Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1974

The Contenders:

Jack Nicholson: Chinatown
Al Pacino: The Godfather Part II
Art Carney: Harry and Tonto (winner)
Dustin Hoffman: Lenny
Albert Finney: Murder on the Orient Express

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1974

The Contenders:

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
The Godfather Part II (winner)
Lenny
Murder on the Orient Express
Young Frankenstein

Derailed

Film: Murder on the Orient Express
Format: Movies! Channel on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’m pretty sure that I’d seen Murder on the Orient Express in the past; I have some vague recollections of it even if I didn’t remember a lot of the specifics. I didn’t remember many of the details, but once we got to the ending, I did remember that, and I’m pretty sure that this is one of the Agatha Christie stories that I haven’t actually read, despite having a small fondness for the mysteries involving Hercule Poirot. Make no mistake: this is an Agatha Christie mystery, which means we’ll get a death, interrogation scenes, and a summing up of the detective implicating everyone in the mystery before pointing the finger.

Before I jump into the specifics, I’ll say this—that brief listing of what the movie will entail, sadly, covers the bulk of Murder on the Orient Express. We get a body straight away, a little bit of investigation and a few starting clues, and then it’s a series of interrogation sequences. Hercule Poirot (played here by a nominated Albert Finney) calls for everyone to be assembled for the summing up before he’s finished his investigations.