The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter was the first Vietnam War movie to win Best Picture. In 1978 there were two movies about the struggles of Vietnam Vets after they came home from the war. The other movie was Coming Home with Jon Voight and Jane Fonda. I have never seen that one so I cant really compare the two.  The Deer Hunter is a 3 hour long movie pretty much composed of 3 parts pre-war, during the war, and after the war of approximately an hour each.  I have been busy and it was difficult to find time to watch the whole movie as a whole so I kind of watched each part separately.  This might have been a mistake because the movie seemed long and drawn out. I wonder if I had watched it all the way through if I would have found it more engrossing. This is a movie that seems like I should have loved.  It is dark, gritty and violent but for some reason it didn’t work as a whole.  Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep all give great performances but there are parts that just don’t work. 

The movie is about 3 Pennsylvania steel workers who enlist in the Army and go over and fight in the Vietnam War.  Before they leave they are excited and ready for action. Steve (John Savage) gets married and they have a huge celebration. The others go off on one final hunting trip.  The leader of the group is Michael played by Robert De Niro.  Christopher Walken plays his pal Nick and Meryl Streep plays Nick’s girlfriend Linda.  Michael, Nick, and Steve head off to war and witness some horrific things. After being captured they are placed in a P.O.W. camp and forced to play Russian roulette.  Michael comes up with a plan for the three of them to escape but to do so he has to play Russian roulette against Nick.  After some intense rounds they manage to overtake their captors and escape. When they are finally rescued they end up being separated and lose track of each other.  When Michael makes it home he finds out that Steven survived and was already home but was staying in a VA hospital because he lost both of his legs, and he has only talked to his wife once since he has been back.  Michael also finds out that Nick went AWOL and no one has heard from him.  Michael and Linda end up comforting each other and begin a romance, but Michael heads back to Vietnam to find Nick.  He finds out that Nick has suffered so much mental stress from all that happened that he has started playing Russian roulette for money.  Michael finds him and tries to talk him into coming home.  Nick is so lost in his own world that he barely recognizes Michael and can’t be persuaded to leave.

While the scenes in Vietnam are intense especially the Russian roulette scenes the ones in Pennsylvania are kind of boring.  I also would have liked to see more of Christopher Walken’s character decent into madness.  He is so great especially at the end when he is completely crazy. This role earned him his only Academy Award.  Robert De Niro gives an excellent performance but when doesn’t he give excellent performances (this was his third of six Oscar Nominations).  While Michael never really goes off his rocker we see him struggle with all that has gone on.  Meryl Streep in one of her first major roles gives a moving performance as Linda who stands by her boyfriend and is devastated when he never returns. Streep earned her first Oscar nomination for the role.  She has since gone on to earn 15 more nomination and 2 wins making her the most nominated actor or actress in Oscar history.  With all this great acting and some really disturbing scenes I still feel the movie doesn’t work as a whole. Like I said I am not sure that’s because I did not watch it all at once but I plan on watching it again straight through as soon as I get a chance to see if it changes my mind.
Update:  After watching the whole thing through from start to finish I realized that there are long parts of the movie that kind of boring and dont really add any plot points or character details.  The stricking images especially in Vietnam are very effective but the long drawn out scenes really take away from the movie. Also the music is very boring especially during the hunting scenes. 

Coming Home was the other big winner in 1978. Losing Best Picture but winning Best Actor for Jon Voight and Best Actress for Jane Fonda. It also won Best Original Screenplay.  It was one of the rare movies that were nominated in all 4 of the acting categories. Besides for Voight and Fonda, Bruce Dern was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Penelope Milford was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.  Also nominated for Best Actor was Laurence Olivier for The Boys from Brazil. This was his tenth and last nomination. He did get the Lifetime Achievement award that year for his many great performances.

1978 seems to have not been a great year for movies. There were not many good movies that year.  The biggest movie of the year was Grease which got only one nomination for the song “Hopelessly Devoted to You” but not for any of the other Bee Gee’s songs in the movie.  Making it the second year in a row the Bee Gee’s got snubbed.  Other popular movies that year included Animal House, Halloween, and Superman. Superman earned John Williams another nomination for Score. Also 1978 was the year Gary Busy got nominated for playing Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story.

An interesting note about John Cazale who played Stan in the movie. John starred in only 5 movies in his career before dying of bone cancer.  He played Fredo in the Godfather and The Godfather Part II, he was also in The Conversation and Dog Day Afternoon.  He was very sick on the set of The Deer Hunter and died shortly afterward at the age of 42. All 5 movies he was in were nominated for Best Picture and 3 of them won. Making him the only person to have every movie he was in to get nominated for Best Picture.  Also, he was engaged to Meryl Streep before he died.  There was a great documentary short that I saw at Sundance about him called I Knew it was You: Rediscovering John Cazale worth checking out if you find if playing on HBO. 

By the Numbers:

The Deer Hunter was listed as number 79 on AFI 100 Greatest Movies in 1997 and 53 in 2007
The Deer Hunter is currently at #132 on IMDB Top 250.

Annie Hall

1977 was a good year for sci-fi movies (also for me because it was the year I was born) with the release of both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But it was the romantic comedy Annie Hall that ended up winning Best Picture that year becoming one of the few romantic comedies to win.  Beating the massively commercially successful Star Wars which was the highest grossing movie of all time at that point. 

Annie Hall is about a Jewish comedian Alvy Singer who falls in love with a naive Midwestern girl Annie Hall.  Their relationship start off promising but it goes through a lot of turmoil as time goes on. Alvy who has been married twice and been in therapy for 15 years has a lot of neurosis which eventually drives Annie away.  The movie is semi autobiographical about Woody Allens relationship with Diane Keaton. 

The movie is a funny and heartfelt tale about love and how things don't always go as we want them to.  Both Woody Allen and Diane Keaton give great performances and there are great supporting casts like Paul Simon and  Christopher Walken in one of his earliest roles.  No one does neurotic Jew like Woody Allen and this is him at his best. The only reason I have mixed feelings about this movie is that it seems like once you have seen one Woody Allen movie you have seen them all.  The story is usually the same. But you can't argue that the jokes are hilarious. There are some great one liners and Allen is a great writer as evident by his 13 Oscar Nominations for writing.  The movie was innovative for the time with the main character speaking directly to the audience and even having a little animation bit in the middle.  The movie was nominated for 5 awards and won 4. It was the third movie in a row to be nominated for the 5 top Oscars only losing the Best Actor.

But an even more innovative film was Star Wars which was nominated for 10 awards and won 6. This breakthrough movie combined a classical hero story and placed it in a futuristic world. It was an instant success and was the highest grossing film of the year. The movie lost the major awards(including Best Supporting Actor for Alec Guinness) but racked up tons of technical awards including Best Editing, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound. It also won a special Academy Award for it's creature creations. 

Winning his third Academy Award was John Williams with his amazing score for Star Wars.  Williams had previously won for Jaws and Fiddler on the Roof. He beat himself in 1977 for another sci-fi masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Creating some of the most memorable scores in movie history it is amazing that he has only won a total of 5 Academy Awards but has been nominated 43 times and a number of those times he was nominated against himself as was the case in 1977.  He was also nominated 8 years in a row between 1996 and 2003.


Oscar Facts:
Woody Allen became the 4th person to be nominated for screenplay and actor for the same movie and only the second person to be nominated for screenplay, acting, and director.  Orson Welles was the only other person to do that in 1941 with Citizen Kane.
Annie Hall is the second shortest movie to win best picture at only 93 minutes(originally it was over 2 hours long the major editing done you would think would have earned it at least a nomination for Best Editing)
The Turning Point became the most nominated film without winning any awards with 11 nominations. The Color Purple would tie it for the record in 1985.
Biggest Snub of the year goes to the Bee Gees not getting any nominations for Best Song from the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack.
1977 was the 50th anniversary of the Academy Awards

By the Numbers
Annie Hall was ranked on AFI Top 100 list at #31 in 1997 and #35 in 2007 and is currently ranked #134 on IMDB Top 250.
Star Wars was ranked at #15 in 1997 and #13 in 2007 and is currently #16 on IMDB Top 250
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was ranked #64 in 1997 and didn't make the list in 2007

Listomania Sunday: Vegas Movies

Well today is my last day in Vegas and thought I would make a list of the best Vegas movies.

1.  The Hangover
2.  Oceans 11
3.  Leaving Las Vegas
4.  The Cooler
5.  Showgirls

While Showgirls is not a great movie it is a classic Vegas movie and thought it had to be on the list. 

Rocky

With the Vietnam war recently over and the Watergate Scandal still fresh in peoples minds 1976 turned out to be a year people were looking for an uplifting story of an underdog.  The public responded to Rocky and it ended up winning Best Picture.  One of the most well known boxing movies and the first sports movie to win Best Picture. 

Rocky is about a down and out aging boxer who just fights random guys in local fights to make enough money to scrape buy.  He lives in a run down house does odd jobs for some mobsters and is trying to start a relationship with a shy women Adrian who works in a pet store.  When the heavyweight world champ Apollo Creed comes to Philadelphia and his opponent gets sick at the last minute they decide to offer a local guy a chance to fight for the title.  They decide Rocky would be a good story and chose him.  This thrusts this poor unknown boxer from the streets into the spotlight and everyone wants to be his friend now that he is a celebrity.  While trying to deal with this new found fame he is trying to start a relationship with Adrian.  After some intense training he goes toe to toe with Apollo Creed. 

The movie with its now iconic music and scenes still hold up over time.  The determination and guts that Rocky shows in his rise to the top is inspiring and in the end it doesn't matter if he wins or loses.  It seems weird that Sylvester Stallone who became one of the biggest action stars of the 80's not only starred in a Best Picture but also wrote it.  He went on to write 5 more Rocky movies and directed 3 of them.  But original is still the best and a classic. It must have been inspiration that people were looking for in 1976.  Plus it probably didn't hurt either that it was released in 1976 and took place in Philadelphia on the 200th Anniversary of the United States.  But the movie beat other movies that I would consider better then Rocky. Including my favorite from 1976 the prophetic Network, the true story about the breaking of the Watergate scandal All the Presidents Men and the Martin Scorseses Taxi Driver.  All these movies are more serious in tone and especially Network and Taxi Driver have a very grim ending.  All the Presidents Men might have suffered from Watergate fatigue at that point. 

Rocky was nominated for 10 awards including Best Picture, Best Director for John Avildsen , Best Screenplay for Sylvester Stallone, Best Actor for Sylvester Stallone, Best Actress for Talia Shire, and Best Song for 'Gonna Fly Now" and became the first sports movie to win Best Picture. Network went on to beat Rocky for Best Original Screenplay and also became the second movie to win 3 awards for acting. Peter Finch beat Sylvester Stallone and Robert Deniro for Best Actor, Faye Dunaway beat Talia Shire for Best Actress, and Beatrice Straight won for Best Supporting Actress.  It was also the first time an acting award was given posthumous as Peter Finch had died shortly before the ceremony. 

Other Oscar Facts:
Sylvester Stallone became one of the few people to be nominated for Screenplay and Acting in the same year.
Beatrice Straight won the award for Best Supporting Actress with only being on screen for 6 minutes and 8 seconds.
Martin Scorsese was not nominated for Taxi Driver but Lina Wertmuller became the first women to be nominated for Best Director for her foreign language pic Seven Beauties.
Two horror movies a genre that usually gets overlooked by the Academy got a few nominations this year.
Carrie was nominated for Best Actress for Sissy Spacek and Best Supporting Actress for Piper Laurie and
The Omen was nominated for Best Song and won Best Score.
On a personal note Bound for Glory was the only movie nominated for Best Picture that year that I didn't not see.

By the Numbers
Rocky made AFI's 100 Greatest Films list at #78 in 1997 and #57 in 2007 and is currently #215 in IMDB Top 250.
Network was listed at #66 in 1997 and #64 in 2007 and is currently #196 on IMDB Top 250.
Taxi Driver was listed at #47 in 1997 and #52 in 2007 and is currently #41 on IMDB Top 250.
All the Presidents Men didn't make the list in 1997 but was #77 in 2007

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

In 1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was the second of only 3 movies to win the top 5 Academy Awards Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress.  The first was It Happened One Night in 1934 and the next was The Silence of the Lambs in 1991.  So this is a very rare occurrence and shows the high acclaim that this movie had.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is about a criminal R.P. McMurphy who pretends to be insane to get out of jail and placed in a psychiatric hospital. He stirs up trouble in the hospital by starting a little gambling among the patients and smuggling in  alcohol and prostitutes.  At one point he orchestrates an escape by stealing a bus and taking the patients on a fishing trip.  All of his shenanigans brings the ire of the head nurse Ratched who uses increasing more drastic measures to control him. 

The movie is truely a great movie. I haven't seen the movie in a while and it still surpised me how good it was. Jack Nichlolson is brilliant as McMurphy and winning his first Academy Award. While Louise Fletcher seemed more of a supporting actress in the movie she was so good as the Nurse Ratched that she steals the spotlight.  The movie is full of future stars a young Danny Devito and a young Christopher Loyd are both in the movie.  The classic story based on the book of the same name is great. I love movies that make you think and this was one of those movies.  As nurse Ratched uses more extreme measures McMurphy becomes more crazy. At the end we are left wondering was McMuprhy insane at the begining or was he driven insane by his "therapy".  The movie deserved all the awards it got and is one of those movies that hasn't lost any impact over time.

Oscar Facts
The movie beat other well known and great movies like Jaws, Dog Day Afternoon and Nashville. 
For the third year in a row Jach Nicholson was nominated against Al Pacino for Best Actor and finally won. This was Nicholson 5th nomination and first win.
Over all One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was nominated for 9 awads and won 5. 
Losing out any nominations for best song is the now cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show

By the Numbers
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was ranked at 20 in 1997 and 33 in 2007 on AFI 100 Greatest Film list
Jaws was ranked 48 in 1997 and 56 in 2007

Listomania Sunday: Best Sequels

This week in my Best Picture quest I saw The Godfather Part II.  Which is considered the best sequels of all time. So, I decided to make my list of the best sequels.

1.  The Godfather Part II
2.  The Dark Knight
3.  The Empire Strikes Back
5.  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
5.  Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Other Sequels that almost made the list. The Bourne Supremacy, Spiderman 2, and X-Men 2.
The last two along with The Dark Knight probe that comic book movies and their sequels don't have to be bad.