For some years now, some of you may remember, I’ve made it a point to watch all of the best picture nominees. This year, for the first time ever, I’d already seen all of them when the nominations were announced. Achievement unlocked, as they say in whatever they say that in.

Since I was ahead of the game there I thought maybe I could also review them all for the first time ever. I always don’t get around to a couple of them, and that’s what happened this year too. I did review AMERICAN FICTION and ANATOMY OF A FALL together, as well as BARBIE, MAESTRO, OPPENHEIMER, POOR THINGS and THE ZONE OF INTEREST. The ones I missed were THE HOLDOVERS, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and PAST LIVES, so I’ll say a little about them now. (read the rest of this shit…)

Hello friends, and welcome to my annual preview of the Oscars. They happen on Sunday and I’m anticipating them in the very rare-for-me position of my actual personal favorite movie of the year (EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE) being the clear favorite for many categories, including best picture. It makes me a little nervous because, for example, in 2015 I wasn’t expecting MAD MAX: FURY ROAD to win an “obviously this is the best picture, how is this even a discussion?” trophy, so I wasn’t let down when it didn’t. So I’m trying to keep in mind that whatever happens it’s amazing that this small, weird, unlikely movie managed to catch on so big and already won a bunch of the other awards. It doesn’t need to win everything. Though it would be cool.

This year for my preview I’ll go ahead and go through each of the categories, though I’ll have less informed opinions on some where I haven’t seen all the nominees. And of course I encourage following the links to my reviews of the ones I’ve seen.
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Ah shit, here we go again. Another Oscar Sunday coming up. As I’ve been doing for some years now, I scrambled to watch all of the best picture nominees that I hadn’t already seen anyway, plus as many as I could from other major categories. This year, for various reasons, I did not write reviews of most of the movies that were nominated, so I’ll kinda-sorta do that here.

No time for a monologue, let’s go straight to the best picture nominees, presented in alphabetical order for your organizational convenience. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Oscars are this Sunday. This is my traditional pre-Oscars post, and also my best of 2019 post. So there will be a high volume of opinions, recommendations and review links in this one.

Once again I saw all the best picture nominees. They were all things I had already seen or was planning to see, so they didn’t broaden my horizons at all. No homework necessary. I reviewed all of them:

FORD V FERRARI
THE IRISHMAN
JOJO RABBIT
JOKER
LITTLE WOMEN
MARRIAGE STORY
1917
ONCE UPON A TIME …IN HOLLYWOOD
PARASITE

I think this is a better than average batch, with almost none that could be considered “Oscar bait.” Many years there’s a nominee I hate (VICE, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY) or I think is way too mediocre and bland to belong in there (DARKEST HOUR), and sometimes most people disagree with me and those end up winning (ARGO, SPOTLIGHT, THE KING’S SPEECH). This year there are enough truly great ones that I have a hard time ranking them (maybe something like ONCE UPON A TIME …IN HOLLYWOOD, PARASITE, JOJO RABBIT, LITTLE WOMEN, THE IRISHMAN and MARRIAGE STORY for the top slots), and the only one I kind of dislike (JOKER) is at least a well-made and unusual movie. (read the rest of this shit…)

Okay, time for my traditional pre-Oscars post. As you have probly gathered by now, I enjoy watching awards shows, I do not think they are too long, I do understand that they don’t represent the best of cinema, and that it doesn’t really matter that much, and I’m not offended if you don’t care about the Oscars. It’s fine, we all do what we want to do. And here’s my piece about my favorite movies of 2018, which only slightly overlap with the things that were nominated.

For those who are interested though I wanted to gather links of my reviews to the nominated movies along with who I’m rooting for in some (not all) of the categories and some other related thoughts. (read the rest of this shit…)

For those who it’s not against their religion, here’s where we can discuss the Oscar business. Sorry for the crappy photoshop work, but it’s the idea that counts. Here are a few thoughts before this year’s awards.

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