1981 Oscar Viewing Project

We are officially announcing our 30th completed Oscar Viewing Project.  As of yesterday, I have officially seen all of the narrative, feature-length nominees from the ceremony, and as we do here, we'll be ranking all of the major categories.  You'll note with this list that part of the reason that I got some of these completed was that 1981 is one of the most repetitive Oscars ever-all five of the Best Picture nominees got Best Director nominations, and they produced half of the acting nominations (in the pre-2009 era, this was a pretty high metric).  In terms of the box office, though, this is who led the field:

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark

2. On Golden Pond

3. Superman II

4. Arthur

5. Stripes

6. The Cannonball Run

7. Chariots of Fire

8. For Your Eyes Only

9. The Four Seasons

10. Time Bandits

Of these, I have seen only five of the top box office draws of the year.  The 1980's, especially the early 1980's, were still in the era where box office and Oscar's tastes were pretty much synonymous, so this is a relatively light list for Oscar nominees (as the only five films that I've seen are the five that are listed below).  I will for sure see Superman II & The Four Seasons before I complete the year for the My Ballot (where I pick the nominees...hopefully should complete that here by early June, though we'll do the 1957 My Ballot next)...the remainder are more of a question mark (make your cases for them in the comments).  If you're new here, also, look at the bottom of the page for links to all of our past 29 OVP's.

With that said, it's time to start impressing Jodie Foster, firing up your IBM computer, & wanting your MTV.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

(Note: Raiders of the Lost Ark received a Best Sound Editing Oscar at the ceremony as a special prize.  Given its nominations in other categories, I obviously saw this film, but wanted to make sure to note it-when we get to the My Ballot in the next two months for 1981, I will have this be a competitive race)

Note from John: When I did this series during the time when I wrote individual articles, and had this blog be a daily part of my life, I made a point of highlighting each nominee in my many write-ups.  While I will be writing these every time I complete a year (we'll have at least one OVP and/or My Ballot every month going forward), I can't make that time commitment, either in terms of number of articles or in terms of giving each nominee their due with a mention.  I promise, though, that I have given each nominee their due under the confines of the specific category while making my rankings (and of course I've seen every single nominated picture), including giving higher rankings to movies I didn't like if the craft was better than ones I did like (Oscar should consider that!).  Hopefully you enjoy the trimmed-down, but still devoted to the original concept version of the OVP we'll have going forward!

Picture

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark

2. Reds

3. On Golden Pond

4. Chariots of Fire

5. Atlantic City

The Lowdown: This is, all things considered, one of the best Best Picture lineups that Oscar assembled during the 1980's, an era of moviemaking I generally find a bit underwhelming.  None of these movies is bad, but the two truly great ones of the lineup are Raiders and Reds, both from directors at the peak of their creative powers.  I'm going to favor Spielberg's Raiders.  It's less in Oscar's wheelhouse (but these are my choices for a reason), but I think that it is a tighter film, and defines the action-adventure genre.  Reds will be showing up again though (and as you'll see in the coming categories, is a movie I loved).

Director

1. Steven Spielberg (Raiders of the Lost Ark)

2. Warren Beatty (Reds)

3. Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond)

4. Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire)

5. Louis Malle (Atlantic City

The Lowdown: We're also going to give Spielberg his second OVP statue for Best Director, once again for a movie he didn't actually win for (can't stress enough how the links to the years we've covered are at the bottom of this page).  It's such a perfectly shot movie, giving us Harrison Ford's iconic archaeologist and a series of flawless adventure sequences.  Beatty's breathtaking too, though, particularly that effortlessly romantic scene at the train station.

Actor

1. Warren Beatty (Reds)

2. Henry Fonda (On Golden Pond)

3. Paul Newman (Absence of Malice)

4. Burt Lancaster (Atlantic City)

5. Dudley Moore (Arthur)

The Lowdown: Don't feel too bad for Beatty, though, as he's going to get a Best Actor statue for our OVP next.  The big fight here for me is between Beatty, whose John Reed is such an impassioned, imperfect example of a revolutionary (pun intended) man, bitter about his inability to be everything he dreamed (but still accomplishing true greatness).  Fonda is excellent in On Golden Pond, wrapping up a career that surely should've gotten an Oscar by then, but as a reminder we pick these winners in a vacuum, so it's possible that we're turning down Fonda's only shot at an OVP win from me, but objectively Beatty is stronger.

Actress

1. Diane Keaton (Reds)

2. Meryl Streep (The French Lieutenant's Woman)

3. Katharine Hepburn (On Golden Pond)

4. Marsha Mason (Only When I Laugh)

5. Susan Sarandon (Atlantic City)

The Lowdown: With the exception of Sarandon (who I think doesn't get Malle's tricky material) this is an underrated "all-timer" lineup, including the best thing I've seen (to date) from Marsha Mason.  For the win, though, it's between Streep and Keaton.  Streep's French Lieutenant's Woman has its detractors (including Streep herself), but I love what she does here, defining two women in similar fashions, both controlled by the same man.  There was a time I considered giving this to Streep (whom, it should be noted, has yet to win one of our OVP's or My Ballot's), but Keaton's sensational here, and giving the best dramatic performance of her career (don't you wish she'd do this instead of yet another spin on Annie Hall just once more?).

Supporting Actor

1. Jack Nicholson (Reds)

2. John Gielgud (Arthur)

3. Howard Rollins, Jr. (Ragtime)

4. Ian Holm (Chariots of Fire)

5. James Coco (Only When I Laugh)

The Lowdown: A lot of first-time OVP rendezvous this year with actors like Hepburn, Mason, Sarandon, Lancaster, & Newman, but it's hard not to think getting to talk about Jack for the first time is the biggest highlight of the bunch.  One of my all-time favorite actors, and you see why here.  His Eugene O'Neill is ruthless, him taking on the role of the "scorned lover" so deliciously ("you're a cheap gutter whore from Portland" being one of the most quotable lines he nails here).  Gielgud is delightful in Arthur and Rollins is the best part of Ragtime, but I am going to give this to Jack (who is definitely in the running to get the most total OVP and My Ballot acting statues before this is over).

Supporting Actress

1. Maureen Stapleton (Reds)

2. Melinda Dillon (Absence of Malice)

3. Elizabeth McGovern (Ragtime)

4. Jane Fonda (On Golden Pond)

5. Joan Hackett (Only When I Laugh)

The Lowdown: Yes, you're reading that right.  For the first (and perhaps only?) time, we are giving all four of the OVP acting statues to the same film, a movie that wasn't able to win Best Picture.  Unlike the other three acting categories, though, Stapleton doesn't have a lot of nearby options that would be respectable choices to beat her.  She nails this part, giving her Emma Goldman an electricity that makes you understand her importance in every scene she's in.  Dillon, McGovern, & Fonda all have their moments, and are roughly on-par (without Stapleton this would've been a more competitive field), but Stapleton being there makes it easy.

Adapted Screenplay

1. The French Lieutenant's Woman

2. On Golden Pond

3. Prince of the City

4. Pennies from Heaven

5. Ragtime

The Lowdown: A particularly weak lineup that isn't entirely Oscar's fault (virtually all of the best films of 1981 were original ideas, unimaginable today), for me it's a contest between the first two, as I thought the screenplays on the remaining pictures were a yawn.  I'm going to give it to The French Lieutenant's Woman, though.  While On Golden Pond had far more quotable lines ("you're my knight in shining armor..." being a classic speech), I think that it doesn't tread deeply enough in the relationship between real-life father-and-daughter Hank & Jane, and I was totally sold on the gimmick of The French Lieutenant's Woman being both a story within a story, something that wasn't in the John Fowles' novel.

Original Screenplay

1. Reds

2. Atlantic City

3. Chariots of Fire

4. Arthur

5. Absence of Malice

The Lowdown: On the flip side, while this isn't that great of a lineup, it at least has one terrific script in the bunch.  Reds is phenomenal, and rises above the cost of an epic (i.e. that the screenplay is regularly the weakest part of it) by giving us a genuine, enthralling love story between two people who can't seem to live without each other (even if they might have to).  Atlantic City has a lovely gimmick, and Chariots of Fire is moving (and Arthur, specifically the parts with Gielgud, can be funny), but none of them can compete with Reds, the one triumph in this field (that should've included Raiders of the Lost Ark).

Foreign Language Film

1. Mephisto (Hungary)

2. Muddy River (Japan)

3. The Boat is Full (Switzerland)

4. Man of Iron (Poland)

5. Three Brothers (Italy)

The Lowdown: One of those years where the Foreign Language Film (now the International Feature Film) category features movies that were only cited for this prize, and nowhere else, so this is your only chance to speak about any of the contenders.  The best of this bunch are Mephisto, a spin on the Faust concept (literally...the main character is an actor best known for playing the devil), and Muddy River, a moving look at friendship across income levels through the eyes of a child.  I'm going with Mephisto, because I think it's grander and has a better central performance from Klaus Marie Brandeur (it also won the Oscar), but Muddy River is not far off and really worth your time if you've never heard of it.

Original Score

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark

2. Chariots of Fire

3. On Golden Pond

4. Ragtime

5. Dragonslayer

The Lowdown: Honestly, in a normal year this would be a slam dunk for something like On Golden Pond, a superb score that can barely muster a bronze here.  Raiders and Chariots are two of the most iconic film scores for a reason, and it's hard to argue with either of them (fun fact: I played "Hymne" by Vangelis for a piano recital when I was in middle school and still have the sheet music for it, even though I don't even have a piano).  I'm going to go with Raiders because I have more of an emotional connection to it, and because I think it's most consistent throughout the actual movie, but this is a coin toss race.

Original Song

1. "Endless Love" (Endless Love)

2. "For Your Eyes Only" (For Your Eyes Only)

3. "Arthur's Theme" (Arthur)

4. "The First Time It Happens" (The Great Muppet Caper)

5. "One More Hour" (Ragtime)

The Lowdown: If you look just at the movie titles here, I'm definitely not picking the best films of the bunch.  Bette Midler quite famously did a send-up of how bad the movies were in this lineup when she presented it (check it out if you haven't seen it...it was the funniest moment in an otherwise pretty tepid ceremony, comically speaking), and both of the Top 2 got the worst of it.  But I don't really connect with Christopher Cross, and I think "Endless Love" is both a moving little ballad, and one that fits the saccharine movie it's housing, just a bit better than the also good "For Your Eyes Only."  Had "Hey a Movie" gotten in from The Great Muppet Caper, we'd be having a reranking here as I always love the Muppets onscreen.

Sound

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark

2. Reds

3. Pennies from Heaven

4. Outland

5. On Golden Pond

The Lowdown: We are once again pitting Raiders vs. Reds, and once again Raiders is coming out on top.  It's just hard to argue with the play on the Saturday morning adventure serial, but now in the mold of a giant movie blockbuster.  Reds is subtler with its sound work, and would make a fine win as well...particularly the crowd scenes feel authentic, melded with the music, but still have a grand aura.  Pennies from Heaven, the token musical that always shows up for Sound...is fine.

Art Direction

1. Heaven's Gate

2. Raiders of the Lost Ark

3. Reds

4. The French Lieutenant's Woman

5. Ragtime

The Lowdown: The best lineup of the bunch, there is not a single bad nominee in this group, and any of them would work as a winner.  I loved the shifts in time being played with in French Lieutenant's Woman, the over-abundance of sets in Ragtime (you understand why this became a musical), the book-laden interiors of Reds, and the continental jumping of Raiders.  But if I have to pick a winner, it needs to be Heaven's Gate, a really grand movie that was (at the time) one of the most famous flops ever made, but it looks spectacular, and I love the shifting stages & devotion to the western on display.

Cinematography

1. Reds

2. Raiders of the Lost Ark

3. Excalibur

4. On Golden Pond

5. Ragtime

The Lowdown: For the first (and only) time in this article, you will see me ever so slightly favor Reds over Raiders.  Despite loving them both, this is the only Oscar contest that I feel Beatty's film exceeds.  I love the camerawork in Raiders (that rolling boulder...come on now, it's iconic for a reason), but I can't help but feel that the use of temperature (you can practically feel the warmth & cold emanating off of the screen in Reds), plus the famous train scene, are impossible to deny.  Kudos also to Excalibur, which has the feel of a shoe-string budget but still gives us glorious looks at Nicol Williamson & Helen Mirren in their entrancing witchiness.

Costume

1. Reds

2. The French Lieutenant's Woman

3. Ragtime

4. Pennies from Heaven

5. Chariots of Fire

The Lowdown: With Indy's fedora left off the dais, it's a contest between the period work of Reds and the period work of The French Lieutenant's Woman (don't look at me like that-I have at least one contemporary film on the list currently for the My Ballot...it's Oscar that never goes there).  Of the two, I go with Reds because I think it is more consistent overall.  There's more care put into French Lieutenant's when it comes to the period stuff than the modern scenes, and Ragtime behind it doesn't break the mold in the way that the of-the-people looks in Reds achieve.

Film Editing

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark

2. Reds

3. The French Lieutenant's Woman

4. Chariots of Fire

5. On Golden Pond

The Lowdown: Again, another Raiders & Reds contest (our final one), with everyone else just getting the scraps.  I think the editing exhibits why these two tower above.  Raiders is fast-paced, effortlessly so in a way that makes every scene feel timeless (which, after nearly 45 years of existence, it really is), while Reds gets a slow-burn, us investing continually as the movie finds its own romance.  The timelessness wins it for Raiders, though (kudos also to French Lieuentant's for working so well with the time jumps).

Makeup

1. An American Werewolf in London

2. Heartbeeps

The Lowdown: We have a pair of two-wide races to complete this year's Oscar's, starting with Makeup (for the record, both of these categories I'll go five-wide when I pick my personal choices).  This was the first year of the Best Makeup category, and they did something that would become commonplace at the Oscars: nominating Rick Baker (the maestro behind An American in Werewolf) and giving the title of "Oscar-nominated" to a truly heinous movie.  There are few films as bad as Heartbeeps, but what's worse is the makeup in it is bizarrely lazy, particularly when you had much better options nominated in 1981 (it's just Bernadette Peters & Andy Kaufman covered in a plastic sheen).  Conversely, An American Werewolf is one of the best achievements of Rick Baker's career, so an easy call for him to take this.

Visual Effects

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark

2. Dragonslayer

The Lowdown: A second category that is only two-wide, we have two films competing against each other in another lopsided victory where I definitely go with Oscar's choice.  At this point, anything George Lucas or Steven Spielberg were creating was foundational to the future of blockbuster cinema, and Raiders is a genius use of practical and special effects, particularly the face-melting scene when they open the Ark.  Dragonslayer, though, unlike Heartbeeps is a genuinely quality product and earned this spot (and will likely make my My Ballot as well for its great use of the imposing dragon in the picture).

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

OVP: Picture (2023)

 OVP: Best Picture (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Ben Le Clair, Nikos Karamigios, Cord Jefferson, & Jermaine Johnson, American Fiction

Marie-Ange Luciani & David Thion, Anatomy of Fall

David Heyman, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, & Robbie Brenner, Barbie

Mark Johnson, The Holdovers

Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas, Martin Scorsese, & Daniel Lupi, Killers of the Flower Moon

Bradley Cooper, Steven Spielberg, Fred Berner, Amy Durning, & Kristie Macosko Krieger, Maestro

Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, & Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

David Hinojosa, Christine Vachon, & Pamela Koffler, Past Lives

Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos, & Emma Stone, Poor Things

James Wilson, The Zone of Interest

My Thoughts: Whenever I finish another one of these seasons, I always seem to start humming "The Blower's Daughter" by Damien Rice, a song that I associate specifically with the film Closer, which I saw in college and was one of the first (then) contemporary films that I saw specifically as "mine."  It was a movie that very few of my friends or people I knew had seen (or liked), and that I loved when it came out (and still do, as is evidenced by the 2004 My Ballot where it made the Best Picture lineup).  The movie is about the passage of time & missed opportunities, but it's also a distinctly college movie for me, one of those formative flicks that you didn't realize going into the year would become part of your personality.  I think about that particularly with Best Picture lineups, because my hope is that some of these movies mean that for young cinephiles who are carving their path in the world, and loving movies in that way that it becomes harder to do the older you get.

One of the movies, though, that shocked me in that specific way in 2023 was The Zone of Interest. Jonathan Glazer takes way too long to make his movies, but he does at least make your patience worthy of the wait.  The Zone of Interest is a fascinating treatise on evil, how it seeps into our day-to-day life so much we can no longer see a world without it feeling commonplace.  The sound design is rich here, adding personality to the picture, and the writing & performances (particularly Sandra Huller) only accentuate this distinct look at the Holocaust and World War II (and, let's face it, modern fascist movements in the United States & Europe).

Another film that reminds me of Closer (I promise, I won't reference Mike Nichols' picture for all of these, but if you haven't seen it, do yourself a treat & seek it out) is Past Lives, though the 2023 movie has a far warmer heart.  I talk about my love of ticking clock romances on this blog a lot, but this one turns that a bit on its head, giving the main love triangle too much time to process their romance, leaving regret in place of urgency.  The way that the film examines how we become ghosts of our former selves (something you only begin to understand as you enter middle age), not in a melancholy way but in an inevitable one is really prescient stuff.  More than any other film in this lineup, I'm happiest this made it because it's the film that could've most easily gotten lost from public consciousness of the Oscar contenders.

The Holdovers is one of those movies that becomes better because of the parts, even if the sum doesn't always add up.  The warm performances from the three leads give it a lot of its flavor, as does some of the poignancy that invades Alexander Payne's script.  The movie is too neat, with every turn feeling telegraphed from the opening moments, and in the process Payne manages to screw up the ending, as he hasn't invested in our main character to make some of his choices in the final scenes feel unsaid.  Simple movies can be total masterpieces, but you have to get every part right if you're going to approach from that vantage-Payne only gets some things right.

Screwing up the ending, though, is not a sin exclusive to The Holdovers.  Maestro has the overconfidence to end with "any questions?" as if Bradley Cooper's film has answered fully the life of a complicated man.  But he doesn't-the movie invites far more questions than it answers, and what it does it gives a lot of really staid conversations about the life of Leonard Bernstein.  I think some of the conversations here are overplayed (I'm tired of talking about straight actors playing gay-in an era where openly gay Jonathan Bailey can get cast as the straight romantic lead in Wicked and get to front a major franchise like Jurassic Park, I think we can concede that we've made some progress), but the film's handling of Bernstein's sexuality seems hampered by real-life considerations (like his family's access to the life rights), and in the process Bernstein remains unknowable throughout the picture, a clear drop given the ending of the film.

But Maestro doesn't fumble at the beginning of the movie.  This is the last time I'll complain about it this season, but Anatomy of a Fall screws up much of its film's momentum at the top of the picture when it shares that it will end without resolution.  The movie never really recovers from that.  Though there are scenes of value (I think the title sequence is impressive, and Sandra Huller is better than the script), the movie's need to stay ambiguous becomes a problem as it feels too open-ended, and especially given how long it is, it lacks perspective on the crime itself.

A movie that better balances the need to be two things at once is American Fiction, though it isn't totally successful either.  American Fiction is really smart as social satire, giving us a cutting diatribe about the commodification of diversity and the ways that racism can take on different forms, even in seemingly progressive politics.  But in a weird twist, the film itself doesn't have enough strength in its family drama (the types of books that the main character wants to write) to sell that story-within-a-story angle.  The film's call sheet is smart (save for a woefully miscast Sterling K. Brown), with Jeffrey Wright a strong lead and I loved the meta-casting of Erika Alexander in a movie about a writer who struggles to convey to his publishers that the Black experience can take on any lens (Alexander is best-known for playing Cousin Pam on The Cosby Show, one of the first mainstream Hollywood productions to truly emphasize this message).  It's just short, though, of being something truly special.

Poor Things in a lot of ways has that "just short" of something truly great scenario going for it as well.  Like American Fiction, it has a strong lead performance, and it has a lot to say, in this case about feminism.  But also like American Fiction, it can't quite find a balance, though here it's trying to keep up with Lanthimos' need for shocking the audience through sex, body humor, and tantalizing moral conversations.  All of these can make up great art (see Lanthimos' The Favourite, in fact), but in Poor Things it gets in Lanthimos' way.  I'll also own that some of the aesthetic choices in the picture feel arbitrary (and a bit ugly for me), which made the film suffer whenever I wasn't getting to revel in Emma Stone's brilliant work.

Killers of the Flower Moon continues Martin Scorsese's recent trend of making his best pictures at the close of his career.  Running well over three hours, the movie gives us a totally epic tale, one that feels more complete for being pieced together (news flash: not every big story works better as a miniseries...this is proof of that).  The acting is somewhat strong.  We have Robert de Niro giving his best performance in decades, and Lily Gladstone's understated approach giving us a woman who is always hiding in Mollie Kyle, a strategy that makes her final scenes just sing on the screen.  I think DiCaprio is miscast (and Brendan Fraser is laughably bad), but those are minor quibbles when you're getting to see a master like Scorsese at work.

We of course have to end with the two movies that will forever be intwined, both in moviegoers' minds and at the Oscars: Barbie and Oppenheimer.  We'll start our Barbenheimer conversation with Oppenheimer, a movie that underlines how Christopher Nolan is one of our most visually arresting film directors.  The movie's aesthetic choices are divine (the art direction & cinematography are both laudable, I also think the editing approach works when it easily could've been too much), and most of the ensemble cast delivers, including some of the bit players like Benny Safdie or Casey Affleck.  I do think Nolan continues to struggle at writing women (and Emily Blunt's not giving us enough to make up for that), but Oppenheimer is going to age beautifully as a Best Picture winner, a striking meld of populist intellectualism.

Barbie is a movie, unlike Oppenheimer, that wasn't guaranteed Best Picture consideration.  It's due to Greta Gerwig's shiny pink optimism that this became the biggest hit of 2023.  Barbie is going to be hard to grade for future generations primarily because it was a phenomenon (the marketing on this film was both costly and insanely effective, with a press junket that should be studied), but the film itself is also strong.  It looks sensational (love the costumes, art direction, & makeup), and the lead actors are both fizzing with chemistry, though the standout remains Ryan Gosling's Ken, inevitably the definitive role of one of our best working actors.  I do think some of the commentary about feminism feels a bit prosaic, but I am hardly going to Kensplain girl power-Barbie is delicious & frothy fun.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes have their categories separated into Musical/Comedy and Drama, with six nominations each so we do get some new names, though not in Drama, where Oppenheimer beats Anatomy of a Fall, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Past Lives, & The Zone of Interest.  Instead it's in Musical/Comedy where Oscar nominee Poor Things took it over some films from the AMPAS lineup (Barbie, American Fiction, The Holdovers) and some not (May December, Air).  The PGA copied Oscar verbatim for both nominations and wins, and BAFTA (the only game in town still doing five nominations) went with Oppenheimer atop Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, & Poor Things.  I wrote an entire article about who might've been in 11th place, and while future pundits (who rely too much on stats for my taste) will assume The Color Purple or Nyad were in 11th place, I honestly think it was All of Us Strangers, Origin, or Air that was in 11th, and would've been the first film since 1943 to get in for Best Picture without a nomination anywhere else.  This is a fascinating conversation (more so than any recent "who was the runner-up" dialogue), so here's the article if you want more or want to know why I picked those specific titles.

Films I Would Have Nominated: You'll find out tomorrow!

Oscar’s Choice: Oppenheimer won by so much, it's a genuine question between The Holdovers, Barbie, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, and The Zone of Interest what was in second place (whomever it was, they were distant, but I'd probably bet on The Holdovers if forced to choose because of how the ranked ballots work).

My Choice: Not a hard one for me-The Zone of Interest is the best in a really solid list of movies (Oscar did better here than he has in a lot of recent years even if there won't be much overlap with my personal ballot).  Behind it (in order) are Killers of the Flower Moon, Past Lives, Oppenheimer, Barbie, American Fiction, The Holdovers, Poor Things, Anatomy of a Fall, and Maestro.  So that means in our six Barbenheimer matchups, Barbie went 5-1...but still missed for Best Picture.

And there you have it-another OVP in the books.  Are you all still enchanted by Oppenheimer, or do you favor a darker picture like The Zone of Interest?  Who do you think was in the second and eleventh places in a year where that was quite murky?  And overall-what is your favorite movie of 2023?  Share your comments below!

Also in 2023: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

Past Best Picture Contests: 1931-32, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

David Attenborough & the True Test of Legacy

Given how much he means to me, it's weird that on a personal blog that I have only written about Sir David Attenborough a handful of times, particularly since I talk about him CONSTANTLY.  While he has starred in a number of documentaries over the years, they aren't film, so they never intersect with Oscar, and while he does quite a bit of political advocacy, he's never run for political office, so I suppose it makes sense.  This past year, though, David Attenborough has made an astonishing five long-form nature series, particularly noteworthy given Attenborough is 97-years-old.  Prehistoric Planet II, Our Planet II, Wild Isles, Frozen Planet II, and Planet Earth III, the latter of which I'm almost done with (the rest I've already completed), have all been part of his past year.  Attenborough's work is vitally important, opening up the conversation about animals & in many ways raising entire generations on how they can have an impact on the beautiful creatures that inhabit our planet.  You could argue that no single living person has done more for environmental advocacy.  And he does so through truly breathtaking documentaries, filled with color, majesty, light, and some of the most impressive nature photography ever put on film.

Planet Earth has become the series he's most synonymous with, and was chronologically the fifth series of the five that he's created in 2023.  It's also, to date, the final series that Attenborough has done or committed to doing.  Attenborough this past year has announced he will no longer travel for on-set location shooting (frequently he will do his specials from places like Africa or the Galapagos Islands, where he will interact with some of the local wildlife firsthand), but has insisted that he will continue to present, as he loves the work.  He does have a special that was just released entitled Attenborough and the Giant Sea Monster (anyone know where you can watch this in the US?), but that's the only thing that he has on the radar.  Rumors abound of a Blue Planet III, but while he has stated that he's not retiring, it's rare (and maybe telling) that he hasn't announced his next project yet.

This is sadly the case for a few legends.  John Williams, age 91, announced his retirement last year, and while he took it back, it's hard not to see his recent Oscar nomination for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (his 54th overall) as being an acknowledgement that it might be his last one.  Similar to Attenborough with Planet Earth, Williams getting to write the final installment of one of his most storied franchises (admit it-you just started to hum the "Raiders March" without me even needing to prompt you) feels like a closing of a chapter, even if it (hopefully) isn't it.  Martin Scorsese, 81, has talked pretty openly about how he knows his career will end soon, and how he feels like what he wants is more time.  Steven Spielberg, 77, recently made The Fabelmans, a lifelong ambition project about his early childhood, and while he (like Scorsese and unlike Attenborough & Scorsese) has announced potential projects, he also has entered the age where every new film feels like an event, a potentially "last of its kind" event.

This is morbid to talk about, and normally I wouldn't because I want all of these men to go on forever, but it does invite a really sad commentary.  These four men are irreplaceable.  There is no "next David Attenborough" or "next John Williams" in the same sense there was never a "next Alfred Hitchcock" or "next Frank Sinatra."  But they also represent a type of entertainment that is at risk of dying all-together.  The kinds of giant, original blockbusters that Steven Spielberg was synonymous with (Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, Jurassic Park) are completely out-of-style, as are his most recent run of thoughtful, meditative historical epics (Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, The Post).  Same with Martin Scorsese-his giant epics are celebrated, but no one else is making them, and at some point they did.  When Spielberg released Amistad, it came out the same year as Titanic, Seven Years in Tibet, and Kundun.  Now, their movies feel completely alien-no one's spending that kind of money on such epic storytelling.  Biopics are cheap-looking Netflix garbage (that still somehow get a lot of Oscar nominations, because it's all they can get their hands upon).  Any special effects film is a retread or sequel, not something groundbreaking like Jaws or Raiders of the Lost Ark.  There's only a few creative minds like Spielberg & Scorsese who consistently get $100 million for an original idea (Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron), but save for Nolan they'll all be over 70 by the end of this year.  Hollywood is not raising an environment where the next Spielberg or Scorsese can exist.

The same can be said for John Williams, which is weird as virtually every film still has composers.  Much of cinematic composing today is either a ripoff of Williams (he's so influenced film music, it's hard not to borrow from him) or a rebuttal to him.  But let's be honest-even if Dial of Destiny is not his best score, listen to it against the other four nominated scores, and you have to admit-it's of a different era, and still an example of the best of its kind.  Even something like Oppenheimer doesn't have that big, Boston Pops-style classical sound to it, the sound that Max Steiner and Miklos Rozsa would bring to music.  With just a few left beside him (like Hans Zimmer & Alexandre Desplat), the man who ushered in a new era of film music could well end that era with him.

And this is, sadly, the case for David Attenborough as well.  Attenborough's films are in a class by themselves, but that's partially because they cost so much.  With continual cuts at the BBC, one wonders if they'll die with him.  Attenborough is a national treasure in Britain, regularly voted the country's most beloved citizen, and public outcry over cutting him from the BBC would be, well, untenable for either of the country's political parties.  But it's pretty clear the writing's on the wall for his nature documentaries after he's gone-they're too expensive to be able to continue in the same way, and even if they did, they won't carry the same level of editorial vision.  Planet Earth III is not easy entertainment.  It's beautiful, mournful, and it also focuses heavily on the damning impact of climate change.  Other documentaries lack Attenborough's heavy hand in showing how we impact the natural world, either leaning in on the cuteness of the animals (DisneyNature) or, if you watch some of the other Netflix documentaries, feeling more like a church potluck's level of depth into the climate crisis.  A series that combines both beauty and responsibility...no one does that like Attenborough.

Why am I bringing this up, other than to bum you out?  It's not a fear of a lack of programs from these four (I have seen most of Attenborough's modern work, but have plenty of past series, including all of the Life collection, which I'm going to start later this year, to watch still), but more a fear of what will happen when they're gone.  Part of preserving an artist's legacy is ensuring that the artists who are inspired by them, not just their work but their work ethic, have a way to move forward & a vision to create freely (and commercially).  We need to start finding a new generation of artists given this kind of investment, so that these men can remain legends, but not the last of their kind.

Gremlins (1984)

Film: Gremlins (1984)

Stars: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Frances Lee McCain, Corey Feldman, Polly Holliday, Howie Mandel

Director: Joe Dante

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90'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 movie that I've watched this month, as I just mentioned, I am seeing for the first time.  That's probably not true for Gremlins, at least not wholly true.  I know we had a copy of the movie that we taped off of a free HBO weekend when I was a kid, and we had a read-along tape of the movie (or a children's novelization of the movie) that my brother liked growing up...but watching it again, I'm fully convinced that I never actually watched this in full even if I've seen it in parts.  Gremlins is one of two movies (along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, both with the guiding hand of Steven Spielberg, who executive produced this picture) that basically launched the PG-13 rating, as at the time it was either going to be PG (which it was) or R-Rated.  Watching it now, the PG-13 rating uproar doesn't feel as warranted as it did for Temple of Doom, but it is definitely something that would've happened had the rating existed in 1984.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses initially on inventor Randall Peltzer (Axton), visiting a shop in Chinatown where he buys a small creature that eventually is known as Gizmo (Mandel), whom he gifts to his son Billy (Galligan).  Billy is told there are three rules when it comes to taking care of the mogwai: 1) don't get them wet 2) don't let them get a lot of light, especially sunlight which is lethal and 3) never feed them after midnight.  Of course, Billy ends up doing all three before the movie is over, given that he's a well-meaning but sexually-distracted (by his love interest Kate, played by Phoebe Cates, with both Galligan & Cates getting their all-American 1980's heartthrob status on in this movie) young man.  Once Gizmo is wet, he multiples into a much less docile mogwai creatures, the leader of which is Spike, and after they are fed post-midnight, they turn into nasty gremlin creatures who terrorize the town (and kill a few people, including Polly Holliday's ruthless Mrs. Deagle), before they are stopped by the sunlight, save for Gizmo who goes back to his Chinatown owner, but not before a heartfelt goodbye with Billy.

The film is a silly blast.  I know people oftentimes lump this in with Poltergeist, as both are sendups of the Reagan Era with Steven Spielberg's involvement, but I don't quite buy that this has as much political cache as Poltergeist's damning (and extremely well-acted) look at the consumerism of the 1980's, but it's definitely there.  Instead, it's just a wholly original work, with adorable, comical creatures that in many ways are more family-friendly incarnations of what Chucky would be a few years later in Child's Play.  The film feels very much in the vein of the Spielberg/Kathleen Kennedy/Frank Marshall machine that would dominate movies from the early 1980's all the way to the MCU era, and like most of those films, this was a massive hit in 1984.

The movie also has the good sense to not try too hard on the effects.  This isn't a slam (the effects look quite good), but they don't use much CGI (at that point just in its infancy as an option onscreen), and instead they smartly keep the creatures animatronic puppets in the vein of something like Yoda or The Dark Crystal a few years earlier.  Even in their most wicked stage, there's so much personality in the gremlins by not having them be CGI (which at this point would've necessitated they all look the same, rather than giving them each a lot of detail & character work), and I think those added touches give us a lot better ride, even if they might make them mildly less scary (since it feels like they're fighting creepy Muppets in some sequences).

Past Horror Month Reviews

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, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

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

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream

OVP: Picture (2022)

 OVP: Best Picture (2022)

The Nominees Were...

Malte Grunert, All Quiet on the Western Front

James Cameron & Jon Landau, Avatar: The Way of Water

Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, & Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin

Catherine Martin, Gail Berman, Patrick McCormick, & Schuyler Weiss, Elvis

Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, & Jonathan Wang, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Kristie Macosko Krieger, Steven Spielberg, & Tony Kushner, The Fabelmans

Todd Field, Alexandra Milchan, & Scott Lambert, Tar

Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison, & Jerry Bruckheimer, Top Gun: Maverick

Erik Hemmendorff & Philippe Bober, Triangle of Sadness

Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, & Frances McDormand, Women Talking

My Thoughts: We are at the end of yet another season of the Oscar Viewing Project!  This is the quickest turnaround we've ever done from the initial ceremony to the OVP ballot (the Oscars were just a few months ago), so I'm excited we were able to do this within a calendar year.  I'm going to make you wait a little more than week for our next season; we'll kick it off in August, but as a hint we'll be doing one of the two remaining years left this century (for links to past contests, click the bottom of this page).  We'll also be doing one of my favorite series to write on the blog-whom I would've picked if I had picked all of the nominees tomorrow.  But for now, grab the popcorn & get ready for one last ride with Oscar's ten best pictures.  Hopefully the ride goes better than our first film...

Triangle of Sadness is another commentary from Ruben Ostlund about the ways that capitalism & power destroy our combined humanity, and how no one is really exempt from it.  Combining Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away with recent Best Picture winner Parasite, the movie is a fascinating look at a lot of ideas that definitely needs a better editor.  The second third of the movie lasts too long, with Ostlund less trying to aid his tale and more attempting to gross out his audience, but much of the rest of the movie is worth sticking around if you can stomach it, specifically grand performances from Dolly de Leon and Harris Dickinson.  The ending needed to chop the last thirty seconds off of it, though.

Top Gun: Maverick is the antithesis in pretty much every way of Triangle of Sadness, here finding ways to glorify the industrial complex & capitalism.  The movie itself works in key aspects.  Some of the supporting cast (Glen Powell & Jennifer Connelly, specifically) play well, and this is a last great lap of one of the quintessential action heroes, Tom Cruise.  Plus, in a world dominated by CGI, it's thrilling to see actual sets, actual stunts, and not just a wall of computer-generated banality.  But the movie's script lands like a lead balloon, is filled with cliche & the dialogue is cheesy as hell (plus, Jon Hamm continues his weird trend of not knowing how to act in movies after giving one of TV's most iconic characterizations).

Women Talking is that rare film where you say "a film feels like a play" but you mean it is a compliment.  Everything about this is about finding direction through conversation, with us learning more about the complicated world these women live in, but also about the freedom they feel outside of the gaze of men.  I loved the way that your initial assumptions of how these women will progress alters, in the way that new ideas change your mind, and I've never felt claustrophobia used as a framing device (rather than something to overcome) so well.  Sarah Polley's movie is fresh, alive, & full of uncomfortable truths.

All Quiet on the Western Front joins the very short list of movies where both the original and the remake got cited for Best Picture (I believe this is just All Quiet and West Side Story...not a great look for Hollywood originality that both are in the past two years).  The story in this movie is too hard to break entirely-it's one of the most damning anti-war tales ever told-but this one feels paint-by-numbers, and includes a needless addition of Daniel Bruhl reminding us of the ticking clock that we already understand is hanging over these soldiers' heads.  With a remake, I need more than just "it's more realistic" to justify its existence, and this movie never provides that.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is bizarre because my initial review of it on Letterboxd (follow me) is way shorter than I normally would've gone with a Best Picture nominee, which is kind of an indication of how I feel about it (and how out-of-nowhere it felt at the time for the Best Picture race).  I liked it, I didn't love it.  I think that the central performances are all good, but the final third is too convoluted, frequently borrowing from things we've already seen and rarely in a way that feels like it's adding more texture to the story.  It's a miracle that an original movie with no established IP or real-life figure managed to take over the pop culture/box office in such a way, so I give it credit for that...but it's not as original as it needs to be, nor as well as well-edited as it has to be, if we're going to throw around phrases like "masterpiece."

If you want to give out that title for a wholly original movie, you gotta look at a movie like Tar.  The movie is an epic, staggering character study of human nature, and the reasons why we keep things secret.  Cate Blanchett gives the performance of a lifetime (and it's Cate Blanchett we're talking about here, so the lifetime was already on a pedestal) as Lydia Tar, owning every scene of her movie and giving us a domineering, complicated, over-her-head woman that defies expectations.  One of those movies you only truly understand once you've seen every second of it.

I'm always a sucker for an "ode to cinema" and the past couple of years have given us high-profile takes from major directors.  2022's best was The Fabelmans, which gives Steven Spielberg the vulnerability to share not just where he came from, but where some of his best movies came from.  Within The Fabelmans, we get a sense of the prickliness that we see in so many of his movies (for all of the "happy ending" criticism that Spielberg gets, so often the children in his films are from "broken" or divorced homes, just like Sammy here).  Solid performances from Williams, LaBelle, & Dano help to underline the central dynamic of a father-and-mother's love being so crucial to a young man finding himself.

I have been so sick of musical biopics (by far the most tired & overdone genre in movies today) that I kind of forgot that they could have some thrills.  Leave it to Baz Luhrmann to get me there with Elvis.  This movie doesn't always work in its approach-the length (oddly enough) is fine, but it glosses over side characters too much (particularly Presley's wife Priscilla), to the point where it makes the editing feel choppy.  And I don't entirely get what Tom Hanks was doing here, even if there are times it kind of works (bad acting can have its place in a movie, though that is what this is).  But casting Austin Butler as this unknowable sex god is so appropriate and so inline with Elvis, you might believe at some points that that electric magnetism has been brought back from the dead.

An even more successful spin on a tried-and-true genre (the buddy comedy) is The Banshees of Inisherin.  The best parts of Martin McDonagh's films are when he gives us sharp edges on his characters, which we get as the film goes-the central four characters are all imperfect, and sometimes that imperfection has consequences they can't take back.  Buoyed by the best acting ensemble of 2022, the writing & acting are so heightened and extraordinary it's hard not to feel you're in the presence of some great, untold tale.  I loved it.

With Hollywood telling more and more stories that we've already heard, an increase in sequels in this category is inevitable.  If that's the case, please make them all as good as Avatar: The Way of Water.  I had honestly forgotten a blockbuster movie could look this good, with James Cameron genuinely caring about light & design in his film rather than piecing together action set pieces with no care in-between.  The story itself is strong, particularly the way that he folds it into a thrilling action sequence over the film's last 40 minutes (you will not look at your watch once in this very long movie), but it's the glorious visual effects that make this something truly special.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their categories into Drama and Musical/Comedy so we have ten films to discuss, but in a different style than Oscar's ten.  Best Musical/Comedy went to The Banshees of Inisherin against Babylon, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Glass Onion, and Triangle of Sadness while The Fabelmans bested Avatar: The Way of Water, Elvis, Tar, and Top Gun: Maverick in Best Drama.  The PGA Awards gave their statue to Everything Everywhere All at Once beating most of the Oscar lineup with Women Talking, All Quiet on the Western Front, & Triangle of Sadness replaced by Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Glass Onion, & The Whale.  BAFTA only does five nominees, and picked All Quiet on the Western Front against Banshees, EEAAO, Elvis, & Tar.  In eleventh place...I think it was probably The Whale given it won two major awards and got the PGA nod.  I maintain that had Glass Onion (a populist hit if you've ever seen one) gotten a real run in theaters and not just a "quick, get it onto Netflix" it would've gotten a nomination here the second it hit $100 million at the box office.  Streaming, I cannot stress this enough, is ruining the entertainment industry.

Films I Would Have Nominated: You'll find out tomorrow!

Oscar’s Choice: An easy call for EEAAO-BAFTA & the HFPA were doing their own things (which I love) but by Oscar night, it was evident that EEAAO was taking this over All Quiet and The Fabelmans.

My Choice: Comparing films is insane, and that's very much proven by my top two films, Avatar: The Way of Water and The Banshees of Inisherin, two superb movies that have nothing in common.  I started this article ranking Banshees first because the acting & story is a bit better, and I'll stay there, but this is one of those decisions I'll waffle about forever.  Behind them (in order) I'd go: The Fabelmans, Tar, Women Talking, Triangle of Sadness, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Elvis, Top Gun: Maverick, and All Quiet on the Western Front.

And there you have it-another OVP in the books.  Are you staying with Oscar's bandwagon love of EEAAO or do you want to hang with Jenny the Donkey & I over with Banshees?  Do you think The Whale, Glass Onion, or something else was just out of this contest?  And overall-what is your favorite movie of 2022?  Share your comments below!

Also in 2022: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature, Sound, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2022

Past Best Picture Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021