my picks for tonight’s 92nd Academy Awards (the Oscars for 2019’s films) (winners indicated)
I correctly guessed 10 out of the 24 categories, which is at least a little better than last year.
Kathy Bates
Richard Jewell movie review: innocent man, guilty movie
Cluelessly simplistic rendering of a 1990s media injustice ignores all the context in which it happened and demonizes the one journalist who acted professionally. Fails even as a conservative screed.
Bad Santa 2 movie review: been there, done that, licked the candy cane lasciviously
Hard to believe it took 13 years to get a sequel to our screens and still have it show not a hint of Bad Santa’s inspiration or subversion.
The Great Gilly Hopkins movie review: a girl’s anger
A tough, simple story about a foster kid whose path to finding a family and a home is not an easy one. There are no platitudes here, just bittersweet truth.
The Boss movie review: hooray for girl power (boo for nowhere near enough)
Plays with hierarchies and rivalries of women’s lives that often aren’t seen onscreen, and embraces women as powerful. But it’s just not very funny about it.
Tammy movie review: women behaving badly
Dumb, pointless, unentertaining crap. But at least it’s about women. Yay? Nah.
Midnight in Paris (review)
Midnight in Paris becomes the butt of its own gentle joke… perhaps the most Woody Allen joke ever, one that wraps up a paralyzing self-awareness in a redemptive self-deprecation to, finally and splendidly, laugh with great good humor at itself.
cinematic roots of: ‘Saw 3D’
In Saw 3D, the latest go-round in the torture-porn franchise, crazy person Jigsaw brutally punishes those people he believes deserve it. This flick sprang from (among other films)…
February 19: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings
We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, but they won’t let you of the special hospital without a good reason. But you can have a multiplex-like experience right in your room with a collection of the right DVDs. And when someone asks you on Monday, “Hey, did you … more…
Alice (review)
More’s the pity that it ends up feeling pointless and empty and humorless, for it starts off rather intriguing, this modern update of Lewis Carroll’s classic novel…
