Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1988

The Contenders:

Charles Crichton: A Fish Called Wanda
Martin Scorsese: The Last Temptation of Christ
Alan Parker: Mississippi Burning
Barry Levinson: Rain Man (winner)
Mike Nichols: Working Girl

Coffey Break

Films: The Green Mile
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

What can you say about Frank Darabont? He has directed four theatrical releases. Of those four theatrical releases, three are based on Stephen King stories, and two of them have been nominated for Best Picture. Darabont owes Stephen King a massive debt, and that’s true in the other direction as well. Two of best adaptations of King’s work are those two aforementioned films--The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. The thing that has prevented me from watching The Green Mile before today is length more than anything; it clocks in at just north of three hours.

This is going to be one of those movies told in flashback. In the film’s present, we meet Paul Edgecomb (Dabbs Greer in this incarnation), an old man who lives in a retirement home. He likes going on walks by himself and seems to know everyone in the home well. One day, while sitting in the television room, the channel gets flipped to a showing of Top Hat, and Paul breaks down. He is led out of the room by his friend Elaine (Eve Brent), and then proceeds to explain to her why the movie triggered such a reaction in him.

Wednesday Horror: Lord of Illusions

Film: Lord of Illusions
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla Digital on The Nook.

Lord of Illusions is one of those films that I’ve probably seen more times than I need to. I think everyone has a movie or two like this that gets put on in the background or they get stuck watching for a fifth time for no good reason. I don’t dislike Lord of Illusions even if I always end up a little disappointed in it. There are some really interesting ideas here, something it has in common with a lot of movies based on Clive Barker’s stories, but it either lacked the budget or the technology or the time to really exploit those ideas well.

Harry D’Amour (Scott Bakula) is a private detective who apparently has a number of run-ins on the supernatural side of things, at least based on the fallout from his latest case involving a child who was possessed by…something. He’s given a new case, a simple one involving insurance fraud, that takes him to Los Angeles. In the course of his investigation, he comes across what appears to be a ritual murder. He’s soon hired for a new case, tailing a well-known illusionist named Philip Swann (Kevin J. O’Connor). The twist here is that Swann’s wife Dorothea (Famke Janssen) has hired him and there are hints that Swann is something more than a simple stage magician.

Act Without Words

Films: The Red Turtle (La Tortue Rouge)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.

When I hear “Studio Ghibli,” I think of Miyazaki. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that. While there are other directors and creators working there, it’s Miyazaki who made the studio what it is in terms of its notable films and generally positive and even rabid fandom. A film like The Red Turtle is a good reminder that they do more than just Miyazaki’s films and that Miyazaki’s films aren’t the only ones that are worth seeing.

The Red Turtle (otherwise known as La Tortue Rouge) is also a reminder that Studio Ghibli’s output isn’t entirely Japanese. While this was certainly produced at least in part by the Japanese company, this is also a French and Belgian production, and the director is Dutch. This is a rare film in the sense that, while not a properly silent film, the only real lines of dialogue are a repeated “Hey” at various times as well as some screaming and shouting. In that respect, the language isn’t an issue at all, and it’s one of those rare films that genuinely requires no translation or various audio tracks for anyone to watch, follow, and understand.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1978

The Contenders:

Coming Home
The Deer Hunter (winner)
Heaven Can Wait
Midnight Express
An Unmarried Woman

Hanging on in Quiet Desperation

Films: About Schmidt
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

About Schmidt has been sitting on my shelf for several years, picked up at a garage sale or library sale, or something like that. The box is covered with half-removed stickers from three or four different places. I got it only because it was something I knew I’d have to watch eventually, and it’s always a good thing to make the process a little easier whenever I can. Seriously, it feels like I spend almost as much time looking for movies as I do watching them, so even one that is relatively easy to find that no longer needs to be found is a good thing.

This is an Alexander Payne film, and I’ve liked or at least appreciated all of the Payne films I’ve seen to this point. In that respect, I had solid expectations. It’s also a movie that star Jack Nicholson, and that’s worth mentioning at the top. I have said multiple times in the past that I really enjoy it when an actor plays against his or her type. Watching Tom Cruise or Albert Brooks play a villain (Collateral and Drive respectively) is something I find endlessly interesting. And that’s the case with Nicholson here. We’ll get to that by the end, since it’s Nicholson’s performance that caused me to watch.

New York Stories

Films: In America
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Jim Sheridan is a fine director. I’ve liked his movies that I’ve seen in the past, so in that respect, I was looking forward to In America. For some reason, I pegged the time frame of this movie all wrong. I knew that this was an immigrant story, but that’s really all I knew. I expect that this would be similar to most of the immigrant stories that I’d seen and that we’d be somewhere in the late 19th or early 20th century. That’s not the case, though. We’re firmly in the early 1980s with our immigrant clan coming from Ireland through Canada to New York on a visitor’s visa.

Our family consists of four people and the intense baggage of a fifth. Johnny (Paddy Considine) is an actor hoping to make it on stage in New York. Wife Sarah (Samantha Morton) is a school teacher, but can’t find work as a teacher in New York, so instead gets a job at an ice cream parlor near the family’s low-rent apartment in a building filled with addicts and drug dealers. The children are Christy (Sarah Bolger) and Ariel (Emma Bolger, Sarah’s real-life sister). The fifth member of the family is Frankie, the son who has died from a brain tumor. This fact weighs heavily on the entire family, of course, but the hardest on Johnny, who has essentially locked off his emotions so as not to deal with his son’s death.