weekend watchlist: a sci-fi mood piece of eeriness, ookiness, and dread
Plus a snarky heist, a two-century-old energy crisis, and more. (First published August 27th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Jordan Peele
Nope movie review: are we not entertained?
There are delicious popcorn-movie vibes and horrors galore, both funny-suspenseful and stone-cold bone-chilling. But most intriguing is the twistiness of how the movie grapples with its own existence.
Candyman movie review: say his name… and understand its power
Strikingly original horror with a purpose: to delve into the mythologizing of the past, to explore the boundary between cultural appropriation and artistic inspiration, to heed the lessons of history.
OFCS 2019 awards winners announced
And we have winners!
Toy Story 4 movie review: recycled playthings… again
The series’ saving grace is that, with humor and heart so beautifully wise and stunningly rendered (CGI pun intended), even as returns diminish, a new chapter is still warm and smartly entertaining.
Us movie review: a new kind of horror for a newly precarious world
An anxious moan, a looming disquiet of a reckoning coming for America. This is horror as weird, funny, damning, and more disconcerting the more you think about it, finding fear right in front of us.
my picks for tonight’s 90th Academy Awards (the Oscars for 2017’s films) (winners indicated)
I correctly guessed 15 out of the 24 categories, which is one of my better showings ever, I think.
AWFJ 2017 EDA Awards winners announced
The Shape of Water wins Best Film, and Best Director goes to Guillermo del Toro. Agnes Varda is Defying Age and Ageism, and Hollywood’s sexual tormentors are inducted in the AWFJ Hall of Shame.
OFCS 2017 awards winners announced
Get Out wins Best Film and Best Original Screenplay. Call Me by Your Name, Dunkirk, and Three Billboards also take two awards each.
