Best Picture 1977

The one thing that stood out about this year, especially in the Best Picture race, is the fact that almost all of these films are anchored by Leading Actresses and it accounts for four out of the five. You could even make a case for Princess Leia in Star Wars being the fifth one. I am not sure there has ever been a year quite like this one for women. I would have to look at the 40 years I've already done and see what the future holds but this is a hallmark, I'm pretty sure. And it's awesome because there should be more years like this. At least in today's world where there are up to 10 nominees, you can have a lot more women lead films. I am looking forward to watching these.

1977 Best Picture

Annie Hall

I look at this Best Picture win as the culmination of my Woody Allen journey. I have gone backwards right alongside the project in watching all his films and here we are at his only Best Picture win, which came early in his career. I was excited to finally watch this because I've heard great things and because it's a female lead driven comedy in some respects. A culmination because this will be at the top or near the top of any definitive Woody Allen best of list and because this is the first film of his to garner awards love (which means it's the last Allen film I'll ever review most likely). There is a lot to love about this film. I think you have to find Allen funny, which I do, because that makes this film and his style just hilarious at times. What I especially liked were all those breaking the fourth wall moments. There is a scene where he is arguing with a man in line for movie about some director and then goes well let's ask him if your interpretation is correct and bring the director from off screen. That sort of absurdity works well within the framework of an Allen film and other moments like Allen and Keaton talking while subtitles show what they are actually thinking are hilarious and poignant at the same time. Hell, there's even a brief animated scene which tells you how different this film really was. I was expecting a normal Allen film where he dissects his relationship with Keaton in a straightforward way but we get all these fun, unique moments and a non-linear version of the relationship that keeps things fresh. The most interesting part for me is that I can see the rest of Allen's career in this film. There are a lot of familiar beats and ideas that will be explored further as the years go on, but this does feel like a leitmotif of Allen's future film output. Allen goes back in time to watch his youth and see his colorful family in a brief scene and he lived under a roller coaster on Coney Island, both which are explored multiple times in later films. It's also nice that Allen isn't too annoying as an actor in this like he will be in some of his later films. Keaton is good and their chemistry together is obvious and makes the film a better experience overall. This is definitely one of Woody Allen's best films and it getting rewarded with Best Picture makes sense to me.

The Goodbye Girl

Oh man. Okay. The progression of going backwards for this project can be a little teasing. You see a film you really enjoy by an actor/director/writer and see that they have other nominations in the past that you will get to. So you get excited for those and then you watch them and are either totally underwhelmed or feel they just plain suck. So you wonder how things would have gone if you saw those films first and then got to the great one. How would that have affected your thoughts on the person? I'll never really know but I loved the hell out of Marsha Mason and Neil Simon's first collaboration I saw, which means it was their last nomination together ever. So I have looked forward to their work and have been subsequently let down by everything I've watched. The Goodbye Girl is no exception. Simon reminds me of a lamer Aaron Sorkin. He has polished, overworked, finely tuned scripts that feel unnatural most of the time because of their rapid fire deliveries and their peculiar words/diction. This film is about a single mother who is freshly left by the man she was with who leased his apartment to another actor friend. Mother/daughter have no claim to the apartment and Richard Dreyfuss shows up one rainy night and tries to get in. The place is locked and he's told to go away so he leaves but then calls from a rainy phonebooth that the apartment is rightfully his. Eventually he gets in and for some reason doesn't call the cops or throw out the mother/daughter though they are squatting in his legally rented apartment. That's the first thing that I disliked about the film was that Dreyfuss allowed them to stay despite Mason demanding he adhere to her rules and pay money and all this. The film would end there as I threw them out no matter what. It continues with us seeing the three all clash because he plays guitar at night and meditates in the morning and they are so different. Okay. Eventually they come to an agreement to live together peacefully. They become friendly and then of course Dreyfuss and Mason fuck and the kid finds out and is heartbroken and jealous. Then Dreyfuss gets offered a film role in Seattle and accepts and oh, drama. Psyche! Flight delayed and he invites Mason to live with him. But oh yeah, drop the kid off at a relative. Don't care about spoilers because this is not a flipping Oscar worthy film! Everything about the two grownups relationship is manufactured. Why would you put up with some squatter? Why would you allow someone to interrupt you as you prepare for your NYC play debut? The romance between Mason and Dreyfuss is hamfisted and rushed for the convenience of the plot. It makes no sense and just starts with no warning. So then they are together and then Dreyfuss gets his movie role offered and that's the part of the film that actually feels real. He takes that thing in a heartbeat and was gonna leave behind this mother/daughter combo that doesn't mean shit to him. But does at the very end when he calls her to come get on the plane with him. There are some nice romantic scenes and some nice familial scenes but this romantic comedy is just so not what should be nominated for Best Picture. I have no clue why the Academy loved it other than Neil Simon and Richard Dreyfuss but it sticks out as a sore thumb because it just doesn't gel. There are too many parts that make you wonder why it was nominated at all. A subpar romantic comedy should never be rewarded like this by the Academy.

Julia

For some reason, I was intimidated by this film when looking at years to come. I saw that it had five different reviews to write and that always seemed like more for whatever reason, even though it was the same as The Turning Point from this year. Maybe it was that the film was about a writer, Lillian Hellman, who goes on a search for her friend Julia just before WWII in Europe. That sounded very epic and the cast seemed very epic and the nominations made it all seem very epic. It wasn't epic. The film is just under two hours and is honestly a little boring. The story is as described above but isn't all that interesting or full of the mystery and intrigue it thinks it is. The beginning shows how Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave grew up as good friends but then drifted apart as life got in the way. The eponymous Julia, Redgrave goes to medical school in Europe and gets involved in the leftist ideals of the time fighting communism (which is a good thing, mind you) but is wounded during some skirmish and Fonda is sent for. Once Fonda arrives to the hospital Redgrave is at, Redgrave is eventually taken away for "treatment" and Fonda spends the rest of the film trying to track her down. It sounds a lot more interesting than it is and the large portion of the middle of the film is mostly Fonda traveling to find Julia. She gets help from various people all working to make sure she gets to Berlin to see her friend. Then she meets Julia but it's brief and she mentions she has a daughter but Fonda must go and they will try to meet up in America again and it's all very rushed. I get that there is secrecy and intrigue and all that going on but the majority of the film is Fonda traveling. I think the film feels it is more important than it really is as evidenced by being virtually forgotten about in today's world. And that's my thing with this film is that it feels grander than it is and is more of a simple story really. That could be the bias I've built up over years of hearing about it and it might be different if you go into it stone cold but for being a much beloved Oscar film based on nominations, it's not all that amazing. I was hoping for an epic film but got an epic letdown. But really, the cast is only okay. The two nominated supporting actors are in the film briefly and don't do much. Fonda carries the film but in that long traveling stretch she just looks confused and surprised then whole time while the others around her do the work. Redgrave is fine and her win seems okay but I was just expecting so much more and didn't get that. If you like this, please let me know what you loved about it.

Star Wars

This is another one of those reviews where I feel I could just leave it blank and you'd understand. This is Star Wars. This is a franchise that is still going on today with an offshoot film about to drop in a couple weeks about Han Solo. It's at almost eleven total films. Almost everyone has seen one of the films and if they haven't, they at least know what Star Wars is. I don't think there is any other film that can match what this franchise has accomplished even on a global scale. And this is one of the first true blockbuster films after Jaws did it first. It set the box office record until E.T. took the record from it almost six years later. Luke, Leia, Solo, Chewie, Vader, Yoda, R2D2, C3PO. You know those characters intimately and could probably fashion the film in your mind just from their names alone. The visual effects changed the game and made the blockbuster into a legit thing that would happen every summer. The story is great, the actors who were in the film are remembered even today and have gone on to do great things. The music is iconic. The sound is amazing. The ideas it presented set off a science fiction boom that is still felt to this day. There's not really much else to say other than this is one of the greatest culminations of things coming together to create something unique and memorable and iconic. I say all this as if this will be my winner but as great as this film is and everything it spawned, I do like the actual winner a lot so it will be really tough to choose who wins. But obviously, Star Wars will live on for generations to come because it's filled with such wonder and excitement and that's something indeed.

The Turning Point

So this film received 11 Oscar nominations and went home empty handed (one of only two films, the other was The Color Purple) and yet somehow I have never really heard of this film. Certainly not before starting this project, but even since it's rarely talked about even today by Oscar nuts. I read that this labored in development for years and years because the idea that a film about ballet wouldn't sell well or be too appealing. I don't know why the Academy latched onto this film like it did but it does seem very of the times. It's a very short film, too. I was fully expecting this to be an two plus hour film but it clocks in at just over an hour and a half. And a good amount of that time (maybe twenty plus minutes) is dedicated solely to ballet performances. So it's a really interesting look at what could be a Best Picture contender back then. The story is about Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft basically healing old wounds. MacLaine was a star ballerina who got pregnant and decided to get married and move to Oklahoma and open a dance studio. Bancroft was another ballerina who got her opportunity when MacLaine left to become a huge success in the ballet world. Bancroft's theater company did a traveling show that MacLaine attended with her family and after her older daughter is offered a spot in the prestigious company. So MacLaine goes with her daughter and son to NYC to be with them as they train. Old wounds are reopened between the two leads and the mother-daughter relationship is strained as the daughter becomes a star. By the end, the ladies all hash everything out and accept everything that has happened. Nice little story with lots of interesting behind the scene looks at ballet with the main draw being the actual ballet performances and the acting of MacLaine and Bancroft. It is a bit short and if you don't like ballet, you probably won't be interested in this. I still kinda scratch my head at how this got 11 total nominations but it's not an awful film like I was preparing myself for. The two leads do give us a nice combination performance and the dancing is certainly impressive to watch. Is it worthy of a Best Picture nod, though? I'm not so certain it is and probably wouldn't have been a choice for me this year. I like that the Academy exposes me to subjects and stories I would otherwise ignore. I don't want to be too harsh on this film because it's definitely not outright bad, it just probably wouldn't be nominated so much in today's world.



This is an interesting year. I'll go from bottom up because The Goodbye Girl had no business being nominated for Best Picture. It's not that good of a film, first of all. And second, it's got some bad acting and a stupid fucking story to boot. I don't like it and don't think it should have been a nominee. I don't like when the Academy gets obsessed with a certain writer or director to the point of crap like this getting nominated. Neil Simon ain't that great. Julia would be next up. I honestly thought this was going to be some epic about a woman going to Europe to meet her friend turned revolutionary, but this is just a boring mess. Fonda isn't that great and half the film is just her traveling to Europe to try to find her friend. It's about people you don't care about and once introduced to them, still don't care about them. It's that Oscar film that purports to be really important and well made that turns out to be boring shit. I mean, I get it as a fifth nomination but nothing more. It got way too much love it didn't deserve. Next up is The Turning Point. A film about two older women jealous of each other's lives because one has a family and the other has a prima ballerina career. More interesting than it seems, the lure is the actual ballet dancing and the relationship of the two older women. It's actually not bad but was way over nominated. It went 0-for-11 and was the first of two films to do that. Says all you need to know about it. Decent but not 11 nominations great. My runner up would be Star Wars. Yeah, I know. It has a more lasting impact than Annie Hall but god damn if I don't like that Woody Allen film. Star Wars is great but it also would have set a bad precedent as a win, I think. Is it the actual Best Picture or is it simply the most fun and well liked because space explosions and aliens and all that? It has it's flaws for sure. The same things used to praise it could be the flaws. Acting, story, effects, music - all are not flawless. So I stick with the Academy and think Woody Allen does deserve a Best Picture win. Easy to say 40 years later knowing he'd put out a film per year but it just feels right that he should have a win here. And Annie Hall is a good choice from his oeuvre. The top half of this category is great while the bottom half is garbage. I'm fully expecting 1976 to be amazing based off my cursory glance at the films on that list.

Oscar Winner: Annie Hall
My Winner:  Annie Hall
Star Wars
The Turning Point
Julia
The Goodbye Girl