The Netflix premiere of
Hillbilly, A Rural Elegy
, a drama about a Midwestern family living in extreme poverty, has met with the cruelest reviews of the year.
"It's what the rich think being poor is about," says Allisa Wilkinson at Vox.
"He
cosplay
with poverty" criticizes David Fears in Rolling Stone.
"A shameless and shameless bait for the awards", summarized in
Vanity Fair
Richard Lawson.
Specifically, the performances of Amy Adams and Glenn Close have been ridiculed by the movie community.
Charles Bramesco analyzes how the mechanisms in the heads of both actresses can be perceived for overreacting, with scenes of brilliance (monologues and panic attacks) so exacerbated that they end up falling into involuntary parody.
"These are the kinds of roles that often attract the attention of awards," says Jason Bailey.
"Movie stars turning into
normal
people
and screaming a lot."
Adams and Close are the two living performers with the most Oscar nominations (six and seven, respectively) without ever having won, which has generated the perception that they are so tired of losing that they have gone the easy way.
But they are not the first to accept characters mathematically conceived to win awards, Hollywood stars have been betting for decades on roles that seemed safe bets but only aroused derision.
Here are nine examples.
Halle Berry in
Frankie & Alice
(Geoffrey Sax, 2010)
Who was the star:
After a decade permanently on the verge of being a star (with supporting roles in
Boomerang
,
The Flintstones
or
X-Men
), Berry finally reached the box office success and the Oscar in 2001. The same year he starred in one of the most publicized film nudes in
Operation Swordfish
(she asked for an extra half a million to show her breasts or, as the director explained, “250,000 per tit”), the actress demonstrated her dramatic talent in
Monster's Ball by
becoming the first African-American actress to win the Oscar as the protagonist.
But her next project,
Catwoman
, made her a laughingstock and her career never soared.
What ingredients it had:
Multiple personality is a double-edged sword for any actor: it allows him to show off his versatility, but he runs the risk of awakening pitorreo among the public.
Sally Field won the Emmy for
Sybil
, Joanne Woodward the Oscar for
The Three Faces of Eva,
and Edward Norton became one of the highest-rated actors in the world thanks to his Oscar nomination for
The Two Faces of Truth
.
But
Frankie & Alice
, of course, was a somersault for Halle Berry as she played a woman with three personalities: a
25-year-old
stripper
, a 7-year-old boy and a racist white woman from the American South.
It was shot in 2008, screened at Cannes in 2010, Berry achieved a Golden Globe nomination (that means nothing, as Sharon Stone well knows) in 2011, and premiered to no avail in 2014.
What the critics said:
"When, during the climax, Frankie jumps from one personality to another quickly the story takes a back seat behind the spectacle of Berry suffering a fit of Oscar fever" (Michelle Orange).
Sharon Stone in
Condemned
(Bruce Beresford, 1996)
Who was the star:
Stone became the official erotic myth of the decade thanks to
Basic Instinct
(Paul Verhoeven, 1992) and quickly earned an Oscar nomination for his dramatic revelation in
Casino
(Martin Scorsese, 1995).
But she wanted more.
What ingredients did the role have:
A dam on death row, like Susan Hayward's Oscar role in 1959 for
I Want to Live!
.
Stone opted for a supposedly infallible formula: Directed by Bruce Beresford (
Walking Miss Daisy
), the actress played a traumatized victim who aroused the sympathy of the public with a crude performance (that is, without makeup and with dirty hair).
Her character was sentenced to death for having murdered two teenagers when she was a crack addict (Stone also played the
flashbacks
, wearing a black wig to make her look like a teenager) and the drama centered on the attempts of her lawyer (Rob Morrow) for saving her from the lethal injection.
But Stone not only did not get the nomination, but the film was ignored by the public (it raised five million with a budget of 40, which is nowhere in the film because everything is interior) and earned Stone a nomination for the Razzie for “Worst Newcomer Actress” for her new side as a dramatic actress.
Lost to Pamela Anderson by
Barb Wire
.
What the critics said:
"The film is not a
Death Penalty
with a silly blonde,
but that satirical title is not far from it: it is formulaic and strangely distant" (Desson Howe).
Sharon Stone kept trying to the point of being embroiled in scandal when it was discovered that she had sent a gold watch to every voter at the Golden Globes in 1998 (when, in fact, she was nominated for
The Muse
).
Only three of 93 voters returned the gift.
Dennis Quaid in
Welcome to Paradise
(Alan Parker, 1990)
Who was the star:
As soon as he scored a blockbuster with
The Wonder Chip
and married America's Bride, Meg Ryan, Quaid pounced on one of those movies that has the adjective "important" impregnated in every frame.
What were the ingredients:
The renowned director Alan Parker (
Midnight Express
,
Mississippi Burning
) boarded a epic drama on a movie projectionist who falls for a Japanese.
When the Second World War breaks out, his wife is interned in a concentration camp of the US Army and he will not stop until he saves her.
What the critics said:
“A prisoner movie in which nothing really happens, the camp is an excuse to shoot shots of dust clouds against the desert sun” (Owen Gleiberman).
But what has made
Welcome to Paradise
down for posterity, aside from its ubiquitous soundtrack in 1990s trailers, is that it was singled out by a Los Angeles University study as the most supposedly Oscar-winning movie ever made: Setting war, truncated love story, epic drama, suffering, war crimes, cinema within cinema, suffering children, political intrigue, natural landscapes, disabilities, historical context, racism, December premiere, tragic historical events and inspirational message.
Not only did it not achieve a single nomination, but it fell into oblivion immediately and not even the television of the nineties, where it could have scratched a status of classic, wanted to recover it.
Will Smith in
Hidden Beauty
(David Frankel, 2016)
Who was the star:
Smith's origins in film are already part of Hollywood folklore: when it was announced at the end of
The Prince of Bel-Air,
he sat down with his agent and together they calculated what elements had the biggest blockbusters (science fiction , explosions, humor, etc).
With that criterion, he chained blockbusters summer after summer:
Two rebel policemen
,
Independence Day
,
Men in Black
,
Public Enemy ...
becoming the favorite star on the planet.
The next natural step was the prestigious dramas and for this Smith continued to bet on formulas: the black that changes the life of a white (
The Legend of Bagger Vance
), the sports biopic (
Ali
, which gave him his first Oscar nomination ) or the beggar who triumphs thanks to his wit and good heart (
In search of happiness
, his second nomination).
But he was losing his magic touch (
Seven Souls
,
Men in Black III
,
After Earth
) and, in 2016, he tried to return to the big leagues by surrounding himself with other stars instead of leading his solo films.
In summer,
The Suicide Squad
.
In winter,
hidden beauty
.
What ingredients it had:
A cast with 19 Oscar nominations and two wins (Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley, Naomie Harris) and a magical tale of grief and loss: an advertising agency creative loses the faith in humanity after the death of his daughter and will overcome it thanks to a support group where he falls in love with a woman who has also lost her daughter and through conversations with Time (Jacob Latimore), Love (Knightley) and Death (Mirren).
[Spoiler] In the end it is discovered that these three magical beings were actors hired by his company to return to work as soon as possible and that the woman he has fallen in love with is, in fact, his wife.
He didn't remember her because he had amnesia.
What the critics said:
“It looks like a parody of an Oscars movie, with over-excited and monotonous performances revolving around a plot as solemn as it is stupid” (Allen Adams)
Meg Ryan in
When a man loves a woman
(Luis Mandoki, 1994)
Who was the star: She
and Julia Roberts reinvigorated romantic comedy and became the highest-paid actresses in the world.
Ryan proved that cuteness can be a profession.
What were the ingredients:
Hollywood does not usually pay attention to alcoholism, because it prefers to glamorize the consumption of alcohol, use it as a comic device or a symptom that the hero is hitting rock bottom.
Ray Milland won the Oscar for
Days Without a Footprint
in 1946, Jack Lemmon was on point for
Days of Wine and Roses,
and Meg Ryan was nominated for this role to the Actors Guild in the first edition of those awards.
Much was said at the time how shocking it was to see her falling in the shower, slapping her daughter or getting violent with her husband.
But when she hid the bottles under the stairs she was still charming.
Her Oscar clip was a closing speech at her Alcoholics Anonymous graduation, in which everyone in attendance was crying and clapping for her.
As a curiosity, Andy García's name appeared before Ryan's on the poster.
And in case anyone does not remember well, no, Andy García was never more of a star than Meg Ryan.
Things that happened in the nineties.
What the critics said:
Roger Ebert, who had been an alcoholic, praised that the film "portrayed with wisdom and ambition how alcoholism affects the fabric of a marriage" and highlighted the work of Ryan, who did not put "not a single but" .
But Owen Gleiberman said it was “a soap opera with a message so injected with the language of recovery that the characters cannot open their mouths without sounding like they are in the middle of a therapy session.
It is not based on the experience of addiction, but on the experience of talking about addiction - it is the longest Alcoholics Anonymous ad in the world. "
The funny thing is that, had she been nominated, it is likely that Meg Ryan would have won: that year there was no clear favorite and the winner was Jessica Lange for
The Things That Never Die
, a movie that hardly anyone had seen.
Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx in
The Soloist
(Joe Wright, 2009)
Who was the star:
Downey Jr. had returned triumphantly with the blockbusters
Iron Man
(Jon Favreau, 2008) and
Sherlock Holmes
(Guy Ritchie, 2009), after several years of legal problems due to his drug addiction, and was trying to regain the title of "best actor of his generation" with whom he had been baptized in the nineties.
Foxx had won the Oscar in 2007 for
Ray
and sought to affirm his dramatic prestige.
What were the ingredients:
A mathematical formula: the story of overcoming a good-hearted white man who saves a schizophrenic black music genius from filth.
But in the end it is the target who ends up learning a valuable lesson.
Directed by Joe Wright right after the success of
Atonement
, its premiere was scheduled for December, in the middle of awards season, but things started to smell bad when the distribution company delayed it the following summer.
What the critics said:
“Aberrante.
An attempt to modernize the forms of expression of the traditional Oscar-film that failed to obtain even a sad nomination ”(Jordi Costa),“ A rich cocktail of all the endemic Hollywood clichés, it is easy to call it bait for the Oscars : each of his movements is calculated to please and provoke liberals, but with great tact ”(Tom Hutchinson).
Since the failure of
The Soloist
, Downey Jr has participated in 11
blockbusters
and only one adult drama.
Kevin Bacon and Christian Slater
in First Degree Homicide
(Marc Rocco, 1995)
Who was the star:
Bacon seemed destined to become one of the great character actors of his generation alongside Penn, Seymour Hoffman or Day-Lewis.
Hollywood had been trying to make Slater a star for a few years at all costs: they put him in adolescent cult films (
Heathers
), generational casts (
Young Gun 2
), blockbusters (
Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves
), family comedies (
Kuffs , cop by chance
),
rogue
noir
(
Love at point blank range
), adaptations of bestsellers (
Interview with the vampire
) or romantic comedies (
A thousand bouquets of roses
).
There was no way.
What ingredients it had:
A prison drama in which Bacon suffers all kinds of torture on Alcatraz, where he spends three years locked in a den without seeing the light, and Slater plays the idealistic lawyer who insists on getting him out of jail.
The friendship between the two characters, the injustice of the sentence (the prisoner was incarcerated for having stolen five dollars as a teenager to feed his sister) and the kilos that Bacon lost (who, like Slater, boasted of having spent hours locked in a cell to get into character) guaranteed her presence at the Oscars, but she went completely unnoticed.
What the critics said:
“Bacon acts like a mass of suffering and victimization, he almost has to contain himself not to eat the set.
Slater is too young for the role and doesn't have the confidence to lower the intensity: like DiMaggio, he wants to hit the ball every time it appears.
In the end we stop believing the story, then we stop caring and then we start to admire the fantastic sets ”(Rogert Ebert).
Despite hanging the "based on true events" sign to acquire a prestigious patina,
First Degree Murder
changed essential details: the real prisoner was not there for stealing five dollars to feed his sister but for murder, never He was in a lonely den and in 1972, at the age of 61, he skipped parole and disappeared without a trace.
Leonardo DiCaprio in
J. Edgar
(Clint Eastwood, 2011)
Who was the star: In
his early 20s, DiCaprio seemed destined to continue the 1970s tradition of character actors thanks to his Oscar nomination for
Who Does Gilbert Grape Love?
and his Silver Bear in Berlin by
Romeo + Juliet.
But the unprecedented phenomenon of
Titanic
turned him into a teenage idol, an image against which he decided to row at all costs working with the most famous directors in Hollywood: Spielberg, Scorsese, Scott, Mendes or Nolan.
By the time his career crossed with Clint Eastwood, the perception (correct or not) was beginning to be generated among the public that DiCaprio wanted to win an Oscar with all his might.
Or, in any case, that the Academy owed him.
By the time he finally won in 2016, there were those who proposed to take to the streets to celebrate: Leonardo's Oscar had become a matter of global interest.
What the ingredients were:
J. Edgar Hoover, the founder of the FBI, is perhaps the most Oscar-winning role DiCaprio has ever played: an iconic historical figure, with an internal conflict over his sexual orientation and dozens of scenes to cut through all the human emotions and go from whispering to screaming in a matter of a counter shot.
Scorsese said that in DiCaprio's face, several moral conflicts can collide at the same time and
J. Edgar
was an ideal opportunity to put that gift into practice, since Hoover was at the same time a hero, a villain, a man in love and a maniac.
And he also aged several decades, through a makeup that provoked uncomfortable laughter in movie theaters: Leonardo DiCaprio's face, for better and for worse, was too famous.
What the critics said:
“The film is waging a war against itself and everyone loses.
The heavy directing, clunky script, and cadaverous makeup salves conspire to put the story at an emotional and historical distance.
It's like seeing wax figures partially in motion ”(Joe Morgenstern).
Anyone who appeared in
Chain of Favors
(Mimi Leder, 2000)
Who was the star:
Kevin Spacey was a perennial secondary who rose to fame with two Oscars in four years (for The
Usual Suspects
and
American Beauty
), Helen Hunt went from being the highest-paid actress on television for the sitcom
Crazy About You
to smash the box office with
Twister
and win the Oscar for
Best Impossible
and Haley Joel Osment was quite simply the most famous child in the world at the time:
Chain of Favors
was his first role after the phenomenon of
The Sixth Sense
.
What ingredients it had:
In addition to its cast, the plot also seemed made with a square and bevel to soften the hearts of Oscar voters: a very introverted boy (Osment), son of an alcoholic stripper (Hunt, playing Julia Roberts by
Erin Brockovich
) and a batterer (Jon Bon Jovi), decides to promote a system called "favors chain" with the help of his teacher (Spacey, who accepted the role, black in the original script, after Denzel Washington rejected it ), a depressed man with shattered skin because his father set him on fire as a child.
The system consists in that he does a favor to a stranger, who instead of returning it will do three favors to three other strangers, thus expanding a network of good intentions to make the world a better place.
[ATTENTION SPOILER!] When the boy is performing his third favor, a classmate stabs him and kills him.
What the critics said:
"She is so in love with her own optimism with human nature that she wants you to overlook her rigid characters, the screeching machinery of her plot, and her immodest assault on your tear ducts" (Dana Stevens).
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