Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1988

The Contenders:

Jodie Foster: The Accused (winner)
Meryl Streep: A Cry in the Dark
Glenn Close: Dangerous Liaisons
Sigourney Weaver: Gorillas in the Mist
Melanie Griffith: Working Girl

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1988

The Contenders:

The Accidental Tourist
Dangerous Liaisons (winner)
Gorillas in the Mist
Little Dorrit
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Queen of the Jungle

Films: Gorillas in the Mist
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

Gorillas in the Mist has been sitting on my shelf for literally years. I knew I was going to have to watch it eventually, but I didn’t really want to because I know how the story ends, and I knew the end was going to piss me off on some level. That’s kind of the problem when you’re dealing with a story based on real events. If you know the real events and they don’t end in the way you’d like them to, you know you’re setting yourself up for a frustrating finish.

Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) was a physical therapist who, inspired by the work of Louis Leakey (Iain Cuthbertson) decides to chuck it all and work in the Congo helping to create a census of mountain gorillas. This is a problem for several reasons. First, she has no experience, and Leakey tries to fend her off because she has no real science training. She eventually wears him down, though, and is soon on her way to the Congo. The second problem is that there is a Congolese civil war, which makes the place incredibly dangerous, and a white woman in the middle of the jungle is going to raise some eyebrows. Third, the mountain gorillas are rapidly going extinct because of poaching. Fourth, and in many ways most critically, the poachers aren’t about to let some wannabee scientist end their income stream.