my picks for tonight’s 97th Academy Awards (the Oscars for 2024’s films) (winners indicated)
I correctly guessed 12 out of the 23 categories, which is exactly as well as I did last year. (Five of my “should win”s did win!) At least I’m consistent.
Jeremy Strong
The Apprentice movie review: Donald Trump’s origin story as a loser and a user
A portrait of a weak man, humorless and friendless, desperate to be liked, desperate to be seen as someone who matters. Sebastian Stan’s brilliantly disgusting Trump is horrifically riveting.
daily stream: in case you need more dramatic Robert Downey Jr., post ‘Oppenheimer’
2014’s The Judge is available to rent or buy on Prime and Apple TV on both sides of the Atlantic.
daily stream: crime as just another form of capitalism
2020’s The Gentlemen is on Prime in the US, Netflix in the UK.
The Gentlemen movie review: sufficiently advanced crime
Guy Ritchie ups his game on his signature subgenre with a hilariously sublime crime comedy that acts as mirror on the legit world and oozes with crackling cynicism about culture and politics as well.
Serenity movie review: gonna need a bigger nope
Accidental hilarity turns ugly in this baffling exercise in genre-hopping that thinks it justifies its Hollywood-typical adolescent-boy attitudes about women, sex, violence, and morality. It does not.
The Judge movie review: you can go home again
Avoids feeling as supremely calculated as it is, perhaps because Robert Downey Jr.’s snark and Robert Duvall’s crusty pragmatism vaccinate against it.
