OVP: The Client (1994)

Film: The Client (1994)
Stars: Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Renfro, Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony LaPaglia
Director: Joel Schumacher
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Susan Sarandon)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

During the 1990's, one of the biggest writers on the planet was John Grisham (still an author that can command bestseller lists, though with a thin hold on larger pop culture), and pretty much every major Grisham novel was bound (for a time) to be brought to the big-screen.  This was because he was basically a star attraction in the title, and it worked-movies like The Firm and The Pelican Brief were big hits, and it wasn't until the late 1990's with box office disappointments like The Chamber and The Rainmaker that the phenomenon of the Grisham adaptation started to die down.  The Client, though, was released during the heyday of Grisham's movies, and is one of only two of his film adaptations (despite all of them having buzzy casts) to win an Academy Award nomination for acting (the other being The Firm for Holly Hunter), getting Susan Sarandon the third of the four nominations she received from 1991-95.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on young Mark Sway (Renfro), an 11-year-old frequently in trouble who accidentally witnesses a suicide.  Before he dies, though, the man who kills himself tells Mark the location of a US Senator's body who has gone missing, and is presumed dead.  It turns out he is dead, and was killed by a rebellious mob hitman named Barry "The Blade" Muldano (LaPaglia).  Both US Attorney Roy Foltrigg (Jones) and henchmen of the Blade's gang begin to harass Mark, his brother (who has been traumatized by the suicide & stopped speaking) and his mother (Parker), so Mark hires a recovering alcoholic attorney named Reggie Love (Sarandon), who despite not being of the same educational caliber as Foltrigg, is able to go toe-to-toe with him, frequently outsmarting his tricks.  Despite friction between the two, Mark & Reggie form an unlikely friendship, and in the end Reggie is able to find the senator's body with Mark, and put Mark's family into witness protection, while still providing Foltrigg with enough evidence to win his case & mount a run for the governorship (the Blade is killed by the mob for his reckless behavior).  Thus, happy endings all around for the heroes, and comeuppance for the villain.

The movie feels a bit like an extended episode of Law & Order upon revisit, albeit with a helluva guest star budget.  I have not read The Client, but I have enjoyed Grisham's books in the past (my favorite is probably The Runaway Jury), as they're pulpy and the sort of thing you can take on a family vacation without having to really consider the book, and frequently putting it down at different intervals (it's not like reading Portnoy's Complaint).  But the movie itself meanders too much, and  doesn't ground Mark with enough consistency, even for an 11-year-old.  Renfro launched his career with this film, which would eventually include hits like Tom and Huck and Sleepers before he would become a tragic case of child stardom gone wrong (drugs, arrests, and death-by-overdose at the age of 25 would follow).  He's good in this movie, but the script does him few favors, making him lose trust in Reggie too often to feel plausible, particularly considering that he has a decent relationship with his mother, even if she's not June Cleaver, and so overreacting to female authority figures feels like a reach.

The movie won one Academy Award nomination, in line with our theme this week, for Best Actress. Sarandon for a brief period in the early 1990's got nominated for everything.  Oscar sometimes does this with actors they feel deserve to eventually win a trophy, increasing their odds of getting one by citing them always, and then immediately lose interest after they win (I suspect if Amy Adams wins a nomination in the next couple of years, she won't be able to get nominated under any circumstances in a similar way afterward).  This was at a point in that push to honor Sarandon, and I honestly wonder if she was close to winning considering how famously bad the category was in 1994 (Jessica Lange ended up winning for a film that had sat on Orion's shelf for three years), but this would've been a weird Oscar win.  Sarandon specializes in playing smart, loquacious women, but this isn't a serious film, and this is merely a good performance in a middling movie.  That being said, I've seen a chunk of these nominations, and I can't promise I won't also consider Sarandon for the win as, yes, 1994 was a strange year for Best Actress.

Five Thoughts on Feud

Yes, I'm aware I'm two weeks late on this, but if you knew what my actual life was like, you'd be expressing nothing but sympathy this morning for me.  I'll be honest here-I haven't been to a movie in weeks.  Quite frankly, I haven't seen a movie in weeks-I can't actually remember the last time that I've gone this long without catching a movie either in theaters or at home (literally, cannot remember), which if you can tell, messes a bit with my head.  That's how insane my work life has been in the past few weeks.  But I'm trying to be back and write a bit more on the blog (and gain control over other facets of my life in the process), and timely or not, I want to share my thoughts on the now finished first season of Feud.  Boiling below are the five main takeaways from the series.

1. This Was a Really Cool Concept...That Didn't Really Work

The problem for me with complaining about Feud is that it's a miracle that the show was made at all. In a sign that Ryan Murphy is now so powerful he can get anything greenlit (joining the likes of JJ Abrams and Shonda Rhimes in that regard), we managed to somehow get a story about two major film stars of the 1940's in their twilight years made for television, despite neither of them having a major cache with younger audiences in the way that, say, James Dean or Marilyn Monroe have today.  It's a miracle that the show was made at all, and really cool.  I love the idea that we can venture into a slice-of-life biopic for a television miniseries in such a way, and in particular about two of my favorite actresses.

I just wish it had been better made.  I haven't, admittedly, seen The People vs. OJ Simpson (which I hear just marvelous things about), but biopics are tough for television.  We know how they're going to go, so there's few surprises, and particularly with Murphy there, you can't stray that far from the ostentatious nature of the series into flights-of-fancy, which has been his raison d'être.  Love or hate shows like American Horror Story or Glee, but they don't let reality get in the way of a bold idea, and I frequently felt like he either repeated himself as a creator on Feud, or he made the series too muted. Take the constant back-and-forth between Crawford and Davis throughout the show.  What initially was trashy fun became boring after so many weeks-it would have helped, perhaps, if we'd occasionally gotten out of their cocoon (seen other relics of Hollywood from their era and what was happening to them at the time like Greta Garbo or Loretta Young), but the tight lens on Crawford (and to a lesser extent Davis) got boring after a while, and you mostly wanted to see where things landed rather than enjoy the ride.

2. The Leads are a Big Part of the Problem.

One of the biggest problems in the show may have been the two leading ladies.  For a while I thought the show might get around the age gap (Crawford and Davis were both considerably younger than Lange or Sarandon in real life, making it seem more urgent for them to keep working), and largely it wasn't a problem, but other things got in the way instead with this specific casting.

For starters, Lange played Joan Crawford the same way she played Fiona Goode or Elsa Mars-a woman looking back on the regrets of her life through the lens of lost youth.  The way she played Crawford, it was hard to fathom that at one time she was at the top of her field and a major movie star force.  This is partially the writer's problem-Crawford as written seemed to only get her power through her movie star beauty, not through talent or sheer determination, but that wasn't true in real life, and more importantly it doesn't really work with some of the things she demands later in the picture.  Forget for a second that she doesn't look or sound or act anything like the meticulous but always glamorous Crawford (the scene where she tells off a fan stuck in my craw as Crawford was unusually devoted to her fans to the end), and think instead about how she's constantly struggling with vanity, and yet has the audacity to march into Jack Warner's office or meet with her agents and tell them all to go to hell.  It's an easy out to blame it on her drinking, but she's hardly a believable figure, someone who has to be constantly reassured of her worth, and Lange plays her the same as she plays every other Ryan Murphy creation.  She's giving a good performance (Lange is a very good actress, and Murphy has stumbled upon an aspect of her talents that I hadn't expected based on her cinematic work), but we've been here before-this is not Lange stretching any muscles.  I won't quibble with an Emmy nomination, but the idea that she's doing something that's anywhere as close to what Reese Witherspoon or Nicole Kidman were doing in Big Little Lies is absurd.  If she beats either it will be a travesty.

Sarandon, on the other hand, is not giving a great performance.  I admittedly am sour on her after the election, and don't know if I'm going to gain back the respect I had for her, but only a fool would say the woman can't act-in the 1990's she was consistently mesmerizing.  But here she can't quite find Davis-she alternates between actually playing her (doing the voice, the walk, the very distinctive Davis persona) and then randomly throwing it out the window.  She, again, isn't helped by the writers (I didn't like her relationship with BD Hyman, and Kiernan Shipka has been better before...not to mention the writers' really want this to be the Joan Crawford Story so her screentime is oddly inconsistent), but this is more on her than them.  She can't seem to find her opinions of her daughter, herself, her costar-Sarandon is a movie star whatever else may be said about her, and that sometimes carries the day, but most of the time she was just dull in the role.  Also, the role really hinges on Davis being the talent, but not the beauty, and, well, Sarandon at 70 is still intensely attractive and foxy in a way that Davis, though lovely, never was.  It hurts your argument when she's repeatedly being called "not the glamorous one" when Sarandon herself always looks glamorous.

With neither she nor Lange really carrying the show to a special place, and the writers' slacking off during stretches of time, the show is difficult to save.  However, there is one special performer who will deserve the plaudits coming her way...

3. Judy Davis is the Best Thing about Feud

This is hardly a revelatory surprise, but man is Judy Davis so much better than pretty much everything else happening in Feud.  Davis at once gets the weird balancing problem between straight drama, melodrama, and camp that Murphy is unsuccessfully juggling, and says "to hell with that" vamping onto the screen and making Hopper into an actual character by playing her initially as a cartoon.

Seriously-the best structured scenes of the show are around Davis's Hopper instigating mischief.  It's a pity that the show didn't use that, quite frankly, as a framing device, or simply made a Hedda Hopper miniseries instead, as Davis's character seems to have enough skeletons and delusions come out that Murphy's initial idea about the cruelty of Hollywood could have been filmed through her lens (plus, her legendary feud with Louella Parsons would have gone along with the title).  We get hints from Davis that Hopper is aware that her glory days are over, that she can no longer compete with the teenybopper set and is instead using the fall of her former friends to stay in the limelight, but unlike Lange or Sarandon, she knows what Hopper's public and private faces look like, and is always keeping them separate.  She hasn't survived in Hollywood all of these years giving out information like chewing gum, or not being willing to stab a friend in the back one day and ask them for a favor the next.

No one else approaches Davis.  I quite liked Alison Wright's Pauline, even though she felt underwritten and only came out as a convenient plot point to move Joan Crawford along in one direction or the other.  Dominic Burgess was initially aces as Victor Buono, giving us perhaps the most Ryan Murphy moment of the show (the XXX theater where he says that Dylan Wittrock has "loads of potential" made me do a spit take...and also start following Dylan Wittrock on Instagram), but he's never as fun or saucy as he was in that initial appearance, and the writers quickly forget about him when he isn't feeding plot change ideas to Davis.  Stanley Tucci and Alfred Molina have their moments, but neither win you over quite like Davis does-there's not enough fire or time spent with them for us to see something special happening.  That being said, no one is as bad as a pair of actresses who should know better.

4. The Interview Aspect of the Show Was Abysmal

Interviews as narrational devices are lazy, and have become aggravating in recent years (The Office was an actual documentary, something they acknowledged within the confines of the plot, unlike Parks and Recreation and Modern Family).  Here it's a part of the plot, but totally unnecessary.  All it did was frame up the story, which the writers could have done anyway, and took away from building on supporting players like Buono or Pauline that might have made the experience a little bit fuller.

It has to be said, as well, that Kathy Bates and Catherine Zeta-Jones (playing Joan Blondell and Olivia de Havilland, respectively) are dreadful in their parts.  Bates seems to have become contractually obligated to appear in all Murphy shows, but what was the point of having Joan Blondell even in the series other than to show off that the writers have heard of her?  We never get a background look at her, she's not in Baby Jane or Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte-hell, why not have Bates play Agnes Moorehead instead?  It made zilch sense, and she phones in the role, never really breathing any extra life into it even though you can hardly blame her since the writers don't seem to care.

CZJ at least has a character that factors into the plot, but man is she out-of-practice.  She's beautiful, and arguably the only person playing someone relatively age appropriate of the leading ladies (de Havilland and Zeta-Jones both being in their mid-to-late forties for pivotal scenes in the picture), but she finds nothing in de Havilland other than what is on the paper.  It gets so bad that when she does her Lady in a Cage impression it's hard to tell whether or not she's acting poorly on-purpose to mock the film or whether this is her actually acting.  For someone who has (and earned) her Oscar, this is a travesty-if she wants to continue working, I'd honestly recommend a tune-up with an acting coach of some sorts.

It wasn't all bad in this department-some one-scene-wonders played quite well within the context of the show.  I liked Sarah Paulson's work as Geraldine Page, even if she played it a bit too naively for a woman who had been working in Hollywood for a decade, and Serinda Swan nailed Anne Bancroft's "serious actress" bit with Crawford, in what I'd argue was the best scene featuring Lange outside of the finale. But these weren't consistent roles, and felt necessary to the writing.  The fact that Bates and Zeta-Jones had so many extra lines was infuriating, and made me wonder if they were cast before Murphy had an idea of what he was going to do with the show.

5. The Show Never Solves the "Biopic Problem"

I have never been a fan of a biopic, and that's because only the best of biopics can overcome the "I know what will happen" angle.  The finest biopics, in my opinion (think something like The Social Network and Wild) aren't afraid of making their subject seem more human, more flawed, and manage to be so interesting you forget that you know how this is going to end.  Most biopics, however, don't achieve this and simply strive for accuracy and imitation, but to me that's not interesting, particularly when it comes to television where "what comes next" is so vitally important to keep you tuned in week after week.

With the exception of Judy Davis's comic relief, this problem is never overcome.  You can claim that most audience members aren't going to know the minutia of whether or not Davis won that Oscar or if Crawford would stay on at Charlotte, but let's be honest here: me (gay, cinema-loving me) was Ryan Murphy's intended audience here, and I knew what was coming.  Despite this, the film never focused enough on things I wouldn't know the resolution to when it came to its cliffhangers and plot points.  Even when it fudged with the truth (Davis and Aldrich's imaginary affair), it didn't do so in a way that helped add drama or tension to the actual plot.  Putting more unknowable things (perhaps making Pauline's struggle a bigger part of the show) would have solved this problem, but mostly I felt listless, knowing that Crawford's film Trog would be a huge black-eye on her career, or that neither of these women would ever really have a major comeback chance after Baby Jane.

All-in-all, then, I left Feud underwhelmed.  I can't say I disliked it, because I would have given up on it if I had, but the intrigue factor (and the occasionally light moments) were really all that kept me going.  When Murphy next season tackles the Charles/Diana feud (a more recent affair, and one that has a lot more chances to be needlessly tacky and controversial considering how Diana died and how many people featured in it are still alive) I'll be sitting that one out, as the show didn't have me hooked.  But I'd still like to discuss if you have thoughts-share them below in the comments section!

OVP: In the Valley of Elah (2007)

Film: In the Valley of Elah (2007)
Stars: Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon, Jonathan Tucker, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Wes Chatham
Director: Paul Haggis
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actor-Tommy Lee Jones)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The words "directed by Paul Haggis" do not inspire much confidence in me when I see them attached to a movie poster or film opening credits.  Ten years later, I still have whiplash from Crash somehow beating Brokeback Mountain (if you think my write-ups have been snarky toward Slumdog Millionaire so far, just you wait Henry Higgins), but I try to enter every film I go into with an open mind, and quite frankly I didn't realize this was a Paul Haggis film until the end credits (I must have missed it at the beginning), so I met this film with few preconceived notions.  The movie, a surprise Oscar nominee (at the time most people figured that Emile Hirsch or Ryan Gosling, not Tommy Lee Jones, would be the fifth Best Actor nominee), follows Jones' Hank Deerfield as he tries to find the true reason for his son's death.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is told in a pretty dark, dry style, almost reminiscent of a Clint Eastwood picture (it should be noted that Haggis originally wanted Eastwood, and not Jones, to play the lead role), and follows through a small military town, with Hank upending a police investigation of his son (he is a former military police detective) by bringing in his experience, and wanting to figure out why the military is so quick to dismiss his son's death.  He is joined by a police detective (Theron) trying to prove herself with whom he becomes friends.  The film unfolds in an interesting way, and Haggis actually maintains a solid amount of the mystery as the movie progresses, with us eventually finding out that Mike was killed for largely inconsequential reasons, likely driven by his fellow soldiers' paranoia and PTSD.

The film is at its best when it's trying to state something interesting about the military, and perhaps something unpopular.  It's worth noting eight years after the fact that this film was made in 2007, during the nadir of public support of the Iraq War, and so a discussion of how the military was mistreating its veterans wasn't as politically radical as it might have seemed six years earlier or even eight years later, but it is something that seems odd from a filmmaker as politically conventional as Haggis.  The film moves at a leisurely pace, occasionally stopping off into sections of the movie that don't really work but usually making a detour that's of interest (particularly in examining the masculine energy and forced respect of the military).  It helps that Haggis hired an ace cinematographer (I swear I didn't know that Roger Deakins, whom I sing the praises of constantly on this blog, was the cinematographer until just now but I did write "beautiful, desolate shots" in my notes on the film) who gives the film a poshness that always makes it look like a great movie.  It also helps that most of the bigger moments are underplayed, such as the final revelation of who killed Hank's son Mike.  Tommy Lee Jones is not a showy actor, but he's one who gets the job done and never overplays his character.  Occasionally this feels a bit underwhelming, but for the most part I was convinced and liked what Jones brought to Hank.

The same cannot be said for the female characters in the film.  Susan Sarandon and Charlize Theron, like Jones, both have Oscars but you'd be right to question this fact based on this movie.  Sarandon's entire part could have been written out without anyone even noticing, and she does little aside from very easy story beats (like being sad when her son dies) to make the character more interesting.  The same could be said for Theron, who has the co-lead role but can't decide exactly what her motives are, and frequently relies on the underwritten script for inspiration, coming up short.  Is she a woman fighting to make it in a man's world, and that's her only motivation?  It's hard to be able to tell, and even she doesn't seem to understand her relationship with Hank.  As a result whenever Jones isn't onscreen you get nothing really from the rest of the cast (including James Franco, who has a bizarrely small part considering he was coming off the Spider-Man movies here and Josh Brolin, who since this is 2007 made his mandatory appearance in the film).

Overall, then, I was whelmed (10 Things I Hate About You joke!) and thought it was good but not great (and the final scene was ridiculously over-the-top, since I probably will never get to mention that again).  What did you think of the movie?  Are you a fan of Jones' surprise nomination or were you more Team Emile or Team Ryan?  Why do you think that Paul Haggis can't seem to direct decent parts for women?  And are you still reeling from Crash winning the Oscar?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Emmy Predictions: The Miniseries

We'll finish off the Emmy predictions with a look at the Miniseries/TV Movie categories, the categories that always get a bit of a brush through at the ceremony, but feature the people whom you actually expect to see at an awards show (the movie stars), so it's hardly something you can relegate to the Creative Arts Emmys.  If you missed earlier this week, don't forget to check out the Drama and Comedy predictions:

Best Limited Series

1. Olive Kitteridge
2. American Crime
3. American Horror Story: Freak Show
4. The Honorable Woman
5. Wolf Hall

The Lowdown: This is always the place to over-bet on HBO, not only because they campaign the hardest, but usually because they have the legit best contenders.  As a result, we've got Olive Kitteridge, the likely victor, on the top, though the network's only other major contender (The Casual Vacancy) has no buzz and I'm taking out for now.  Instead, I've got the rare nominee from a major network (American Crime), the perennial nominee American Horror Story (only at the Emmys could a perennial nominee be in the Limited Series category), the prestige-y Wolf Hall (PBS usually slices a nod here too), and the Sundance hit The Honorable Woman.  I suspect that there will be love for Texas Rising in other Emmy categories, especially in the tech slots, but both it and The Missing seem too small to take out this quintet.

Best TV Movie

1. Bessie
2. Derek: The Final Chapter
3. Nightingale
4. Killing Jesus
5. Agatha Christie's Poirot: Curtain, Poirot's Last Case

The Lowdown: Eww, this category looks awful.  No wonder Bessie seems so out-in-front here, there's nothing really to choose from (someone seriously dropped the ball here as every decent contender seems to be in the miniseries category).  Derek made it before and if The Big C and 24 are any indication should have no trouble scoring a couple of nods in an easier slate of nominees, and Nightingale may be largely forgotten but with an up-and-coming star and a weak bench to compete against is a certainty (David Oyelowo should succeed here where he couldn't at the Oscars).  The final two slots I'm going with Killing Jesus because apparently it's a frontrunner (ugh though-Bill O'Reilly with an Emmy?  Blech!) and Agatha Christie's Poirot, a swan song for a famed series.

Best Actor in a Miniseries/TV Movie

1. David Oyelowo (Nightingale)
2. Richard Jenkins (Olive Kitteridge)
3. Mark Rylance (Wolf Hall)
4. Bill Paxton (Texas Rising)
5. David Suchet (Agatha Christie's Poirot: Curtain, Poirot's Last Case)

The Lowdown: I am near certain that Oyelowo wins this one, so it's really just four guys going for an "honor just to be nominated."  That means that Richard Jenkins, who is the well-noted lead of Olive Kitteridge will make it, as will Bill Paxton who is enjoying a nice resurgence in TV movies at the moment (at this rate he might well win an Emmy soon), and Mark Rylance, who has owned Broadway for the past decade and seems likely to be both an Emmy and an Oscar nominee by year's end.  The final slot I'm going to do my true random prediction of the bunch (I haven't really gone out on a limb quite yet in any of these predictions) and go with David Suchet, who has been a TV icon as Poirot for years now without ever being cited, and it's not like Ricky Gervais or Timothy Hutton really need points for largely forgotten work this year.  Either of them make more sense (or perhaps even Oscar-winner Adrien Brody in Houdini), but Suchet seems like a nice way to honor a longtime TV trouper.

Best Actress in a Miniseries/TV Movie

1. Frances McDormand (Olive Kitteridge)
2. Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Honorable Woman)
3. Queen Latifah (Bessie)
4. Jessica Lange (American Horror Story: Freak Show)
5. Felicity Huffman (American Crime)

The Lowdown: In this category, "always go with the Oscar nominees" is a solid maxim, and it's completely true this year.  While some of these women are more known for television than film (namely Felicity Huffman, though lately Jessica Lange as well), all five have at least one Oscar nomination and in two cases a number of them.  Each of them have dominated the conversation so much that the only other person who could remotely compete appears to be Frances O'Connor in The Missing, but I don't think she'll have enough fame to get past this list (maybe if it had been Frances Conroy).  The best question here is whether Frances McDormand will actually show up to pickup her Triple Crown, or will she bow out on the off-chance she's going to lose to Gyllenhaal or Latifah?

Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries/TV Movie

1. Bill Murray (Olive Kitteridge)
2. Stephen Rea (The Honorable Woman)
3. Joanthan Pryce (Wolf Hall)
4. Damian Lewis (Wolf Hall)
5. Finn Wittrock (American Horror Story: Freak Show)

The Lowdown: If there's one rule in doing any sort of awards' predictions, it's to ignore your own personal opinions and always just go with the buzz.  Most of the time this is easy, as frequently the buzz and my own opinions are easy to separate.  For example, I can see that Damian Lewis and Jonathan Pryce both have that aura of former nominee and prestige, or that Stephen Rea's an Oscar nominee which should help him for The Honorable Woman, or that Bill Murray is a movie star icon in a major production, likely meaning not only a nomination but a win.  However, I just cannot buy the buzz behind Michael Chiklis, who was in every channel imaginable worse than Finn Wittrock in Freak Show.  It makes sense that the Emmy-winning Chiklis beats the ingenue and part of me is expecting it, but it will break my heart not to predict Wittrock for the performance of a lifetime, and so I am going with him, wrongness be damned.

Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries/TV Movie

1. Mo'Nique (Bessie)
2. Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story: Freak Show)
3. Kathy Bates (American Horror Story: Freak Show)
4. Janet McTeer (The Honorable Woman)
5. Susan Sarandon (Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe)

The Lowdown: I got a little bit off-the-track in the past category, but won't be in this one.  I know what side Emmy's bread is buttered on, and big names mean nominations (just ask Ellen Burstyn).  Susan Sarandon may be in a tiny film that got minimal plaudits, but she's also Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, who has never won an Emmy in four nominations and she's competing in supporting not the more competitive lead, so that should be enough to make it short of Alfre Woodard being in a show I haven't heard of yet.  The rest of the nominees seem set-Cynthia Nixon, Angela Bassett, and Zoe Kazan all have potential, but Sarandon makes the most sense on-paper, and that's where I'm headed.

Those are my final nominations (I don't really do the reality categories).  What are your thoughts?  Who do you agree with and who are you thinking has no shot?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Tammy (2014)

Film: Tammy (2014)
Stars: Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates, Allison Janney, Dan Aykroyd, Gary Cole, Sandra Oh, Mark Duplass, Toni Collette, Nat Faxon, Ben Falcone
Director: Ben Falcone
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Melissa McCarthy has had one of the swiftest and oddest rises to movie stardom in recent years.  After years of solid but under-the-radar television work in shows like Gilmore Girls, Samantha Who, and Mike and Molly, she became the breakout star of the monster hit movie Bridesmaids.  In the years since, she’s been nominated for an Oscar, won an Emmy, and starred in two more major hits (Identity Thief and The Heat).  Much has been made about her weight and the age at which she became a breakout star, but the reality is that this is an impressive run for any actor, regardless of gender or weight, and McCarthy is now positioned in Hollywood as one of the biggest stars in its firmament.  She’s as bankable as DiCaprio, as well-liked as Bullock, and as talented as Hanks.  She’s a force to be reckoned with.

(Spoilers Ahead) She’s also one of the few actors in Hollywood that basically guarantees I get out and see her movie, so regardless of the reviews (and oh how treacherous they have been!), I was there opening night of Tammy, ready with one of my friends to enjoy the delightful McCarthy.  And I have to say that I left somewhat satisfied.  I get where the reviewers were coming from, but I also feel like they missed a few of the points of the film itself.

The film tells the tale of Tammy (McCarthy), a woman somewhere in her thirties who is having a no good, very bad day.  She totals her car when a deer hits her, gets fired from her job as a result, and then comes home early to find that her husband (Faxon) has been having an affair with the neighbor (Collette).  As a result of all of this, she decides to head out on the open road, but needs money and a car, which means that her grandmother, Pearl, (Sarandon) needs to tag along.

On the road, of course, we find that Tammy has dreams of a better life for herself, but little follow-through, and oftentimes acts impetuously and without regard for other people.  Pearl seems somewhat more level-headed but imbibes to an unhealthy degree, causing her to occasionally say or do things that seem out of character.

Throughout the film we meet a bevy of interesting characters, particularly of note being Kathy Bates as Pearl’s lesbian cousin Lenore and her partner Suzanne (Oh).  The film had started meandering in multiple directions by the Lenore point in the movie, so Bates and her steady, calming presence was most welcome and probably makes her the MVP of the supporting cast, though the entire film is really just about McCarthy.

Honestly, that’s the main and probably only reason to see the movie, because the actual script and plot are a mess (McCarthy and her husband wrote the script, and while I see where they were going, this needed some heavy editing and rewriting).  For starters, there’s no way of knowing what sort of movie we’re supposed to be telling.  McCarthy’s Tammy is occasionally Megan from Bridesmaids, and then on a dime turns into Shannon from The Heat, and there even appears to be a bit of Dawn in Identity Thief in there.  It’s all a conglomerate of past McCarthy characters, which would be fine (actors repeat performances all the time and oftentimes with great success-just ask Cary Grant), but there’s too little consistency across Tammy.  Is she down-on-her-luck or is she just a loser who never tried?  The film doesn’t seem to know, and tries to make her both.

The same can be said for the love story.  I like that McCarthy wanted a talented cast surrounding her, and gave her old friend Nat Faxon a small role as her husband (they were in The Groundlings together), but it’d be easier for us to feel for her if we’d had at least one scene of the two of them together.  We don’t know whether to feel hatred or pity for the character (Tammy isn’t an easy character to live with, and she did cheat on him), and so the main obstacle to her later romance with a shy local man named Bobby (Duplass) is kind of a “huh.”  This is a pity because McCarthy was born to play romantic comedy leads-that ability to get the audience to root for you and have both a tough exterior and a soft side-she has that in a way no actress has had onscreen since the Holy Trinity of Roberts/Bullock/Ryan in the 90’s.  This, quite frankly, and not gross-out comedy, should be her genre of choice.

The last really odd thing about this movie is the ages of the cast members.  I get that actors frequently play characters not quite their age, and I will easily buy McCarthy as 35 (she looks younger than she actually is to begin with), but Allison Janney and especially Susan Sarandon seem WAY too young to be playing her mother and grandmother, respectively.  Would it have been so bad to cast someone like Cloris Leachman or Betty White or an actor who could have believably passed for her grandmother in the role of Pearl?  It’s such an odd decision on the part of the cast, and one that frequently took you out of the movie.

All that being said, McCarthy herself is intensely watchable in this movie, like she always is.  She can sell the physical aspects of the comedy (the holdup scene is wildly funny, and most of her one-liners land with aplomb), and also has the actor’s sensitivity to never abandon the audience-we always want what’s best for Tammy, even when she does particularly stupid things.  And the romantic comedy angle, though a bit tagged on: I’m not kidding here; someone cast this woman in the next big Rom-Com.

Those were my thoughts on the uneven but occasionally quite watchable Tammy.  What are yours?  Do you also feel that McCarthy would be best-suited for romantic comedies?  What are your thoughts on the bizarre age gaps?  And should Kathy Bates be in every film?  Share in the comments!

Top 10 Greatest Oscar Dresses

For me, the Oscars are all about the movies and the performances and the celebration of the cinema.  That being said, I'm more than aware that for some people it's a giant fashion show that somehow gets bogged down by clip shows and shiny gold men.  For those people, this is for you.  I am not a fashionista, but from my remembrance (and from photos), I have given below my Top 10 favorite Oscar dresses (year listed is the year of the ceremony).

10. Halle Berry in Elie Saab (2002)

When you know there's a good chance you're about to get a very historic Oscar and you happen to have the body and face of Helen of Troy, going outside the box is a great idea.  Only Berry could pull off a sheer floral top with the burgundy skirt, but that's who wore it so it makes the list.

9. Grace Kelly in Edith Head (1955)

The black-and-white photos have never done this elegant, subtly mint green dress justice-just the faintest hint of color pops when offset by Kelly's alabaster skin and elbow-length white gloves.

8. Uma Thurman in Prada (1995)

Thuman has only ever received one Oscar nomination, and she sure made the most of it with a spectacularly gorgeous lavender Prada dress.  Her makeup and statuesque beauty highlight it, but the thing that pulls this together is the supremely luxurious shawl.  This is a woman who knows classic movie star glamour.

7. Elizabeth Taylor in Dior (1961)

Liz had just had one helluva a year with the death of her husband Mike Todd, then she ran off with Debbie Reynolds' husband Eddie Fisher and nearly died (you can see her tracheotomy scar in this photo).  The Oscar was certain to be hers, and she owned the red carpet in her Dior (in fact, Melina Mercouri, Deborah Kerr, and Shirley MacLaine all skipped the ceremony Taylor was such a frontrunner).

6. Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy (1954)

Hepburn basically invented great Oscar fashion (and made herself a fashion icon for all-time) when she won her trophy for Roman Holiday and sported classic white Givenchy (don't you love that she totally pulls off the belt?).

5. Nicole Kidman in Dior (1997)

Joan Rivers famously hated it ("here comes Nicole Kidman in the ugliest shade of green I've ever seen"), but I cannot get enough-hyper elegant, slightly exotic, and a color no one ever rocked before (or really has rocked so well since).  The top bead work reminds me of Berry's dress in the sense that only Kidman could pull it off, and she would remain a fashion icon for the upcoming sixteen years.

4. Cate Blanchett in Armani Prive (2007)

I honestly could put ten Cate Blanchett dresses on this list and just be fine with it.  Between she, Kidman, and the woman at number two on this list, that's pretty much my entire fashion lexicon.  If in doubt, I'll always list one of them as the best-dressed of the night.  Though she didn't win for Notes on a Scandal, Blanchett clearly demanded the red carpet and looked like a goddess in this chic metallic gown.

3. Susan Sarandon in Dolce & Gabbana (1996)

I'm aware that some of you may hate this dress, but I don't care.  I have always been obsessed with the confidence of this gown (along with the sunglasses).  Copper is a color that only some people can pull off, but Sarandon surely is one of them.  An actress at the height of her fame and power.

2. Kate Winslet in Ben de Lisi (2002)

Winslet always hits a home run, in my opinion.  I even loved her dress at the 1998 Oscars.  I have to admit, though, that I'm with the consensus-this gorgeous red Ben de Lisi dress is the clear winner.  Winslet, like many before her on this list, didn't win her Oscar that night but this was a clear victor.

1. Julia Roberts in Valentino (2001)

 I honestly wasn't sure where I'd go with the number one dress, but how could it not be this?  Perfectly blending modern Hollywood with its classical roots, Roberts found elegant, simple lines with this black and white gown that brilliantly highlighted not only her beauty, but the ultimate accessory: Oscar himself.

Those are my choices-how about you?  What is your favorite Oscar dress?