Category: Personal Favorites

1944 – Barry Fitzgerald

Going My Way

Ok, I’m going to quickly address the elephant in the room, and I’m fully aware that many critics of the time, and probably people of today might disagree with me.  This is a bogus nomination.  Fitzgerald should not have been nominated for Best Actor, and for the simple reason that he was already nominated for an Oscar for the same role in the proper category.  For the same roll.  The unfairness of this nomination was… well… unfair.  He was nominated, and won the award, in the Best Supporting Actor category!  Can you imagine if he had won Best Actor as well, for the same performance!?!

His part within the narrative of the story was not a lead roll!  He played Father Fitzgibbon, a curmudgonly Catholic priest in a run-down New York cathedral that is behind on its mortgage payments.  The church is on the verge of forclosure.  Now, if Father Fitzgibbon was the protagonist, the driving force behind the saving of the church, then he would have been the main character, but he wasn’t.  Bing Crosby’s Father O’Malley, the real leading character of the story, came in to save the church, and help the doddering old Fitzgibbon become less of a stick-in-the-mud.  He simply reacted to the events taking place in the narrative, but he didn’t drive them.

So I have to ask why he was nominated for both categories.  Well, to quote Wikipedia, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, when speaking of Crosby, wrote, “He has been stunningly supported by Barry Fitzgerald, who plays one of the warmest characters the screen has ever known. As a matter of fact, it is a cruel slight to suggest that this is Mr. Crosby’s show. It is his and Mr. Fitzgerald’s together. And they make it one of the rare delights of the year.”  But he said it himself!  Stunningly SUPPORTED BY…

Was Fitzgerald’s performance good?  Absolutely, if you don’t mind the forced wholesomeness that was inherent in the script.  And I don’t mind that he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.  Good for him, and I’m glad he took home his Oscar.  But I guess it just sticks in my craw, just a little bit, that he was even nominated for an Oscar in the Best Actor category.  It was undeserved.

1944 – Bing Crosby

Going My Way

Bing Crosby gave a good performance, though I have to say, it was very one-note.  What I mean by that is that the part was written in such a way, that there was no other way he could have played it, and that way had no flaws that would have made the character realistic.  He played a Catholic priest, Father O’Malley, who was so good, so pure, so kind, so generous, so optamistic, so empathetic, so… everything, that I can honestly say I’ve never met that kind of a saint in my life.  But you know what?  I enjoyed the character anyway.  And if you’re going to write a character like that, who else could have played him but Bing Crosby.

First of all, he totally looked the part.  He had a face that was kind and gentle, just like the character of O’Malley needed.  Mostly, I think it was his eyes.  Second, his mannerisms were as gentle as his face.  He was confident without being arrogent, loving without being lecherous, ernest without being pushy.  And finally, there was his voice.  There was a reason he was a professional recording artist that dominated both the pop charts and the big screens of the entire decade. 

And yes, lets pause for a moment to talk about Bing’s voice.  I’m a singer, myself, and so I know a little bit about the craft of singing.  Crosby’s voice was beyond amazing.  It was like plush velvet.  It was as warm and smooth and comforting.  His tone, all the way from his low register to his high, was completely even and seamless.  Because, yes, this movie could possibly be considered a musical, though calling it a light-hearted drama with a few musical numbers might be more accurate.  I particularly loved his rendition of Would You Like to Swing on a Star, a tune I’ve always liked.  And who knew this is where it came from?

Now, did Bing deserve the Best Actor Oscar?  Well, the film was incredibly popular and His Acting nomination was only one of the film’s ten nomination that year.  But for me?  The wholesomeness written into the script was too forced.  But, I guess, why not?  I mean, Crosby had a few slightly dramatic moments here and there, though the drama was never very intense.  See, I’ve seen Crosby in deeper roles than this, so I know he was capable of more, but the script just didn’t call for it. 

1943 – Greer Garson

Madame Curie

Greer Garson played herself once again.  You could easily transplant her into the exact same characters in some of her other films, and you’d never notice the difference.  She had the same look, the same accent, the same cadences, the same facial expressions, the same attitude.  She was just nice and wholesome, and not much else.  There wasn’t a mean bone in her body, which matched her costar, Walter Pidgeon perfectly.  There just wasn’t much to her character that stood out to me, and it made me wonder why she was nominated for best Actress.

But Greer’s part in this movie did have one saving grace for her, one deeply dramatic scene that had to have been the reason she was nominated for an Oscar.  It was near the end, after Madame Curie learns that her husband has been killed in an accident involving two horses pulling a carriage.  She went catatonic, refusing to eat or drink as she processed her new reality.  The makeup on Garson made her look drab and sickly.  The dead look in her eyes was something I have never seen from the actress.  And then once her old friend leaves, she gets up and goes through a few special objects that brought up memories, and they have an effect on her.  She turns away from the camera and begins sobbing and crying.  It totally fit the scene and Garson was good. 

I say good, but not great.  First, she hid her face, so you couldn’t see her full unbridled emotional journey in her eyes.  It was there, but it was hidden from the viewer, and I think I would have been more invested in Madame Curie’s pain if I could have seen her face.  There was one other scene in the film where she showed a bit of strong emotion.  She was angry when she thought that four years of difficult and tedious work had produced no results.  Again, she was good there, but not great.  And what’s more, I think that maybe she could’ve been better.

Like her costar, I am not convinced she should have been nominated for Best Actress, except that she appears to have given audiences what they wanted, good-natured wholesomeness that bordered on unrealistic.  But that’s what she was good at.  And I have to admit, she looked just as beautiful as ever, so that helped.

Cast Photos

Character Posters

22 – Avengers: Endgame

Well, here we are at the big one.  This is the climax of the Infinity Saga within the MCU franchise.  Here is where we resolve the Snap, which happened in Infinity War, and add in the final player in the action/Drama, Captain Marvel.  This was not only one of the biggest films in the whole Marvel tapestry, it was one of the biggest earning films of all time – ever.  To quote Wikipedia, “It grossed $2.799 billion worldwide, surpassing Infinity War’s entire theatrical run in eleven days and setting a number of box-office records; it was the highest-grossing film of all time from July 2019 to March 2021”

It was incredible and absolutely lived up to all the hype.  It brought in every hero from the MCU franchise.  Of course the big three were there, Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor, but we also got back The Guardians of the Galaxy, The Winter Soldier, Falcon, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, The Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, War Machine, Ant-Man, and of cour4se, Captain Marvel.  But it also brought along all the surviving peripheral heroes from all the different franchises like Valkyrie, Okoye, Shuri, Wanda Maximoff, The Wasp, The Ancient One, and even Loki.  Plus a great little scene with Thor’s mother, played by Renee Ruso.

But the real highlight of the film was its awesome main villain, Thanos.  Josh Brolin took that role and made his one of the greatest bad-guys of all time.  He was powerful, smart, cruel, and best of all, supremely determined to achieve his goals, and willing to crush anyone or anything that stood in his way.  Brolin’s performance was spellbinding, even though it was all done with facial capture technology, motion capture software, and CGI.  The visual effects throughout the entire film were amazingly photo-realistic, and Thanos was no exception.

But it wasn’t just the spot-on visuals that was impressive.  The story was fantastic!  The action was thrilling!  And the Drama was enough to bring me to the edge of tears every time I see it.  Spoiler Alert.  The moment when Thor’s hammer flies back and caught by Captain America is enough to me raise my fists in the air in excitement.  And the death and funeral of Tony Stark is simply heartbreaking.  Yes, the self-sacrificial death of Black Widow was also pretty devastating, but it just didn’t have the same impact as the film’s climax.  The entire final battle scene was just mesmerizing.  It gave every character their moment to shine, reminding us of why we like each of them.  I can’t help but watch that final battle sequence on the edge of my seat, every time.

But I think the biggest shout-out has to go to the film’s directors, the Russo Brothers, Anthony and Joe.  They knocked this out of the park.  I can’t even imagine what is involved in making a movie of this magnitude, but they pulled it off beautifully, controlling and coordinating every aspect of the process from beginning to end.  They didn’t direct all the movies that came before Endgame, but they brought the varied actors all together and were respectful to where every one of them came from and what came before.  They made Endgame work as part of the fabric, the overall tapestry, that is the MCU.

This was the perfect ending to the Infinity Saga.  It is the twenty-second film in the franchise and it is the culmination of all the movies that came before it.  It summed them all up and gave them a satisfying ending.  But as we all know this wasn’t the end of the franchise.  It was just the end of the Infinity Saga.  And in true comic book fashion, the story continued.  This was not the end, but it was a phenomenal cap the Infinity Saga.  This will always be one of my favorites!  The surviving heroes continue to show up in future MCU movies.  And the great action films just keep coming and coming.  And even the films which are not as well-received, still enthrall me.  I am a true fan and I hope they keep going.   I love them three thousand.

Top 10 Favorite Parts

1. The surviving heroes go to kill Thanos.  “I went for the head.”
2. Hulk tries to make time travel work with Ant-Man. 
3. Thor, who has suffered more loss than anyone in the MCU, is reintroduced as “fat Thor.”  I love Thor’s reaction to hearing the name of Thanos.
4. Planning the time-heist.
5. Hulk’s conversation with The Ancient One where he gets the Time Stone
6. Thor’s conversation with his mother.  “I am totally from the future.”
7. Hulk’s snap and the destruction of the Avengers’ complex.
8. The beginning of the battle.  Thor suits up with a braided beard and lightning in his eyes!  Then Thor, Cap, and Iron Man fight Thanos!  Also the short conversation with Thanos before the fight starts.
9. Special moments in the battle: (A) Captain America catches and uses Thor’s hammer! (B) Thanos breaks Cap’s shield. (C) Hawkeye escapes the tunnels with the stones. (D) Cap faces down Thanos’ entire army alone.  Then, “On your left,” and the arrival of the lost heroes. (E) Black Panther, then Spider-Man, then Captain Marvel  takes the stones, trying to get them to the Brown van. (F) Captain Marvel arrives and destroys Thanos’s ship. (G) Wanda Maximoff breaks Thanos sword in half and nearly defeats him by herself. (H) Thanos tries to head-butt Captain Marvel and she doesn’t even react to it. (I) “And I… am… Iron Man.”  SNAP! (J) Thanos turns to dust.
10. Tony Stark’s funeral and his final message to his family.  “Part of the journey is the end.”

1942 – Gladys Cooper

Now, Voyager

Gladys Cooper did a really great job in this movie.  She played the film’s main antagonist.  She was a mean, sour old lady who treated her children, especially her youngest daughter, played by Bette Davis, like possessions, holding the inheritance of her wealth over her head like a threat.  She had very few kind words to say to her, but she had plenty of negative comments and opinions about her behavior.  I didn’t like Mrs. Vale, but that’s ok.  I wasn’t supposed to, which just means that Cooper did a great job, and she deserved her Oscar nomination.

From the first moment she is on the screen, she establishes herself as a bitter old woman who doesn’t ever realize how cruelly she is emotionally torturing her daughter.  She controls every aspect of the girl’s life, telling her what to wear, what to say, what to do.  And after her daughter’s stay at a sanitarium, after the girl has learned to be more independent and self-assured, she basically tells her to do as she is told or she won’t get any inheritance.  And even though Charlotte is kind to her, I could see disgust in Cooper’s eyes every time she looked at her daughter.

Cooper’s final scene was particularly well-acted.  Charlotte tells her that she has broken her engagement with a wealthy man from a high-born family.  The look of anger and disgust on her face was horrible to see from a mother to a daughter.  I was horrified to see that look.  Cooper really sold the moment showing the audience in no uncertain terms just how the character regarded her independent child.  My first thought when her heart gave out and she expired, was that it was the best thing that could happen to Charlotte.  Cooper created a powerful villain.  Even though she was not actively evil, she was most certainly a horrible manipulative person.  I wasn’t sorry she died, and I wasn’t supposed to be.

I think Cooper deserved her nomination, and if it was not for Teresa Wright’s amazing performance in Mrs. Miniver, I thinks she would have taken home the Oscar.  She was that good.  She was bitter, crotchety, and mean in just the right amounts.  And she was able to throw in self-righteousness and a “poor-me” attitude that was unmistakable.  Cooper really turned in a fantastic performance.