On paper, at least, Joe Wright’s The Woman in the Window has a whole lot of Oscar connections in it. The psychological thriller stars Amy Adams, recipient of six nominations who’s never won (she’s considered well overdue for a victory). Costars include Academy winners and nominees such as Gary Oldman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Julianne Moore in addition to Anthony Mackie, Wyatt Russell, and Brian Tyree Henry. Screenwriter Tracy Letts has a Pulitzer Prize to his name. And Wright has seen two of his efforts (Atonement, Darkest Hour) nab Best Picture nods.
Window hits Netflix today after originally being planned for a fall 2019 premiere via 20th Century Fox. It was pushed back to May 2020 due to reshoots and the COVID-19 pandemic. The pic was finally snatched up by the streamer, foregoing a theatrical release. So there’s the question of whether this is even eligible for the Oscars since it’s not hitting the big screen. Not that it matters.
Word of mouth over the past several months has not been kind and the just lapsed review embargo confirms that. The Rotten Tomatoes score is a troubling 27% with many critics calling it a poor Hitchcock ripoff. Despite the many participants with a nexus to awards attention, Window appears more likely to garner Razzie mentions than anything at the big dance.
Zack Snyder’s zombie tale Army of the Dead hits hundreds of screens this weekend before its Netflix streaming premiere on May 21. Reviews are out and several indicate it’s a winner (especially the opening scene which is drawing raves). The Rotten Tomatoes score currently sits at 76%.
If an Oscar Watch post for this particular genre seems strange, I get it. I’m not talking about a Best Picture nod or lead actor recognition for Dave Bautista. However, some critics are pointing out Army‘s visuals. Just last year, the Netflix monster pic Love and Monsters scored a surprise nomination in Visual Effects.
Here’s the caveat: several contenders in the race from 2020 were pushed back to 2021. In other words, VE should be more of a crowded field this time around. That includes potential heavy hitters like Dune, Eternals, the fourth Matrix, Top Gun: Maverick, The Suicide Squad, and Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Having said that, if Netflix launches a serious campaign, Army could march to the shortlist in this specific category and a nod is not out of the question.
My latest Shoulda Been Oscar Contender is an appropriate one for Mother’s Day. This particular mama went to great lengths to protect her son since, ya know, he was charged with saving the universe decades later from annihilation. She even got herself thrown in a mental hospital because of her heroic efforts.
I’m speaking of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Reprising her role from the 1984 classic, Hamilton stepped up her game in the 1991 sequel alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Edward Furlong as her future Earth saving teen.
Terminator 2 was a game changer itself when it came to special effects and action. It resulted in six Oscar nominations, including victories for Makeup, Sound, Sound Effects Editing, and (of course) Visual Effects. Yet nods in the biggest categories were elusive. 1991 was a strong year in Best Actress with Jodie Foster winning for The Silence of the Lambs over the sturdy competition of Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon for Thelma & Louise and Laura Dern in Rambling Rose.
However, Hamilton’s strong (and not just her biceps) performance could have easily gotten the fifth slot over Bette Midler in For the Boys. MTV recognized her work and she won Best Actress at their ceremony. And while the Academy isn’t known to honor performances in action flicks, they had deservedly done so just five years earlier for Sigourney Weaver in another heralded genre sequel Aliens (also directed by Cameron).
They missed a good opportunity to do the same here. Lastly, while not every mother is charged with keeping their kid alive to avoid planetary destruction, the great ones sure make us all feel like they do. Happy Mother’s Day to all of them!
James Foley’s 1992 adaptation of David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Glengarry Glen Ross is an abundance of riches featuring some of the finest actors around. From Alec Baldwin’s now legendary speech to the assorted desperate salesmen to Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, and Jonathan Pryce showcasing their chops (and many creative uses for profanity), it is truly an actors showcase. Looking back, it’s surprising that it only received one Oscar nomination. I would argue they picked the wrong screen legend to honor in Supporting Actor. This brings us to our latest Shoulda Been Contender.
1992 was a huge year for Al Pacino. He had been nominated for six Oscars and had zero victories to show for it. That included amazing work in the first two Godfather epics and Dog Day Afternoon. Pacino was a double nominee in ’92 for lead in Scent of a Woman and in supporting here. The former would finally bring him his long awaited win. However, I would argue that Jack Lemmon should have filled the slot for the latter.
As the once thriving and now down on his luck Shelley “The Machine” Levene, it is Lemmon’s character that is the heart of the picture. By its year of release, Mr. Lemmon had already garnered 8 nods for his long body of work. This includes two wins – 1955’s Mister Roberts in supporting and 1973’s Save the Tiger in lead. His last nomination came in 1982 for Missing. No disrespect to Pacino, but this should have marked #9 and would have rightfully given Lemmon deserved mentions in five different decades.
My Should Been Oscar Contenders series moves from a trio of supporting actors from 1993 to a deserving supporting actress hopeful the following year.
In 1993, Anna Paquin was a surprise victor in the category at age 11 for The Piano. In 1994, the Academy bypassed a 12-year-old thespian who gave an equally impressive performance. Alongside box office stars Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst stole the show in Neil Jordan’s blockbuster Interview with the Vampire.
As Claudia, Dunst’s character starts out as an innocent 10-year-old who is turned into a vampire. She is cursed by always appearing as an adolescent even as she lives several decades following that bite. Her role would be difficult for any actress to pull off and Dunst proved her chops early on.
The Golden Globes did honor her with a nod. The Academy should have followed suit.
In recent interviews promoting Coming 2 America, Eddie Murphy spoke about how critics went gaga over his dramatic turn in 2006’s Dreamgirls. It earned him his first and only Oscar nomination. He was considered the frontrunner in Supporting Actor but lost in an upset to Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine. Murphy’s remarks indicated that reviewers might have been somewhat misguided in recognizing his performance in Dreamgirls while ignoring his treasure trove of comedic excellence in numerous pictures.
Eddie is right and there’s no better example than his work ten years before his Academy nod in The Nutty Professor. The blockbuster remake of the 1963 Jerry Lewis vehicle found Murphy playing multiple roles and doing it brilliantly. The kitchen table scenes in which he plays almost every member of the Klump clan are worthy of a nomination itself. He did manage to pick up a Golden Globe mention for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy (ultimately losing to Tom Cruise for Jerry Maguire).
There are many example of roles played for laughs that the Academy unjustly ignored, but Murphy’s multifaceted turn here stands near the top.
My latest Shoulda Been Oscar Contenders post completes a trio of supporting actors that warranted attention in 1993. That was an already impressive year in that category with Tommy Lee Jones winning for The Fugitive. The other nominees: Leonardo DiCaprio (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape), Ralph Fiennes (Schindler’s List), John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire), and Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father). The other performers mentioned in previous write-ups were Val Kilmer for Tombstone and Sean Penn in Carlito’s Way.
My final contestant is Denzel Washington in Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia. The AIDS drama, of course, gave Tom Hanks his first Best Actor win of two in a row (taking the prize the next year for Forrest Gump). There was little doubt at that time that Hanks would walk away with the gold and his acceptance speech remains an Oscar highlight.
That makes it even more confounding that his costar didn’t get more chatter. Washington was already a victor in supporting four years earlier for Glory. In 1992, he nabbed a Best Actor nod for Malcolm X. He would take Best Actor eight years later for Training Day and has been nominated three times since. However, the legendary actor’s role as Hanks’s reluctant attorney was critical to the success of the film and in many ways equaled the performance of the lead.
Keep an eye out for future posts of hopefuls that didn’t make the cut on the blog soon!
Continuing with my new series covering performances that could have warranted some Oscar attention, I move to my second post in the Supporting Actor race of 1993. The first one centered on Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday in Tombstone. As a reminder, the actual five nominees were a strong grouping with Tommy Lee Jones emerging victorious for The Fugitive. The other nominees: Leonardo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Ralph Fiennes for Schindler’s List, John Malkovich for In the Line of Fire, and Pete Postlethwaite for In the Name of the Father.
Another notable performance for that derby: Sean Penn in Brian De Palma’s Carlito’s Way. Almost unrecognizable as a sleazy coked up lawyer with an unforgettable hairdo, Penn managed to steal scenes from Al Pacino’s title character. Had his work been included here, it would have marked his first nod. Two years later, he achieved that with Dead Man Walking. Four more nominations (all in Best Actor) would follow with two victories in 2003’s Mystic River and 2008’s Milk as well as 1999’s Sweet and Lowdown and 2001’s I Am Sam.
Yet his rare supporting turn alongside Pacino would have been fine with me for a sixth mention – even with the solid competition nearly three decades ago.
My Should Been Contenders posts will continue with another sturdy supporting turn from 1993…
For a while, it didn’t look like this would be the case… but there were surprises to be had at the 93rd Annual Academy Awards and it wasn’t just about the winners. I didn’t expect Glenn Close to shake her groove thang to the late 1980s classic “Da Butt” by E.U., but it happened and it was pretty darn funny. I certainly didn’t expect Best Picture not to be the last category announced, but it happened in what turned out to be a poor decision. Memo to the Academy: make the biggest race of all the final one. It’s not that complicated.
There were also some unexpected twists in the categories themselves. Let’s get this out of the way: I went 13/20 in my picks. You won’t hear me bragging about that statistic. Until the final few minutes of the program (which did manage to run just a tad long), it started to seem like Nomadland might not be the big winner of the evening. It got there with expected wins in Picture and Chloe Zhao in Director (becoming the second woman to ever nab that prize). The surprise victory was Frances McDormand in Actress. By doing so, she became only the second performer to take that race three times (Katherine Hepburn did it on four occasions). McDormand won over my prediction of Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman. Most prognosticators who didn’t pick Mulligan went with Viola Davis in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
Nomadland led all films with 3 wins. We had six others with two: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in Costume Design and Makeup and Hairstyling (correctly picked), Soul for Animated Feature and Score (got that right), Sound of Metal in Sound (yes) and Editing (where I incorrectly had The Trial of the Chicago 7), Mank in Production Design (bingo) and Cinematography (where I had Nomadland), Judas and the Black Messiah with Daniel Kaluuya in Supporting Actor (a no-brainer) and Song (where “Fight for You” was an upset victor and where I had “Speak Now” from One Night in Miami).
And then there’s The Father. Of the 8 Best Picture nominees, it was the only one that I had leaving empty-handed. Instead it took Adapted Screenplay over Nomadland. And then the late speculation of an Anthony Hopkins win over Rainey‘s Chadwick Boseman came to fruition. This really wasn’t a big shocker as Hopkins had just nabbed the BAFTA and this seemed like a genuine possibility. The decision of the producers to save Best Actor for last as opposed to Best Picture seems like they wanted to end on a dramatic note with Boseman getting the posthumous award. That backfired as Hopkins was named and he wasn’t even on video to accept. P.S. – it was Trial of the Chicago 7 that turned out as the lone BP nominee that left with zero hardware.
In other races, Promising Young Woman took Original Screenplay and Another Round won International Feature Film as expected. Same with Tenet in Visual Effects. In one of the better acceptance speeches of the night, Yuh-jung Youn emerged as Supporting Actress in Minari. I picked Time as somewhat of a spoiler choice in Documentary over My Octopus Teacher, but Octopus stood tall.
The team behind this year’s ceremony obviously had their work cut out for them. I appreciate that they mostly met the time limit. Beyond Yuh-jung, Another Round filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg and Chloe Zhao gave standout acceptance remarks. This ceremony itself won’t be too well remembered despite some best efforts… perhaps other than (and I didn’t think the post would end like this) Glenn Close and her surprise dance moves.
Breakdown of wins are as follows:
3 Wins
Nomadland
2 Wins
The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Mank, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Soul, Sound of Metal
1 Win
Another Round, Minari, My Octopus Teacher, Promising Young Woman, Tenet
That’s all for now and thank you for following me all along the way in these many months of 2020 Oscar speculation!
1993 was an exceptionally strong year in the Supporting Actor category with five worthy nominees in the mix: Leonardo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Ralph Fiennes for Schindler’s List, Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, John Malkovich for In the Line of Fire, and Pete Postlethwaite for In the Name of the Father. Jones would ultimately walk away with the prize.
However, there are three other performances that come to mind in that particular year and they will be showcased in my next Shoulda Been Contender posts. It starts with Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in Tombstone. Nearly 30 years later, you may not remember that there were two competing Wyatt Earp pics happening. Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp with Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid was the 1994 summer release that was a potential Oscar contender and blockbuster. It turned out to be neither. Tombstone, released in December 1993, wasn’t so eagerly anticipated.
Yet audiences liked what they saw when it debuted. It was a rock solid action western with Kurt Russell in the commanding lead as Earp. It become a high earner and remains an enduring favorite with moviegoers. As good as the picture is, Kilmer’s work was great with endless quotable lines and character quirks. Having already made a name for himself in Top Gun, Willow, and his uncanny impression of Jim Morrison in The Doors, Kilmer’s Holliday may still stand as his most memorable role. And that deserves mention in a year full of notable supporting turns.
As mentioned, I’m not finished with this category in 1993. Stay tuned…
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