Category: Oscar Nominee

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House of Gucci (2021)

This movie is such a mess that I’m having a hard time even thinking of a synopsis that covers what is portrayed. The best I can come up with is it’s about how Patrizia Reggiani’s (portrayed by Lady Gaga) marriage to Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver in the film) caused the Gucci family to lose control of their fashion empire. Aside from the title, it takes its time bringing the Gucci name into the film. Lady Gaga looks great as a 1970s Italian woman, but I don’t know about her portrayal. While her father-in-law Jeremy Irons pegs her as a gold digger early on, there’s nothing in the early scenes that suggests that and her later actions come a bit out of nowhere. This could just be poor writing, but it’s not sold regardless. The entire cast is a bit out of sorts as to what kind of movie they’re in. They all fumble with their Italian accents, Irons deciding early on his normal one would suffice. Everyone that is except for Jared Leto. He gives an entirely dedicated campy performance as Maurizio’s cousin Paolo; he’s almost unrecognizable. I’m pretty sure the Oscar nomination is just for his makeup.

Oscar Nomination: Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling

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The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

Despite the disapproval of her in-laws, recently widowed Gene Tierney moves with her young daughter Natalie Wood to a seaside cottage formerly owned by a sea captain. The sea captain Rex Harrison now haunts the cottage, butting heads with Tierney until a partnership brings them together in a romance that is unable to endure on the earthly plane. It’s a sweet little tale and Tierney carries it well. Despite his generally genteel personage, Harrison is rather funny as the gruff captain. The story did bring to mind his role in Blithe Spirit, though he was the one being haunted there. Supernatural  Romance

Oscar Nomination: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White

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Affair in Trinidad (1952)

After her husband is murdered on the island of Trinidad, Rita Hayworth is asked by the investigators to exploit his alleged murderer’s attraction to her to gather information about a Nazi conspiracy he is likely the ringleader of. Complicating matters, her husband’s brother Glenn Ford arrives on the island after receiving a letter the brother sent on the day he died. The plot meanders quite a bit, especially with a forced relationship between Hayworth and Ford. Ford is a bit of a stick in the mud and their chemistry is lacking, but Hayworth is radiant as always.

Oscar Nomination: Best Costume Design, Black-and-White

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The Citadel (1938)

An adaptation of a novel that helped lay the foundation of the NHS, Ronald Donat is a doctor who over the course of his career witnesses firsthand the inequalities of for-profit medicine from the coal miners whose ailments are ignored to the rich folk whose hypochondria is treated with the best medicine could offer. Rosalind Russell is his beautiful, faithful wife who encourages him to follow the moral path. For me, it was mostly just an okay film though it does get its message across. Donat carries the film well, but his voice here reminded me a lot of Ray Milland so I was distracted multiple times, making sure Donat hadn’t suddenly morphed into Milland.  Best Picture Nomination

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture; Best Actor in a Leading Role; Best Director: Best Writing, Screenplay

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Dangerous (1935)

When already engaged Franchot Tone meets downtrodden actress Bette Davis, whose performance once inspired him to change careers, he offers her a helping hand which eventually leads to an offer of marriage and assistance with her floundered career. It reminds me a bit of Davis’s role in Of Human Bondage, as she admits here that she destroys everything she touches. Her character here seems a little less ruthless, that is until she cripples a man, but also capable of redemption. Those traits make for a lighter feeling film and her performance a lot less impactful.

Oscar Win: Best Actress in a Leading Role

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Bloodbrothers (1978)

In modern times, this movie could be titled Toxic Masculinity the Movie. In a working class Bronx family, Richard Gere is a sensitive young man who doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life but definitely would rather work with kids than the union construction job his father and uncle have pushed onto him. His father Tony Lo Bianco is a philanderer who beats his wife to the emergency room when he just suspects her of infidelity and has caused her such general anxiety that in turn her influence brought an eating disorder in their younger son. It’s an appealing early role for Gere, though he seems like he should have just been born with grey hair. I particularly appreciate his bonding with children throughout the film and his relationship with waitress Marilu Henner.

Oscar Nomination: Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium

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The Bostonians (1984)

Suffragette Vanessa Redgrave and Southern lawyer Christopher Reeve vie for the attentions and affections of Madeleine Potter the allegedly charismatic daughter of a faith healer. Aside from being rather slow, the biggest problem with the film is that there is nothing enthralling about Potter’s character and her only trait seems to be the inability to make decisions on her own. It makes one wonder why either of the other main characters gives a wit as to what she does with her life. Reeve is thoroughly dislikable a misogynist who just wants to marry Potter and get her barefoot and pregnant for all her livelong days. Redgrave is ethereal, but she seems mostly motivated to further her cause even if while she shows actual love for Potter.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role; Best Costume Design

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The Affair of the Necklace (2001)

After watching Marie Antoinette, I was more familiar with the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. This is another retelling of that story, but from the perspective of Hilary Swank’s Jeanne of Valois-Saint-Rémy, a prominent participant in the scandal. For such a tale of intrigue, this film is quite dull. Joely Richardson makes a decent Marie Antoinette and Christopher Walken is amusingly campy as the occultist Count Cagliostro, but Swank is poorly cast in her role. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a period piece or just an inability to encompass the various qualities necessary of the character, but she doesn’t bring an ounce of believability to the role.

Oscar Nomination: Best Costume Design

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Twice in a Lifetime (1985)

On the night of his 50th birthday, Gene Hackman goes to a bar without his homebody wife Ellen Burstyn and flirts with the younger, new barmaid Ann-Margret. Despite, or maybe because of, thirty years of marriage with his wife and having three now adult children together, he finds himself falling for Ann-Margret and beginning an affair. It’s a bit exasperating to watch Hackman disintegrate his long-time family unit without much thought, but in parallel, it also shows how people get stuck in patterns without much thought to their happiness or the direction their life is going. I enjoy watching films set locally so I can try to guess the neighborhoods they were filmed in, that is as long as it’s not really Vancouver or some other city pretending.

Oscar Nomination: Best Actress in a Supporting Role

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In Our Water (1982)

At this point I’ve seen a number of narrative films based on corporations contaminating water supplies that the details from this film are not all that surprising. A family in South Brunswick, New Jersey discovers that the water coming from their well, and that of their neighbors, has been contaminated by a local landfill. This documents the father becomes an activist and fights to get local, state, and federal governments to acknowledge the problem. It’s all very depressing as it’s a real life story that occurred before those other films and just establishes that these problems keep happening and environmental protections are so easy to reverse or ignore.

Oscar Nomination: Best Documentary, Features

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