Week 6 (Part 1): Cheeky Britons

Note: I'm watching movies faster than I can write about them here on the 'Net, but I will try to do better. In this post, we will discuss:

• Sense and Sensibility (nominated 1995)
• Four Weddings and a Funeral (nominated 1994)
• The Crying Game (nominated 1992)

Sense and Sensibility was nominated for Best Picture in 1995. Not the best year ever. It's an adaptation of the Jane Austen novel and stars Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet as the Dashwood sisters. (To a complete, drooling literature idiot like myself, and especially from the film-viewer perspective, it is barely distinguishable from the various iterations of Pride and Prejudice.) More interestingly, it's the first movie directed by Ang Lee to have really garnered a mainstream audience. It's therefore very well crafted and acted, if not particularly interesting. Though not my favorite role of hers (that would be The Remains of the Day), Thompson is still the highlight of the film. Score: 5.5.

Cheeky Briton Hugh Grant occupies a modicum of on-screen time in Sense and Sensibility, but let's go back in time one year and talk briefly about Four Weddings and a Funeral, which was nominated in 1994. This a cute film that unfortunately centers on a totally unbelievable and unlikable quasi-cum-actual romance between Hugh and Andie MacDowell. That part of the movie is very conventional and soul-sucking, but the supporting roles and story lines are much better -- because they are quirkier, Britisher, and more interesting. For example, Simon Callow (who was also outstanding in A Room With a View) is great as the flamboyant partner of John Hannah's character. When Callow's character dies, Hannah's character delivers a euology, and it is one of the most romantic, sad film moments that I have ever seen:

It's worth noting that this was the last movie I needed to watch in order to have completed the full slate of 1994 Best Picture nominees. There's a lot to say about 1994, and I will do so later. But as to Four Weddings and a Funeral, on the strength of the eulogy scene alone, I bumped the score up to 5.9.

Let's go back even further in time for a moment and talk about The Crying Game, nominated in 1992. This movie is somewhat of a puzzler. It may be among the first widely recognized and acclaimed films to explore the topic of gender identity (and no, Tootsie does NOT count). At the very least, it is certainly the only film to simultaneously address both the ethnonationalist conflict in Northern Ireland and gender identity. Jaye Davidson, whom I knew growing up as the villain from Stargate, plays the girlfriend of Forest Whitaker's character and who eventually becomes the love interest of Stephen Rea's character. It's a solid film, worth watching with an open mind, but it will not blow you away. Score: 5.8.