Distant Relatives: The Entertainer and The Wrestler

Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema. 

Angry Old Men 

As a society we have such a strange relationship with celebrities.  We admire them and we despise them.  We love when they fail, embarrassing humiliation and then we promise to celebrate their comeback.   For the person who has actually attained fame, there's a good chance that that fame will come to an end before they do.  At some point society won't have a place for them anymore.  Filmmakers seem naturally attracted to the stories of these people since their world, for good or bad, is eternally rooted in the hype of fame.

Tony Richardson's The Entertainer and Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler are two outside-of-Hollywood films with two very outside-of-Hollywood subjects.  Archie Rice of the somewhat-forgotten (or at least under-loved) The Entertainer is an old music hall performer, a song and dance man in a world where rock and roll is the only song and dance anyone seems to care about any more.  His audience is small and unenthusiastic.  Randy the Ram's audience is enthusiastic.  He's got small crowds cheering for him every week as he makes the rounds of the local underground wrestling scene.  The audience cheers for blood and bruises.  They cheer for Randy out of nostalgia for a time when Randy had full arenas packed just to see him entertain.

See the Resurrection

Two men trying desperately to hold onto a time when they mattered, growing old, living paycheck to paycheck or not even.  At the start Randy seems to have a better deal.  He's at least part of a community (though most of his fellow underground wrestlers are young guys trying to get where he once was), he has a haunt in the local strip club and a tenuous connection with fellow over-the-hill dancer Cassidy.  Living in a trailer park isn't preferred but he plays with the local kids and he has people who cheer for him.  Archie Rice does not.  And while he can often be found throwing one or many back among laughing cohorts, it's an attempt to recapture the good old days and numb the present ones.  They are not really his friends.  Both men are estranged from their families with particular attention payed to their relationships with their daughters.  Archie's is sympathetic but disappointed.  Randy's is jaded.  The father/daughter relationship is often plastered with "daddy's little girl" cliches.  Maybe we're meant to think that here, or maybe not.  Certainly we're given a glimpse into what could be.

Naturally there's a comeback opportunity that is not to be.  It seems unfair to breeze over the big chance for these men but it's a foregone conclusion that it can never be.  The entertainment industry demands change or death and these men, so desperate to matter again, aren't evolving but trying to pull their worlds back into the past with them.  Then again, the evolution that the world demands of these men is far from ideal.  Archie's best prospects are in Canada where he has an opportunity to run a hotel.  For Randy it's the deli counter of his local grocer, waiting on grumpy, particular seniors.  It's no surprise that Randy chooses to put his health at risk to fulfill his comeback, just as Archie stakes his financial future and risk of prison time on his.  The choice that these men have really isn't a choice at all.

We Had Faces Then

There is one woman whose shadow looms large over these two men.  She is the patron saint of washed up performers, or perhaps since we're talking in terms of relatives, their mother.  Norma Desmond is the original doomed performer though she's a villain; as time goes on, these characters get more and more tuned to our sympathies.  Desmond is such a villain that her film needs a hero.  Archie Rice isn't a villain but he's quite hurtful to those who love him.  He's given up trying.  Randy the Ram too screws up and often, but we get the sense that he's trying, he just can't overcome his own nature.

Randy's likability and the severity of his ultimate fate presents us with the biggest emotional blow of any of these characters.  Perhaps as time goes on, these kinds of stories must get more painful to make us take notice.  Or perhaps writer Robert Siegel has noticed how fatalistic celebrity culture has become.  All three films inhabited by these characters end with a death.  Perhaps it's the death of hype, or old Hollywood or British reign (as has been speculated in the case of The Entertainer).  Either way, the past dies.  And so does the roar of the crowd.

Robots and Scientists and Planes (Oh My!)

Jose here, to remind you of an underrated gem from 2004.



When I was a child I was addicted to Superman. Not the Christopher Reeve movies and obviously not the weird TV show with Teri Hatcher, but the classic animated shorts from the 1930s. We had a VHS tape which I could watch for hours and hours completely enthralled by the terrific stories, the foreign adventures and even the sense of menace and doom conveyed by Dave Fleischer in under ten minutes.

Years later I had the same feeling watching Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Kerry Conran's debut film was a tribute to this era which featured giants robots, timeless kingdoms atop the Himalayas, perky reporters and heroines with eye patches.
Everything in the film is CGI, except for the actors, which gives it a retro-futuristic air. With nods to Dave Fleischer, Flash Gordon, Indiana Jones (which is itself a tribute to serials) and The Wizard of Oz, the film is a treat for film buffs who will have a great time with all the references.

But the film's joy isn't only in its referential nature. It's also a heck of an adventure film in which plot has little relevance and over the top is always the way to go. Gwyneth Paltrow is wonderful as reporter Polly Perkins and for those who think she takes herself too seriously, you can see her having actual fun in this one!

Jude Law is glorious and dashing and Angelina Jolie is splendid in what amounts to a glorified cameo. Unsurprisingly the film was a box office failure and Conran hasn't made a film since. Laurence Olivier was the villain! Come on!

That's sad, because in terms of energy and pure love for the movies, not many films made in the past decade can be compared to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In a perfect world the captain would be fighting the crab aliens from Méliès Trip to the Moon...

De Niro to the 7th? (Oscar's Male Hierarchy)

Have you been buying the minor huzz (hype+buzz) 'Robert De Niro's 7th Oscar nomination' for the holiday film Everybody's Fine? My friend txt critic saw it last night and sent the following note by phone...

it's, well, fine. most definitely a drama (despite the trailer) and conceptually a cross between About Schmidt and Four Christmases. nice, sweet and somewhat forgettable.

might, MIGHT be a nomination for DeNiro, but i wouldn't bet on it.

I dunno. I wasn't betting on it either but Best Actor sure seems vacant this year with only Colin Firth (A Single Man) and George Clooney (Up in the Air) catching any sort of real fire. As I've been saying for months, Fox Searchlight shouldn't have even hesitated to position Crazy Heart for a 2009 release. Jeff Bridges would have a clear shot at the career trophy given the field (if -- and it's always a big if since distributors routinely call upcoming performances "the performance of a lifetime" -- the star turn is as good as they say). I'm glad to hear that release is still a possibility... though the hour is getting late. UPDATE: Fox finally came through. It'll be released on December 16th. Why must everyone wait until December? Good smaller movies routinely get crushed when they're released at the same time, the heavyweight big budget contenders sucking the air out of the room as they do.

Aside from Firth and Clooney, the rest of the men are all still assumed rather than proven contenders. Anything might happen in that category.

Incidentally, if De Niro miraculously manages a seventh nod this year, it doesn't disrupt Oscar's actor hierarchy so much, it just switches who De Niro is tied with. The 22 Most-Favored list currently goes like so [please note: this is for competitive acting statistics only... some actors moonlight as producers, writers, directors, what have you]

1. Jack Nicholson (12 noms, 3 wins)
2. Laurence Olivier (10 noms, 1 win)
   
3. Spencer Tracy (9 noms, 2 wins)
4. Paul Newman (9 noms, 1 win)
   
5. (tie) Marlon Brando and Jack Lemmon (8 noms, 2 wins)
6. Al Pacino (8 noms, 1 win)
   
7. Peter O'Toole (8 noms, zero wins)
   
8. Dustin Hoffman (7 noms, 2 wins)
9. Richard Burton (7 noms, zero wins)
   
10. (tie) Robert De Niro and Michael Caine (6 noms, 2 wins)
11. (tie) Robert Duvall and Paul Muni* (6 noms, 1 win)
    
12. (6 way tie) Tom Hanks, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Gene Hackman, Denzel Washington and Sean Penn (all of them with 5 noms, 2 wins)
13. (tie) James Stewart and Gregory Peck (5 noms, 1 win)

There are three obvious living threats to this list that come to mind: Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio (3 noms, massive stardom, gainfully employed well into the next decade) and Morgan Freeman (4 noms, 1 win and still working regularly at 72 years of age). But cross your fingers that Jeff Bridges and Albert Finney (with 4 and 5 noms respectively) get another shot at the competitive gold soon.

*depending on how you count those "unofficial" deals in the early years. If I made any mistakes in the chart -- i'm only human -- I assume you'll let me know in the comments.

Any Sam, Myth or Harry.

Jose here with some guys in skirts and feuding gods.

Images have began to circle the web announcing the remake of Clash of the Titans (is it just me or does it feel like it was announced about a month ago? Movie production sure is fast nowadays...). The movie based on the 1981 classic is being directed by Louis Leterrier and stars Sam Worthington (who's yet to prove his worth with James Cameron's upcoming Avatar) as the mythical demigod Perseus.

The original was a favorite of mine as a kid. I used to be enchanted by Ray Harryhausen's stop motion effects (I covered my eyes whenever Medusa appeared and was terrified by the Stygian Witches) and the plot got me interested in Greek myths.

Once I became film conscious however, the movie proved to be worthy because of several other things. That cast for starters! With Sir Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Burgess Meredith and Flora Robson among others, the film is an example of how great actors make even campy fantasy seem relevant. Not to mention Harryhausen's breathtaking effects (how he was snubbed for an Oscar is insulting).

Now, next year's remake has people like Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Mads Mikkelsen, but I wonder, just how much of the wonder that fuels the original one, will be recreated with CGI?
Few people are remake advocates, but with this one in particular just how much charm will be lost with the, increasingly, generic look of computer animated effects?

In Defeat: Defiance.

Jose here with a bit of history and the movies. The title of this post appears in Winston Churchill's WWII memoir The Gathering Storm, but might as well describe Sarah Miles; Julianne Moore's character in The End of the Affair.

The 1999 film, based on Graham Greene's semi-autobiographical novel takes place in WWII London where Sarah, who is married, has an affair with writer Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) until the Blitz provokes the film's title.

You see, it was 69 years ago today that the German Air Force began bombing England for almost a whole year. Once it began, London was bombed continuously for 57 days. One one of those days Sarah faces her greatest fear.



During one of their illicit rendezvous, she sees Maurice leave the room as the bomb alarms fill the city. A sudden blast (and a chance for cinematographer Roger Pratt to shine) makes Maurice disappear into a cloud of smoke and broken glass.


This leads Sarah to unexpected behavior that consequently gives Moore a chance to own the film in the subtle way only she knows how. Her portrayal of quiet dignity, unbridled passion and otherworldly faith earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

As a piece of Blitz trivia, the movie featured in The End of the Affair is 21 Days, starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier (who were also engaged in an extramarital affair). The film is about a man who kills his lover's husband and then has only three weeks to be with her before surrendering to the authorities. When Fiennes' character watches the movie he must've wanted to be the leading man. That the film condenses the themes of guilt, forbidden passion and limited time frames to love, speaks to Jordan's cinematic knowledge and his spoiler-ish slyness.

Marilyn. Never Allowed to Rest in Peace

I've been offline quite a lot this past week so perhaps this is old news but last night I read a rumor that Scarlett Johansson might be offered the part of Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn. That's a future film based on a posthumously published diary by Colin Clark. He was under Sir Laurence Olivier's employ during the shoot of The Prince and the Showgirl when Marilyn was 30 and Olivier 50.

I love showbiz movies but I often wish that telefilms & movies would leave Marilyn alone. Better that Hollywood promoted Marilyn's actual work (still undervalued) than continually reanimating the corpse of her celebrity.

As for the possible Marilyns, Scarlett still hasn't really proven herself a viable box office commodity but she's held on to the #1 most-sought-after-young-actress title anyway. And for a surprising number of years now. That said, if we must see Marilyn revived again, I'd rather see Michelle Williams (also in the running) have a go at it. Cup size aside, I think Michelle looks more like Marilyn and she's turned into a more interesting actress, too.

A teensy sampling of "Marilyns" in the past 25 years [clockwise
from left]: Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd in Norma Jean & Marilyn
(1996), Theresa Russell in Insignificance (1985), Sally Kirkland in The
Island (1998) and Samantha Morton in Mister Lonely (2007)

Still the list of actresses that have played Marilyn is crazy long. How exactly would any actress really distinguish herself in the role at this point? My natural orientation leans heavily towards actresses, but in this particular case I'm a lot more curious as to which 40-50something male star would risk taking on OLIVIER (capitals intended). That's not an actor-on-actor challenge you see so often.
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FAINTHEART (Best Pictures From the Outside In #13)

Since we've got a whole slew of new readers (thanks for joining us!) a little explanation. This is the 13th episode of the series "Best Pictures From the Outside In" in which Mike (GoatDog's Movies), Nathaniel (The Film Experience) and Nick (Nick's Flick Picks) compare Best Picture winners from either end of Oscar's timeline. We started by pitting the first (Wings, 1927) and the last (No Country For Old Men, 2007) against each other. In each subsequent episode we move one step forward in time and one step backward. We might throw in an extra episode pitting this year's winner (will it be The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or Slumdog Millionaire?) against... something. Eventually the series will end in the middle in the 1960s arguing about the comparative merits of In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Oliver! (1968). By the time that episode rolls around maybe nobody will be asking for "more".

Season 1: Episodes 1 thru 12
And now Season 2 kicks off with Episode 13...

Rebecca (1940) vs. Braveheart (1995)

Nathaniel: First, readers, an apology. It's been a long time since the last installment of this series and it's entirely my fault. While Nick and Mike were undoubtedly on their horses in blue war paint, ready for battle, I was stubbornly holed up in my room. A strained analogy: this Best Picture twofer is rather like the sprawling Manderlay estate in Hitchcock's Rebecca and I'm like the new Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine). I was feeling overwhelmed. I am trying to get used to my surrounding in the East Wing (Rebecca -remarkably I'd never seen it!). The West Wing (Braveheart) I was avoiding like the plague. But the plot and this entires series requires that one move freely about in both wings of Oscar's mansion. So I finally walked into Braveheart again. I walked in slow motion according to the visual grammar of the movie, and am ready for battle. And there ends my analogy and apology.

...now if only Mel Gibson would apologize to me.

Nick: I DON'T THINK HE'S GOING TO APOLOGIZE!! BUT I WILL, IN ADVANCE! BECAUSE!! IF WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT BRAVEHEART! I SHOULD WARN YOU!! I CAN ONLY TALK LIKE THIS!!! THE MOVIE IS CONTAGIOUS!! IT MAKES ME UNDULY EXCLAMATORY!!! WILLIAM WALLACE IS THE KING MIDAS OF YELLING! EVERYTHING HE TOUCHES TURNS TO YELLING!!! FREEEEEEDOM!!!!!

Nathaniel: Would you like a lozenge?

Perhaps a gag.

Nick: YES, THANKS!! DO YOU ALSO HAVE A CUDGEL AND SOME BAGPIPES THAT I CAN BORROW?! AND PERHAPS A SMOCK WITH A FLEUR DE LIS ON IT! IN CASE I NEED TO LOOK LIKE I'M FROM FRANCE!!!

Nathaniel: Where is Mike?

Has Mel Gibson stabbed him? slit his throat? set him aflame? bludgeoned him to death? None would surprise. Has there ever been a more violence-loving mainstream auteur in Hollywood? Inarguably this is the bloodiest film to ever snag Hollywood's top prize. Even Gladiator (a more appropriate film to go full title boogie into barbarism) wasn't as interested in death blows. It's impossible to look at Braveheart now (for me at least) and not see it as an unfortunate positive reinforcement for Mel's wild eyed sadism... it's like a warm up before the lovingly detailed torture of Jesus or the inventive brutalizations of huge swaths of Mayan extras.

Braveheart is not for the Faintheart

It's interesting to see him paired with Hitchcock though, since Hitchcock himself has a sadistic reputation.

Mike: I just have one word to say about your brutal, Longshanks-style ambush of Braveheart while I was away... FREEEEEEEEE--OK, maybe a few words. Yes, it's unnecessarily sadistically bloody. Yes, it's so historically inaccurate I won't believe anything in it, even if I see corroboration from other sources. Yes, it's puerile and adolescent and downright stupid about sex and politics and ideology and the incredible, unanswerable strategic power of a well-timed cock-waving. Yes, Mel's completely wrong for the part, making its intentional anachronisms blend with its unintentional anachronism into a sort of aggressively loud milkshake. (Which Longshanks wants to drink up.) And yes, Mel is no director, and whatever majesty the film achieves can be ascribed to cinematographer John Toll (but not to editor Steven Rosenblum or composer James Horner, who should both have been drawn and quartered for their work here).

But I like it.

It's never boring, for one, even though it is way too long. I like its fumbling efforts to be about something, not just FREEEEEEDOMMMMMMMM!!!! and bleeding head wounds but also about mythmaking. I like that Mel was reaching back to the era of widescreen Cinemascope historical epics that made up in energy what they lacked in brains. Yeah, it would have been better with Charlton Heston in front of the camera and Anthony Mann behind it, but if we compare it to its modern equivalent, Gladiator, it comes out on top for me, because you know Mel would have brought in ten thousand extras and a dozen rhinoceri (rhinoceroses?) instead of settling for a CGI Colosseum and a couple green-screened tigers.

Nick: Well-played, Goatdog. You write like A WARRIOR-POET! (I am attempting to modulate myself.) I can get behind that whole last paragraph, except that Russell > Mel is already enough to tip me back into Gladiator's camp in this particularly low-riding Best Picture square-off. And though Gladiator is stultifying whenever nobody's shooting an arrow or being chained to someone else, and Braveheart does have it beat for palpable, physical heft, Gladiator doesn't leave the bad, coercively BLOODLUSTY TASTE IN MY MOUTH that Braveheart does.

I also remember how wowed lots of people were by the muddy, immersive, rough-and-tumble quality of all the Braveheart battle sequences when the film came out, before Saving Private Ryan opened three years later and pretty much rewrote the book.

Nathaniel: Points in Saving Private Ryan's favor: It didn't really feel like Spielberg was actually enjoying the carnage. He was just revealing how horrific war is for the most part (which harkens back to that scene we all loved when we covered All Quiet on the Western Front -- violent death is terrifying, shocking and wasteful... even if you're a soldier and you know it's part of the drill). Both of those films feel human when they're dealing with death. With Braveheart I can only anthropomorphize because it feels like a rabid dog to me. I see it stumbling around, foaming at the mouth, looking for something to kill. It's so over the top that it plays like a parody of an epic rather than an epic. But the size of its fanbase is such that I shouldn't reveal how truly terrible I think this movie is...

Mad Max Mel

But I'm glad Mike defended it. It's fresh perspective for me. It's true that it's not "boring" and I'd never thought before to give Mel credit for his mad commitment to everything, not just the slow-motion button. But Mike is right that as a director he is.

Committed.

Bring out the rhinoceri!!!

Nick: Speaking of the crazy-ass shit that can happen when YOUR FIRST WIFE COMPLETELY F***ING DIES and you don't know how to channel all your emotions about it... who's going to address the ghost in the room? I think she just floated past me. I hope I haven't been tricked into wearing one of her dresses.

Nathaniel: You can wear any dress you like so long as we can get out of these kilts.

Mike?

[two weeks pass]

Mike: I must apologize for my lengthy absence; I dozed off during the first hour of Rebecca and only woke up recently. I've never been able to get into this film, from its college-years status as the movie I rented the most times without watching (seven), to my two or three viewings since I finally managed to get it into my DVD player (although I guess it was a VCR way back then). Why does it take so damned long to get going? It certainly looks great, although only Hitchcock would think of shooting almost all the exteriors and a handful of interiors against rear-projection. The end product feels like it's actually taking place inside that elaborate model we see during Fontaine's famous prologue soliloquy. As she later says about Monte Carlo, "I think it's rather artificial."

I guess that's just Hitchcock for you, but this feels closer to the boring Rope end of his experiments with enclosed spaces and farther from the exciting Rear Window end. And the leads don't help: Olivier outside of Shakespeare continues to elude me, Fontaine's slack-lipped, stuttering, hunched-shoulders conceit of youthful naivete grates on me, and only Judith Anderson really seems to be on whatever wavelength Hitchcock is going for.

Nick: I don't think I've disagreed with Mike twice at one time, ever. Certainly not in this series. So I'm feeling a little shaky right now; my lip is trembling like Joan Fontaine's and my shoulder is sort of hunched as I type this, while my face turns into a soft-focus mask of despair, and I go prowling around my high-ceilinged hallways, looking for answers. Which is all to say that I like Rebecca, a lot, and I especially like the first hour or so. I love the unease that Hitchcock builds into Joan's growing acquaintance with Maxim de Winter and into Joan's relationship with the woman she "accompanies," and how that woman can't help admiring her success at "snaring" Maxim. The estate is so gloriously designed and photographed; it may be artificial, but it's one hell of a shimmering, satin tapestry. The whole thing just feels so gossamer, but in a creepy and palpably cold way. It gets the du Maurier blend of dread, camp, and romanticism just right.

Admittedly, I like the second half a bit less, though it helps that I always, always forget all the big twists, so I get suckered by the narrative. I appreciate the continuity with Hitchcock's gamboling, picaresque thrillers of the 30s, full of improbable kooks who know just enough to be dangerous. But Rebecca does start to feel a bit gassy and over-crowded, and Olivier's performance gets a little stuck.

Nathaniel - you'd never seen Rebecca before, right? Break the tie!

[three weeks pass]

Nathaniel: "Last night I dreamed of Manderlay again"... or, to be more specific, last night I nightmared of Rebecca again. That is to say, would we ever wrap up this particular BPFTOI ? And this time it's all my fault! In a very peculiar way the movie has become Rebecca DeWinter to me and, like you Nick, I've gone all pinched as if I'm playing Fontaine. I'm totally the second Mrs de Winter ... and the original intimidates me.

In the long line of psycho screen lesbians, isn't Mrs. Danvers the top?

It's now been over a month since I've seen the movie and it feels like a ghost to me just like Rebecca. I don't love her/it as much as Mrs. Danvers does (my god, who could?) but I am semi-fond. So rather than playing tiebreaker I play mediator. There's a lot of good stuff here, but there's also too much clunkiness (Hitchcock loves exposition but that boathouse sequence!) for me to accept its lauded place in the Hitchcock canon (his one and only Best Picture winner? Argh).

That said can we talk about Mrs. Danvers for a minute. That negligee sequence!

Did you ever see anything so delicate? Look... you can see my hand through it.

I love that it works as a reflection of the movies inimitable creepy/gossamer quality you mentioned (who could ever put those together? Hitchcock that's who) but it's also so subversively Queer. It's now vying for the top spot in the annals of all time best barely sublimated gay desire scene (Red River's famous "ever had a good swiss watch?" sequence now has formidable competition). Judith Anderson does a fantastic job of actualizing this woman who isn't self-actualized at all. I just loved her. This isn't a new reaction of course since the character is so iconic but, DAMN! Sure Mrs. Danvers is but one blip in a long chronological line of psycho screen lesbians but I guess I'm more than okay with uncharitable portrayals of gay characters when they're done with such style, creativity and craft and not when they're just blandly reflective of their director's "issues" with the same [cough Braveheart cough]

Nick: Anderson is indeed great, and even if, for me, the second half of the film trails a little vaguely after a fascinating set-up, I love that Hitchcock hands the whole end of the movie to Mrs. Danvers, making her all but synonymous with that funereal mansion and bringing them both down together in a giant blaze of neurotic ardor. I love the tension between smallness (hers is a supporting role, after all, and not a deeply contextualized one) and hugeness (the wide angles, the whole estate, the end of everything, the screen filled with smoke). I also love that Hitchcock knows that if you direct a movie carefully, the audience can often detect the heartbeat of the whole film in the fate of a single character. It's as though we zoom in on one persona/relationship, between the already-dead and the soon-to-be-dead woman, and we suddenly see the whole canvas in a different way.

Gibson finds it impossible to delve into his movies like this. In fact, he's always racing out of them toward some larger concept that ultimately has little to do with what he's made a film about. It's "freedom" in this case, even though he's helpless for almost three hours at stitching the battlefield stuff to the halls-of-power stuff in any meaningful way, or at proposing any particular notion of what "freedom" means for these characters, or this film. (Gibson pulled a similarly open-ended non-sequitur with those looming ships at the end of Apocalypto; happily, for him, Christ's Resurrection at the end of The Passion lent some credence to his preferred style of conclusion.) If you have to ditch your own movie and chase an empty slogan in order to finish it, you probably haven't -- you know -- directed it very well. Or told a coherent story, though I like Mike's idea that he's at least gestured toward a myth in a robust, unembarrassed way. Plus, as we've all covered, he does succeed in dicing and stabbing and defenestrating the hell out of a whole lotta people. Maybe FREEEEEEEDOM's just another word for no one left to kill.

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Rebecca (1940) was nominated for 11 Oscars and won 2 (Picture & Cinematography) Braveheart (1995) was nominated for 10 Oscars and won 5 (including Picture & Cinematography)

Now is your chance to YELL, readers. Are you slathering on warpaint to punish us for our treatment of Mr. Gibson? Where do you fall on our Rebecca scale of love / like / can't get into?