BEFORE: In advance of Oscar night, a look back at one of the darker chapters in Hollywood history, the blacklist that followed the McCarthy hearings. Woody Allen carries over as an actor, though not as a director.
Also in honor of Oscar night, my wife sent me a link to a list on BuzzFeed of someone's ranking of the best Best Picture winners, along with comments over what "should" have won each year over the subjectively questionable winners. Clearly, this person has their favorites among the also-rans, such as "Fargo" and "Pulp Fiction", and that influenced their choice of these films as Top 10:
10) Unforgiven
9) The Deer Hunter
8) It Happened One Night
7) The Bridge on the River Kwai
6) Lawrence of Arabia
5) The Silence of the Lambs
4) The Godfather Part II
3) Casablanca
2) The Godfather
1) All About Eve
That's all well and good, if you're that person - but I've now seen all 10 of those films, and I certainly wouldn't include "Casablanca", "All About Eve" and "It Happened One Night" anywhere NEAR my Top 10. So you know what I have to do know, right? I have to take all 67 of the Best Picture winners that I have seen (3 of the other 18 are currently on my watchlist) and apply my ratings from the ones I've seen during this project, and think about the ones I've seen before this project, and come up with my own personal Top 10 Best Best Pictures:
10) Million Dollar Baby
9) Shakespeare in Love
8) Braveheart
7) Forrest Gump
6) The Hurt Locker
5) Platoon
4) Slumdog Millionaire
3) Titanic
2) The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
1) Amadeus
This was TOUGH to do - if you don't believe me, try ranking your own top 10. And then I looked at the films that would be #11-20, and they are phenomenal films too: The Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, Argo, The Last Emperor, The English Patient, The Bridge On the River Kwai, Dances With Wolves, American Beauty, Unforgiven. I had to limit the list to films I thought were 8's or above, and then some had to be classified as 8.5's in order to advance. You may disagree with my rankings (my wife sure did) but that's the point, it's all subjective, and when you get down to the best of the best, one's personal choices could be separated by a hair's width of a margin.
THE PLOT: A cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Guilty By Suspicion" (Movie #187)
AFTER: I realize that Woody did not direct this film, but it's still a little strange to see him in a film whose opening + closing song: "Young at Heart", sung by Frank Sinatra. Sinatra, of course, would be the ex-husband of Woody's future ex-lover, and the possible biological father of the son he would someday believe to be his. Yeah, actors are a weird bunch.
But I like Zero Mostel, who was probably the best thing about this film, playing the over-the-top Hecky Brown, who eventually loses his star gig on TV because he once marched in a May Day parade, because he was hot for a leftist girl with a big booty. Allen plays Howard Prince, who essentially makes the same mistake, falling for a TV showrunner who has her own Commie magazine. Oh, plus he hangs out with blacklisted writers who can't get hired, and passes their scripts off as his own.
The system works for a while, and he gets to keep 10% of his non-earned earnings, which allows him to pay off his gambling debts and start living a better life, but it's only a matter of time before someone sees him associating with the "wrong" people and he gets called in to testify. Will he name names and roll over like the nebbish he usually plays?
Also starring Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Michael Murphy, Andrea Marcovicci, David Margulies, with cameos from Danny Aiello, Charles Kimbrough.
RATING: 5 out of 10 rewrites
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