daily stream: remember, remember the fifth of November…
2006’s V for Vendetta is on Prime and Max in the US, Prime and Apple TV in the UK.
Batman
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.
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.
