weekend watchlist: the unbearable wait for massive success
Plus a subtle dystopia and a subtle nervous breakdown. (First published April 22nd, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Never Let Me Go
Colin Firth and Natalie Portman are Oscar shoo-ins; everything else up for grabs: Oscar predictions
Here’s an at-a-glance look at my picks for Sunday night’s Academy Awards — projected winners are Xed. Keep in mind: this isn’t a list of whom I think should win Oscars but whom I think will win…
question of the day: What is your most underappreciated movie of 2010?
With the Oscars about to hit, on Sunday, the 2010 lovefest will be over. But those stings, of the movies you loved that no one else seemed to appreciate, will remain… like with me and my love of Never Let Me Go…
Alliance of Women Film Journalists 2010 EDA Awards nominees
The AWFJ is one of the critics’ groups I belong to; my input helped determine these nominees, and I will vote in the final balloting to narrow it down to the winners. I still have to watch a few of these nominees…
cinematic roots of: ‘Never Let Me Go’
In Never Let Me Go, Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, and Andrew Garfield are childhood friends destined to be organ donors in a dystopic parallel England where such things are a matter of bureaucracy and custom. This flick sprang from (among other films)…
Never Let Me Go movie review: ordinary people
I’ve come to realize recently that there’s something more chilling, more eerie than a fictional dystopian world: a fictional dystopian world in which no one understands they’re living in a dystopia.
labor troubles on ‘The Hobbit’; Twitter effect doesn’t exist; terror nerds and outspoken bombshells; more: leftover links
Every week my browser gets cluttered up with tabs for stuff that I stumble across and figure I might be able to use as a Question of the Day or a WTF Thought for the Day or grist for some other post…
question of the weekend: Why hasn’t geek culture grown up?
It suddenly occurred to me when I was writing about the trailer for Never Let Me Go the other day that I was surprised that we don’t see more movies like that one these days. See, 25 years ago, when I was 15, if someone had told me, “By the time you’re 40, geeks will … more…
trailer break: ‘Never Let Me Go’
Take a break from work: watch a trailer… I suspect that this is going to be one of those films that some people are going to deny is science fiction — it can’t be science fiction! it’s got drama and romance! and no spaceships or laser blasts! — or else they’re going to dismiss it … more…
