skimpole

I'm going to suggest Kevin Spacey as a co-lead, since his story is equally important throughout the movie, he gives a better performance than the other two, is crucial to solving the mystery, while the last 20 minutes of the movie when he isn't there are clearly the worst in the entire film. As for The Devil's Advocate, the film lives or dies on what one thinks of Pacino's hammy performance. Reeves is a lead, but clearly not award-worthy. Theron is not award worthy as either lead or supporting. I'd say Pacino was a lead.

I saw three movies this week, none of them particularly good. Inferno actually starts out with some competence, with Tom Hanks finding himself disoriented in media res. But then it just waddles along and then becomes very silly. Seriously, if you've invented a virus to wipe out half the world's population and there are people chasing you to stop you from doing that, you release the virus immediately! You don't hide it in a puzzle for your girlfriend giving your opponents the time to successfully stop you. Paul is a forgettable trifle about two English nerds encountering an alien while on vacation in the United States. It's somewhat crude in tone, and otherwise unremarkable. I'll Cry Tomorrow won an acting award at Cannes in 1956, where it beat out Pather Panchali and Smiles of a Summer Night. So it's clearly not just Hollywood that makes egregious choices. Basically it's an undistinguished alcoholism movie the kind where the protagonist actually says "I can quit when I want."

Actor Ralph Fiennes, The English Patient Kenneth Branagh, Hamlet Marcello Mastroianni, Three Lives and Only One Death Timothy Spall, Secrets and Lies Joe Pantoliano, Bound Runner-ups: Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting), Stellan Skarsgard (Breaking the Waves), Melvil Poupaud (A Summer's Tale), Leon Lai (Comrades: Almost a Love Story), Jeremie Renier (La Promesse), James Spader (Crash), Tony Shalhoub (Big Night), George Clooney (From Dusk to Dawn), John Travolta (Broken Arrow), Antonio Banderas (Evita), Christopher Walken (The Funeral), Jack Kao (Goodbye South, Goodbye), Christopher Eccleston (Jude), Chris Cooper (Lone Star), Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible), Skeet Ulrich (Scream) Actress Mara Wilson, Matilda* Jennifer Tilly, Bound Brenda Blethyn, Secrets and Lies Nicole Kidman, Portrait of a Lady Maggie Cheung, Comrades: Almost a Love Story, Irma Vep *Juvenile Performance of the Year Runner-ups: Gina Gershon (Bound), Krstin Scott Thomas (The English Patient), Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves), Amanda Langlet (A Summer's Tale), Gwenaelle Simon (A Summer's Tale), Shaghayeh Djodat (Gabbeh), Deborah Kara Unger (Crash), Madonna (Evita), Frances McDormand (Fargo), Elizabeth Pena (Lone Star), Diane Keaton (The First Wives Club), Supporting Actor Derek Jacobi, Hamlet Danny DeVito, Matilda John Malkovich, Portrait of a Lady William H. Macy, Fargo Edward Norton, Primal Fear Runner-ups: Steve Buscemi (Fargo), Henry Czerny (Mission Impossible), Willem Dafoe (The English Patient), Naveen Andrews (The English Patient), Richard Briers (Hamlet), Peter Stormare (Fargo), John P. Ryan (Bound), Christopher Meloni (Bound), Nicholas Farrell (Hamlet), Elias Koteas (Crash), Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting), Jonathan Pryce (Evita), Olivier Gourmet (La Promesse), Matthew Lillard (Scream), Michael Maloney (Hamlet), Pete Postelthwaite (James and The Giant Peach), Jean-Yves Gautier (Three Lives and Only One Death), Jack Nicholson (Mars Attacks), Robin Williams (Hamlet), Billy Crystal (Hamlet) Supporting Actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Secrets and Lies Holly Hunter, Crash Barbara Hershey, Portrait of a Lady Kate Winslet, Hamlet Juliette Binoche, The English Patient Runner-ups: Embeth Daviditz (Matilda), Julie Christie (Hamlet), Pam Ferris (Matilda), Maryam Mohamadamini (A Moment of Innocence), Chiari Mastroianni (Three Lives and Only One Death), Rhea Perlman (Matilda), Aurelia Nolan (A Summer's Tale), Goldie Hawn (Everyone Says I Love You), Kristy Yang (Comrades: Almost a Love Story), Susan Sarandon (James and the Giant Peach), Rosanna Arquette (Crash), Glenn Close (Mars Attacks), Not seen: Jerry Maguire, Sling Blade, Marvin's Room, Ghosts of Mississippi, The Crucible, The Mirror Has Two Faces --------Mastroianni's daughter nearly got a supporting nomination. I know that in 1967 I nominated both Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac for awards when they played sisters (which they were) and twin ones (which they weren't) at that. And in 1981, both Henry and Jane Fonda were nominated playing father and daughter. But Mastroianni and his daughter's characters aren't related in Three Lives and Only One Death. I was wondering if there was a movie where related actors played non-related characters and both got nominated in somebody's awards choices. -------Interesting year for best actress: Diane Keaton gets the veteran winner who gets a nomination slot that usually goes to Meryl Streep. Ironically she does it for a movie that Streep is also a star of. Kristen Scott-Thomas gets the nomination for stunning movie epic, except that in the old days Julie Christie wasn't nominated for her role in Dr. Zhivago, but for a lesser movie, Elizabeth Taylor got nothing for Cleopatra and the women are forgettable in Ben-Hur and non-existent in Lawrence of Arabia. The other three choices are unusual, since Leigh is often ignored, and this is the only nomination Von Trier has ever gotten.

1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula Reservoir Dogs Aladdin The Crying Game The Best Intentions The Long Day Closes Glengarry Glen Ross Unforgiven Lessons in Darkness Howard’s End Runner-ups: A Tale of Winter, Porco Rosso, Hyenes, The Player 1993 Schindler’s List Groundhog Day Short Cuts The Age of Innocence Farewell my Concubine Dazed and Confused Caro Diaro Naked The Puppetmaster Sonatine Runner ups: The Remains of the Day, D'Est, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould 1994 Pulp Fiction Death and the Maiden Speed Chungking Express The Puppet Masters Satantango Vive L’Amour Through the Olive Trees Little Women Ed Wood Runner-ups: Clerks, Ashes of Time, Wild Reeds, That's Entertainment III, To Live 1995 Richard III The Usual Suspects Se7en Twelve Monkeys Dead Man Underground City of Lost Children The White Balloon Fallen Angels Cyclo Runner-ups: Heat, Ulysses' Gaze, La Haine, The Ceremony 1996 Matilda Bound Secrets and Lies The English Patient Hamlet (Branagh version) A Summer’s Tale Portrait of a Lady A Moment of Innocence Three Lives and Only One Death Crash Runner-ups: Comrades: Almost a Love Story, James and the Giant Peach, When we Were Kings

Nick of Time isn't a bad film, though in retrospect it is a thoroughly unremarkable one. Walken does nothing new with his performance. What is most striking for me, was that it was the first, and probably only, movie where I was the only one in a (first-run) theatre.

Actor Morgan Freeman, Se7en Ian MacKellan, Richard III Gabriel Byrne, The Usual Suspects Johnny Depp, Dead Man Robert De Niro, Heat, Casino Runner-ups: Bruce Willis (12 Monkeys), Al Pacino (Heat), Harvey Keitel (Ulysses' Gaze), Vincent Cassel (La Haine), Tom Hanks (Toy Story), Sean Penn (Dead Man Walking), Ron Perlman (The City of Lost Children), Leon Lai (Fallen Angels), Miki Manojlovic (Underground), Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas), Lazar Ristovski (Underground), Hubert Kounde (La Haine), Brad Pitt (Se7en), Mohsen Kafili (The White Balloon), Said Taghmaoui (La Haine), Le Van Loc (Cyclo), Shah Rukh Khan (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge), Takeshi Kaneshiro (Fallen Angels), John Travolta (Get Shorty), Alan Rickman (Sense and Sensibility), Kenneth Branagh (Othello), Gene Hackman (The Quick and the Dead), Antonio Banderas (Desperado), Ciaran Hinds (Persuasion), Gene Hackman (Crimson Tide), Stellan Skarsgard (Zero Kelvin), Anthony Hopkins (Nixon), Actress Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking Isabelle Huppert, The Ceremony Sandrine Bonnaire, The Ceremony Madeline Stowe, 12 Monkeys Alicia Silverstone, Clueless Runner-ups: Aida Mohammadkhani (The White Balloon)*, Emma Thompson (Sense and Sensibility), Julie Delpy (Before Sunrise), Judith Vittet (The City of Lost Children), Kajol (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge), Elizabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas), Angela Bassett (Strange Days), Salma Hayek (Desperado), Sandra Bullock (While you Were Sleeping), Amanda Root (Persuasion), Julianne Moore (Safe), Maia Morgenstern (Ulysses' Gaze), Christina Ricci (Casper), Holly Hunter (Copycat), Minnie Driver (Circle of Friends), Meryl Streep (The Bridges of Madison County), Geena Davis (Cutthroat Island), *Juvenile performance of the year Supporting Actor Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects Kevin Spacey, Se7en Chazz Palminteri, The Usual Suspects Pete Postelthwaite, The Usual Suspects Jim Carrey, Batman Forever Runner-ups: Kevin Pollak (The Usual Suspects), Stephen Baldwin (The Usual Suspects), Nigel Hawthorne (Richard III), Daniel Emilfork (The City of Lost Children), Jim Broadbent (Richard III), Gary Farmer (Dead Man), Dominique Pinon (The City of Lost Children), Adrian Dunbar (Richard III), Benicio de Toro (The Usual Suspects), Dan Hedaya (Clueless), Don Rickles (Casino), Lance Henriksen (Dead Man), Tony Leung Chiu Wai (Cyclo), Gene Hackman (Get Shorty), Wallace Shawn (Toy Story), Jean-Pierre Cassel (The Ceremony), Jeremy Irons (Die hard with a Vengeance), James Cromwell (Babe), Val Kilmer (Heat), David Morse (12 Monkeys), Edward Hardwicke (Richard III), Dan Hedaya (The Usual Suspects), John Wood (Richard III), Tim McInnerny (Richard III), Peter Greene (The Usual Suspects), Dennis Farina (Get Shorty), James Woods (Nixon), Forest Whitaker (Species), Joe Pesci (Casino), Supporting Actress Gwyneth Paltrow, Se7en Annette Bening, Richard III Michelle Reis, Fallen Angels Mirjan Jokovic, Underground Tran Nu Yen Khe, Cyclo Runner-ups: Kristin Scott Thomas (Richard III), Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite), Maggie Smith (Richard III), Rene Russo (Get Shorty), Brittany Murphy (Clueless), Carol Florence (12 Monkeys), Charlie Yeung (Fallen Angels), Joan Allen (Nixon), Karen Mok (Fallen Angels), Kate Winslet (Sense and Sensibility), Jacqueline Bisset (The Ceremony), Virgine Ledoyen (The Ceremony), Gina Gershon (Showgirls), Not seen: The Postman, Mr. Holland's Opus, Rob Roy, Georgia ----------Although I actually agree with two of the Academy's acting choices this years, while the other two aren't bad, I really don't like the oscar selection for this year.

I saw three movies this week. Un Chambre de Ville, notwithstanding frequent nudity from Dominique Sanda, is not one of Demy's best films. It's entirely sung like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but without as good a score. It's colour-coded, but in a more depressing way. It brings in aspects from other of his films, like an unplanned pregnancy, and it seeks to bring in more relevance since it takes place in a strike in Nantes in the early fifties. Interestingly, while Danielle Darrieux and Michel Piccoli were a couple in The Young Girls of Rochefort, here they're mother in law and son in law. Lion is a movie that's best if you don't think about it too hard. For example the child who's the star for half the movie is very cute and charming, which makes one think of all those directors who got great child performances without them being cute or charming (Erice, Eustarche, Tarkovsky, Kiarostami, Bergman, etc.) The India involved is hot, crowded, poor and inhabited by dark-skinned people. In other words, it has nothing profound to say about the country. The second half is flawed as it has nothing thoughtful to say about the situation, the relationships between Patel and Rooney and Kidman are not developed very well, and the movie ends as an advertisement for Google Earth. So the movie of the week is The Asthenic Syndrome a 1989 Soviet film which is difficult to describe. The syndrome involves the protagonist having spells of falling asleep. The scene is the somewhat shabby world of 1989 perestroika Moscow, but with compelling aesthetic and modernist touches.

Well I am glad that we get to see Army of Shadows

When Sight and Sound came up with its greatest film poll in 2012, only six movies after 1979 made the list. None of those movies were really conventional. In the Mood for Love and Mulholland Drive have strange elliptical narratives. Close-Up takes unusual turns for a documentary, Shoah is a distinctly rigorous, not to say arduous documentary, and Godard's History of Cinema doesn't really resemble a conventional documentary at all. And then there's Satantango, which got two nominations this year. Here's Jonathan Rosenbaum's review from The Chicago Reader: If great films invent their own rules, reinventing some of the standards of film criticism in the process, Bela Tarr’s Satantango surely belongs in their company. Showing Sunday as part of the Chicago Film Festival, this very dark Hungarian black comedy has more than a few tricks and paradoxes up its sleeve. Shot in black and white, with a running time of just under seven hours (it’s designed to be shown with two short intermissions), it boasts a decrepit, squalid rural setting enveloped in constant rain and mud and a cast of about a dozen greedy, small-minded characters, none of whom has any remotely redeeming qualities. Yet over two separate viewings it has provided me with more pleasure, excitement, and even hope than any other new picture I’ve seen this year. I’m not the only one who feels this way. Since the film surfaced at the Berlin Film Festival in February and was enthusiastically heralded by J. Hoberman in the Village Voice, it has enjoyed successful runs in Hungary and Germany. (In Budapest, Tarr told me, some viewers were willing to stand for the whole seven hours.) It has already acquired distributors in Holland, Italy, and Switzerland, and tickets for the single screening at the New York Film Festival were sold out even before the ad appeared in the New York Times, at which point about 200 more orders came in. On the other hand, at the second of two screenings held at the Toronto Film Festival last month, there were only a handful of people, though nearly all of them stayed to the end. Many of my colleagues writing for national publications admitted that they would rather risk seeing three or four bad films in a row than take a chance on this one. I suspect that part of what put them off is the chance they might really like it — which would interfere with their usual line of work. The very notion of a seven-hour masterpiece challenges the way the film business operates, especially in a climate where the value of a movie is largely gauged by the big-studio cash poured into its promotion. Satantango was shot over two years — 120 shooting days in all — at a cost of a little over a million and a half dollars, or roughly one-twelfth the cost of a “low-budget” Hollywood picture like Ed Wood. And we all know that, regardless of how good or important it is, its chances of being recognized in the national media are nonexistent. Sarcastic to the core, this movie demands to be read as a kind of interim report on where humanity seems to be lodged — in a quagmire of cowardice, betrayal, self-delusion, alcoholism, and deceit, a place where people snoop on their neighbors and strive to cheat them behind their backs and where bureaucracy has become so encrusted in its own self-serving operations that buzzwords like communism, capitalism, and even Christianity have become meaningless, interchangeable labels for whatever grubby social and economic interactions happen to take place. Yet I think it would be wrong to call this adaptation by Tarr and Laszlo Krasznahorkai, who wrote the celebrated 1985 Hungarian novel of the same title, misanthropic, at least in the sense that, say, Stanley Kubrick’s movies are. Like Luis Bunuel and perhaps the painter Pieter Brueghel, Tarr and Krasznahorkai have a view of abject, self-absorbed peasants that is too passionate and too richly human to be adequately described as cynical or antisocial. When a bunch of their characters are seen elaborately dismantling a large cabinet outdoors while preparing to move from a depleted farm to an abandoned manor house nearby, the revelation that they’re carrying this out to prevent “the Gypsies” from taking this useless piece of furniture is quintessentially Bunuelian in its comic — and cosmic — futility. So far I could almost be describing a painting. But even though the action of Satantango covers only two consecutive fall days, followed by a couple of mordant epilogues occurring later the same month, this is a narrative constantly in motion — at least in the way we experience it — thanks to Tarr’s elaborately choreographed camera style and respect for duration. Filmed in extremely long takes, the movie makes us share a lot of time as well as space with its characters, and the overall effect is to give a moral weight as well as a narrative weight to every shot: as detestable as these people are, we’re so fully with them for such extended stretches that we can’t help but feel deeply involved, even implicated in their various maneuvers. (If memory serves, this is somewhat less true of Tarr’s two impressive previous features, Almanac of Fall — which Facets Multimedia recently brought out on video — and Damnation, in which Tarr’s mobile long-take style is less tied to the movements of the characters.) When these grubby characters are indoors and relatively stationary, the camera tends to weave intricate arabesques around them, all but spelling out the allegorical spiderweb that the offscreen narrator evokes when describing the ties between these people. When they’re outside and walking — most often in the rain, and without umbrellas — the camera is generally content just to follow or precede them across endless distances. (A master illusionist in more ways than one, Tarr told me in Toronto that all the rain in the film comes from a rain machine; real rain, he noted, isn’t adequately photogenic.) Either way, the unbroken flow of the story telling and our moral implication in the events are both essential consequences of the camera style, and conversely the formal beauty of that style is never less than functional to the film’s narrative and morality. Unlike the postmodernist Hollywood specials currently commanding the attention of critics as models of art for grown-ups — adolescent, instantly gratifying compendiums like Forrest Gump, Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction, and Ed Wood, whose “eternal truths” (i.e., comforting lies) have everything to do with TV shows and other movies and nothing to do with lived experience — Satantango is a movie calculated to hit you where you live, and to change how you think and feel about it. If all your life has been spent in front of television and movie screens, the movie may not register, because this is one of those rare films that address not “the media” but everything the media leave out. (Significantly, only two TV sets figure here: one is on the blink, and the other never gets plugged in.) One lengthy sequence of horrifying but bloodless violence involving a little girl and a cat — fashioned with such cunning that many viewers accept it as real rather than fabricated — has infinitely more impact than all the combined vats of red paint splattered about by Stone, Tarantino & Company and tells us far more about the world we’re living in. (Erika Bok, nominated by me for Best Supporting Actress) Nevertheless, the way this film interfaces allegory with realistic detail may distract us from the fact that its universe is brilliantly constructed, not merely discovered. Despite the apparent homogeneity of the godforsaken setting, the carefully selected locations are in ten separate parts of Hungary. (According to Tarr, the most “Hungarian” aspects of the film are its landscapes and its humor.) Similarly, the remarkable sound track, which has a tactile physicality and density, was created rather than found: practically all of the film was shot silent, and the dialogue and sound effects were added later. If the long takes, like the landscapes and the sound track, correctly convey the impression that Tarr is a materialist filmmaker, paradoxically his materialism is arrived at through methods that in some ways are the reverse of those of Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, who tend to regard directly recorded sound as a kind of moral necessity. Tarr told me that Krasznahorkai’s long novel, which hasn’t yet been published in English, consists mostly of internal monologues by various characters, each one structured in alternating clusters of six paragraphs, corresponding to the 12 steps of the tango: 6 steps forward, 6 steps back. Apparently a close adaptation, the film is split into 12 titled sections, and some of the titles are matching pairs: “Perspective From the Front” and “Perspective From the Rear,” for example, and “The Spider’s Work” and “The Spider’s Work II.” The first six sections carry us through portions of the same day several times, from the vantage points of several characters; the next four give us the second day from only two perspectives. All 12 sections end powerfully with offscreen third-person narration — eloquent, poetic commentary on the characters and their world that I assume comes directly from the novel. (Peter Berling, nominated by me for Best Supporting Actor) When I asked Tarr about what literary tradition the novel belongs to, he cited the contemporary Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard and, before him, Franz Kafka. The one Bernhard novel I’ve read reminded me of Samuel Beckett, and perhaps by default I’m inclined to view this novel’s tradition in Anglo-American terms. Beckett is powerfully evoked in the film’s third section — a mesmerizing tour de force charting for a full hour the chiefly solitary movements of an aging doctor lost in an alcoholic haze — and the overall narrative construction suggests Joseph Conrad and William Faulkner. I’m thinking here not only of Conrad’s Nostromo, which concentrates on the events of a single day seen through multiple viewpoints, but even more of Faulkner’s similarly structured Light in August, as well as such experiments in internal monologue as The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. Indeed, the doctor in the film recalls the Reverend Gail Hightower in Light in August, a fallen patriarch who might have served as his community’s conscience if he and the community hadn’t both deteriorated into an apocalyptic, postmoral stupor. Though Krasznahorkai’s novel was written when “communism” (that is, what we and the Hungarians were erroneously calling communism) was still in power, and the movie was made after this apparatus came apart, tellingly the society depicted in the film could belong to either era. Similarly, though both the settings and the camera style suggest a despiritualized Andrei Tarkovsky, the film contains elements of Christian allegory, not only in the demonology of the title but also in the messianic qualities of a key character, Irimias (played by the film’s composer, Mihaly Vig). Ultimately, whether this highly suggestive story is described as Christian, antitotalitarian, communist, precommunist, postcommunist, or some combination of the above is entirely a function of how we wish to apply its lessons, because its vision is broad enough to encompass all of these points of view. I’ve avoided telling the plot because one of the film’s central pleasures is the clever, carefully calculated unfolding of the story. But however fuzzy a few of the narrative details may be — an obscurity perhaps attributable to the allegorical context or to the occasionally awkward English subtitles — the story’s main lines and its meaning are unmistakable. And its liberating gallows humor is like a tonic after the easy lies of other movies, a slap that returns us to our senses.

Cary Grant in His Girl Friday and North by Northwest and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man.

Quotes from 1994 Chungking Express Since she left, everything in the flat is sad. Everything needed lulling to sleep. [to soap bar] You've lost a lot of weight, you know. You used to be so chubby. Have more confidence in yourself. [to washcloth] You have to stop crying, you know. Where's your strength and absorbency? You're so shabby these days. Pulp Fiction (one of the few quotable passages) [Jules has a gun on Ringo; Yolanda points a gun at Jules, yelling hysterically] Yolanda: Don't you hurt him! Jules: Nobody's gonna hurt anybody. We're all gonna be three little Fonzies here, and what's Fonzie like? [Yolanda stares at him, confused] Jules: Come on, Yolanda! What's Fonzie like?! Yolanda: Cool? Jules: What? Yolanda: Cool. Jules: Correct-a-mundo! And that's what we're gonna be - we're gonna be cool. Speed Annie: You didn't leave me. I can't believe it... you didn't leave me. Jack: Didn't have anywhere to be just then. [they kiss] Jack: I have to warn you, I've heard relationships based on intense experiences never work. Annie: OK. We'll have to base it on sex then. Jack: Whatever you say, ma'am. .

I'm going to make the case that Spacey is a supporting player. (Spoiler alert) Yes, his character is the most important in the movie and when we rewatch it we realize that he has been manipulating everyone the whole time. But we don't realize it until the last three minutes of the movie. Remember, in the climactic gunfight on the dock, the audience is led to believe that Spacey's character is just hiding and not doing much of anything. Certainly what he's actually been doing doesn't show any great acting skill on Spacey's part. Yes, he spends most of the movie talking to Palminteri. But we think that's just a framing device the movie is using. In the quintet's scenes together, he appears much of the movie in fourth place. He has the least lines in the arrest, interrogation, lineup and jail cell scenes. And he doesn't get the juicy dialogue the others get. Much of the movie is spent wondering about Byrne's character, with Pollak and Baldwin getting much of the attention. That Spacey is equally convincing as the pathetic Roger Kint and the absolutely ruthless Keyzer Soze is a tribute to his skill. But for once it's the screenplay that deserves the credit. Also, FWIW, Spacey overwhelmingly got supporting, not leading, nominations.

What about Madeline Stowe in Twelve Monkeys?

I saw three movies last week. Cluny Brown is a fine Lubitsch picture, his last, with his wit and charm fully in evidence. If it's not the best of his movies, it might be that while Charles Boyer gives an excellent performances, Jennifer Jones is not especially inspired. Still the movie is good enough that one doesn't really notice. Love is Colder than Death is one of Fassbinder's earlier features. One might describe it as a neo-noir film, only instead of being conventionally enjoyable like many French Wave neo-noirs, it's more rigorous and abstract. It's not the most pleasurable of movies, it's still worthy of interest. Finally Sully is reasonably good, with Tom Hanks giving a decent performance as the heroic ordinary man captain. It is hampered by the fact that Sully didn't really face the bureaucratic nagging that Sully is presented with in the movie. On the other hand it works well, even if there is one reenactment too many. Aaron Eckhart gives a good closing line.

Actor Donald Sutherland, The Puppet Masters Ben Kingsley, Death and the Maiden Johnny Depp, Ed Wood Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Chungking Express, Ashes of Time Jean-Louis Trintignant, Three Colours: Red Runner-ups: John Travolta (Pulp Fiction), Ralph Fiennes (Quiz Show), John Cusack (Bullets over Broadway), Nigel Hawthorne (The Madness of King George), Hossein Rezai (Through the Olive Trees), Stuart Wilson (Death and the Maiden), Takeshi Kinesharo (Chungking Express), Leslie Cheung (Ashes of Time), Jean Reno (Leon: The Professional), Lee Kang-Sheng (Vive L'Amour), Jim Carrey (The Mask), Ewan McGregor (Shallow Grave), Christopher Eccleston (Shallow Grave), Ge You (To Live), Gael Morel (Wild Reeds), Terence Stamp (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), Brian O'Halloran (Clerks), Chen Chao-Jung (Vive L'Amour), Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption) Actress Sandra Bullock, Speed Sigourney Weaver, Death and the Maiden Winona Ryder, Little Women Toni Collette, Muriel's Wedding Gong Li, To Live Runner-ups: Yang Kue-Mai (Vive L'Amour), Irene Jacob (Three Colours: Red), Brigitte Lin (Chungking Express), Cameron Diaz (The Mask), Farhad Kheradmand (Through the Olive Trees), Kate Winslet (Heavenly Creatures), Jodie Foster (Maverick), Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures), Mia Kirshner (Exotica), Kerry Fox (Shallow Grave), Jamie Lee Curtis (True Lies), Julie Delpy (Three Colours: White), Jeni Courtenay (The Secret of Roan Inish) Supporting Actor Samuel L. Jackson, Pulp Fiction Martin Landau, Ed Wood Peter Berling, Satantango Paul Scofield, Quiz Show John Hannah, Four Weddings and a Funeral Runner-ups: Chezz Palminteri (Bullets over Broadway), John Turturro (Quiz Show), Mihaly **** (Satantango), Bruce Willis (Pulp Fiction), Tom Cruise (Interview with the Vampire), Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), Jeff Daniels (Speed), Tony Leung Ka-fai (Ashes of Time), Harvey Keitel (Pulp Fiction), Christopher Walken (Pulp Fiction), James Garner (Maverick), Christian Bale (Little Women), Andras Bodnar (Satantango), Antonio Banderas (Interview with the Vampire), Quintin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction), Gabriel Byrne (Little Women), Joe Morton (Speed), Tom Arnold (True Lies), Bill Murray (Ed Wood), Eric Stoltz (Pulp Fiction), Supporting Actress Rachel Griffiths, Muriel's Wedding Erika Bok, Satantango* Faye Wong, Chungking Express Uma Thurman, Pulp Fiction Susan Sarandon, Little Women *Juvenile Performance of the Year Runner-ups: Dianne Wiest (Bullets over Broadway), Elodie Bouchez (Wild Reeds), Sophie Lee (Muriel's Wedding), Ica Bojar (Satantango), Claire Danes (Little Women), Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction), Jennifer Tilly (Bullets over Broadway), Helen Mirren (The Madness of King George), Kirsten Dunst (Interview with the Vampire), Kirsten Dunst (Little Women), Brigitte Lin (Ashes of Time), Maggie Cheung (Ashes of Time), Not seen: Nobody's Fool, Nell, Tom and Viv ------Sometimes you're tired that an actor keeps getting in the runner-up position, without being nominated. And you just give them the award regardless.

Oh, there's this quote I should have included yesterday: Cliffhanger Eric Qualen: Do you know what real love is, Kristel? Kristel: No. Eric Qualen: [whispers in her ear] Sacrifice... [shoots her]

Quotes from 1993 Malice The question is, 'Do I have a 'God Complex'?...which makes me wonder if this lawyer has any idea as to the kind of grades one has to receive in college to be accepted at a top medical school. Or if you have the vaguest clue as to how talented someone has to be to lead a surgical team. I have an M.D. from Harvard, I am board certified in cardio-thoracic medicine and trauma surgery, I have been awarded citations from seven different medical boards in New England, and I am never, ever sick at sea. So I ask you; when someone goes into that chapel and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their wife doesn't miscarry or that their daughter doesn't bleed to death or that their mother doesn't suffer acute neural trauma from postoperative shock, who do you think they're praying to? Now, go ahead and read your Bible, Dennis, and you go to your church, and, with any luck, you might win the annual raffle. But if you're looking for God, he was in operating room number two on November 17, and he doesn't like to be second guessed. You ask me if I have a God complex? Let me tell you something: I am God. Schindler's List Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now the young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is history and you are part of it. Six hundred years ago when elsewhere they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Casimir the Great – so called – told the Jews they could come to Krakow. They came. They trundled their belongings into the city. They settled. They took hold. They prospered in business, science, education, the arts. They came with nothing. Nothing. And they flourished. For six centuries there has been a Jewish Krakow. Think about that. By this evening those six centuries are a rumor. They never happened. Today is history. Stern: Let me understand. They'd put up all the money. I'd do all the work. But what, if you don't mind my asking, would you do? Schindler: I'd make sure it's known the company's in business. I'd see that it had a certain panache. That's what I'm good at, not the work, not the work – the presentation. Groundhog Day Phil: It's the same things your whole life. "Clean up your room!", "Stand up straight!", "Pick up your feet!", "Take it like a man!", "Be nice to your sister!", "Don't mix beer and wine, ever!" Oh yeah — "Don't drive on the railroad tracks!" Gus: Well, Phil, that's one I happen to agree with.

Musical numbers from 1992: "Friend Like me" Aladdin The Long Day Closes at 65:

I was busy last week, but here are some great quotations from 1992: Unforgiven Will: It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have. Kid: Yeah. Well, I guess they had it comin'. Will: We all have it comin', kid. Glengarry Glen Ross (one of the more printable lines) As you all know, first prize is Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody wanna see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. Bram Stoker's Dracula Van Helsing: Jack, come here. I know how deeply you loved her. That is why you must trust me, and believe. Doctor Jack Seward: Believe? How can I believe? Van Helsing: I want you to bring me, before nightfall, a set of postmortem knives. Doctor Jack Seward: (appalled) An autopsy?! On Lucy?! Van Helsing: No, no, no, not exactly, I just want to cut off her head and take out her heart.

I'm assuming Winona Ryder is the only lead in Little Women. What about Quiz Show?

I have Jackson as supporting. Very simply, the structure of Pulp Fiction can be broken down into four parts: the first half of Vincent and Jules' morning, the Thurman subplot, the Wills subplot, and the second half of Vincent and Jules' morning. Vincent/Travolta is the only character who appears in all four parts, and Jules/Jackson is missing or mostly absent from the middle two. I can understand why people admired Jackson's performance since it overnight turned him from "the black guy in Goodfellas and Jurassic Park," to a major movie star. But sometimes supporting roles are the more impressive ones. Wills is clearly supporting in my view.

I saw four movies last week. Meantime is an interesting eighties movie about a family dealing with family and being tempted by skinheads than by any more practical or humane alternative. Tim Roth does a good job in an early role as an almost catatonicly awkward teenage. The Red Turtle is a wordless animated film about a man washed up on a desert island, where he encounters the title creature. It's very sparse and austere and perhaps it needed more emotional weight. The Long Long Trailer does answer a question that if you wanted to have someone direct an episode of "I Love Lucy" you couldn't choose better than Vincente Minnelli. A climatic episode as Lucy and Desi pull there horrifyingly awkward trailer up and won a mountain shows Minnelli's comedic talents quite well. Ultimately it's minor Minnelli, but it's OK. No Home Movie was Chantal Akerman's movie, about her mother who died by the end of its filming, followed by Akerman's own suicide. It consists of long takes of stationary shots, many of them wordless. And the version I got on Hoopla had no subtitles so I couldn't understand what Akerman and her mother were talking about. So I'll have to watch the DVD version to see if I can find out more.

Actor Bill Murray, Groundhog Day Anthony Hopkins, The Remains of the Day Liam Neeson, Schindler's List David Thewlis, Naked Daniel Day-Lewis, The Age of Innocence Runner-ups: Zhang Fengyi (Farewell my Concubine), Leslie Cheung (Farewell my Concubine), Takeshi Kitano (Sonatine), Kenneth Branagh (Much Ado About Nothing), Daniel Day-Lewis (In the Name of the Father), Kevin Kline (Dave), Johnny Depp (Benny & Joon), Wiley Wiggins (Dazed and Confused), Robin Williams (Mrs. Doubtfire), Luis Miguel Cintra (Abraham's Valley), Tom Cruise (The Firm), Clint Eastwood (In the Line of Fire), Woody Allen (Manhattan Murder Mystery), Jason London (Dazed and Confused), Alec Baldwin (Malice), Christian Slater (True Romance), Will Smith (Six Degrees of Separation), Harvey Keitel (The Piano), Sam Neill (The Piano), Donald Sutherland (Six Degrees of Separation),.Johnny Depp (What's Eating Gilbert Grape) Actress Emma Thompson, The Remains of the Day, Much Ado About Nothing Michelle Pfeiffer, The Age of Innocence Gong Li, Farewell my Concubine Holly Hunter, The Piano Juliette Binoche, Three Colours: Blue Runner-ups: Patricia Arquette (True Romance), Sigourney Weaver (Dave), Mary Stuart Masterson (Benny & Joon), Lesley Sharp (Naked), Diane Keaton (Manhattan Murder Mystery), Leonor Silveira (Abraham's Valley), Stockard Channing (Six Degrees of Separation), Andie MacDowell (Groundhog Day), Annabella Sciorra (Mr. Wonderful) Supporting Actor Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive Ralph Fiennes, Schindler's List Ben Kingsley, Schindler's List Greg Cruttwell, Naked Jack Lemmon, Short Cuts Runner-ups: John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire), Forrest Whitaker (Body Snatchers), Gene Hackman (The Firm), John Lithgow (Cliffhanger), Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father), Chris Penn (Short Cuts), Adam Goldberg (Dazed and Confused), Wilford Brimley (The Firm), James Fox (The Remains of the Day), Dennis Hopper (True Romance), Joe Pantoliano (The Fugitive), Tim Robbins (Short Cuts), Matthew McConaughey (Dazed and Confused), Bruce Davidson (Short Cuts), Andreas Katsoulas (The Fugitive), Oliver Platt (The Three Musketeers), Frank Langella (Dave), Tom Wood (The Fugitive), Aidan Quinn (Benny & Joon), Matthew Modine (Short Cuts), Tom Waits (Short Cuts), Chris Elliott (Groundhog Day), Lim Giong (The Puppetmaster), Supporting Actress Joanne Woodward, The Age of Innocence Winona Ryder, The Age of Innocence Anna Paquin, The Piano* Jennifer Jason Leigh, Short Cuts Lily Tomlin, Short Cuts *Juvenile Performance of the Year Runner-ups: Emma Thompson (In the Name of the Father),Holly Hunter (The Firm), Madeline Stowe (Short Cuts), Katrin Cartlidge (Naked), Andie MacDowell (Short Cuts), Annie Ross (Short Cuts), Claire Skinner (Naked), Lori Singer (Short Cuts), Julianne Moore (Short Cuts), Mara Wilson (Mrs. Doubtfire), Not seen: What's Love got to do With it, Shadowlands, Fearless --------And Joanne Woodward, after not being nominated at all for the previous four decades gets an oscar. --------I have to say the 1991 Actress category was very strong, and this year was comparatively weak.

I'll be happy too. The Best Intentions is a movie scripted by Ingmar Bergman, and directed by Billie August, who won the Palme D'Or in 1988 for Pelle the Conqueror. The movie is about the courtship and marriage of Bergman's parents, and it ends with Bergman's mother pregnant with the future director. I nominated Samuel Froller and Pernilla August in the lead roles as Bergman's parents, with August narrowly beating Emma Thompson for best actress. I also nominated Max von Sydow and Ghita Norby in supporting roles as August's parents. One is likely to compare the movie to two of Bergman's classics: Scenes from a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander. On the one hand The Best Intentions is a lesser movie to both. On the other hand that's hardly surprising, since the former is one of the great movies about marriage, and the latter is one of the great movies period. True, August and Froller, aren't of the same quality as Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, but then who is? (Well Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk, but I digress). The marriage in The Best Intentions is not a happy one, but one can see that it would last, and not just because divorce was extremely difficult to get in early 20th century Sweden. Froller has a difficult role. Although objectively handsome, his haircut and moustache remind one of a rat. This impression is encouraged by his not being a very sympathetic character. He plays a theology student and later a pastor. He starts off the movie rudely rebuffing his maternal grandfather for the way he treated his (Froller's) mother. The first half of the movie, (which is about three hours: it's edited from a mini series), deals with his successful courtship of August. He starts this notwithstanding the fact that he is engaged, and sleeping with, another woman (a waitress). Eventually he gets out of that, though not before sleeping with August before their wedding. As a pastor he isn't always sympathetic, since he is still fairly self-righteous and drags August to the boondocks of Sweden where she, previously a cultured and upper class woman, has to do the housework. On the other hand, he works hard, is concerned about the poverty of the area, stands up to the local bigwig, and takes in a poor boy (which not very happy consequences.) This makes him more nuanced than the pastor, also based on Ingmar Bergman's father, in Fanny and Alexander. As for August I chose her over Thompson for a couple of reasons. For a start I saw The Best Intentions in the mid nineties, when it was one of the first movies about a complex relationship I'd ever seen. By contrast I first saw Howard's End about fifteen years later when I had seen a lot more. While Thompson radiates intelligence and warmth, August does actually play in a real marriage, not real simply in the sense that it was based on an actual marriage, but real in the sense that it is more plausible than the subtle ideological abstractions that underlay Forster's novel.

I saw four movies last week. Sound of the Mountain is a Naruse film starring Setsuko Hara. It's interesting, if not as impressive as Late Spring, which it followed on TCM. Hara plays more of a wallflower role, though it is striking that she has an abortion in frustration over her husband's womanizing. Can one think of an American movie in which the lead, sympathetic female character makes such a choice? Well there's The Godfather, Part II, but otherwise... Sister Kenny has a good performance by Rosalind Russell playing a strong professional woman. But it became more problematic as it went on, as it did not really provide a convincing explanation why we should accept her if most Australian doctors thought she was a dangerous quack. I read the novel "Ivanhoe" when I was ten, and I thought it was very boring. I can't say the movie version is very good. It certainly does take some time to get started, though there is a rousing siege, George Sanders becomes more interesting as the movie goes one.and Elizabeth Taylor does a better job being beautiful than being a convincing Jew. L'Humanitie is a subtle movie. This 141 minute movie is about a police inspector shocked by a horrifying murder who muddles along trying to solve it, somewhat disconcerted by an attractive neighbor and her uncouth boyfriend. It's kind of hard to describe the atmosphere: there's scenes of explicit sex, and there's a lot of ordinary, arguably banal and dehumanizing portrayal of contemporary French life.