Another performance for which Gena Rowlands was overlooked by the Academy was "Once Around" from 1991. She played Holly Hunter's mother. Holly had just broken up with her long time fiancee and decided to marry Richard Dreyfuss. Richard had a good heart but he was an insensitive overbearing jerk who was completely unaware that his behavior created a great deal of dissension in their family. Despite the pitiful attempts by the cast at Boston accents, I thought this film was delightful.
Gena and Danny Aiello (another overlooked performance as Holly's father) were wonderful as they tried to accept this man who loves their daughter and is good to her while he alienates her family. My wife and I spent a lot of time discussing this film: "Richard is such a jerk, they should get rid of him! No, he is really a nice guy, he is just cluless. Gena and Danny just need to be patient." We both felt for Gena and Danny. Good work by them and, I'll bet to the surprise of many of you, Lasse Hallstrom.
If this is on DVD, please check it out. I enjoyed the performances and the story and I think you will agree Gena was wonderful.
Edited By kaytodd on 1213934624
Another Woman (1988)
Just got it on Netflix. Hopefully watching it tonight.Damien wrote:flipp525 wrote:Next up on the list, Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).
Woody Allen's best. A truly great movie.
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
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Big Magilla
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Days later, and I'm still thinking about Another Woman. So, I went ahead and ordered the DVD for my permanent library. As others have mentioned below, this year was chock full of rich leading female performances making it difficult to narrow the field down to only five.
I'm already thinking ahead to when this year comes up in the Nomination Game. I love Griffiths' performance in Working Girl and Sigourney Weaver gets all method-y and tragic as Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist, but they're going to be the first to go to make way for Gena Rowlands' outstanding performance.
Edited By flipp525 on 1213711289
I'm already thinking ahead to when this year comes up in the Nomination Game. I love Griffiths' performance in Working Girl and Sigourney Weaver gets all method-y and tragic as Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist, but they're going to be the first to go to make way for Gena Rowlands' outstanding performance.
Edited By flipp525 on 1213711289
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
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Big Magilla
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Precious Doll
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My own final 5 choices for '88 were:
Glenn Close for Dangerous Liaisons
Jodie Foster for The Accused
Isabelle Huppert for The Story of Women (not eligible for consideration this year)
Diane Keaton for The Good Mother
Meryl Streep for Evil Angels
I'm in total of agreement that this is one of the best years for actresses and would be happy with the inclusions of:
Melanie Griffith (Working Girl)
Barbara Hershey (A World Apart)
Carmen Maura (Women on the Verge....) - don't think this was eligible for the year
Imogen Millais-Scott (Salome’s Last Dance)
Nobuko Miyamoto (A Taxing Woman) - possibly not eligible
Gena Rowlands (Another Woman)
Theresa Russell (Track 29)
Susan Sarandon (Bull Durham)
Sigourney Weaver (Gorillas in the Mist)
Edited By Precious Doll on 1213584737
Glenn Close for Dangerous Liaisons
Jodie Foster for The Accused
Isabelle Huppert for The Story of Women (not eligible for consideration this year)
Diane Keaton for The Good Mother
Meryl Streep for Evil Angels
I'm in total of agreement that this is one of the best years for actresses and would be happy with the inclusions of:
Melanie Griffith (Working Girl)
Barbara Hershey (A World Apart)
Carmen Maura (Women on the Verge....) - don't think this was eligible for the year
Imogen Millais-Scott (Salome’s Last Dance)
Nobuko Miyamoto (A Taxing Woman) - possibly not eligible
Gena Rowlands (Another Woman)
Theresa Russell (Track 29)
Susan Sarandon (Bull Durham)
Sigourney Weaver (Gorillas in the Mist)
Edited By Precious Doll on 1213584737
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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Big Magilla
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I would rank these three as well as Christine Lahti in Running on Empty higher than Rowlands who is very good, but all five actual nominees were deserving in one of the best years for actresses ever. If ever there was a case for having ten nominees ieach in the major categories this was it.Cinemanolis wrote:Reza wrote:I would knock off Melanie Griffith (Working Girl) and add Gena Rowlands to the list.
Melanie Griffith is easily the week link of the line-up. However Shirley McLaine (Madame Sousatzka), Michelle Pfeiffer (Married to the Mob) and Susan Sarandon (Bull Durham) also flirt with my top5, possibly leaving Sigourney Weaver out.
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Cinemanolis
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Melanie Griffith is easily the week link of the line-up. However Shirley McLaine (Madame Sousatzka), Michelle Pfeiffer (Married to the Mob) and Susan Sarandon (Bull Durham) also flirt with my top5, possibly leaving Sigourney Weaver out.Reza wrote:I would knock off Melanie Griffith (Working Girl) and add Gena Rowlands to the list.
Easy choice for me:flipp525 wrote:ANOTHER WOMAN (1988)
directed by Woody Allen
I realize that the 1988 slate of Best Actress contenders was an "embarrassment of riches" -- from Jodie Foster's brutalized and courageous rape victim to Glenn Close at her chillingly bitchiest in Dangerous Liasons -- and it would be difficult for me to choose who to knock out of that fine slate but, I would've loved for Rowlands' brilliant turn as the tortured intellectual in this film to have been recognized. It's so different from the histrionics she often relied on in the Cassavettes years and I say that as major fan of her work in A Woman Under the Influence (for which I awarded her a PenelopOscar).
I would knock off Melanie Griffith (Working Girl) and add Gena Rowlands to the list.
ANOTHER WOMAN (1988)
directed by Woody Allen
Continuing along my meandering retrospective of Woody Allen films of the mid-to-late 80's, I watched Another Woman last night which features, in my mind, one of Gena Rowlands absolute finest performances. She plays Marion, a heady, emotionally-vacant college professor and author who, upon overhearing a therapy session in an office adjacent to the flat she has rented to complete her latest book, is forced to reevaluate the cold, cerebral existence she has led and the failed, questionably immoral decisions she's made along the way. This unexpected jolt into self-discovery triggers a contemplative malaise that begins to affect how she views the world and the course she's taken through it.
Bergman-esque (no surprise for an Allen project) in its pondering of the meaning of life and the path of a moral existence, the film is decidedly quiet, dark, mournful yet an ultimately satisfying experience. Marion's journey, like any person who might be examining themselves at mid-life, is an unflinching, often unsettling, look into her past as well as a series of encounters with people she has wronged along the way, dead and alive. Sandy Dennis makes a striking cameo as her former best friend who, over a late-night drink and a reunion of sorts after years of absence, confronts Marion with the accusation that Marion used her intellectual wiles to steal her one true love's affections.
Employing Bergman's cinematographer Sven Nykvist and the haunting string-based "Gymnopedie No. 3" by E. Satie, Allen's film is most analagous to Bergman's own Wild Strawberries (1957) in which a man, on his way to claim a medal for a life's acheivement, must face the consequences of the decisions of his past. However, in contrast to that film, Marion's journey feels more organically tied to the landscape around her. In a city as complex and compartmentalized as New York City, Marion's little corner of intellectual solace in that urban beehive leads to the very deconstruction of her entire life.
Excellent, spectacularly-talented ensemble led by Ian Holm, Martha Plimpton, Gene Hackman, Betty Buckley, John Houseman, Blythe Danner, Philip Bosco, a young Frances Conroy and the weary, troubled, almost ghostly performance of a very pregnant Mia Farrow (who was originally supposed to be play the lead in the film). I highly recommend it.
I realize that the 1988 slate of Best Actress contenders was an "embarrassment of riches" -- from Jodie Foster's brutalized and courageous rape victim to Glenn Close at her chillingly bitchiest in Dangerous Liasions -- and it would be difficult for me to choose who to knock out of that fine slate but, I would've loved for Rowlands' brilliant turn as the tortured intellectual in this film to have been recognized. It's so different from the histrionics she often relied on in the Cassavettes years and I say that as major fan of her work in A Woman Under the Influence (for which I awarded her a PenelopOscar).
Next up on the list, Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).
Edited By flipp525 on 1213551963
directed by Woody Allen
Continuing along my meandering retrospective of Woody Allen films of the mid-to-late 80's, I watched Another Woman last night which features, in my mind, one of Gena Rowlands absolute finest performances. She plays Marion, a heady, emotionally-vacant college professor and author who, upon overhearing a therapy session in an office adjacent to the flat she has rented to complete her latest book, is forced to reevaluate the cold, cerebral existence she has led and the failed, questionably immoral decisions she's made along the way. This unexpected jolt into self-discovery triggers a contemplative malaise that begins to affect how she views the world and the course she's taken through it.
Bergman-esque (no surprise for an Allen project) in its pondering of the meaning of life and the path of a moral existence, the film is decidedly quiet, dark, mournful yet an ultimately satisfying experience. Marion's journey, like any person who might be examining themselves at mid-life, is an unflinching, often unsettling, look into her past as well as a series of encounters with people she has wronged along the way, dead and alive. Sandy Dennis makes a striking cameo as her former best friend who, over a late-night drink and a reunion of sorts after years of absence, confronts Marion with the accusation that Marion used her intellectual wiles to steal her one true love's affections.
Employing Bergman's cinematographer Sven Nykvist and the haunting string-based "Gymnopedie No. 3" by E. Satie, Allen's film is most analagous to Bergman's own Wild Strawberries (1957) in which a man, on his way to claim a medal for a life's acheivement, must face the consequences of the decisions of his past. However, in contrast to that film, Marion's journey feels more organically tied to the landscape around her. In a city as complex and compartmentalized as New York City, Marion's little corner of intellectual solace in that urban beehive leads to the very deconstruction of her entire life.
Excellent, spectacularly-talented ensemble led by Ian Holm, Martha Plimpton, Gene Hackman, Betty Buckley, John Houseman, Blythe Danner, Philip Bosco, a young Frances Conroy and the weary, troubled, almost ghostly performance of a very pregnant Mia Farrow (who was originally supposed to be play the lead in the film). I highly recommend it.
I realize that the 1988 slate of Best Actress contenders was an "embarrassment of riches" -- from Jodie Foster's brutalized and courageous rape victim to Glenn Close at her chillingly bitchiest in Dangerous Liasions -- and it would be difficult for me to choose who to knock out of that fine slate but, I would've loved for Rowlands' brilliant turn as the tortured intellectual in this film to have been recognized. It's so different from the histrionics she often relied on in the Cassavettes years and I say that as major fan of her work in A Woman Under the Influence (for which I awarded her a PenelopOscar).
Next up on the list, Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).
Edited By flipp525 on 1213551963
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell