Tag: Academy Award Winner

The Departed

Scorsese has fun with material about unexpected violence and foul language. Peak for Jack Nicholson wearing a gray “Irish” t-shirt. –October 31, 2024

Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind is obviously brilliant, but it’s hard to forgive how desirable the filmmakers make the Confederacy.  –September 30, 2024

CODA

Heartwarming and sensitive, CODA is the kind of movie that once drew adults to theaters. Now it lures us to Apple TV as campaign fodder for an Oscar, which it won. –August 31, 2023

No Country for Old Men

A little regional dialogue goes a long way in No Country for Old Men, which follows a sheriff who misses older times that are gone forever. Stupendous and properly Oscar-winning. –July 31, 2023

Parasite

Trump dismissed it, creating a stir, but I missed it in first release. Catching up now that a few years have passed, Parasite is extraordinary, but I’m unsure if it’s great. –May 31, 2023

Midnight Cowboy

Of ways to unpack the only X-rated Best Picture Academy Award winner in history, the most interesting may be Midnight Cowboy’s value as an experimental movie that gave birth to the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1970s. –March 31, 2023

Marty

“You don’t like her. My mother don’t like her. She’s a dog. And I’m a fat, ugly man. Well, all I know is I had a good time last night. I’m gonna have a good time tonight. If we have enough good times together, I’m gonna get down on my knees. I’m gonna beg that… Continue reading Marty

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Everything Everywhere All at Once is so much weirder than you might anticipate from the trailer, and you might become impatient. Then you’ll cry when you see how family is first made through reproduction and, later, by choice. –January 31, 2023

How Green Was My Valley

“Everything I ever learnt as a small boy came from my father, and I never found anything he ever told me to be wrong or worthless. The simple lessons he taught me are as sharp and clear in my mind as if I had heard them only yesterday.” Nominated for the 1941 Academy Award for… Continue reading How Green Was My Valley

Million Dollar Baby

Million Dollar Baby is two movies folded into one, although the May-December friendship is far better than the boxing story that works Rocky-like to get folks in the door. –October 31, 2022

Rocky

Forget the franchise build around it and remember: Rocky is about everyday people trying to be just a little bit better than they were when we first meet them. –September 30, 2022

Crash

Take 1: “Moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other.” Take 2: My reaction has shifted in time. Michael Peña’s storyline aside, I think Crash may be the most overrated Academy Award winner of the 21st century. –November 30, 2023

Mutiny on the Bounty

“Discipline’s the thing. A seaman’s a seaman, a captain’s a captain. And a midshipman is the lowest form of animal life in the British navy.” Twelve films were nominated for the Outstanding Production Academy Award of 1935. Aside from the eventual winner, Frank Lloyd’s Mutiny on the Bounty, which was produced by MGM, five other titles… Continue reading Mutiny on the Bounty

Going My Way

“The smiles you’ll gather / Will look well on you / Oh, I hope you’re Going My Way too.” –July 31, 2022

Gandhi

His weapon was his humanity. –June 30, 2022

Titanic

“She hits the berg on the starboard side, right? She kind of bumps along, punching holes like Morse code, dit dit dit, along the side, below the water line. Then the forward compartments start to flood.” –December 31, 2021

Nomadland

Take 1: Garrett Chaffin-Quiray and Ed Rosa interpret the 2020 Academy Award winner. Take 2: Frances McDormand craps into a plastic bucket in Nomadland. She also pees in a field and skinny dips in a mountain river. But you’ll probably remember her best for playing against the prickly type she’s mastered over the last 20 years.… Continue reading Nomadland

You Can’t Take It With You

“As near as I can see, the only thing you can take with you is the love of your friends.“ Frank Capra is the epitome of New Deal-era Hollywood. A longtime Columbia Pictures contract employee, his movies are built upon the harsh material realities of the times but equally buoyed with a mixture of optimism, ingenuity,… Continue reading You Can’t Take It With You

Grand Hotel

“And what do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat. Sleep. Loaf around. Flirt a little, dance a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall. No one knows anything about the person next to them. And when you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed.” “People come. People go. Nothing ever happens,”… Continue reading Grand Hotel

Cavalcade

“How very impolite of the twentieth century to wake up the children.“ Noel Coward’s successful, London-set play “Cavalcade” (1931) was adapted for the big screen and won of the 6th Academy Award for Outstanding Production. Hailed as, “A love that suffered and rose triumphant above the crushing events of this modern age! The march of time… Continue reading Cavalcade

Cimarron

“In 1889, President Harrison opened the vast Indian Oklahoma Lands for white settlement.” Described as being, “Terrific As All Creation”, Cimarron is a slight movie important only for having won the 4th Academy Award for Best Production, a title since re-named Best Picture. Now almost unwatchable, save for its sweeping vistas and set design, the movie’s empire building… Continue reading Cimarron

Wings

“Life marched at double-quick in those feverish days of ’17.” It’s hard to consider artifacts from an earlier time. Not only is there a need to establish context, there is an equal need to evaluate what’s discovered on its own merits as well as in regard to the present. Tagged as, “The Drama of the… Continue reading Wings

All Quiet on the Western Front

“When it comes to dying for your country, it’s better not to die at all.” American cinematic depictions of war have run the gamut from patriotic and wide-eyed national chauvinism to harsh self-criticism over the value of conquest. There have also been considerable efforts to imagine wars and military crises in other countries, and certainly… Continue reading All Quiet on the Western Front

In the Heat of the Night

Take 1: In the Heat of the Night spends time looking at a racist lawn jockey, considers the value of non-medical abortion, and holds court for Sidney Poitier’s, “They call me Mr. Tibbs.” It’s an Oscar winner that does its job, one tidy sequence of great screen acting after another. Take 2: To understand how and… Continue reading In the Heat of the Night

Platoon

“I love this place at night, the stars. There’s no right or wrong in them. They’re just there.” –September 30, 2019

A Beautiful Mind

“I’ve gotten used to ignoring them and I think, as a result, they’ve kind of given up on me. I think that’s what it’s like with all our dreams and our nightmares.” Ron Howard’s Best Picture Oscar winner for 2001, A Beautiful Mind, features rich costume and set design, convincing make-up effects, and a too-good-to-be-untrue central story… Continue reading A Beautiful Mind

The English Patient

“I promise, I’ll come back for you. I promise, I’ll never leave you.” I was late to the party for The English Patient, Anthony Minghella’s Academy Award winning Best Picture from 1996. Having watched the March 24, 1997 Oscars telecast, I was then-clinging to an ill-fit graduate school program, and I had just found full-time work.… Continue reading The English Patient

Moonlight

“At some point, you gotta decide for yourself who you gonna be. Can’t let nobody make that decision for you.” –October 31, 2018

The French Connection

“Get your hands on your heads, get off the bar, and get on the wall!” Gene Hackman has long been a personal favorite. Perhaps it’s his speaking voice that echoes a spot in my memory about educated, mid-western speech. Maybe it’s the rough-hewn physical presence with a receding hairline and wily eyes that see more… Continue reading The French Connection

"These are the words I said to you," sayeth the Curator, Garrett Chaffin-Quiray