Catch Me If You Can | Through the Shattered Lens

I hated Grind so much that I decided to watch another movie to get it out of my head. I’m glad I did because, for my second movie, I picked a good one.

Catch Me If You Can takes place in Minnesota. The school board is planning on closing down Cathedral High School unless the school can raise $200,000. Class president Melissa (Loryn Locklin) takes charge of the fundraising drive but, even though she pours her heart into all of the car washes and bake sales, she’s only been able to raise $19,000. Dylan Malone (Matt Lattanzi, who was married to Olivia Newton-John) is the school bad boy, who is always late to class because he’s busy racing other cars on the country roads near the school. The principal (Geoffrey Lewis) gives Dylan an option. He can either help Melissa or he can go to detention. Dylan’s idea of helping is to take the money that Melissa has raised and bet on the illegal races that he’s entering. At first, it works. But when the Fat Man (M. Emmet Walsh) challenges Dylan to race his best man and then tells his racer to cheat, Dylan and Melissa lose all the money. The Fat Man has a proposition. The Fat Man dares Dylan to enter an impossible, timed race. If Dylan wins, he’ll make the double the money that he lost and he and Melissa will be able to save the school. Dylan agrees. Luckily, it turns out that the school’s principal is also the legendary Fast Freddie, the only person to ever win the Fat Man’s race.

It may not be anyone’s idea of great art but Catch Me If You Can is still a delightful and fun 80s teen movie, complete with a nerdy sidekick who turns out to be secretly cool, a bad boy with a heart of gold and a mullet, and a big football game at the end. The plot doesn’t even make sense but the cast gave it their all and, as someone who took part in way too many car wash fund raisers in high school, I knew exactly what Melissa was going through! I’ll admit that, towards the end of the film when everyone was counting down how many seconds Dylan had to make it to the finish line, I got a little caught up in the moment and I may have even cheered a little. Catch Me If You Can is a wonderful slice of 80s goodness.

Welcome to the aughts. The new century started out with the terror of 9-11 and it ended with the collapse of the world’s economy. In between, a lot of films were released. Some of them were really good. A few of them were nominated for Best Picture. Most of them were not. As always, there were snubs aplenty.

2000: Michael Douglas Is Not Nominated For Wonder Boys

I recently saw someone online bemoaning the fact that Michael Douglas appears to be fated to end his career as a supporting character in the MCU as opposed to playing the type of “mature” roles with which he made his reputation. And I actually think that person had a good point. Michael Douglas, whose performances once epitomized the last few decades of the 20th Century, does seem a bit out of place surrounded by CGI and responding to the overly quippy dialogue of the MCU. If you want to see a truly good Michael Douglas performance that doesn’t involve anyone shrinking, check him out in Curtis Hanson’s Wonder Boys. Though Wonder Boys won the Oscar for Best Original Song and picked up nominations for Editing and Adapted Screenplay, Michael Douglas’s wonderful lead performance was overlooked.

2001: Mulholland Drive Is Almost Totally Ignored

Considering the reverence with which it is now viewed, it’s interesting to note that Mulholland Drive only received one Oscar nomination, for David Lynch’s direction. The film was not nominated for Best Picture. Naomi Watts and Laura Harring both went unnominated. At the time, I imagine the film was too strange for Academy voters and its origin as a television pilot probably worked against it. Today, it is regularly cited as one of the best films ever made.

2002: Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks Are Not Nominated For Catch Me If You Can

Catch Me If You Can was that rarest of movies, an underrated Steven Spielberg production. Christopher Walken was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and the film’s score was nominated as well. But both Leonard DiCaprio and Tom Hanks went unnominated, despite doing some of the best work of their careers.

2002: Robin Williams Is Not Nominated For One Hour Photo

One Hour Photo featured what I consider to be Robin Williams’s best and most poignant performance. It was also perhaps his most frightening performance, which probably explains why the Academy shied away from honoring it.

2003: Scarlet Johansson Is Not Nominated For Best Actress For Lost In Translation

Though Bill Murray got most of the awards attention, Scarlet Johansson’s performance was just as important to the success of Lost In Translation.

2004: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Is Not Nominated For Best Picture or Best Actor

Even before he decided to present himself as being an expert on vaccines and modern art, I wasn’t a huge fan of Jim Carrey’s. That said, even I have to admit that he deserved a nomination for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film itself was only nominated for two Oscars. Kate Winslet was nominated for Best Actress and Charlie Kaufman won the Oscar for Original Screenplay. The film deserved quite a bit more.

2007: Once Is Not Nominated For Best Picture

This is one snub that I haven’t quite gotten over. Once, a beautiful independent film from Ireland, deserved far more love than it received from the Academy. That said, it did win the Oscar for Best Original Song and Glen Hansard gave one of the best acceptance speeches in Oscar history. So, there is a little justice.

2008: The Dark Knight Is Not Nominated For Best Picture

If ever there was a comic book movie that deserved to be nominated for Best Picture, it was this one. To me, I think the main reason why The Dark Knight is superior to so many other comic book movies is because, even with Batman and the Joker running around, it still feels as if it’s taking place in the real world. The smartest decision that Christopher Nolan made was to use a real city for Gotham instead of constructing a phony-looking set. The fact that The Dark Knight received 8 nominations without also receiving a nomination for Best Picture leaves little doubt that the film’s lack of a nomination was due to its origins as a comic book movie. There was such an uproar about The Dark Knight failing to pick up a Best Picture nomination that the Academy increased the number of Best Picture nominees to ten. (Of course, that’s didn’t do much to help anything.)

2008: Robert Downey, Jr. Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For Iron Man

The MCU is now so big that it’s easy to forget that, if Robert Downey, Jr. hadn’t been a convincing Tony Stark in 2008, the whole thing would have never happened. Going back and watching the early MCU films, before they got bogged down in their own formula, can be an eye-opening experience. Downey’s performance in the first Iron Man holds up extremely well. He goes from being an irresponsible businessman to being a hero and he’s convincing at every turn. He gave such a good performance that it convinced even those of us who weren’t comic book readers to stick around and see what was coming up next in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

2009: George Wyner Is Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor For A Serious Man

Not all snubs involve big stars or famous actors. Some of them involve talented character actors like George Wyner who totally knock their one scene out of the park but who still don’t get the recognition that they deserve. In A Serious Man, Wyner plays the rabbi who tells Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) the parable of the dentist who found Hebrew phrases on the teeth of one of his patients. It’s a mesmerizing scene, thanks to George Wyner’s skill as a storyteller.

Agree? Disagree? Have a snub of your own that you’d like to mention? Let us know in the comments!

Coming up next, we go from the 2010s to the present day!