Blue Sky

wow! Jessica Lange is so good in this movie it is embarrassing! She owns the screen in every one of her scenes. Tommy Lee Jones to his credit- lets her be the star of the movie. Though the plot is a little implausible- just like David sent off Bathsheba's husband to certain death- to seduce her- the army didn't reckon with the power of a strong and slightly crazy woman. The teenagers in the film add to its poignancy. On the surface the Marshall family seems dysfunctional- but actually- with love they function very well.

Just as Shohei Ohtani cannot, by himself, take the Anaheim Angels to baseball greatness neither can Jessica Lange lift this film into the realm of goodness. Tony Richardson's last movie remains, after twenty nine years and despite Ms. Lange's powerful performance, a decent but flawed work.

The flaws, of course, can mostly be laid at the word processors of scenarists Rama Laurie Stagner, Arlene Sarner and Jerry Leichting. Not content to tell a simple but moving story of a troubled marriage between a too extroverted, aging Southern belle and a too introverted intellectual, set on an oppressive army base (are there any other kind?) in the South in the early sixties...think "Reflections In A Golden Eye" meets "Woman Under The Influence"...they concoct a truly ludicrous, 1970s, anti government paranoia tale complete with underground nuke tests, fallout, psychiatric incarceration and a kindly, bearded AEC official coming to the rescue (unfortunately, way too late to save the film). And so, by act three, we have left the relatable realm of relationships and recognizable emotions for Hollywood liberalism at its most amok. Or, to put it another way, we've gone from a good, gritty Tony Richardson film to Alan Pakula or Martin Ritt on a bad day.

Bottom line: Richardson shoulda gone out with the kitchen sink, not the paper shredder. Give it a C plus.

PS...Almost as depressing as Richardson's too early demise is seeing the star of "The Last Picture Show", twenty one years after that masterpiece, reduced to a non credited cameo as a cowboy with radiation poisoning.

"Blue Sky" might've made for a great night of television had it premiered on HBO or Showtime as a cable-film. With somewhat reduced expectations coupled with the intimacy of watching the movie on the small screen, one might be inclined to forgive the film for its lack of scope. Set in Alabama in the mid-1950s, Jessica Lange plays an Army engineer's wife and the mother of two young girls who is tired of being dragged from one military base to the next. She harbors a dangerous, possibly manic-depressive side, and makes life difficult for everybody--leaving a trail of gossip and bad blood behind her. Tommy Lee Jones is her patient, loving husband, and Powers Boothe is Jones' newest Commanding Officer who sees only Lange's sexy externals and desires her. All three performances are very good (with Lange winning the Best Actress Oscar, possibly due to a slow year for women in film); however, the picture takes a wrong turn in its third act and finishes limply. Wolfish Boothe becomes a deceitful villain (as if being a cheating husband wasn't enough!), while Lange's volatile Carly is sent out on a limb to save her husband from the clutches of the ignorant, power-hungry government. Had the script stayed true to the character conflicts (which would have matched the film's modest budget), this may have been an effective little soaper. Unfortunately, too many ambitious ideas are cranked out in the picture's squashy final stages, the result being a dramatic film which is dramatically unfulfilling. **1/2 from ****

This film had some really interesting scenes that made me watch the movie twice but that was enough. The story overall is a bit too messy.

Jessica Lange was a hoot as the manic-depressive flirtatious wife of Army Major "Hank Marshall." Boy, poor Hank had his hands full with "Carly" as his wife. Lange plays the role a little over-the-top but that's what makes her interesting here. It turns out to be a military soap opera film, if there is such a thing.

The soap angle came in not just between the Major trying to control his out-of- control wife, but the couple's poor daughters who had to live with this under their roof. Amy Klempp and Amy Locane played the sympathetic daughters.

There's more to the story, such as incidental things like nuclear bomb testing but, believe-it-or-not, that takes a back seat to Jones and Lange's marital woes. Frankly. when I write this, over 10 years after seeing the film, I wonder why I bothered watching this twice. I was a big fan of Jones, and maybe that was it, plus Lange looked good back then playing the blonde bombshell. This is one of the last films in which she looked this good as her "Tootsie" days were starting to wan.

1994 was a year of weak female performances, but Jessica Lange's Oscar-winning turn in "Blue Sky" is a real sight to behold. She stars as the alcoholic wife of a well-to-do military nuclear engineer (Tommy Lee Jones). Jones knows of a cover-up by the military to keep nuclear testing in Nevada a secret in the early-1960s. This testing has no visual effect on anything in the environment (thus the name "Blue Sky"). Needless to say this is an intriguing film that is somewhat based on true testing which took place in sparsely populated areas of Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico in the late-1950s and early-1960s. However, this film almost never saw the light of day. It was produced in 1991, but sat in an Orion Pictures vault for over three years. The film was finally released to generate revenue for the soon to be disbanded Orion. No one was ever clear on why the film was not initially released in 1991. Many speculate that director Tony Richardson's AIDS-related death may have had something to do with the studio's reluctance to release the film. This is just speculation, there is no proof of that. Its inability to get released is a bit of a mystery though. I mean a film with Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones should have no trouble being released in my mind. Anyhow, this is Jessica Lange's greatest role. Tommy Lee Jones and Powers Boothe also give great supporting turns. 4 out of 5 stars.