Joaquin Phoenix @ 50: An Alternative Oscar History

by Cláudio Alves

Joaquin Phoenix's last great performance was in C'MON C'MON.

Do you have your own dream Oscar ballots lying around? I've been doing them for ages, probably since first finding The Film Experience and becoming entranced by Nathaniel's Film Bitch Awards. In recent years, the mountains of notebooks finally came to be formally digitized, starting with the long process of creating Letterboxd lists out of every Oscar eligibility rulebook, going back to 1927. This way, I was able to make a massive Excel spreadsheet with ballots for every year, following AMPAS guidelines. Oh well, much ado about nothing. The only reason I'm bringing this up is to contextualize the bizarre birthday post in store for today, when Joaquin Phoenix celebrates his mid-century mark. 

As the Todd Haynes fiasco and the disappointing Joker diptych have made Joaquin Phoenix something of a sore subject, let's go back to happier times and better movies. Indeed, let me present an alternative Oscar history. The thespian remains a winner but under very different circumstances…

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Happy Birthday, Laura Dern!

by Cláudio Alves

Laura Dern has been blessing us with her existence for 55 years. The Oscar-winning actress started young, being the daughter of two screen titans in their own right – Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. Indeed, one of her earliest big-screen roles was by her mother's side in Martin Scorsese's 1974 Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Since then, Dern has flourished into one of American cinema's most important modern performers. Often driven to auteurs with bold visions, she's a director's actress whose commitment to her roles is never in question. She's never in danger of dispassionate acting, giving it her all 100% of the time and often twisting her visage into terrifying extremes. She really is 'The Face.'

To celebrate the occasion, a list of favorite Laura Dern film performances…

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Top unheralded performances in PTA's filmography

by Cláudio Alves

Across the years, Paul Thomas Anderson's films have earned nine acting Oscar nominations, including a win for Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. It's fair to say that actors love the director. Why shouldn't they? While these movies' leading players earn prizes, every part, no matter how small, is written with complexity, directed, and framed with attention. Indeed, some of the best performances come from those bit players, sometimes glorified cameos, sometimes supporting roles within a sprawling cast. If you've seen his latest, you'll know that, beyond Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman, Licorice Pizza is almost entirely made up of such actorly turns.

With that in mind, a list of favorite unheralded performances from PTA's filmography. These are thespians who earned no accolades for their work, beyond ensemble prizes, and whose roles tend towards the diminutive. But, of course, as these ten master artists make evident, there are no small parts, only small actors… 

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The New Classics: The Master

By Michael Cusumano

The Master refuses to elevate the audience above Freddie Quell.  In the simplistic version of the film Joaquin Phoenix’s wastrel Freddie Quell would be The Sucker and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd would be The Fraud and there would be little ambiguity about it. No doubt this version was what many expected when they bought a ticket for Paul Thomas Anderson’s kaleidoscopic spiritual and psychological odyssey. A dynamic that would allow for them to lean back and smugly cluck that they wouldn’t be so easily taken in by such madness.

What Anderson's fictionalized take on the founding of Scientology delivered was something altogether more twisted and obscure. At no point can we be entirely sure what any of the main characters truly believe...

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Beauty vs Beast: Running Mates

Jason Adams from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" query -- when I saw it written in my calendar that today is the 25th anniversary of The Fugitive my first thought is I must have done that movie for this series before, but a quick skim tells me I hadn't, and so here we are! I vividly remember The Fugitive coming out in the summer of 1993, a banner year for this movie-lover - I had gone to see Jurassic Park a dozen times by then and I needed something fresh and new to feed this newly awoken beast inside me; Harrison Ford leaping out of a train-crash did the trick.

I went to see the film several times after that, but save a few minutes here and there on TV I don't think I have seen it since? Still it's an easy enough film to remember, especially after we spent that entire year's awards season getting the clip of Tommy Lee Jones saying "gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse" hammered into our heads over and over and over, until he got his Oscar for it the next spring.

bike trails

PREVIOUSLY Two weeks back we had you tackling PTA's The Master - turns out that Joaquin Pheonix holds that title, taking a precise 2/3rds of your vote. Said Devin D:

"This performance truly cemented Joaquin Phoenix as one of the irrefutable greats, and it was very nice that Philip Seymour Hoffman got to work yet again before his untimely passing with Paul Thomas Anderson in a role so sizable."