OVP: Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Film: Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Stars: Tom Cruise, Willem Dafoe, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond J. Barry, Jerry Levine, Frank Whaley

Director: Oliver Stone

Oscar History: 8 nods/2 wins (Best Picture, Director*, Actor-Tom Cruise, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing*, Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Tom Cruise: click here to learn more about Mr. Cruise (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Growing up, Tom Cruise was not an actor that my parents liked a lot.  While stars such as Harrison Ford or Sandra Bullock being in a picture was pretty much a blank check ticket situation to see their new film, Cruise's movies were oftentimes only ones we would seek out if they had a lot of buzz.  When I would ask about this (as you can imagine, young John was always talking about movies), a big part of the reason was "I don't think he's a very good actor" which to be fair was something that was a relatively commonplace topic during much of Cruise's career with the general public.  Cruise, because of his arresting good looks (for me, it's always been the hair-Tom Cruise has spectacular hair) and the types of movies he picks (action films, franchise pictures, and romantic melodramas) has usually been dismissed as a pretty boy or a commercial star only.  This is something we've actually seen throughout this year: Errol Flynn, Charles Bronson, & Arnold Schwarzenegger were all never nominated for Oscars, and it took Sean Connery until the second act of his career to win one.

But Cruise, Cruise at the height of his fame did not seem content with being a pretty boy.  His onscreen idol was not Errol Flynn or Sean Connery...it was always Paul Newman, and Paul Newman got to be in action films and be nominated repeatedly for Oscars.  Born on the Fourth of July was not Cruise's first clear play at an Academy Award nomination (he had starred alongside Newman in The Color of Money, and the year before starred in the Best Picture winner Rain Man), but in both cases it was his costar that won Best Actor.  Born on the Fourth of July was the first time that Cruise got nominated, and it's a fascinating film that both signaled where he was headed with his career for the next decade (regularly appearing in films that were Oscar-adjacent) and also an anomaly, given it was the rare really "actorly" role that Cruise would take in his career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Ron Kovic (Cruise), the quintessential American young man who wrestles for his school, is in love with the prettiest girl at school (Kyra Sedgwick) and devotes his passion to God and Country (specifically the Republican Party).  When fighting breaks out in Vietnam, Ron is the first to enlist, and he goes to war...and promptly realizes how much patriotism relies upon the sacrifices of an average man.  He becomes paralyzed from the waist down, unable to have children or to ever walk again, something he initially refuses (to the point where he nearly loses his legs through obstinance), and then slowly works back to reality, though first having bouts of severe alcoholism & depression.  This leads him away from the Republican Party that sent him to war, and eventually he becomes a vocal supporter of the anti-war movement, nearly being trampled during the 1972 RNC while they nominate Nixon to a landslide victory.  The film ends with this low point being countered with a high point, Kovic's real life speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention.

It's worth noting before we get into Cruise's work here that this film is directed by Oliver Stone.  In an era where directors like Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, & Robert Zemeckis made films that were only subtly political (though politics are there, especially in Spielberg's work), Stone's films of this era were known for their hyper-political atmosphere.  Films like Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, & Nixon (all very popular with Oscar and usually with audiences) questioned authority to the point of feeling conspiratorial (as a youth who read entertainment & celebrity magazines weekly, I believe I learned the phrase "conspiracy theory" from it being linked to Oliver Stone).  The film's anti-war politics feel a bit more routine today, given that we've had decades of film that have been comfortable questioning the honestly of the US government in foreign affairs, but in 1989 it's worth noting that having the quintessential American boy next door (Tom Cruise) spouting off leftist dialogue in a year where ardent pro-Vietnam congressman George HW Bush had become president is an interesting counter.

The film itself occasionally feels underwritten as a result of the politics, mostly because Stone's politics are so well-honed into the script, sometimes at the sacrifice of character.  I loved, for example, the way that we are introduced to Kovic as a bit weak-willed (he's not the best wrestler, he doesn't have the guts to take the girl he likes to the Prom), and then seeing that the world doesn't actually care about him when he gets back.  He fervently believed in American exceptionalism, and in giving himself as a sacrifice, but when he gets back, he learns as he matures into a true adult that his sacrifice meant little to the people he did it on behalf of (and much of that was just talk, not deed), and those who stayed behind profited in his absence, or worse yet, simply want him to go away.  The cruelty of his not being perfect is felt on his parents, who want their old son back...and hate their new one (the relationship between Ron & his mother is really well done because it's so uncomfortable).  But this also means that we rarely get to know much about the side characters (Sedgwick and Willem Dafoe feel pretty two-dimensional from actors we know can do more), and I wanted to understand more about what made this story specific than trying to make it feel universal to fit Stone's lecture to the viewer.

As for Cruise?  I liked him in this.  I think Cruise, at the time very willing to mess with his star persona, plays Ron as unlikable, oftentimes nauseatingly so, but it works for the character.  I think the way that he embraces the arrogance that comes with youth, knowing that those around you couldn't possibly be right because they've lived longer and seen more of the world (something we all go through as young adults eager to be seen as equals) is really well done.  I do wish he had had more scene partner work-there are times when it feels like he's trying to inhabit the whole screen in his scenes, needing us to KNOW the message he's trying to convey, sometimes swinging a bit from scene-to-scene without giving consistency is an issue (though more the writer's fault), but this is proof of something I already know (I disagree with my parents on this one): Tom Cruise, when he wants to be, is a fine actor.

OVP: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Film: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, OJ Simpson, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, Susan Flannery, Jack Collins

Director: John Guillermin

Oscar History: 7 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-Fred Astaire, Art Direction, Cinematography*, Film Editing*, Score, Song, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

Steve McQueen's career hit its financial peak in 1974, when he starred with Paul Newman in today's film The Towering Inferno.  At this point, Newman & McQueen were two of the biggest names in movies, and there were quite a few arguments over who would get top billing in the picture (ultimately it was a draw, with McQueen's name first but Newman's name higher), but after this both would suffer career lulls.  Newman would rebound eventually in the 1980's with films like The Verdict and The Color of Money, the latter winning him his only competitive Oscar, but McQueen would never regain this position.  He'd make an ill-fated Ibsen film in 1978 (one that would basically disappear from public consciousness), and then a pair of pictures in 1980 (Tom Horn and The Hunter), both decent-sized hits that might have hallmarked a comeback, but that wasn't to be.  Just over three months after the release of The Hunter, Steve McQueen would be dead.

(Spoilers Ahead) But before we get into that, let's get into the height of his career, at least commercially.  The Towering Inferno was a landmark movie in terms of its box office in 1974.  In the previous years, films like Airport and The Poseidon Adventure had found a formula for success-put a bunch of famous stars, including at least a few studio system legends that can scoop up a supporting acting Oscar nomination, and place them in an insane disaster situation, one that will have at least a few of them die, but the audience can look on in horror as we wonder who from this insanely-stacked call sheet might be safe.  This film is no less than these, and arguably has the starriest cast  of the bunch, but is much more in the vein of Airport (which I did not enjoy) than The Poseidon Adventure (which I did enjoy, in large part due to Shelley Winters' solid work).  The film has the tallest building in the world on fire, and all of our characters, including architect Newman and firefighter McQueen, fighting to stay alive as more-and-more paths to the ground floor are forfeited.  Along the way, some live (including, surprisingly, conman Fred Astaire), and some die, most shockingly Jennifer Jones, who in a morbid twist would be flung from the top of a giant building in the movie two years before her daughter would commit suicide in exactly the same way.

If only the movie was any good.  Technically, this is impressive-the set design, effects, and especially the stunt work are out-of-this-world, but the film spends no time trying to develop the characters, giving us two-dimensional feats from genuinely talented actors.  It's not like someone like Faye Dunaway or Paul Newman can't add a bit of three-dimensionality to their work, but there's no call for it.  Our star of the month, Steve McQueen, feels almost ancillary to the plot of the picture even as he's supposed to be the hero.  Fred Astaire would receive his only competitive acting Oscar nomination for this movie, and man is it unnecessary-he barely has anything to do, other than shout for a dead Jennifer Jones toward the end of the picture.  It feels weird to live in a world where Fred Astaire (whom I love) never got a competitive acting nomination, but, like...over John Cazale in The Godfather, Part II or John Huston in Chinatown...let's not be ridiculous here.

As I said above, Steve McQueen would disappear from movies after this, having a bit of a nomad period where he just went out into the country in a motor home, in the process turning down parts in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Apocalypse Now that might've dramatically changed his legacy.  But his health by the late 1970's was in terrible shape, and he developed mesothelioma (likely due to asbestos exposure from his time in the Marines).  The National Enquirer, at that point most famous for its ongoing coverage of the death of Elvis Presley rather than the right-wing attack ads that it would become known for to modern supermarket shoppers, broke the story that McQueen was dying shortly before his death (he'd been trying to keep it a secret), and McQueen attempted a number of experimental procedures, including a surgery to remove a tumor from his liver in Mexico, a procedure he couldn't have performed in the United States because no doctor would do it (since it would kill him).  12 hours into the surgery, the American doctors were proven correct, and Steve McQueen died at the age of only 50 from a heart attack.

Next month, we're going to talk about a man who was good friends with McQueen, even if they also had something of a professional rivalry during McQueen's early stardom.  Like McQueen, he also would die young, but unlike McQueen, that death would cement his legacy in a way that would in many ways outlast any films he made in life...and would become the source of near constant conspiracy theory in the decades to come, in ways that would haunt his family for generations.

OVP: The Reivers (1969)

Film: The Reivers (1969)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Sharon Farrell, Mitch Vogel, Rupert Crosse, Juano Hernandez, Burgess Meredith

Director: Mark Rydell

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Rupert Crosse, Score)

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 Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen, fitting of a man synonymous with both a sex symbol persona and a cool guy elusiveness, had both a lot of romantic conquests in his life as well as not a lot of press about them, save for his marriage to 1970's superstar actress Ali MacGraw, whom he costarred with in 1972's The Getaway (which I'd already seen, hence why it's not the movie today) and which spanned most of MacGraw's time as a major box office draw post-Love Story.  McQueen, though, would marry three times, including model Barbara Minty very late in his life (they were married less than a year before his death), and would have affairs with Mamie van Doren & Lauren Hutton.  But fitting a man whose onscreen personas rarely are ones that a "woman can tame," none of these relationships really defined his career in the way that Joanne Woodward's relationship with his peer Paul Newman would (or Warren Beatty's legendary bed-hopping would until he married Annette Bening).  

(Spoilers Ahead) I bring this up because the movie we're watching today is something of an outlier in McQueen's career.  The Reivers, based on a work by William Faulkner, is a tale of the South (like all of Faulkner's stories), but one with very little complicated plot and were it not for the presence of McQueen (then a massive star in a way the studio couldn't afford) and the presence of a bordello, there are moments in this that have the vibes of a Disney film, with an unlikely parental guardian in Boon (McQueen) looking after young Ned (Vogel), taking him on an adventure through the countryside along with their friend Ned (Crosse) in a bright yellow 1904 Winton Flyer.  The film itself has multiple chapters, but not a lot of common thread, and is told through a rose-colored nostalgic narration by Burgess Meredith, who plays a grown Ned through voiceover.

McQueen's part here is really uninteresting.  He's not doing anything special-this doesn't have the direness of Cincinnati Kid or the sophistication of Thomas Crown, and doesn't have the gravitas of a western (which McQueen would make three of during his run as a leading man, most notably The Magnificent Seven which we covered for a past season of this series with Yul Brynner).  His Boon is a cad, a likable one, but one who treats his prostitute girlfriend Corrie (Farrell) like garbage, even though he does end up marrying her in the end.  There's nothing really here-it's just blank space, and like I said, were it not for the heavy subject matter, lends itself to the two-dimensional drift of a live-action Disney movie at this time.

The film is notable for its two Oscar nominations, which is a big reason why I picked this one.  Rupert Crosse would become the first Black man to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor for this film (Sidney Poitier at this point had gotten two nominations in the lead category, but no Black person had somehow gotten into Supporting Actor).  His performance is just fine though-he in many ways has a scene-stealing role, but his performance doesn't have enough presence to really steal the scenes away from McQueen even on easy mode, and he likely got the nomination based on a late scene in the movie where he faces off against a racist Southerner.  Crosse would die relatively soon after this nomination from lung cancer, and really this is his only notable role.

The other nomination is from John Williams for Best Score.  Williams' work here is really fun (in many ways it feels like it's paying homage to Aaron Copland, which is not something you would oftentimes say about Williams, and proof of his versatility as a composer).  Williams was still in his Oscar infancy here, getting only his second nomination, and he had yet to win (that wouldn't happen for two more years), but it's also fun to think about the pre-Spielberg years given between this and his even better work in The Cowboys, he was doing a lot more playful stuff onscreen.  He correctly lost to Butch Cassidy, but it's fun to finally see one of his earliest nominations.

OVP: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Film: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke, Jack Weston

Director: Norman Jewison

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Original Song-"The Windmills of Your Mind," Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Coming off of the success of The Cincinnati Kid, for the rest of the 1960's, you'd be hard-pressed to find a film actor who was more consistently bankable and electric than Steve McQueen.  In 1966, he won his first (and only) Academy Award nomination for The Sand Pebbles, a commercial triumph which got 8 nominations in total (McQueen would lose to Paul Scofield for A Man for All Seasons).  But it was in 1968 that he arguably hit his peak.  The most famous film of his career came out that year, the action flick Bullitt, which would be considered by many to be the greatest action film ever made (I liked it, but am not going to be quite that superfluous).  But I'd already seen that film, and with the Saturdays with the Stars, we stick entirely with movies I haven't seen of these actors, so we're going to focus on the other Oscar-winning film that McQueen made in 1968, a movie that was more polarizing with critics but nonetheless continued his trend of printing money: The Thomas Crown Affair.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is odd, and I'm going to start that right out because the plot is a bit thin.  It essentially follows Thomas Crown (McQueen), a bored millionaire who recruits a bunch of men (who know neither him nor their conspirators) to rob a bank, which they do successfully (and somewhat amusingly) in the film's opening moments.  It then shifts gears, with us meeting Vicki Anderson (Dunaway), a breathtaking blonde who is also clever, and who quickly figures out that Crown surely robbed the bank.  But there's a problem-there's no evidence other than common sense (and intuition), and both Crown & Vicki are mad horny for each other.  So Vicki is torn into a game of cat-and-mouse, with her seemingly closing in on him...all the while not realizing that she's getting played.  The film ends with Crown attempting another robbery, one that works perfectly and that he's confessed to Vicki already, implying to her that she loves him too much to stop him.  When she does, by showing up in the cemetery, she realizes that he did not, in fact, trust her, giving her the money from the second bank robbery for sport (along with his spectacular navy blue Rolls Royce), while he jets off to anonymity with the money from the first robbery.

Like I said, the plot doesn't resonate in a big way.  As I explained it above, it's quite straightforward, but doesn't read that way when you're watching the movie.  This is in part because it's severely underwritten-we don't get a lot of sense of who these characters are out of context with each other.  McQueen's Crown is essentially a thrill-seeker, a playboy, but we don't get much more.  Meanwhile, the only thing we learn about Dunaway's Vicki is that she doesn't play by the rules, which of course means that to all of the men around her, she's portrayed as a bitch (even though most of her best traits are lauded in Crown).  It's frustrating, and it feels stretched, like we're trying to make an excuse for this movie to exist.

But you see a 4-star review for a reason, and that's because it looks incredible.  The cars, the beaches, the costumes, the grand camerawork, it's all sublime.  There is a scene where Dunaway & McQueen, both just impossibly sexy, play the randiest game of chess you can ever imagine, us darting from his icy blue eyes to her pillow lips, each of them thumbing the pieces as if they're taking off each other's clothes.  Combined with a grand score, and the classic "Windmills of Your Mind" (one of the best movie songs of all time), it all adds up to film being a visual medium: who cares if none of it makes all that much sense when you are just looking for a cigarette to light afterward.

OVP: The Untouchables (1987)

Film: The Untouchables (1987)

Stars: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Charles Martin Smith, Andy Garcia, Robert de Niro

Director: Brian de Palma

Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Best Supporting Actor-Sean Connery*, Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

We're going to cover two Connery films today as I missed last week, but didn't want to short-change him, so we'll talk through both his time in the 1980's and, this evening, the 1990's.  Connery was, by the early 1980's, a movie star but not a consistent box office presence.  While he had made hits (Time Bandits dwarfed its production costs in 1981), nothing he had done had, quite frankly, approached what he had achieved with James Bond, and as a result Connery was talked into making his final installment in the franchise in 1983 with Never Say Never Again.  This was something he did without Eon Productions (traditionally the production house for Bond films), and he did so in a head-to-head competition with Roger Moore, who had Octopussy out that year.  Both films were huge successes at the box office, though Moore's film ended up on top.  Connery hated the experience, and stuck to his commitment to "never again" after this one (he would never appear in a Bond film again), and indeed wouldn't even make a movie for two years after this.

(Spoilers Ahead) Connery probably could've played his types of middling, increasingly aging rogues & fictional knights forever for the rest of his career, the memory of Bond so appealing to nostalgic movie producers who grew up idolizing him, but it was today's film that truly changed the course of his career & legacy.  The Untouchables is a film where Connery gets second billing to Kevin Costner, not remotely as famous as him at the time, but it was a smart move to choose a supporting part.  The Untouchables is a highly-fictionalized look at Eliot Ness (Costner), the federal agent who led the efforts to take down Al Capone (de Niro), and features Connery in a role as a rogue cop, one who is brought in as part of Ness's operation, which is ultimately successful in beating Capone (or at least sending him to jail), but (because this is a Brian de Palma film) not without a lot of very bloody corpses along the way.  Like most of de Palma's films, I struggled with this.  Costner's one of the blandest leading men of his era, gorgeous but blank-faced and rarely a compelling figure in the lead (and if we're judging solely on looks, Andy Garcia is even prettier than him at this point), and Robert de Niro is actively terrible in this movie, a hint of the many cash-grabs the acting icon would have in the decades to come.  The best part of the movie, for me, was Ennio Morricone's score (and that flawless Giorgio Armani tailoring).

Connery is solid, though, not nearly as good as he is in, say, The Man Who Would Be King, but he's winning and very good at embracing the role of "aging sexy guy who mentors a younger star," something that he'd started with Christopher Lambert in 1986's Highlander, and which would become the bulk of the remainder of his career.  For much of the catty press he took back in 1983 for Never Say Never Again, about how he and Moore were far too old to be believable as aging action stars bedding women young enough to be their daughters, it did feel like Connery's place as an action star would soon fade.  But here, he showed how well he could fit in-he was a tough guy, someone who was grizzled but had "one last go in him" and this would be something he'd ride for the next 15 years or so, but also would carve out for others like him.  Action stars, because of Connery's work in this and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade a few years later, had a path for a second act, one with a lot of box office (The Untouchables was a massive hit, the sixth highest-grossing film at the domestic box office in 1987, and made 3x as much as de Palma's now much-obsessed Scarface), so the paydays (and movie stardom) could continue even as the stunt work became less intense.

It also would define Connery's career because it made him one of the only action stars to date to win an Academy Award.  In the 1980's, with a lot of Golden Age actors aging to the point where they were near death, we saw a lot of the leading actors of that era winning "sentimental" Oscars.  Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, Geraldine Page, Don Ameche, Paul Newman, & Jessica Tandy would all take home Oscars at the time, and with this movie, Connery would as well.  Connery's win is one that it's hard to fault the Oscars (it's cool that he won a sstatue, even if I don't know that I'm going to agree with them in the 1987 OVP), and certainly they did worse in the era, but it gave him a nobility that would become a trademark the remainder of his life, and gave him a further distinction over future James Bond actors none of whom (to date) have ever gotten so much as a nomination.

OVP: The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Film: The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Stars: Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith, John Huston

Director: John Milius

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Sound, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

To most filmgoers, certainly in the 1970's, Sean Connery was essentially James Bond.  While other actors at that point (Roger Moore, George Lazenby, even David Niven) had played the part, Connery was Bond...and he wasn't super happy about it.  Connery is not the last of the actors this year we'll profile who struggled with being taken seriously as a thespian having enormous success in the realm of action movies, but he might be the most perturbed of the bunch.  Connery is a good actor, one who even during the height of Bond was working with important directors like Alfred Hitchcock & Sidney Lumet, but all the public saw him as was 007.  Literally-Michael Caine (Connery's longtime friend) would tell an anecdote about how upset Connery would get when someone would call him James Bond rather than his real name in the streets.  So it's not surprising that after Diamonds are Forever, a massive hit for United Artists in the early 1970's, that Connery largely eschewed the role, and in 1975 made two films involving Huston (one as his costar, the other as director-star) that would stand up as attempts for Connery to be taken more seriously as an actor.  One of these, The Man Who Would Be King, would become a classic, while the other would be quickly forgotten.

(Spoilers Ahead) We're choosing The Wind and the Lion and not The Man Who Would Be King because I always choose "new to me" movies for this series, and not only have I seen The Man Who Would Be King, but I also genuinely love it, so I couldn't go in unbiased if I tried (if you haven't seen it, add it to the Watchlist).  The Wind and the Lion is a weird amalgamation of historical drama and at least (to a degree) a romantic film, based in part on a true event involving President Teddy Roosevelt.  The film follows the kidnapping of Eden Pedecaris (Bergen), a wealthy woman stying with diplomats in Morocco by Mulai Ahmed Er Raisuli (Connery), as a way to start a Civil War in his country, one that will result in the Sultan leading Morocco to be publicly shamed.  They bond in a bit of Stockholm Syndrome as Eden comes to understand Raisuli's plight, though this is told with long swaths of the film going back to DC where President Roosevelt (Keith) is in the middle of his 1904 presidential bid, and attempting to use the kidnapping as a way to win over voters to win the election.

The Wind and the Lion is a weird movie, made stranger by the fact that it's based in part on a true story (though in real life Bergen's character was a man, almost certainly changed to a woman to help aid the romantic angle, as this was in the era where a giant epic needed to have a beautiful woman for the lead to fall in love with).  Connery is actually playing a real person, one who (like Connery) would live long after the events of this film.  The problem is that the film feels cartoonish in the many cutaways to the White House.  The movie might've been able to skate by without much chemistry between Bergen & Connery (Bergen is an odd actress, in that I don't generally like her in straight dramatic roles, but she's so compelling as a classy comedic role & she's so insanely gorgeous that I always hope I will find the drama that works for me), but these diversions distract too much, and make it feel silly, even if I adored the Jerry Goldsmith score.

And Connery does work in this role, and it's not a coincidence that the actor would excel for many years in epics and David Lean-style films for the remainder of his career (even if Connery would sadly never work with Lean directly).  He plays the part with a sort of majesty, an inherent otherworldliness that he would bring to roles like The Man Who Would Be King and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, two of his finest roles that I've seen.  It's also probably why he would eventually be offered the part (and then turn it down) as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings (given the deal that Connery got, had he taken the part it might've made him the highest-paid actor in cinema history (based on the rumors that have leaked about his offer and the percentage of the profits, he may well have made upwards of half a billion dollars from the part over the course of the series).

OVP: Objective, Burma! (1943)

Film: Objective, Burma! (1943)

Stars: Errol Flynn, James Brown, William Prince, George Tobias

Director: Raoul Walsh

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Film Editing, Score, Motion Picture Story)

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 Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

To talk about Errol Flynn, you cannot ignore the almost cartoonish difference between the flawed-but-noble heroes that he perfected on the big screen, and the debaucherous nature of his real-life persona, which was brought to the foreground in 1942 when Flynn was accused of statutory rape by two teenage girls.  To note, Flynn at the time was still a huge movie star, having just finished releasing Desperate Journey with Ronald Reagan to enormous box office days before the accusations-Warner Brothers was not in a position to just cut him given the box office receipts.  But the scandal was huge, as the shocking details of what happened were spread in papers across the country.  Attorney Jerry Giesler, at one point the most famous lawyer in Hollywood, was able to get Flynn acquitted, mostly by destroying the reputations of the women who accused Flynn of rape.  But something happened in the wake of this scandal that would not be the case for a number of other figures (like those of Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, & later Ingrid Bergman): Flynn emerged with a different reputation, but one that largely still had box office draw even in the immediate wake of the scandal, and was still allowed to work regularly in Hollywood

(Spoilers Ahead) That can be seen in the movie Objective, Burma!, which was released just over two years after the trial, and was by pretty much all accounts a hit, and it wasn't Flynn's only one of this period.  Gentleman Jim was released during the height of the coverage to success, and both of the (now largely forgotten) movies that Flynn released in 1943 were also hits.  In fact, Flynn would be successful for much of the mid-1940's...but he'd do so in very different pictures.  Objective, Burma! is a good example of that.  The film is a fictionalized telling of the Burma Campaign during World War II, with Flynn playing an army captain whose platoon is trudging through the jungle, in near constant danger from the Japanese.  The film is one of several movies that were released during the Golden Age of Hollywood that favored realism over a more fictionalized, personalized storytelling method, in many ways resembling more a documentary film (which was a familiar format to audiences during WWII due to newsreels), than a more traditional storytelling technique.

As a result, the film is technically really impressive.  The special effects, especially during some of the early attack scenes when we see an entire army camp decimated by timed explosions, are wonderful, and the sound work & cinematography are strong.  But the movie itself is a bore.  With the exception of George Tobias (the future Mr. Kravitz on Bewitched), none of the numerous side characters stand out, and frequently you're left watching their deaths be mourned onscreen with an internal monologue of "which guy was this again?" all of which makes the film's three Oscar nominations (for editing, writing, and music) feel a bit like a head-scratcher: why are we awarding these when the special effects or sound work are the actual calling card here?

Flynn, as well, feels muted to the point of being boring, something that never crossed my mind during his Captain Blood and Robin Hood era.  Whether intentionally or not, much of the work that Flynn stars in that I've seen after his trial feels a bit too noble, as if the studio was scared to put him into films where he could be seen as a rake or a cad...because it suddenly felt too close to home.  This would cause his career in the late 1940's to suffer, as audiences who had been more than willing to give in to a controversial celebrity in the wake of his trials because they still loved him so much, weren't willing to give in to the studio wanting to clean up his image onscreen to protect them from the public confusing real life and fiction too much.  It wasn't until the studios finally let him play another sex-pursuing hero in The Adventures of Don Juan in 1948, that audiences truly returned home, and allowed him to be a dependable box office draw into the early 1950's.

This is all to say that Flynn's reputation, and much of his modern association (if you ask lay moviegoers what they know about him today, it will be the statutory rape allegations) did not have the impact on his career that later major movie stars like Mel Gibson or Johnny Depp would receive when they had scandals threaten their careers.  Gibson & Depp would see their careers largely evaporate, but despite some setbacks in the years after the war, Flynn largely got away fine from this scandal-it is only history that really hurt him, but if you look at what his career was like, he paid a surprisingly small price for one of the biggest scandals of Hollywood's Golden Age.

OVP: Interview with the Vampire (1994)

Film: Interview with the Vampire (1994)

Stars: Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Stephen Rea, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater, Kirsten Dunster

Director: Neil Jordan

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Art Direction, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

The 1990's were really the last decade that was indisputably about the movie star, and even horror, a genre famous for having B-Grade names and a willingness to tackle unknown actors, was not immune to trying to use big names to guarantee major box office.  One of the biggest hits of the mid-1990's, in fact, was a horror film starring two of the most important movie stars on the planet, Tom Cruise & Brad Pitt. The film is, of course, Interview with the Vampire, and while I am a huge Brad Pitt fan (he is maybe my favorite working American actor?), this has been the most glaring gap in my viewing filmography of his (it is my 38th Brad Pitt film, putting him squarely in the Top 5 most-viewed movie actors ever for me).  The movie was nominated for two Oscars, keeping with our trend this month of favoring Oscar-nominated horror movies, but let's be honest-this is all about the gigantic stars at the center of its cast, facing off in the only movie they have made together (to date).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is told in flashback, here by Louis (Pitt), a centuries-old vampire who is telling Daniel Molloy (Bale) the story of his life.  The film goes back to Louis beginning as a vampire, when, widowed and with a dead child, he wants to die, but a vampire named Lestat (Cruise) has other ideas, and turns him into a vampire, initially as his companion.  This becomes a problem when Louis cannot stomach the constant murder that comes with being a vampire, living off of rats & chickens rather than humans like Lestat.  He finally breaks with the orphaned girl Claudia (Dunst), who is dying of the plague, and as a treat, Lestat turns her into a vampire too.  The problem is that she cannot age, and will remain a young girl forever, which makes her angry and restless, blaming Lestat for her condition.  She and Louis try to kill Lestat, and flee to Europe, where they meet a band of vampires including Santiago (Rea) and Armand (Banderas).  Santiago tries to kill them both for the "unforgivable crime" of killing a vampire, which they think they did to Lestat, in the process killing Claudia but not Louis (who gets his revenge by killing all of the vampire coven except Armand).  The film ends with us back to the present day, where Daniel begs to become a vampire, Louis realizing in the process that he has learned nothing (human beings will always want immortality, no matter the price), and Daniel, fleeing, runs into Lestat, who bites his neck, and offers him "a choice" indicating that he will have to choose whether to die or become a vampire, the same choice that was once offered to Louis.

The movie's horror elements are pretty minimal.  Other than Lestat's jumpscare at the end with Daniel, it's honestly not even scary, and I don't know that it's meant to be-it functions in a lot of ways like a very dark gothic novel, perhaps more Alexandre Dumas than Bram Stoker.  Its horror tag is solely based on the vampire aesthetic, which is good.  The Oscar nominations are totally earned-I loved the shifting cities and looks of the vampires (the way that they continually seem themselves, slightly out-of-place, no matter the century they're in), and the Goldenthal score is both extravagant and a bit cheeky, which works with the picture.

That's because while it's not a good movie (it's too decadent and ridiculous to actually be good), Interview with the Vampire is a fun movie.  Cruise is delicious, and honestly kind of a riot as Lestat, forever being a total bitch to everyone.  Both of these characters (as well as Banderas's) are obviously intended to be gay (or at least sexually fluid), but only Cruise has the balls to actually play him that way, not just when he seduces a young fop (that looks comically like him), but also just in general-he's flirting with Louis like a married couple the entire movie.  The best performance in the film is Dunst's, which shows a real range.  She was nominated for a Golden Globe for this (she missed with the Oscars), and it shows why-just a child when it happened, she showed a remarkable ability to feel like (toward the end) she is channeling a bratty teenager or young woman who is constantly frustrated by her inability to grow up.  It's good stuff, and makes her cruel fate even harder to stomach-she never stood a chance.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Flatliners Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, An American Werewolf in London, The Changeling, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, The House on Sorority Row, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Pet Sematary, Poltergeist, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, Sleepaway Camp, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, Flatliners, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

OVP: Altered States (1980)

Film: Altered States (1980)

Stars: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid

Director: Ken Russell

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

Every genre of movie has a pretty wide berth when it comes to its description.  Think of something like "comedy" where everything from the films of the Three Stooges to the polished wit of Noel Coward to the black-hearted works of Yorgos Lanthimos are somehow under the same umbrella.  This is true of horror as well, as we see with Ken Russell's film Altered States.  This is definitely a horror film, fit snuggly into the concept of body horror, and one that was nominated for a pair of Oscars (as we've said, this is pretty rare for horror pictures, particularly when you're talking Best Score).  But it's also quite cerebral, and could easily be a thriller (or, honestly, just a SciFi Drama).  We will consider it, though, for the sake of our conversation this month, a horror film, and a pretty odd one.

(Spoilers Ahead) Ken Russell's films are quite heady so I''m going to give you a high-level look into the plot, but know that I'm missing some things.  We have Eddie Jessup (Hurt), a scientist who is studying schizophrenia but becomes obsessed with the concept of studying other states of consciousness.  The movie leans in on this as he moves into a sensory deprivation tank, and enjoys the secession from reality that it affords.  Years later, he is still obsessed with this concept, despite having domesticated a bit (he's married to his wife Emily, played by Brown, and has two daughters).  His marriage nearly in shambles, he goes to Mexico to study a tribe that has shared hallucinatory states, and is able to join them with a magical mushroom potion, one that he steals & brings home to study in the lab.  Continued time in the tank shows that he is manifesting or reverting to some sort of caveman state of being, one that is potentially killing him, but that he becomes addicted to experiencing so he can understand what is happening beyond himself.  The films ends with him nearly transcending to another plane, but because it's going to come at the cost of Emily, he decides not to do it, and they reunite, their marriage on the mend.

The film is one that I'd find really hard to love, but I also understand & respect those who are into.  It deals with a lot of larger concepts, and I don't think it works.  On some level it's clearly about the Frankenstein myth, with Eddie wanting to create something beyond himself, understanding mankind in a different level.  In doing this, it's noteworthy that he becomes estranged from his wife, who actually has created other life (their two daughters), which is the core of the Frankenstein myth-men are obsessed with this thing that women can do and they cannot.  I don't think, though, that Russell has enough to say about this-he shoots for the wider reachs of the universe, asking questions, but because these questions are unknowable, he can't really find the answers.

The film's two Oscar nominations I was in the middle on, even if the film looks pretty good (the creepy-crawly skin effects on William Hurt are well-done...and also kudos to Russell for making sure to have totally unnecessary male nudity in a genre where we almost always get that for women but not men).  The sound is intriguing, but it's also repetitive, and honestly, this would be much more in the "sound effects" category we'd get soon after this than the mixing I'm accustomed to (they were combined then).  The Score, a rare nomination for John Corigliano who would pull off one of the category's great upsets 19 years later for The Red Violin, is solid but again, not exactly to my tastes.  It's interesting, it fits the film, but it's not as iconic as you'd want from one of the rare entries into the horror genre nominated for Best Score.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

OVP: Score (1999)

OVP: Best Original Score (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Thomas Newman, American Beauty

John Williams, Angela's Ashes

Rachel Portman, The Cider House Rules

John Corigliano, The Red Violin

Gabriel Yared, The Talented Mr. Ripley

My Thoughts: The longer you get away from an Oscar ceremony, the more likely it is that you remember it differently, particularly if you don't remember it at all.  I've seen races that were genuinely competitive in their moment end up being reappraised as "everyone knew that was coming" by people online too young to have any idea.  But some contests it's clear even with no foresight that no one saw this coming, and that is the case with 1999's Best Score.  The Red Violin became the only film since 1988 to win a Best Score Oscar statue on its only nomination (and  with a composer receiving his only Oscar citation to date), and it did so in a huge shock that we'll get into below.

We'll start with The Red Violin, which is the story not of a person, but about a famed red violin that we learn the history of over a 300-year-time span.  It's honestly a cool concept, but it doesn't work in the movie (which features Samuel L. Jackson-someone please ask him if he remembers making this movie in his next press tour).  What does work is the music.  The focus on the violin, and the way the music moves through time frames is really something, though I will own that I initially assumed this was going to be "unbeatable" given what it knocked out for the statue.  It helps that Joshua Bell, then something of a heartthrob in the classical music world, performed the violin solos himself, acting as a surrogate for the movie.

In terms of the runners-up, I'm guessing it was between two men, both of whom are Oscar staples.  The most likely was Thomas Newman, and give-or-take 1917, this is the closest he's ever been to an Academy Award.  The thing about it is that it's a genuinely fine piece of music (if you can get past your Thomas Newman preconceptions-I know some people aren't into his highly-percussive scores).  The use of xylophone, drums, and marimbas to get his modernist sound that would accompany this film throughout is really ingenious, playing on something old and something new (which is the theme of American Beauty).  At the time, so pervasive was this soundtrack that it was played on Los Angeles radio stations as part of a campaign to get Newman his statue...which would've aged really well if he'd gotten it.

The other contender who I think was in the running for a win was John Williams.  Angela's Ashes would've joined The Red Violin as a "film that had no other nominations" winner, but it's John Williams...that wouldn't have been a surprise.  A year after not getting an expected statue for Saving Private Ryan, he was back (minus Spielberg) in a book that was a genuine blockbuster in the 1990's.  I'll be honest, though, as big of a fan of Williams as I am, this is one of the few misses for me amongst his Oscar nominations-I can't get onboard.  It's hopelessly generic, doesn't add much to the story, and doesn't feel like a continual theme.  It sometimes feels like he found piano music for another movie and just reused it for this picture.

Rachel Portman was the first woman to win an Academy Award as a composer for 1996's Emma, and became a staple on the Miramax lot in the years that followed.  The Cider House Rules might be her best work.  Much of the reason that the movie works at all is Portman's piano-laden score, giving us a soaring interlude to cling to between pretty familiar story beats.  Not every score needs to be bold and inventive, and Portman shows that here.  This is classically-done stuff, really elegant and without a false note, and has been used in the years since in trailers and montages for a reason-it feels timeless, and perfectly-matched to the movie's sweet-but-moving center.

Our final nominee is The Talented Mr. Ripley.  I am a huge fan of the scores of Gabriel Yared (he's already got a silver medal in our My Ballot Awards from 2000-23), and this doesn't disappoint.  Unlike any of the other men on this list, Yared has to match his score to a very song-heavy score; for those that don't remember, music rings from every corner of The Talented Mr. Ripley (at one point Jude Law & Matt Damon actually sing, and there are tunes by Miles Davis & Charlie Parker mixed in).  But what is wholly Yared is really engrossing, enigmatic orchestral music, Yared's unique ability to match the tone of his film (particularly with Anthony Minghella's pictures) on full display.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Grammys eligibility window for the best film score nomination is not the same as Oscar's so oftentimes you'll see films from two different years getting citations.  In 2000, we had The Red Violin & Phantom Menace losing to 1998's A Bug's Life, while in 2001, Thomas Newman won for American Beauty, and beat Rachel Portman, Jon Brion (Magnolia), & Randy Newman (Toy Story 2).  The BAFTA's and Golden Globes don't have the same eligibility issues.  BAFTA gave their statue to American Beauty against The End of the Affair, Buena Vista Social Club, & The Talented Mr. Ripley, while the HFPA selected The Legend of 1900 (an Ennio Morricone score) atop (there were a lot): American Beauty, Angela's Ashes, Anna and the King, The End of the Affair, Eyes Wide Shut, The Insider, The Straight Story, and The Talented Mr. Ripley (I have no explanation as to how Morricone won this against this list of films, nor how there were nine nominations...anyone in the comments want to englighten me?).  I mean, The End of the Affair is a good guess for sixth place (Michael Nyman is so prolific it's weird he's never gotten an Oscar nomination), though Mark Mancina's work on Tarzan (another name that Oscar has bizarrely never called) is a good guess, as is a double citation for John Williams (a name Oscar loves) for The Phantom Menace.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I sometimes think that Oscar doesn't have enough fun in this category, choosing dour and dramatic music when he could be having more fun.  Jerry Goldsmith's sweeping love themes in The Mummy would be a good place to start (and hey-they already like him!).

Oscar’s Choice: Like I said, I think Newman and (to a lesser degree) Williams were in the running here, but as we found out, upsets happen and The Red Violin took the cake.

My Choice: I'm going to give this one to Portman over Newman, though both will be showing up in my My Ballot awards in a few weeks (where I pick my overall favorites for the year).  I think Portman does something special here, creating a classic, traditional score that feels totally original, and I loved it.  Behind these two, I'll go The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Red Violin, and for the first time ever, John Williams gets last place for Angela's Ashes.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Are you looking to hold onto our cursed violin, or would you prefer to ride in the New England countryside with me?  Is this the closest Thomas Newman ever got to a statue?  And was it The End of the Affair, Tarzan, or The Phantom Menace in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 1999: Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Score Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. 2023

OVP: How the West Was Won (1963)

Film: How the West Was Won (1963)

Stars: Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Russ Tamblyn, Raymond Massey, Mickey Shaughnessy

Director: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, & George Marshall

Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Original Screenplay*, Film Editing*, Sound*, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

We cannot do a month devoted to Debbie Reynolds without talking about one of the most famous scandals of the Classical Hollywood era, her relationship with Eddie Fisher.  Fisher was a major singer at the time, on-par with acts like Fabian and Elvis Presley in terms of his popularity, and even had his own hit television program.  The two were the equivalent of what today we'd think of as Zendaya & Tom Holland (or for you older people, Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston)-America's Sweethearts, the boy and girl next door who had married each other.  Their marriage was rocky when it wasn't on the front pages, though, with Fisher a serial philanderer, including an affair with Playboy Playmate Pat Sheehan.  But it was when he had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, the rare celebrity at the time on-par with Reynolds & Fisher, that the entire world paid attention.  Taylor, who had recently been widowed after the death of producer Mike Todd, was best friends with Reynolds, but still ended up in bed with her husband.  The scandal was sensational, one of the biggest celebrity news stories of the decade, and it had bizarre implications for all involved.  Reynolds, of course, was canonized as the scorned woman, and would have five movies come out in 1959 alone.  Elizabeth Taylor, the mistress, normally would've been the one to pay the price in the public's eye, but she was fine career-wise.  Within a year she was clutching her first Oscar, and a few years later would become the highest-paid actress in film history (and the centerpiece of an equally-famous affair) on the set of Cleopatra.  Instead it was Eddie Fisher who actually paid a career price, with his show being cancelled and his music career largely being destroyed.  It's hard to grasp now, but at the time Fisher was as big of a deal as Reynolds & Taylor were...now, he's nothing but an asterisk compared to the two women, who famously years after they'd both left Fisher reconciled and even starred in a film written by Fisher & Reynolds' daughter Carrie.

(Spoilers Ahead) During the wake of the scandal, Reynolds got a lot of career mileage and a number of hit movies, one of the biggest being today's film How the West Was Won.  The movie is less a cohesive story, and more a series of vignettes that tell the tale of how the American West began as well as how it ended, but the centerpiece around the film is Reynolds, who despite not getting top-billing (it went alphabetically for all of the main stars) is the movie's main character as Lilith Prescott, a woman dragged to the wilderness by her parents (Moorehead & Malden), and then when they die, she ends up making the west her home, marrying a scoundrel (Peck) who ends up making good, and eventually settling in the West with her nephew (Peppard) after most of the rest of her family dies.  In the meantime, we get pirates (led by Walter Brennan), the growth of the railroad, and, oh yeah, the Civil War.  

The movie is BIG, and it's not afraid of it.  There's a reason it has three directors and 17 (not a typo, I counted) Oscar-nominated actors on the call sheet.  But the thing is-it's not very good.  None of the actors are giving particularly good performances, and given who they are, that's a crime.  The best in the cast might be...Wallach, only because he gets to play a villain?  Honestly, even that feels like a stretch to me.  It's more a cavalcade of cameos, each seemingly doing John Ford a favor by appearing in a movie that would be such a big hit it'd be a weird case of it being one of their signature movies of the 1960's despite only Reynolds being in very much of the picture.  It deals a lot with cliche, and trying to shove what would've been a miniseries today into a couple of hours of celluloid.

The film won eight Academy Award nominations, and they're a mixed bag, but definitely not all bad.  The movie's screenplay win is abject silliness (it barely runs together as a plot!), and the same can be said for the editors, who probably got this nomination because it was a novel concept to have unrelated stories start to blend this way, but just because it's unique doesn't mean it's good.  The art direction & costume nominations are better, but less inspired.  The art direction feels more a tribute to the beauty of nature in the film, which is definitely on-display (also, because this is shot in Cinerama there's a lot more art direction than you'd normally expect), and the costumes are fine though nothing stands out in particular.  It's the last three nominations that worked best and felt most-earned.  The film's cinematography, capturing the beauty of the west (lots of this was shot off a studio lot), and it also works really well in conjunction with the stunt and effects teams (the Civil War & river rapids sequences, in particular, are the stuff that makes you wonder why it's taken so long to get a Stunts Oscar).  This also works for the sound work, with a lot of the action set pieces feeling really in-your-face, and it works well with the film's high musical quotient.  And of course Alfred Newman's score, generally considered to be his best work, is spectacularly grand.  All-in-all, there's a lot of elements of a classic here...if only the movie itself were any good.