my picks for tonight’s 89th Academy Awards (the Oscars for 2016’s films)
Now updated with winners…
Damien Chazelle
La La Land movie review: city of stars, shining just for us
A marvel. Funny and exuberant and bittersweet and cliché-busting and unexpected as hell. We are going to need more movies like this one.
OFCS 2016 awards winners announced
Moonlight wins big…
AWFJ 2016 EDA Awards winners announced
Moonlight leads, with seven awards…
10 Cloverfield Lane movie review: the monsters women have to deal with
A marvelous little movie: compact, efficient, almost unbearably intense, smartly (perhaps accidentally) feminist. A glorious treat of pulp genre fun.
Whiplash movie review: music as a savage beast
If you didn’t think music could involve actual blood, sweat, and tears, this breathtakingly visceral coming-of-artistic-age drama will set you straight.
Grand Piano review: not enough notes
Builds up a good momentum of suspense only to throw it away on a rushed, unsatisfying ending, rendering all its preposterousness suddenly unforgivable.
