Remember the basement in Zodiac? A man tells Robert Graysmith he drew some movie posters, and suddenly you’d give anything for Jake Gyllenhaal to get back in his car. David Fincher spends so much of the film teaching us to study handwriting and question witnesses that one perfectly ordinary conversation can scare us senseless. That’s directing worth an Oscar nomination. | © Paramount Pictures
Kirk Douglas gets a splendid courtroom speech in Paths of Glory, and Stanley Kubrick understands exactly how little good it will do. Three French soldiers face execution for an attack their commanders bungled. As Colonel Dax argues for their lives, Douglas lets his lawyer’s composure slip just enough to reveal a soldier appalled that he has to explain any of this to fellow officers. | © United Artists
Somewhere underneath that enormous hat, Hugo Weaving is giving a remarkably delicate performance. Listen to V introduce himself in a barrage of words beginning with his favorite letter, then hear how gently he speaks to Evey when she’s close enough to hurt him. The painted grin stays put. Weaving lets us hear when the man wearing it has stopped smiling. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
For all the attention Pacino and De Niro got for sharing a cup of coffee, my Oscar vote goes to whoever made downtown Los Angeles sound like that. During the bank getaway in Heat, rifle fire cracks against the surrounding buildings and rolls back over the street. Close your eyes and you can still hear how exposed those cops are behind their car doors. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
How does a blind flower seller come to believe Charlie Chaplin’s penniless Tramp owns a luxury car? She hears a door close. That tiny misunderstanding gives City Lights its whole romance, and Chaplin trusts us to catch it from the way Virginia Cherrill turns her head. Remember that gesture when the two meet again. She has another way of recognizing him, and it’s a heartbreaker. | © United Artists
Anne Hathaway slips out of a maid’s uniform, takes off with Bruce Wayne’s pearls and pockets an unwary congressman along the way. Her best trick comes later. Cornered in a bar as police storm in, Selina Kyle lets out a terrified scream and instantly becomes somebody the cops ought to rescue. Imagine how much fun that would have been as her Oscar clip. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
American ticket buyers had grounds for a refund. Sergio Leone’s nearly four-hour gangster epic reached U.S. theaters cut to 139 minutes and rearranged in chronological order. Watch the longer version and pay attention to a telephone that keeps ringing across cuts. Leone makes you sit inside an old man’s memory, where a call he wishes he’d never made can still keep him awake decades later. | © The Ladd Company
Watch Harvey Keitel when Johnny Boy walks into the bar to “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Robert De Niro gets the slow-motion entrance, a girl on each arm and the grin of a man who owes everybody money. Keitel gets the harder job. In Charlie’s face you can see precisely why he’ll keep bailing this idiot out, even as he does the arithmetic on what it’ll cost him. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Spare a thought for the men tied to the couch. MacReady is testing blood samples with a hot wire, and each man has a growing personal interest in who’s sitting beside him. Rob Bottin’s creature effects get top billing in most conversations about The Thing. The wicked pleasure of that scene comes from John Carpenter giving us time to work out the seating problem ourselves. | © Universal Pictures
The poor woman in the convertible can hear something ticking. We know exactly where it’s coming from because Orson Welles showed us the bomb going into the trunk several minutes ago. Russell Metty’s camera has since drifted across rooftops, picked up a pair of newlyweds and followed everybody to the border. Meanwhile, an official still has routine questions to ask. Do hurry, officer. | © Universal-International
Danny’s tricycle makes a glorious racket on the Overlook’s bare floors, then goes quiet each time he hits carpet. After a couple of turns, you know the rhythm well enough to start dreading the next stretch of hallway. An Oscar nomination for the sound of The Shining would have been easy to justify on the strength of one kid pedaling around an empty hotel. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Somebody ought to have handed Eli Wallach a supporting actor nomination just for the gun-shop visit. As Tuco, he examines the revolvers on offer, listens to their mechanisms and assembles one to his liking from the available parts. Wallach gives a wanted bandit the fussy professional pride of a watchmaker. For several minutes, Clint Eastwood can wait. We’re shopping with Tuco. | © United Artists
Try selling a heist movie on the promise that everybody can skip the heist and meet back at the warehouse. Quentin Tarantino pulls it off with considerable help from editor Sally Menke, who knows exactly when to let us in on what each crook knows. A story about walking into a public restroom gets more screen time than the robbery. You’ll remember every urinal. | © Miramax Films
Mathilda walks past the apartment where her family has been murdered and rings her neighbor’s bell. The killers can see her. She has to look like a kid waiting to be let into her own home, and Natalie Portman lets us watch that cover story crumble with every second Jean Reno takes to answer. It was her first film role. You’d swear she’d done this for years. | © Gaumont
Julianne Moore barely has to open her mouth before you know Maude Lebowski grew up on a different financial planet from the Dude. Then out comes that exquisitely precise diction, which Jeff Bridges receives with the dazed courtesy of a man trying to follow instructions at the DMV. The Coen brothers wrote a kidnapping mystery where half the fun is hearing two people attempt a conversation. | © Working Title Films
A severed head sprouts spider legs and scuttles across the floor in John Carpenter’s The Thing, and somehow the guy who built it had Oscar night off. You can argue about whether the Academy was ever going to embrace a movie that gross, but surely somebody could have put in a word for the effects crew. Here are 15 great movies that came up empty on nomination morning, along with the work that deserved a closer look.
