An Oscar in your rearview mirror doesn’t mean you’ve got taste

Just because you win an Oscar doesn’t mean that every subsequent film you make will be Academy Award-caliber stuff. In fact, Oscar winners inevitably make incongruous missteps in their career after they pick up an Academy Award.

Just look at Kevin Costner. After being on top of the world when he won the best director Oscar for the 1990 best film, “Dances With Wolves,” he made the gargantuan turkey “Waterworld” and then directed a three-hour celluloid nightmare called “The Postman,” which was DOA with critics and audiences alike. No sooner did Julia Roberts earn an Oscar for “Erin Brockovich” than critics soured on her talents in the ill-fated comedy “America’s Sweethearts.” And what was Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones thinking when he signed up for the yawn-inducing comedy “Man of the House,” a film so tepid that it wasn’t even screened for critics?

Here’s a look at some Oscar winners and follow-up films they’d love to forget.

Al Pacino

The intense actor has basketfuls of Oscar nominations – he won best actor for 1992’s “Scent of a Woman” – Tony Awards and even an Emmy, but he’s made more than his fair share of stinkers. His latest film, the dumdum thriller “88 Minutes,” managed to eke out $6.8 million at the box office despite devastating reviews.

The film, which was shot in late 2005 and released theatrically and on DVD last year internationally, scored only 7% “fresh” on rottentomatoes.com. In fact, most reviewers talked more about Pacino’s overly coiffed hair than any other aspect of the production.

The film was even more poorly received than Pacino’s 2002 drama “People Like Us.” Perhaps Pacino’s unfinest hour, though, was “Revolution,” the 1985 Hugh Hudson epic about the Revolutionary War. Pacino stayed away from the screen for four years after that debacle.

Halle Berry

She became the first African American actress to win the Oscar for lead actress for her revelatory performance in 2001’s star drama, “Monster’s Ball.” But Berry hasn’t had great luck picking follow-up projects. There was the loony 2003 thriller “Gothika,” which wasted her talents. But “Gothika” almost seems like “Citizen Kane” next to 2004’s “Catwoman.” Me-owww! Berry plays Patience Phillips, a shy, plain Jane designer for an ad agency who dies one night and is reborn thanks to a cat named Midnight who has ties to ancient Egypt. As Catwoman, she carries a whip – perhaps because she dresses like a dominatrix. The film picked up several Razzie Awards including worst film and worst actress for Berry.

Whoopi Goldberg

After winning best supporting actress for her wildly comedic role in 1990’s “Ghost,” Goldberg has a decidedly mixed track record in feature films. But none of her post-“Ghost” films can beat 1995s “Theodore Rex,” which opened at a video store near you in the summer of 1996. This dino-snore finds Goldberg playing a wise-cracking cop – who “cops” an attitude with authority – assigned to investigate the murder of a dinosaur. In the futuristic “Theodore Rex” universe, scientists have brought back the dinosaurs and given them education and a voice. To help Katie with her assignment is Theodore, the first dinosaur detective. No wonder Goldberg tried to leave the production. Unfortunately, contract obligations forced her to stay.

Robin Williams

The manic comic/actor has made so many turkeys since winning the 1997 supporting actor Oscar for “Good Will Hunting” that its hard to single out just one. But perhaps one of the worst is 1999’s “Jacob the Liar,” a messy tub of treacle that is based on an acclaimed 1975 East German film. Williams plays a Jew living in a Polish ghetto during World War II who overhears a news broadcast in Nazi headquarters that the war is going badly. When he tells everyone of the news, he decides to make up more bad news about the Nazis in order to give his fellow ghetto-dwellers hope. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll rush to turn off the TV. Liev Schreiber, Alan Arkin, Bob Balaban and Armin Mueller-Stahl also star in this sticky, gooey mess.

Nicole Kidman

The Australian actress won the 2002 best actress Oscar for her performance as Virginia Woolf in “The Hours.” But “Bewitched,” the 2005 big-screen feature adaptation of the 1960s classic sitcom, should have been called “The Weeks.” Boring! While Kidman certainly can twitch her nose just as Elizabeth Montgomery did 40 years ago as a real-life witch who yearns to live like a human, the film lacks wit, spark and charm. That’s despite the fact that it was co-written and directed by Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle”) and features Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine and Will Ferrell. (Where’s Dr. Bombay when you need him?)

Anthony Hopkins

Hopkins won his only best actor Oscar for his mouth-watering performance as the brilliant cannibal Hannibal Lecter in 1991’s “The Silence of the Lambs.” But he nearly silenced his fans with the ghastly 2002 spy thriller “Bad Company,” in which he teams with fast-talking comic actor Chris Rock. It’s like watching water trying to get along with fire. Under Joel Schumacher’s sledge-hammer direction, Hopkins over-emotes as CIA agency chief Gaylord Oakes, who recruits the twin brother (Rock) of a dead agent (Rock) to take his late bro’s place in deadly negotiations to buy a nuclear weapon from a Russian mobster. You wish the mobster would just pull the plug on the weapon and end this debacle.

Nicolas Cage

Picking up the best actor Oscar for his towering turn as a drunk in 1995’s “Leaving Las Vegas” didn’t go to Cage’s head. He’s made just as many bad films after winning the Academy Award as he did pre-Oscar. One of his deadliest is the mindless 2000 actioner “Gone in 60 Seconds,” a loud, stupid and inane remake of the fun 1974 indie film. Cage isn’t the only Oscar winner slumming in this film – Robert Duvall and Angelina Jolie are also marking time. Cage plays Memphis Raines, who once was the greatest car thief but now lives in quiet retirement. That is until his pesky younger brother (Giovanni Ribisi) gets in trouble with a crime lord. The only way Memphis can save his brother is to steal 50 rare automobiles. Said critic Roger Ebert: ” ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’ is a prodigious use of money and human effort, to make a movie of no significance whatsoever, in which the talents of the artists are subordinated to the requirements of the craftsmen.”

Angelina Jolie

Speaking of Ms. Jolie, she’s had more than her share of dogs since winning best supporting actress for 1999’s “Girl, Interrupted,” including the 2002 romantic comedy “Life or Something Like It.” Sporting a Marilyn Monroe platinum blond do, Jolie struggles mightily to be funny as the bubbly but clueless TV reporter Lanie Kerrigan. Her big dream is to be work on a national morning news program in New York, but before she can get her big tryout, she learns from a street person named Prophet Jack that she will die the following Thursday. Unfortunately, for viewers watching this dreck is akin to a slow death.

Cuba Gooding Jr.

Who will ever forget Gooding’s energetic acceptance speech for winning the supporting actor Oscar for 1996’s “Jerry Maguire”? Unfortunately, most of Gooding’s post-Oscar films are eminently forgettable. Now, he’s best known for those Jockey underwear ads with Michael Jordan. One his biggest bombs is the 2003 comedy “Boat Trip,” which teams him with former “Saturday Night Live” regular Horatio Sanz. They play two straight guys pretending to be homosexual on a gay cruise ship. It’s anything but fierce. “Flouncing and preening, the actor works hard to sell the movie’s penile, puerile jokes, his strain so evident that it borders on sad,” said San Francisco Chronicle critic Carla Meyer of Gooding’s performance.

Adrien Brody

The youngest actor to ever win the lead actor Oscar – he was 29 – for 2002’s “The Pianist,” Brody has yet to follow up his haunting performance in the Holocaust drama with anything close to its power and poignancy. And you just feel embarrassed for him in M. Night Shyamalan’s poorly reviewed 2004 chiller, “The Village.” Brody overacts outrageously – it’s not really his fault, because the role is so ill-conceived – as Noah Percy, the “village idiot” living in an Amish-type burgh surrounded by woods that are inhabited by vicious creatures referred to Those We Do Not Speak Of. Needless to say, things don’t end too well for poor Noah. Brody isn’t the only Oscar winner trapped in this silliness – William Hurt also appears in the film, as do Oscar nominees Sigourney Weaver and Joaquin Phoenix.

susan.king@latimes.com