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.

The Oscar Project #48: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

by Chris Marshall:

I’ve seen One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest on multiple occasions, perhaps more than any other Best Picture winner except Forrest Gump, but I had somehow forgotten how good—and how powerful—a film it is. Few other movies can elicit this kind of emotional response.

Personally, the primary emotion I feel while watching it is anger. Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) manages, in a decade full of films filled with pretty awful people, to be the most despicable of all. She represents the worst kind of authority figure; it’s as if her entire purpose is to make the patients’ lives as awful as possible.

Or at least that’s the way it seems to Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson). I’m not entirely convinced that the rest of the patients feel so negatively toward her, despite the cold, unfeeling exterior she displays when talking to them. Of course, the key difference between McMurphy and the others is that the others are actually insane, or at least have real mental issues to deal with. He has taken malingering to the next level, though, feigning mental illness to get off his work farm, assuming that being institutionalized will be a much cushier gig than forced labor.