#oscars 16

                   W I N N E R : Leonardo DiCaprio for “The Revenant”.

One of the things I’ve been looking forward to the most in doing this project is the noir boom post World War II. In a lot of ways, it started with Rebecca and The Maltese Falcon, but The Fallen Sparrow and Shadow of a Doubt which were both nominated in the 16th Academy Awards would really mark the turning point in the genre before the 17th Academy Awards which would have a metric ton of the sort. The Fallen Sparrow isn’t a great film, but even now, it feels like an important one. It brought a darkness to the war which was rare in this time of great patriotism and propaganda, and did deliver exciting cinematography and performances. It’s really worth checking out. 7/10.

Oscars Year 16 Best Picture winner, Casablanca, and nominees, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Heaven Can Wait, The Human Comedy, In Which We Serve, Madame Curie, The More the Merrier, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Song of Bernadette and Watch on the Rhine.

The animation in this is really, really lovely, which is nice in this ultimately storyless film. It’s a short romp more than anything else, but the backdrops are basically to die for. 6/10.

The dog who played Lassie is basically amazing? And outacts half the cast! What a great dog. Otherwise this is a cute little family film and clearly influenced many, many family films that would follow it. It’s pretty saccharine, but it does genuinely connect with viewers and tugs out a tear or two. 6/10.

Oscars Year 16 Best Actor winner, Paul Lukas, Watch on the Rhine, and nominees, Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca, Mickey Rooney, The Human Comedy, Gary Cooper, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Walter Pidgeon, Madame Curie.

This movie has a lot of charm, and really wins over the audience with James Cagney’s charisma and his platonic chemistry with Marjorie Lord. They play off each other beautiful as she tries to do what’s right for the town, and Cagney tries to do right by her. It’s fun, even if there are sequences that feel unintentionally overdramatic. 7/10.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - Westerns aren’t really my thing. That said, I actually really liked The Ox-Bow Incident. It’s a tender film that’s more interested in its characters than the tropes of the genre, and poses a moral question not usually allowed in the genre, nor in many films of the era. It’s very, very good. 8/10.