews of this movie, and I get where they're coming from, but frequently the good reviews include phrases like "good enough," "comfortable," "charming cast," and "rises above"...indicating that we're all just sort of complimenting the pile of money rather than critically examining that the movies aren't necessary even if they're fine.  The post-credits sequences contained a genuine shock (kudos to JK Simmons for bridging the MCU divide and bringing back J. Jonah Jameson), and then a nonsensical ode to the Skrulls when we learn that Nick Fury & Maria Hill weren't there the whole time, but instead they were shape-shifters.  Perhaps that will be me for the next installment, as unless there's something truly special coming in the next round (and right now none of the announced films scream out "See me!") it'll be a John lookalike that's sitting next to you in theaters.  Endgame was the proper closer to this series, and Far From Home was a reminder as to why it needs to close.

OVP: Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Film: Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Stars: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly
Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Some films are made to be high art.  Others are meant to make money.  The idea that the two can't merge has always bugged me.  After all, many films that we consider a "classic" today were intended to be blockbusters of their era.  Look at something like yesterday's The Adventures of Robin Hood for a good example of a movie that combined commerce with art in its era, and is now regarded as a classic.  Then you have something like Kong: Skull Island, which unlike two of its predecessors (the 1933 & 2005 versions of the story) is not intended to be a "classic" of its filmic genre, but instead feels like an all-star cash grab, and something of a franchise-starter.  Indeed, it appears that Kong: Skull Island will have a sequel next year called Godzilla vs. Kong, combining the franchise with the recent Godzilla one, though with the anemic numbers for that franchise this year, it's hard to imagine that Warner is pumped about this 2020 release.  As is evidenced by how little story matters from one movie to the next, it doesn't look like any of the main actors in this film are actually going to show up for the next movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is not exactly a retread of the King Kong legends about a film crew headed to Skull Island in hopes of finding giant beasts.  Instead, 29 years after two men are seen getting killed by a giant ape on Skull Island, an expedition happens at the tail-end of the Vietnam War headed by Bill Randa (Goodman), who works for a secret government agency called Monarch.  Headed by a Lt. Col Preston Packard (Jackson), he goes to the island and wants to prove the "Hollow Earth" theory correct, that there's a secret world within the planet that houses unknown creatures.  Also along for this journey are British Air Service Captain James Conrad (Hiddleston) and an anti-war photographer Mason Weaver (Larson), because you have to have a motley crew if you're going to pull together an all-star monster movie.  Once they get there, of course, all hell breaks loose.  Kong attacks the air units, conveniently leaving alive all of the actors we recognize and killing every single other one, and then retreats into the background, with Packard now obsessed with revenge but Conrad/Weaver both hoping to find an actual explanation for Kong.  They do, from one of the two men who landed on the island 29 years prior, Marlow (Reilly), who shows that Kong is actually defending the island from a series of creatures called "Skullcrawlers" who would destroy the people of the island (and possibly escape off of the island) if it weren't for Kong keeping them safe.  Weaver & Conrad try to convince Packard not to attack Kong, but to no avail, which results in Packard dying at Kong's hand, and then Kong having to take on the largest Skullcrawler before eventually emerging wounded but victorious.  The survivors leave, with Kong left behind, and during a post-credits scene Weaver & Conrad both learn that Kong isn't the only monster hidden beneath the earth's surface, and in fact figures like Godzilla, Rodan, & Mothra are among us, setting up the sequel.

The film is not great, and this is coming from someone who generally likes monster movies (genre bias is probably what's going to save this from being a 1-star film, so if you are prone to dislike monster movies, steer clear).  The Kong action sequences are really impressive-I get why this was nominated for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars, but the story is pretty tired and convenient.  We never quite stray into Michael Bay territory, but we come close, especially when it comes to the treatment of Jackson's character, who basically tries to get his Apocalypse Now on against Kong himself.  But the scenes with Kong, especially the air battle against the planes, is darn impressive, and might be worth checking out if you like big-budget action flicks.

The acting, though, is subpar.  You'd hardly know that the film features a trio of Oscar nominees (and John Goodman, no thespian slouch).  It's as if all of the actors in the picture just sort of decided to mentally check out, and give relatively forgettable performances, or at least ones that are over-the-top.  With a story that's pretty formulaic, you need some solid movie star work from the leads to ensure that we aren't just watching an effects spectacle, and none of them bring something special to the roles.  Jackson's at least trying with Packard, but can't ground him in any way to make him seem like a believable person, and the likes of Larson, Goodman, and Hiddleston are coasting on memories of better work and hoping you don't notice (but you will).  All-in-all, it doesn't feel like an elevated story like Godzilla a few years back, but instead more like a disposable 1960's monster movie, without the camp.  I'm part of the problem (I'll be seeing the next two movies as well because I love this genre), but I wish that Hollywood would try harder before even my die-hard love wanes.

OVP: Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Film: Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Stars: Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Bradley Cooper, Josh Brolin
Director: Anthony & Joe Russo
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I wrote when Captain Marvel came out that it had become impossible for me to judge the films in the franchise without seeing how they ended, and so I (like every person on the planet, apparently) went out the first week Avengers 4 was in theaters and caught the final(?) chapter of the movie franchise.  The film is destined for a slice of immortality, certain to overtake Avatar as the highest-grossing film (a title it may hold forever considering global box office trends-like Avatar and Titanic before it, it’s hard to imagine what kind of movie would eventually trounce such a film).  But the better question is-is it any good?  After 11 years and 22 films, what was the series finale like?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie picks up almost exactly after we left off, with an opening eerily similar to The Leftovers (a series that is heavily borrowed from in terms of aesthetic, though not in gravitas by this picture).  Hawkeye (Renner) watches as his entire family goes up in smoke (similar to Carrie Coon's Nora on The Leftovers), and soon we find out what life is like in a world where half the planet has disappeared. Each Avenger that got left behind takes their lives in different directions.  Iron Man (Downey) settles down with Pepper Potts and has a child, Black Widow (Johansson) takes on the Nick Fury role, Hawkeye becomes an assassin, the Hulk (Ruffalo) becomes a kinder, gentler being, Captain America (Evans) runs grief sessions, and Thor (Hemsworth) just is a drunk who lets his Adonis-like figure go in favor of a Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski sort of aesthetic (though he’s still hot, and anyone who says otherwise needs corrective lenses).  The return of Ant-Man (Rudd) gives them hope that they can go back-in-time and stop Thanos, but Nebula (Gillan), Thanos’s daughter accidentally informs her father in the past that they are trying to undo his work, and as a result they have a gigantic battle where literally every character you can think of from the MCU pops up to fight Thanos.  This journey ultimately ends in the death of not only Thanos, but also Black Widow & Iron Man, and Captain America becoming too old to be an Avenger.

Here’s the deal-there’s a lot to really like about Avengers: Endgame.  The casting budget on the film had to be just impossibly large (when you’re willing to spend money to, say, just have Michelle Pfeiffer & Marisa Tomei stand at a funeral, you know you’ve entered new territory), but it’s a joy to see something so spectacular. The fight scene with Thanos is wonderful, with major moments from Captain America (people cheered in my theater when he took Thor’s hammer) and for girl power (it was hokey as hell, but I loved the “Women of Marvel Assemble” sequence, and so did the packed theater I was in).  In my opinion we have Evans, Hemsworth, & Gillan as the movie’s MVP’s (the movement to get Robert Downey Jr. an acting Oscarcitation feels a stretch, and more a nod to a truly remarkable comeback than a true acting achievement).  Gillan is giving a strong performance, and Evans/Hemsworth have carved out such wonderful dimensions with these noble guys (and have such great chemistry with everyone) that it’s terrific to get to see them together for the last time.  And there’s something to be said for the movie feeling permanently over.  The next franchises are clearly set up (Spider-Man in a few weeks, but also there’s obvious potential for a future Captain America (with Anthony Mackie as the star), Black Panther, Captain Marvel, & Guardians pictures), but it also feels like an end to at least the chapter that started in 2008, a true achievement in a world where we have to stretch movies until their story breaks.

But there’s also a lot of slog here.  Trying to fit 40-odd characters into a movie is a tough task, and certain people (Black Widow & Hulk especially) get the short end of the stick in this picture.  The movie is overlong, predictable, and doesn’t have the emotional heft of the last film’s surprise snap.  Everything in this movie feels exactly how you would have expected it to turn out.  That might be the sign of a good finale (everything was as it was supposed to be), but a movie should have at least some unexpected twists, and it might have been more interesting if we’d had characters die whom we thought might actually exist in the MCU in the future.  As a result, I’m giving this movie a 3 star rating, and think it rates under Infinity War, which felt more epic and more urgent. As a franchise, it’s hard not to commend the achievements of Kevin Feige over the past 11 years, and I’d probably go with a 4-star for the 22 parts as a whole, even if only a couple actual movies in the series rose to that same level.

Ranking the Marvel Movies

Next week, we will see the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's current chapter (phase-I don't know what we call this).  For roughly 11 years, we've been getting nearly nonstop movies from the studio, every few months yet another massive hit from Disney.  Individually, the series has had ups-and-downs, with no proper, truly terrible films in the bunch but, honestly, no truly unstoppable masterpieces either (I'm decidedly a Marvel fan for comics, and yes, I bought comics religiously as a child, but I still think The Dark Knight is better than any movie on this list, and I'm not even a Nolan fanboy).  I'm not sure if I'll stick around past this collective list of movies for "Phase 4" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe-I think stories have to be able to end to qualify as stories and not just rambling tales, and in a lot of ways Avengers: Endgame feels like a series finale while the next phase of the MCU (whether that be Spider-Man or Black Panther 2) is a spinoff I'm not sure I'll sign up for.  But in honor of this 22nd film and a closing of the Thanos chapter of the series (and likely the departures of actors like Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, and Robert Downey Jr. from these collective roles), I finally got around to seeing Thor: The Dark World (the only missing piece in this puzzle for me) and instead of writing a traditional review of the picture, I thought I'd buy into the trend over the next two weeks and give my personal rankings of the different films.

21. Iron Man 2 (2010)

By-far the weakest entry in the series, not even Downey's schtick (which even in 2010 was starting to show signs of repetitiveness) could save this boring slog of a movie.  Mickey Rourke was coming off such a high with The Wrestler, it's a pity that his comeback stalled after giving the quintessential "boring villain" performance, something that has plagued most of the series (certainly compared with DC).

20. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

I mean, it feels like a cheat to even include this since the titular role was recast, and let's be real here-this is only included because it technically came after Iron Man, otherwise we'd likely leave it off of the list.  That said, Edward Norton was the least of the three Hulks (I actually didn't mind the strong artistic license Ang Lee took with the 2003 version), and Liv Tyler brings really nothing to the love interest role.

19. Thor: The Dark World (2013)

I'll be honest here-while I'm genuinely a fan of both in real-life as celebrities, and actually think that Hemsworth has done the best work outside of the series, I'm decidedly in the field of Captain America within the confines of the quality of their actual stand-alone films.  This is the least of the Thor outings, with a convoluted villain plot and Natalie Portman basically phoning it in as a love interest she likely had no interest in playing (notice how she has yet to show up again in the series).

18. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2 (2017)

Backlash to the first installment always felt a bit extreme to me, with people I think just forgetting that the movies can occasionally be a good time.  That being said, the second film is a bit off-base, with a lot of the same jokes from the first film being repeated, and with no one saying anything new, not even Kurt Russell as a nice-guy villain.

17. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2014)

The actual Avengers movies themselves have always felt a bit of a paint-by-numbers approach.  Perhaps most shocking because of the number of stars that they fit into one film (what is the casting budget on this movie-$100 million, $150?) we also see a lot of ego on display as they attempt to shove every character into enough scenes to warrant 7 or 8-digit pay days.  Combined with James Spader as an eye-rolling villain, and you get a bloated picture.

16. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

I was so smitten with the first movie, it was always going to be a letdown when they brought back this character, as how could it possibly be as much fun?  Even by bringing Michelle Pfeiffer on board, we struggle to make this one work, with the Ghost villain story feeling totally ancillary to the plot, and perhaps they'd have been better off just letting the unknown be the villain here, rather than having a traditional comic book plotting.

15. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

This is inarguably the silliest film on this list, somehow even surpassing Guardians of the Galaxy, and is the one I wish I liked more.  The cast is superb, possibly the best of any of the films, but it's too random, sporadic, and ridiculous (the entire Jeff Goldblum subplot seemed only there to create memes).  Us finally getting a proper female villain in the series (and played by Oscar Winner Cate Blanchett, no less) is about the best I can recommend here.

14. The Avengers (2012)

We jump from Thor 3 to Avengers 1 where we now have 3-star movies (ie movies that I'd actually recommend based on the rules of this blog).  This is fun, and cool, but never as fun & cool as it should be.  Loki is a good villain, but there's not the right level of chemistry yet between the six main characters, as Hemsworth & Evans in particular are still finding their bearings as matinee idols against an established star like Downey.

13. Doctor Strange (2016)

I can't really figure out how I feel about Benedict Cumberbatch, who always feels a bit too eager in his cinematic work, and seems intent on mugging in a way that recalls a British Justin Timberlake.  That said, this is a good movie, one that just avoids the cliches of an introduction to a character enough to not feel boring.  Tilda Swinton joins the long pantheon of Oscar-winning actresses who have randomly appeared in MCU movies (Portman, Bening, Blanchett, Tomei...it's a longer list than you'd think).

12. Iron Man 3 (2013)

Much better than the sequel, Iron Man 3 actually challenges Downey a bit as an actor in a way few others in this series have done.  We see him fight a villain that feels worthy of him in a way others in the series haven't (Guy Pearce's creepy Killian), and we get arguably the best work out of Gwyneth Paltrow we've had this decade.

11. Thor (2011)

Chris Hemsworth might be my favorite discovery from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of actors who hadn't already proven to themselves at that point.  He's so debonair, funny, charming, and DAMN sexy, and all of that comes out when he basically brings Thor from the comic book pages to life here.  He's considerably better than the film, but that's true pretty much every time he's onscreen.

10. Captain Marvel (2019)

The first of the movies to be headlined by an Oscar winner, and it shows.  Larson is hamstrung by us spending most of the movie looking for clues to what will happen in Avengers: Endgame, but she actually has a fun popcorn movie here, and though he's hidden behind distracting CGI, Sam Jackson gives his best work in the series here as a young, pre-eyepatch Nick Fury.

9. Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Thor is probably my favorite of the actual superheroes in the films, but Captain America is the best leg of the franchise.  Arguably the weakest of the three mostly because of the messy ending to the film, this is still fun and considerably better than the two Avengers films that preceded it (for all intents and purposes, this was the third Avengers movie-look at who it starred in that photo!).

8. Iron Man (2008)

The film that started it all, Robert Downey Jr. going from basically uninsurable to a matinee idol will eventually be one of the great Hollywood comeback stories.  He's great in this movie, a role he was born to play, and the lack of over-confidence in his work (though thankfully not in his character) is spectacular movie star fun.

7. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

It is literally impossible to gage this film without seeing the sequel (increasingly, it's hard to gage this entire series without seeing the rest of the series) since they are so interconnected, but most of the film gets it right.  The film is grand in scale, there are some strong performances (particularly Tom Holland), and Thanos is a well-executed villain.  It all depends on what the nexy film does, though, over whether this movie stays on its perch considering the cliffhanger.

6. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

This movie works really well on its own, and arguably doesn't need the rest of the series to elevate it at all.  Fun, with a great motif & scheme for the characters (I loved the pre-war scenes and the ridiculousness of Captain America's new body), Chris Evans nails this part & sets up a complicated character that in the comic books was always underwritten.

5. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

I didn't want this movie, and I distinctly remember at the time of its announcement saying "I'm not going to see it" after the terrible reboot with Andrew Garfield proved to be such a disappointment.  However, Tom Holland is the best of the three live-action Peter Parkers, playing with a lack of confidence that is endearing and works so well it's impossible to deny him his place in the Top 5.

4. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

I don't care that you don't like it anymore, or that Chris Pratt has become problematic in the years since (I actually do care about that one, but as a classic film historian, I have dealt with problematic film stars for decades so my tolerance level is high).  This is the first of the quartet of films I gave 4-stars to, and it earns it with great humor, unlikely heroes, and a new swagger to the MCU.

3. Ant-Man (2015)

By far the most visually innovative of all of the movies, and perhaps the funniest, everything about this movie works.  Paul Rudd is great as the unlikely hero, Michael Douglas hasn't been this good in 15 years, and what could have been a joke of a movie ends up being one of the best installments in the series without ever being too silly.

2. Black Panther (2018)

Marvel goes prestige with this movie, the first superhero movie to ever compete for the Best Picture Oscar.  Armed with the series best villain (Michael B. Jordan is sexy & dangerous as Killmonger), we see an expanded universe that shows that the MCU might just be able to survive after the first class of superheroes (Evans, Downey, ScarJo) hang up their capes.

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

The best Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, and next to The Dark Knight, the best comic book movie of this century, period.  Johansson was on a creative high at the time, and you can see that in her work here, and Robert Redford's warm, movie star charisma (very similar, in fact, to Chris Evans') is eerie because he's so nasty as an Edward Snowden-style figure, a villain whose point you can kind of see even if it's totally evil.  Add in Toby Jones' Arnim Zola making a freaky cameo (still my favorite scene in literally any Marvel movie), and you have arguably the best picture in the series (to date).