4 Movies Oscar 2020 Winners Want You To Forget
2. Joaquin Phoenix - Irrational Man
Taking the Best Actor award is the highlight of very few careers, but the aim of most. But, to get there, you have to be cast in the right showcase. And to get there, you have to be seen. And to be seen, you have to appear in as many things as you possibly can, no matter their quality.
That may explain why 2020's Best Actor recipient was the star of 2003's It's All About Love, a film so bad that his co-star burst into tears when she saw the finished article. Set in the near future, this science fiction shows a world where climate change causes flash ice ages that freeze people to death on the streets of Africa and gravity that fails every now and then... Oh, and sticking with the hard science, those who suffer from broken hearts will find that those hearts literally freeze.
But not every role is awful. Some films, such as 2004's The Village are actually good little films if you go into them blind, with even M Night Shyamalan's trademark twist one of the few truly well-handled ones in his career. It's just a shame that the entire project has the dark cloud of plagiarism all over it, making it something Phoenix is unlikely to call for a sequel to.
And, while his admittedly accurate rant about the dairy industry took centre stage in this year's acceptance speech, it seems that his morality wasn't as well-honed in 2015. This was the year he starred in Irrational Man, which was written and directed by Woody Allen. The same Woody Allen who made a joke about his ex-wife's sexual assault as part of a televised interview. The same Woody Allen who, at 56, started a sexual relationship with a girl more than thirty years his junior who was the adopted daughter of his then-wife Mia Farrow and her ex-husband Andre Previn. The same Woody Allen who was accused in 1992 of having molested his own 7-year-old adoptive daughter, a claim she has consistently made to the present day.
With Phoenix playing the lead role, he was an avatar of Allen himself. Unsurprisingly, he murders a family court judge and tries to murder the main woman in his life; things that bring him the first joy he's felt in a long time.