The Last Detail

Film: The Last Detail
Year: 1973
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid, Carol Kane, Clifton James, Michael Moriarty, Nancy Allen
Director: Hal Ashby
Nominations: Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Supporting Actor (Quaid), Best Adapted Screenplay

I'll start off by saying I always assumed that this film's title referred to making sure everything is just as the characters want it, down to the last detail.

It's actually about two naval enlisted men who are "detailed" to transfer a prisoner to where he'll be incarcerated. Numerous times throughout the film, Gunner's Mate "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young) declares "I hate this stupid chicken-sh*t detail!"

Mulhall, and Signalman "Badass" Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) are two "lifers" in the US Navy, neither of whom know each other but both of whom have developed a rather lax attitude toward duty. Both are pulled for the above-described detail, seemingly because neither has anything better to do, though neither is happy about it.

The now ex-Seaman Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) is their charge; a young man only recently enlisted who was caught trying to steal forty dollars from a charity dropbox. Because it was the pet project of the base commander's wife, he's been dishonorably discharged and sentenced to eight years in prison. Both Buddusky and Mulhall feel this is a bit harsh, but don't give it much thought, until they've spent a little time with Meadows.

Buddusky discovers that Meadows has had a pretty sheltered life, raised by a single mom who likely was an alcoholic to boot, and hasn't experienced much in life. He has no malice toward anyone; his only real issue is that he's a compulsive kleptomaniac, which is revealed when he tearfully confesses that he's stolen before even when he had enough money to buy whatever he was stealing.

While Mulhall is less than symapthetic, it's hard to dislike the simple but good-natured big lug of a guy, and Buddusky feels like he needs to really experience some life before he's locked up for the better part of his twenties. As they have a week to get him to Portsmouth, but can get there in two days, they hang around Washington while Buddusky does his best to show Meadows a good time, Mulhall reluctantly tagging along, trying to remind everyone what they're really traveling for, occasionally just giving in and joining them.

The film is based on a book by Darryl Ponicsan, and an interesting bit of trivia is that Ponicsan wrote a follow-up, years later, called Last Flag Flying, about Meadows, now in his 50's, getting back in touch with Buddusky and Mulhall to help him get to his son's funeral. That book was adapted into a movie of the same name, with the names of the three central characters changed so that people didn't think it was a sequel to this one, and starred Steve Carell in the "Meadows" role, with Bryan Cranston as "Buddusky" and Laurence Fishburne as "Mulhall".

Anyway, enough side-tracking.

This is a film that's difficult to dislike, but it's also hard to really know what you liked about it. Jack Nicholson is in top form as Buddusky, though quite frankly we all know today that Nicholson has a type, and he's very much playing to type here. This is probably the earliest performance of his I've seen (yet) but every tic and nuance we associate with Nicholson is fully on display here. Apparently he was upset that he didn't win the Oscar for this role, as he considered it some of his finest work. While I have yet to see some of his earlier performances, I have seen some that have come after, and honestly, I think his finest work was ahead of him.

Otis Young, whose career didn't reach the heights of either man he's acting alongside in this film, is also fine, even if, like Nicholson, his character is a little one-note. I love how he starts off determined to do the job he was given and getting increasingly annoyed at Buddusky until he finally shouts "I consider myself in jeopardy with you, understand? This ain't no farewell party and he ain't retirin'! He's a prisoner and we're taking him to jail!" But by the end of the movie he's got an air of irritated resignation, even buying hot dogs for a "picnic", which they hold after it's started snowing.

Randy Quaid...man, I can't even articulate why, but it's so strange to think that Randy Quaid is an Oscar nominee. Quaid's main claim to fame, besides being the big brother of Dennis Quaid (man, to think those two shared the same parents; we know who got the looks in that family) and most recently, more's the pity, going full-on crazy, is playing annoying redneck Cousin Eddie in the National Lampoon's Vacation series, most notably in Christmas Vacation, but he's shown up surprisingly often in my Oscar viewing. Aside from this one, he had featured roles in The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Midnight Express and, well down the road from these films, Brokeback Mountain. Not bad for a guy we mostly associate with goofy comedy roles, and who, after acting in these films (except that last one of course), joined the cast of Saturday Night Live, of all things.

But this is the film that got him the nod, and frankly, I can see why. Meadows in the book is a little guy, but Quaid, at 6'7" but with the face of a child, and the easy-going manner reminiscent of Forrest Gump, is the perfect actor to play this guileless man-child. Somehow his height, combined with his manner and expressions, just makes him more lovable. We almost hope the guys decide to set him free and just live with the discharge they're threatened with if it happens.

I've just about said all there is about the plot of this movie without going into specifics. It's really a three-man show, with a few cameos along the way. Don't blink and you'll see a young Gilda Radner as a member of a cult that the three of them encounter, which turns Meadows on to the calming, or focusing, power of chanting. Carol Kane, already fairly well-known, drops in as a spirited hooker who provides Meadows with his first experience in that regard. Essentially the plot is Buddusky thinks of something they could do in the time they have left, Mulhall protests, Meadows is usually pretty non-committal about whether or not he even wants to do it, sometimes even saying he'd rather not, and then they go do it.

But it doesn't seem repetitive. Instead, it's charming, and it's sweet to watch three men who don't really know each other and would never have met otherwise, growing to become friends, even sticking up for Meadows when he's bullied and teaching him confidence. It's something to watch Meadows's development from a shy kid who won't even protest when he isn't given mayonnaise on his burger after specifically asking for it to a man who at one point initiates the next activity with a cool "drop your socks and grab your cocks, boys, we're going to a party". It's delivered with this strange innocence, like he's saying it because he's never had a chance to do so before and he's not gonna blow it.

There's laughs, tears, drama, heart and a ton of profanity (no, really, it broke the record in F-bombs) and a great time waiting for anyone who watches this movie.

The Exorcist

Film: The Exorcist
Year: 1973
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Max von Sydow, Linda Blair, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Mercedes McCambridge
Director: William Friedkin
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Burstyn), Best Supporting Actor (Miller), Best Supporting Actress (Blair), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Sound Mixing

The Exorcist is one of those films that I don't really think I can talk about because there's no way I could say anything that hasn't already been said.

This indisputable classic, the first horror film to receive a Best Picture nomination, has been so quoted, memed and whatever else you can do with a movie that by now, even if you haven't seen it, you've seen it. You know that poor possessed Reagan MacNiell turns her head all the way around, that she declares to the priest that his mother sucks c**ks in Hell, and that she levitates while the priests shout "The power of Christ compels you!" You know that her bed rises into the air at some point, you know that young Reagan refers to the other presence as "Captain Howdy", you've seen the image of "Captain Howdy" with the wide eyes and sharp teeth, and you likely know that for probably the first half of the movie, everyone, the priest included, thinks Reagan just needs treatment for mental illness.

That being said, I was still surprised by many elements of this film the first time I watched it (not this time; this is one I've definitely seen before). For instance, I'd always believed that the priests wanted to come do an exorcism and that they had to talk Reagan's mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) into it. Rather it's the opposite; after the doctors can find no reason whatsoever for Reagan's sudden change in behavior, nor can they explain some of the things they've seen, like her leaping off the bed several feet in the air from an inclined position, they finally suggest that if she really believes she's possessed, maybe an exorcism would convince her that the demon has left.

Desperate, Chris contacts young Father Damian Karras, a priest who's starting to lose his faith thanks to his ailing mother getting worse, doctors unable to prevent her from slipping away, despite her being a staunch Catholic with unshakable faith all her life. Karras, who also has his doctorate in psychiatry, also thinks Reagan is simply mentally ill, and lets Chris know that the Catholic church no longer performs exorcisms, as most of the conditions that used to warrant one have been revealed to be mental disorders. Even seeing Reagan in her state doesn't convince him. At one point he pulls out a bottle of tap water and declares that it's Holy water, which he begins splashing on Reagan's body. On cue, Reagan begins to thrash and twist as if being burned. This tells Karras that Reagan isn't possessed, and is merely acting like she thinks a possessed person would. That is, until Reagan's nanny Sharon (Kitty Winn) shows him that Reagan herself, still inside her body, is making scars on her skin spelling out the words "help me".

And this is another point; I'd always assumed that Max von Sydow, as Father Lankester Merrin, an experienced exorcist, was the principle male role in this film, and that it's he who spends most of the movie trying to exorcise young Reagan. His name is second in the credits and that iconic shot of him arriving at the MacNiell home (see the poster above) is instantly recognizable. In fact, he's essentially the title character, as he's the man with exorcism experience that the church calls in when Father Karras convinces them that Reagan really is possessed. The film actually does open with him in Iraq, on an archaeological dig where numerous images of a demon are unearthed. Then he's pretty well absent for a majority of the film, which Father Karras being the main contact with the church Chris has.

One common misconception a lot of people have is that this movie makes clear that Reagan is possessed by a Mesopotamian demon named Pazuzu. In fact, this movie never makes it entirely clear just what is possessing Reagan (at one point it claims to be the Devil himself, which Karras immediately dismisses) and the demon never names itself nor is named by the priests, at least not here. The novel might make it clear; I don't know. I haven't read it. But in the films, the name "Pazuzu" isn't spoken on screen until the second installment.

Much of the early parts of this movie frustrated me, as the doctors are so determined that Reagan is just mentally ill that they start grasping at straws. They insist that Reagan merely believes that she's possessed, and when Chris asks how she could leap off the bed like that, the doctor explains that her condition could be using her adrenal glands to give her what is essentially enhanced strength. My next questions would have been "Okay, and the unnatural bulging at her neck? And the multiple voices including male ones, sometimes several at once?" It bugs me when movie characters don't ask the obvious questions.

But yeah, I'm not going to waste much time going over this movie and asking if it deserved all its nominations, because of course it did, but I do have a couple of quibbles.

The first is that, at least as far as the films I've seen, this one really should have won Best Picture. I need to see The Sting, and once I do maybe I'll change my mind, but I know I'm not the only person to feel like the wrong movie won the top prize. At the very least, William Friedkin deserved another Best Director win, and I wonder if his loss stemmed mostly from the fact that he'd won already just two years prior for the film The French Connection. Also from the fact that it was a horror movie, a genre the Academy has historically had issues with.

Ellen Burstyn, who seems to show up in a number of films I've watched recently, pulls off the role of the increasingly worried, panicked, then frantic mother, but what really sells this to me is one scene that has nothing to do with motherhood. See, I didn't know this the first time I saw the movie but the character Chris MacNiell is actually an actress, and one early scene shows her acting on a set. When she's in character, she acts nothing like Chris MacNiell but still seems to be acting very naturally. It's actually harder than one thinks to play an actor acting, because there's a tendency to ham it up, but that's the moment when I was best able to buy her as a worried mother, because now she didn't seem to be acting in her scenes with Reagan and Father Karras.

Linda Blair received a Best Supporting Actress nomination, making her one of the youngest nominees ever, but I wonder how much of that was due to her incredible makeup job and Mercedes McCambridge as the voice of the demon within her. True, Blair had to emote through that makeup, and she really did speak during filming, with McCambridge's voice dubbed in later, and those really are her facial expressions, even if they're enhanced by the make-up. The scene I was most impressed with was the one in which she was hypnotized, as this was the main scene in which the creep factor was strongly present even before the make-up and dubbed voice. Am I saying she wasn't worthy of her nomination? I don't know. I don't think I'm really saying that. But I do wonder how much of an impact the make-up and voice had on her nomination, and she wasn't part of either one.

A bigger problem for me is what to do with Father Karras. Playwright and sometime actor Jason Miller plays Karras, in his film debut, and he's heavily present throughout the movie, with multiple scenes devoted to his character even before he's contacted by Chris. I can't confirm just how much screen time he had, but he definitely doesn't feel like a supporting player in this. I'd be shocked if he had much less screen time than Burstyn herself, and the movie is as much about him as it is about the MacNiells. I'll talk more about the concept of "category theft" when I do my write-up for this category, but honestly, I feel like if he'd been played by, say, Robert De Niro, he likely would have been campaigned for and nominated in the Best Actor category. Miller doesn't even get second billing. It just about has to be because it was his first film. You'd never know, though, because Miller fits this role so well you could believe they hired an actual priest (they did; all the members of Karras's parish are actual priests, but he isn't, and you'd never know). If there's a standout performance in this film, as far as I'm concerned it's his. This is why I think he should have been nominated for Best Actor; Max von Sydow did not receive a nomination for this iconic role and performance, but that's because he had to compete with his own co-star for the nod, and between the two, Miller's screen time and deep characterization, brought to life by his dour, realistic performance, made that no competition at all.

The last thing I want to talk about is that it's pretty rare for a film with makeup this good not to win an Oscar for it, but there's a handy explanation; the category did not exist at the time. That's a real shame because the makeup job they do on Linda Blair is phenomenal, and also iconic. But it's not just Reagan who impressed here; Max von Sydow was only 44 at the time, playing a character who's in his 70's at least. He's actually younger here than Stellan Skarsgård was when he played the young version of Father Merrin in the more recent Exorcist prequels. His makeup job is good enough that I never realized it until reading about it, and never did the math on von Sydow's age, assuming he must have been in his late 50's, early 60's at least, and in his 80's today....yeah, don't judge me, I just never really thought about it. Apparently he started losing work because people thought he was an old man. That's Oscar-quality makeup.

But it didn't win makeup, or any of its actual nominations, barring two; Adapted Screenplay and Sound Mixing. Both deserved, but come on, this movie, with its incredible impact on the film industry and horror as a genre, and only two awards? Really?

Next on the list is The Last Detail.

Bang the Drum Slowly

Film: Bang the Drum Slowly
Year: 1973
Cast: Robert De Niro, Michael Moriarty, Vincent Gardenia, Phil Foster, Heather MacRae, Ann Wedgeworth, Tom Ligon, Tom Signorelli, Danny Aiello, Selma Diamond, Barbara Babcock, Patrick McVey, Marshall Efron, Barton Heyman
Director: John Hancock
Nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Gardenia)

I'm not much on sports, but I've never really had a problem with sports movies. Probably because they're more about people than about the game.

Robert De Niro and Michael Moriarty star as two players for the fictional New York Mammoths team. Moriarty is Henry Wiggin, an over-educated pitcher who sells insurance on the side and has had a book published, earning him the nickname "Author".

De Niro is Bruce Pearson, a decidedly not bright hick who routinely gets picked on by the other players, except for Henry, who tries to treat him fairly, mostly out of pity.

The movie starts with Henry having driven Bruce to the Mayo Clinic, where he's been informed he has terminal Hodgkin's. Eventually they get back to New York where Henry, who's been holding out on renewing his contract trying to negotiate for a better deal, learns that the team's owners are planning to cut Bruce in favor of Piney Woods (Tom Ligon), a hot new catcher with rebel tendencies. Upset that life seems to be handing a series of bum deals to a man who seems to have no malice toward anyone and whose only crime is not being smart, Henry agrees to his contract offer, but on the condition that from now on, he and Bruce are a package deal. They want him, they have to sign Bruce, too, and if they are thinking of cutting Bruce or sending him the minors, Henry will go too. The coach, Dutch Schnell, is livid when the owners accept this, as he was looking forward to his new catcher, and is dumbfounded that Henry would stick his neck out for the guy who's so dumb he's become the team joke.

Oh, and just how dumb is Bruce? Well, for one thing, he can't seem to figure out that Henry's name isn't "Arthur", which is how he hears the word "author". Also, he's never been invited to play a game of Tegwar with his teammates. We'll talk about that in a moment.

Henry thinks it would be bad for the team to know what's happening with Bruce, but Dutch is determined to find out why Henry is doing this. He knows Henry would never have done this for another player; why this dunce? His quest to find out what happened on the trip Henry and Bruce took, and why they came back with Henry willing to stick with Bruce like this, coupled with his continued witnessing how the other players are still treating Bruce, who he has started to see as an actual friend, and on top of that trying to keep Bruce from screwing up the rest of his life with bad decisions, has Henry finally tell just one teammate about Bruce's condition. And from there, well, you tell one person on a team something and you might as well tell them all.

Bruce, meanwhile, has decided to change his beneficiary to his recent girlfriend, Katie (Ann Wedgeworth), instead of his parents, who are suffering financially. Henry thinks, and he's not wrong, that Katie is a gold digger who planted the idea of making her his beneficiary into Bruce's head.

This is a fine film, even if ultimately it does feel a bit inconsequential to me. I wasn't really that invested in the plot, to be honest, and while I did like the interplay between Moriarty and De Niro, I felt like some of the drama was sucked out by us knowing from the film's opening moments that Bruce is dying, so that when in the end, Henry narrates to us that Bruce passed a few weeks after officially retiring, my response was to wonder how he managed to last so long. It's actually a plot point that even as his disease progresses, his finally being accepted on the team has him playing better than he ever has. If anything I started wondering if the film was going to pull a cop-out and have his diagnosis be wrong, but, spoilers, I guess, it doesn't do that, but still seems to have a satisfying ending.

Michael Moriarty is just fine as Henry Wiggin, who as I understand it is the protagonist of four books by Mark Harris, of which Bang the Drum Slowly was the second. Strangely enough, there didn't seem to be much character there to work with; the movie mostly has Henry reacting to Bruce's illness and the ensuing fallout from that. Without Bruce, there wouldn't be a story, which is probably why people think of this movie as focusing on De Niro's character, when in fact he's more a plot device than a character himself.

As for the always dependable De Niro, here he is, pre-Oscar nominations of any kind, already a rising movie star, and when he opens his mouth, 2019 Woody Harrelson comes out. No, I'm serious, watch the movie. He's freaking Woody Harrelson, so much so that I'd accuse him of just mimicking Harrelson if Harrelson hadn't been a young preteen boy at the time.

What I really liked about the film was the concept of Tegwar, a card game the teammates all play together that they frequently rope fans into as well. Bruce has never been asked to play, and he asks Henry about it and why he's never included. It turns out that "TEGWAR" means "The Exciting Game Without Any Rules", which means that the players rope in fans to play, most of them just thrilled to be playing cards with their favorite baseball players, and the players make up the rules as they go along, making up names for winning hands like "Double-Birdie", "Banjo", "Red Rooster", etc., and if the mark (the fans) get a similar hand, they make up a reason why this time it's not a double-birdie, but could have been if it was a different version of the game, or different day of the week. It was a clever little running gag.

But as always, I gotta talk about the reason this film made it onto this blog; Vincent Gardenia in the role of flustered coach Dutch Schnell, who received a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for this performance.

And I gotta say, Gardenia's nomination this year really brings home to me a fact I've known more or less from the beginning but never really allowed myself to think about, and that is that sometimes people get nominated for Oscars and you can't really tell why. Sometimes it appears to be little more than blind, stupid luck. This is why every year there's a nominee, or more than one, that has people going "are you kidding me? How did they get nominated?" or sometimes it's more like "wow, they got nominated. That's good, even if I didn't think it was gonna happen."

I keep wondering if Gardenia got his nod thanks to the number of nominations going to Martin Balsam in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, Max von Sydow in The Excorcist, Dustin Hoffman in Papillon, Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets or perhaps Robert Shaw in The Sting cancelling each other out. There's nothing bad about Gardenia's performance, but what was all that good about it? What made people watch this movie, in which he gives a relatively one-note performance in a role that could have been played the same way by any number of different character actors and think "yeah, he deserves an Oscar nomination"?

Having seen all the nominated performances in this category this year, I think I can safely say that Gardenia's nomination must have been one of those "you're kidding me" surprises that happen every year, that articles were written asking why he got one instead of one of the names I mentioned above. None of the others have me wondering "what on earth got him on the shortlist?" in quite the same way.

I'll be posting more on the nominees in this category as the week goes on, but it might take me a while to finish the year, because I want to watch a couple of films that relate to the nominees this year from previous Oscar years. One of them, The Last Picture Show, I already watched, because for 1973 I'm watching The Paper Chase, and both films star Timothy Bottoms, an actor whose film career kinda fizzled as he got older and he's now mostly doing TV guest spots. He was projected to be the next big thing back in the early 70's it's kinda fascinating to me how quickly he was forgotten, considering that very early in his career, while still a very young man, he headlined two major Oscar-winning movies.

Before I watch The Sting I want to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, both of them movies that starred Paul Newman and Robert Redford and were directed by George Roy Hill, but Butch Cassidy came first.

None of these, though, prevent me from discussing the other Best Supporting Actor nominees, so I'll keep theses posts coming as the week goes on, next up being The Exorcist. Lock your doors and put away the Ouija boards.

Happy New Year, New Category

As I said in my last post, I'm now going to start doing years in full, selecting a year, then one category within that year at a time, finishing the year before I move on to another.

So the year I drew this time is 1973. And the first category draw is Best Supporting Actor.

The nominees this year were:

• Vincent Gardenia in Bang the Drum Slowly
• Jack Gilford in Save the Tiger
• John Houseman in The Paper Chase
• Jason Miller in The Exorcist
• Randy Quaid in The Last Detail

As with other years, these films almost all (with one exception) were nominated in other categories as well, and I'll discuss each in my posts on the films. I'll then do a post on my choice for this category before moving on to my next category.

I've seen two of the films from this category already in the past, but will need time to re-watch them so my memories of them are fresh. The other three will be brand new to me.

2004 Best Actress: My Choice

It's time once again to go over the nominees in our most recent category and year, and evaluate them, and pick our own winner. This time I had so little watching time that a couple of these viewings are several weeks old for me, so I'm going off memories that aren't fresh. The individual posts about the movie are fresh (I would usually do them the same day or the day after) but now I'm having to think about how Annette Bening, who I watched several weeks ago, stacks up to Imelda Staunton, who I watched last night.

Anyway, once again the nominees for Best Actress, 2004, are:

• Annette Bening as Julia Lambert in Being Julia
• Catalina Sandino Moreno as María Álvarez in Maria Full of Grace
• Imelda Staunton as Vera Drake in Vera Drake
• Hilary Swank as Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby
• Kate Winslet as Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Academy's Choice: Hilary Swank

Weighing the Performances:

Annette Bening in Being Julia

We had some real heavyweight champs this time around, no pun intended toward Million Dollar Baby, but I think I can now safely say that Annette Bening was a real featherweight this time, nominated, essentially, for the sort of role that might have won her an Oscar in, say, 1935. No, seriously, I've been watching a lot of the older Oscar-nominated films from the 20's and 30's recently, to sort of ground myself in Hollywood history as I go through these films, and frankly, Bening's performance was fine for that era, but in modern times we demand authenticity, and Bening doesn't deliver here. This is a performance, in the purest sense of the word. Julia doesn't behave like a real person, but as a larger-than-life persona that could only exist on stage. Which is somewhat appropriate as the movie about stage acting, but most of the time, once an actress steps off the stage, and especially when she knows she isn't being watched anymore, she drops the act. Bening is clearly channeling the charming but entirely outdated theatrics of Gloria Swanson or Norma Shearer. It's a nice throwback to old Hollywood, but it doesn't feel self-aware, like she's deliberately trying to hearken back to the era where Davis or Garbo would pour on the theatrics. That would probably be enough to change my opinion entirely, like when Jack Nicholson deliberately made Jake Gittes a Bogart type in Chinatown, but without just "doing" Bogart. In this case, though, it's like she really believed she was doing some real, quality acting here, the kind only one of the greats could do, but in practice it almost comes off like unintended caricature. Considering her entire competition this year are going for utter authenticity, such a performance almost seems ridiculous, and what's really funny is that earlier in the year, I recall people suggesting that this would be the film that got Bening her long-deserved Oscar. Yeah, she was the early (and I mean early) favorite to win, though as I said in my initial review of the film, I really don't understand why people think of Bening as this oft-snubbed actress who should have won years ago. I've never really thought she was anything special. She certainly isn't here.

Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria Full of Grace

Catalina Sandino Moreno was a newcomer both to American audiences and audiences in general, as Maria Full of Grace was her film debut, making her part of a select group, and in distinguished company, such as Glenn Close, Julie Andrews, Angela Lansbury, Orson Welles, Oprah Winfrey and Edward Norton, among many others. I don't know if it was her direction or her newness that had her performance come off so natural and real, adding to the edge-of-your-seat nature of her plight. Ms. Moreno's best scenes come from when she needs to act normal even as she goes through customs, is caught, and has no choice but to go along with the authorities, not knowing how she's going to get through this. It feels very much like watching a documentary, as she doesn't behave like an actress would be tempted to, but seems to actually be feeling the anxiousness and worry that her character is. And that's just the more intense scenes; her understated but emotionally turbulent performance works in a number of settings, such as at the doctor where she learns her baby has survived her muling with full health, at the home of the sister of a fellow mule who is dead, and she has to pretend she doesn't know this, while confronting her co-worker who also got into muling but now seems to blame her for it, you name it, we're in her skin the entire way. It's such an honest performance one would almost be tempted to suggest she wasn't really acting, though we know she was, and that she's capable of other performances.

Imelda Staunton in Vera Drake

Threading the subtle needle of addressing a hot-button issue in a way that makes it more about the character than the issue, Imelda Staunton had the task of trying to make an unlicensed woman performing secret abortions seem both sympathetic and have us questioning the wisdom of her actions at the same time.. There's no question her character wants to help people, but she also knows what she's doing is criminal, and potentially dangerous (she maintains that the procedure has never harmed anyone before, but she also seems unable to stay around after it's done and watch the results). It's a fine line she has to walk. She portrays Vera as a woman full of heart who lives to help others, but when she's brought face to face with a criminal investigation, she breaks down and is unable to call her actions what they are. It's really something that we're able to watch her court scenes and feel both like she's being unfairly judged but also that perhaps she's earned this. Staunton, like we usually get with Mike Leigh's actors, gives a performance much like what I said of Moreno above; very natural, authentic and seeming more like we're watching an actual person instead of a performance. As Staunton has a stage background, and in other roles I've seen her in she's as theatric and melodramatic as Bening in Being Julia, this actually was a true effort on her part, but was likely helped by Mike Leigh's approach; having her just hang out with the actors playing her family, without a script, just getting used to each other. I don't know that Moreno had that, which makes me lean, so far, to her.

Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby

Hilary Swank did an unconventional "deglam" for her role as Maggie in Million Dollar Baby, a white-trash woman with nothing in her life except her dream of being a boxer. I talked about "deglamming" in my initial review, and I mentioned that here, Swank's deglam consists mainly of not looking like a conventional Hollywood beauty and allowing her face to get messed up and covered in blood, sweat, tears and bruises. It's very easy to see her as the backwoods woman from Missouri she's supposed to be, but most of that has to do with Swank's natural unconventional look. She didn't have to do much to look like a poor wannabe boxer, is what I'm saying. Even her southern accent probably wasn't a stretch for her. What's really crazy is that this is Swank's second win and her first win was another where she deliberately looked masculine and did a southern accent. Somehow that's a winning combo for Swank with the Academy, as since then she's tried for more nominations with more conventional Oscar-type roles like in Insomnia, The Gift, The Homesman, The Affair of the Necklace, Amelia and Freedom Writers and the Academy hasn't cared a whit. She's one of only seven performers to win literally all their nominations, and she did so with two very similar roles. What part of this role impressed the Academy so much that they just had to award her again? After all, her first win was for playing a trans man (how well would that go over nowadays?) so what was more challenging about a woman who wants to box? Well, probably all the off-screen training and prep that went into it, I'll grant that. Going even further, I wasn't impressed with her portrayal of a southerner, thought it might have been the script that let her down there. The line "don't rightly know" still doesn't sit well with me. But the scene where she, only able to move her facial muscles and those not much, tells her mother what she'll do if she comes back again? Oh, boy, that was a chills moment. So I can't say I didn't appreciate the nomination, but a win? Let's look at our final performance, and decide.

Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Kate Winslet is a transcendent actress, who I firmly believe is going down in history for her generation the way we revere Katharine Hepburn, Olivia de Havilland or Elizabeth Taylor today. She's a winner now, as well, but wasn't when this film was made, and I gotta say, I think it was a missed opportunity (I have a feeling she will win again some day, though). This was a very tough role, and one of the true stretches I saw among the five performances here. I've pointed out how she's really playing three versions (maybe more) of the same character, and having to make each convincing and believably a part of the same person. She's the Clementine who's just a young broken bird with her own issues, a spiteful bitch who hates her lover and wants nothing more than to get out of the relationship, a free spirit who encourages her man to come out of his shell, and even just a reflection of how he likes to think of her, and the real question is how much of these are part of her real persona, how many of them are just her ex-lover projecting them on her, or is it possible that they're all facets of the real woman? Man, I'm tired just thinking about what must have gone into that performance.

My Choice: Kate Winslet

It's probably appropriate to say this here; I'm going to change up my methods a bit. Up until now I've been drawing a new category and year each time. It's led to some frustration as I've more than once drawn the same category twice, and there's been several categories I haven't gotten to do at all yet. I mainly set it up the way I did so that I wouldn't get bored doing a full Oscar year in one go, but to be frank, I've actually done this more than once now, and I think I prefer it.

So from now on what I'll do is draw a year, and then do the year in full, still film by film, category by category like always, but in this case, just drawing the category so that I'll know what order I'll do them in for that year.

The main difference is that you'll see a full year finished, category by category, with the same opening and closing posts as always, and I'll be honest; I thought about going back and doing the rest of the year for years I've already covered (1938, 1954, 1929-30 and 1974) but I think instead I'll wait until those years come back around.

Vera Drake

Film: Vera Drake
Year: 2004
Cast: Imelda Staunton, Phil Davis, Daniel Mays, Alex Kelly, Eddie Marsan, Adrian Scarborough, Heather Craney, Sally Hawkins, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Sharp, Liz White, Peter Wight, Sandra Voe, Martin Savage, Jim Broadbent
Director: Mike Leigh
Nominations: Best Director, Best Actress (Staunton), Best Original Screenplay

I'll be honest; I've been putting off watching this movie. There's simply no way to talk about it without talking about its extremely sensitive subject matter, and I've stated several times that I don't want to turn this blog political, or alienate anyone, no matter whom, from reading it.

There's almost no way to do that while discussing this movie.

This incredibly British movie comes from respected arthouse director Mike Leigh, who's noted for coming up with these low-key but compelling slice-of-life dramas about ordinary folks in some sort of crisis, often simply telling the actors what their characters are going through and hoping for, not telling them what the other actors in a given scene are going to do or say, and letting them act it as naturally as they can, usually ending up with performances that seem less like acting and more like we're watching some kind of documentary. As I understand it, he did the same thing here; not telling any of the main actors aside from Imelda Staunton what the subject of the film was until it was revealed in the scenes, as well as having the actors who played Vera and her family just interacting with each other in character off-script for weeks at a time, so that their family dynamic would feel natural.

And it's about a woman who performs illegal abortions in 1950's London.

Might as well rip that band-aid right off from the get-go, eh?

Vera is a middle-aged domestic who likes to go around her neighborhood and check in with the various people in need there, such as elderly men who need in-home care but can't afford it, lonely chaps who might enjoy a quiet evening tea with a family, people who need groceries but can't go out to get them, etc. She seems almost impossibly saintly, but Staunton doesn't overplay the part or make the character seem like an angelic soul; she's just a woman who sees things that need doing and no one else is doing, and she does them. If I didn't know plenty of women like that, I'd say this was harder to believe.

But one thing Vera does to help people is she performs abortions for young women in trouble. Naturally she doesn't tell anyone about this, as it's the 1950's and not only is what she's doing quite illegal, but also the sort of thing one doesn't talk about.

I'd make a joke about how if Leigh wanted us to feel sympathy for Vera, he went wrong by casting Delores Umbridge, but Ms. Staunton had yet to play Umbridge. In fact, it was probably based on how sweet she could seem in this movie that got her that role.

That said, I'm not sure we're meant to see Vera in an entirely sympathetic light. Oh, make no mistake, we are meant to think of her in a positive light, and it's very easy to see that she's only doing what she does because she wants to help. But the movie is somewhat ambivalent when it comes to how we are supposed to see what she's doing. When the other characters are told about it, what we're seeing are honest reactions from modern actors living in 2004, and in each case it's shock and even some horror. This is particularly the case when she tells her husband (Phil Davis), whispering it in his ear while his face goes from concerned to confused to horrified to finally angry. Her son (Daniel Mays) reacts with utter horror, even saying he can't forgive her, and he's not shown to be some sort of self-righteous hypocrite, either.

I'm skipping ahead; Vera's actions eventually come around to haunt her but not until we've seen her perform several abortions on several women in different states of distress, and this is where I'm wondering whether or not we're really meant to take from this movie the message that she's doing a good and necessary thing.

For starters, there's the fact that her clientele ranges from women who were raped to housewives who simply can't afford any more children, to unmarried women who can't tell their parents what they did to loose women who don't want to face the consequences of their actions. Vera doesn't seem to care why the abortion is requested; she'll just do it. Only once is adoption brought up, and it's by a male psychiatrist speaking to a woman who was raped. Why Vera doesn't suggest this to the overburdened housewife or the loose woman is beyond me.

Then there's her method. Vera's abortion method involved a Higginson bulb syringe with which she pumps water with carbolic soap and a disinfectant into the mother's womb. Even at the time this movie was made, this method was known to be almost 100% fatal to the mother and extremely painful whether or not the mother died. Vera may or may not know that herself, but she treats it as though it will be a slight pain that will go away as soon as the uterus gets rid of everything in it. She claims she's done it numerous times over the course of several years without incident, even though in this film one of her patients nearly dies from the procedure, which is what lands Vera in court. There have been a number of complaints against this portrayal of the procedure, as if it's rare for a woman to have issues with it when in fact most did, but it also really brings home the fact that, regardless of intent, method or anything else, Vera is still performing a potentially very dangerous medical procedure without any formal medical training.

I need to point something out, because regardless of what side you fall on in this debate, there's a simple fact that not many people seem to know, and that is that back when abortions were performed illegally, they were 99% of the time still performed by licensed medical professionals in clean, up-to-code clinics. They were called "back alley" abortions because the doctors let the women into their facilities through the back entrance after hours. The sort of abortions Vera Drake performs in this film were not common, and the women who died from abortions usually were the ones who sought out women like Vera.

Finally, what made Vera seem less than entirely sympathetic were a few scenes where, seemingly, Vera herself isn't sure that she's really doing the right thing. In a scene midway through the film, Vera is shown almost hurrying from the apartment of one scared young woman who wants her to stay until it's done. Vera almost can't wait to leave. Then there's her euphemisms, used in a way that shows Vera's rehearsed what she's going to call it; instead of "when your body miscarries and your fetus is flushed out", she says "when it all comes away", and instead of "I help young women terminate their pregnancies", she says "I help young girls out", and when confronted with the word "abortion", she tearfully says "that's not what I call it". To me, it felt like Vera wasn't entirely at ease with what she was doing, and was mainly involved in it because, as the movie strongly hints without coming out and saying it, someone did the same for her when she was a teen.

There's also a subplot involving the woman who meets with and sets up Vera's clientele (Ruth Sheen). She charges them for the procedure (significantly less than what a woman would pay in one of those "back-alley clinics", but still hefty fees) without telling Vera, making herself a tidy profit. This, too, adds to the feeling of the movie showing both sides of the issue. Vera may only want to help, but in the process, she's enabled a woman's greed and hurt her clients financially as well as perhaps physically.

Staunton, a little-known actress at the time (she's still primarily known for playing Umbridge), carries all these scenes off in a natural, realistic way that helps us stay anchored in the character regardless of how we feel about her actions. As I said, the film never really seems to be judging her either way. A pro-choice person watching this might feel outrage at the way the justice system treats a woman who's just trying to help where no one else would, while a pro-lifer might see a misguided woman who might mean well but who still undertook dangerous medical procedures on women without a license, giving them bad follow-up advice, and perhaps even feeling like maybe it was the wrong thing all the while.

In summary, Staunton is a very talented actress who gave this role the appropriate gravitas and heart, and managed to leave us conflicted even if we still feel that Vera's motives were entirely pure. So, for that, her nomination was earned, but as for whether or not she's a winner, we'll see in the next post.

Mike Leigh received nods for directing and writing the screenplay, and that screenplay nomination, similar to the one he got for Secrets and Lies, always makes me smile since I know that the "screenplay" consisted of writing out a character's motivations and actions and then letting the actors take it from there. I suppose that's a pretty novel and inventive way of doing it, so I won't fault the nomination. I can understand the director nomination even more so, as it takes a great deal of directorial talent to essentially film people not really acting, moving and speaking in unpredictable ways, and manage to frame it perfectly.

Million Dollar Baby

Film: Million Dollar Baby
Year: 2004
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Jay Baruchel, Mike Colter, Lucia Rijker, Brían F. O'Byrne, Anthony Mackie, Margo Martindale, Riki Lindhome, Michael Peña, Bruce MacVittie, Marcus Chait
Director: Clint Eastwood
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Eastwood), Best Actress (Swank), Best Supporting Actor (Freeman), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing

It's weird, I know, but watching this movie for this blog was the first time I'd ever seen it. I didn't exactly avoid this movie; I kept meaning to give it a watch at some point. But somehow every time I thought about it, I would file it away under "later", even though I knew I really wanted to see it, mainly because when it was first released it got the kind of gushing response from critics that's pretty rare for any film, and it won four of its seven Oscar nomination, including Best Picture, which is also odd because at the start of Awards season it wasn't even on the slate. Eastwood finished it in record time and got a qualifying release run for it, and it took over. Before it was in the game, most people thought this would be the year Martin Scorsese finally won (for The Aviator) but there wasn't much in the way of backlash when this one powered through and took all the awards we'd thought would be Scorsese's.

What makes this even more odd is that this was marketed as, essentially, a female take on the Rocky story; in fact I saw more than one joke poster made up in PhotoShop of this film's poster with the words "Rocky with Breasts" replacing the title. It's not that at all; it's the story of two lonely people who need each other; both have an empty place inside them that is filled by the other. Frankie Dunn is an old boxing coach whose daughter stopped speaking to him years ago, and his attempts to reconnect with her are met with complete shut down. Maggie Fitzgerald is a woman who came from nothing, lost her father at an early age, and has nothing in her life worth talking about except her determination to become a boxer.

I was surprised, I admit, by how much this story was about Frankie as much as it was Maggie. I knew that Eastwood co-starred and that it was as much about their relationship as trainer and coach, and yes, I knew Eastwood took top billing and was campaigned and nominated as Best Actor, but I guess I assumed it was due to his also being the film's director and being unwilling to take a backseat to Swank, but honestly, the movie really is about both of them, equally, and in the beginning it's almost more his story than it is hers.

But I can see why it was Swank who captured all the headlines. Hers is very much the more demanding role; Eastwood's range has never been that broad and it doesn't broaden here at all (more on him in a moment) but Swank went through a ton to become Maggie. She worked out, training as a boxer with real-life boxer Lucia Rijker (who co-stars in this film as her main opponent) and is entirely convincing as a woman with white trash hillbilly roots. At least, eventually. In her earlier moments, her Missouri accent is hilarious instead of authentic and the first time she said the words "I don't rightly know" without irony, I was rolling my eyes (and I have a bit of an issue with how this film handles people from the south, which I'll get to later). But as the film progressed, I realized that I could totally buy her as a scrappy young woman with nothing to lose, because she doesn't have that "I come from Hollywood" look that most actresses her age have. She's definitely not afraid to "deglam", which is a term that got used a lot around the time of her win, which usually meant an attractive actress undergoing a make-up job that robs her of her Hollywood beauty. Think Nicole Kidman in The Hours or Charlize Theron in Monster, both of whom won before this film came around. Swank's "deglam" doesn't involve much make-up, instead relying on her posture, movements, voice and her willingness to get messed up; she spends several scenes covered in blood, sweat and tears (sometimes all at once) including a scene where she breaks her nose. But even once all that was cleaned off, she looked and felt like exactly what she was supposed to be; a white-trash wannabe boxer.

If anything, Swank's lack of a Hollywood look has worked against her since her two Oscar wins. It's been a long while since she's been in a movie anyone has heard of and/or had a role that was notable in a film. Which sucks, because she really is a talented actress, and I don't think it was her willingness to deglam that won her this Oscar but instead it was the fact that we totally believe her in this role. She doesn't look like an actress deglamming to sell the role of a boxer; she looks like a boxer.

Now let's talk about the ending, which is a bit of a spoiler, but not really since the movie earned some controversy over its ending, and by now if you don't know what it entails I have to assume you don't care about it. Maggie's boxing career comes to a sudden and abrupt end thanks to an overly aggressive opponent who doesn't care about rules and sucker-punches her between rounds. Left with not even the ability to move below the neck, Maggie's entire reason for living is now gone. She states many times in the film that if she doesn't have boxing, she doesn't have anything, and she holds to that. These scenes also probably went a long way toward her Oscar win, as it's been established that if you can make Oscar voters cry, they will be more likely to vote for you, but it's also where the controversy comes in as it seemed like a very ablist move; Disability Advocacy groups suggested that the whole "a life disabled is not a life worth living" message, which may or may not have been the film's intent; Eastwood insisted it wasn't, to be harmful. I can't decide if it's also out of character for Maggie, whose entire attitude is "never give up", but then, if you know you'll never box again and boxing is all you lived for...might not you consider it "giving up" to live as a crippled person dependent on machines to survive?

I'm not going to debate the morality of it as that's not the purpose of this blog, but I will say that Swank sells those scenes as well as she does the scenes of Maggie as a fully able-bodied young woman. One of her more triumphant scenes comes when she confronts her family while still in her hospital bed.

Did she deserve her Oscar, which was her second win? Maybe. I haven't seen Vera Drake yet (I've had so little time to watch movies lately) but she's already got competition from Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria Full of Grace.

Eastwood as Frankie is the flip side of the same coin; Eastwood has a way he acts that hardly ever changes much, but it does say something that no matter what, I always believe him. It's almost like Sean Connery; he plays Clint Eastwood so well that I never see him as "Clint Eastwood playing X" but as "X, a kind of Eastwood-type". As the cantankerous old trainer, Eastwood is right in his element and he earned his second, and so far last (let's face it; likely his last ever, as he's presently 89 and acting less and less) Best Actor nomination (his only other acting nod, also for Best Actor, was for Unforgiven, which also won him Best Director like this one did). A deserved nod? Perhaps. One wonders how different things would be had Eastwood not come on board, or had only acted instead of also directing (initially writer Paul Haggis was going to direct, and wanted Morgan Freeman to play Frankie, but Freeman wanted to play Scrap-Iron instead, so Eastwood was hired, then slid into the director's chair as well once filming scheduling issues with the film Crash prevented Haggis from directing both).

It's difficult to say what might have been in other circumstances, but Frankie is a layered role, with a lot for an actor to sink his teeth into. He's not just the "old coach" role, but he's also trying to learn to speak Gaelic for reasons the movie never explains, and in an attempt to atone for whatever he did that drove his daughter away, he's shown praying to a God he's not sure he believes in, and attending Mass daily, even if he does seem to take some joy in baiting the young, not-exactly patient priest (Brían F. O'Byrne). Near the film's beginning, he's shown to have an almost familial relationship with his concurrent client, Big Willie Little (Mike Colter), even helping him replace his wife's car, but unfortunately holding back on getting him a title fight, telling him, not for the first time "maybe you'll be ready next year." Willie eventually drops him, gets a title fight almost immediately and wins, which plays some role in Frankie's eventual coming around to training Maggie.

See, at first, he's a typical old chauvinist, saying he won't train girls and that "girly tough ain't enough", but later elaborating further, telling Maggie that she's too old and nowhere near far enough along for him to turn her into a real fighter before she's too old for actual fights. But her persistence eventually wins him over and gradually she goes from not knowing how to hit a bag or move her feet to knocking all her opponents out in the first round, prompting Frankie to move her up a weight class; something he's always refused to do as it involves too much risk. It also becomes obvious that the two of them are forming the father-daughter bond neither of them has with their biological counterparts, especially when he has a robe made for her with the name "Mo chuisle" sewn into it, which, and this is a bit of a spoiler, is a Gaelic term that means "My beloved" and also "my blood".

As a director, Eastwood does a fine job, and I admit I've always thought of him more as a director who occasionally acts, but I'm not sure he's really "the best" director. I'm not the most qualified to judge here, because as I understand it, directing is kinda being in charge of everything; where the camera goes, what gets focus and what doesn't, the performances, all of it, and in that case there's nothing here to point out as wrong, but nothing that really made me go "okay, that's why he won".

Morgan Freeman plays Eddie "Scrap-Iron" DuPris, manager and maintenance man for Frankie's gym. He's a former fighter himself who won 109 fights, but lost his sight in one eye after his last one. This is the movie that won Freeman his (so far) only Oscar, after four nominations, and most of the critics at the time agreed that while his win wasn't exactly "undeserved", it really was a career Oscar rather than one earned by this film alone. And I have to agree; Freeman is always very watchable, even when phoning it in, and extremely likeable, and he's both here, but he's not given a ton to work with. He does get one incredible scene where he shows that he might be old and might be well past his glory days, but you still don't want to push him too far. It's a real stand-up-and-cheer moment but it's also unfortunately too short. Scrap is also the film's narrator, which might have gone some way toward his win as well. Personally, I think Freeman's best role was the convict Red in The Shawshank Redemption and it still bugs me that he didn't win for that one (he narrated that one, too) so, like many, I will probably always think of his win here as the Academy awarding him for Shawshank a bit too late.

The part of the movie I liked least (which isn't to say it turned me completely off) was its portrayal of southerners. Maggie herself is a southerner but she wants to escape "that life"; her white trash in the extreme family, including a fat lazy mother (Margo Martindale) who refuses to lift a hand except to help herself, a sister (Riki Lindhome) cheating the welfare system and a jailbird brother (Marcus Chait). Maggie's family can be summed up in one sentence, delivered early by Maggie herself: "my sister's cheating the welfare system by pretending one of her babies is still alive". I mean...yow. There's a scene where she uses the money from her fighting wins to buy her mother a house (while Maggie herself continues to live in squalor). Her mom's reaction? Anger, because owning a home might mean she can't collect welfare anymore, and asking Maggie why she didn't just give her the money? This comes back to bite her, though, in one of the most satisfying scenes, when her family shows up after the accident, not to comfort her (of course not; these people are about as comforting as a gravel pit full of broken glass) but to try and get her to sign all her assets over to them. She tells them she knows her mother never signed the lease for the new house (despite going ahead and moving in) so if they ever come back, she'll sell the house right out from under them.

If it were just Maggie's family, I'd be okay with it because God knows horrid rednecks like this exist, but the only other southerner in the film is an uneducated (possibly simple) young Texan calling himself (really) Dangerous Dillard Fighting Flippo Bam-Bam Barch, as if he couldn't make up his mind what his ring name would be, but you can call him "Danger", as most of the other characters do. Danger (Jay Baruchel) can't fight, hasn't paid any gym dues (unlike Maggie, whose paying six months up front is why Frankie doesn't just tell her to stop coming around) and while he means no harm, also is pretty behind the times when it comes to acceptable language (check out the first thing he says to Scrap, and Scrap's rather hilarious response). He thinks he's gonna be the next Welterweight champion, but watching him even just warming up is pretty pathetic, especially as he keeps loudly challenging a retired Welterweight champ (who's nowhere around) to a fight. Scrap talks about how fighting is "mostly heart" but a fighter who's nothing but heart is looking for a beat-down, which is what Danger is. Honestly, Danger is such an over-the-top caricature of a southern good ol' boy that it's almost like he walked in from another movie, and he's so dumb one wonders how he managed to get his gloves on.

Almost makes one think the writer (either FX O'Toole who wrote the short stories this movie is based on, or Haggis himself) has an issue with southerners. But it's not enough to really over-turn my overall opinion.

Was this movie really deserving of its four wins, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor? Honestly, I'm not sure. It was very good, but I'm not sure I'm ready to call it the best. I've seen two of its competitors in the past and was a bit more impressed by both of them, and due to Swank's kinda weird beginning here, I'm wondering if Winslet wasn't the better performance in this category, but we'll decide that two posts from now.