The Last Blog Name On Earth

Directed by King Vidor

Written by Frances Marion

Starring Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Irene Rich and Rosco Ates

In the modern world, women are consistently second choice to men in just about everything – mostly for sexist reasons.  They also make less money for doing the exact same job – also for sexist reasons.  But it’s not only today this happens, because it’s been that way since time immemorial, and Hollywood has certainly been no different: all the big stars are men, and all the big paydays are for me.  For proof, consider the relative pay imbalance between Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams for Ridley Scott’s All The Money In The World, even before Wahlberg squeezed more money out of the re-shoots.

It is in light of all this that the achievements of Frances Marion were all-the-more amazing. Continue reading →

Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner

Written by James Goldman, from the book by Robert K. Massie

Starring Michael Jayston, Janet Suzman, Laurence Olivier and Tom Baker

From the late 1960s, through the 1970s, there was a New Golden Age in Hollywood.  This was a time when popular movies were also good movies, but also a time when edgy films could be popular.  If there was a Venn diagram to represent it, then the circles for ‘Edge’, ‘Popularity’, and ‘Good’ would all overlap completely.

Moreover, during this time, Edgy/Popular/Good movies also won Oscars.  After all, between 1969 and 1979, Best Picture winners included Midnight Cowboy (1969), The French Connection (1971), The Godfather (1972),[1] The Sting (1973),[2] One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest (1975), Rocky (1976), Annie Hall (1977), and The Deer Hunter (1978).  There was literally no other decade in film history where this kind of thing happened. Continue reading →

Directed by John Boorman

Written by John Boorman

Starring Sebastian Rice-Edwards, Sarah Miles, David Hayman, Derrick O’Conner, Susan Wooldbridge, Sammi Davis and Ian Bannen

Hope and Glory is a war film – specifically, a World War II film.  But not in the way that anybody goes off to battle and dies in an overly bloody or realistic way.

Or, at all.

And also not in the way World War II films tend to be defined, which is exclusively by the American involvement.[1]  You know, the story of a group of disparate ethnicities and regional accents from across this melting pot of a country we live in fighting the Nazi’s.  Rather, it’s more a character study, focusing on one London family in the first year or so of the war, and how they cope with the blitz. Continue reading →

Directed by Anatole Litvak

Written by Frank Partos and Millen Brand, based upon the novel by Mary Jane Ward

Starring Olivia De Havilland, Mark Stevens, Leo Genn, Celeste Holm, Helen Craig, Leif Erickson, and Beulah Bondi

In Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon plays an aimless, unambitious janitor at MIT who ultimately proves a math genius.  But, even as his secret is discovered, he’s reluctant to use it, owing to some past trauma he suffered in life.  To get passed it, he meets with a psychologist (Robin Williams), and by talking about baseball, they work towards some sort of breakthrough.[1]

So do they solve Damon?    You bet they do.  And all it took was repeating the phrase, “It’s not your fault!” until he accepts it wasn’t his fault after all. Continue reading →

Directed by James Ivory

Screenplay by Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro

Starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox, Christopher Reeve and Hugh Grant

Let’s be honest: Anthony Hopkins is only ever going to be defined by one thing.  No matter what else he does in life – or did – he’s only ever going to be Hannibal Lecter first, and everything else second.  What is a bit curious here is while he might have made his take on the character, he was not the first actor to play the part.[1]  It was Brian Cox who had first crack at it, in Michael Mann’s Manhunter, and while Cox was charming, he lacked the specific menace Hopkins brought to the role.  Which is why one man’s take on it is iconic (Hopkins), while the other’s is merely mentioned in passing as a thing that happened (Cox).[2] Continue reading →

Directed by George W. Hill

Screenplay by Frances Marion, additional dialog by Joe Farnham and Martin Flavin

Starring Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, Leila Hyams, George F. Marion and J.C. Nugent

Old movies are just different.  That’s a fact.  They come from a different time, they come from a different era, they came from a different sensibility.

They are products of their environment.

And yet, too often people forget that.  Instead, they get too stuck in their own love of the present – or the near-present – and everything from it, and everything it does, to be able to look through the world they’re used to in order to see something of value in what come before them.  If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard somebody complain about a movie being in black and white, or the old garish Technicolor,[1] and therefore not being worth their time, I wouldn’t have money to retire on, but I could at least get a cup of coffee. Continue reading →

Directed by Jan Troell

Screenplay by Jan Troell and Bengt Forslund, based upon the novels “The Emigrants” and “Unto A Good Land” by Vilhelm Moberg

Starring Max Von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg, Pierre Lindstedt, Allan Edwall and Monica Zetterlund

There is no way I would have ever seen The Emigrants if not for this project.  Partially that’s because I’m not super-into Swedish film in general – I do enjoy a handful of Bergman films, including The Virgin Spring, but by no means am I ‘into’ Swedish films.[1]  But also it’s because The Emigrants just happens to be a Swedish film that’s 190 minutes long.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against long films.  After all, Gone With The Wind is almost 240 minutes long and it’s a top-10 for me.[2]   Plus, I’m down for foreign films.  Another top-10 of mine?  Aguirre, The Wrath of God.[3]  It’s just that when those two things intersect – extreme length and reading – it makes even the best movie a bit of a tough sit. Continue reading →

Directed by Robert Benton

Written by Robert Benton

Starring Sally Field, Lindsey Crouse, John Malkovich, Danny Glover, Ed Harris and Amy Madigan

I wouldn’t call Sally Field an unlikely Oscar winner – I wouldn’t call anybody an unlikely Oscar winner.  After all, lot’s of people manage to capture lightening in a bottle, or just happen to be in the right place at the right time, and wind up with an Oscar.  It could happen to anybody.  It happened to Broderick Crawford, it happened to Roberto Benigni, it happened to Paul Haggis.  It’s what happens when a cultural moment coincides with the Oscars, or when some dumb schmuck gets the role tailored perfectly to their skills.

Serendipity.

Sally Field, though, might be the most unlikely two-time Oscar winner.[1]  I mean, if I were to ask you to name a  two-time Oscar winning actor, Field’s would likely be pretty far down the list – she’s just not a person you expect to have two Oscars.  After all, she started her career in the silly sitcom, Gidget, followed it up with the equally-silly The Flying Nun, then spent several years trying to break out of that ghetto before finally having her biggest box-office success playing the second-fiddle love-interest to Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. Continue reading →