1984 Oscar Watch

This is a fairly "meh" year.  Amadeus wins Best Picture and 7 other awards.  Sweeps for big epic films usually result in a boring Oscar year.  Not much to talk about but let's do it anyway.

You can see my GABBY winners and nominees HERE

Best Picture

 

5. A Passage To India is one of the most boring and long movies I had to sit through doing these blogs.  David Lean directs this movie in his usual epic style but this story does not need to be an epic.  It's an almost 3 hour film that could easily be 90 minutes.  A British woman accuses an Indian doctor of rape.  He didn't do it and it takes almost 3 hours to tell this story.  This was to be David Lean's final film.

4. Places In The Heart is an episodic look at the life of a widowed woman trying to keep her farm afloat after her husband's death.  It's not a perfect film but at 102 minutes it is infinitely easier to sit through than A Passage To India.  So, Sally Field's husband dies, the bank wants to take her farm, she decides to grow cotton with the help of a homeless black man and a blind man.  A lot of side stories happen, there's a dust storm, her sister's husband is having an affair, the Ku Klux Klan shows up, she has trouble getting a fair price for her crop.  It's a decent film, not something that needed to be in this category though.

3. A Soldier's Story is a murder mystery/procedural about the killing of a black sergeant in Louisiana.  A black sergeant is killed and the black soldiers are all suspect because they all hated him, the white soldiers are all suspect because this is the racist south and another black soldier is called in to figure out what happened.  It's directed by Norman Jewison and based on a play.  It's a bit stage-y at times where you can tell that they just copied a scene word for word from the play but it moves at a very nice pace.  It's also got an impressive ensemble of young black actors before they became famous like David Alan Grier and Denzel Washington.

2. The Killing Fields took me 3 tries to enjoy.  I watched it in high school for the first time and filed it under one of those films where I understood the critical acclaim but it wasn't for me.  The 2nd time I watched it was a few years ago and I remember being bored.  I just watched it with fresh eyes and really liked it.  It's a hard movie to get through at times and is a little overlong but it's really well made.  I think the documentary The Act Of Killing may have aided in my enjoyment.  Sam Waterston stars as Sydney Schanberg, a reporter for the New York Times.  He is in Cambodia with photographer Dith Pran, played by newcomer Dr. Haing S. Ngor who himself was held captive in a Cambodian prison.  The country is in the midst of a civil war and at one point Pran saves Schanberg's life.  Sydney is able to get Pran's family out of the country but Pran stays behind to help.  The Khmer Rouge arrest every Cambodian citizen and Pran ends up in prison.  Later, in America, Sydney is trying to raise awareness to get Pran found and freed to no avail while Pran is trying to survive.  It's a very good film but something you have to be in just the right mood for.

1. Amadeus is a biopic of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart told through the man who killed him.  Composer Antonio Salieri is nearing the end of his life and confessing his sins.  Did it need to take 3 hours to show that Salieri killed Mozart because he was jealous of his genius while he mired in mediocrity?  Probably not.  This movie could have been an hour shorter but it does flow quite well.  It beats you over the head with its own epic-ness and music.  It's a very good film with terrific performances and excellent production elements.

Meh, all of these films have varying levels of decency, but I'm not excited about anything winning.  Amadeus is obviously the best made film but I don't think anything here is a classic.  The only thing I don't want to win is A Passage To India.  Everything else would hold up as a winner.  Based on scale the vote is between Amadeus and The Killing Fields and looking at how the two films have aged, Amadeus has held up the best.

Oscar Winner: Amadeus

My Vote: Amadeus

GABBY Winner: This Is Spinal Tap

Best Actor

 

5. Sam Waterston plays Sydney Schanberg, a reporter for the New York Times who finds himself in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime in The Killing Fields.  He befriends a Cambodian photographer who ends up in prison and then tries to get him freed.  Waterston is fine in the film but really only reacts to tragedies around him.  Once the middle of the film hits he takes a backseat to Dr. Haing S. Ngor who plays the photographer.

4. Tom Hulce plays famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the 3 hour long biopic Amadeus.  His performance is a bit anachronistic with the time period he's living in.  I think that was intentional but there were times where I felt like I was watching Pinto from Animal House in a powdered wig.  He has an annoying laugh in the film that he does in almost every scene.  It seems like he started with that and let it take over the character.

3. Jeff Bridges earned his 3rd of 7 Oscar nominations, so far, for playing an alien from another planet in Starman.  He takes the body of a dead man and has to learn to walk, talk and act like a human being.  The form he has taken also happens to be the dead husband of Karen Allen and he takes her on a road trip to Arizona so he can rendezvous with his spaceship home.  It's a very funny performance as Bridges talks in a clipped manner of speaking because he is learning each individual word and just copying human behavior.  There's also some very funny moments when he mimics people and learns things like thumbs up and flipping the bird.  He never relies solely on humor though as he is still able to make you feel for this weird alien ball of light in a human body even though the character is completely unrelatable.

2. F. Murray Abraham is incredible as both old and young Salieri, the man who was tortured by his own mediocrity and threatened by Mozart's genius in Amadeus.  This was Abraham's first major film role and unfortunately he never got close to anything as good as this.  He's still turned in fine performances but never got another role as good as this one.  Abraham not only dons makeup to play the older Salieri but really gets into the skin of an old man.  Not only in his voice and mannerisms but he is really terrific at playing the same character at two different points of his life.

1. Albert Finney plays Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British former counsel in Mexico in John Huston's Under The Volcano.  The film follows one day in his life while his ex-wife comes to try to save him and their broken marriage.  As a recovering alcoholic, I am a sucker for a good story about a drunk at the end of his rope.  What Finney does here is something not a lot of actors do when playing the perpetually inebriated.  Real drunks don't act drunk.  Dudley Moore in Arthur comes to mind of an actor playing stereotypical drunk and a good hot bath brings him back to normal.  Real drunks have figured out how to successfully blend in with their surroundings.  Finney doesn't over do anything with his performance.  His drunkenness exists in the subtle nuances of his character.  As he's talking you can see something in his eyes that tells you he's not really paying attention to what he's talking about, he's thinking about where his next drink is coming from.

F. Murray Abraham was a relative new face in 1984 so I find it odd that Albert Finney didn't win.  Also Abraham had to split the vote with Tom Hulce.  Although, Amadeus was such a huge critical hit that I'm sure everyone thought that the name F. Murray Abraham would be across marquees for years to come.  Instead he played the villain in The Last Action Hero and Albert Finney is still waiting for an Oscar.  I'm going with a vote split and picking Finney myself.  Not only is he an actor who deserved an Oscar during his career but he's overdue at this point and fantastic in his film.  From his first scene you get the feeling like you are watching an Oscar winning performance.  The same can be said about F. Murray too but Finney had the better career.

Oscar Winner: F. Murray Abraham

My Vote: Albert Finney

GABBY Winner: Steve Martin for All Of Me

Best Actress

 

5. Vanessa Redgrave.  This is one of those movies that makes me hate the fact that I started this.  The Bostonians is a Merchant/Ivory adaptation of a Henry James novel.  That sentence alone made me not want to watch this.  I got about 30 minutes in and decided I must have better things to do with my time.  If you like these types of movies, you're not wrong, we just watch films differently.

4. Jessica Lange plays a woman trying to keep her farm afloat.  Remember that sentence because it's going to come up quite a bit this year.  Country stars Jessica Lange and her real life partner Sam Shepard as a farm couple trying to survive when they are facing foreclosure.  It's not a bad film, but I watched it right after watching Places In The Heart and The River and it was my least favorite of the three movies with the same theme.  Also, Lange just won an Oscar for a role she shouldn't have so I'm not considering voting for her.

3. Sissy Spacek plays a woman trying to keep her farm afloat.  The River is yet another film from 1984 about the hardships of farmers but this one has a flood so it's probably the most exciting.  Spacek is good in the lead role but she just won an Oscar 4 years ago and this is in no way 2nd Oscar quality.

2. Judy Davis is perfectly fine in A Passage To India but this film is just so dull.  She plays a British woman who suffers a panic attack when she's touring a cave in India.  She interprets the shock as a physical attack and an Indian doctor is to blame.  So, to sum up, nothing happened, an Indian man is accused of something that didn't happen, she later realizes that it was all in her mind.  That story took 3 hours to tell.

1. Sally Field plays a woman trying to keep her farm afloat.  I'm pretty sure if I finished The Bostonians there would be a third act plot where we saw Vanessa Redgrave planting corn.  I can't confirm that but it probably happened.  Places In The Heart is the best of the "woman trying to save her farm" genre that popped up in 1984 and then disappeared forever and that's due to the performances from the cast.  This movie has Ed Harris, Danny Glover, John Malkovich and at its center, Sally Field.  This is an incredibly sympathetic performance with some real nice moments.  Field is a widow who when the bank tells her she's about to lose her farm decides that she can do the impossible and bring a crop of cotton in.  Field was very deserving of the nomination, in a stronger year she wouldn't be my vote but in this weak category she ends up being the best choice.

Judy Davis is the only one here without a win.  In most years that means she gets my vote but I hated A Passage To India so much that I just can't bring myself to vote for her.  So, let's play a little process of elimination with the former winners.  Redgrave: No, absolutely not.  Lange: Just won for a performance she shouldn't have.  Spacek: Good but she was much better in The Coal Miner's Daughter.  I think a 2nd Oscar should top the performance you won for.  Field won an Oscar in 1979 for Norma Rae and she is equally good here so I'll pick her.  Plus, this gave us the iconic "You like me, you really like me" Oscar moment so there's another reason to vote for her.

Oscar Winner: Sally Field

My Vote: Sally Field

GABBY Winner: Kathleen Turner for Romancing The Stone

Best Supporting Actor

5. Ralph Richardson.  As I was queuing up Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes I had the thought, how the hell did a Tarzan movie score an Oscar nomination?  Well, this is sort of a classy Tarzan movie.  It focuses mostly on the ape man fitting in to high society.  It’s not a bad movie if you can get past the fact that Andie MacDowell is obviously dubbed.  Richardson died before the movie came out so this is a nomination for an acting legend who never won an Oscar.  The performance is not really Oscar level other than that.

4. John Malkovich was in two Best Picture nominees this year, in his first year in film no less.  That alone is worthy of a nomination.  He played a pot smoking photographer in The Killing Fields and earned a nomination as a blind man in Places In The Heart.  He is very believable in the role and has that kind of part where he starts as an asshole but then softens and redeems himself.

3. Pat Morita almost didn’t get cast as the wise sensei Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid.  Producers thought the part should go to a more serious actor rather than the guy most famous for playing Arnold on Happy Days.  His light touch with the role is what makes the character so endearing.  He gives the character a soft side that makes you want him to teach you karate.

2. Dr. Haing S. Ngor was not an actor when he was cast as Dith Pran in The Killing Fields.  He was a doctor who actually spent time in a Cambodian prison.  Knowing this while watching the movie does add realism to his performance.  When you see him looking at the horrors around him you can see something in his eyes that another actor couldn’t bring to the role.  He’s truly authentic and incredible in the film.  My only problem with him winning is that he’s not an actor.  He is brilliant playing himself much like Harold Russell was in The Best Years Of Our Lives but the Oscars are for acting and John Malkovich should have one before Haing S. Ngor.

1. Adolph Caesar plays a sadistic black drill sergeant who is murdered in the first scene in A Soldier’s Story so his performance exists only in flashbacks.  Nobody is sure who the murderer is because so many people had motive to kill him.  He’s a black man with power in the racist south so the black soldiers hate him, the white soldiers hate him and he hates himself.  This is always a hard type of character to play because you have to have enough sympathy so the audience will care about your death but also be enough a bastard so it’s reasonable to think people wanted you dead.  Caesar walks that line brilliantly in the film.

This is a tough category because I can make an argument for anybody here winning but at the same time there’s not one person who is clearly the vote.  First person off the list is Richardson.  This isn’t a Peter Finch or Heath Ledger situation where they probably would have won if they were still alive. A vote for Richardson is basically just a vote for a dead guy.  I read a quote somewhere, I think Inside Oscar, from Malkovich saying he knew he wasn’t going to win because who wants to vote for the one living white guy.  That’s how I feel too.  We don’t see a lot of categories with this much diversity so out goes Malkovich.  Then I have to take out Ngor just because he’s not an actor.  It would be like if the kids from Hoop Dreams won Best Actor.  Problem there is, neither Morita or Caesar had the greatest careers either.  So I have to vote for the best performance and that’s Adolph Caesar.  Ngor winning holds up in that Harold Russell type way but I would have rather seen a real actor win.

Oscar Winner: Dr. Haing S. Ngor

My Vote: Adolph Caesar

GABBY Winner: Adolph Caesar

Best Supporting Actress

5. Lindsay Crouse plays Sally Field’s sister in Places In The Heart.  I’m not really sure why she’s in the film.  The movie is about Field trying to save her farm and then they keep cutting to Crouse having marital problems which has nothing to do with the main plot.  Her husband is having an affair and I’m trying to remember if she even shares screen time with Field.  She must but most of her scenes exist in a completely separate film.  She’s fine in the role but I felt that her whole subplot was pointless filler.

4. Peggy Ashcroft certainly was old and British in A Passage To India.  I guess that’s enough to win you an Oscar.

3. Christine Lahti plays Goldie Hawn’s best friend in Swing Shift, a romantic drama starring Hawn and her real life beau Kurt Russell.  It’s World War II and the women are working in the factories.  Lahti plays the wise cracking, tough talking friend who used to be a singer and has a gangster as an ex-boyfriend.  She’s a bright spot in the film, the film just isn’t that good.

2. Glenn Close doesn’t have much to do in The Natural but she does bring something to a thankless role that a lesser actress wouldn’t.  Robert Redford stars as an old baseball rookie with a magical bat. Close shows up in the middle and has a romance with him, he’s in a slump and her presence snaps him out of it.  They were childhood sweethearts and now she’s a single mother.  She’s very good in the role, there’s just not much to it.

1. Geraldine Page only has two scenes in The Pope Of Greenwich Village but in this weak ass category she ends up being my vote.  This vote has nothing to do with her performance in the film which is fine but too brief to really consider Oscar worthy.  She got 6 nominations in her career and will win Best Actress next year for a lame ass movie.  If she wins here then she doesn’t win next year.  That means The Pope Of Greenwich Village, a good movie, is an Oscar winning film and The Trip To Bountiful, a really boring film, isn’t.

This is a big crop of ‘who cares’.  None of these performances deserve an Oscar so I gotta vote for the actress.  The Academy picked the oldest lady and went with Ashcroft.  I’m thinking of picking Close because she’s my favorite actress but this is not the role I want her to win for.  I’m going with Page just so Whoopi Goldberg can win an Oscar next year.  This was a really weak year for this category, I had to resort to some filler nominees to fill out my list too.

Oscar Winner: Peggy Ashcroft

My Vote: Geraldine Page

GABBY Winner: Elizabeth Berridge for Amadeus

Best Director
Milos Forman wins his 2nd Oscar for Amadeus.  Seeing as how he already won I probably would have voted for Roland Joffe for The Killing Fields.  Forman was clearly the best though and the rest of the category was pretty weak consisting of David Lean, Robert Benton for the fairly routine Places In The Heart and Woody Allen for the funny but not his best comedy Broadway Danny Rose.

Best Original Screenplay/Adapted Screenplay
The 3 comedies nominated in the Original category, Splash, Beverly Hills Cop and Broadway Danny Rose, more than likely split the vote and Places In The Heart ends up winning.  The other 4 Best Picture nominees earned nominations in the Adapted category along with Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes written by Robert Towne’s dog.  Towne hated the finished movie so much that he took his name off of it and replaced it with P.H. Vazak, the name of his dog.  Amadeus wins and deservedly so.

Best Documentary Feature
I don’t usually comment on this category but I just think it’s a weird coincidence that I just finished 2008 where Milk was nominated for Best Picture and the next year I cover, The Times Of Harvey Milk wins an Oscar.  I use a random number generator to pick years and am constantly surprised by little coincidences.

Best Original Score/Song Score/Song
The music in A Passage To India is appropriately sweeping and epic so I don't have that big of a problem with it winning even though any of the other nominees would be a better choice, particularly Randy Newman's score for The Natural.  This was the last year the Original Song Score category existed and they gave the Oscar to Prince for Purple Rain over The Muppets take Manhattan and Songwriter and deservedly so.  None of the songs in Purple Rain scored nominations in the Best Song category nor did any of the songs in This Is Spinal Tap.  Instead we have two songs from Footloose, Against All Odds by Phil Collins and Ray Parker Jr.'s Ghostbusters.  All these cool movie songs from 1984 and the Oscars give it to Stevie Wonder for I Just Called To Say I Love You from The Woman In Red.  An almost unlistenable song from an almost unwatchable movie.

Best Sound
Amadeus wins because, why?  Musicals or movies about music always win this category.  David Lynch's Dune scored an Oscar nomination, which is a silly thing to have happened.

Best Art Direction/Costume Design/Makeup
Amadeus wins these three technical categories.  Sweeps are boring to write about.

Best Cinematography/Film Editing
The Killing Fields was able to best Amadeus in these two categories and deservedly so.  The movie is beautiful to look at and has many tense moments that are aided by tight editing.

Best Visual Effects
Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom beats 2010 and Ghostbusters.  No complaints here.

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