2023 Saturdays with the Stars Recap

Yesterday we finished up our month with Kris Kristofferson, and today, we are putting the final cap on our "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood" season.  I will totally own this, our fifth season, is probably my favorite season we've done since Season 2 (when we tackled sex symbols), and maybe my favorite ever.  I knew going into this that westerns have always been one of my favorite genres, and getting to see such a wide array, including a lot of hidden gems that have been on the To Do list for a while, was an absolute treat.  But I didn't realize how many of the films would end up being downright classics, from Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy to some of the gorgeous westerns that Anthony Mann made with Jimmy Stewart, there are movies on this list that have quickly catapulted to my favorite westerns list, and I have even added a few already to my home collection.

The biggest thing that excited me, though, was how this really ended up being the tale of Hollywood, starting with The Big Trail and ending with Heaven's Gate, and how much of Classical & New Hollywood came in-between.  This has been the case in all of our seasons, but seeing it through the most American of genres, the western, it felt like I was hearing it for the first time.  We'll get into our sixth season, where we will be "Crowning America's Sweethearts," on Saturday, but one last time, take a look at some of the best from this season of "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood."

Favorite Performance from Each Star 

January: Gary Cooper, Man of the West

February: James Stewart, The Naked Spur

March: Gregory Peck, The Gunfighter

April: Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution

May: Randolph Scott, Ride the High Country

June: Yul Brynner, Westworld

July: John Wayne, The Shootist

August: Franco Nero, Querelle

September: Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

October: Robert Redford, Barefoot in the Park

November: Sam Elliott, Molly and Lawless John

December: Kris Kristofferson, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

5 Favorite Performers (Alphabetical, and based solely on the films we watched as a collective & not on the rest of their careers)

Marlene Dietrich

Clint Eastwood

Robert Redford

James Stewart

John Wayne

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution

Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

James Stewart, The Man from Laramie

James Stewart, The Naked Spur

John Wayne, The Shootist

12 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

The Big Country

Destry Rides Again

A Fistful of Dollars

For a Few Dollars More

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

High Plains Drifter

The Naked Spur

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Ride the High Country

Westworld

Winchester 73

Witness for the Prosecution

Top 12 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Stars...and Yes, Alphabetical)

Ellen Burstyn, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Dan Duryea, Winchester 73

Mariette Hartley, Ride the High Country

Burl Ives, The Big Country

Katy Jurado, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Diane Ladd, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Elsa Lanchester, Witness for the Prosecution

Charles Laughton, Witness for the Prosecution

Una O'Connor, Witness for the Prosecution

Lee van Cleef, For a Few Dollars More

Lee van Cleef, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Eli Wallach, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

OVP: The Horse Whisperer (1998)

Film: The Horse Whisperer (1998)

Stars: Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Dianne Wiest, Scarlett Johnasson, Chris Cooper

Director: Robert Redford

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"A Soft Place to Fall")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Robert Redford: click here to learn more about Mr. Redford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked a little bit about how Robert Redford was getting beyond his pretty boy roots, and beyond acting all-together by founding the Sundance Film Festival, today the most important film festival in the United States.  But Redford quickly went from highlighting the films of others to making his own in 1980, with the premiere of Ordinary People, his landmark debut which won the Best Picture & Director actors, making Redford one of the only directors to win for his film debut.  Redford would continue acting in the decades that followed, but many of his most remembered films from this time period were movies he directed like A River Runs Through It (which I love) and Quiz Show.  Because he didn't star in these movies, this is not my opportunity to watch Ordinary People for the first time (somehow, it is one of the only Best Picture winners I've never seen, and the most critically-acclaimed gap in my viewings), but instead we will talk today about the first time that Redford directed himself, in 1998's romantic western The Horse Whisperer.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with tragedy, as Grace MacLean (Johansson), the teenager daughter of a posh Manhattan couple Annie (Thomas) & Robert (Neill), is in a shocking accident with her horse, where she loses her leg, and her best friend & her horse are killed.  Annie, though an Anna Wintour-style magazine editor at the beginning of the film, starts to believe that saving Grace's horse Pilgrim is somehow connected with her daughter finding a zeal for life again, and so she goes to Montana to meet with a "horse whisperer" named Tom Booker (Redford), who runs a ranch and while initially hesitant, also sees that Pilgrim & Grace are connected.  He begins to train Pilgrim, but in the process he starts to win over not just a recuperating Grace, but also a smitten Annie, with whom he begins to have an affair.  Their love from two worlds is pretty clearly not going to last, but it is a moment where Annie begins to ponder her responsibilities to herself, her identity, and her family...and the man she is falling in love with.

In 1998, romantic dramas like The Horse Whisperer were not uncommon (see also Hope Floats, Meet Joe Black, and City of Angels), and so it isn't noted as a success in the way it would be today (a straight drama grossing almost $200 million in 2023 would be a guaranteed Best Picture nomination).  But looking back on it, it's so refreshing to watch the film from a modern lens, knowing this type of film would go out-of-fashion just a few years later as studios lost their minds over the X-Men and Spider-Man box office receipts.  The movie doesn't apologize for being complicated, giving us a woman who shouldn't be falling in love (she's married), but she is, and it doesn't give us easy answers.  In the end, it's not clear Redford-the-director knows if Redford-the-actor should end up with Annie or not, and that's kind of the point.  Love doesn't always have right answers, and to see that in a movie without any winking, comedic relief, or need to infantilize adults by pretending this is the first time either has fallen in love would read as bold today, and it's expertly handled by Redford as a director.

I will say that I don't think the movie succeeds in terms of chemistry between the two leads.  This is a weird situation as I think both Redford & Thomas give strong performances (both are very good actors) in their own lanes.  Redford's Tom is played as a romantic who clearly was too burned to end up with another woman after he lost his last wife, and Thomas gives Annie a three-dimensional look at motherhood, and being willing to sign up for more adventures as you age.  But the two don't have romantic inclinations to each other.  This isn't the age gap (though it's hard not to think about that since it's the only thing Gen Z audiences are capable of talking about in romances), but more so their acting styles.  Redford is such a naturalistic, California boy against Thomas stage-trained British beauty, and they don't really jive even as an opposites-attract pairing.  Good movie, good performances...weirdly not a compelling romance (though the Oscar-nominated song definitely tries on that front, giving us a lovely, lonely country ballad that they dance to at a critical moment in the picture).

With that, we're going to retire Robert Redford, who at 87 is still acting semi-regularly acts.  After the combined star wattage of Redford & Clint Eastwood, two of the great living movie stars of the 1970's, we're going to move next month into the work of a man who got his career start doing some of the independent westerns of the 1970's, before eventually moving into character actor roles in Hollywood films starting in the 1980's, including a turn in one of the most noted westerns of the 1990's. 

OVP: The Electric Horseman (1979)

Film: The Electric Horseman (1979)

Stars: Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Valerie Perrine, Willie Nelson, John Saxon

Director: Sydney Pollack

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Robert Redford: click here to learn more about Mr. Redford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Robert Redford is, of course, an iconic movie star and film director (we'll get into the film direction part of his career next week).  But if you think about his impact on Hollywood, there's a word that comes to mind more than any other that's part of his legacy: Sundance.  This is of course the name of his character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but it's also the name of the film festival that Redford helped to launch.  Redford bought land in Utah with some of his salary from Butch Cassidy, and would even film a portion of Jeremiah Johnson on this land.  In 1978, though, Redford would use his connections with Utah to found the Sundance Film Festival.  The initial festival was focused on previously-made movies, but by the 1990's the festival had grown, eventually becoming the most important film festival in America.  In recent years, it has become an important launchpad for major Oscar contenders like Manchester by the Sea, Call Me By Your Name, and the Best Picture-winning CODA.

(Spoilers Ahead) Redford didn't have a specific film tied with his early days at Sundance, so I instead am going this week with a western from around the time that Redford was founding Sundance (and just before he'd become a film director), The Electric Horseman.  The film has Redford as Sonny, a washed-up former rodeo champ who spends most of his days now as a spokesmodel for a breakfast cereal.  Sonny is a drunk, a shell of his former self, and also about to get fired during a large corporate merger.  He's also being harangued by an ambitious young reporter named Hallie (Fonda), who is trying to get a story about Sonny, and she gets one when he steals the horse he is a co-sponsor of the cereal with, trying to free it since it's being mistreated by the corporation.  They set off an adventure across the country, intent on letting the horse free before the corporation can get it back, and of course along the way...they find love.

The Electric Horseman is maybe the silliest concept for a movie I've seen in a while.  If the plot above makes no sense, that's because the movie doesn't hold up to this level of scrutiny.  Why, exactly, does a cereal company care so much about one horse, and also why will this throw off a potential merger deal?  These are questions that you shouldn't ask if you want to enjoy the film, which is quite enjoyable, to be fair.  Fonda & Redford, whom we already saw had chemistry in Barefoot in the Park, are at the peak of their star charisma in this movie.  Both had spent the past decade being some of Hollywood's most reliable leading players, and there's something about seeing two iconic stars play off each other that's breathtaking.  This is what was lost when we moved to making superheroes into movie stars rather than actors-getting to view an actual superpower, cause you don't get more radiant than Redford & Fonda at their celebrity peaks.

The film received one Oscar nomination, for Best Sound.  I don't really get this-the sound recording isn't all that interesting, and you could argue there was more opportunity to lean in on the sound design a bit earlier in the film, with the clanging in the casinos and the opening rodeo sequences.  But I do wonder if it got nominated on the richness of Willie Nelson's voice.  Nelson was making his film debut as an actor after a decade of being one of the faces of the Outlaw Country era, and would go on to star in a number of films in the next couple of years (right around the same time that Dolly Parton, his occasional collaborator, was becoming a movie star).  He recorded five songs for this, including a solo version of "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys," and if that's what the Academy was interested in...I can hardly blame them (Willie Nelson being long one of my favorite singers).

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

Film: Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

Stars: Robert Redford, Will Geer, Stefan Gierasch

Director: Sydney Pollack

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Robert Redford: click here to learn more about Mr. Redford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Robert Redford has always looked like a movie star.  But earlier on in his career, he was breathtaking in a way few male movie stars had ever been to that point.  He was a genuine pretty boy, and while attractive men have long been at-home in Hollywood, frequently men this good-looking had to have a wilderness period where they prove themselves.  This was the case for Redford.  He famously tried to get the lead in The Graduate, but was too good-looking (the role ended up making Dustin Hoffman into a star, and an Oscar-nominee); he was similarly turned down for the George Segal role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (which got Segal an Oscar nomination).  But in the early 1970's, in the wake of the success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Redford used his movie stardom to not just make money, but to force Hollywood to take him seriously as an actor.  Between 1972 & 1976, Redford started off a run of movies with Jeremiah Johnson that would include The Way We Were, The Sting, The Great Gatsby, Three Days of the Condor, and All the President's Men.  These were all box office smashes, but more importantly to Redford's long-term career, they were all critical successes as well (save maybe The Great Gatsby, which had the dubious distinction of being a Francis Ford Coppola-written movie the same year he made The Godfather Part II & The Conversation, a comparison most films would suffer in comparison to).  Redford got his first (and only, to date) Oscar nomination for acting in The Sting, and by the end of this run, pretty-or-not, he was never going to have to worry about being taken seriously as an actor again.

(Spoilers Ahead) This season is about westerns, and so when selecting a title from this run, I had to pick Jeremiah Johnson, the one western he made in this series of hits.  The movie is largely the Redford show, playing a fictionalized portrayal of the real-life mountaineer Jeremiah Johnson, who in the picture has just finished his time in the Mexican War, and has decided to go out into the wilderness & live a solitary life.  This is largely what he does, though he meets a few characters along the way, including Will Geer's Bear Claw, who mentors him in the ways of the mountains before he becomes a frozen corpse (this is how he gets his gun in an opening scene).  Throughout the film, we do see some growth in him especially after he becomes an accidental father (adopting a young boy as his ward) and husband (a Native American woman is given to him as a gift).  In the back-half of the film, after his wife & son are killed by the Crow tribe, he sets out on revenge, but eventually finds a peace with the Native Americans after they respect that both sides have suffered enough.  The film ends with him essentially folding into the myth of the mountains, never to be heard from again (but always a part of the place).

The movie, it has to be said, looks great.  The location-shooting (which Redford & director Sydney Pollack insisted upon) in Utah pays off in a big way with the expansive wide shots & gorgeous cinematography.  Redford, as well, looks divine in this.  Armed with a brunette beard but sandy blonde hair, he looks like a mountain man that's tumbled out of the cover of one of your mom's romance novels.  I also loved the song score, which plays in the background of the film, and I think adds a little bit of depth that the rest of the movie doesn't have the weight to carry...

...because this isn't a great movie even if it's an aesthetically-pleasing one.  Redford's Jeremiah Johnson gets no substance.  I think there's an understanding here that the reason Jeremiah becomes a mountain man is PTSD from having to deal with the death & destruction he saw in the Mexican War, but there's no sense of that in any part of Redford's work.  I'll praise him for most of the rest of the month (he's one of my favorite actors), so I can say as a fan that this isn't what he's best at.  Redford's best roles are either where he's out-of-his-league (Butch Cassidy, All the President's Man) or where he's combatting the expectations of looking like the all-American man but falling short (The Way We Were, The Sting, The Natural).  Here he's doing neither, and it shows.  Also, given it's the most famous part of this movie-the blink & you'll miss it head nod scene (you know it from the gif of Redford in this movie that has dominated the internet for the past decade) happens about halfway through, and in context it also reads as a little silly (just like the meme).

OVP: Barefoot in the Park (1967)

Film: Barefoot in the Park (1967)

Stars: Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Charles Boyer, Mildred Natwick

Director: Gene Saks

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Mildred Natwick)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Robert Redford: click here to learn more about Mr. Redford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Robert Redford always looked like a movie star (he famously was confused when Mike Nichols said he couldn't be the lead in The Graduate because he was too good-looking, apparently being perplexed when Nichols said he wasn't believable as a guy who was turned down by a girl...the real-life Redford being truly unfamiliar with the concept).  However, it took him a while to get there.  In the 1960's, Redford became a mainstay in television guest spots, including roles on Maverick, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Twilight Zone, even getting an Emmy nomination for The Voice of Charlie Pont, but film stardom wasn't really an option.  He started his film career in a guest spot in Tall Story (with Jane Fonda & Anthony Perkins), and became a second-or-third leading man in pictures like Inside Daisy Clover and The Chase.  It was in 1967 that Redford finally got to be a proper leading man and gain a strong foothold in Hollywood in Barefoot in the Park, a big hit (again opposite Jane Fonda) for Paramount that would lead to Redford getting A-list status for the next 50 years.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows newlyweds Corie (Fonda) and Paul (Redford) as they start to understand early married life together.  The beginning of the film is just them having sex for six days at the Plaza (having non-stop sex with a 30-year-old Robert Redford sounds like a good way to kill a week, so well done to Jane).  Afterward, though, they move into their fifth story walkup (without an elevator, a running gag in the movie), and the reality of domesticity starts to take over.  It turns out that Corie is not impressed with Paul's buttoned-up attitude, focusing on his job & not experiencing life, and she wants someone who is more adventurous, someone like their upstairs neighbor Victor Velasco (Boyer), whom Corie is trying to set up with her mother Ethel (Natwick), who is a bit shocked by everything involved, and likes her routine.  As the film goes, it turns out that both Corie & Paul need to give a little, but are clearly meant for one another, and the film ends with them reconciling on their rooftop after Corie saves Paul's life to a smattering of applause (and of course Victor & Ethel end up together too, because why not?).

The movie itself is a bit of a mixed bag.  The script is by Neil Simon, and (are we in a safe space here?)...I've never really gotten Neil Simon.  For much of the 1960's & 70's, his plays & films were a huge part of the cultural zeitgeist, but they feel bland and like they're commentating on things about romantic life that feel pretty prosaic and a weird mix of modern ideals & conservative values.  Maybe you had to be there to get it.  Like, it makes no sense that Corie is just learning about Paul being a "stuffed shirt" now, given they presumably dated before they got married (we learn zilch about what they're like before the wedding, which is an interesting writing choice but it doesn't really get us anything).

The stars, though, make up for it.  Fonda & Redford are sexy as hell, and honestly you kind of just want to spend the entire movie focusing on their randy interactions at the Plaza, with Fonda telling naughty jokes as Redford gets into the elevator being a plus.  The two of them, who had already starred in The Chase as co-leads before this, would go on to star in two more movies in the decades to come, and it shows-their chemistry is off-the-charts.  The supporting roles are less successful.  Boyer, at this point well into his career as a leading man and now taking smaller parts as an aging lothario, is as hammy as you'd expect, and so is Natwick.  This was the character actress's only Oscar nomination, and I have a personal policy of not being too mean about ragging on actor's only nominations, but this isn't earned.  She's two-dimensional, is basically comic relief that rarely provides comedy, and probably only got this because AMPAS wanted to award the film somewhere, and the leads were too sexy to honor just yet.

Saturdays with the Stars: Robert Redford

Each month of 2023 we are taking a look at a star who made their name in westerns, rustling cattle & riding horses during the brief time when cowboys ruled Hollywood.  Last month, we talked about Clint Eastwood, possibly the last really great western star to come out of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and who went on to become an Oscar-winning director.  This month, we'll appropriately enough go to another Oscar-winning director, one who got his start in romantic comedies, but would become a key player in several classic westerns before getting behind the camera, and founding America's most important film festival.  This month's star is Robert Redford.

Redford was born in Santa Monica, California to the son of an accountant, and like Eastwood, his family history in the US could be traced back to before the Revolutionary War.  He moved to New York City to get his start in acting, and got increasingly large parts in Broadway productions.  He also spent the front half of the 1960's getting bit parts in films & a lot of work in television, including an early part in The Twilight Zone, making him one of the last living actors to have gotten a major part in the 1960's best television series, even getting an Emmy nomination in 1962 for The Voice of Charlie Pont.  Redford would quickly develop into a movie star in films like Inside Daisy Clover and Barefoot in the Park playing romantic leads with "All-American" boy-next-door good looks.

Redford is a fascinating actor to pick for a series about westerns for a variety of reasons.  For starters, he honestly is maybe too good-looking to be believable in a western, particularly in the way that he presented.  Gregory Peck & Gary Cooper were very handsome, but Robert Redford had a modern beauty that didn't jive with period films, it felt so of-the-times (look at that photo of him, or look again as I know you can't stop staring at it-tell me that man couldn't still clean up at any bar in America on a Friday night).  But Redford would, in fact, become synonymous with the western, first in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and then later as an almost unrecognizable figure in Jeremiah Johnson.  This month, we're going to talk about his career, as well as his foray into film festivals, conquering the west for the movies via Sundance.

OVP: The Candidate (1972)

Film: The Candidate (1972)
Stars: Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, Melvyn Douglas, Don Porter
Director: Michael Ritchie
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Original Screenplay*, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

After a week off, we are back with more film reviews this week, and we're also going to return to an Oscars theme week.  For our 2005 OVP write-ups, we're going to be discussing the sound categories this week, and so I thought it would be fun to complement that with a collection of "Best Sound" Oscar nominations on the blog.  Every weekday this week we will be discussing an Oscar Sound nominee that I watched (or in one case, re-watched) for the first time during quarantine.  This will be the only thing that these films may have in common-we're going to discuss dramas, animation, musicals, and action films, but all of them were Oscar-blessed.  The first film of this bunch is going to be 1972's The Candidate, a movie that feels quite prescient when we look at what would happen in the ensuing years in terms of politics.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around the campaign of one man running for office, and what happens when he suddenly becomes viable.  Marvin Lucas (Boyle), is a Democratic operative who needs to find someone to take on Republican Senator Crocker Jarmon (Porter).  No Democrats want to run against the popular Jarmon, so Lucas is looking for someone who can be a sacrificial lamb so that the bottom half of the ticket doesn't get blown out.  He recruits Bill McKay (Redford), the handsome son of former Gov. John McKay (Douglas), to run for the seat, and promises him that he can run on his own issues-since he's going to lose, he can be as progressive as he wants to be without issue.  However, when polling shows the younger McKay is going to lose in a landslide (thus hurting the bottom half of the ticket), McKay has to moderate his stances to help the party.

You see where this is going, right?  The platitudes and banality of McKay's message starts to resonate with the voters (alongside the fact that he looks like Robert Redford), and what was once a lost cause election suddenly becomes one where Bill has a chance to win.  McKay is forced to abandon his principled stand on key issues, and even begrudgingly speak to his estranged father.  When McKay nearly abandons his moderate platform by insisting the campaign discuss poverty & civil rights, the campaign is able to distract the media by having Bill's father show up at the debate, endorsing his son in the process & giving them a shiny object to keep the real issues of the campaign away.  McKay ends up winning the election, but realizes (there's a famous quote at the end of the movie where Redford states "what do we do now?" to Boyle's campaign manager with no answer in reply) that in the process of the campaign he has lost anything that made him authentic, thus winning without it meaning anything.

The film in many ways foreshadows the ugliness of politics in the modern era.  The scene where McKay's father endorses his son to keep the heat off of what his son actually said (what actually will matter to the voters), is particularly compelling in a week where a congressman called one of his colleagues a "bitch" but the focus from the media was more on whether he'd publicly apologize or not, not whether or not he is fit for public office after such an outburst (spoiler alert: he's not).  The movie was written by Jeremy Larner, who worked for the Eugene McCarthy campaign in 1968, and so therefore knows of what he speaks, and also was clearly issuing an indictment of the then-modern Democratic Party for picking a more palatable middle-of-the-road candidate (Hubert Humphrey) over the outsider (McCarthy) that he had championed.  The script is great, knowingly looking at politics (even if it rarely gives us much to go off of in terms of lead performances, though Redford is a smart casting decision as an "empty vessel" that everyone can project their dreams off of given his universal handsomeness & natural affability), and is that rare movie that ages beautifully (if depressingly).

The film's sound nomination, though, is weird.  The 1970's if you look at the Sound categories oftentimes did this with prestige films, nominating films that we wouldn't normally consider a "Sound" nomination today, but instead just a movie they liked.  The film doesn't sound bad, but it also reads like a normal political drama, with sound occasionally coming forward in the crowd or debate scenes (but that'd been done before so this wasn't a new thing), but most of the movie is conversation, standard-issue.  Therefore while it obviously fits our theme (it was nominated!), it's a weird fit, especially considering its competition (The Godfather, Cabaret, The Poseidon Adventure) is much more what we'd assume would show up in a production category like this.

Who Will Win the 2020 AFI Life Achievement Award?

A few weeks ago, we did a look at who might be the next American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and since I had a lot of fun creating the list, I thought it might be enjoyable to take a look at a different upcoming major career recognition honor, the AFI Life Achievement Award.  This past summer, Denzel Washington was the recipient of the distinction, arguably the highest career honor in American cinema, but the organization actually doesn't wait long to announce its next winner, and if history teaches us anything, the victor will be proclaimed in early October, so we're only a few weeks away from learning the winner of the 2020 trophy.  As a result, I thought it'd be fun to take a look at a Top 10 list of who might be selected as the next honoree.

Before we get to the list, it's worth name-checking a few things that previous winners have had in common, so as to deduce who might be most likely to win this year.  47 film luminaries, ranging from John Ford in 1973 to Washington last year, have taken the trophy, so we have a bit of data to mine for clues as to whom next year's honoree might be.

Age: The average age of a winner is 69, though that's definitely an average (Steve Martin is the only winner to have actually been 69 when he won).  19 of the winners have been in their 70's, which is by far the most common age group to have won in, and no victor has been older than 90 (top in age was Lillian Gish) or under 46 (Tom Hanks was the youngest, and that win was criticized enough that I doubt they go for someone that young again).  So this probably means someone like Olivia de Havilland is out, as is someone like Leonardo DiCaprio.  As a result, bonus points to anyone somewhere between about 65 and 79, though obviously they could and have leaned outside that age range.

Occupation: The award is open to anyone in the film industry, but like most honors, it's more geared toward movie stars.  70% of the winners have been principally known for acting, and all but one of the remaining victors have been film directors (the sole person who was neither was John Williams, and there's really no living behind-the-scenes person who could rival Williams in terms of public perception, so it's going to be a movie star or a director).  The film directors who did make it are extremely well-known, just as famous to the public in recent years as a movie star (think George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg), so don't count on aging directing superstars like Norman Jewison or Ridley Scott, as they likely aren't famous enough.  They're also not American which brings us to...

Geography: This is the American Film Institute Award, and while that title doesn't preclude anyone, it sure helps if you're American.  94% of the winners were Americans upon the time they won (this includes people who enjoyed dual citizenship like Elizabeth Taylor and Sidney Poitier), which is potentially why foreign-born icons like Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, & Laurence Olivier never won, and likely why figures such as Julie Andrews or Sophia Loren (who otherwise would have been shoo-ins) haven't taken the honor yet.  The three foreign-born figures who did win (Sean Connery, David Lean, and Alfred Hitchcock) don't really have a lot in common, so it's hard to find some commonality to one person getting in if they aren't American.

Oscar History: If you're going to be taking the AFI title, it helps (a lot) if you're an Oscar winner.  77% of all of the honorees were at the time of their victory winners of at least one competitive Academy Award, and another ten were nominees (two of which, Henry Fonda & Martin Scorsese, would win competitive Oscars post their AFI ceremony).  The only person to have never been nominated for an Oscar and still win the AFI is Steve Martin, someone you'd be hard-pressed to find an obvious corollary to today.  This pattern has gotten even stronger in recent years-85% of the past twenty recipients were Oscar winners (excluding Martin, George Lucas, & Harrison Ford).  So it's likely that the next person to take the AFI will have won a competitive Oscar.

Gender: The ceremony seems to be trying to correct this in recent years, but it's still very much a boy's club at the AFI.  81% of all winners have been men, and the ceremony has never honored a woman who was solely or principally known as a behind-the-scenes figure (women like Shirley MacLaine, Barbra Streisand, and Diane Keaton have all directed films and won the AFI, but all three made their names in movies as actors).  The last two winners have been male, but history has shown that doesn't necessarily mandate that we'll be seeing a woman here in 2020.

DeMille/Kennedy: There are at least two other awards (other than Oscar) that are a strong indicator of whether or not someone will take the AFI trophy-the Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Kennedy Center Honor.  62% of all winners of the AFI were also DeMille winners and of those who were alive to receive it (the Kennedy Center Honors started last of the three honors, in 1978, so John Ford was dead by the time they rolled around despite having already won the AFI), 69% of the AFI Award victors also won the Kennedy Center Honor.  23 people have pulled off all three.  While the AFI has occasionally led the field (ie someone won it there before they picked up other honors, like Steven Spielberg or Elizabeth Taylor), it's a pretty strong indication if you're primarily known for film and you win one of these trophies that you're going to win one (or both) of the others.  One could make a sincere argument that the list of people who have taken the DeMille or Kennedy Center Honor without also having an AFI is particularly short right now, so AFI may be forced to add a new name to the roster next year.  Of the 16 DeMille and/or Kennedy Center victors (without an AFI) who have meaningful cinematic contributions, almost all of them have something stopping them from taking this leg of the Cinematic Life Achievement Triple Crown (I started calling it that years ago...and it has not caught on).  There are several non-Americans (Sophia Loren, Julie Andrews) or Americans more commonly known for citizenship in a different country (Anthony Hopkins, Angela Lansbury).  There are figures with major contributions to cinema but who are more known for TV (Cicely Tyson, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno), music (Cher), or the stage (James Earl Jones, Lansbury again), and then there are a few figures due to health or antipathy to such things might not show up at all (Joanne Woodward, Gene Hackman, Woody Allen).  That actually only leaves four figures who could be considered real contenders that AFI hasn't picked yet, and all four will be listed below so I won't spoil the fun just yet.

Fame: This is a hard one to quantify, but all of the winners have to be famous, and tend to still be extremely well-known when they won.  This has become even more pertinent in recent years.  Arguably the last time someone who wouldn't have been a household name still the year they won was Robert Wise in 1998, and in the past few years we've seen actors who are very active in modern filmmaking like Diane Keaton, George Clooney, and Denzel Washington take the trophy, so I suspect that the winner this year would either be still revered or quite frankly be someone whom you'd expect to be getting top billing on your local marquee.  This means that names like Ellen Burstyn, Sissy Spacek, Gena Rowlands, Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, or Francis Ford Coppola, names that probably have earned this kind of distinction but aren't really household in the same way as Clooney, Keaton, & Washington, are going to struggle to get a citation without some sort of revival.  This ceremony is funded by advertising revenue, and as a result they need a bigger name for ratings.

With all of that said, here are my guesses as to who the Top 10 contenders for the trophy are.  Sound off in the comments if you have predictions as well!

Honorable Mentions: Lots of options here, but Goldie Hawn, Robert Duvall, Spike Lee, Brad Pitt, Will Smith, Julie Andrews, and Michael Caine are all people that wouldn't surprise me, but all have at least some debits that would preclude them (age, geography, and fame being factors to at least some degree depending on the artist).  However, they're close enough to being real threats that I figured I needed to at least CYA myself by mentioning their names.

10. Ron Howard

Age: 65
Geography: American (born in Oklahoma)
Oscar History: 4 nods/2 wins
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Him: Howard is the rare American director who hasn't won this award that has the sort of name recognition (thanks to his previous years as an actor) and populist films (Cocoon, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind) that might win him a citation someday.  He's also well-liked by other directors who would have some influence in the selection such as George Lucas & Steven Spielberg (not to mention his movie star daughter could push for him & would make a glamorous, sentimental host for the evening), and he's nearly the right age for the win.
Why Not Him: Howard, though he does have a pair of Oscars, isn't really in the same pioneering league as the other directors from a critical perspective.  His closest corollary among the winning directors would be Lucas, and he's never made anything remotely as important to Hollywood as the Star Wars franchise (even though, ironically, he has made a film in the Star Wars franchise).  Howard makes a lot of sense in theory, but I wonder if they'd pull the trigger for him or wait for a director like Quentin Tarantino to be old enough before they pick another behind-the-scenes figure.

9. Glenn Close

Age: 72
Geography: American (born in Connecticut)
Oscar History: 7 nominations
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Her: Close recently had a bout of incredible press, first from her finally making a play for her Oscar trophy, and then a round of public sympathy for not actually winning an Oscar most assumed was in the bag.  She's well-known to audiences (everyone's heard of her) but still has critical hosannas in her corner to make this feel like a classy choice, and would be near the average age for a winner.  Could she be chosen as a way of the industry saying "yes, you're a legend" after she was denied that claim a few months ago?
Why Not Her: I mean, if she couldn't win the Oscar, it's hard to imagine that she'd take this trophy (like I said-it's very hard to win this if you aren't an Oscar winner).  Close seems a better fit for the Kennedy Center Honors considering she's nearly as well-known for television and stage as she is for film, and it's not like she has a lot of massive hits under her belt in the way that Denzel Washington or Tom Hanks does.

8. Jessica Lange

Age: 70
Geography: American (born in Minnesota)
Oscar History: 6 nods/2 wins
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Her: Lange has been having one of those great, late career renaissances that occasionally gets you to sweep awards like this.  In many ways it recalls Morgan Freeman, who wasn't particularly famous until much later in his career, and then suddenly he was greeted with an onslaught of awards. American Horror Story and Feud have earned her a new generation of fans, and if Keaton & Streep are going to win this trophy, it feels like Lange should join them as an 80's movie queen who stayed a household name decades later.
Why Not Her: Lange had a robust cinematic career, but other than Tootsie there aren't a lot of widely-remembered classics on the list.  More importantly, Lange's late-career renaissance has been for television, not for the movies in the way that Freeman's was.  She would get them ratings, and in some ways this might be what finally got Jane Fonda her trophy, but Fonda is way more iconic than Lange is in terms of her cinematic pedigree (even though they have matching Oscar counts), and Lange would be a harder sell for AFI without another great movie role.

7. Samuel L. Jackson

Age: 70
Geography: American (born in DC)
Oscar History: 1 nomination
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Him: Jackson is the highest-grossing actor in terms of Box Office draw ever.  He's worked with literally everyone (I wouldn't be stunned if even I've made a film with him at this point) and has been both a critical muse (Scorsese, Spielberg, Tarantino, & Paul Thomas Anderson have all worked with him), as well as the star of major franchises like Jurassic Park, Avengers, Star Wars, and The Incredibles.  He's almost exactly the average age for the honor, and few figures in the past thirty years have been in as much American film as Jackson.
Why Not Him: The problem is that Jackson's made a lot of tripe along with all of those major paychecks.  Notice that Michael Caine has also never won this trophy, and almost certainly Johnny Depp is going to struggle to take it as well.  This is because Jackson's ubiquity hasn't necessarily translated to quality.  Every AFI winner has made a couple of stinkers, but Jackson's name isn't necessarily synonymous with quality, but rather quantity.  That's a problem if you're going to get the highest honor in American cinema.  Plus, even with all of those movies he's still never won an Oscar.

6. Tom Cruise

Age: 57
Geography: American (born in New York)
Oscar History: 3 nominations
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Him: Cruise is a bit young for the award, but few actors can boast his consistent movie star appeal.  Nearly 40 years after he became a headliner, he's still a leading man in major blockbuster movies, and has made a lot of the people who regularly sit in the AFI audience rich beyond their wildest dreams.  He's had quality films (those three Oscar nominations), and has enough movie moments through Jerry Maguire, Mission Impossible, and Top Gun to guarantee a built-in audience for the awards show.  All-in-all, this is a pretty solid bet for someone the AFI will want to claim...one of the few undisputed modern movie stars who can always land a picture.
Why Not Him: Cruise is a bit on the young side, and hasn't won an Oscar (or the DeMille yet, and I think that would come first for him considering the Globes love of celebrity).  More importantly, Cruise's public behavior since his 90's heyday makes this award come with some controversy.  Forgetting the Scientology aspect for a second (and that's a big thing to disregard), he's been erratic as a public figure & his films have taken a serious detour in quality since the early-aughts.  At this point he's more Sly Stallone & Liam Neeson than he is Tom Hanks or Denzel Washington, and Stallone/Neeson aren't anywhere near an AFI Life Achievement Award.

5. Sally Field

Age: 72
Geography: American (born in California)
Oscar History: 3 nods/2 wins
DeMille or Kennedy?: Field will receive the Kennedy Center Honor later this year
Why Her: Field's recent Kennedy Center Honor is a big deal, as it elevates her to the same echelons of people like Lauren Bacall, Joanne Woodward, and Myrna Loy (three other actresses who got the Kennedy Center Honor but never AFI) rather than any number of 70-something actresses who were once headliners but now frequently come in as supporting players or in TV cameos.  The list of true film stars who get the Kennedy Center Honor and not the AFI is small, and Field comes with two Academy Awards, as well as a number of still iconic hits (Smokey and the Bandit, Steel Magnolias, Forrest Gump) and recent success (My Name is Doris, the Spider-Man movies) that could make this an easy sell from a fame perspective.
Why Not Her: Field probably wouldn't be a great choice in 2020, since she just won the Kennedy Center Honor (it's uncommon, though not unprecedented, for someone to get two such awards so close together).  One would think they'd wait a year or two before picking her.  That said, we're likely due for another female victor, and unlike the next two women, she's much closer to the age of the average recipient so I wouldn't discount her; Field represents a jump from "good guess, and maybe someday" to "I could truly see it happening in 2020."

4. Julia Roberts

Age: 51
Geography: American (born in Georgia)
Oscar History: 4 nods/1 win
DeMille or Kennedy?: Not yet
Why Her: Roberts is going to win this award at some point, as long as she lives long enough.  She's exactly the sort of figure who scores the AFI-popular, enduring, beautiful, a leading woman even when her star started to dim, and someone who scored an Oscar at the peak of her fame, so there's critical cache to go with the many, many hits.  Honestly, so confident am I that Roberts will win this, and win it soon, that I didn't even list Sandra Bullock on this list, despite me also thinking she could take this at some point as well (since Roberts will get this before Bullock, in the same way Meryl Streep was always going to win here before Diane Keaton).  It's not "if" but "when" for Julia Roberts.
Why Not Her: Roberts is the youngest person on this list, and while she wouldn't be the youngest victor ever (Hanks may have that record forever, unless the AFI goes for Leo DiCaprio in the next year or two), she'd be the third youngest after Hanks & Spielberg if she took it.  She regularly makes movies, and there's no rush.  Why not give it to her when she's approaching Clooney's age (he was 57)?  I think that will be the thought process for the AFI, at least.

3. Jodie Foster

Age: 56
Geography: American (born in California)
Oscar History: 4 nods/2 wins
DeMille or Kennedy?: Foster memorably took the DeMille at the 2012 ceremony
Why Her: Unlike Clooney, Foster is approaching Clooney's age (she'd be exactly his age if she was the 2020 victor), and she's one of only two people on this list who has taken the DeMille/Kennedy distinction AND has enough distance to that award that it wouldn't llok like they were copying the Globes.  Foster is an iconic star, iconic enough that even without a lot of recent film hits she could still feel like a relevant winner, and she's probably going to win this eventually.  The past two years have shown a propensity for picking actors that were a little young for the award, but were certainly going to take the trophy at some point-could that continue with Jodie?
Why Not Her: Aside from the age aspect, there's the lack of a lot of recent roles, and her tendency to be more political & press-shy than your average winner.  They have strayed in a way the Kennedy Center Honors have not (look at how Jane Fonda has the AFI but not the government-sanctioned Kennedy Center award), but her filmic resume in the past two decades is pretty thin for someone who would be winning a trophy that oftentimes comes at the tail-end of your cinematic career, not when it's largely been dormant for a decade.

2. Jeff Bridges

Age: 69
Geography: American (born in California)
Oscar History: 7 nods/1 win
DeMille or Kennedy?: Bridges took the DeMille earlier this year.
Why Him: He's exactly the right age for this, and like some other recent winners, he's been a constant movie presence for decades, but certainly a constant force in the last decade.  Bridges won his Oscar less than ten years ago, and has scored two citations since then, as well as a lot of renewed affection for being one of the best actors of his generation.  Everyone seems to love him (he'd have great speeches), and this has probably graduated to the "inevitable" at this point for AFI to pick him.  I can't really think of a better time to appreciate him with such a major honor, can you?
Why Not Him: The only thing holding me back from picking him is that he just won the DeMille.  Unlike the Kennedy Center Honors, the DeMille winner has to give a speech, so the AFI could risk all of their best material having gone to that Globes' speech that could still be in their memory rather than Bridges giving a fresher one at the AFI.  That's about the only reason I can think of not to pick him-he was my dark horse guess for this next year until he won the DeMille, and I suspect I'll be predicting him in 2021 if he doesn't take it next year.

1. Robert Redford

Age: 83
Geography: American (born in California)
Oscar History: 4 nods/1 win (as well as an Honorary Oscar)
DeMille or Kennedy?: DeMile in 1993 and Kennedy Center Honors in 2005
Why Him: One of the great mysteries of awards show nerddom, to the point where I always have to double check that I'm not wrong, is how Robert Redford hasn't won the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award.  He's a film icon with a number of classic movies under his belt (he's worked with everyone from Marlon Brando to Paul Newman to Jane Fonda to Meryl Streep), he's an actor-director (Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, & Orson Welles can all attest that's a good way to win this), and he's also well-known for his celebration of smaller American film through his work with the Sundance Film Festival.  Should he not win, he'd be one of the biggest names to never take the honor, and one of the more regrettable.
Why Not Him: I genuinely don't know.  He's considerably older than the average winner, and it's hard to imagine that someone hasn't pitched this idea before.  Is he refusing to accept (this doesn't seem like Redford-he showed up for the Honorary Oscar and the Kennedy Centers relatively recently so why refuse the AFI specifically)?  I've never gotten the impression he's a jerk off-screen (and it's not like that's stopped them before-I mean, Dustin Hoffman has won this award).  Honestly, I can't think of a real reason that he hasn't won, and will be perplexed by him not winning until he dies or finally gets the trophy-his recent retirement surely makes a strong case for giving him this, right?  As a result, I'm going with the obvious answer here even though I've predicted Redford before for this honor.

4 Mini Reviews

We conclude our review roundups today with four more more movies from 2018 that I'll be giving mini-reviews to for the sake of time as we put a finish on last year and roll into our 2019 projects.  We still have some more 2018 movies that I want to get into, but we'll be doing that via our traditional full reviews, with these last four films getting the one-paragraph treatment (tis the curse of not getting an Oscar nomination and landing on a day I was too busy to complete the review).  I've made these films wait long enough, though, so let's dive in to their discussion.

The Old Man & the Gun (dir. David Lowery)

This film works better if you assume that Robert Redford is, indeed, retiring from acting.  If you do, you get the sense of wistfulness for an actor who has dominated movie screens for decades.  Redford's kind, handsome face and voice resonate with the audience even as he treads on familiar beats.  It's an odd story, the kind I'm surprised Clint Eastwood hadn't gotten his hands on (about a bank robber whom tellers genuinely like and has been robbing banks nearly all of his life).  Being based on real life, there are less twists than you'd hope for/expect, and the back-half where you 100% want him to get away with it but know he can't if this movie ever got made, is a bit of a drag, but Spacek & Redford have good chemistry, and with the knowledge that Redford won't make any more movies, there's enough nostalgia there to give you a good experience. (Ranking: 3/5 stars)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (dir. Peyton Reed)

It must have sucked having to follow something as emotionally-draining as Avengers 3, but Ant-Man in theory works better as a standalone comic film, thanks in large part to the compelling main antics of Paul Rudd, our unlikely hero.  The film doesn't have the same level of panache and focus, unfortunately, that the first film had (which is my second favorite of all of the Marvel Universe films after Winter Soldier), getting too bogged down in the Ghost villainy, which goes nowhere, and perhaps not realizing that the movie doesn't really need a villain since bringing back Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), is more than enough plot.  Still, Michael Douglas's work here is continually great and I love the chemistry between Rudd & Lilly.  I just wish the film had trimmed about thirty minutes off of its runtime, avoiding expanding in too many directions. (Ranking: 2/5 stars)

Colette (dir. Wash Westmoreland)

Keira Knightley's post-Pirates career has perhaps been one of the best I've ever seen out of an actress that could've so easily just been "the love interest" in a pair of 2003 movies.  An adventurous artist, I can think of no better person to play the charming, provocative Colette in the early stages of her career when she was writing the Claudine books under her husband's name.  Unfortunately the movie never really captures the bite that Knightley seems raring to give to this character, with the thick plot feeling thinly handled by Westmoreland, trying to fit traditional story beats into the life of an untraditional woman.  Still, Knightley remains an actress I'm obsessed with, and will follow her pretty much anywhere. (Ranking: 2/5 stars)

A Bag of Marbles (dir. Christian Duguay)

A tiny little film that probably escaped mention with most people last year, I was intrigued by the film trailer of two young boys forced to flee the Nazis during World War II on foot, abandoned by their parents in hopes that they'd someday get to reunite.  The movie is based on a true story, an extraordinary one that became a bestselling memoir in the early 1970's, and there are moments that live up to the potential I saw in the trailer.  The cinematography is terrific, and I loved some of the side touches, particularly the brief interlude in the middle of the film when they're in Southern France, getting a respite from the war.  However, the movie never captures the startling fear of the real-life journey, and the child actors responsible for the main characters feel adrift in the movie's direction.  (Ranking: 2/5 stars)

OVP: The Great Gatsby (1974)

Film: The Great Gatsby (1974)
Stars: Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern, Sam Waterston, Karen Black, Lois Chiles
Director: Jack Clayton
Oscar History: 2 nominations/2 wins (Best Costume Design*, Best Original Song Score*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I have never bought the argument that a book is un-filmable, save perhaps for the dictionary or some form of poetry (and even then I think you might be able to make something interesting out of it).  This is certainly not true of a novel-you just have to change your approach.  No book, in my opinion, has been called "unfilmable" more often, however, than F. Scott Fitzgerald's magnum opus The Great Gatsby.  I honestly loved this book the first time I read it.  I hit it appropriately at the precipice of adulthood, just around the age of seventeen, when most people do, and the beautiful shirts and the vivid colors sparkled on the page.  Unfortunately, much like its future successor from Baz Luhrmann, Francis Ford Coppola's vision of Gatsby fails to land on the page, frequently feeling like a boring, odiously long movie and nothing more.

(Spoilers Ahead) I could start this out with an explanation of the book, but as it's arguably the most discussed novel of the 20th century (give or take Orwell and Tolkien), I don't know that it's necessary.  Suffice it to say Gatsby (Redford) loves and loses, Nick (Waterston) becomes disillusioned, and Daisy (Farrow) learns very little along the way.  The movie stays relatively close to the book in terms of plotting, though, it's worth noting, resisting flights of fancy or ways to make the novel more conducive to the screen, as large swaths of the book rest on Nick's narration.  This may be its greatest undoing, as you have to try to at least get at some of the interpretations of the book in order to get to why it's so terrific, but it has to be said that if you wanted a movie simply for the sake of preserving the book with a select set of stars (like having every major Broadway diva do Gypsy), that mission is accomplished to the satisfaction of those people who complain about minute details being changed in adaptation.  After all, the casting director isn't at fault here-I would've picked this slate of actors too.

No, the movie itself, though, is rather lifeless, and never really sees beyond the world of parties, costumes, and a romantic triangle.  This is typically all most movies ever need to thrive.  But Gatsby has always felt like a story where the romance was secondary.  I don't want to get into an English class-level discussion of the book (you can find thousands of those at SparkNotes sites all around the web), but the book itself turns the whole romance ideal on its head.  You have the inherited wealth of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, unpunished despite their actions, in juxtaposition to the crooked Gatsby, who is the closest we get to a likable character but whose sole drives are shallow and utterly fruitless-Daisy will never leave behind her country club life to go with this dangerous nouveau riche man, and perhaps doesn't even love him other than she loves his adoration.  The film loses this in its treatment of Daisy (always the problem with films-Daisy isn't supposed to be likable, and Farrow doesn't get that across enough to the point where it changes our onscreen perception of her-she just makes her naive, not cruel), and doesn't even delve into the possibilities that Nick presents.  All-in-all, it's a clunker of a film-boring, listless, and nothing really to lend itself other than gorgeous costume work.

This is, of course, where it won one of its pair of Oscars.  The book presents a costume designer's paradise, complete with Farrow and Lois Chiles in a variety of hats and flapper dresses, and of course there's Redford in that impeccably cut pink suit.  The costumes are gorgeous-I've seen both the suit and one of Farrow's dresses on a recent trip to Rosecliff in Newport (where the movie was filmed), and the stitch-work and precision is exquisite.  I'm not saying I'm automatically giving this the OVP based on being one of the more iconic looks in all of 1970's cinema (there's some really wonderful costumery in Chinatown and The Godfather Part II that year as well), but it's hard to argue with the Academy's knee-jerk win for the film.  The Song Score Oscar, on the other hand, felt overly generous.  It essentially won for the inclusion of a few jazz standards that were "ehh" to the plotline, and perhaps more so because it competed against two massive flops, and even though it had tepid reviews initially, Gatsby itself made Paramount a fortune.

Those are my thoughts on this 1974 misfire-what are yours?  I feel like this is a movie that many of you may have seen, or at the very least have opinions on, so why do you think that no one can quite get Gatsby right?  Do you think this movie deserved both of its Oscars?  Share below in the comments!

OVP: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Film: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Stars: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
Director: George Roy Hill
Oscar History: 7 nominations/4 wins (Picture, Director, Sound, Original Screenplay*, Score*, Original Song*, Cinematography*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

We finish off our three-day look at the final AFI 100 Years list with the final film that I saw that completed both the original and the tenth-anniversary editions of the list, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Yes, despite being a film fanatic for some twenty-odd years, I had somehow never seen the classic western before a few weeks ago, and let me tell you, I was excited.  There are very few bonafide American classics I haven't caught-in fact, I think this is the last one left that no one would dispute its importance and relevance.  As a result, I was truly hoping that I would love it as it was closing a long introductory chapter in terms of the world of cinema, and thankfully I did.  The film, warm and funny and still artistically-strong, is a joy to watch and something you'll want to see again and again.

(Spoilers Ahead...though this is based on real-life so spoiler alerts aren't really that necessary) The film is the story of Butch Cassidy (Newman), an intensely-charming bank robber who is joined by a gang that doesn't like his increasingly individualistic ways, but he is constantly supported by his right-hand man the Sundance Kid (Redford).  The two are in charge of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang, a group that frequently finds themselves blowing up the safes on trains and taking the loot.  The two gain a bounty on their head about halfway through the film that feels disproportionate to the loot they've taken, but they realize the train owner has a personal vendetta against them and they know that they won't be able to escape the men running after them, so they flee along with Sundance's lover Etta (Ross) to Bolivia.  There they have a mildly successful career as bank robbers before justice catches up with them once again, and they die (presumably) from a flurry of Bolivian bullets.

The film's plot is relatively predictable, but it gains almost all of its power from the strength of the two leads and in particular the splendid cinematography.  Newman and Redford, who would re-team four years later for the Oscar-winning The Sting, have an almost orgasmic chemistry with each other in the picture.  Newman has rarely been so watchable as Butch, someone who flirts with everyone (including Sundance), and can get pretty much anything he wants from anybody (excluding Sundance).  Newman was such a game entertainer but he rarely showed off this comedic muscle-in many ways he reminds me of a classic Jon Hamm-so handsome you can't believe they're also funny.  The wryness with which he infuses Butch is mesmerizing, and really brings the script by William Goldman to life.  Redford is forced to play the straight man, but he finds the silliness in his character (that infamous "I can't swim" cliff scene being probably the best example), and is so beautiful it's easy to see why Katharine Ross can fall for him even if he's constantly a pain-in-the-butt.

The film won seven Academy Award nominations, and all of them were a worthwhile investment, but I want to speak specifically to the cinematography.  It's easy to make the desert look good, but there are techniques here that I don't recall seeing prior to 1969 even in the films of Frederick Young.  The twilight scenes, in particular, are gorgeous and Conrad Hall (who would go on to lens pictures like American Beauty and Road to Perdition late in his career), despite the fact that if IMDB is to be believed he didn't original come up with the idea, gives us a more essential picture by making these scenes darker and richer in color than you'd expect from what seems to be a truly great buddy comedy.  This is wonderfully contradicted with the famed "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" sequence (which Robert Redford originally hated), which turned out to be one of the most celebrated in the film and wouldn't work if it weren't for the quick touch of Hall and Newman.  Overall, the film is a joy from start to finish-it's not a heavy, serious picture but it's one that it's impossible not to respect and admire.

Those are my thoughts on this classic movie, one I highly recommend if you've never gotten around to it-what are yours?  Do you have a favorite between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (I am perpetually loving Paul Newman)?  What is the biggest American classic film you've never seen?  And where does this rank in the (admittedly excellent) list of 1969's best movies?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Truth (2015)

Film: Truth (2015)
Stars: Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford, Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid, Elisabeth Moss
Director: James Vanderbilt
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's a little weird to start to see current events not only that you remember, but ones that you followed vividly on the big screen, but that was the case for me with Truth.  The 2004 elections were the first election cycle that I truly gave up my time and energy to try and campaign.  I was out stumping for John Kerry every single weekend, volunteering at events, even meeting everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to John Edwards to escorting Andre Heinz around my campus in hopes of getting the Massachusetts senator into the White House.  So I remember being livid at CBS and the producers at 60 Minutes for giving ammunition to the Bush campaign, who were already out smearing Sen. Kerry's war record, by royally botching the Bush National Guard story.  As a result, I went into Truth, even eleven years later, wondering how I would feel watching a story that still stung as it unfolded onscreen. After all, not only did this hurt Kerry's presidential chances, but it also ruined Dan Rather's career and altered journalism irreparably to the point where no one has the credibility necessary to get the benefit-of-the-doubt anymore.  What I found was a movie that may have occasionally challenged my perceptions, even if it is hampered by weak supporting parts and an occasionally too simplistic approach to the facts.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film's story is extremely well-known to anyone paying the remotest attention to the news in 2004, but for those who didn't, here's a brief synopsis.  60 Minutes, headed by producer Mary Mapes (Blanchett) discovered documents that were later proven to be potentially-forged that indicated that then-President George W. Bush had used his father's connections to get out of serving in the Vietnam War, along with multiple other members of prominent Texas families at the time.  Mapes proceeded to put the show on 60 Minutes with Dan Rather (Redford) conducting the interviews.  Almost immediately after, questions arose about the authenticity of the documents and the validity of some of the interviews, and many members of the media questioned whether or not the story had been thoroughly vetted.  The question in some ways hurt the Kerry campaign, giving them little to discuss about Bush's military record in comparison to his due to having to appear in conjunction with the fabrications (remember at the time Kerry was being "Swift-boated" and was countering pretty vigorously his military career with that of President Bush considering the increasing unpopularity of the Iraq War), and destroyed CBS News' reputation, causing them to fire Mapes and let Rather go in order to administer damage control.

The film follows all of that, but as it is based on the memoirs of Mapes, it is much kinder to her than I think even the most generous of viewers would anticipate.  The film frequently finds ways to create doubt in favor of her story, giving credence to Mapes even in areas like the forged documents, which most unbiased observers have felt she should have done a better job authenticating.  The film's politics, therefore, are interesting because they run counter to what many people, including CBS, have felt at the time and are pretty quick to throw two major "hmms" into the controversy; one, that CBS had a lot to gain from President Bush being re-elected due to the Viacom merger and two, that the reasons to forge the documents were pretty suspect and would have required someone with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of President Bush's time in the National Guard.  These are two fuels for the liberal side of this conspiracy theory, and while the politics seem pretty much in order, one does raise an eyebrow at the way that Mapes, our clear heroine in this story according to the writers, is exonerated by the directors even though at the very least she exhibited a serious lack of good judgment by airing this story without better vetting her sources.

The film's politics aside (and that's a big aside as they're the most interesting part when you compare it to the public perception of this scandal), you have a film that is pretty blase and hackneyed.  Taking out the fact that we know the ending from the beginning, the film's attitudes toward journalism occasionally feels a bit like it's trying to piggyback onto All the President's Men, but the side characters are wholly underwritten and underacted as opposed to that film.  There's a scene late in the movie where Topher Grace and Dennis Quaid meet with a throwback to an earlier scene where Quaid called him a hippie, except they've had almost no interaction since then so it's nostalgia over something you didn't care about, and this is true for most of the film.  The movie's only truly important characters, aside from the threat to journalistic trust, are Redford's Rather and Blanchett's Mary, and we get wildly different results from these two.  Redford's underplaying Rather far too much, and seems to just be portraying Robert Redford as a journalist.  There's no attempt by the actor to imitate Rather's iconic voice, and even his mannerisms lost in translation.  It feels more like Redford is playing simply a man who is revered, rather than one of the most recognizable figures in journalism of the past forty years.  This is entirely a miss, and something the film (which wants to make you cry), should have played up better considering Rather's position in a lot of our childhoods from watching alongside our parents and grandparents (including my own).

Blanchett, on the other hand, is marvelous.  For an actress that has developed a brilliant little niche of playing insanely wealthy white women who are deluded by their own stature into making critical mistakes (Elizabeth, Talented Mr. Ripley, Aviator, Blue Jasmine, soon Carol), she still finds something new and exciting onscreen as Mary Mapes.  She plays her both as someone who has an insane amount of conviction, but also who can't quite see that she could be wrong, that she made mistakes.  There's a number of fantastic monologues for her, particularly one late in the movie where she verbally owns the board investigating her, and you can see on Blanchett's face things she's been struggling to convince a public that has turned against her of, even when she realizes that she might have been glossed over by select prejudices.  Blanchett's a force of raw energy here, easily worth the price of admission even if I do give the film itself two stars.  She'll be nominated for Carol if she's included at the Oscars, but her work in Truth is a pretty fantastic consolation prize.

Those were my thoughts-let's hear yours.  This is likely to set social media a bit on-fire considering the political leanings of the filmmakers, so what did you think of Truth?  Where does it rank against some of Blanchett and Redford's other work?  And do you ever have a movie change your mind about a real-life event?  Share your thoughts in the comments!