Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1990

The Contenders:

Anjelica Huston: The Grifters
Kathy Bates: Misery (winner)
Joanne Woodward: Mr. and Mrs. Bridge
Meryl Streep: Postcards from the Edge
Julia Roberts: Pretty Woman

Number One Fan

Film: Misery
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

Watch enough movies, and eventually you’ll see some stuff that you just don’t want to see again. Usually, that means a film that I don’t want to watch again regardless of what I thought of it. I don’t plan on watching Salo a second time, for instance, because there are things I don’t want to sit through again and because I think it’s an affront. A film like Idi i Smotri, though, I think is one of the great films of its year but I don’t think I have the emotional capacity to see it a second time. Misery is unique in this respect. I love this film, but there is a single scene I have never been able to watch a second time. If you’ve seen Misery, you know the precise scene I am talking about.

Aside from that one scene, Misery is most notable for being the film that made the nation aware that Kathy Bates existed, and we have to give the movie its props for that. Before this, who knew who she was? After this, who didn’t? Bates’s performance as Annie Wilkes is one of the all-time great out-of-nowhere performances in film history. Bates may have been around before this film, but once she was seen here, she was everywhere.