Christmas Day audiences had a full menu in 1991: the Wim Wenders epic, the latest Lawrence Kasdan navel-gazer, a French film adaptation of a French literary classic, and the adaptation of a best-selling novel about a married man who falls in love with his sister's married therapist. Decisions, decisions! Audiences chose Hook; the Academy chose The Prince of Tides.
Based upon the 1986 best-selling novel of the same name by Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides was the second directorial effort for Barbra Streisand, who cast herself and Nick Nolte as the leads. The film wound up in the Top 20 highest-grossing films of 1991 and received seven Academy Award nominations - but not for Best Director, the only Best Picture nominee not to get a nomination in that category. As Billy Crystal sang, "Did this film direct myself?" Streisand would only direct one more film, 1996's The Mirror Has Two Faces.
Here are six of the films Vhristmas audiences could enjoy:
Grand Canyon
release: Christmas Day
nominations: Best Original Screenplay
dir: Lawrence Kasdan
pr: Michael Grillo / Lawrence Kasdan / Charles Okun
scr: Lawrebce Kasdan & Meg Kasdan
cin: Owen Roizman
An ensemble film about Los Angelenos bonding despite class and racial divides over how to be...good people. Asks a lot of questions, insane found baby subplot, unquestionably sincere, which is probably why it comes off as so vapid. A nomination for its writing feels egregious.
Madame Bovary
release: Christmas Day
nominations: Best Costume Design (Corinne Jorry)
dir: Claude Chabrol
pr: Marin Karmitz
scr: Claude Chabrol, from the novel by Gustave Flaubert
cin: Jean Rabier
A doctor’s wife in 19th-century France grows bored and begins having affairs and running up debt. Isabelle Huppert, tremendous, no surprise. The nominated costumes? Exquisite. The men? Oh-ho-HO!
The Prince of Tides
release: Christmas Day
nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Nick Nolte), Best Supporting Actress (Kate Nelligan), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Score (James Newton Howard), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Paul Sylbert / Caryl Heller)
dir: Barbra Streisand
pr: Andrew S. Karch / Barbra Streisand
scr: Pat Conroy and Becky Johnston, from the novel by Pat Conroy
cin: Stephen Goldblatt
A lot to get into, just with Nick Nolte, and we'll get into it when we get into the Oscars.
Until the End of the World
release: Christmas Day
dir: Wim Wenders
pr: Graham Burke / Anatole Dauman / John Kirby / Jonathan T. Taplin / Dominique Wallon
scr: Peter Carey and Wim Wenders, original idea by Wim Wenders and Solveig Dommartin, in collaboration with Michael Almereyda
cin: Robby Müller
How do I briefly summarize this film? In the near future, two fugitives chase each other in a glove/trotting quest to deliver world-changing technology while the end of the world looms overhead. Current wisdom holds that one should watch the 5+-hour director’s cut, but I watched the US theatrical version that’s about 3 hours and it felt very full and complete. Imagines a future ruled by WiFi and tech, of video calls, doomscrolling, people getting lost in recreations of memories past, chatty car GPS systems, and even becoming addicted to, I promise this is true, “Eye Phones”. And after three or five hours, what’s it all about? How we connect to each other at the beginning of a New Millennium. Technology opens up new portals, but it cannot, should not, replace the here and now; if we spend our days in dreams and fantasies, if we lose ourselves in revisiting memories, how do we make new ones, how do we grow together? Incredible soundtrack full of heavy-hitters (Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Jules Cruise, k.d. lang, etc.) performing original songs. William Hurt gets to play every role in his repertoire: the romantic, the fugitive, the grieving father, the dutiful son, the addict. Expansive, yes, yet not unwieldy.
Fried Green Tomatoes
release: December 27
nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Jessica Tandy), Best Adapted Screenplay
dir: Jon Avnet
pr: Jon Avnet / Jordan Kerner
scr: Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski, from the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
cin: Geoffrey Simpson
A rewatch! Kathy Bates is going through some empty nest midlife crisis bullshit, trying to figure out life as a married woman in modern Southern America; she listens to an old woman at a retirement community regale her with memories of tomboy Mary Stuart Masterson, her dead brother’s fiancée Mary-Louise Parker, and their Whistle-Stop Cafe. I don’t think the two storylines ever really coalesce into a solid, single journey, and Jessica Tandy's relationship to the flashbacks feels established more by vibes than anything else, but I like the timelines and enjoy watching the actors. Has one of those macabre narrative turns that only Southerners could think of for a feel-good story. Tawonda forever!
Naked Lunch
release: December 27
dir: David Cronenberg
pr: Jeremy Thomas
scr: David Cronenberg, from the novel by William S. Burroughs
cin: Peter Suschitzky
Exterminator William Lee is led into a world of espionage and inter-dimensional intrigue by talking beetles disguised as typewriters...or is he a writer so plagued by guilt over his wife's death that he's on an endless substance binge and escaping into his fantasies? OK, the latter, obviously, sometimes, but the fantasy is also engrossingly portrayed - disgusting, even, but you can't look away. Throughout is just this overwhelming...sadness. It's a very sad movie about an addict whose means of escape isn't working out the way he wanted it to.
And those are the 75 films of 1991!
Next time, we start talking Oscars and get into the nominees for Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones (JFK), Harvey Keitel (Bugsy), Ben Kingsley (Bugsy), Michael Lerner (Barton Fink), and Jack Palance (City Slickers).
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