Oh Patton. I just… I am unsure as to where I should start here.
Good idea, Patton. So, back in April of 1971, a film about the U.S. General George S. Patton of World War II won seven Oscars. Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Sound, Best Art Direction, and Best Actor. Fun Oscars Fact: George C. Scott (who confusingly enough played George S. Patton) is the first person in history to refuse an Oscar. He called the Oscars “a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons.”
He’s not WRONG. Just dramatic as hell.
So apparently Patton is this ridiculously classic war epic covering the career of General Patton. Maybe I’d watch a Drunk History of this story… but not a 2 hour and 51 minute biopic of a controversial World War II veteran.
And not just because the film fails so spectacularly at passing the Bechdel Test (I’m serious, not a SINGLE woman has a line in this film, except for maybe one woman wearing a burka offering two chickens to General Patton out of respect). Now I know what you’re thinking, “It’s a movie about World War II, Saving Private Ryan doesn’t have female characters.” And to that I would say Saving Private Ryan has a surprise third-act Matt Damon, which could redeem anything in my eyes.
Here’s the only gif from the actual film I could find, which shows a pivotal scene in which Patton slaps a soldier for being too traumatized from the shelling to continue fighting. Patton gets in big trouble for berating the soldier by calling him a coward, and thankfully, his career goes downhill from there.
War movies and Westerns are not my thing, as I have stated countless times here, as I think they promote a type of masculinity that is incredibly harmful. But if you’re into war movies, you should give this one a try. It offers an extensive look at the politics behind World War II, plus Francis Ford Coppola was one of the screenwriters, so there’s that.
Also the first scene of Patton is iconic and allowed for this Looney Tunes bit.
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.
A $100 million Roman epic that is also a Best Picture winner? Hard to believe in this century, with the past decade being dominated by low-budget indies such as Slumdog Millionare in 2009, The Hurt Locker in 2010, and The Artist in 2012. But it wasn’t so long ago that massive blockbusters like Titanic, Lord of the Rings, and Braveheart were taking home the golden statue.
I think the digital age can be thanked for the improved quality of small independent films, since passion projects like Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) can be made for as little as $1.8 million, or Whiplash (2014) for $3.3 million, and then can be successful enough to get the Academy’s attention.
But anyway, since I have 100 more gifs of this film, I might as well talk about it. Gladiator tells the almost true story of the Roman Emperor Commodus, who became the sole emperor of Rome at the age of 19 when his father, Marcus Aurelius, died in 180 AD.
Here we have a young Joaquin Phoenix, as Commodus, pouring his heart out to his father, after being told that the general Maximus (Russell Crowe) will succeed his father instead of him.
Poor Joaquin. All he wanted was for his father to love him! Well Commodus takes the throne by his own doing, forces Maximus to be executed, and then ascends to the throne in a wonderful celebration of 150 days of Colosseum games.
And I know Commodus is a corrupt leader and probably sexually attracted to his sister, Lucilla… but I think Joaquin is beautiful and I can’t stay mad at him.
I call it the Jamie Lannister effect.
Anyway the script went through a million rewrites, which I think can be chalked up to arguments between the historians hired to work on the film and the studio people who were worried about narrative. Apparently, after several drafts, Russell Crowe said to one of the writers, “Your lines are garbage but I’m the greatest actor in the world, and I can make even garbage sound good.” I would like to see the movie fail after a declaration like that, but Russell Crowe did win an Oscar for this… so I don’t know.
But he’s right, so many of the lines are garbage. It’s like they focused on the massive sets and costumes (over 27,500 pieces of armor were made for the film), that they didn’t care what anyone was actually saying, as long as it looked awesome.
And it does look awesome. The first scene is a battle between the Roman army and the Germanic tribe in the last holdout against the Roman Empire’s expansion. Beyond that, the Gladiator scenes themselves are cool as hell.
Oops wrong gladiators. Despite the insane effects, including CGI shots of the entirety of Rome and a packed Colosseum, the film is lacking in character stuff. Apparently, Maximus himself wasn’t even a likable protagonist until they added all of this weird stuff about the afterlife.
So the film added a ton of random dream sequences where Maximus ponders his life after death, wondering about the meaning of it all. He was just an innocent farmer who became a general who became a slave who became a gladiator!
You do you Commodus. Anyway the film went on to gross $457 million, it won five Oscars including Best Picture, and it is #46 on the IMDb Top 250. The first Best Picture winner of the 21st century!
Sometimes all it takes is a little research to learn that Netflix has some hidden gems you didn’t even know were hidden gems. The Apartment, a movie I had never heard of before I made this list, is not only a Best Picture winner or #99 on the IMDb Top 250, but is also #80 on the AFI 100 Films list. The triple threat! I maybe only have a handful of these films left.
None I promise. Okay! So Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon star in this comedy-drama about a man who lets his bosses use his apartment for their extramarital affairs in exchange for pulling him up the corporate ladder. But he falls for the elevator assistant and everything goes to shit!
Billy Wilder originally wanted to direct this film in the 1940s, around the time when he had directed Double Indemnity (and a few years before he directed Sunset Boulevard), but the production code at the time actually forbid adultery in films. We’ve come a long way! By the 1960s, Americans were seeing a lot more than the used to on film. By this I mean that in 1960, Psycho had finally shown the first toilet flush in American film history.
*Violins screeching*
So poor C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), must regularly vacate his apartment so that his superiors can screw the secretaries, phone operators, and elevator girls that work in this massive insurance company. I mean actually massive.
Fun fact: The wide shots of the office scenes were made to look bigger by using smaller and smaller desks and smaller and smaller people. The ones in the back (maybe not in this shot specifically) were actually children.
Anyway, so Baxter falls in love with Fran Kubelik, played by the amazing and beautiful Shirley McLaine. She’s often spouting sad one-liners about love.
Here she is today singing with Darren Criss on Glee.
She has an Oscar.
So when Mr. Baxter falls in love with Miss Kubelik (as they affectionately call each other?), Mr. Baxter’s arrangement with his employers becomes a problem. And crazy romantic comedy tropes come into play!
The film is comedic without ever being screwball, and dramatic without ever being disheartening. It balances nicely, and I think that’s what makes it rise above the comedies of its time. Shirley and Jack give real depth to these stock characters, the unattainable girl at work and the goofy man chasing after her. While exploring the bitterness of falling in love in addition to the harshness of the American corporate world, The Apartment feels like it’s actually trying to say something rather than just pull a laugh.
The film went on to win five Oscars, three of which went to Jack Lemmon (Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Original Screenplay). Only 10 people have ever won three Oscars in one year, including James Cameron, the Coen Brothers, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Peter Jackson, and Francis Ford Coppola. The ONLY person ever to win four Oscars in one year is Walt Disney. Oscar facts!
Okay so I don’t know why but Netflix seems to have more Best Picture Winners than IMDb Top 250 films so that’s just how this list is going to go. Which I don’t have a problem with because they’re all on my Watchlist anyway.
The French Connection! I feel like I had vaguely heard of this film, but it’s more or less on the list simply because it’s #93 on the AFI Top 100 as well as being on Netflix.
The film follows two detectives, Doyle and Russo, trying to stop a major drug deal between a giant French heroine syndicate and the mob. They have smuggled $32 million of heroine into New York by hiding it in a French television star’s car and have to outsmart the detectives before making the deal.
It’s kind of exciting? I don’t know, the plot is kind of predictable: detectives have one tiny lead to go off of, lots of stakeouts, reach a dead end when the villains are overly careful, detectives get thrown off the case for not following the rules, villains slip up, detectives win. Just hearing the title, The French Connection, made me sad that that connection wasn’t Alain Delon.
Oh my god I can’t even.
Anyway the inspiration for the film came when William Friedkin was living with Howard Hawks’ daughter, and he asked her if she liked his movies, and she said they were lousy. She said, “Make a good chase. Make one better than anyone’s done.”
And thus one of the coolest chases in film history is born.
Doyle avoids an assassination attempt by the French drug dealer’s hitman, who then boards a subway train and literally commandeers the train while Doyle chases it underneath in his car. It’s actually 15 minutes of pure intensity and it was the one time in the film I didn’t look like this.
And this is the director who directed The Exorcist two years later! Crazy. I’m sorry, cop movies are not my thing.
The film went on to win Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing at the 44th Academy Awards. Fun Fact, this Oscars included a 12 minute long standing ovation for Charlie Chaplin receiving an Honorary Award, the longest applause in Academy history.
So I quickly scrapped the idea of making a Summer 2015 Moviecation List in favor of making a Spring 2015 Moviecation List! I mean the summer solstice is June 21st this year, so I have plenty of time.
Ah yes. The film that has been on my Netflix Watchlist since the dawn of time… basically. The 72nd Academy Awards Best Picture Winner, American Beauty. Luckily for me, I managed to get 16 years without knowing what the hell this movie was about! I mean… the cover is a girl’s stomach with a rose in front of it. I assumed it was about sex? Well I was right.
Kevin Spacey plays a boring, unappreciated, uninteresting middle class father named Lester Burnham. The beginning opens with Lester narrating that he has just died, a direct reference to another Moviecation film, Sunset Boulevard! It all ties together, people.
So Lester is living a meaningless and passionless life. His wife doesn’t have sex with him, his 16 year old daughter hates him. Everything is ordinary. Until he falls in love with his daughter’s friend, Angela.
Yes, cue roses. Angela is aware of this obsession, teasing Lester’s daughter, Jane, about Lester’s infatuation with her. The attraction provides a sort of sexual awakening for Lester, and his life changes courses dramatically, starting with his marriage.
Meanwhile, his wife, Carolyn, played by Annette Bening, is described as being soulless and shallow by almost every character in the movie. She herself begins a passionate relationship with a fellow real estate agent. And then her husband finally starts standing up for himself in their marriage, but in an almost emotionally abusive way.
Needless to say, the Burnham family is not the most supportive of one another.
While Jane struggles with issues of feeling unappreciated by her parents, Angela is continuously toying with the idea of being attracted to Lester.
Which sparks her relationship with the new next-door neighbor, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), a dark videographer and pot dealer with a ruthless and violently homophobic ex-Marine for a father.
So the film situates three new relationships in the world of a seemingly ordinary middle class family. American Beauty continually addresses the connection between sex and performance, or the act of putting on a show to seem a certain way to someone. Especially Angela, who prides herself on being sexually adventurous and mature, but also trying desperately to be special.
Lester’s lust for Angela is the driving force behind Lester’s change of character. He quits his job and begins working at a burger place, remembering the days of his youth when all he did was “party and get laid.” This rejection of his responsibilities as a father and a husband reveals his own selfishness, but also his desire to feel truly alive in a world the continually tries to put you a box of materialism and monotony. Even the pristine nature of the Burnham house, the perfect rose garden, the $4,000 couch, the staged family dinners with diagetic music creating an atmosphere of sophistication, everything works to represent the Burnham’s as being an ordinary, functional American family.
The writer, Alan Ball, has stated that two events inspired him to write the film. First, a plastic bag floating in the wind, which is included in the film as a shot that Ricky has and wants to show Jane because it made him aware of all of the beauty in the world. Second, the Amy Fisher trial in 1992, where a 17 year old high schooler shot her 35 year old boyfriend’s wife. This does not happen in the film, although Lester does die.
Critics have been widely positive although divided on the film, many stating that they have a different interpretation every time they watch it. This is what makes a truly great film, so I decided to offer mine.
American Beauty affirms the inherent struggle between middle class conformism and the individual desire to feel unique. The only way around this battle is to find beauty in the everyday world, and therefore breaking free of the imprisonment of the ordinary.
Well that’s just my thought. The 90s were crazy and masculinity was in crisis, so different people see different things in this unique story. American Beauty is #61 on the IMDb Top 250, and won 5 Oscars: Best Actor, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Picture.
I did it!! Oh god it feels good to finish a film bucketlist, because it means I get to make a new one!
The last film on my list is Best Picture Winner All About Eve. The story was originally a true anecdote told by actress Elisabeth Bergner, then written as a short story by Mary Orr, and finally written for the screen and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It tells the story of Eve Harrington, a renowned Broadway actress winning a fictitious theatre award, and how she climbed the social ladder to achieve her dream of fame and fortune.
After seeing Eve receiving her award, the story flashes back to the day the main characters meet Eve Harrington. She has spent weeks seeing every performance of the famous Broadway actress Margo Channing, and now the writer’s wife, Karen Richards, wants to introduce Eve to her idol.
The incomparable Bette Davis plays the egomaniac diva, Margo Channing. An aging Broadway actress, Margo is constantly obsessing over how others perceive her and how she’s going to remain in the spotlight. To her, Eve is an innocent little nobody who is in for a rude awakening in the theatre world she so desires to be a part of. So Margo takes Eve under her wing, making her her assistant, agent, secretary, and friend.
But things take a turn! I don’t want to give away too much, but the film is an entertaining look at the relationships between women in the workforce, how building one up means tearing another down, and how theatre is especially designed for this ruthless competition.
Margo’s obsession with age is constant, as she eventually reveals herself to have recently turned forty, while her boyfriend (who is also her director) is only 32. Her bombastic attitude and abrasive reaction to everything relating to her persona is at its peak when Eve starts to encroach on both her professional and personal lives.
Also every scene where Margo is drinking is amazing. But the film is also a lot deeper than its story about theatre prima donnas and the malevolent critics who make or break them. Its release less than a decade after World War II has created for some incredibly interesting interpretations on what it means to be a woman in America.
Many have argued that Eve’s invasion of everything Margo holds dear is a metaphor for the attack on traditional American values: women trying to assume agency in a patriarchal society, homosexuality encroaching on traditional heteronormative values, COMMUNISM! It’s all hinted at with the audience being left to decide which side they support.
I don’t know what to make of the LGBT reading of the film, since in 1950 any vaguely homosexual character is innately the antagonistic force in the story, while Eve to me is more of the generic woman trying to conquer an extremely unwelcoming and sexist industry.
Speaking of female empowerment! Marilyn Monroe appears about halfway into the film for no reason.
I’m going to be completely honest and say that I have never once seen a film with Marilyn Monroe in it… which is saying something since I’ve seen every episode of Smash!
But I was actually shocked at how much Marilyn shines on camera. Like it’s unthinkable that someone could steal a scene from Bette Davis, but I literally couldn’t take my eyes off her when she was on screen.
Iconic. Anyway the film is an impressive study on the power of theatre and performance in our lives, and how becoming the person we dream of being can mean sacrificing everything others believe about us. It almost reminded me of Birdman, the way it intertwined film and theatre and the way different walks of life view different types of artistic creation.
The film was nominated for a record fourteen Oscars (a feat not accomplished again until Titanic 47 years later. It won Best Picture, and is still the only film ever to have four actresses nominated. It currently is #98 on the IMDb Top 250 and #28 on the AFI 100 Films list. And that’s all folks! Stay tuned for my Summer 2015 Moviecation List!
