Sometimes I get so sick of doing this project. Days where I watch some shitty Best Actress movie after working 12-13 hours and commuting home and watching a 2 - 2 and half hour movie that I struggle to finish then having to write a decent review instead of just 5 minutes of hurried writing. I want to put some effort into these reviews, ya know? Or I waste my Friday/Saturday night watching a 2-3 hour movie and having to write reviews and hating life because I just wasted part of a weekend on a terrible movie. It happens often in this project and I hate it. It's part of the source of some of my delays. I think it'll get better when I get beyond the years I was born and can get into the classic film factor. I know there will be awful films in the 70s but I feel like they will matter more than the shitty films of 1996. I think it's all about perspective. That's why I can't wait to get into the 80s. On paper this year doesn't look too bad, so let's find out!
1991 Best Actress
Jodie Foster - The Silence of the Lambs
I think in the legend of this film, what gets lost is how strong Foster's performance really is. I say that knowing she won her second Best Actress award for this and this is what people instantly think about when they think of Foster (besides maybe Reagan's assassination attempt). But Foster is active in this film just as much as Anthony Hopkins is. I like that she portrays a strong female character that could easily be subbed with a man which tells me that it's just a strong performance, period. I know that sounds a little off but yes, she's a strong female but I feel like this would have been a man's role if it wasn't the 90s. Anyway, she knocks it out of the park as FBI agent in training Clarice Starling. She's a determined woman who wants to show she can be an asset like any male agent could be. I especially like that the film doesn't focus so much on the fact that she is a woman and instead focuses on the interplay between her and Hopkins. Foster holds her own against an iconic character and doesn't look any less for the wear. The West Virginia accent is fine and I appreciate that she's not portrayed as a super hero or super cop. She's smart which leads her to Buffalo Bill but the ending isn't her playing the hero so much as Foster playing scared and letting her training kick in. She's such a normal character in those regards and Foster plays it effectively. Foster also needs to be able to carry the film when Hopkins isn't on screen and keep it from suffering any major drop off. I think she does well in keeping the viewer engaged and interested as we are with Hannibal Lector. It's a great performance and I'm not sure what else can be said or needs to be said about it. It's a no brainer for a winner.
Geena Davis - Thelma and Louise
Having just watched this film for the first after knowing about it's cultural impact from other places, this is a fantastic film! The film has been lampooned to death so I was expecting this rote, cheesy woman buddy film and it's much more than that. Briefly about the film, I love the way it's shot. It still looks fresh and the hand held camera movements lends itself well to the story. It makes the relationship between Davis' Thelma and Sarandon's Louise feel even more real and authentic. That's one of the things I enjoy about both of their performances but especially Davis. She looks like she improv'd all of her performance or that she's not totally aware that their is a camera on her the whole time. Some actors know how to play it up for the cameras and to get the best side, take, whatever but Davis is fine with looking goofy and being herself. Hard to fully explain, I just like how natural she is in front of the camera. She plays the titular Thelma as I said and is the more emotional and carefree of the two. I think that's what I like about her performance the most. Davis and Sarandon are going away for a long weekend to escape their husbands and let loose. Davis gets almost raped and Sarandon kills the guy and the two go on the lam. That's the film in a nutshell. Now, you can say that this film glorifies violence and drunk driving and belittles men and all that, which is frankly does, but turnabout is fair play to me. We see this same perspective from the men's side all the time so I'm not really all that up in arms about this version. I think Davis and her character appropriately react to the situation which is pretty screwed up all around but when you're involved in a traumatic event, I would expect that. I also think that Davis best represents the new found freedom and desperation of the two characters. She's the one who has a fling, robs a store, puts a gun to a cop's head. She's the one that really embodies what the film is about. It's why I prefer her over Sarandon out of the two, just seems like the more honest (and better) performance.
Laura Dern - Rambling Rose
I dislike this movie greatly. One of the few films I outright hate so far. The performances are all what they are, which isn't awful but the film is just creepy and weird and a very bad, uninteresting story. And I'll be perfectly honest, I'm not a Laura Dern fan. I did go into this with an open mind but this performance has a lot of the traits that I don't like about her other work. It has that flighty, free spirited, innocent, child like behavior that you can kinda see even in her recent nomination for Wild. Dern plays a young woman who comes to a house in the South apparently getting away from her troubles. She becomes a live in helper for a very strange, weird family and stirs up trouble with everyone she meets because of her behavior. She's a very lithe, pretty young thing and she knows it and pretends to be coy and innocent while sashaying around town in a tight dress with her cleavage showing, sneaking men into her bedroom and even having the teenage boy of the house get her off sexually. The tone of the film is way off and Dern's performance doesn't really help matters. She mostly plays the same one note for much of the film with some bouts of over-dramatic acting thrown in. I don't think it's anything to write home about and certainly not Oscar caliber stuff. I never feel sympathetic for her and I think I am supposed to but since I can't even figure out if I'm supposed to or not, this film and performance fails. Why am I watching her and why am I not into her performance at all? I have no reason to like her nasty, creepy performance and that's what it all boils down to. I feel as if the Academy was super proud of nominating a mother - daughter duo for the same film and trying to make a star out of Dern. Not a good look going the nepotism route for the Academy.
Bette Midler - For the Boys
If you are a Bette Midler fan, you'll love this nomination and be screaming for it to win. I get that. It's a really interesting performance. Midler plays a singer who forms a duo that goes on USO tours and is genuinely funny. It's a really interesting film because it sort of shadows Midler as she sings on tour in WWII, then gets begged to go to Korea to sing there. Except while there, she actually experiences war first hand and sees a soldier die in front of her. Her life and this film is very much an indictment on the US's involvement in international conflicts. Life was just peachy in WWII, the men were heroes sacrificing themselves for the greater good. In Korea, it was a war we didn't understand that was far more brutal than we could ever have imagined or realized. The casualties were too raw and unexpected because we are a super power. Then Midler's Uncle gets canned for being a suspected commie sympathizer mirroring the Red scare in politics. Midler and a great James Caan turn to television before offering to go to Vietnam to sing. Midler's son is there and she gets to be near him in their sparse base only to see him die in an attack. This shows just how brutal the Vietnam War really was and how it wasn't so romantic like WWII or idealistic like Korea. If they were to continue it into Iraq or Afghanistan, I can just picture how those moments would go. When I was there we flew in Toby Keith and Aaron Tipin and UFC fighters to our small FOBs and it was brief and a great distraction and ridiculous all at the same time. I admire this film for sort of showing all that hypocrisy about the USO thing. I don't actually think that Midler would have been allowed to fly to a far off base where her son was if the threat was that high but it makes for a very dramatic effect. I thought Bette was perfect for this role. It seems tailor made and Midler seems like she was better suited for living in the 40s and 50s as an actress and singer. I know she's had a big following but I think she would have been a huge star way back when. I was ready to dismiss this performance but I think Midler did a really great job portraying not only a singer and entertainer but especially a mother. I can respect the pin up aspirations but Better was born too late. She's great in her role even if it's a little too anemic.
Susan Sarandon - Thelma and Louise
Sarandon plays the other part of the duo, Louise. She is more of the straight, serious character than Davis' innocent, naive Thelma. The two set off on an adventure for a weekend before things take a turn for the worse at a bar. Sarandon ends up killing a man and begins making a lot of poor choices as a result. Sarandon is the one that compounds things and is the decision maker as Davis blithely tags along so she doesn't abandon her friend and get in trouble. Sarandon's performance is good and the two have some really great chemistry together. They seem like long time friends. I'm just not as enthused about Sarandon here when compared with Davis. Sarandon is sort of the caretaker and because of that we (or at least me) look maybe a bit more harshly on her even though she's just playing a character. It's probably because she plays the straight woman that makes her performance a little less enjoyable overall and makes the interplay between her and Davis work so well. You wouldn't want the same two characters going through this story because that would be incredibly boring. So in that regard, Sarandon succeeds at doing what's necessary for the film and the relationship.
All in all, not a bad group at all! One stinker but the rest are pretty good and I'm glad for that. If I could, I would excise Dern from this group and find another, more deserving performance somewhere else. Hated the film and disliked the performance. No thanks. Midler was surprisingly good as I thought it might be a very derivative, one note performance. She brought a little more to it that I expected and I like that. I think Sarandon would be very close to Midler in terms of voting. She's been better and her partner outshines her, honestly. She's still pretty good, however and 3rd ain't too bad a place. Davis is my easy runner up because I was completely charmed by her performance. I think it has a great deal of depth and really stood out to me over Sarandon. Foster is your obvious winner. Just can't go wrong with her performance. A decent group and thankfully not all tied to awful films.
Oscar Winner: Jodie Foster - The Silence of the Lambs
My Winner: Jodie Foster - The Silence of the Lambs
Geena Davis
Susan Sarandon
Bette Midler
Laura Dern
No comments:
Post a Comment