Since the Academy Awards began, only three animated films have won Best Picture. Two of them, Toy Story 3 and Up, are seen by many as beneficiaries of the Academy's 2009 expansion of the nominees to ten. The first animated Best Picture nominee didn't need an expanded ballot, it had the juice to take one of only five slots reserved for the very best in cinema, as decided by the people who make it. That was Beauty and the Beast:
After two decades of output that offered more curiosities than classics, the studio returned to making musical adaptations of fairy tales, as it had in the early days with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella. The Little Mermaid was a hit in 1989, and now came Beauty and the Beast, the "tale as old as time" about a beautiful young woman who, to save her father, offers herself as a prisoner to the owner of an enchanted castle: a prince cursed to live as a beast. Released the Friday before Thanksgiving, it proved to be no turkey. The songs, the canny casting (Angela Lansbury! Jerry Orbach!), the animation, the writing, all of it struck a chord with audiences and critics. It wrapped up the year as #3 at the box office and won two of its six Academy Award nominations. The success inspired a live-action Disney Channel pre-school series, a Broadway musical, a straight-to-video spinoff (with Tim Curry and Bernadette Peters!), and, eventually, a not-as-good live-action remake.
We'll get more into it when we discuss the Best Picture nominees. Meanwhile, that entire Autumn is full of instant classics and off-the-beaten-track masterpieces:
release: October 18
dir: David Kellogg
pr: Carolyn Pfeiffer / Lionel Wigram
scr: David Stenn
cin: Janusz Kaminski
A rewatch! Musical…drama? Well, whatever you want to call it, hood rat (?) Vanilla Ice and his crew are stranded in a small town and he falls for the nice suburban girl across the street BUT turns out her dad’s in witness protection and the mob has discovered their whereabouts. The writing? Cliched. The acting? Mediocre. The songs? Passable, barely, with one certified abomination in "The People's Choice". Ah, but the cinematography? Janusz Kaminski makes what should have been a dismissible cash-in on a fad singer into one of the best-looking films of the year. Watch without sound, you'll be stunned how gorgeous some of these images (and lead actors Ice and Kristin Minter) are.
My Own Private Idaho
release: October 18
dir/scr: Gus Van Sant
pr: Laurie Parker
cin: John J. Campbell / Eric Alan Edwards
About two male hustlers, one a gay narcoleptic (River Phoenix), the other a slumming rich hetero (Keanu Reeves), and the journey they take through the streets of Portland and beyond. Apparently adapted from Shakespeare's Henry IV, with Reeves as Prince Hal and William Richert’s Bob Pigeon, a crass, overweight, Fagin-esque lover of boys and booze, as Falstaff. Which makes Phoenix…well, I’m not entirely familiar with the Henriad, I’ll be honest. Anyway, this felt honest to me; I don’t mean its milieu, I’ve no idea, but the emotions, the scenes of restlessness and quiet yearning between moments of just nothing, just survival, listless existence…yet a determination to exist, to keep living, even as you wander from uncertain scenario to dangerous scenario…that felt honest. And very sad! Thoughtfully depicts, hm, not chosen families so much as networks you wind up within, however affectionate and friendly it can be, there is still a transactional understanding at work.
Whore
release: October 21
dir: Ken Russell
pr: Dan Ireland / Ronaldo Vasconcellos
scr: Ken Russell / Deborah Dalton, from the play Bondage by David Hines
cin: Amir M. Mokri
A rewatch! I guess this was the month for sex workers! Based on a British play, this is Ken Russell’s down-and-dirty response to the Hollywood sheen of Pretty Woman; there is no heart of gold, no Prince Charming, just a foul-mouthed hooker surviving the streets of Los Angeles. It’s about as “realistic” as Ken Russell gets: most of the film is leading lady Theresa Russell monologuing her experiences to us, sometimes dramatized in flashback, sometimes not, and there’s an undeniable stylization to her delivery. And yet. If you can accept that this is how the film will be within the first ten minutes, I think you’ll appreciate what an effective, unpretentious piece of filmmaking this is, a study of a character who never makes the right decision, yet who we are asked to empathize with - not pity - because she is a person, not evil, not a monster, but a working woman whose last-resort trade can bring happiness and economic growth…but whose precarious situation is exploited by persons on both sides of the law, criminalized by a society that wants to have its whores and punish them for existing, too. Her stories range from the horrifying to the farcical to the surprisingly, genuinely nice. Count it as another great work from master Russell.
Life is Sweet
release: October 25
dir/scr: Mike Leigh
pr: Simon Channing Williams
cin: Dick Pope
Another master, Mike Leigh, offers us this comedy about a working-class family and a season exploring new ventures: father Andy is a cook who’s been talked into getting into the food truck game, mum Wendy is a shop clerk invited to be a waitress at a slow neighbor’s awful new French restaurant; and twins Nicola and Natalie are, respectively, planning a trip to America, and slowly but loudly wasting away in perpetual depression (and bulimia). Plot? No. Leigh lets us just live with this family for a bit, allows us to give them the same grace and understanding that we would want others to give us. The music is heavenly. Alison Steadman as Wendy and Jane Horrocks as Natalie get the bulk of the film’s focus, they’re great; so does Timothy Spall as a neighbor, I can see where he’d get frustrating but I liked him.
Vegas in Space
release: October
dir/pr: Phillip R. Ford
scr: Doris Fish / Miss X / Phillip R. Ford, additional dialogue by Raymond Keebaugh / Sandelle Kincaid
cin: Robin Clark
A sci-fi extravaganza where a trio of Earth space officers travels to the women-only planet of Clitoris in a search for lost gems. Behind-the-scenes, an inspiring labor of love: the entire cast is made up of drag queens, with many also serving as crew members, filmed over a period of seven years inside star Doris Fish’s apartment. On the screen, a fun, funny sendup of just about every 60s schlockbuster cliche you can think of: Beach Party-style musical numbers, big hair, conspiracies, unexpected romances, space flight, and natural disasters. There’s no winking at the camera, and that’s why it works. Masterpiece.
Billy Bathgate
release: November 1
dir: Robert Benton
pr: Robert F. Colesberry / Arlene Donovan
scr: Tom Stoppard, from the novel by E.L. Doctorow
cin: Néstor Almendros
Local tough becomes the protege of notorious gangster Dutch Schultz. Dustin Hoffman may be, technically, too old to play Schultz, but he conveys the man’s menace bluntly, chillingly - well, he is one of America’s greatest actors. In a cast that includes Nicole Kidman, Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi, and Stanley Tucci (as Lucky Luciano, terrible), the standout is Steven Hill as Schultz’s accountant and advisor Otto Berman, an understated portrait of an intelligent guy devoted to men of violence. The direction is understated too, but that’s less effective.
Cape Fear
release: November 13
nominations: Best Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Juliette Lewis)
dir: Martin Scorsese
pr: Barbara De Fina / Robert De Niro
scr: Wesley Strick, from the 1962 screenplay by James D. Webb and the novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald
cin: Freddie Francis
You can’t say this one’s understated, though! Martin Scorsese’s remake of the 1962 classic about a violent parolee who stalks his former lawyer. This version complicates matters, with Nick Nolte’s lawyer having intentionally sabotaged his own defense, and Robert De Niro’s calculating psycho knows exactly what buttons to push: Nolte’s almost-mistress Ileana Douglas and his rebellious teenage daughter Juliette Lewis. There’s never a moment to breathe, it’s either wall-bouncing shouts, Grand Guignol bloodshed, or, worse, the quiet, sphincter-puckering tension of violence withheld…for now. Interminable finale, though.
Kafka
release: November 15
dir: Steven Soderbergh
pr: Harry Benn / Stuart Cornfeld
scr: Lem Dobbs
cin: Walt Lloyd
Insurance worker and sometime writer Franz Kafka finds himself involved in a strange conspiracy after a colleague is murdered. Plays like a dark, surreal comedy, cinematographed in glorious black-and-white in the German Expressionist style (Walt Lloyd, take a bow!). Crazy finale. Is it convincingly Kafka-esque? I don't know, but there are some striking images.
Prospero's Books
release: November 15
dir: Peter Greenaway
pr: Kees Kasander
scr: Peter Greenaway, from the play The Tempest by William Shakespeare
cin: Sacha Vierny
Peter Greenaway’s follow-up to The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is an unconventional adaptation of The Tempest: the great John Gielgud is the magician Prospero, and after he casts a spell that brings the ensemble to the island he rules over, he then speaks for all of them, Gielgud doing full character voices as the other performers act in dumb-show. Once again, the music of Michael Nyman is put to goosepimply use; and the set and costume designers, guided by Greenaway, fill every frame with references to and recreations of images religious and mythical. There’s an incredible wedding masque that runs almost ten minutes before Gielgud pulls the plug with the famous line, “Our revels are ended…” and experiencing it … I had to pause the movie, I was so moved, reduced to tears. The whole movie is about power, power through the collection of knowledge and beauty and art and magic, power to control the narrative…yet, even with all that, how illusory true control is, how empty to accumulate it all and enjoy none of it. Many thoughts.
The Addams Family
release: November 22
nominations: Best Costume Design (Ruth Myers)
dir: Barry Sonnenfeld
pr: Scott Rudin
scr: Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson, from characters created by Charles Addams
cin: Owen Roizman
A rewatch! Gomez Addams’ long-lost brother Fester returns home, but all is not as it seems, maybe. A great introduction to this world, Raul Julia and Christopher Lloyd are committed, giving go-for-broke cartoon performances that play wonderfully off Anjelica Huston’s no-less-gutsy gossamer approach. Winks to the show, built off the original Charles Addams illustrations, but very much its own beast, thank goodness.
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
release: November 22
dir: Phil Nibbelink / Simon Wells
pr: Steven Spielberg / Robert Watts
scr: Flint Dille, story by Charles Swenson, from characters created by David Kirschner
A rewatch! The Mousekewitz family heads West, not knowing of a wicked plot hatched by cats to trap city mice in the desert. Feels more harried than the first installment, still boasts gorgeous animation and songs.
Beauty and the Beast
release: November 22
wins: Best Score (Alan Menken), Best Original Song (“Beauty and the Beast”)
nominations: Best Picture, Best Original Song (“Beauty Our Guest”, “Belle”), Best Sound (Terry Porter / Mel Metcalfe / David J. Hudson / Doc Kane)
dir: Gary Trousdale / Kirk Wise
pr: Don Hahn
scr: Linda Woolverton, story supervision by Roger Allers, story by Brenda Chapman / Chris Sanders / Burny Mattinson / Kevin Harkey / Brian Pimental / Bruce Woodside / Joe Ranft / Tom Ellery / Kelly Asbury / Robert Lence
A rewatch! A bookish Beauty becomes the prisoner of a Beast in an enchanted castle and…well, things change. We’ll discuss its merits when we discuss Best Picture.
For the Boys
release: November 22
nominations: Best Actress (Bette Midler)
dir: Mark Rydell
pr: Bonnie Bruckheimer / Bette Midler / Margaret South
scr: Neal Jimenez and Lindy Laub and Marshall Brockman, story by Neal Jimenez and Lindy Laub
cin: Stephen Goldblatt
An aging star looks back at her career, especially the USO Tours that made her famous. Bette Midler is mostly good, but she's uneven here, trying to find the through line of an inconsistent character sometimes buried beneath makeup and wardrobe that are desperate to evoke The Changing Times. When she’s great, she’s great, especially in a could’ve-been-maudlin rendition of “In My Life” among troops stationed in Vietnam. It’s a moving moment that drives home much of the movie’s under-the-surface concern - after WWII, the USO shows were not primarily about patriotic positive vibes for the troops, but propaganda pieces for US foreign policy and career boasts for increasingly out-of-touch stars - a tension it nervously backs away from because, hey, we need to end this thing on a high note. James Caan is miscast as her performing partner.
My Girl
release: November 27
dir: Howard Zieff
pr: Brian Grazer
scr: Laurice Elehwany
cin: Paul Elliott
The daughter of a mortician comes of age one Summer in 1970s Pennsylvania. Well, it says Pennsylvania, but they actually filmed it in Central Florida, there was one shot of a tree that made me curious so I looked it up. I always know. One of those classics I feel like everyone my age saw as a kid, but this was my first time and I just loved it. It was funny and intelligent and has a big Plot Point near the end that wasn’t telegraphed very well but which, I think, fit neatly with the film’s concerns about how we handle all the aspects of growing up. Didn’t expect to love this as much as I do.
Next time, criminals and conspiracy theories.
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