Category: Best Acting

Jane Fonda is a single woman doing all she can to keep her family’s ranch despite the land hungry machinations of Jason Robards. She’s helped on her fool’s errand by Richard Farnsworth and James Caan. Fonda looks appropriately unglamorous and gritty as a woman more or less on her own on the frontier, but the whole affair is a bit dull and uninvolving. The film is supposedly set toward the end of World War II, but other than the vehicles and a mention of post-war declining beef prices, there is nothing that makes this distinctly of that era over any other in the history of the American West.  

Oscar Nomination: Best Actor in a Supporting Role

True 70s gritty realism here, Stacy Keach is a washed up boxer in Stockton, California who encounters young Jeff Bridges at a local Y and encourages him to take up the gloves. The film follows these two over a period of time as their boxing careers, and love lives, take opposite trajectories. Stockton is shown as a grim, depressing locale where the only jobs available are farm labor and the only entertainment is the local bar. In his early 30s, Keach somehow is as beat down as the city where he lives, whereas the only a handful of years younger Bridges is his exact opposite. Thus ends my unplanned mini Jeff Bridges marathon.  

Oscar nomination: Best Actress in a Supporting Role

After losing the spoils of their previous score, Clint Eastwood’s Thunderbolt is compelled to perform one more heist with his former gang. Jeff Bridges’s young hoodlum, Lightfoot, is brought along for the ride, despite the misgivings of pretty much everyone else. Most of the movie is a buddy flick with Eastwood and Bridges romping around Montana together, powered along by Jeff’s grating laughter. They have quite a bit of chemistry, though Bridges good-naturedly does most of the work while Clint provides plenty of scowls.

Oscar Nomination: Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Bette Davis carries this film. Leslie Howard is a man with a disability who falls in love with Davis’s character. Davis is perfection in portraying the absolute highs and lows of her character. Howard is adequate as the man who is strung along by her, willing to sacrifice his livelihood, financially and occupationally, just to be with her. Even when he feels he has moved on, she is able to pull him back into her web.

Oscar Nomination: Best Actress in a Leading Role (write-in)

After surviving a car wreck that killed her husband, Ellen Burstyn discovers she has the power to heal. Unfortunately the Bible thumpers in her hometown, including potential love interest Sam Shepard and her own father, can’t just let her do her thing and require that she dedicate her powers to their god. There is also a bit of additional religiosity in the portrayal of an afterlife, but the incredibly talented Burstyn commands the entire film with a serene agnosticism which carries the whole power of the film.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role; Best Actress in a Supporting Role

One of Francis Ford Coppola’s earlier works, You’re a Big Boy Now is ostensibly a comedy. While it is certainly light hearted, the comedy is completely absurd rather than bringing forth any actual laughs. Peter Kastner’s Bernard is a 19 year old virgin who still lives with his parents. When his father decides it’s time to leave the nest, he moves from Great Neck to Manhattan and tries to hook up with a former classmate and a sexy misandrist. The characters are one dimensional and the plot doesn’t go much further than that. There is a very cute Old English sheepdog named either Dog or Rover.

Oscar Nomination: Best Actress in a Supporting Role