Spring 2015 #10: Terms of Endearment (1983) - James L. Brooks

Now I know what you’re thinking, “How many Best Picture winners starring Shirley MacLaine are on this list!?”

That’s all. I’ve been waiting weeks to say that.

So you’d think a movie with Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, John Lithgow, Jeff Daniels, and Danny DeVito would not be a 2 hour and 12 minute story about the heartbreaking relationship between a mother and daughter that ends in tragedy, but here we are. The film was nominated for eleven Oscars, winning five, three of which were for James L. Brooks.

And one for each of these two fine actors.

Okay so the film follows thirty years of the love-hate relationship between Aurora and Emma. We first see Aurora checking on her infant daughter by leaning over her crib to make sure she’s still alive, and then being satisfied when her daughter wakes up and starts crying. It’s perfectly emblematic of Aurora’s need to push test Emma’s limits as a daughter; Aurora’s satisfaction in her own role as a mother means more to her than her daughter’s well-being. 

There are no gifs of Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment on the internet so here she is getting out of a pink Rolls Royce in the 1964 comedy What a Way To Go! 

There are also zero gifs of Debra Winger. So bizarre. “Terms of Endearment gifs” only brings up tons of Leslie Knope compliments.

But the movie is touching, demanding the viewer to question what familial love means as these two women make their way through various tumultuous romantic relationships. Emma marries Jeff Daniels’ character, Flap Horton, while Aurora slowly is won over by the sometimes disturbing advances of her next-door neighbor, an alcoholic retired astronaut.

But the film isn’t really about men, it definitely focuses on motherhood and how complex the relationship is between mothers and their children. The most touching scene happens at the end when Emma explains her love for her two sons to them. It’s a heartfelt ending to an otherwise bizarre movie. 

Here’s another gif of boss-ass Shirley MacLaine in this comedy I’ve literally never heard of but now want to see despite its not-so-great reviews.

Terms of Endearment is a classic in the way it approaches comedy and mother-daughter relationships, and it deserves recognition for its incredible performances, the best of which is Debra Winger’s I believe.

Day 5: January 7th, 2014: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) - Miloš Forman

When I looked at the list of my eleven remaining films, something made this one jump out. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a film that gets brought up countless times in normal conversation, if only to call something crazy. And each time I’m reminded that I’ve never seen the film that gave Jack Nicholson his first Oscar!

Okay let’s not get too cocky. So One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest tells the story of R.P. McMurphy, a criminal admitted to a mental hospital for evaluation after having served some time for the statutory rape of a 15 year old girl. Quickly into the film, McMurphy realizes that he prefers serving time in a mental institution than in a jail, but he first must break the type-A Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched is a total badass, without ever batting an eye. She’s oppressive, cunning, stone-cold, and stubborn. McMurphy is her care-free antithesis, and the film pits the two against each other to reveal just how complex McMurphy is as a character.

McMurphy collects the other colorful characters like a gang leader, and shows them a life of freedom and independence outside of Nurse Ratched’s oppression. There’s Taber, a loud-mouthed madman played by Back to The Future’s Christopher Lloyd. 

There’s also Billy Bibbit, a stuttering teen, Martini, a delusional man played by Danny DeVito, Chief Bromden, a giant Native American man believed to be dumb and deaf. And that’s not even half of the ensemble in the film.

The whole group bonds over their illnesses, as McMurphy refuses to see them as they see themselves. The film takes on a very interesting perspective towards mental illness, one that America still struggles with today. McMurphy proclaims that none of the men in the institution are any more crazy then the men walking around on the street. And the idea that one is only crazy when they see themselves as crazy echoes throughout the film, with characters showing wide ranges of depth and intelligence. 

But in the end, it becomes clear that Nurse Ratched intends on making these men feel as if they need to stay in the institution for their own safety, and McMurphy comes to realize that he can do nothing to change their minds. And he really tries everything. 

It all comes down to a tragic ending that really helps you understand the kind of negative effects institutions that are run by people like Nurse Ratched can have, both on the way we view each other and on the way we view our mental states.

So overall, I deeply enjoyed the film. It follows a similar vein to Silver Linings Playbook, which preaches this idea that while we’re all really messed up, we have the power to view ourselves however we please, whether that can be a good or bad thing is up to us. It’s a little heavy-handed, but not to the point where it’s annoying (ahem Gravity), so I highly recommend it. Plus the writing is amazing. To see why the film won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, take a look at the following gif.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) - John Huston

So last week I had to read The Maltese Falcon for my Hard-Boiled Fiction And Film Noir class, and today I had to watch the film. I had heard the film was basically identical to the book, so I was excited.

The novel by Dashiell Hammett was one of the early hard-boiled detective novels of the 1930s. It started a massive trend (still going on today) of giving a rough, go-getter detective some insane mystery to solve. He often ignores the laws of the police force, and doesn’t take shit from anyone. In this case, his name was Sam Spade, played by the wonderful Humphrey Bogart. 

So the film opens with this intro:

And I was immediately like:

I spent the first about… 130 pages of a 215 page novel having no clue what the Maltese Falcon was and how it came about… and in the movie they tell you straight up! But oh well, I was over it, because even if they hadn’t told the audience I would have already known. So I sat back and enjoyed this amazing film.

The main plot follows Spade as he tries to figure out more and more about a woman named Brigid O'Shaugnessy. She originally came to him as Miss Wonderly and then later told him her real name was Miss DeBlanc, but then finally settled on her “actual” name about 30 minutes into the film. And she’s very messed up.

She’s a pathological liar and good one at that. She keeps the truth from Spade for almost the entire movie, until finally he figures it out and gets to the bottom of the actual case, which involves a man named Gutman and his desperate attempts at obtaining the Maltese Falcon from Brigid. 

One thing I found odd about both the film and book is that they throw in this very off-putting character of Joel Cairo. And by off-putting I mean the most bizarre, metrosexual/homosexual man I’ve seen in any film from this era. Here he is.

And by no questions he’s referring to his sexuality… okay kidding. But he’s just weird. In the book, he physically comforts a young man who has just been beaten up by Spade, and in the movie he does it even more awkwardly. Also there’s a creepy undertone about him being foreign and slightly (totally) homosexual at the same time. It was creepy and I don’t know why it was necessary.

Homoerotic undertones. Just saying.

Aside from that, the film was actually really entertaining. The mystery aspect of it was well done, because the plot is like… The DaVinci Code-level complex… but entertaining and thoughtful.

Also, when I was doing some research for this post I came across the weirdest discovery. The director of the film, John Huston, is Anjelica Huston’s father.

That’s not the weird part. When I saw his IMDb picture, I recognized him, but I wasn’t sure what from. I tried to forget it… but then:

John Huston plays Noah Cross in Chinatown! Granted that was 33 years after he directed The Maltese Falcon. Okay… if you haven’t seen Chinatown, just understand that his character in this film is the stuff of nightmares.

Unfortunately (but also fortunately) gifs of this man do not exist.

Okay, overall, I loved the movie. But I think a big part of that came from having just read the book a few days ago. It ranks at #122 on the IMDb Top 250, which I can agree with. It had its slow parts, but from a film standpoint it was engrossing, intellectual, and humorous when it needed to be.