A Room with a View Pt 1: A Florentine Summer

Occasionally we'll take a movie and baton pass it around the team and really dive in. If you missed past installments we've gone long and deep on Rebecca (1940), West Side Story (1961),  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Cabaret (1972), Silence of the Lambs (1991), Thelma & Louise (1991), Aladdin (1992) and A League of Their Own (1992).  

 

A ROOM WITH A VIEW
(a three part retrospective)
part 1 by Cláudio Alves

Ismael Merchant and James Ivory's breakthrough hit, A Room with a View, based on the 1908 novel by E.M. Forster marked the beginning of a new era of British costume pictures. It opened in both the UK and the US in the spring of 1986 (the year we're celebrating this month at The Film Experience) on its way to becoming a beloved modern classic.

The movie won the BAFTA for Best Film and was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Since it's currently streaming on both HBOMax and the Criterion Channel, it's a perfect time to revisit. Let's dive in...

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1986: Jenette Goldstein in "Aliens"

Before each Smackdown, suggestions for alternates to Oscar's roster...

by Nick Taylor

My boyfriend had seen Aliens before we watched it together recently. Of course he had. Tommy loves science fiction and Aliens is one of the few perfect movies ever made in any genre, with so many elements that are not just immaculately assembled and realized in their own right but tremendously influential to how cinema subsequently related to sci-fi and war films. What’s undeniably stock about its characters and scenario is fresh and alive to behold, mixing an absolute lack of subtlety with nuance, modulation, and unimpeachable judgement. 

This is certainly the case with Jenette Goldstein’s performance as Private Vasquez, a member of the military unit assigned to accompany Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her Weyland-Yutani Corporation handler Burke (Paul Reiser) to a terraformed colony on a planet that may or may not already be lost to an invasive species of perfectly-built killing machines...

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1986: Cathy Tyson in "Mona Lisa"

We're revisiting 1986 this month leading up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown. As always Nick Taylor will suggest a few alternates to Oscar's ballot.

It’s been a while since I wrote about someone who had actual Oscar buzz, right? We can argue how Anna Magnani and Kimberly Elise should have contended in their years, but Cathy Tyson’s cryptic and involving turn in Mona Lisa definitely appears to have landed in the sixth spot of the 1986 Supporting Actress lineup. Tyson won LAFCA (tying with Dianne Wiest for Hannah and Her Sisters) and was first runner-up with New York. She scored Globe and BAFTA nominations, as well, before missing out with Oscar. Given the strength of her performance, the degree of precursor attention she received, the way her role fits in well-worn paths for ingenue recognition, and the ... um... quality of some of the actual nominees, I’m surprised Tyson didn’t make the cut.

Tyson plays Simone, a high-class sex worker. Her shadowy employer suddenly gives her George (Bob Hoskins), a hot-tempered ex-convict fresh out of jail, as her driver/bodyguard...

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