'80s Oscar darling

Nominated for 4 Best Actress Oscars in the 1980s (in addition to 1 win for Best Supporting actress), Jessica Lange did not win the lead actress award until 1995, for Blue Sky. The film, which was actually completed in 1990, but not released until 1995 due to the studio's bankruptcy issues, was not nominated for any other Oscars.

Set in the early 1960s, Blue Sky stars Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Marshall, an army major and expert on radiation, whose outspoken beliefs that the army should put greater restrictions on their nuclear testing have made him unpopular and become an obstacle to his career. Lange plays Marshall's wife, Carly, whose promiscuity and mental instability become another. The coincidental timing of her affair with his commanding officer and his discovery of the cover-up of an accident at a nuclear test site lead to Hank being locked up in a mental hospital, leaving Carly as the only one who can save the day.

Lange does steal every scene she's in, and Jones does a decent job of keeping up with her, but their performances are the only things worth watching in this film. The other performances are not particularly good. The camerawork is sloppy and confused - the film's director had been directing for a few decades, but this felt like the work of somebody who had no experience at all. As for the story, it was pretty improbable, it relied too heavily on coincidence for a couple of major plot points, and it had a happily-ever-after ending that wrapped things up far too neatly to let a little thing like logic get in the way. Even Lange's performance, the main selling point of the film, is the weakest I have seen from her. This felt to me like basically a watered-down, more stereotype-driven version of the character Lange played in the film Frances.

Movie trivia question: In his directorial debut, character actor Ed Harris directed himself to a Best Actor nomination for this film.