The nominees were ...
Dances With Wolves. A rousing entertainment, a huge and unexpected box-office hit, and for the most part a critical success. But a backlash soon began to set in, when critics began to second-guess their original judgments. It's overlong, it sentimentalizes American Indian culture into New Age mysticism, and producer-director-star Kevin Costner -- who is on-screen for virtually the entire film -- doesn't have the gravitas to carry off so important a role. Compared to such classic Westerns as Stagecoach, Red River, and The Searchers, it becomes clear what the film needed at its center was a John Wayne or a Gary Cooper or even a Clint Eastwood.
... when it should have gone to ...
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| GoodFellas |
I confess to some mixed feelings about this movie. It is a superbly canny and assured piece of filmmaking, the work of a great American director (Martin Scorsese). Yet its excessive cleverness -- asides to the camera, bits of Brechtian alienation, astonishingly staged violence -- keep me from warming to it, the way I can warm to The Godfather or The Sopranos. It almost never lets up, aiming at the head and the gut but not quite capturing the heart. But it has held up over time, while Dances With Wolves has continued to seem a little lacking in the kind of assurance that comes with having a great director in charge. It certainly didn't capture the Academy's heart: It won only one Oscar, for Joe Pesci. The omission of Ray Liotta from the nominees continues to puzzle.
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