Hello again! Thanks to everyone who reacted strongly to yesterday’s kickoff to the Best Picture countdown — both in terms of what you were shocked to see represented (Rocky fans, I heard you) and dismayed to see delayed (CODA detractors, also noted).
Will your favorite (or least favorite) be called today? And the Oscar goes to…
CATCH UP ON THE COUNTDOWN
Part 1: #94-71
70. The Lost Weekend (1945)
For contemporary viewers, The Lost Weekend might feel like a dispatch from another planet. Billy Wilder's film pokes around at the dangers of alcoholism and addiction before the culture really had the language to describe it as we do now. Ray Milland's struggling writer Don Birnam envisions himself as something of a Jekyll and Hyde when he starts drinking, unable to see how the two sides are deeply connected. He goes on quite the weekend bender in 1940s New York as he puts off writing his manuscript, and Wilder makes us sit through quite a bit of melodramatic hand-wringing over Don's condition before we get to an ending that's more subversive than it gets credit for being. Like much of Wilder's work, the final moments reframe the film. But here, they cannot quite redeem it.
69. Rain Man (1988)
I always have a sweet and pleasant watch when I tune into Rain Man. But with more time, I can't help but see the film as having somewhat of a mistaken focus. Filtering the story through Tom Cruise's character, the greedy and self-interested Charlie, rather than through his autistic brother Raymond (played by Dustin Hoffman) is ultimately a misguided filter. It has the effect of turning the condition into a simplistic "learning experience" for Charlie rather than seeking to understand Raymond on his own terms. The journey of two brothers unaware of each other's existence is a heartwarming one to watch. The two grow close, even as Charlie initially sets out to recapture some of Raymond's large share of their father's inheritance. The character gets an expected change of heart, but the movie would have benefited from a shift of view to help the saccharine schmaltz go down a little smoother.
68. Out of Africa (1985)
Something just felt very empty about Out of Africa to me, and it seems to be bigger than just the clueless colonialism of its lacking self-awareness. Sydney Pollack's epic romance set amongst Europeans in early-20th century Africa has all the sweep and scale of a David Lean film ... and little of its grandeur. I felt consistently at arm's length from Meryl Streep's Karen Blixen as she experiences newfound loves (and associated loathings) for various men and African peoples. There's the occasional stunning vista or breathtaking moment to help compensate for the emotional deficit, but not nearly enough to overcome it entirely. The whole enterprise just felt a bit too calculated and safe for my taste – as if an AI set out to create the perfect epic romance but ended up delivering the predictable version of one.
67. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
For a movie that has the reputation of being one of the most ignominious and controversial Best Picture wins of recent memory, I was somewhat surprised to find that Shakespeare in Love is ... mostly fine? (This is what most movies are, after all! But most don't go on to have the baggage of winning Best Picture.) It's a nice period romance about a misunderstood writer who falls for a misunderstood woman of society after they bond over the power of spoken language ... and how that supposedly informed the most popular tale of star-crossed love the world has ever known, Romeo & Juliet. It's innocuous and inoffensive. A mildly memorable trifle that would be a nice thing to watch on cable yet now must bear the burden of an honor it does not really deserve. For never was there a story of more woe...
66. A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Somehow A Beautiful Mind wasn’t produced by Miramax, and yet no film provides a clearer view of how Harvey Weinstein warped the awards forever by figuring out how to pander to the lowest common denominator sensibilities of Academy members. Ron Howard is a solid workman director and manages to elevate this color-by-numbers “Great Man” biopic into efficient entertainment. There are powerful performances aplenty from Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly, and confounding expectations by waiting to reveal which characters are mere figments of subject John Nash’s mind makes for a solid twist on first watch. But what you see is what you get here. No less, sure, but certainly no more either.
65. Platoon (1986)
I'm glad some record of the Vietnam War from the experience of someone who actually fought in it exists, and Platoon's vivid recreation of one soldier's experience does retain the texture of Oliver Stone's lived experience. The film stands in stark contrast to films like Apocalypse Now, which sought to map a generation-defining debacle to some wider poetic resonance to make sense of the whole thing. But is Platoon really any better for avoiding such trappings? Eh. The rending of Chris' (Charlie Sheen) soul between noble Elias (Willem Dafoe) and treacherous Barnes (Tom Berenger) maps a little too neatly into archetypal struggles. The film ends up feeling like a simplified version of a murky conflict, perhaps helpful for Stone himself but not all that revelatory for viewers.
64. Gladiator (2000)
An explosion of masculine rage and insecurity, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. The sword is light and the sandals are empty in Ridley Scott's Gladiator, an imitation Ben-Hur with similarly stunning craftwork undone by a flimsy script. All the ancient Roman spectacle falls flat because there's so little development behind the archetypal characters of Russell Crowe's heroic general-turned-gladiator and Joaquin Phoenix's covetous emperor whose cowardice calcifies into cruelty. The two men grunt, scream, and sweat their way through the film, and their tenacity does manage to cut through some of the crap. Yet no amount of chest-thumping can fill me with enough adrenaline to blind me to the manifold flaws of Ridley Scott's would-be epic.
63. My Fair Lady (1964)
A form as joyful as the musical should not feel like such a bloated slog as it does in My Fair Lady. The film provides plenty of time to marinate in objections to the gender politics of this comical British twist on the Pygmalion because scenes just drag on far beyond the point of interest. (Or maybe this is just confirmation that Lerner/Loewe musicals are just not my style.) This three-hour musical gets the occasional burst of staccato screwball energy from the uptight Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) butting up against the incorrigible urchin Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) — no doubt orchestrated by George Cukor, one of the first great studio rom-com directors. He's also got some interesting ideas around framing and composition to capture something akin to the stunning sight of a stage tableau, yet these come too few and far between. This is a movie musical mostly devoted to simply recreating the original show, and it's mostly just trying to make its audience forget they aren't watching performers live before their eyes.
62. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
This is no one's idea of a revelatory biopic, but at least The Great Ziegfeld delivers in the spectacle department. This portrait of a legendary New York City showman does, in fact, show rather than tell about his legendary flair for the theatrical. The exploits of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. as he hustles his way to building an entertainment empire are always entertaining, if not particularly novel. The film never takes his greatness for granted, staging lavish musical numbers demonstrating the kind of "wow" factor that made the Ziegfeld Follies such a stage sensation. While these sequences don't necessarily match the great Busby Berkeley's flair for cinematic choreography, they are still quite something to behold for their scale and creativity. They're fully convincing setpieces in making us believe that Ziegfeld earned his titular descriptor.
61. The Last Emperor (1987)
I lament that I did not find this as interesting in concept as I did in execution. The Last Emperor charts the vast changes in Chinese society in the 20th century not through someone who led them but rather just observed them. Puyi is hardly the kind of "Great Man" so often centered in these types of epics, but the film doesn't quite offer enough to replace this tried and true formula. It's interesting enough to watch someone trying to live hedonistically but is doomed to experience events historically, but that idea wears thin as Puyi grows older. Still, the combination of writer/director Bernardo Bertolucci and cinematographer Vittorio Storraro at least manages to keep the imagery arresting throughout. They favor the pace and gravity of the European arthouse over the American studio system, and it does make the film feel different. Just wish "different" was also mapped more closely to "better" in this case.
60. You Can’t Take It With You (1938)
I'm always going to be a sucker for some good "Capra corn." It's no wonder director Frank Capra enjoyed such success during the Great Depression as a filmmaker who managed to see the good in everyone, even through the darkest of times. You Can't Take It With You shines as an ensemble piece, with Capra treating each eccentric member of a household facing eviction with unmistakable compassion. It's a little bit successful as a romantic comedy where a man from the monopolistic banking class falls in love with a girl from the house being eyed for a takeover. I just didn't find much chemistry at all between leads Jean Arthur and Jimmy Stewart, the latter of whom — hot take! — has just always felt stilted when placed into any role requiring a more sensuous appeal. Did I still swoon for these characters all the same? Sure I did.
59. From Here to Eternity (1953)
This melodramatic ensemble drama seems to have a built-in expiration date. From Here to Eternity is a drama for the Greatest Generation to remember their “Before Times” — an aimless, formless period of time before World War II reshaped their lives. The meandering is partially the point until it’s not thanks to a “December 6, 1941” calendar that appears on the wall in the third act. But the two central romances between soldiers and the women who distract them from the burdens of their duty feel like entirely different films. Sturdy performances from Burt Lancaster and especially Montgomery Clift, ever the broodingly handsome cipher, do help the film recover some of the ground … but far from all of it.
58. CODA (2021)
Emotionally manipulative as all else, and guess what? I loved it. CODA presses all your buttons but can get away with it because the film projects all its moves in advance — and does so with sincerity. Sian Heder’s film is at its best as a family drama, especially as it adds personality and character to deaf characters who are usually reduced to nothing more than their disability. Too bad about the coming-of-age story for the protagonist (and Eugenio Derbez’s dreadful music teacher who takes it to 11 when providing the necessary evil of driving plot). Yet when it all collides in the rousing climactic musical number, try staying dry-eyed as complaints fall away in the wake of overwhelming sweetness.
57. Dances with Wolves (1990)
I mostly knew Dances with Wolves through the lens of a colonialist critique before watching. I'm here neither to defend nor demolish a film that structurally takes the form of a "white savior" movie, only to say that it's a bit more complicated than meets the eye. Costner's film strikes a far less triumphalist tone than I would have anticipated — the American West is not won in this film so much as it is spoiled by the lack of harmony. The film is at its best when Costner lets his character John Dunbar soak in the solitude of the lone cowboy mythology; the first hour in particular is quite remarkable because he brings a real depth of feeling to the archetype's obvious signifiers. His interactions with the Native Americans leave a bit to be desired by not developing them more as people. (At three hours, it wasn't for lack of time!) All the same, Dances with Wolves resounds with such righteous indignation over the treatment of the land that it's easy enough to get swept up and briefly forget some objections.
56. The King’s Speech (2010)
I've jokingly coined the term "King's Speech formalism" to deride movies like this that try to hide the cynical, conventional mechanisms of a standard-issue adult drama underneath a veneer of obvious visual choices meant to ever so slightly surprise its viewers. Tom Hooper insists on peppering in random Dutch angle tilts and extreme long shots to emphasize how out-of-place Colin Firth's stuttering King George VI feels in his lofty position of power. The schema comes to feel quite suffocating and, frankly, distracting from the real emotional power of the film. The King's Speech is a by-the-numbers inspirational biopic, but it proves quite rousing and affecting in spite of itself thanks to the emotional performances of Firth and Geoffrey Rush as the king's unconventional speech coach. The film's climatic oration shouldn't work as well as it does (set to the beats of Beethoven! come on!) yet still manages to stir the soul.
55. Patton (1970)
The most interesting war in Patton does not play out on any battlefield. It's in the fabric of the film itself. There's a vision of this movie as something radically different than a Great Man biopic of the famed WWII general, and it's best encapsulated in the vestiges of Francis Ford Coppola's script that remain in the finished product. They fired him, but he still got an Oscar — and the last laugh. Elements like the infamous opening direct address and the brutally graphic depictions of war's carnage point to an iteration more in line with the towering achievement that is George C. Scott's larger-than-life performance. But Franklin J. Schaffner's drama falls in line with a plot marching dutifully forward through Patton's wartime battles against enemies both earned and made. (And presents the German perspective of Patton? Huh?!) The devotion to strict chronology feels ill-suited to provide a portrait of a man whose eccentricity and ingenuity defied traditional patterns. Scott's rousing turn makes it more watchable than not, though the filmmaking does try its hardest to bludgeon his work with banality.
54. The Artist (2011)
The charms of The Artist dissipate almost the second after the credits start rolling, but while you're in its thrall, the movie's silent sensibilities are utterly infatuating. Michel Hazanavicius gives enough thought to how to make a dialogue-free film in the age of talkies for the concept to rise above the level of gimmickry. The expressive performances of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo sparkle, as does their canine companion Uggie (who transcends talkies). But at a certain point, it becomes apparent that the storytelling gambit becomes its limit, and you're just watching an amusing riff on Singin' in the Rain.
53. Ben-Hur (1959)
Of all the Best Picture-winning epics of mid-century, Ben-Hur is the one that feels the most obviously a response to TV. It's ultra-wide frame with Biblical scale and ancient opulence is practically poking the small-screen competition in the eye and screaming "betcha can't see THAT at home!" Three-and-a-half hours is a bit long for a mostly simple story of a Jewish nobleman on a mission for redemption and vengeance against his vindictive Roman childhood friend. Scenes play out far longer than they should because they luxuriate in their own sense of scope and grandeur. Because it's a William Wyler film, it's never entirely dull or clumsily made, though he doesn't quite feel as natural a fit for the epic as someone like David Lean. His chariot races are a technical triumph but largely unengaging on a visceral or emotional level. Oh, and all those weird overlapping touchpoints with Jesus Christ? Miss me with that mawkish pandering.
52. All the King’s Men (1949)
There are some genuinely riveting flashes of All the King's Men, an otherwise fairly standard tale of political intrigue. (It might be to the detriment of this story's legacy that the corrupting of the anti-corruption candidate has become such a fixture of American life.) Writer/director Robert Rossen makes some curious maneuvers with perspective in the film, somewhat aping the framing device of Citizen Kane at times. It's ultimately a film too beholden to portraying a string of events in the rise and fall of Governor Willie Stark. Rossen doesn't get nearly enough of a chance to show his hand on what he thinks this fable is really "about." Is it about populism or the people who fall for it? Is it about the politician or the reluctant enablers sucked into their orbit? All the King's Men is somehow all and none of the above. But in those moments where Rossen can show the electrifying effect of Stark's rhetoric on a hungry populace, it deftly manages to approximate the ferocious, pugnacious energy of its central figure.
51. An American in Paris (1951)
Classic case of the right talent winning for the wrong movie. I think most people would agree that the superior Gene Kelly vehicle is Singin' in the Rain, released just a year after An American in Paris won Best Picture. Director Vincente Minnelli brings bright, vivid colors to make the song and dance numbers here light up the screen. When they're occurring, they dazzle. But as soon as they end and we're left with a loose, thin plot about American ex-pat artists trying to make it in post-World War II France, the film just doesn't hold the same appeal. It's not without moments of magic, but there's not nearly enough consistent or compelling structure stringing them together.
If you’ve read this far, or at least scrolled to the bottom, I think you can see how much work has gone into this project — and hope you will consider supporting this and all the other work on the Marshall and the Movies newsletter by becoming a paying subscriber. I have made this series free, but these kinds of tasks usually go only to the paid list. Don’t miss out on the next one!
Hope you’re ready for round 3 tomorrow! Rankings #50-31 coming your way.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall