I was listening to a recent episode of The Big Picture podcast, and they made a comment I thought was interesting: There’s an incredibly low correlation between Best Actress Oscar winners and Best Picture Oscar winners. Amanda Dobbins put it something like this, “Movies with good female roles aren’t valued by the Academy (or men in general)”. (I could have added that last part, I’m not sure.)
That prompted me to look at the list of Best Actress winners, and whoo boy there are a bunch of movies that I’ve either not seen or didn’t care much for. If I had to pick the very best movie (Oscar or no) with a Best Actress winner from the last 50 years, it’s very slim pickings. Of the movies that I’ve seen and really, really liked, it’s only:
Silver Linings Playbook
Shakespeare in Love
Fargo
The Silence of the Lambs
Misery
Now, a lot of that is due to gaps in my movie watching. Movies that I’ve never seen that I’m guessing would fall in this category:
Annie Hall
Moonstruck
La La Land and Network, maybe?
But overall, it was pretty eye opening to see the disconnect between that list and movies that I have historically cared about.
I would echo you on Fargo, Silence of the Lambs, and Misery. Shakespeare in Love was solid, but it’s been too long and I barely remember it. Silver Linings Playbook is a big pile of meh for me.
Personally would add La La Land, The Favourite, Black Swan, As Good as It Gets, Annie Hall, and Network into the top tier of movies featuring Best Actress winners. And then quite a few others that I would put a tier down from there but still did like (Three Billboards, Still Alice, The Reader, Walk the Line, Erin Brockovich, Driving Miss Daisy, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).
As I scrolled the list, I did see a lot more good than bad.
I posted about Room recently. I have no grudge with its accolades at all, but it did send me to a rare level of discomfort. If you put me in the Academy I would have voted for Brie Larsen that year. But shit that movie made me squirm.
I can’t even readily explain why Room is too distressing for me to just say unqualified good things about when I casually threw Still Alice into a positive list though, since Alzheimer’s completely horrifies me.
Give me Fabelmans over Silver Linings Playbook all day. But I realize we just disagree on The Fabelmans.
It depends on what you are looking for. Absolutely banana’s wild movies that are bad, but in an enjoyable way, or actual tight movies.
4 is ok, 5 has a little comedy. 6 is insane with lore that is complètement fou (the producer’s cut is slightly better, but both bad, but watchable). H20 lots of people like, but it get’s more normal and I find boring. Resurrection is BAD, but so fucking funny. It’s got Starbuck and Bustah Rhymes :)
Watched Priscilla. Had no real idea what exactly the movie was going to focus on; as an enjoyer of Elvis’s music, I basically knew some very general Presley lore, and then I guess learned more from the fairly recent Baz Luhrmann biopic, but Priscilla was really a footnote of that one at most.
When I saw during the opening credits that Priscilla Presley herself was an executive producer, and that the film was based on her book, I did not expect my primary takeaway to be “wow, Elvis was a bigger shithead than I ever realized,” but that was definitely how it came out. During the first act I was very uncomfortable with how the initial story was playing out, but when the moral clarity from behind the camera became increasingly obvious I became acclimated and settled into an increased appreciation of it.
Cailee Spaeny, who I had no real awareness of even though she was apparently one of the Cheney daughters in Vice, does a strong job of carrying the film as the lead. It’s nothing that’s getting me off the Lily Gladstone train, but I’d be happy to see Spaeny’s work get nominated here. I also appreciated the directorial work of Sofia Coppola, thought she adopted a restrained tone that some would not have been able to resist breaking free of, and I thought it served the film well. I also give her particular kudos for a particularly strong final few minutes to close the film out.
It’s not going to be one of the very best of the year, but I’m glad I watched it. 3.5/5.
Some general characterizations of the film that I would consider spoilery:
Their relationship was not romanticized and it also wasn’t simply portrayed non-judgmentally. I kept having reactions of, “This poor girl. Fuck.” Again, Priscilla being an executive producer, you could normally accuse her of putting a self-serving slant on things, but assuming that it’s factually true that this adult in her life just went full predator on her when she was a high school freshman and that her parents did very little to protect her when she was still a child, I don’t see how I can do anything but extend her the full benefit of the doubt.
Coppola clearly frames Elvis on many occasions in the classic way that a director would frame a full-on villain of a story. When I saw that, I went from a revolted feeling of “this is messed up” to “oh, she gets how messed up it is and she’s firmly guiding the audience to feel the same.” Honestly, in some ways this made me want to revisit Luhrmann’s work with a more judgmental eye, because I had no idea that she was so young at the time this relationship started until this movie started playing out, and it feels like Luhrmann just 100% punted on a fairly crucial aspect of Elvis’s character. Granted that movie was already a bit long and sprawling and if anything felt that it could have been edited down, but if anything I’m recalling it as though Luhrmann took deliberate steps to sweep the impropriety under the rug. It’s possible I’m misremembering though.
I should add that I would still primarily process this more as the story of Priscilla through her relationship with Elvis and that Elvis himself is not the main character, but it doesn’t pull any punches with him.
Watched Sunshine for the first time in quite a few years. So many beautiful, mesmerizing shots and the score and audio is amazing but I’m not a fan of the final act and that hasn’t changed over repeat viewings. I think it could have been a masterpiece if they hadn’t gone the route they did.
I can’t get enough sun shots and the music playing when gold suit ejects itself from the ship is epic
Can’t say that a lot of the story of “Voleuses” or whatever its called in english made sense. Much less the end. Another example of where the trailer promised more than the film delivered.
I have now seen First Blood for the first time. I assumed that the Rambo franchise just inherently couldn’t connect for me as well as the Rocky franchise does, and that conclusion is likely correct, but this was really strong stuff. Pretty incredible economy of dialogue for Stallone in this one. He spends long stretches of the movie saying absolutely nothing, and then whenever he does talk it quickly becomes the new coolest thing that’s happened so far in the movie.
In theory this would mean that I shouldn’t have quickly bypassed the Rambo stuff every time I went to the video store as a kid, but no regrets. Zero chance that young me could have fully appreciated all of what Stallone was going for here. Pretty far from the vapid action flick I long assumed it to be.
I also didnt watch the Rambo movies as a kid, but my reasoning was the NES game was so goddamn fucking hard that I never wanted anything to do with that franchise ever again
That NES game was crap. And if I’m remembering right, it really didn’t resemble anything from this movie? I’m assuming they lifted the premise more from part two and beyond. Which honestly makes me guess I wouldn’t like the sequels to this like I liked some of the Rocky ones.
