Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1995

The Contenders:

Apollo 13
Babe
Leaving Las Vegas
Il Postino
Sense and Sensibility (winner)

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1995

The Contenders:

Sean Penn: Dead Man Walking
Nicolas Cage: Leaving Las Vegas (winner)
Richard Dreyfus: Mr. Holland’s Opus
Anthony Hopkins: Nixon
Massimo Troisi: Il Postino

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1995

The Contenders:

Meryl Streep: The Bridges of Madison County
Sharon Stone: Casino
Susan Sarandon: Dead Man Walking (winner)
Elisabeth Shue: Leaving Las Vegas
Emma Thompson: Sense and Sensibility

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1995

The Contenders:

Chris Noonan: Babe
Mel Gibson: Braveheart (winner)
Tim Robbins: Dead Man Walking
Mike Figgis: Leaving Las Vegas
Michael Radford: Il Postino

I'm Okay with My Decay

Films: Leaving Las Vegas
Format: DVD from Cortland Community Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

There was once a time when Nicolas Cage was not a parody of an actor. There were flashes of what he’d become during this period, but for years, Cage was a bankable actor in the sorts of movies that you didn’t watch just to see how insane his performance was. In the middle of that period was 1995 and Leaving Las Vegas, the film for which Cage won an Oscar.

Leaving Las Vegas is perhaps best described as a completely nihilistic romance. Ben Sanderson (Cage) is a screenwriter who has fallen on hard times. He’s not sure if his wife left him because of his alcoholism or if he became an alcoholic because his wife left him, but he’s gone far past the stage of being a functional drunk. Shortly after the movie starts, Ben loses his job, and with a sizable severance check, he decides to move to Las Vegas. He burns most of his belongings and leaves with the intent of drinking himself to death.