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THE
TOP 10
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1990
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Dances
With Wolves, Kevin Costner's overwhelmingly popular revisionist
western, bulldozed its way over all comers in 1990, receiving twelve
nominations and seven Oscars. That one of those nominations went
to Costner's typically wooden performance as a former Cavalry officer
who "goes injun" after being adopted by a band of Lakota
Sioux that are so kindhearted and pacifistic that they seem more
like a hippie commune than a tribe of Native Americans was a clear
indication that the Academy was so taken in by this somber film's
self-righteous political correctness that they wanted to throw as
many honors at it as possible. But with the passage of over a decade,
the Academy's devotion to Dances With Wolves now seems like
an act of contrition to the Sacheen Littlefeather mentality because
while the film undeniably has some effective elements (the celebrated
buffalo hunt sequence is very exciting indeed), it is so permeated
by a sense of its own self importance that it hard to watch with
a serious eye. To be sure, it isn't any more one-sided or dishonest
than all those John Wayne movies that depict the white man as well-meaning
pioneers bringing civilization to an untamed land and the Indians
as brutal savages, but the Academy generally turned its nose up
at such racially simplistic drivel in the past. 
Simplistic
is hardly the word for GoodFellas, Martin Scorsese's brilliant
depiction of mobster-turned-stoolie Henry Hill's chronicle of his
days in the Mafia; a seeming response to The Godfather saga,
whose epic characters are depicted as major players on the world
political stage, the made men of GoodFellas are concerned
with nuts and bolts problems like unloading the contents of a rerouted
cigarette truck or disposing of the carcass of a pesky competitor
with quicklime (issues that Michael Corleone never had to soil his
silk suit with).
Martin
Scorsese has been nominated for Best Director six times and Best
Adapted Screenplay twice before finally winning the directing Oscar
for The Departed in a selection largely effected by sentimentality.
He was always overlooked for his greatest work, failing to receive
nominations for Mean Streets and Taxi Driver and losing
the Oscar for his masterpieces Raging Bull and GoodFellas
to movie stars making their directorial debuts with heavy-handed
dramas. Robert Redford's output as a director has been a
reasonably honorable follow-up to his Oscar-winning debut for Ordinary
People, with somber films like A River Runs Through It, The
Horse Whisperer and the Oscar-nominated Quiz Show providing
some intensely watchable sequences despite a cloying sense of self
importance and prettified presentation that frequently undermines
the films' best intentions. Far less successful has been the directorial
career of Kevin Costner, who waited seven years before making
the follow-up to his his own overrated directorial debut. The vehicle
he chose was the fiasco The Postman, which not only blew
the lid off Costner's reputation as a director but derailed his
acting career (Costner was rumored to have directed the last two
weeks of his other megabomb, Waterworld, after credited director
Kevin Reynolds walked off the film). Costner tried to redeem himself
with one last stab at directing with the satisfying 2003 western
Open Range, but by that time no one cared any more.
Director
Franco Zeffirelli stunned the movie world in 1989 by announcing
that he was making a film version of Shakespeare's Hamlet
starring action megastar Mel Gibson, an actor whose only previous
Shakespearean experience was playing Romeo in an Australian production
years previously. Gibson surprised critics by delivering a creditable,
if uninspired, performance; aided in no small way by Zeffirelli's
screenplay which brilliantly condenses the massive play far more
effectively than Laurence Olivier's Oscar-winning film (although
the highlight of the Olivier film - the duel in Act V - is the low
point of the Zeffirelli version, with Gibson embarrassing himself
by stomping and hooting at the stunned Laertes as though he were
taunting Joe Pesci in a Lethal Weapon movie). Zeffirelli
also had the good sense to surround Gibson with a brilliant supporting
cast, most memorably with inspired turns by Helena Bonham Carter
as Ophelia, Paul Scofield as the Ghost and best of all Glenn
Close in a towering performance as a childlike Gertrude. Close
is only nine years older than the actor playing her son, but such
chronological nitpicking never enters the mind as one is riveted
by the actress' sensitivity and imagination as one of Shakespeare's
great tragic heroines.
1991
was such a weak year for movies that the Academy resorted to measures
that they had never gone to previously, naming the feature length
cartoon Beauty and the Beast as one of the Best Picture nominees
in order to round out the field. Disney's delightful retelling of
the classic fairy tale was one of the studio's greatest achievements,
but the fact that it received a nomination when such timeless classics
as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Pinnochio, Bambi, The Little
Mermaid or The Lion King were never even considered for
the top award is far more indicative of the slim pickings in this
year than of the singular contributions of Beauty and the Beast
to the art of animation (as notable as they were). With so little
to pick from, its understandable that the Academy chose to honor
the gruesome but compelling thriller, The Silence of the Lambs.
In a stronger year, The Silence of the Lambs would usually
be the type of film that was relegated to technical awards (if any),
although there is no denying that the film is brought into a level
beyond the depth of most thrillers through the complex performance
of Jodie Foster and the electrifying presence of Anthony Hopkins
as the screen's most famous cannibal-psychiatrist. 
Anthony
Hopkins was on screen for all of eighteen minutes in his most
famous performance as Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lechter
in Silence of the Lambs and made the most of it by providing
some of the screen's most unforgettable and terrifying images, largely
by maintaining a chilling stillness. But as memorable as Hopkins
was in the role, his Oscar win was harshly criticized at the time
not only for the brevity of his appearance, but because many felt
that it was accomplished as much through clever lighting and editing
as anything contributed by the actor. And as effective as Hopkins
is as Lechter, the role provides almost no insight to his bizarre
behavior and doesn't challenge the actor to do any more than deliver
all his lines in a creepy monotone. To be sure, 1991 was not a stellar
year for male performances and most of Hopkins' competition - Warren
Beatty in Bugsy, Robert De Niro in Cape Fear and Robin
Williams in The Fisher King - were unexceptional exhibitions
that were only in the running because the Academy required five
nominees. But the performance of Nick Nolte in Barbra Streisand's
flawed film of Pat Conroy's novel The Prince of Tides represented
not only the finest work of that actor's checkered career, but the
outstanding performance of any actor in 1991.
Barton
Fink won the Golden Palm at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival in
addition to awards for Best Director for Joel Cohen and Best Actor
for John Goodman (the first film to be so honored), as well as winning
awards from the New York Film Critics for Judy Davis for her touching
performance as playwright-turned-screenwriter Fink's would-be muse
and the Los Angeles Film Critic Award for Michael Lerner's inspired
send-up of MGM head Louis B. Mayer in the person of studio boss
Jack Lipnick. But the real genius of the film is Joel Coen and
Ethan Coen's brilliant screenplay, which starts out as a clever
satire on 1930s Hollywood and ultimately evolves into an absurdist
nightmare. In the Best Original Screenplay category, the Academy
nominated some startlingly unoriginal screenplays - James Toback's
Bugsy, Lawrence Kasdan and Meg Kasdan's Grand Canyon,
and winner Callie Khouri's Thelma & Louise. The Oscars
have always preferred the safety of mundane formalism to any type
of risk and the outrageous screenplay for Barton Fink was
undoubtedly too unconventional for the tastes of the Academy membership.
But screen Barton Fink and Bugsy or Grand Canyon
back-to-back some time and the audacity of the Coen brothers will
stay bouncing around your brain long after the conventional plotting
of the other films have crawled into a dusty corner to fade away.
After
years of being taken for granted for outstanding films like High
Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josie Wales, Tightrope, Bird, and
Pale Rider, 1992 was the year that Clint Eastwood got respect
for the brilliant valedictory to his career as a Western star, Unforgiven.
Eastwood plays William Munny, a once-brutal murderer who reluctantly
goes off to commit one final murder for money after years of trying
to find redemption as the pig farming father of two young children.
The role is a brilliant evolution of the character he played in
his spaghetti westerns of the 1960s, and his presence in the film
is arguably the best example in the history of film of an actor's
screen personae filling in a character's background. But Unforgiven
is much more than simply a star vehicle for Eastwood to come full
circle with his Western image, providing an actor's field day with
brilliant performances by Gene Hackman (who won a richly-deserved
Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as a sadistic sheriff), Morgan Freeman,
and Richard Harris. Unforgiven's chief competition in the
Oscar Derby was the compelling sex-change thriller The Crying
Game (a film whose head-spinning surprise plot twist was betrayed
by the nomination of Jaye Richardson in the Best Supporting Actor
category); but after that the competition fell off drastically,
with the Academy so desperate to fill out the Best Picture field
that they nominated the mundane courtroom drama A Few Good Men
(overlooking the far more challenging Malcolm X). But
on Oscar night it was all about quality, with Eastwood finally getting
his long-overdue recognition.
Marisa
Tomei's Academy Award for her stereotypical performance a gangster's
moll in the broad comedy My Cousin Vinny is generally considered
the worst Oscar choice in recent memory, particularly as it she
was selected over four of the finest actresses in the world (Judy
Davis, Joan Plowright, Vanessa Redgrave, and Miranda Richardson)
for a performance that (although highly amusing) was of no more
quality than countless other gangster moll send-ups. Tomei is a
capable actress who has delivered fine performances in films like
Unhook the Stars, Slums of Beverly Hills and In the Bedroom,
but her Mona Lisa Vito didn't offer anything different from what
you might see in your average network sitcom on any given night
of the week.
1992
was a fine year for non-English language films, and the five the
Academy selected were good ones: Close to Eden, Daens, A Place
in the World, Schtonk, and the winner Indochine. The
most popular foreign film in the United States was overlooked, however:
Like Water for Chocolate, director Alfonso Arau's provocative
drama of a young woman (beautifully played by Lumi Cavazos) who
is unable to marry her lover because of her mother's insistence
that her older sister marry first, forcing the girl to use food
as a supplement to her sexual frustration. The Oscar snub of Like
Water for Chocolate (which also deserved nominations for Arau,
Cavazos, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography and Art Direction) was
particularly disappointing after A Place in the World became
the first film in Oscar history to have its nomination taken away
because it was discovered that its Argentinean director Adolfo Aristarain
was refused by Argentina to have the film submitted as the country's
official entry for Best Foreign Language Film, so he had the film
submitted by his wife's homeland of Uruguay. It was a silly loophole
(typical of the political infighting that accompanies the Foreign
Language Film Oscar) that has since been closed, but it resulted
in an unfortunate episode that not only denied Like Water for
Chocolate of the recognition it deserved, but so embittered
Aristarain that he refused to allow A Place in the World
to be shown in the United States until 1995, when it made a paltry
$100,986 at the box office. Nobody won.
Steven
Spielberg was itching to win an Oscar by 1993, occasionally throwing
in a clumsy, frequently overrated drama (The Color Purple, Empire
of the Sun, Always) into his filmography in a transparent attempt
to win the plaudits he never received for his masterful excursions
into popular filmmaking. Spielberg finally hit paydirt when he came
across Thomas Keneally's book about Oskar Schindler, the controversial
(he was a war profiteer and member of the Nazi party) savior of
over 1000 Jews from Nazi concentration camps. Spielberg's dynamic
presentation of the inspiring story was recognized as an instant
classic (it was rated as the ninth greatest American film ever made
by the American Film Institute) and was the runaway winner at the
Academy Awards that year (despite distinguished competition from
In the Name of the Father, The Piano, and The Remains
of the Day in addition to the potboiler The Fugitive).
As moving and effective as Schindler's List is, it is somewhat
overrated (it is overlong and its "group hug" ending is
sentimental manipulation at its worst), but it contains some of
the most powerful sequences ever filmed and should be lauded for
its sensitive handling of a brutal subject matter. In a less competitive
year the award might have gone to the superbly acted Merchant-Ivory
collaboration The Remains of the Day, but 1993 was the year
that Steven Spielberg finally - and deservedly - got the Oscar recognition
he coveted.
Political
correctness consumed the Oscars in 1993, with Tom Hanks absurdly
winning the Best Actor award for his unconvincing performance of
an AIDS patient in Philadelphia. Hanks was strangely lauded
for the "risk" he took by playing a homosexual lawyer
who sues his employers after they fire him upon learning of his
disease, a role that was designed to be overpraised and in which
Hanks looks distinctly uncomfortable (an embarrassing scene in which
Hanks dances with his partner - an equally miscast Antonio Banderas
- depicts his character looking so awkward holding his supposed
lifemate that they look like two teenagers at a high school dance).
But Hanks (who is usually a brilliant actor and richly deserved
the Oscar he won for Forrest Gump) is a master of using political
correctness to his benefit and managed to turn his stiff performance
in this asinine film into a referendum on gay rights, even using
the Oscar podium as a platform for an embarrassing, self-serving
sermon about gay men who served as role models in his life (providing
the basis for the comedy In and Out). The four other nominated
actors - Daniel Day Lewis in In the Name of the Father, Laurence
Fishburne in What's Love Got to Do with It, Liam Neeson in
Schindler's List, and particularly Anthony Hopkins giving
the finest performance of his career in The Remains of the Day
- were vastly superior to the overrated Hanks, as were the unnominated
Clint Eastwood in In The Line of Fire, Bill Murray in Groundhog
Day, and Jeff Bridges in Fearless, but since they weren't
pushing a popular political agenda they failed to make the cut.
The
only woman to be nominated for Best Actress for a Shakespearean role
was Norma Shearer for her stiff and overaged depiction of Juliet in
MGM's infamous 1936 version of Romeo & Juliet. Emma
Thompson was undoubtedly taken out of the running to join her
with a nomination for her magnificent performance of Beatrice in Much
Ado About Nothing because of Thompson's Best Actress nomination
for her other brilliant performance that year in The Remains of
the Day (she was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for
her far lesser work in In the Name of the Father). But as good
as Thompson was in Remains of the Day she is even better in
Much Ado, providing Beatrice with a wit and sensuality which
unfortunately overpowers her Benedick (Thompson's then-husband Kenneth
Branagh, who - after the triumph of his film of Henry V - was
never as effective in Shakespearean films in which he both acted and
directed, achieving his only other unqualified success as Iago in
Oliver Parker's film of Othello). Indeed the cast of the film
is not generally up to Thompson's standard (Kate Beckinsale is an
excellent Hero, but Denzel Washington is stiff as Don Pedro and Michael
Keaton is mush-mouthed as Dogberry, while Keanu Reeves provides the
worst performance in the history of Shakespeare on film with his unintentionally
hilariously appalling depiction of the evil Don John), but while she
is on the screen the film takes on a luminosity that recalls a youthful
Audrey Hepburn. 
Two
brilliant movies went head-to-head in 1994, Forrest Gump
and 
The
Academy seemed to lose its mind in the documentary field this year,
selecting Maya Lin, a satisfactory though unexceptional
examination of the talented young Chinese-American artist who rose
to prominence by designing the the Vietnam War Memorial. The film
relies far too heavily on Lin's overly-cerebral and sometimes ponderous
analysis of her own work, and while the finished products are clearly
powerful and moving, the commentary she provides is frequently long-winded
and occasionally bordering on the pretentious. Overlooked were two
of the most important and popular documentaries ever made: Hoop
Dreams and Crumb. The omission of Hoop Dreams,
the story of two African American boys who struggle to become college
basketball players, caused a particular outrage among the public
when it was denied a nomination, even though Crumb, the bittersweet
chronicle of underground comic doyen Robert Crumb is the
better film. Both are undeniably superior to the winner Maya
Lin, whose selection has left a pall over the documentary category
that continues to this day.
It
seems like an almost yearly occurrence when the Academy overlooks
the most popular and important documentary of the year for a nomination,
and the pattern has never generated as much controversy as over
the snub of Hoop Dreams. Following the outrage, Entertainment
Weekly ran an article outing the Academy process for selecting the
award, disclosing that the members of the committee who chose the
nominees were not even documentary filmmakers (unlike the other
categories, whose nominees are chosen by members of that field).
The article forced the Academy to revise its rules (much like the
snub of The Thin Blue Line), although too late for Hoop
Dreams to be considered for the award. It was the only documentary
from 1994 to be nominated in a general category however, for Film
Editing - losing to Forrest Gump.
Given
the Academy's preference for pretentious drama, it's not surprising
that it has always turned its back on children's films. Prior
to 1995, the only three or four films nominated for Best Picture
that might fall into this category were The Wizard of Oz,
Mary Poppins and Beauty and the Beast (and perhaps
E.T.). With another shortage of outstanding films to choose
from this year the Oscars had no choice but to add another
to the list, Chris Noonan's film adaptation of Dick King-Smith's
novel The Sheep Pig. Noonan's deceptively simple Babe
turned out not only to be a technical marvel (48 real Yorkshire
pigs plus an animatronic double played the title role), but
a refreshingly gentle and heartwarming story of a little pig
raised by sheepdogs that learns to herd sheep himself. Babe
is that rarest of creatures, a film made for children that
can be enjoyed equally by adults, that was a financial smash
which put character actor James Cromwell (until then best
known for his recurring role as Stretch Cunningham in All
in the Family) on the map for his Oscar nominated performance
as farmer Arthur Hoggett. It was not only the best film of
the year, but the only one that is likely to be continued
to be screened with enthusiasm fifty years after its initial
release.
Nominated
for seven awards, the only Oscar Babe took home was
for its stunning visual effects. The surprise winner this
year was Mel Gibson's plodding epic film of the story of 13th
century Scottish hero William Wallace. Braveheart is
an reasonably entertaining (though overlong) action film which
gives Wallace's story the typical Hollywood treatment (the
movie begins with a prologue showing the child Wallace expressing
his undying love to a little girl of his own age but when
the adult Wallace rides back from the wars to claim her, the
actress playing the adult character is easily fifteen years
younger than Gibson) and is not even remotely in the same
league as the other nominees (Apollo 13, Babe,, Il Postino,
and even Sense and Sensibility), much less their
superior.
The
success of Braveheart on Oscar night continues to
be one of the most puzzling surprises in the history of the awards.
The lumbering film was not particularly well reviewed (Time Magazine
said ""Everybody knows that a non-blubbering clause is
standard in all movie stars' contracts. Too bad there isn't one
banning self-indulgence when they direct.") nor was it a financial
blockbuster (it came in fourth at the box office on its opening
weekend). Its success was doubtless due to a series of happy accidents
concerning its Best Picture competition that pushed it to the top:
Rightful winner Babe was a children's movie and not in keeping
with award prerequisite of being a somber drama; Apollo 13
inexplicably did not receive a Best Director nomination even though
it did win the DGA Award for Ron Howard; director Ang Lee shared
the same fate for Sense and Sensibility, a well-acted
though unengaging film of Jane Austin's novel that lacked Braveheart's
impressive budget and cast of thousands; and Il Postino was
a foreign language film. With all of its rivals dropping out of
the running, Braveheart won Best Picture by default.
Following
the death of Laurence Olivier and the retirement of John Gielgud,
the mantle of Greatest Shakespearean Actor fell to Ian McKellen,
whose performances of Macbeth, Richard II and Coriolanus
had already fallen into legend. McKellen solidified this title with
his brilliant rethinking of Olivier's signature role of Richard
III as a 1930s fascist dictator. McKellen won London's Laurence
Olivier Award for his stage performance of the role and the film
that he made from it was even better, surrounding McKellen with
a brilliant cast that included Annette Bening, Jim Broadbent, Nigel
Hawthorne, Kristen Scott Thomas, John Wood, Maggie Smith, and Robert
Downey Jr.. But it is McKellen's dynamic portrayal that surrounds
the action, delivering one of the most forceful and imaginative
performances in the history of Shakespeare on film.
A
memorable episode of Seinfeld depicts the character of Elaine
mystified over the praise being heaped on The English Patient,
until she finally runs out of a theatre showing the film because
it is simply too long and boring to sit through. madbeast.com shares
Elaine's opinion of the monotonous saga, ranking it with Cimarron,
Cavalcade and Oliver! as one of the genuinely awful films
to win the Best Picture Academy Award. The Academy's devotion to
the lifeless The English Patient is especially confusing
since all four of the other nominees (Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets
& Lies, and Shine) were excellent films that would
have been reasonable selections for the top honor. The best of the
lot by far was Joel and Ethan Cohen's disturbing comedy-drama of
a kidnapping gone horribly wrong, Fargo. Ranked as the eighty-fourth
greatest American film ever made by the American Film Institute
only two years after its release, Fargo packs more drama
and suspense in its ninety-eight minute running time than most of
the recent Oscar winners dole out in their meandering three-plus
hours. Brilliant acted by an outstanding ensemble that included
unforgettable performances by Frances McDormand. William H. Macy,
Steve Buscemi (who lost the Supporting Actor Hindsight Award to
Macy in a coin toss), and the menacing Harve Presnell, audiences
will forever wonder in astonishment how this great film could be
bypassed for recognition over the interminable The English Patient.
With
nine Oscars, six BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globes, the DGA Award, American
Cinema Editors Award, American Society of Cinematographers Award,
and Art Directors Guild Award to its credit, the two hour and forty
minute sluggishly-paced, forgettably-acted The English Patient
must surely be ranked as the most overrated film ever made and the
worst Best Picture selection since Oliver! The Academy has
been increasingly taken in by empty-headed opulence in recent years
(Out of Africa, Braveheart, Titanic), but never has a film
received so many honors for bringing so little to the screen as this
pretentious mess.
When
Eddie Murphy presented the Best Picture Oscar to The
Last Emperor in 1987, he used the occasion as a soapbox to point
out that the Academy Awards had recognized only three black actors
in its history to that time; adding that he would probably never
win an Oscar for saying so. Whether or not Murphy's statements had
anything to do with his not receiving a nomination for The Nutty
Professor can never be known, but he gave a performance of astonishing
warmth and sensitivity behind the film's fat jokes and fart gags.
Murphy's career output has been disappointingly thin in recent years
(outside of his delightful voice work in the Shrek films
and his brilliant Oscar nominated performance in Dreamgirls),
but when he started out, there were few better examples of a fresher
and more irreverent personality in motion picture history. He was
robbed of a nomination for his performance in Beverly Hills Cop,
perhaps the greatest instance in film history of a performer raising
mundane material to an outstanding level by the sheer force of his
personality. But his best work as an actor was as the shy and gentle
Professor Sherman Klump, and while Rick Baker and David LeRoy Anderson's
Oscar winning fat suit may have supplied the character's girth,
it was Murphy who provided Klump with a disarmingly old soul.
Prior
to the Academy Awards, almost every major critics group had given
their Best Picture award to Curtis Hanson's riveting film noir,
LA Confidential. But by the time Oscar Night had rolled around,
James Cameron's Titanic had become the movie phenomenon of
the decade and the all-time box office champion; so the Academy
rewarded it by giving it a record-tying 11 Oscars. Titanic
is an impressively produced film, but there is no question that
the Academy confused the devotion of a legion of teenage girls for
quality and had the film been judged strictly on the basis of its
merits as a motion picture (instead of a social phenomenon) it would
have walked away with nothing more than a few technical awards.
But for some unfathomable reason, the country became obsessed for
a time by this silly film that had the sensibility of a cheap romance
novel; and in that gap it not only managed to spin more gold than
Rumplestiltskin, it was able to con the motion picture elite into
believing that James Cameron was King of the World. Mercifully,
Titanic-mania has worn off over time (the film is given a
mediocre 6.8 rating on IMDb.com, whose readership is comprised of
Titanic's key demographic audience), and we now look back
on our fascination with it with the same sense of irony as seeing
an old snapshot of ourselves in high school with an outrageous hairstyle,
and musing "what the hell was I thinking?"
The
unfortunate loser in this whirlwind was LA Confidential,
which was certainly the finest film of the year despite winning
only two awards (ironically, one of the awards it won was one it
didn't deserve, for Kim Basinger's mediocre performance as
a call girl with a resemblance to Veronica Lake). Hanson's output
as a director has been a mixed bag in the ensuing years (although
Wonder Boys, his brilliantly oddball character study of an
eccentric English professor, was certainly the most under-rewarded
film of 2000), but LA Confidential was much more worthy of the sensation
created by Titanic. Wonderfully acted by Russell Crowe, Guy
Pearce, Kevin Spacey, Danny De Vito, and James Cromwell, LA Confidential
will at least have the distinction of forever being at the top
of most lists of the films that should have won the Best Picture
Oscar, but didn't.
When
Helen Hunt won the Best Actress Oscar for As Good As It
Gets, she used the occasion to express her surprise at being
honored over the actress she thought should have won the award,
Judi Dench for Mrs. Brown. While one admires Hunt's graciousness,
it's hard not to agree with her. Hunt is an enjoyable actress who
turns in the same dependably generic performance in everything she
does: her work in As Good As It Gets as a waitress who forms
an uncomfortable alliance with a mentally unbalanced writer (brilliantly
played by Jack Nicholson, who performed true alchemy with a role
that was so disturbing for an alleged romantic comedy that it might
have been unwatchable in a lesser actor's hands) was not noticeably
different from the performances she turned in in Twister
or What Women Want or, for that matter, an episode of Mad
About You. Hunt is a wonderfully appealing personality who lights
up any project that she takes part in, but she is a woefully limited
actress who does not belong in the Oscar pantheon.
Only
one black person (John Singleton for Boys N the Hood) and
three women (Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties, Jane
Campion for The Piano and Sophia Coppola for Lost in Translation)
have been nominated for the Best Director Oscar to date. Both those
numbers should have swelled in 1997 with Kasi Lemmons' atmospheric
direction of the chilling drama Eve's Bayou. This nail-biting
tale of family tension in the Louisiana bayou in the early 1960s
was among the finest films of the year, but was completely bypassed
in the Oscar race amidst the hysteria over Titanic. Regrettably,
Lemmons (who won an award for Outstanding Directorial Debut from
the National Board of Review for Eve's Bayou) has had only
two small budget directorial opportunities since.
The
Oscar success of Shakespeare in Love was criticized in some
quarters because of the lavish Academy Award campaign staged by
its distributor, Miramax Film's Harvey Weinstein. While there is
no doubt that Weinstein was extravagant in his spending, it might
not have mattered if the film weren't a remarkably clever and touching
romantic fantasy about a love affair that served as the Bard's inspiration
for Romeo & Juliet. In reality R&J was based
upon an old legend, but otherwise Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's
clever screenplay made remarkable use of the few known facts of
Shakespeare's life to spin a heartwarming delight. Shakespeare
in Love was considered a surprise winner on Oscar Night, with
the award expected to go to Steven Spielberg's fatuous, overlong
and overrated Saving Private Ryan; and given the Academy's
distaste for comedy, Shakespeare in Love does not seem to
fit the usual Oscar mold. But because of the film's literary background
it had just enough pretension going for it to seem Important enough
to win Academy Awards, even though at its core it remains a classic
romantic comedy (Gwynneth Paltrow's Oscar for her unexceptional
performance in a run-of-the-mill ingenue role was a terrible choice
over the far more challenging work of Fernanda Montenegra in Central
Station or Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth), a difficult
genre that is rarely honored by the Academy.
The Academy has a special fascination for films set in the background
of the Holocaust (the documentary selections are frequently criticized
for favoring films on the subject), although it can be argued that
this horrific event presents more opportunity for drama than any
other backdrop. Even with this admission however, it is difficult
to understand the deference Italian comic Roberto Benigni
generated for his ghastly and offensive attempt to set his over-the-top
slapstick routine amidst the atrocities in Life is Beautiful.
Benigni's film, which attempted to tell the story of a Jewish man
who is sent to an Italian concentration camp and tries to make the
situation palatable for his son by pretending that they are taking
part in a contest to win an army tank, trivialized the horrors of
the Holocaust to an unimaginable degree and his incompetent attempts
to mix his shameless mugging with labored pathos recalls Jerry Lewis
at his most self-indulgent. Remarkably, the movie public fell for
Benigni's train wreck and the film was nominated for a record number
of Oscars for a foreign language film (since broken), winning Benigni
awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Actor. Particularly disturbing
is the fact that the deserved winners in these categories, Brazil's
Central Station and Ian McKellen's performance in Gods
and Monsters, were among the outstanding film achievements of
the decade. Fortunately, Benigni's shell game with the American
film audience was ultimately seen through and his follow-up to Life
is Beautiful, a big budget live-action film of Pinnochio,
was laughed off the screen as an unwatchable mess. But Benigni's
Oscars for Life is Beautiful are an embarrassing reminder
of the spell he once cast over Movieland, and his statuette for
Best Actor ranks as the worst selection in the history of the Academy
Awards.
1930s
film director James Whale was never nominated for an Academy Award,
despite a filmography that included such classics as Frankenstein,
Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and the best of the
three film versions of Show Boat (which immortalized Paul
Robeson's rendition of "Ol' Man River"). Gods and
Monsters, Bill Condon's superb drama that brilliantly fictionalizes
Whale's last days with an imagined relationship between the homosexual
filmmaker and his heterosexual gardener, won the plaudits that Whale's
films never did with an Oscar for Condon's inventive screenplay
(based on Christopher Bram's novel Father of Frankenstein)
and nominations for Ian McKellen as Whale (who was robbed of the
award for the finest performance of the decade) and Lynn Redgrave
as his devoted German housekeeper. Even with these honors the film
was shortchanged, deserving additional nominations for Best Picture,
Best Director, and Best Art Direction and Best Makeup; the latter
two remarkable achievements for a film made on such a minuscule
budget.
American
Beauty was the product of first-time screenwriter Alan Ball
and first-time film director Sam Mendes, both of whom won Academy
Awards for their maiden effort. The film is a disturbingly dark
male menopause story that slowly evolves into a strange murder mystery,
featuring wonderful performances by Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening,
Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari, and Chris Cooper (who was
sadly overlooked for a nomination against strong competition). American
Beauty won the Oscar over outstanding opposition from nominees
The Cider House Rules, The Insider and The Sixth Sense
(fifth nominee The Green Mile was not remotely on the
same level), but was the deserved winner along with awards for its
two newcomers as well as one for cinematographer Conrad Hall and
for the brilliant work of Spacey as Best Actor. Regrettably, the
creative team who made American Beauty have not maintained
the same high level (with the exception of Ball, who went on to
create the popular and quirky television series Six Feet Under).
Spacey, whose remarkable string of outstanding films that included
his Best Supporting Actor win for The Usual Suspects, LA Confidential
and Se7en took a nose dive following American Beauty
with such lamentable films as Pay It Forward, K-PAX, The Shipping
News, The Life of David Gale, Superman Returns and his self-directed
public relations fiasco Beyond the Sea, a vanity project
that did little for Spacey's crumbling public image (although he
has done impressive work in the theatre as the artistic director
of the Old Vic in London). Bening was wonderful in her Oscar nominated
turn as a theatre diva in Being Julia although she balanced
that out with the disastrous bore Running With Scissors),
and Mendes followed his his memorable debut with the pretentious
and overlong Road to Perdition. American Beauty was
a triumph for all of them, and we can only hope that they will rise
to those creative heights again.
One
of the more peculiar awards in Oscar history was Topsy-Turvy
for its unremarkable makeup design that depicted the premiere production
of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. Christine Blundell
and Trefor Proud provided quite ordinary theatrical makeup for the
mundane drama that paled in comparison to the outstanding nominated
work of Michele Burke and Mike Smithson for Austin Powers: The
Spy Who Shagged Me, Greg Cannom for Bicentennial Man,
and Rick Baker for Life. Topsy-Turvy (which also won
the Oscar for its costume design) received several honors that it
didn't deserve, including the New York Film Critics Award for Best
Picture despite the fact that it had very little plot and almost
no dramatic conflict (in real life, Gilbert and Sullivan hated each
other while Sullivan - who fancied himself a serious composer -
detested the frivolous nature of their collaborations; but the film
barely touches on this, with Sullivan only mildly objecting to the
triviality of Gilbert's librettos at the beginning of the film only
to be won immediately over by the story of The Mikado, the
most trivial material he ever produced).
The
Best Actress race this year was a neck-and-neck contest between
Annette Bening and Hilary Swank, with Swank deservedly winning for
her staggeringly poignant breakthrough performance as the tragic
Brandon Teena, whose sexual confusion led to her tragic murder.
Of the other exceptional female performances this year, the most
outstanding one failed to receive a nomination: Reese Witherspoon's
hilarious turn as an obnoxious overachiever running for student
body president in the quirky comedy Election. Witherspoon
has developed into an outstanding actress, deservedly winning the
2005 Best Actress Oscar for Walk the Line, but her appearance
as the vindictive Tracy Enid Flick represented one of the most interesting
and entertaining performances of the year and should have brought
her the first of many nominations.