The Verdict -- Best Supporting Actress 1985

#5. Anjelica Huston in Prizzi's Honor: Anjelica is the first winner to receive a last place ranking from me, and that's due to her uneven but memorable performance as Maerose Prizzi. Her opening scenes rank among the best of these five ladies, but the amount of lackluster scenes that pile up after that dull her impact incredibly. Still, this is a performance with many classic lines and moments, and one that I used to despise and now only feel mostly ambivalent towards. Chalk that up as a small victory for Anjelica, I suppose.

#4. Meg Tilly in Agnes of God: Clearly the most out-there performance of the batch and thus the hardest to compare with her fellow nominees, but Meg Tilly sure does entertain as Sister Agnes. My closing thoughts in my review still stand, and I still have trouble describing my opinions on her memorably strange turn. She's a very unlikable and grating character, but she almost single-handedly makes the film work, and somehow makes her character not only believable but more believable than the two pedigreed actresses that costar in her film. Wonderfully weird is a good way to describe this one, I suppose.

#3. Amy Madigan in Twice in a Lifetime: I have literally never heard anything about Amy Madigan or this film before reviewing her performance, so I was pleasantly surprised to find her performance in Twice in a Lifetime to be a very strong one despite the dubiousness of the film. She's the film's trump card, and she makes the movie work almost single-handedly with her dynamic energy and forceful unwillingness to let her family off the hook. Her performance may not be as memorable or as over the top as her fellow nominees, but her restraint and self-awareness make this performance completely nomination-worthy.

#2. Margaret Avery in The Color Purple: These long four months have been the most beneficial to Margaret Avery, as her performance has climbed it's way up two spots after my initial viewing found me significantly less satisfied with it. But I'm glad I've seen the light, because this is a very elegant and graceful performance that fits very well with her director's style. Her Shug Avery may not be as fleshed out as she could be, but what she's lacking in raunch she makes up for in pure emotional impact and phenomenal chemistry with Whoopi Goldberg. If she had sung her own songs, this might have even been a half a point higher.

#1. Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple: Though I fell in love with both of the Color Purple ladies, there was no denying that Winfrey's Sofia is my choice in this strong year. She's the least realistic character in The Color Purple, and is very often cartoonish, but by the time she circles back around and absolutely breaks your heart you don't even really care about that anymore. Larger than life, and as entertaining as can be I have no shame in my love for this performance.

The Year in Review: The amount of time it took me to complete this year should not be looked at as a commentary on the quality of these ladies' performances, but rather a commentary on my lack of motivation and extreme business over the last few months. In what seems to be a running theme, of these 4 films I really didn't like three of them (I give you 0 guesses as to which ones), though for the most part these ladies were the best parts of their respective movies. In an ideal world, the three ladies from Clue would have been duking it out for the Oscar, and I'd be satisfied with any of them having won really. But alas. Not to take anything away from Oprah, who is fantastic. I have another year already lined up, but I'm going to play it smart and get at least two or three reviews in the can before I even announce it. I'll throw out a useless hint: It's a year from 2000s with 2 nominees sharing a single film.

Shoulda Been a Contender: Eileen Brennan in Clue; Madeline Kahn in Clue; Lesley Ann Warren in Clue


All Supporting Actress Nominees Ranking:

1. Patty Duke in "The Miracle Worker" (1962)
2. Dorothy Malone in "Written on the Wind" (1956)
3. Thelma Ritter in "Pickup on South Street" (1953)
4. Linda Hunt in "The Year of Living Dangerously" (1983)
5. Anna Paquin in "The Piano" (1993)
6. Cher in "Silkwood" (1983)
7. Eileen Heckart in "The Bad Seed" (1956)
8. Emma Thompson in "In the Name of the Father" (1993)
9. Julianne Moore in "Boogie Nights" (1997) 
10. Ellen Burstyn in "The Last Picture Show" (1971)
11. Oprah Winfrey in "The Color Purple" (1985)
12. Patty McCormack in "The Bad Seed" (1956)
13. Claire Trevor in "Dead End" (1937)
14. May Whitty in "Night Must Fall" (1937)
15. Margaret Avery in "The Color Purple" (1985)
16. Mildred Dunnock in "Baby Doll" (1956)
17. Angela Lansbury in "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962)
18. Ethel Waters in "Pinky" (1949)
19. Amy Madigan in "Twice in a Lifetime" (1985)
20. Meg Tilly in "Agnes of God" (1985)
21. Gloria Stuart in "Titanic" (1997)
22. Alfre Woodard in "Cross Creek" (1983)
23. Barbara Harris in "Who is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?" (1971)
24. Geraldine Page in "Hondo" (1953)
25. Anne Shirley in "Stella Dallas" (1937)
26. Amy Irving in "Yentl" (1983)
27. Kim Basinger in "L.A. Confidential" (1997)
28. Shirley Knight in "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962)
29. Cloris Leachman in "The Last Picture Show" (1971)
30. Margaret Leighton in "The Go-Between" (1971)
31. Rosie Perez in "Fearless" (1993)
32. Mercedes McCambridge in "All the King's Men" (1949)
33. Joan Cusack in "In & Out" (1997)
34. Anjelica Huston in "Prizzi's Honor" (1985)
35. Ann-Margret in "Carnal Knowledge" (1971)
36. Donna Reed in "From Here to Eternity" (1953)
37. Glenn Close in "The Big Chill" (1983)
38. Alice Brady in "In Old Chicago" (1937)
39. Mary Badham in "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962) 
40. Holly Hunter in "The Firm" (1993)
41. Celeste Holm in "Come to the Stable" (1949)
42. Ethel Barrymore in "Pinky" (1949)
43. Minnie Driver in "Good Will Hunting" (1997)
44. Thelma Ritter in "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962) 
45. Winona Ryder in "The Age of Innocence" (1993)
46. Grace Kelly in "Mogambo" (1953)
47. Mercedes McCambridge in "Giant" (1956)
48. Marjorie Rambeau in "Torch Song" (1953) 
49. Elsa Lanchester in "Come to the Stable" (1949)
50. Andrea Leeds in  "Stage Door" (1937)

Anjelica Huston in Prizzi's Honor

Anjelica Huston won an Academy Award on her first nomination for her performance as Maerose Prizzi in John Huston's Prizzi's Honor. If I never have to watch Prizzi's Honor again in my life, I would be just fine. It's not that the film is awful by any means, but I really just don't find it to be funny or come together in any coherent or clear way. It's trying to be a crime drama, comedy, and romance all rolled into one and just messes up each of those aspects without having any discernible strengths. The film is about the unlikely romance between two hit man/woman/people, Charley Partanna (Nicholson) and Irene Walker (Turner) and the troubles they face balancing their love and the demands of the powerful Prizzi crime family that employs Charley. Kathleen Turner is so very drab and Jack Nicholson pushes too far into the realm of clownishness  I enjoy William Hickey's performance more than most because at least he is entertaining and consistent in his outlandish characterization. Huston plays Maerose Prizzi, who has been ostracized from the family due to some vague situation involving Charley, to whom she was engaged. Honestly, I watched this film two hours ago (for a second time) and already am unclear about the reasons behind Maerose's exile, that's how little this film has stuck with me.

Knowing the details of Maerose's exile isn't especially important, because Anjelica Huston makes you feel the emotional impact of the exile from her first second on screen. She's an actress who always makes a big impression by virtue of her striking looks, but decked out in some memorably garish outfits she makes an even more startling impact. Her first scenes in the film are her best. They take place at a wedding where Maerose's presence is unwanted by her father, and here Huston does a marvelous job at expressing just how wounded and hurt she is by the forced isolation from her family. Huston is known for her strong and forceful characters, but in these first few scenes she does an adept job at playing Maerose as a strong woman struggling to maintain her composure. She also has very good chemistry with Jack Nicholson (most likely because of their longtime real-life relationship), despite the fact that he seems content with just mugging to the camera, a trap she herself falls into on occasion.

After these initially bursts of stark vulnerability, Huston's performance devolves into amateurish but not altogether awful territory, unfortunately. The script plays Maerose as the mastermind behind many of the events in the film, placing Anjelica as a sensual seductress and devious schemer. The seduction scene just didn't work for me, as Anjelica seems determined not to show any emotion besides a steely ambivalence, and instead focuses on her dialogue and line readings (which are admittedly sometimes genius). She maintains this steely flatness for the remainder of her film, with all that vulnerability shown at the beginning of the film disappearing altogether. It's a puzzling approach to the character, and one that makes her character too uneven and unbelievable. I may sound a little back and forth on this performance, and that is because in every scene (after the wedding) I found something small to like and a lot of larger things that took me out of the performance. I think she was trying too much here, and lost control of the emotional reins of her character.

That being said, Maerose does play to many of Anjelica's strengths of an actress such as her skill for dialogue and an absolutely domineering screen presence. I'm not sure she was quite the right actress for the part, ultimately, so I can only assume her relationships with Nicholson and her father convinced them that she was the right choice. It's not an awful performance by any means, and those early scenes are exceptionally good if only she could pull it together throughout the rest of the film. 3/5 Fancy Funerals.

Margaret Avery in The Color Purple

Four months later....

Margaret Avery received her first and only Oscar nomination to date for her performance as Shug Avery in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. Of the two nominated supporting ladies, there is no doubt that Shug plays a more important role in main character Celie's (Whoopi Goldberg) journey. Shug first enters the film as a potential rival of sorts, a free-wheeling jazz singer who Celie's husband Mister (Danny Glover) has long been infatuated with, and someone who he openly has extra-marital affairs with. However, the two women eventually form a tight bond as Shug helps Celie open up and stand up to her abusive husband, eventually even embarking on something of a romance. Another key aspect of the performance is Shug's desire to reconcile with her father, the town preacher, who looks down upon her extravagant lifestyle as immoral and ungodly.

It's an incredibly juicy part, and Avery does a commendable, if slightly uneven, job of portraying all facets of Shug's personality. Where she struggles the most is in showing the excess of Shug's lifestyle. From her very first scene, when she arrives at Celie's home drunk out of her mind, I never found myself convinced of her immorality. It takes all of one scene for Avery's niceness to come out, and thus never really believed her as the crass party girl that makes her father upset with her. From that first scene onward  Avery emphasizes the pleasantness of Shug. Avery made a conscious choice to downplay Shug's party nature and instead focus on her kind heart, which is admirable though dulls the impact of her "wild" party scenes. It doesn't help that director Spielberg seems imminently more interested in big emotional moments rather than characterization.  It's also sad that my favorite Shug moment in the film, when she sings "Miss Celie's Blues (Sister)" to Celie, can't be attributed completely to Avery with Tata Vega serving as Shug's singing voice.

However, it's because of Avery's choice to downplay Shug's rowdiness and focus on the inner soul of the character that the rest of her performance is supremely touching and rewarding. Her chemistry with Whoopi Goldberg is phenomenal, and scene by scene they build a warmth marked by playfulness and mutual support. Though Spielberg dulls the sexual implications of the film, the two actresses clearly know what type of relationship the two really have, and do a good job at underpinning their relationship with just the right amount of sexuality to get the point across. Her most moving moment in the film is another that can't be completely attributed to her, the moving reconciliation with her father that culminates in her singing a song ("God Is Trying to Tell You Something"). It's her big moment in the film, and one that causes me to tear up (I crumble to pieces in the final scene of the film every time). The film's focus is on sentimentality and moving emotional moments, and that shows in Avery's performance. She's consistently elegant, touching, and has the type of sentiment that Spielberg requires.

Ultimately, Avery's performance in The Color Purple is the one that most improves on multiple viewings, starting out as a mere 3/5 when I first saw it. It's not quite as flamboyant or showy performance as Whoopi or Oprah's, but instead is a more graceful and affectionate performance that emphasizes the warmheartedness of this supposedly "immoral" woman. The performance is far from perfect, though Spielberg's heavy-handed direction has something to do with dulling her rowdy impact, and nobody could make a relationship with a character as deplorable as Mister believable, but those are only minor points off an otherwise well-calibrated performance. 4/5 Funeral Funerals.

Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple

Oprah Winfrey received her first and only Oscar nomination to date for her performance as Sofia in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. The film is about Celie Johnson (Whoopi Goldberg), a young black woman who is forced into marriage at a young age, and Celie's growth from a timid and confidence-less young woman to a stronger one willing to stand up for herself. I've seen The Color Purple twice now in an effort to motivate myself to write about either Margaret Avery or Oprah Winfrey's performances (which is not a comment on either the film or the nominated ladies, but rather my lack of motivation and exhaustion from work) and each time Sofia has stood head and shoulders as the most vigorous presence in the film. It's really a combination of the charisma of Ms.Winfrey and the larger than life ardor of the character she plays. Sofia is the domineering wife of Harpo (Willard Pugh), the buffoonish and ill-behaved son of the tyrannical "Mister" (Danny Glover).

Sofia is the absolute opposite of Goldberg's Celie in nearly every way, a spirited and boisterous character with an energetic physicality that makes her character larger than life. She storms into the film and is instantly the most magnetic personality on screen, as she fights back against the various offenses thrown her way by Mister, Harpo, and even Celie. Winfrey allows Sofia to be a woman of perseverance and undying vitality. When the frequently beaten Celie advises Harpo to beat his wife to set her straight, Sofia confronts her and shows the ferocious doggedness of her refusal to be treated as a lesser person and the love she has for her husband. Sofia only knows how to be her wholly independent self, and won't allow herself to be anything else or hold back in the same way that Celie will. Winfrey drifts between comedic and dramatic moments gracefully, all the while maintaining the unapologetic girth of her character. Which, of course, makes the demoralization of her character even more completely and utterly devesatating.

After punching the condescending (and white) mayor, Sofia finds herself physically and emotionally beaten down and placed first in prison and later in service of the mayor's doltish wife, Miss Millie (an amusing and spiky Dana Ivey). Separated from her family and physically scarred for life, Sofia shrinks in everything but physical stature and becomes a broken version of her dominant self. Winfrey once again nails the physical aspects of the character, effectively showing the shameful and despondent nature of  Sofia's life through her walk and body language. This previously overly-expressive woman becomes a broken woman just moving through life without really living it. Winfrey's scenes working for Miss Millie is like watching an emotional zombie as she tunes out the world around her and puts her head down and does as she's told. She has many devastating moments where Miss Millie flirts with reuniting Sofia with her family, and ultimately none of them succeed and Winfrey shows a Sofia so broken that it doesn't even faze her. She's numb to the world around her.

At the end of the film, we don't exactly get an explanation as to how Sofia is reunited with her family but she is, and the climactic dinner table scene is a fabulous denouement to the film and both Winfrey and Goldberg's performances. Celie finally gains the conviction to leave her husband, and this show of perseverance reignites the old Sofia into action. It all happens a little quickly, but Winfrey adds such emotional heft to the scene (I suspect Spielberg cut some scenes here too) that you don't really care. It' an emotional journey that Winfrey travels, and one that is more than worth taking. Sofia can be a bit of a cartoon at times, especially in the beginning of the performance, but Oprah balances out the cartoonish and touching in a very cinematic way. Do people like Sofia exist in real life? Probably not but Winfrey succeeds in making you not care about realism and instead loving the force of nature Sofia is. 4.5/5 Fancy Funerals.

Meg Tilly in Agnes of God

Meg Tilly received her first and only Oscar nomination to date for her performance as Sister Agnes in Norman Jewison's Agnes of God. Tilly plays a novice nun who gives birth and claims the dead child was a result of a virgin conception. Jane Fonda and Anne Bancroft play a psychiatrist and mother superior respectively who butt heads in the resulting police investigation. The film itself is an exceedingly dull experience, with the two female leads giving weak, directionless performances that only highlight the stagey blandness of the material. Through the overall strange nature of her role, Tilly is immune to the banality of her film by being the only performer who holds your attention. Sister Agnes has to be one of the most unique and just plain strange characters to be nominated for this award, which makes Meg Tilly's performance a really hard one to review, much less to give a rating. The character is just on a whole other wavelength from most Oscar-nominated characters.

Sister Agnes isn't just a naive girl, she's a young woman who has spent the entirety of her life away from the rest of civilization under the sole care of an abusive mother who never taught her anything in the ways of sexuality or even just much general education. She's uncommonly confident in her skewed opinions and views, and sticks to the things her mother taught her despite everyone around her saying otherwise. Meg Tilly plays this bizarre (almost cult-like) dedication and naivety with various layers of sweetness. She has some obvious physical advantages, with her childlike face and baby voice (which is as grating as her sister's, albeit in a completely different way) allowing her immediate sympathy. Each scene seems to reveal an additional layer of Sister Agnes, and she gets progressively more unsettling, crazy, and otherworldly as the film progresses.

One thing Meg Tilly is not during this course of Agnes of God is subtle, but in this case that's probably a good thing. A character as unstable (and frankly, unrealistic) as Agnes isn't one that an actress needs to ground or base in reality because she's by design a unique, strange creation. Were Tilly playing Fonda or Bancroft's character her unsettling and glazed over delivery would be out of place, but it fits the role of Sister Agnes snugly. Tilly isn't afraid to dive into the outlandishness of her character, and she succeeds in making her the most interesting aspect of the film through pure watchability. It's a bold performance in which Tilly fully understands the absurdity of her character and embraces it wholeheartedly.

This performance is surely not to be for everyone, and I'd venture to guess that many probably even despise it. I'll admit that this was among the toughest performances for me to write about, much less rate. She just has a puzzling effect that changes from scene to scene. It's just so out there and it's own type of acting that comparing this to other performances of a completely different nature (sort of like Patty Duke's Oscar winning performance) is near impossible. Meg Tilly's presence is always felt in the film, and she does well in making Agnes memorable but never quite likeable. That's not to say Agnes needs to be likeable in the film, but makes it more difficult to rate. It's just a unique accomplishment that I feel will take me awhile to fully describe my thoughts on coherently. For now, I settled on 4/5 Fancy Funerals. That's just the rating that feels right to me.

Amy Madigan in Twice in a Lifetime

Amy Madigan received her only Oscar nomination to date for her performance as Sunny Sobel in Bud Yorkin's Twice in a Lifetime. As far as marital dramas go, Twice in a Lifetime is a pretty standard and unspectacular film, starring Gene Hackman as a middle-aged steelworker who leaves his wife (an effective Ellen Burstyn) for a sultry barmaid (Ann-Margret). The film treats this central development as an inevitability and thus loses much real drama. It doesn't help that Hackman and Ann-Margret give such insufferable performances that I found myself easily giving my sympathies to Burstyn. Amy Madigan gives the most magnetic and lively performance in the film as Sunny, the couple's oldest daughter who finds herself going through some financial struggles, with the separation of her parents affecting her deeper than her parents might have thought.

Madigan is without a doubt an actress with some interesting qualities, lacking in conventional beauty and having a brusque vocal quality that she can't seem to downplay no matter the role. Dressed in a collection of frumpy soccer mom outfits and a tomboyish haircut she pummels through this film like a bulldog, vacillating between quiet lovability and manic rage. It makes for an interesting combination, as Sunny clearly has positioned herself as the person in the family that protects and watches out for everyone, and is not equipped to handle the situation that the separation has placed her in. After finding out about the affair that her father has undertook with a barmaid, you can feel that Sunny's furious reaction goes farther than pity for her mother and hurts her on a higher level. A key part of her storyline is the financial troubles she and her husband (who she loves) are going through, and Madigan makes it palpable that Sunny hates her father for messing up a life that she desperately wants to have. It's been done before-the children falling apart because of a change in their parent's relationship, which they have modeled their own lives on, but Madigan doesn't make it seem too overdone.

This personal rage culminates in an intense and wonderfully acted scene in which Madigan confronts Hackman at the bar where he is openly flirting with his new mistress. As Ellen Burstyn reacts with passivity and confusion, Madigan takes up the position of being angry for her and delivers as forceful confrontation that is somewhat ruined by Hackman's buffoonish performance. Madigan isn't afraid to overdo it and even though she dips a little too deeply into overacting she comes out on top with the pure force of the scene. After this confrontation towards the middle of the film Madigan is left to pick up the pieces of her now "broken" family, and handles herself with strength and composure for the rest of the film. She's not allowed very much more important scenes, but distinguishes herself adequately by being emotionally available and alert for the rest of the film. By picking up the pieces of the family and putting them back together, Madigan's character grows to become a strong and independent person separate from her parents more than she thought she could be.

I suppose the main detracting factor in the performance is that sometimes Madigan can be a little uneven, but that is something that seems built into her character. As the mediator and central figure in her family dynamics Madigan changes her approach from scene to scene, but remains a rough edge throughout. It's a consistently interesting performance that makes use of her natural talents as an actress and rises about the mediocre material.What I got out of Twice in a Lifetime may have been ever so slight, but Amy Madigan does her best to link together the pieces into something that sort of works. At the very least when she was off screen I always preferred her to the alternatives (Hackman, Ann-Margret, Sheedy). 4/5 Fancy Funerals.

Best Supporting Actress 1985

And the nominees were....

• Margaret Avery as Shug Avery in The Color Purple
• Anjelica Huston as Maerose Prizzi in Prizzi's Honor (winner)
• Amy Madigan as Sunny Sobel in Twice in a Lifetime
• Meg Tilly as Sister Agnes in Agnes of God
• Oprah Winfrey as Sofia in The Color Purple 

The Field: It's been a while since I've done a year from the 80's, so I was pleased to see this year come up, even if I was kind of hoping to do a year from the 2000's. But I'm a stickler for keeping it random, and this year is one I'm excited for too. The Color Purple is one of those classics that I'm ashamed I haven't seen yet, so that is easily the film I'm most looking forward to. I've seen Prizzi's Honor but don't have particularly fond memories of the film itself, so hopefully this time around the experience will improve. Amy Madigan is the first up, and hopefully sooner rather than later.