31 Days of Oscar

Movies to See Right Now

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Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD
Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD

It’s time for the Oscars, so you really should watch the year’s best film (and Oscar favorite) Boyhood if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video. Otherwise:

  • Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
  • The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
  • The Belgian drama Two Days, One Night with Marion Cotillard, which explores the limits of emotional endurance.
  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
  • Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
  • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
  • Julianne Moore’s superb performance is the only reason to see Still Alice;
  • The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
  • I was underwhelmed by the brooding drama A Most Violent Year – well-acted and a superb sense of time and place (NYC in 1981) but not gripping enough to thrill.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. It is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

It’s time for Turner Classic Movies’ annual 31 Days of Oscar – a glorious month of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films on TCM. This week, I am highlighting:

The Producers (February 21): This zany 1967 Mel Brooks madcap classic is probably my nominee for Funniest Movie of All Time. (Much better than the 2005 remake.) Deliverance (February 21): Our of my all-time favorites – still gripping today – with a famous scene that still shocks. Jon Voigt, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox form an impressive ensemble cast.
Seven Days in May (February 26): A GREAT political thriller
The Emigrants (February 27): This Swedish film remains the best depiction of pioneer settlers in the American West.

Movies to See Right Now

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David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. (center back) in SELMA
David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. (center back) in SELMA

The best films in theaters right now are no secret – most are Oscar-nominated:

  • Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
  • The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
  • The Belgian drama Two Days, One Night with Marion Cotillard, which explores the limits of emotional endurance.
  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
  • Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
  • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
  • The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
  • I was underwhelmed by the brooding drama A Most Violent Year – well-acted and a superb sense of time and place (NYC in 1981) but not gripping enough to thrill.

My DVD/Stream of the week is last year’s best Hollywood movie, the psychological thriller Gone Girl, with a star-making performance by Rosamund Pike. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

It’s time for Turner Classic Movies’ annual 31 Days of Oscar – a glorious month of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films on TCM. This week, I am highlighting:

  • The Great Dictator (February 7): Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious and devastating takedown of a thinly disguised Adolph Hitler – almost two years before the US entered WW II.
  • Laura (February 9): perhaps my favorite thriller from the noir era, with an unforgettable performance by Clifton Webb as a megalomaniac with one vulnerability – the dazzling beauty of Gene Tierney. The musical theme is unforgettable, too.
  • All the King’s Men (February 11): one of the best political movies of all time, from the novel based on the saga of Huey Long . Watch for the brilliant, Oscar-winning supporting performance by Mercedes McCambridge.
  • The Bad Seed (February 13): very bad things are happening – the chill comes from the revelation that the murderous fiend is a child with blonde pigtails.

CAGED: Eleanor Parker and Hope Emerson in the prototype for Orange is the New Black

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31-days-2015-blogathonThis article is written for the annual blogathon in celebration of Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscars.  The blogathon is hosted by classic movie bloggers Outspoken and Freckled, Paula’s Cinema Club and Once Upon a Screen.

Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED
Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED

Want to see the prototype for Orange Is the New Black?  In the 1950 Caged, Eleanor Parker (who died last year) played the naive young woman plunged into a harsh women’s prison filled with hard-bitten fellow prisoners and compassion-free guards. Parker was nominated for an acting Oscar, but her performance pales next to that of Hope Emerson, whose electric portrayal of a hulking guard also got an Oscar nod.

Caged is a Message Picture, editorializing that the prison experience unnecessarily molds inmates into criminals.  Although its trailer (available on IMDb), with its breathlessly sensationalistic narration, makes the film appear overwrought, Caged is edgy enough to have currency with modern sensibilities.  Parker’s newbie  is NOT innocent and wrongly convicted –  as the movie opens, she’s one of the crew in a bank heist.  She experiences hellish brutalization behind bars.  There’s also behind-the-bars pregnancy, inmate suicide and implied lesbianism.  The ending, when the protagonist is finally released and can choose between going straight or going bad, is filled with the cynicism and despair of film noir.

Eleanor Parker hit every note on her character’s slide from the Good Kid who made a dumb mistake all the way down to a Hard Case seasoned with hopelessness.  (In a stunningly competitive year, she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday, along with Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard, and both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter for All About Eve.)

But this is Hope Emerson’s movie.  Emerson draws the audience’s attention every moment that she’s on-screen.  Her prison matron is not just harsh but sadistic.  Emerson was able to radiate meanness with every glance, and took full advantage of her dominating physicality. It’s a performance that still works today.

This was the apex of Emerson’s career.  She stood a big-boned 6″2″, and then as now, Hollywood didn’t have many parts for an actress with her appearance.   She started on Broadway in her early 30s (as an Amazon in Lysistrata), was successful in radio voice-over work and managed 43 screen credits.  She was 53 years old when she made Caged.

Caged also features the fine character actresses Agnes Moorehead, Jane Darwell (Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton here as a young woman).

Sixty-five years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever.  TCM is featuring Caged on February 20 during its 31 Days of Oscar.  It’s also available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on  iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Xbox Video and Flixster.