1986 Oscar Watch

Aside from Terms Of Endearment, the 80s sucked when it came to Best Picture winners.  Ordinary People is a good film but not a great one, same can be said for Rain Man.  Gandhi, Out Of Africa and The Last Emperor are bloated, boring epics.  Amadeus is good but too long.  Driving Miss Daisy is a very "meh" choice and Chariots Of Fire kinda sucks.  Then you have Platoon right in the middle of the decade and I'm thinking, how did A Room With A View not win?  The Academy was on a hot streak of picking boring films but they finally made a hip choice.  This year is all around pretty decent.  Paul Newman and Michael Caine win overdue Oscars and you have Marlee Matlin and Dianne Wiest as well.  I went a different way with most of my picks but I have very little complaints this year.

You can see my GABBY winners and nominees HERE

Best Picture

5. A Room With A View is a Merchant/Ivory film based on an E.M. Forster novel.  Maybe I'm uncultured, uneducated or unintelligent but these movies bore the crap out of me.  I can not stand these prim and proper costume heavy period pieces.  If this is your cup of Earl Grey, have fun.  We apparently experience film differently but I know I'm not alone in feeling this way.  I also know that a lot of people feel differently because these movies keep getting made.  Not trying to start a fight, I just hate these types of films.

4. The Mission looks gorgeous, it was shot by Chris Menges who won an Oscar 2 years ago for The Killing Fields.  It sounds beautiful, it was scored by the incredible Ennio Morricone doing some of his best work.  If that's all you need to call something a great movie then this is a fantastic film.  If you want a compelling story and good performances then this is a huge failure.  I hard trouble staying awake for this movie that stars Jeremy Irons trying to convert a bunch of natives to religion.  It also features a completely miscast Robert De Niro and the movie is very dull.

3. Children Of A Lesser God is a beautiful love story between a hearing man and a deaf woman.  William Hurt stars as a teacher at a deaf school who falls for the school janitor who is a strong willed woman who rejects the idea of teaching deaf people to speak.  She feels ostracized by society and Hurt is the first person she lets in to her world.  It has a bit of a Lifetime movie of the week feel to it but it's so well done it makes me choke up every time.  The chemistry between Hurt and Marlee Matlin, who plays the deaf woman, is incredible.  They were dating in real life as well.

2. Platoon is Oliver Stone's Vietnam epic.  It asks the same question that most films of this kind ask.  Why are we all here?  What does it all mean?  And we see all this through the eyes of Charlie Sheen, son of Martin Sheen who took of through the same ponderings in Apocalypse Now.  It's a well made film.  Sheen joins the war effort and gets into a platoon with two sergeants, one good and one evil.  The movie uses these two characters to present both sides of the argument to why we were there in the first place.  It's a really good movie, my only beef with it is that it won Best Picture and Apocalype Now didn't.  That, to me, is the best Vietnam film but Platoon and The Deer Hunter won the Oscars.

1. Hannah And Her Sisters is a movie I avoided for years because I thought it was going to be over rated.  I always heard that this was one of Woody Allen's best but I was also told that about Manhattan and I found that movie severely lacking in most of anything.  I watched this for the first time about a year ago and absolutely loved it.  It sets the perfect balance between the two sides of Woody Allen films.  After Annie Hall, Woody makes Interiors which is laugh free and downbeat.  Then he makes Manhattan where he tries to be a little funnier but still primarily focusing on the human condition.  Gone are the crazy silly days of Sleeper and Bananas but every now and then he will do a fun fantasy film like The Purple Rose Of Cairo.  This strikes just the right balance of human study and comedy and truly is one of his best films.  The characters and their relationships are truly engaging but you also get plenty of laughs and heart.  The story revolves around Hannah, she is happily married (she thinks) to Michael Caine but he is in love with one of her sisters.  Her other sister is a neurotic mess who ends up in a relationship with Hannah's ex-husband who is a hypochondriac who thinks he's dying.  The entire cast is terrific and the script is incredible.  I just love this film.

Platoon is a good winner.  The only reason I don't like the win is because Apocalypse Now is a better movie.  I know they're not in the same category and were released 7 years apart but if someone was picking a movie to watch and using the Oscars for a reference they may assume that Platoon is the superior film.  Other than that, it's a really good movie and one of the best winners in this category of the decade.  There's no way A Room With A View or The Mission should win, although they would feel right at home with the crap that was winning at this time.  Children Of A Lesser God is a wonderful film but a little small for the big prize.  My favorite of the bunch was Hannah And Her Sisters but Woody already got his Oscar love, plus he doesn't care about these things anyway.  So I vote Hannah but am totally cool with Platoon winning.  It was really the best choice they could have made. 

Oscar Winner: Platoon

My Vote: Hannah And Her Sisters

GABBY Winner: Little Shop Of Horrors 

Best Actor

5. Dexter Gordon was a jazz saxophone player and not an actor.  In Round Midnight he plays a jazz saxophone player, not the biggest stretch.  He's actually very good in the role but it's hard to tell how much of the performance is acting and how much is just perfect casting.  I can imagine Paul Newman playing this type of character but I can't imagine Gordon playing Fast Eddie Felson.  It's a nice nomination but a solid no for a win. 

4. William Hurt won Best Actor the year before this for Kiss Of The Spider Woman and his performance in Children Of A Lesser God is good but not back-to-back Oscar good.  He plays a teacher at a deaf school, primarily focusing on teaching deaf kids to speak.  He falls in love with a deaf woman who works at the school and the movie is about their romance.  He has excellent chemistry with his co-star and has to do double the acting.  Not only does he have to play his part but he has to be the means of communicating Marlee Matlin's sign language to the hearing audience.

3. James Woods plays a pot smoking photojournalist whose mouth has gotten him in trouble to the point where nobody will hire him.  Salvador is Oliver Stone's other movie that came out this year and it is just as critical of the United States's foreign policy as Platoon.  He and his buddy go to El Salvador so he can get some freelance work taking pictures of the conflict down there.  While he's there he gets in the middle of death squads and military control.  He could just leave but he meets an old flame with two kids that he needs to protect.  Woods is really good here and the movie is like The Killing Fields but instead of boring old Sam Waterston you get a hip guy you can relate to.  Woods is a big reason why this movie works.

2. Bob Hoskins got his only Oscar nomination for playing a recently released gangster working as a chauffeur to a high price prostitute in Mona Lisa.  This is a film directed by Neil Jordan who did The Crying Game and the two movies share many of the same themes.  They're both about forbidden love and falling for someone outside your circle.  Hoskins takes a job from his boss, played by Michael Caine, to act as a driver and bodyguard for a call girl.  At first Hoskins and the call girl differ but eventually he starts to fall for her and he helps her find a friend that has disappeared in the seedy underbelly of sex workers.

1. Paul Newman recreates his role of Fast Eddie Felson from The Hustler in Martin Scorsese's follow-up to the 1961 classic The Color Of Money.  He is great, the movie is missing something.  I'm not sure what it's missing, maybe it's just some excitement.  Newman plays Felson, an old pool hustler who finds Tom Cruise showboating around a pool table one day.  He takes the kid under his wing and they go into pool halls and start hustling.  Cruise plays the games, Newman takes a cut and shows him the ropes.  Scorsese swirls the camera around and zooms in quickly to people's faces like he can't figure out what he wants to focus on.  The grittiness of the original is gone and what is left is pure popcorn.  Newman, however, holds the film together.  He's playing a character who dispenses wisdom often and Newman himself plays the character with the wisdom of a guy who's been doing this a really long time.

Newman was so overdue for an Oscar at this point that it was a joke.  They should have given him the win in 1961 for the original film and then they had numerous chances like Cool Hand Luke and The Verdict but despite 7 nominations he never took one home.  This was also his last chance, he got a veteran nomination in 1994 and a final one in 2002, but this was really the last chance to give him a competitive Oscar and it not seem like a blatant gift.  So this vote for Newman is less a vote for a great performance and more a vote for a guy who really should have won by now.  So since the performance isn't really worthy of a win I gotta stick by my rule of veteran wins.  Mainly, does him winning here take a deserved win away from anyone else?  Kinda, but not really.  Gordon doesn't really belong here and Hurt just won but Hoskins and Woods could have won this if it weren't for Newman, and had Newman already won they would be my top two.  Both are on their first nominations though so the edge still goes to Newman. 

Oscar Winner: Paul Newman

My Vote: Paul Newman

GABBY Winner: Jeff Goldblum for The Fly 

Best Actress

5. Jane Fonda wakes up next to a dead body and has no memory of what happened in The Morning After. It's a typical 80s mystery/thriller and she is the weak link in this tough category.  Plus, she already had two Oscars and there's no way she deserved a 3rd for this.

4. Sissy Spacek stars as one of three sisters, the other two being Jessica Lange and Diane Keaton, in Crimes Of The Heart.  This is a movie I thought I was going to hate that I ended up being delighted by.  I like when I am proven wrong by a film because it leaves open the possibility that I may one day like a costume drama.  It gives me a hopeless optimism as I near the end of watching every Oscar nominated film.  This is a dark comedy set in the south where three sisters come back home after one of them murders her husband.  Sissy plays the murderer.  Her husband was abusive and caught her having an affair so she shot him and watched him die.  Sissy is very funny in the film and probably has the most convincing accent of the three leads.  She's so meek but also so powerful at the same time.  I really enjoyed her in the film but she just won 6 years ago and this category is stacked this year.

3. Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley in Aliens.  She has been in stasis since the first movie and once rescued nobody will believe her about the alien that took over her ship.  Now she has to fight a new crop of space creatures.  Weaver kicks ass as Ripley and it's really cool that they nominated her for this.  She's a bad ass action hero in a male dominated genre.  It's not really Academy Award worthy though.  In a weaker year she would be an awesome winner but imagine if Harrison Ford got nominated for Air Force One.  You'd be like, that's pretty cool but Oscar?

2. Marlee Matlin is deaf in real life so some might say it's not really a stretch for her to play a deaf woman in Children Of A Lesser God.  I don't know who would say that but I want to separate this performance from those like Harold Russell and Dr. Haing S. Ngor.  Matlin was an actress who was perfect for this part.  Those other two were people called into fit a part that paralleled their lives.  Matlin has a natural star quality about her.  She's just captivating to watch and when you take away all dialogue from an actor then you are only left with the physicality to express emotions.  Matlin barely says a word in the film but we always know what she's trying to say.

1. Kathleen Turner delivers a very funny performance in Peggy Sue Got Married as a woman who travels back in time to her high school days.  Mysteriously at her reunion she finds herself waking up a teenager again.  Now she has the second chance to live her life on a different track.  She dumps her loser boyfriend who in the first timeline ended up cheating on her, she befriends the science geek who ended up becoming wealthy and she tries to savor every moment she has with her family.  It's a cute little time travel comedy.

This is a pretty tough category.  I like all 5 of these actresses and their performances.  First we have to take off Fonda and Spacek just because they've won before and in a category like this you have to look for any reason to note vote for someone until you pick the winner.  Next off is Weaver just because of the type of role she's playing.  She's great but it's an action movie and a sequel.  I usually hate when I hear the phrase "not Academy friendly" because film should be judged equally no matter what the genre.  But when you get down to it, some stuff is just not Academy friendly.  That leaves Matlin and Turner and as much as I loved Marlee and am glad that she won, I gotta vote for Kathleen Turner.  Mainly because Turner had the better career and Matlin never had anything bigger than this.  Kathleen Turner was the Best Actress of the decade cranking out hit after hit year after year.  Then she disappeared and you should have given her the Oscar when you had the chance.

I gave Marlee Matlin the win in my awards because I already gave Turner a win in 1984. 

Oscar Winner: Marlee Matlin

My Vote: Kathleen Turner

GABBY Winner: Marlee Matlin 

Best Supporting Actor

5. Denholm Elliott is the best part of a boring movie but I ain't voting for nobody in A Room With A View.

4. Willem Dafoe plays a Christ like sergeant in Platoon.  He will literally shoulder your burden as he is introduced lightening a fellow soldier's backpack and carrying it up a hill.  He's the pot smoking nice sergeant who loves his men and the men love him.  He's the yin to Tom Berenger's yang and he has the classic death scene on the poster.  He's good in the film but he's the less showy of the two Platoon actors nominated in this category.

3. Michael Caine is always great and his performance in Hannah And Her Sisters is no different.  He plays Hannah's husband who is plotting an affair with her sister.  He has fallen in love with her and spends all his time thinking about her.  He tries to facilitate a chance meeting on the street just so he can spend some time with her.  We also get to hear his internal monologue so we get to see Caine acting and then hear his pleasant voice relaying his thoughts.

2. Dennis Hopper is simply iconic as Frank Booth, the gas huffing sociopath rapist and kidnapper in Blue Velvet.  His career had been in decline for many years but this is the year he got sober and mounted a comeback.  And the Academy nominated him for Hoosiers instead.  There's no reason why he shouldn't have been nominated for Blue Velvet and he would have easily won this category.  I'm guessing David Lynch's bizarre and violent freak show was too much for the voters so they picked the nice movie.  In Hoosiers he plays an old drunk whose son is on the basketball team.  He knows everything there is to know about college basketball but he's too drunk to function.  Gene Hackman offers him a spot on the team if he can get his act together.  He does, quits drinking and redeems himself.  It's not a bad performance but him being up this high in the rankings is almost solely due to Blue Velvet and almost nothing to do with his actual nominated performance.

1. Tom Berenger is the evil sergeant in Platoon.  He has a badass scar on his face that lets you know he's seen some shit and he has no problem killing Vietnamese people if they are in his way.  Berenger is fantastic in this role.  He's a villain in the film but a hero in his own mind.  You can tell that Berenger thinks that his character is in the right at every move even though he does some truly despicable things.  Based solely on performance, he's the best in this category, no questions asked.

Tom Berenger gives the best performance in this category but I can completely see why he lost.  First off, you have a vote split to contend with.  Both Berenger and Dafoe are nominated and I'm sure some people couldn't decide between them so they voted for someone else.  Then you have two sentimental choices to compete with.  I'm sure Dennis Hopper got a lot of votes because of his amazing comeback story.  This guy was written off as a lost cause until he gets sober and has an amazing year.  Even though he was nominated for the wrong film, I'm sure he got a lot of votes.  Then there's Michael Caine who has been consistently good for 20 years now and never won an Oscar.  Caine is good but I don't think he's Oscar level good compared to Berenger and even Hopper.  Plus, I've already voted once this year based on career achievement so I'm gonna vote for the better performance here. 
 Still, it's cool that Caine won an Oscar.  It's the 2nd win I have issue with.  Caine is so good in everything and has never given a bad performance, even in bad films.  Have you ever seen The Swarm or Beyond The Poseidon Adventure?  God awful films that feature Michael Caine doing his best.  He missed out on accepting his Oscar this year because he was doing reshoots on Jaws 4.  They should have just given him an Oscar the next year for Jaws 4 because he's great in that movie too. 

Oscar Winner: Michael Caine

My Vote: Tom Berenger

GABBY Winner: Alan Ruck for Ferris Bueller's Day Off 

Best Supporting Actress

 

5. Maggie Smith.  You gotta love Maggie Smith but there is absolutely no way I am voting for anyone or anything associated with A Room With A View.

4. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio plays Tom Cruise's tough girlfriend in The Color Of Money.  Cruise is a pool hustling prodigy but he's too cocky.  Paul Newman sees Mastrantonio as the key to focus him.  So she comes along with them as they hustle and sometimes Newman pretends to make out with her to make Cruise angry so he can use that anger playing pool.  She's fine in the film but not really a performance that needed to get nominated.

3. Tess Harper is quite a hoot as the McGrath sisters's gossipy cousin in Crime Of The Heart.  She shows up, gets some good laugh lines and manages to steal focus from Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek.  The main reason I can't vote for her is because she's not stronger than anyone else in her film.  It would be odd if she gets an Oscar and Sissy Spacek doesn't and Keaton and Lange aren't nominated.

2. Dianne Wiest plays Hannah's neurotic sister in Hannah And Her Sisters.  She does a lot of drugs and can't keep a job or a man.  Then she finds someone in the form of Woody Allen, who is just as big of a mess.  He's a hopeless hypochondriac who was also married to Hannah.  They go on a blind date that ends up in disaster but a few years later they reconnect and fall in love.  I like Wiest in this film but honestly, I don't understand why she won.  I mean, this is an incredibly weak category but I don't see the acclaim for her performance.  I've read some articles that call this one of the best decisions of all time.  I get the Wiest win in 1994 but this seems like she just won by default.  If they were going to give it to someone from Hannah And Her Sisters I would prefer they nominate Barbara Hershey.

1. Piper Laurie plays Marlee Matlin's estranged mother in Children Of A Lesser God.  She's not in the film that much.  William Hurt goes to her to try and get some information and it turns out that she resents her daughter for her husband leaving.  Marlee's father couldn't deal with the stress of having a deaf daughter so he left the family.  Then later on in the movie Marlee and William break up and she needs a place to stay so she goes to her mother and reconciles with her.  She really only has two scenes in the film and it's not much of a part.  This is kind of a veteran nomination but I'll try to explain why she's my number 1.

None of these performances really scream Oscar winner.  Smith already won twice and is disqualified for being in a Merchant/Ivory film.  Mastrantonio doesn't do much of anything in her film.  Harper is fun but her competition and co-stars are stronger.  That leaves Piper and Dianne and Dianne has the better role and delivers the better performance.  However, Dianne is going to win again in 1994.  Knowing that makes me want to vote for Piper Laurie.  Also, I wanted to vote for her for both The Hustler and Carrie but didn't because there was someone stronger in those categories and I also loved her in Twin Peaks.  Out of these 5 women, she's the one that I want to have an Oscar the most, not counting Maggie Smith who already had 2.  The final reason I wanted this to happen is because it would have been so cool for both Newman and Laurie to win on the same night.  They star in The Hustler and 25 years later win Oscars for different films. 

Oscar Winner: Dianne Wiest

My Vote: Piper Laurie

GABBY Winner: Cathy Tyson for Mona Lisa

Best Director
Oliver Stone wins for Platoon which is probably the best choice in the category.  David Lynch would have been the cool choice for Blue Velvet.  I also would have liked to see Woody Allen win for Hannah And Her Sisters.  I think this is probably his best directorial achievement as all the performances are wonderful and the movie is just very tight and focused throughout.  Roland Joffe and James Ivory rounded out the category.  The only Best Picture nominee without a Best Director nomination is Children Of A Lesser God.  Why?  Because a woman directed it.

Best Original Screenplay/Best Adapted Screenplay
They had to give Woody something even though he wasn't going to show up to collect it.  Hannah And Her Sisters deservedly wins Best Original Screenplay beating out both Oliver Stone movies, Platoon and Salvador and, for some reason, 'Crocodile' Dundee.  Speaking of things I don't understand, A Room With A View wins Best Adapted Screenplay over Children Of A Lesser God, The Color Of Money, Crimes Of The Heart and Stand By Me, receiving its only nomination.

Best Original Score/Original Song
While I feel Jerry Goldsmith's score for Hoosiers and Ennio Morricone's epic score for The Mission are the best in the category, Herbie Hancock winning for Round Midnight is a pretty hip choice.  Not so hip is the Best Original Song category as ballads from The Karate Kid Part II, An American Tail, That's Life and Top Gun get nominated.  My favorite of the bunch is Mean Green Mother From Outer Space from Little Shop Of Horrors.  Take My Breath Away by Berlin from Top Gun wins and it's not a bad song but they couldn't have nominated Danger Zone?

Best Sound/Sound Effects Editing
Platoon wins Best Sound but doesn't get a nomination in the other category so Aliens rightfully wins for Sound Effects Editing.  Although it had tough competition from Top Gun and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Best Art Direction
More like Best Fart Direction.  A Room With A View wins.

Best Costume Design
More like Best Far-ume Design.  A Room With A View wins.

 Best Cinematography
Chris Menges wins for The Mission and I can't argue with that.  The movie looks absolutely gorgeous, I just wish the script was half as compelling as his camerawork.  But real quick, what's Peggy Sue Got Married doing in this category.  I just watched the film and I didn't notice anything special about the cinematography.  It also won the American Society Of Cinematographers award this year, their first in existence.  I must have missed something.

Best Makeup
The Fly is one of the most deserving winners ever in this category, especially since it was up against The Clan Of The Cave Bear.

Best Film Editing
Platoon wins this one and is a very solid choice.  Aliens would have been the cooler choice.  Actually, my favorite was probably Hannah And Her Sisters which weaves all the stories together seamlessly.  Woody's longtime editor Susan Morse received her only Oscar nomination this year.

Best Visual Effects
Aliens beats Little Shop Of Horrors and Poltergeist II: The Other Side.  You'll hear little complaining from me.

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