Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Winner: The Crying Game (dir by Neil Jordan)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Directed by Neil Jordan and first released in 1992, The Crying Game opens at a fair in Northern Ireland. A black British soldier named Jody (Forest Whitaker) meets a flirtatious woman named Jude (Miranda Richardson). Jude leads Jody away from the fairground. Jody thinks that they’re going to have sex but instead, he ends up getting kidnapped by Fergus (Stephen Rea) and Peter Maguire (Adrian Dunbar). As Peter explains it after Jody is taken to an abandoned cottage, the soldier is now a prisoner of the Irish Republican Army.

Jody is left in a dark room, tied to a chair and with a canvas bad over his head. Fergus is often left to guard him. Despite Peter’s explicit orders, Fergus talks to Jody and the two men strike up an uneasy friendship. Fergus removes the bag from Jody’s head. He even reveals his name. Jody and Fergus talk about their lives. Jody says he joined the Army and was immediately sent to the most racist part of the UK. Fergus replies that his only issue with Jody is that “you shouldn’t be over here.” Jody talks about his love of cricket. Fergus talks about his love of hurling. Fergus sees a picture of Jody with his lover, Dil (Jaye Davidson). Fergus comments that Dil is attractive. “She’s not your type,” Jody replies.

Peter warns Fergus not to become friends with Jody because there’s a good chance that they’re going to have to execute him. And when the British refuse to exchange prisoners, the order does come down to carry out the execution. Fergus demands that he be allowed to carry out the shooting. However, as he leads Jody out of the cottage, Jody breaks free. Fergus chases him but, as they reach a nearby road, Fergus realizes that he can’t bring himself to kill Jody. Unfortunately, Jody is still killed when he’s run over by a British army truck.

Fergus flees to London and, after getting a job as a construction worker, he tries to lay low and track down Dil. Dil, however, turns out to be not quite was Fergus was expecting. It turns out that Jody didn’t reveal every aspect of his life while he was trapped in that cottage. Meanwhile, Jude and Peter both show up in London and demand that Fergus help them execute “some judge.”

The Crying Game is a twisty and engaging thriller, one that is best known for the twist involving Dil’s identity but which is also a thought-provoking look at the assumptions we make about each other and the roles that people feel forced to play. Fergus doesn’t really have it in him to be a terrorist or an assassin but it’s the role that he feels he’s been forced into by his desire to see the British leave Northern Ireland. Jody turns out to have a few secrets of his own and, once their revealed, his eagerness to go off with Jude is seen in an entirely new light. Jude and Peter present themselves as being honorable freedom fighters but their actions often seem to suggest the opposite. In the end, the only character who is truly comfortable with their nature is Dil. Both Stephen Rea and Jaye Davidson more than deserved their Oscar nominations. Their chemistry goes a long way towards making this a thriller that sticks with you.

The Crying Game was nominated for several Oscars but lost the majority of them to Unforgiven. (Both Stephen Rea and Clint Eastwood lost Best Actor to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman.) However, Neil Jordan did win an Oscar for his clever screenplay. Rea has continued to act. Davidson, who reportedly hated the fame that came with appearing in The Crying Game, appeared in one more film before retiring.

Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Winner: My Left Foot (dir by Jim Sheridan)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“This is Christy Brown, writer, genius!”

So declares Patrick Brown (Ray McAnally) as he carries his son, Christy Brown, into a Dublin pub. It’s one of the most emotional moments to be found in the 1989 Best Picture nominee, My Left Foot. Based on the main character’s memoir, My Left Foot tells the story of Christy Brown, wh was born into a working class Dublin family of 15 and who grew up to become an acclaimed writer and artist. Afflicted with cerebral palsy, Brown’s left foot was the only part of his body that he had full control over. The film follow Brown as he learns to write, paint, and communicate with that foot. As a child, Christy Brown is played by Hugh O’Conor. As a young man, he’s played by Daniel Day-Lewis, who apparently stayed in character even when he wasn’t filming. Day-Lewis won his first Oscar for his performance as Christy Brown. Brenda Fricker won a Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Christy’s mother, Bridget Fagan Brown, making My Left Foot the first Irish film to win any competitive Oscars. I would argue that Ray McAnally, at the very least, deserved a nomination for Supporting Actor as well. (Sadly, McAnally passed away shortly before the release of My Left Foot.)

My Left Foot is an inspiring movie but, at the same time, it’s an honest one. Christy Brown’s life is never portrayed as being easy and Christy himself is never portrayed as being a saint. There are time when Christy is pissed off at the world, at one point even starting a brawl in a pub. Even after Christy is accepted into a school for people with Cerebral Palsy and he has the first exhibition of his work, there is still heartbreak. Christy has fallen in love with a woman named Eileen (Fiona Shaw) and when he discovers that she’s engaged, he comes close to ending his own life. It’s a not to watch as Christy’s pain feels so real and so intense that you almost feel like an intruder while watching. The film leaves you cheering for Christy and happy that he’s found a way to express his feelings and his intelligence but at the same time, it never fools you into thinking that Christy is going to have an easy life. The film’s too honest to end on a note of false hope.

My Left Foot features one of Daniel Day-Lewis’s best performances. (Though who say that every Day-Lewis performance is one of his best have obviously never seen Nine.) Day-Lewis not only captures Christy’s physical condition but, even more importantly, he allows us into Christy’s mind. We get to know Christy as much for his sharp wit and intellect as for his physical disability. Brenda Fricker plays Bridget as being earthy but supportive, someone who always tries to do the best for her son. But the performance that really makes me cry is the performance of Ray McAnally, who initially doesn’t know what to make of his son but who changes his mind once he sees Christy writing with his left foot. “Genius!” he declares and it brings tears to the eyes of everyone watching.

My Left Foot was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. Oliver Stone won Best Director for a much more grandiose portrait of disability, Born On The Fourth Of July. Best Picture, meanwhile, went to Driving Miss Daisy.

The Unnominated #11: The General (dir by John Boorman)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.

Directed by John Boorman, 1998’s The General tells the story of Martin Cahill.

Martin Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) was a Dublin-based crime lord, a thief by trade who never made any apologies for his profession. The film opens with the end of Martin Cahill’s life. Leaving his suburban home, he’s sitting behind the steering wheel of his car when a young man runs up and shoots him in the face. Cahill’s car rolls forward while his wife (Maria Doyle Kennedy) screams for help. Cahill has been assassinated in front of his family and the reaction of the local police is to celebrate until Cahill’s oldest nemesis, Inspector Ned Kenney (Jon Voight), announces that they have nothing to cheer about. The film leaves it somewhat ambiguous as to who shot Cahill, though it heavily suggests that he was shot by the IRA, both because of their mistaken belief that he was moving drugs into the neighborhood but also because of his refusal to share his profits with them.

The film flashes back and we watch as Martin Cahill, a rebellious young man who stole to impress girls and to get a shot back at the establishment, grows up to become Martin Cahill, the crime lord that the papers nickname The General. Cahill is a professional thief and he’s fairly honest about it. When his government-controlled flat is torn down, Cahill camps out on the site in a tent, refusing to leave because the location of the new building is to close to the police station. He says he’d rather be moved to a richer part of town. It’s better for his work. As portrayed by Brendan Gleeson, Cahill is a fascinating and complex character, a ruthless criminal who is also devoted to his pigeons, his children and both his wife and his girlfriend (Angeline Bail). (Fortunately, for Martin, his wife and his girlfriend know about each other and are good friends.) He’s the type of crime lord who will test a man’s loyalty by nailing him to a pool table and then take him to the hospital afterwards. “Sorry, Martin,” another associate says after Martin shoots him in the leg to make a fake break-in look authentic. It’s hard not to like the film’s version of Martin Cahill, an intelligent and ultimately honest man who understands the importance of allowing his enemies to believe him to be a buffoon. He may be a criminal but he considers it to be an honest living, unlike the government officials who force unwanted laws and exorbitant taxation on the citizenry Director John Boorman certainly seems to like Cahill, which is interesting as Boorman was actually the victim of one of Cahill’s robberies. (Boorman recreates the robbery in the film.)

The film went unnominated at the Oscars, which were dominated that year by Shakespeare in Love and Saving Private Ryan. Brendan Gleeson definitely deserved a nomination for his charismatic performance as Martin Cahill. Equally worthy of a nomination was Seamus Deasy’s black-and-white cinematography, which gives the film the dream-like feel of a half-remembered legend. (The version of the film that’s on Tubi features desaturated color. It’s actually an effective look for the film’s story but I still prefer the black-and-white original.) Neither was nominated and, indeed, Brendan Gleeson would have to wait until 2023 to finally receive his first Oscar nominations for The Banshees of Inisherin.