my picks for tonight’s 95th Academy Awards (the Oscars for 2022’s films) (winners indicated)
I correctly guessed 13 out of the 23 categories, which is a little better than how I did last year.
Batman
OFCS 2022 awards winners announced
Everything Everywhere All at Once leads with six wins; The Banshees of Inisherin takes fours awards. Twelve films overall earned awards.
The Batman movie review: to bat, or not to bat
No snark, no spandex pantomime spectacle. Just noir mystery, Pattinson’s sad recluse a detective in a cesspit of corruption. Relentlessly grim, all darkness and despair, not escapist but of our time.
Joker movie review: sad clown, bad clown, not at all a rad clown
Not fit to lick the boots of Martin Scorsese or Christopher Nolan, though the height of its ambition appears to be its desperation to do so. A movie as pathetically ineffectual as its protagonist.
Shazam! movie review: unmarvelous
Nothing matters in this literal adolescent-male power fantasy, a cheesy mishmash of nonsense and low stakes. Anyone who needs at least a bit of meat in their superhero tales will be disappointed.
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies movie review: the last action heroes (to get a movie)
The superhero movie we need, and also the one we karmically deserve. A riot of hilariously zippy animation that gleefully shreds the clichés of the genre while also lovingly embracing its self-referential geek experience.
Ready Player One movie review: trivial pursuit*
A nightmare of nothingness, of empty, soulless wankery, that serves only to reassure male dorks that their pop-culture obsessions make them special, and will make cute girls like them.
Justice League movie review: grab ’em by the fanboy
The cinematic equivalent of Trump and Brexit as awfulness brought upon ourselves. Incoherent and cheap-looking. There are no heroes, and everything is broken.
American Assassin movie review: we’ve CIAn it all before
It’s tormented hotheads all around with a hero and villain who are almost indistinguishable and same-old spy stuff racing to a seen-it, been-there ticking-clock finale.
