Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 338-340: The Costner Collection

In my previous post I commented on how Patrick Swayze was one of the top box office draws in 1990 which made Ghost one of the highest-grossing movies of the year. But the man who remained a large draw over four consecutive years in the 1990s was Kevin Costner. Costner had gained most people's attention after appearing as Elliot Ness in The Untouchables before following it up with a starring role in Bull Durham. But it was another baseball film, and Best Picture nominee, that would cement his place as one of cinema's most recognisable stars.

That film was Field of Dreams in which Costner played Ray Kinsella, a farmer with a quirky family who begins to hear voices emanating from his cornfield. The film wasn't one I'd seen before but had heard various things about it namely that it was a feelgood film that appealed to male sports fans in particular. As somebody who's never particularly been a sports fan I was sceptical to the feelings this film provoked and it seems I was right to do this. The other famous attribute of the film is the line 'if you build it he will come' which convinces Ray to erect a baseball pitch next to his cornfield. Thanks to the fact that neither he nor his wife are particularly rational people they build the pitch to see what will happen. The film called for plenty of disbelief suspension as the ghost of disgraced baseball player 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson and various others started to play on the field. However director Phil Alden Robertson insinuated that the ghosts were only visible to open-minded folks due to the fact that Ray's brother-in-law couldn't see them when they were in plain sight. Despite risking financial ruin, Ray listneed to the voice once again as this time he was told to 'Heal his Pain'. The pain he had to heal was that of author Terrence Mann, a voice of the 1960s who had since disappeared from popular culture. Mann was possibly the most interesting character in Field of Dreams as he had become an antisocial recluse refusing to see anybody who'd been inspired by his works. Mann and Ray's road trip soon went into an entirely different direction as we learnt the story of player turned doctor 'Moonlight' Graham. I found the whole Graham subplot to be a bizarre diversion in the film's narrative which then picked up when Ray returned home. Despite not enjoying a lot of what had gone before, I have to admit that I rather enjoyed the final scenes of the film in which Ray was reunited with his father for a game of catch. However I didn't find this to be a particularly heartwarming scene and it didn't bring a tear to my eye in the way that scenes similar to this have done.

Throughout Field of Dreams I tried to work out why Costner would become such a big Box Office draw over the next four years. The answer I came up with was that he had the clean cut looks of a classic movie star and chose projects that would suit his style. The role of Ray Kinsella sees Costner play to his strengths as a likeable man who is following his heart rather than his head. Costner admirably anchored the film but at the same time I didn't think his performance was ever that enigmatic. Personally I thought the film's best performance came courtesy of James Earl Jones who breathed life into the character of Terrence Mann. Jones portrayed Mann as a belligerent character who was once full of ideals but has since fallen into obscurity while also ably conveying the author's change over the course of the film. The inclusion of Burt Lancaster as Doc Graham was an odd one as I don't think a star of his calibre should have appeared in such a small role. As much as I love Lancaster I think he was misused here and I think he should've stuck with his instincts which initially led him to turn down the role. Although I wasn't completely taken in by Field of Dreams' narrative I did think it had a particularly distinctive style. The use of a real farm in Iowa added some realism to the piece and John Lindley's stunning cinematography perfectly captured the exterior scenes. Furthermore Lindley tried his best to shoot the ghostly baseball players in a convincing way and was aided by James Horner's enchanting score. In fact it was Horner's score that stuck with me the most once I'd watched the film and that really says something about both the script and the performances. Whilst Field of Dreams wasn't a bad little film I just wasn't blown away by anything that happened in it and so don't understand the impact that it has had on a lot of people.

Following Field of Dreams, Costner's next project was his first film as a director and one that he'd been personally involved in for over five years. Costner first read Michael Blake's script for Dances with Wolves in the early 1980s and convinced him to turn into a novel. When the novel was finally released, Costner won the film rights and went over budget as well as over schedule to complete the western. There were plenty of sceptics who felt that Dances with Wolves would be a failure based on the fact that Costner broken the unwritten rule of first time directors; never film outdoors. Costner broke this rule in the biggest way possible, setting the majority of the film in the South Dakota countryside. Part of the reason for the delay was due to the area's unpredictable weather which held up filming for days at a time. But Costner wanted to use the area to add realism to the story about a Union Officer who integrates with a Sioux Indian tribe during the American Civil War. Costner's John Dunbar is the officer in question who ventures into the tribal camp when he finds one of their number, Stands with a Fist, wounded and on her own. Dunbar starts to impress the Sioux with his abilities but his failure to speak their language means that he has trouble communicating with them. Thankfully Stands with a Fist, who was adopted by the community after being born into an English-speaking family, remembers how to converse in her native tongue and eventually falls in love with Dunbar. Due to his relationship with a certain mammal, Dunbar later changes his name to 'Dances with Wolves' and helps his new family defeat the vicious Pawnee Tribe. However, Dunbar is later captured by his own people who believe he is a traitor to their cause and place him under arrest. The film's final scenes bring up the themes of family and finding somewhere to belong but deliver this message in an incredibly brutal way.

With the delays on the film, Dances with Wolves was expecting to be a flop especially considering it was a three hour western from a debut director. However critics and audiences flocked to see the film and it was later named Best Picture with Costner winning a further award for Best Director. Watching the film more than twenty years later I can't really see what both the critics and the academy members saw to make them hold the film in such high acclaim. A lot of the positives can be attributed to Dean Semler's cinematography which perfectly captured the imagery of the American west. Semler led me into Costner's world of the Sioux tribe and on a visual level I felt like I was part of the action. The story was another matter altogether as Blake's script was overlong and seemed to tread over the same points many times. In my opinion it took far too long for Dunbar to encounter the Sioux tribe as his integration into their society was the main story of the film. I was equally disinterested in Dunbar's relationship with Stands with a Fist partly because of Mary McDonnell's subdued performance. Whilst the character of Stands with a Fist was an interesting one I don't think McDonnell was really captivating and I don't feel that she shared a lot of chemistry with Costner. Of the three films in this post, I feel Dances with Wolves features Costner's weakest performance as he plays an unconvincing military hero. In my opinion Costner is at his best when he's on screen with other actors but as Dunbar faces plenty of solitary days during the film he's forced to lead the film single-handedly. I do feel that Costner should have stayed behind the scenes and given somebody else the role of Dunbar as it seems to me as if he was a little over-stretched. Although visually stunning, Dances with Wolves was a struggle for me to get through and I found the two central performances to be incredibly mediocre. But, as we've learnt by now, the academy loves a historical epic and Costner definitely delivered that with Dances with Wolves.

Costner won his two Oscars in 1991 before going on to play Robin Hood and as a result was subsequently named the biggest Box Office draw of the year. 1991 also saw Costner star in his third and final Best Picture nominated film as he starred as district attorney Jim Garrison in Oliver Stone's JFK. Costner resurrects the everyman persona he had in Field of Dreams to play the New Orleans DA who is desperate to point out the inaccuracies carried out in the Warren Report into President Kennedy's assassination. The film itself almost acts as a drama documentary with a long prologue, narrated by Martin Sheen, talking about the good Kennedy did for the country and what happened following the assassination. Garrison's main claim is that other people were involved in the assassination and that the original suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, may not have been part of the plan. Stone's script, co-written with Zachary Sklar, sees Garrison conduct a number of interviews with witnesses and his staff. These dialogue-heavy scenes are interspersed with flashbacks of the events themselves which are all presented in black and white. I found this to be an interesting narrative device that stopped the film dragging and gives the audience a visual aid to enhance the characters' dialogue. Garrison finally finds enough evidence to charge New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw with conspiracy to murder but discovers that several forces are acting against him bringing the case to trial. Stone uses his film to criticise the media's ability to tarnish the reputation of an individual to the extent that people start to distrust every word Garrison says. Although it was a little clichéd, the affect that Garrison's investigation had on his family was a well-executed subplot and one that felt realistic. The final court case in which Garrison struggled against the full force of the government was perfectly executed and was up there with some of cinema's finest courtroom scenes. However I personally felt that Garrison's final speech was a little bit overblown and it almost felt like Stone was writing at testimony against everything that was wrong with the US government.

Unsurprisingly the film was met with mass controversy on its release as many critics accused Stone of rewriting history. As somebody who has very little knowledge of this time in American history I felt that JFK was an interesting exploration of a potential cover-up. But even I felt Stone's approach was a little heavy-handed and some of his suggestions seemed completely over-the-top. Though not as over-stretched as Dances with Wolves, JFK was still a bit overlong for my liking with a few scenes being surplus to requirements. But those are just minor niggles in a film that is stylish, well-written and that includes a fantastic ensemble cast all of whom play their parts brilliantly. As Shaw, Tommy Lee Jones is convincing as both a Louisiana slimeball and a closeted homosexual who is ashamed of certain parts of his life. Jones' performance earned JFK its only acting nomination but this doesn't do justice to some of the fine turns put in by Joe Pesci, Kevin Bacon and Laurie Metcalf. But to me the best performance came from Gary Oldman as Harvey Oswald as he's able to bring some sympathy to one of history's most famous killers. Oswald's story is told almost entirely in flashbacks but Oldman's charisma is enough to make all aspect of his character appear realistic. Robert Richardson's cinematography brilliantly captures the hectic nature of the day of Kennedy's assassination and the various elements that help back-up Garrison's case. Stone was committed to recreating the assassination almost frame-for-frame and used the real Dealey Plaza to do so. The film's editing was one of its biggest strengths as Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia seamlessly cut between the characters' speaking and the black and white flashbacks. As you would expect, John Williams' musical sequences enhance the film even more and feel incredibly presidential. Overall I enjoyed the majority of JFK with only Stone's heavy-handedness letting the film down slightly.

Meanwhile Costner continued to be a star following his roles in JFK and the romantic drama The Bodyguard. But Costner fell from favour following such flops as The Postman and Waterworld and as a result he lost his headliner status. Having watched these three films it was clear that audiences were drawn to Costner's likeable presence and he often played reliable heroes who did little wrong. But at the same time I can see why he hasn't had the long-lasting appeal of some other headliners and instead is now playing supporting roles in films such as the recent Jack Ryan instalment.

Next time we see the rise of a director who burst onto the scene in the 1990s with a whole new approach to film-making.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 288-289: A Bunch of Sissy's

From Glenn Close we turn our attention to another great actress in Sissy Spacek. Far from playing the Feme Fatale which has been Close's go to guise, Spacek's acting style was is much more natural and allows the audience to identify with her character. It was this down-to-Earth attitude that earned her six best Actress nominations one of which she turned into a win.

Spacek's winning performance came as country singer Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. I thought her innocent wide-eyed look was perfect as she had to portray Lynn as a young woman of thirteen up to her glory days as a country star. In fact I thought that Spacek almost pulled off being a teenager in the opening scenes and was fantastic in portraying the transformation of Lynn over the years. The first part of the film sees Loretta being courted by eventual husband Mooney who soon breaks a promise he made to her father and moves her away from her native Kentucky. As she has a brilliant voice, Mooney encourages her to perform and she soon receives an offer to cut a demo for her first single. Realising that they have to capitalise on this initial breakthrough, Mooney and Loretta go on a tour of DJs and promoters in the south in order to get her voice heard. Loretta's innocence makes her seem instantly likeable and she's genuinely shocked when she discovers her song 'Honky Tonk Girl' has made into the charts. This in turn lands her a spot on the Grand Ole Opry and she soon attracts the attention of her idol Patsy Cline. As Loretta's success grows, Mooney becomes jealous of his wife becoming the more dominant one in their marriage. With Loretta beginning to overwork herself she soon becomes stressed and unable to remember the words to her lyrics. Although she suffers a breakdown, the film ends on a high as we witness her comeback and the performance of the film's titular track 'Coal Miner's Daughter'.

Having watched a lot of biopics about musicians in the past I did approach Coal Miner's Daughter with some level of trepidation. Luckily, I needn't of worried as Michael Apted's film was an incredibly well-paced piece that covered all of the key points of Lynn's life without every overstaying its welcome. Tom Rickman's adaptation of Lynn's autobiography made me understand the motivations of both her and Mooney as her success in the music business changed her to an extent. What I liked about both of the Lynns is how they didn't feel like stereotypes and instead felt like real people throughout the course of the film. Whilst Mooney does react jealousy to Loretta's new stardom he never gets aggressive and is later supportive of her during her breakdown. Similarly you can understand Loretta's need to make herself more glamorous as her star ascends despite the fact that she really doesn't need as much make-up as she thinks she does. The musical numbers are all joyous, though I suppose you have to at least enjoy country music a little bit to appreciate them. Sissy Spacek more than deserved her Oscar as she portrayed all of the stages of Lynn's persona from innocent teenager to glamorous superstar to an overworked singer heading for a nervous breakdown. Spacek excelled at portraying Lynn's innocent charm and she really made the character come alive both through her acting and her singing. I'm shocked that Tommy Lee Jones didn't receive at least a nomination for his role as the supportive yet jealous Mooney. I personally believe that his performance is as integral as Spacek's and I really found his performance brought out the human side in the sometimes aggressive Mooney. Coal Miner's Daughter was really a step above the normal biopic and showcased just how great Spacek can be when given the right part.

The fact that they are both based on true stories is possibly the only similarity between Coal Miner's Daughter and Spacek's other Best Picture nominee Missing. Missing doesn't have the gloss of a Best Picture film but instead employs the documentary style favoured by its director Costa-Gavras. Set in Chile during the rule of Pinochet, Spacek plays Beth Horman the wife of a radical journalist who goes missing after their house was ransacked. Charlie's disappearance prompts his father to arrive in Chile and seek help from the American consulate in finding his son. Ed had never approved of his son's life choices and wondered why he'd never settled down and got a proper job. Whereas Charlie was a fairly liberal young man, his father is incredibly conservative and is a practising Christian Scientist meaning he's very much a man of faith. Ed and Beth clash over the latter's lack of co-operation with the men who are attempting to help find Charlie. Beth's distrust of the men is later explained through a series of flashbacks showing what sort of a man Captain Ray Tower actually is. As they spend more time together, Ed and Beth continue to bond as he realises the horrors of the country his son briefly called home. With the American government appearing more suspicious then they first seemed, Ed begins to give up hope of ever seeing his son again. Though the ending is predictable, especially if you were aware of the original story, it doesn't make it any less shocking.

Missing was a film that focused on a recent crisis and gave it a human face. Costa-Gavras portrayed the Chile of the time where bodies were simply strewn across the streets for all to see and where the sound of gunshots was a regular occurrence. Ricardo Aronovich's superb cinematography captured all this brutal detail perfectly and he particularly excelled when shooting the scenes in Chile's national stadium. The human face of the film was Ed who was experiencing the horrific nature of the country first hand and we as the audience were meant to relate to him. The fact that Ed was played by Jack Lemmon meant that he came across as likeable despite his initial prejudices and beliefs. Lemmon's performance was just brilliant as he made the audience identify with a man who was just trying to find his son. Though Beth wasn't as innocent as Loretta Lynn, Spacek still played an extremely down-to-Earth character. Spacek played Beth as somebody who was horrified by what was going on around but had got used to it over time. Spacek also really came alive when portraying Beth's defiance in the face of the American authorities. Another memorable aspect of the film was Vangelis' electric score which contributed to both the jarring nature of the Chilean conflict and the emotional aspects of the Ed/Beth relationship. Even though I found it tough to get through at times, Missing was nonetheless an accomplished film which told the story of a conflict through the eyes of those who didn't quite want to believe it. It is definitely a piece of historical film-making and one that is still as relevant today as it was thirty years ago.

Next time we have the film which became the last live action musical to be nominated for Best Picture for twenty-two years!

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 167: A Place to Stay in the New Decade

So I was thinking I wouldn't try and start on the 1960s as I've so many other things going on at the moment that it would be a mistake but then I never really listen to myself do I? As I ended the last decade with a winner I decided to start the sixties with one also and it's one that has been sitting on my shelf for ages now that being The Apartment. The first five minutes or so of the film establishes the plot as Jack Lemmon's CC Baxter introduces us to his life in which he rents out his apartment to various bosses from the office in which he works so they can be with their mistresses. In return Baxter hopes to get some sort of promotion so he can impress Shirley MacLaine's kindly elevator operator Fran Kubelik. When his boss Sheldrake offers a promotion it is under the condition that he too get a key to Baxter's apartment which he agrees to but later discovers that his mistress is in fact Fran. When Fran realises that Sheldrake will never leave his wife she overdoses on Baxter's sleeping pills however he finds her just in time and helps her recover growing closer to her in the meantime. So the love triangle then develops between Sheldrake, Fran and Baxter in the final third of the movie and it is essentially rooting for the underdog over the more powerful yet cowardly man.

There are no words to describe how much I love The Apartment and it more than deserved to win the Best Picture award. Once again I think it's the academy giving Billy Wilder an award just because they forgot to even nominate Some Like It Hot for Best Picture the previous year. However from the writing, to the performances and to the lovely majestic score from Adolph Deutsch everything is right about this film. For a starters there's Jack Lemmon a man that can go from slapstick comedy to full on drama in a matter of moments and this role more than suits him as he frantically tries to arrange a schedule to fit all of his philandering superiors into his abode at different times. Shirley MacLaine is equally as brilliant as the beautiful, fragile Fran who does a great job making us sympathise for the other woman who is sleeping with a married man and makes us understand that sometimes you can't help who you fall in love with even if they are already attached. There's such a great chemistry between Lemmon and MacLaine the scenes between them in the apartment are just breath-taking as he gently tries to help her get over her suicide attempt. Billy Wilder demonstrates why he is perhaps the greatest director of all time as every frame tells a story from the humdrum world of the office cubicle to the single man trying to escape his life of drudgery through watching the TV. There's nothing bad about a film that is simply about two lost souls trying to find each other which features lots of laughs, a few tears but plenty of enjoyment. I'm so glad that this is the first film that I watched from this decade and I would recommend all of you go out and watch it immediately.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 147: Going Stir Crazy

Basically all of the films on this list are coming from either LoveFilm or various YouTube sources so if I can't reference a movie on either of those then I probably won't get to watch it. A nominee from the 1956 ceremony, Mister Roberts, was one such film which I had already banished to the unwatchable pile so imagine my surprise when it suddenly appeared on the T.V. listings for a Channel Five Saturday afternoon. Thanks to that I was able to watch the film whcih it turned out was a comedy-drama set during the final days of World War 2 on a naval Cargo Ship. To me it reminded me of The Caine Mutiny which I recently watched as it was about mundane life on a ship featuring a quartet of impressive performance from big names - Henry Fonda as Mister Roberts, James Cagney in his final MGM performance as the tyrannical Captain, William Powell in his final performance as the world-weary ship Doctor and Jack Lemmon winning the Supporting Actor Oscar here as the jovial ensign in charge of morale and laundry. For me this was one of Henry Fonda's best turns, apart of course from 12 Angry Men, playing a man who is desperate to serve properly and writes weekly letters to be let off the ship however Cagney's Captain sees him as an asset so keeps him around and he is well liked by his crew members whom he doesn't impose strict rules on. As time goes on the Captain is frustrated by Roberts and feels he isn't respecting him so he grants the crew their leave as long as Roberts tows the line and agrees with his orders. When the crew finally find out about this they decide to forge a letter from the Captain and get him transferred from the ship and he finally gets to serve in Japan the film tragically ends with the news that Roberts died when a suicide bomber killed all the crew of his new ship. While the death of your main character would usually be a downer in the case of Mister Roberts it was slightly more poignant and uplifting as he died getting what he always wanted to do and that was serve properly during the war.

I have to say I really enjoyed Mister Roberts mainly how easily it was able to demonstrate how not all men had heroic jobs during the war some of them just were there to ship cargo from one port to another and weren't happy about it. There are a lot of comic segments throughout the film demonstrating this including one where the men try and spy nurses on a nearby island while they are in the shower while one long scenes sees Fonda, Powell and Lemmon try and knock up some home-made scotch. These segments are transposed with some truly heart-wrenching moments such as Cagney opening up to Fonda about his life before he became a captain which was fairly reminiscent of Bogart's speech to his crew in The Caine Mutiny and also the scene in which Fonda goes crazy after he realises that he might not serve when peace in Europe is announced. Lemmon's performance is indeed great combining his comic timing with more dramatic moments of clarity personally his ways of getting revenge over a captain he's scared of are particularly memorable. All in all a great quartet of performances coupled with John Ford's skilled direction and a great script means that Mister Roberts is one of the better Oscar nominees never to take home the prize.