With awards season well underway, everyone interested in
movies is thinking about Oscars. The
Academy Awards aren’t for everyone, but everyone that cares about film thinks
about them at one point or another. It
could be the love of the filmmaking craft, and the prestige that comes with
celebrating it. Maybe it could be that
the awards don’t truly represent the important films that could last through
generations. The thoughts are there,
positive and negative, as the ceremony approaches its annual event.
The big awards that are handed out are Best Picture, Best
Director, and the four acting categories.
There are other great categories, too, but in terms of general interest,
those are the six that people have the most fervor for. Best Picture is the culmination of
everything, so people get excited for it.
Best Director is who people most associate with steering the ship. The actors are the faces of the movie. Every other category falls away, as do the
names of the people involved, since the general audiences don’t usually pay
attention to the other aspects of filmmaking.
Legacy becomes the discussion once the awards are handed
out. Will the Best Picture winner hold
up in the years to come? Some might
while others won’t. Will the directors
ever be able to make a film nearly this good again? Sometimes they can, sometimes they can’t. The most interesting to look at, however, are
the legacies of the actors involved.
There are certain actors who will get nominated time and time again and
not really falter from year to year.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Jack Nicholson are
people who tend to end up in best performance discussions when they release new
films. That’s not what makes the acting
awards interesting. What about the
actors who don’t continuously make award worthy movies?
See, the thing is, an actor could make a good movie and get
awards buzz for it. At the same time,
they have a movie in post production, and they’re working on another one. Those movies might not be nearly as
good. They could have done them for a
paycheck. They could have done them
simply because they were offered a role and they wanted to work. Or they could have been confident in the
material and things just didn’t work out the way they hoped. This was all in place before they were
nominated for an Academy Award. That’s
what the most interesting thing in awards season is. An actor could be nominated for, or even win,
an Academy Award, only to have one of their worst movies come out that same
year or just after.
This topic was semi-inspired by Cuba Gooding Jr. The man won an Academy Award for Jerry Maguire in 1997. His career didn’t immediately take the dip
that some of the more interesting examples did.
He continued with some strong performances in movies like As Good As It Gets and Pearl Harbor. The early 2000s weren’t nice to him,
though. He ended up in Rat Race, which has become one of those
classics in my house that probably isn’t a classic in too many others. Then there was the one-two punch of Snow Dogs and Boat Trip in 2002. It wasn’t
a good year for Cuba. He tried to come
back with Radio, but soon ended up in
mostly direct-to-video or very limited theatrical run movies that nobody
remembered. He would pop up once in a
while in things like American Gangster
or Daddy Day Camp, but most of his
work was under-the-radar and barely noticed.
The movie that people come back to for his fade into
obscurity is Snow Dogs. The 2002 family comedy from Disney was about
a Miami dentist who learned he was adopted and travelled to Alaska to uncover
the truth about his parents. There were
some huskies and a border collie along for the adventure as he joined small
town culture and became a dogsledder. It
wasn’t the best movie ever, but it was far from the horrible reputation it left
behind. The actors tried to make the
best that they could from a poor script, Cuba Gooding Jr. included. Among the winking dogs and slapstick,
child-oriented humour were some decent performances and sweet moments that
helped create a story worth investing time in.
It wasn’t the worst thing that Cuba Gooding Jr. was ever a part of.
Other actors ended up with more immediate bad roles when
they were coming off an award win. In
2002, Halle Berry won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Monster’s Ball. It was one of those career making roles that
was going to propel her to great things.
She had been in X-Men and Swordfish, put an award-winning
performance into this other movie, and would go on to even bigger parts. That’s what would normally happen. In Berry’s case, that promise would be
tarnished almost immediately. Though, it
would take a couple years for it to fully set in.
The same year that Halle Berry won Best Actress in a Leading
Role, she was in a major action film as the female lead. That film was Die Another Day. It was the
final James Bond movie to star Pierce Brosnan in the lead role. The movie paid homage to every James Bond film that came before. It was dropping during the fortieth year of James Bond on the big screen. It was also utilizing the effects that were popular
at the time, which was a drastic move away from the practical spectacle that
people had come to love with the franchise.
There was an invisible car, a laser beam from outer space, and a
terrible Madonna song that kicked things off.
It was not the greatest outing from action’s longest running
franchise. Halle Berry played Jinx, an
American special agent who was helping Bond take down the bad guys. The producers wanted to potentially create a
spin-off with her character. That never
came to fruition because of how poorly received Die Another Day was. The
franchise would reset itself a few years later with a new actor playing James
Bond and no sign of Jinx.
That wasn’t even the worst for Halle Berry. Two years later, she would play the lead role
in a Catwoman movie. It went down in history as one of the worst
comic book movies ever, and one of the worst movies to come out in the
blockbuster era. Selina Kyle was a
character from the Batman comics who
was a cat burglar. Catwoman eschewed the Selina Kyle identity. The writers made their own secret identity
for the superhero/supervillain. Patience
Phillips was the new main character, who was killed by a cosmetics company,
only to be resurrected by a bunch of cats and have cat powers. Most of the movie was terrible. And it was a selling point for studios to not
do a female led superhero movies for years to come. Halle Berry had come off an Academy Award win
and did these two movies. Gosh.
For a third example, Sandra Bullock took the cake for people
who got an Academy Award and then had a bad movie right around the corner. In fact, both happened at about the same
time. The Golden Raspberries tend not to
be mentioned in the blog. They were
mentioned in the early days as a jump off point, but that awards ceremony tends
to be piling on the same people year in and year out for movies that might not
deserve the worst of the year moniker.
However, in the case of Sandra Bullock, it’s impossible to mention her
Academy Award without mentioning the Golden Raspberries.
In 2009, Sandra Bullock was in The Blind Side. It was a
movie about a woman taking in a young football player from the wrong side of
town. She gave him everything he needed
to succeed in the sport and reach his potential. Her performance was so acclaimed that it
earned her that golden man statue that the business strives to get. The night before, however, was the exact
opposite experience. The night before
the Academy Awards, Sandra Bullock was accepting a Golden Raspberry for her
work in All About Steve. In one weekend, she won both the Best Actress
at the Academy Awards and the Worst Actress at the Golden Raspberry Awards.
Three examples with three different timeframes where the
Academy Award legacy came with bad movies.
Cuba Gooding Jr. had a career of questionable choices following the
potential people saw in him during Jerry
Maguire. Halle Berry immediately
followed her Academy Award win with a couple duds that she managed to come back
from in recent years. Sandra Bullock’s
win came at the same time as a win for Worst Actress. Each of these Academy Awards are intertwined
with the legacies of the actors who won them.
Each of the bad movies bring back memories of the time that the actor
put in an award-winning performance.
What followed and what happened is as interesting as the award itself.
This awards season doesn’t seem to have too many oddballs in
the acting department for the Academy Awards.
That might not be the case though.
For many actors, particularly two of the three that were looked at here,
the lows came after the high. Two years
out from now, there could be some strange things coming for whoever wins their
respective acting awards. They could
keep putting in great performances in great movies, or they could make movies
that’ll be covered in future weeks of the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Only time will tell.
Now for a few notes before we part ways:
- Snow Dogs was suggested by @koalainchicago, who previously suggested View from the Top (week 83).
- Die Another Day (week 153) and Catwoman (week 174) were mentioned in this post.
- Jim Belushi voiced a character in Snow Dogs. He was in New Year’s Eve (week 57), Jingle All the Way (week 160), and Snow Buddies (week 270).
- Brian Doyle-Murray showed up in Snow Dogs. He also showed up in Cabin Boy (week 173) and Nothing But Trouble (week 267).
- Jay Brazeau made his third appearance in the Sunday "Bad" Movies this week, following appearances in House of the Dead (week 59) and Warriors of Virtue (week 88).
- Christopher Judge is another three-timer with Snow Dogs. He was previously in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190) and Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark (week 300).
- Richard Steven Horvitz came back to the Sunday "Bad" Movies today. He first appeared in Son of the Mask (week 207), then he returned for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (week 226), and now he's in Snow Dogs.
- One last three-timer was Anthony Harrison, who came into Snow Dogs having already been in Blackwoods (week 115) and Snow Buddies (week 270).
- Cuba Gooding Jr. starred in Snow Dogs. He had a supporting role in Norbit (week 227).
- Sisqo played one of the dental workers in Snow Dogs. He would go on to play a surfer in Surf School (week 42).
- Artine Tony Browne had his second Sunday "Bad" Movies appearance this week after having a small role in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50).
- Angela Moore showed up in Snow Dogs. She also had a role in Jingle All the Way 2 (week 160). Dave 'Squatch' Ward was in both movies with her.
- Snow Dogs saw the return of Gwendolyn Osborne-Smith, who was last featured in Jack and Jill (week 101).
- Britney Ever After (week 258) actress Nicole Oliver reappeared this week in Snow Dogs.
- Hollywood legend Graham Greene was in Snow Dogs, just like he was in Winter's Tale (week 89).
- Another Hollywood legend, James Coburn, had a large role in Snow Dogs. He also had a large role in Hudson Hawk (week 232).
- David Boyce showed up in bot Exit Wounds (week 93) and Snow Dogs.
- Did you see Frank C. Turner making his second Sunday "Bad" Movies appearance this week? He was in Alone in the Dark (week 152) and now he's in Snow Dogs.
- Finally, there was M. Emmet Walsh. He had roles in both Snow Dogs and Wild Wild West (week 296).
- Director Brian Levant also put in a second Sunday "Bad" Movies release this week with Snow Dogs. He previously directed Jingle All the Way (week 160).
- Have you seen Snow Dogs? Are there any other actors who won an Academy Award then went on to make some weirdly, bad movies? What do you think of the examples I used? Let me know in the comments.
- Twitter and the comments are places where you can suggest movies I should be checking out for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. If there’s a movie you think would fit in the blog, drop it in one of those places and I’ll add it to my list.
- There is an Instagram account for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Check it out for updates about the blog and pictures from the movies I cover. Some other stuff too, but mostly that.
- I have a Snapchat (jurassicgriffin), if you want to add me. Sometimes I share scenes from bad movies. Sometimes.
- That does it for this week. The post is coming to a close. But one last thing is to let you know about next week. Back in the first couple weeks, I watched a movie called A Car’s Life (week 2). Now I’m going to move onto the sequel. Next week will be the week of Car’s Life 2. Cruise on back to the blog next Sunday to see what I have in store. See you then.
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