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 #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.