The Oscar Project #57: Amadeus (1984)

by Chris Marshall:

One of the first things I thought while watching Amadeus was that Mozart, portrayed by Tom Hulce, bore a striking resemblance to Fred Armisen. As much as I like Armisen, I felt like this was a bad sign right off the bat. Our hero (is he a hero?) turns out to be one of the most annoying characters in the Oscar Project to date.

Most of the problem stems from his laugh, which is an abomination. Few things bother me more than a bad laugh, and this film gives him oh so many opportunities to use it. And then there’s his stupid, stupid face. I hated him so bad.

This is a shame because outside of Mozart himself, there’s nothing very objectionable about Amadeus. I thought F. Murray Abraham was good as Salieri, and in fact, I started rooting for him to murder Mozart as soon as possible. I’m not exactly sure this was the director’s[1] intention.

Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - an Abe-omination

First, a few things: I went into this movie in probably a bad mood, and I had read the book. I liked the book – it wasn’t great, but it was a cool concept and I thought the author, Seth Grahame-Smith, did a good job.

The book was written like Abe Lincoln really was a vampire. G-S tried to take existing journal entries and letters from Lincoln and add in vampire things and made it sound realistic. The vampires that existed in the novels were NOT adverse to silver, they COULD be seen in mirrors and they could harm each other. Aside from the whole moving really fast, being really strong, not totally loving sun and needing to drink human blood (and immortality), vampires are just like us. This a concept that he carried out well.

The Oscar Project #56: Terms of Endearment (1983)

by Chris Marshall:

I’m now halfway through watching the Oscar winners of the 1980s, and as I feared, I haven’t been very impressed by the quality of the movies. I was, however, quite pleased with Terms of Endearment. It’s a typical Oscar bait tearjerker, but at least it was well made.

Like Ordinary People, it could have easily fallen into that dreaded Lifetime movie category if not for the quality of its cast. Debra Winger was still a relative newcomer at the time, but this was Shirley MacLaine’s third appearance in a Best Picture winner[1]. Among the supporting cast, Jack Nicholson, who won Best Supporting Actor for this role, and Danny DeVito (!) were making their second Best Picture appearances.

The story is really quite expansive, though it never feels like it. I don’t know if it’s ever specifically said how much time passes, but it begins right before Debra Winger’s wedding and ends when her oldest kid appears to be in his tweens/early teens. Nevertheless, the plot moves fluidly, and it never feels like the movie is trying to do too much.

The Oscar Project #55: Gandhi (1982)

by Chris Marshall:

Gandhi is a film that brings me back to Oscar winners of old, in that they take an Indian man, a man who devoted the second half of his life entirely to securing India’s independence from the British Empire, and they cast an actor (Ben Kingsley) who is white and British. I’m sure there’s some kind of symbolism in that. I’m just not sure what it is.

That being said, Kingsley was fantastic as Gandhi. In the first part of the film, which takes place in South Africa, everything seemed a little off. Honestly, though, I think that has more to do with seeing Gandhi (who was an attorney, after all) wearing suits and other European clothing. I’m so accustomed to seeing him in his traditional Indian garb that it just seems wrong to see him wear anything else.

After Gandhi returns to India, by which point he has already overcome grave injustice toward his fellow Indians in South Africa, Ben Kingsley stops being Ben Kingsley and transforms entirely into Mohandas K. Gandhi. I don’t think anybody ever doubts his acting skills in general, but if they do, they need look no further than this film.

The Oscar Project #54: Chariots of Fire (1981)

by Chris Marshall:

For a few very brief moments, I started to believe I was going to enjoy Chariots of Fire. The opening scene is its most iconic, the often parodied sequence where you see guys running in slow motion while the famous theme song by Vangelis plays. If you’re not familiar with the original—and I didn’t know this is where that trope started either—you’ve likely seen similar sequences in films such as Mr. Mom. Everybody’s seen Mr. Mom, right?

Anyway, in case you’re not familiar with this film, and I think there’s a very high probability of that, it’s a true story about two British Olympic runners. Eric Liddell (played by Ian Charleson, who we’ll see again next year) is a devout Christian who devotes all of his achievements to advancing his religious beliefs, even going so far as refusing to run a heat that’s scheduled to be held on a Sunday. Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross) is Jewish, and he is attempting to use his fame to reduce anti-Semitic prejudices.

About the only person involved in this film that people might have heard of is Ian Holm. He’s Liddell’s trainer, but he’s better known for playing Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And I guess some people may know John Gielgud, who we will also see again next year.

The Oscar Project #53: Ordinary People (1980)

by Chris Marshall:

Ever since I watched it a couple of days ago, I’ve been trying to decide whether or not the title Ordinary People is ironic or meant in earnest. If it’s serious, then I think that Robert Redford (well, I guess the author of the novel would be more to blame) doesn’t have a very good idea of what ordinary people are like. The protagonists are wealthy, live in a giant house, had a maid at one point, and so on. But maybe they meant that these guys have problems just like ordinary people do.

Either way, these folks certainly do have problems. Plenty of them, as a matter of fact. Before the movie even starts, the elder son dies in a boating accident, a tragedy that serves as a catalyst for the most, if not all, of the events in the film. Oh, and the younger son (Timothy Hutton) attempted suicide and was placed in a mental hospital, which also took place prior to the evens in the movie.

So… yeah. If these are the problems we don’t see, then you can probably imagine that the situations we do aren’t exactly going to be a barrel of laughs.

The Oscar Project Interlude #5: Best of the 1970s

by Chris Marshall:

Well, my most anticipated decade is over, and it leads into one of the decades I’m least excited for. I still can’t believe I’ve made it this far without missing a single day along the way. Now that my thesis is completed, I’ve gotten back ahead of schedule, so there’s no reason for that to change any time soon.

So how about those 1970s, eh? They generally lived up to all the hype. If you’re the type of person who cares about lists, seven of the Best Picture winners from the 1970s appear on AFI’s updated list of the top 100 American movies of all time, making it the most represented decade[1]. Although I’m still a little bit iffy on Annie Hall, I believe the others undoubtedly deserve their spots.

The Oscar Project #52: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

by Chris Marshall:

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that Kramer vs. Kramer far exceeded my expectations, but I’m afraid that’s understating it a bit, as I had very low expectations. Perhaps a more glowing endorsement would be to say that it is a very good film by any measure.

I should have known that a collaboration between Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep in their primes would be decent at worst, but sometimes I forget that the plot of a movie isn’t its defining element. I expected to be bored, and that wasn’t the case at all. Part of the problem was that it simply didn’t have the same reputation as the other winners in the 1970s, so I judged it unfairly based on the level of competition. Whatever excuse I could use, I was wrong.

This isn’t a movie about plot. It’s about characters. You could almost view Kramer vs. Kramer as the dramatic/tragic counterpart to Annie Hall, as they are both about the deterioration of a relationship. The difference is that in the former, a child is involved, which adds an extra level of complication to the whole deal.

I loved Prometheus...I just don't know if it's good

[Yar! There be spoilers ahead]There’s something about exploration science fiction (for lack of a better term) that really appeals to me. Some of my favorite sci-fi is just about people going out into the unknown and looking around and poking at things. There’s something that’s just so cool about that: some ragtag crew (with something to prove! And hidden agendas!) flying out into space and landing on an new planet or spaceship or whatever and throwing on the ol’ spacesuits and walking out there all slow and cautious and scanning everything. I love it.

I love that feeling of the unknown. It’s so crazy because even though you don’t know what you’re going to discover inside that crazy temple building, just discovering that it’s there has already completely changed the course of humanity. Just seeing the thing has reshaped the world, but everyone has to focus on what else is in there to find out what happens to them. It makes everything so tense-you know every weird picture or strange button they see is going to be important later and you’re trying to piece everything together just like they are.

The Oscar Project #51: The Deer Hunter (1978)

by Chris Marshall:

I’m glad last year’s winner was a comedy, because Michael Cimino forgot to put any jokes in The Deer Hunter. Rarely will you ever see a more depressing film, which is quite a statement, considering that this decade alone we have seen or will see a man lobotomized, a bitter custody battle, and several dozen murders.

Released just a few years after the end of the Vietnam War, this movie tells the story of three friends who enlist in the military and how that choice affects not only their own lives but the lives of everybody they know. It’s similar in many ways to The Best Years of Our Lives, except that it shows more than just the aftermath of the war. You see it all, from a wedding right before they ship out to the most horrible moments of their war experiences.

The Best Years of Our Lives is a better movie overall, but I think that seeing exactly what the guys in The Deer Hunter went through makes it easier to understand why they’re so irreparably damaged when it’s over. Even Mike (Robert De Niro), who escapes more or less unscathed physically, will never be the same.