Category: Oscar Nominee

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