Give This Man an Oscar

Venus is less a May-December romance than it is a love story: tender, often funny, sometimes shocking, and heart-wrenchingly melancholy without being overly sentimental. Peter O'Toole plays an aging actor who falls for the twenty-something great-niece of a friend, and the result is a film punctuated with an Oscar-worthy performance from one of our greatest living actors.

Venus marks O'Toole's eighth Academy Award nomination. Nominated performances past, in films as diverse and memorable as Lawrence of Arabia, Becket, The Lion in Winter and My Favorite Year (one of my favorite films) have yet to see him honored as Best Actor by the Academy. Venus proves that at 74, O'Toole is at the top of his craft. One should hope that this is his year.

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