The main thing I want to say about The Brutalist is that I will be pissed off if it wins Best Picture. I have a feeling it will, so I’m going to hold off on doing a full-fledged review of it now. If it wins, it will be included in my Best Picture Blog series. …
Category: Reviews
A Real Pain: A Journey with Broken People
A Real Pain is one of those movies that feels like a gut punch you want to take over and over again. It’s a beautiful work of art that simmers with drama and emotion. Screenwriter, director, and star Jesse Eisenberg did a masterful job of weaving emotional relationship-building with a story that is as much …
Emilia Pérez – Unintentional Satire
I finally got around to watching Emilia Pérez on Netflix the other night to see what all the fuss was about. I had seen clips of the one song that everyone is deservedly mocking online, and thinking that it was representative of the film, I fully expected to hate it. And I almost did hate it. I …
A Complete Unknown: An Entertaining, but Flat Film.
I will preface this by saying that I have always been a casual fan of Bob Dylan. I’ve never owned any of his albums, but I likewise never change the radio station when one of his songs comes on, and I never skip a song of his if it comes up on my Spotify playlist. …
2025 Golden Globes Recap
It’s safe to say that the Golden Globes are not what they used to be. For many years, the Golden Globes were the antithesis of the Oscars. Where the Oscars were stodgy and proper, the Golden Globes always had an edge to them. People still got dressed up, but at the Oscars, everyone stays in …
Wicked: What Modern Cinema Should Be
I will preface this post by saying that while I have always been familiar with Wicked as a popular piece of modern musical theater, I have never seen the show, nor have I read the book by Gregory Maguire. I was familiar with many of the songs, like Defying Gravity, Popular, and The Wizard and …
Gladiator II Makes Us Look in the Mirror
Years ago, when I first heard that there would be a sequel to Gladiator, a film that won Best Picture and is one of the greatest films of this century’s first decade, my initial thought was, “Why?” Why do they feel the need to make a sequel to a film that had a closed and …
Two Movies I Saw This Weekend
I saw a couple of movies this weekend that I liked but didn’t love. Woman of the Hour is the directorial debut of Anna Kendrick, who also starred in the film. It’s airing on Netflix, and I have a lot of mixed feelings about Netflix movies in general. I don’t generally go out of my …
Conclave – Kicking Off Oscar Season
Yes, we are early in Oscar season, but IMHO, we already have a front-runner. Conclave might be everything you look for in Oscar bait, but it is an exceptional piece of cinema. There is not a weak link in this film. The story is riveting. The characters are engaging. The cinematography is stunning. The overall …
We Live in Time: An Almost Great Film
Last weekend I saw We Live in Time, directed by John Crowley and starring Andrew Garfield as Tobias and Florence Pugh as Almut. This film, to me, is an example of an “almost great” movie. Crowley did a nice job directing the individual scenes. Garfield and Pugh had wonderful chemistry as a couple navigating their …