Oscar Film Journal: Platoon (1986)

Welcome to another Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com!  I'm hoping to have finished viewing every Best Picture nominee within the next five years - only 247 left to go....

Today I'm circling back to the 1980s and a movie I've seen a few times but somehow always forget exactly how it goes.  It's the film that put Oliver Stone on the map as a director, the 1986 Best Picture winner Platoon.  Starring Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, and a host of prolific character actors like Keith David and Forest Whitaker, Platoon is loosely based on Stone's own experiences during the Vietnam War.  Intended as both a tribute to the men who fought there, and a propaganda-free, warts-and-all portrayal of what it was really like, Stone's screenplay pulls no punches, immersing the audience in the chaotic Hell on Earth that was this quagmire of a war.

Charlie Sheen's character is newly stationed volunteer Chris Taylor, a college dropout who, like so many young men in the 60s, dreamed of being part of something important like their WWII veteran fathers were.  The idea of fighting for their country seemed so simple and noble, but the illusion was quickly shattered when they arrived in the sweltering Far East jungle to face an enemy the US government severely underestimated, in service of a nebulous, undefined goal.  

Oscar Film Journal: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

Time for another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

We're in the 1940s once again, looking at an odd little inclusion in Best Picture lore.  Today's subject has been much-discussed and analyzed, and mostly celebrated in spite of its myriad flaws and unforced studio errors that led to its not being the film it should've been.  I'm talking about The Magnificent Ambersons.  

This was Orson Welles' sophomore directorial effort, and the story behind it is just as intriguing as the movie itself.  Welles was famously signed by RKO Pictures after taking the radio and theater worlds by storm in the late 30s, and given creative carte blanche for his debut, the incomparable Citizen Kane.  Infamously that film not only went over-budget and over schedule, but its subject matter sparked a major feud with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who used his massive media influence to try and cripple the film's distribution.  Kane was heralded as a major cinematic achievement but underwhelmed at the box office, and RKO management no longer trusted Welles with final cut.

Oscar Film Journal: All the King's Men (1949)

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Today I'm heading to the 1940s again for the 1949 Best Picture winner, All the King's Men, starring Broderick Crawford and directed by Robert Rossen.  Based on Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer-winning novel, ATKM chronicles the rise of a political demagogue, an idealistic fellow named Willie Stark who runs for public office hoping to do away with political corruption.  But Willie doesn't have much success running a campaign the honest way and realizes he has to play by the dirty rules of politics to get things done, ultimately becoming the very thing he once detested.  As Governor he engages in graft, political intimidation, scandal coverups, character assassination, philandering and likely outright violence, using his populist charisma to bend the voters and the gears of power to his will (Gee, why does this all seem oddly relevant in 2026?).  By his side is a newspaper reporter-turned opposition researcher Jack Burden, who at first believes in Willie's platform but slowly begins to see what a parasitic con man he's become, as Willie ruins the lives of all of Jack's loved ones.

Oscar Film Journal: Quiz Show (1994)

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We're swingin' back to 1994 to close out that year, with Robert Redford's historical drama Quiz Show, chronicling the scandal that rocked television....well, quiz shows in the 1950s, when it was discovered through a Congressional investigation that one popular show in particular, Twenty-One, was not on the level.

John Turturro and Ralph Fiennes star as two wildly successful contestants.  Awkward, uncharismatic Herb Stempel (Turturro) has been on an unprecedented winning streak that for a while kept America glued to the television, but ratings are beginning to stagnate and the show's producers (David Paymer and Hank Azaria), along with the head of the show's sponsor Geritol (welcome surprise Martin Scorsese) and the NBC President (reptilian character actor Allan Rich), have decided it's time his streak came to an end.  Enter the debonair scion of a well-respected family of intellectuals Charles Van Doren (Fiennes), who auditions for the NBC shows to supplement his lowly income as a college instructor and demonstrates prodigious knowledge of various subjects, and the powers that be decide he's the perfect successor to Stempel.  An arrangement is made with both contestants that Stempel will stumble on an easy question (What film won the Best Picture Oscar for 1955?) and Van Doren will become the new champion by answering questions the he's already heard.  Van Doren becomes a sensation and his family hopes it will spark a wave of intellectualism across America.  But Stempel contacts the New York District Attorney's office to blow the whistle on the whole scam, and a young lawyer named Dick Goodwin (a surprisingly effective Rob Morrow doing a pretty good Boston accent) works to take down the network.

Oscar Film Journal: Twelve O'Clock High (1949)

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Up until yesterday I had two years in Oscars history where I hadn't seen any of the Best Picture nominees: 1949 and 1956.  I'm happy to say I've rectified one of those two by watching the 1949 war film Twelve O'Clock High, starring Gregory Peck and directed by henry King.  

TOCH is based on a novel, itself loosely based on true events surrounding the earliest American aviary missions during World War II.  Stationed in England, the 918th Bomb Group has been conducting raids on German-occupied targets in France, mostly without success and suffering heavy casualties.  Major General Pritchard recognizes that a leadership change is needed, and assigns Brigadier General Frank Savage (Peck) to whip the unit into shape, boost morale, and hopefully turn their productivity around.  Savage rules with an iron fist, demanding the members of the unit refrain from becoming attached to each other or even to surviving the war, lest their emotions jeopardize their mission.  "Think of yourselves as already dead," he tells them, earning the unit's disdain and prompting a slew of transfer requests.  But the unit's legal administrator Major Stovall (Dean Jagger, in a performance that won him a supporting Oscar) wants to see the mission succeed and agrees to stall the transfers until they've racked up some battlefield wins, banking that the requests will ultimately be withdrawn.  Slowly the team comes to trust Savage and his methods, and they make major strides in slowing down German munitions manufacturing, via repeated air raids on Germany itself.

Oscar Film Journal: Ben-Hur (1959)

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Today's a doozy.  I'm finally breaking the seal on the year 1959, and starting at the top, with the Best Picture winner (along with the ten other awards it bagged), Ben-Hur.  Based on the 1880 novel by Lew Wallace, directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston, Ben-Hur was a massive undertaking, boasting some of the largest film sets ever constructed and an epic three-and-a-half-hour running time, not including the overture and intermission.  At a $15 million price tag it was also the most expensive film every produced at that time, and was such a box office sensation it outgrossed every film that came before it except one: Gone With the Wind.

The narrative is set against the backdrop of the birth, rise, and eventual crucifixion of Christ.  A fellow Judean named Judah Ben-Hur (Heston), born around the same time as Jesus, grows up to be a wealthy Jewish merchant.  His childhood friend Messala has gone on to become a Roman tribune, co-governing Jerusalem.  Messala has fully bought into the idea of Roman global domination and tries to convince Judah to join him and become a high-ranking Roman official.  But Judah's loyalty is with his Jewish brethren and he vows to help them regain their freedom, driving an intense rift between the two friends.  During a parade held for Governor Gratus, Judah's sister Tirzah accidentally knocks a loose roof tile into the street, injuring Gratus.  Even though Messala knows it was an accident, he uses this as a pretext to imprison Judah, Tirzah and their mother Miriam, making them an example of what will happen to anyone who questions Roman dominion. 

Oscar Film Journal: Mutiny On the Bounty (1935)

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We're sailin' on back to the 1930s for a rip-roaring, seafaring yarn, the first cinematic adaptation of the classic historical novel Mutiny on the Bounty.  Directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, this version actually incorporates events from the first two books in the Bounty trilogy.  

Laughton plays the infamously ruthless Captain William Bligh, whose cruel treatment of his officers and men becomes so intolerable his executive officer Fletcher Christian (Gable) leads the titular mutiny.  The Bounty undertakes a daunting two-year voyage from England to Tahiti to transport a supply of breadfruit trees to the West Indies as a cheap food supply.  Throughout the voyage Bligh ruthlessly punishes his crew for even the slightest infraction, cuts their food rations while upping his own, and even accuses his own officers of theft when various supply counts are off.  Finally the usually even-tempered Christian can take no more, and he exiles Bligh and his loyalists to a lifeboat and sets them adrift, while opting to stay in Tahiti with the islander woman he's fallen for.  Complicating the matter is the presence of Christian's friend, midshipman Roger Byam, who out of duty remained loyal to Bligh but stayed on the Bounty because the lifeboat had no more room.  Eventually the idealistic Byam agrees to return to England, hoping his loyalty to his captain will save him from the hangman's noose.

Oscar Film Journal: On Golden Pond (1981)

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I've been meaning to watch today's film for some time now and kept putting it off.  I remember as a six-year-old hearing about this one and thinking it sounded like an "old people movie," probably because it's about a couple of old people.  

Today's subject is On Golden Pond, starring Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Jane Fonda, in Henry's final film role (He passed away only eight months after its release).  Based on the play by Ernest Thompson, On Golden Pond tells the story of an elderly couple spending the summer at their vacation cottage by a New England lake.  Norman is about to turn 80 and is beginning to suffer from dementia and angina, and his wife Ethel struggles to convince him it's worth hanging on for a while longer.  Their daughter Chelsea arrives with her fiancé Bill and his son Billy, and we learn pretty quickly that Chelsea and Norman's relationship has long been strained (She even calls him by his first name instead of "Dad").  Chelsea and Bill take a trip to Europe and leave Billy in the care of his soon-to-be step-grandparents for a month, giving Norman a chance to learn how to be an actual parent, thus softening his sardonic, grim worldview.

Oscar Film Journal: Lilies of the Field (1963)

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Heading back to the early 1960s and a peculiar little film called Lilies of the Field, starring Sidney Poitier, in the role that won him an historic Oscar, the first Academy Award given to a black actor for a lead performance.  Based on the novel by William Edmund Barrett, Lilies is a very simple story of a transient California-bound handyman who stops off at a makeshift Arizona convent for a water refill, offers to help the nuns who live there in exchange for cash, and instead gets roped into the months-long assignment of building them a chapel.  Homer Smith (Poitier) initially hopes to make a quick few bucks repairing the roof of their shared housing, but the head nun Mother Maria (a stern but oddly likable Lilia Skala, who earned a Supporting Actress nod) seemingly underplays her knowledge of English to avoid paying him.  Homer stays the night and shares the scant meal the sisters offer, but one night turns into many, as Maria keeps giving him odd jobs to perform for free, telling him God sent him to help.  As he gets to know their mostly Spanish-speaking local congregation (Sunday mass is held outdoors) he begins to feel a duty to follow through on the challenge, an admittedly appealing task for the amateur architect.  

Oscar Film Journal: Gandhi (1982)

And it's time for yet another Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

The 2026 ceremony may be in the history books but that doesn't mean we can't still have fun.  Today's subject is the 1982 epic biographical drama that won the Best Picture trophy, Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, starring Ben Kingsley in the role that also won him the gold statuette.

Gandhi covers the rise of India's famed spiritual leader and activist, and his decades-long efforts to free his home country from British rule, without the use of violence.  After a prologue that depicts his 1948 assassination, we circle back to his time as a young, idealistic attorney living in turn-of-the-century South Africa where, despite his station as an educated man, he is still treated as a second-class citizen due to his race.  He quickly becomes involved in local activism, staging a demonstration where Indian residents burn their required ID cards and face imprisonment.  He catches the attention of like-minded Indian activists and reporters, and by the time he returns home some years later he is greeted as a celebrity.  Over the next three decades he champions Indian independence through peaceful non-cooperation and a vow of poverty, dressing only in minimalistic, handmade clothes, quietly enduring British military violence at protest marches, and journeying to the ocean to sift salt and sell it to fellow natives (British law forbade the sale of salt by anyone but British-owned distributors).  The colonialist government takes notice and numerous acts of violence erupt on both sides, most notably the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, where a rogue British colonel orders his men to fire relentlessly on a gathering of protesters.  In 1947 after years of negotiations, India and Pakistan are finally freed from British rule, but find themselves at odds over religious beliefs, and a year later Gandhi is shot by a Hindu nationalist.

Oscar Film Journal: Whiplash (2014)

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Circling back to one of my recent favorites, a film I've seen numerous times but about which I haven't written a full review, 2014's Whiplash, the breakout film by Damien Chazelle, starring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons.  As a musician and Berklee College of Music alum, Whiplash piqued my interest right away, telling the story of an ambitious young drummer at a prestigious, competitive jazz conservatory in New York.  Andrew Neiman wants to be the next Buddy Rich and knows that his key to success in the NYC jazz scene is to get in good with the school's toughest, most celebrated band leader Terence Fletcher (a scenery-chewing Simmons at his Oscar-winning best).  As Andrew forsakes his personal relationships for his dedication to his craft, the teacher-student dynamic becomes a power struggle, with Fletcher going to appalling lengths to wring the best possible performances out of his pet project, and Andrew demanding a modicum of appreciation from his perfectionist mentor.  Drawing on his own experiences in high school jazz band, Chazelle fills the movie with questions about losing oneself to ambition and the price of success, as well as asking "How far is too far to push a promising student?"  

Oscar Film Journal: In the Bedroom (2001)

Time for yet another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com! 

***Here there be SPOILERS***

We're heading back to the early aughts and a year I can't believe was 25 ago, 2001, for a look at the directorial debut of Todd Field.  The film is In the Bedroom and stars Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek and Marisa Tomei.  Set in a small town in Maine, the story centers around a middle-aged couple whose graduate student son Frank (Nick Stahl) is in the middle of a summer fling with Natalie, a much older, divorced woman with two kids (Tomei).  Frank assures his concerned mother and strangely proud father that the affair is just for the season until he goes to graduate school, but it's clear right away that these two have real feelings for each other and that Frank has a strong bond with her kids as well.  Complicating things is the fact that Natalie's husband Richard is still trying to win her back, becoming more and more abusive in the process.  

Oscar Film Journal: Lion (2016)

Welcome to another entry in the vaunted Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  When I started this project five years ago I'd seen 214 Best Pic nominees, and since that time I've viewed an additional 150.  Pretty cool, huh?

We're headed back to the mid-teens for one of the less-talked about Best Picture nominees of 2016, one that I kept putting off for whatever reason, the Garth Davis-helmed biographical drama Lion, starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman.  Based on actual events, Lion is the tale of a boy named Saroo from a tiny village in India, who in 1986 got separated from his family when he fell asleep on an empty train one night, waking up hundreds of miles away in a different region of the country with an entirely different language.  After months of living on the streets he was brought to the police by a concerned citizen and placed in an overcrowded orphanage, and ultimately adopted by an Australian couple.  Twenty years later as an adult, Saroo is on his way to a promising career in the hotel business, but finds himself suddenly obsessed with reconnecting with the life he'd left behind.  The problem is he never learned his mother's full name, nor the correct name of his village, and the train stop he remembers is one of hundreds in the region.

Oscar Film Journal: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

And we're back with another Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com!

Strap in for a trip to the 1940s, specifically the first year of that decade, for a look at John Ford's acclaimed adaptation of John Steinbeck's Pulitzer-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath.  Starring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and John Carradine, TGOW is the story of a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers who lose their farm to mechanization and are forced to relocate to California to find work.  Like the novel, this film is rife with sociopolitical commentary and takes a staunch pro-worker stance, depicting as its antagonists uncaring landowners, brutal deputized police, and a system that chews up and spits out the little guy.  Some classics never age.

We begin the story with Tom Joad (Fonda), one of the family's adult sons, who's just been released from prison on parole after accidentally killing a man in a bar fight.  He hitchhikes home to find his farmhouse deserted, and a neighbor informs him the wealthy landowners have run everyone off their farms to make way for new, more efficient machinery.  Tom finds the rest of his family nearby at his uncle's house, but that house is also set to be bulldozed the next day.  The family loads up their dilapidated jalopy and heads west to California, having received a handbill advertising hundreds of available farming jobs.  Of course they soon learn that thousands of those handbills were distributed, and jobs in California are now just as scarce as in Oklahoma.  

Oscar Film Journal: Sentimental Value (2025)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  Seven 2025 nominees down, three to go...

Today I'm looking at Joachim Trier's latest opus, Sentimental Value, a Norwegian family drama of strained parent-child relationships starring Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as a father and his two adult daughters who become reacquainted after the death of the mother.  We learn via the film's engaging prologue that the parents spent a lot of time screaming at each other, severely damaging the older daughter Nora (Reinsve), who now has trouble getting close to anyone.  The father (Skarsgard) left, only occasionally reconnecting with his children over the following decades, and not very successfully.  

In the present, Nora is now an accomplished theater and television actress, her younger sister Agnes (Lilleaas) did some acting as a child, having starred in one of her father's acclaimed films, but has since left the business.  The father Gustav has enjoyed a long directorial career but hasn't made a feature in fifteen years and now wants to reclaim the family home (which technically on paper still belongs to him).  Not only that, he's written a new screenplay, the best of his career, and wants Nora to star in it.  But Nora rejects the olive branch, refusing to even read the script, and Gustav ends up instead casting famous American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), while also agreeing to several artistic compromises in order to get Netflix to finance the project.  

Oscar Film Journal: The Verdict (1982)

Still pluggin' away at these old movies, so let's do another Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com!

The year is 1982, the director is Sidney Lumet, the genre is legal drama (coincidentally the same as the film that put Lumet on the map), the star is Paul Newman, the film is The Verdict.

Based on a 1980 Barry Reed novel and adapted by vaunted playwright-turned-screenwriter David Mamet, The Verdict tells the story of deadbeat ambulance chaser Frank Galvin, who once had a promising career as an attorney but lost that and his marriage to the bottle.  He now scours the Boston Globe obituary section looking for opportunities to convince the bereaved to pursue wrongful death suits.  When we first meet Frank, this strategy is going very badly for him and he is kicked out of a funeral home for attempting to solicit work.  He spends most of his waking hours at a local Irish bar, pounding shots of whiskey and occasionally hitting on women (one of whom, played by Charlotte Rampling actually succumbs to his charms, but isn't quite what she seems).  One day his former partner Mickey (Jack Warden) sends him a medical malpractice case involving a woman admitted to a Catholic hospital during labor, who was seemingly administered the wrong form of anesthesia, leaving her in a coma and on life support.  The woman's sister and brother-in-law have filed suit against the church and the doctor in charge, hoping to land a significant settlement, of which Frank stands to retain one third.  

Oscar Film Journal: Erin Brockovich (2000)

Welcome to Oscar Film Journal entry #138, I think.

Time to take a trip back to the year 2000.  Hey remember when we all thought the year 2000 was gonna be this super-futuristic era with flying cars and no racism?  Good times.  

Anyway we're looking at Best Picture nominee Erin Brockovich, the remarkable true story of an ordinary single mom of three who used her natural savvy, tenacity and charisma to become a high-powered paralegal and activist.  Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the film stars Julia Roberts as the title character, in an Oscar-winning tour-de-force.  I was skeptical going into this about whether Roberts' performance would be anywhere near the level of say, Ellen Burstyn's harrowing turn that year in Requiem for a Dream, and while I still think Burstyn's was the superior performance, Roberts' work here is definitely Oscar-worthy.  In fact she's so captivating she more than makes up for the film's script shortcomings.  The structure is pretty standard "scrappy unlikely hero makes good" fare, the dialogue is sometimes hamfisted, and certain relationships are underwritten, but Roberts is so much fun to watch and so squarely the focus of the story that the films works quite well overall.

Oscar Film Journal: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

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Still chippin' away at the 1970s and a film against which I've long had a bit of a grudge simply because it beat out the timeless masterpiece that is Apocalypse Now in the Best Picture category that year.  I'm talking about Kramer vs. Kramer, written and directed by Robert Benton (based on Avery Corman's novel) and starring Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, and in a performance that made him the youngest Oscar nominee of all time at age eight, Justin Henry.  

Kramer vs. Kramer is a domestic drama about a couple going through a divorce and the effect this change has on their young son.  Ted Kramer is a work-obsessed NYC marketing exec, so detached from his home life he doesn't even know what grade his son Billy is in, and so emotionally distant from his wife Joanna that she decides one day to pack up and leave them.  Ted is so wrapped up in his own stuff he at first thinks she's joking and then barely reacts once she actually exits.  The next morning he haphazardly makes Billy breakfast and just barely gets him to school on time, and we really get a sense of how ill-equipped he is at parenting.  But over the next year he and Billy become very close, and with a little help from the Kramers' neighbor Margaret, Ted develops the skills he needs as a father (illustrated perfectly by a later scene where Ted is making Billy the same breakfast, calmly and adeptly).  Suddenly though, Joanna returns after a year in Los Angeles and asks for custody, and an ugly legal battle ensues.

Oscar Film Journal: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Welcome to another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  Strap into the DeLorean and let's head back to the 1970s, specifically to the year of my birth (in fact this film had its NYC premiere the day before I was born)....

Today's subject is the Best Picture winner for 1975, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, starring Jack Nicholson in a role that won him his first Oscar and helped define his storied career.  Directed by Milos Forman and based on Ken Kesey's novel, Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a psychiatric ward in Oregon, where a multi-time petty criminal named Randle McMurphy has finagled a transfer out of the prison system to avoid hard labor.  The administrator suspects McMurphy is faking mental illness but reluctantly agrees to keep him on a trial basis.  McMurphy quickly finds himself in a power struggle with the ward's icy, domineering head nurse Mildred Ratched, ultimately inciting a rebellion among the other patients.

This film was in development hell for over a decade, originally set to star Kirk Douglas, and eventually the property found its way into his son Michael's hands instead.  After thirteen long years of development (and a successful Broadway adaptation), the film was finally made in early '75 and became an instant sensation, finishing second at the box office that year, garnering nine Oscar nominations, and going on to be the second of three films ever to win the five major awards - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best (Adapted) Screenplay.  In pop culture it's been referenced countless times, for example inspiring Metallica's "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" and Stone Cold Steve Austin's iconic match ending moment at WrestleMania 13 where he fought Bret Hart's inescapable Sharpshooter before ultimately passing out (Austin cited Nicholson's attempt to lift an impossibly heavy water fountain as his impetus for that match finish).   

Oscar Film Journal: Nebraska (2013)

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I'm circling back to the 2010s, to a film I meant to watch at the time but never got around to, it's Alexander Payne's comedy-drama Nebraska, starring Bruce Dern and Will Forte.  Nebraska is a road movie of sorts, about a crotchety septuagenarian named Woody who's convinced he's won a million dollars through the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes and insists on traveling from his home in Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska to collect the winnings.  Initially he thinks he can make the trek on foot, but the police pick him up wandering down the freeway, and despite numerous attempts by his two sons (Forte and Bob Odenkirk) and his hilariously fed up wife Kate (a brilliantly cast June Squibb) to convince him it's all a scam, he refuses to let it go.  Thus his younger son David agrees to drive him to the company's headquarters and find out for sure (Woody doesn't trust the mail system so that's a non-starter).  David knows there's nothing at the end of this particular rainbow but sees the trip as a chance to spend quality time with his emotionally distant father.  Woody quickly lets his drinking get the better of him, falling and hitting his head, and the pair decide to hole up for a few days in Hawthorne, NE, with Woody's brother Ray.  While in Hawthorne they run afoul of Woody's ex-business partner-turned nemesis Ed (a slimy Stacy Keach, recalling his turn in American History X), who upon learning of Woody's alleged newfound wealth attempts to extort David out of some cash (For that matter, so do several of Woody's relatives).