2019 Oscars

So the Oscars are tonight. Huh. I won’t lie, I really don’t care about this years Oscars. When the nominations were first announced I was disappointed with them, mostly the nominations for best picture. The Oscars moved a few years back to allow up to 10 movies to be nominated for best picture, this year they chose only to nominate 8.

Bohemian Rhapsody, Black Panther, Green Book, Roma, The Favorite, Blackkklansman, Vice, and A Star is Born. We all know I feel Black Panther is overrated so it’s placement here is entirly because of its cultural impact and not on it actually being a quality film which is fine I guess, but films like Bohemian Rhapsody and Vice have no real place in this category, They’re above average (Ok Vice is actually just average) movies for sure, but to say that they should be considered the best movie of the year while First Reformed, Eighth Grade, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, First Man, Creed II, Isle of Dogs and A Quiet Place are ignored is just tragic. It’s the worst-kept secret that money and campaigning determines most if not all of who wins the actual awards, but to not even nominate some of these while nominating others is just plain stupid.

Take a look at Vice, it tried to emulate the style of The Big Short, but playing a biopic about Dick Cheney so fast and loose just doesn’t work at like all. It’s nominated liberal Hollywood elites watched it and thought to themselves, “Yes I also think Dick Cheney was a bad guy who abused power, therefore this movie is good!” It’s so stupid. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t-a fan of Dick, but that doesn’t make an average movie really good all of the sudden.

Oh well, what can I do about it? Not watch probably. I’ll still make some predictions though.

Actor in a leading role: Christian Bale will win for Vice, I know I just bashed the movie a lot, but Bale’s performance is so good it elevated what is otherwise a bad movie to average. It’s exceptional.

Actor in a Supporting Role: Mahershala Ali will win for Green Book and they’ll be 100 articles more written about the historical inaccuracies of Green Book.

Actress in a Leading Role: Glenn Close, The Wife. End of story.

Animated Feature Film: Incredibles 2 will probably win because Disney/Pixar always win, but Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse is miles bedtter.

Directing: This is a toss-up for me, I’m tempted to say Alfonso Cuaron for Roma, but I also really want to say Spike Lee for Blackkklansman. I’ll stick with my initial gut and go with Alfonso.

Original Song: I’M OFF THE DEEP END, WATCH AS I DIVE IN… Shallow’s got this locked up as far as I’m concerned even though I think there are better songs in A Star is Born than it.

Best Picture: I’m gonna go for Roma on this one, I know Netflix really really wanted to win a big Oscar like this and so they probably campaigned super hard and as I said before, money really wins these things.

Adapted Screenplay: Blackkklansman, they gotta give Spike Lee something.

Original Screenplay: First Reformed is actually nominated for this so I’m really tempted to go with it, but something like Green Book will probably win.

No one cares about the rest of them so I won’t make predictions. Someone let me know how I do because I’m not watching. Later.

5 Favourite Films: 2018

Another year has come and gone and it’s time for me to put up my lists for favorite films from the past year!

YAY!

This year though I have to make a confession. I didn’t see as many movies as I normally do. Something about actually getting a social life managed to eat into a lot of my movie-going time. Unlucky I suppose, but friends are also nice as well.

Still, though, I did end up saw quite a few movies and need (yes need) to talk about them, even though most of them I already talked about. I’ll be going from 5-1 because I can’t give away the secret of my favourite right away, can I?

#5: First Reformed

This is definitely a movie a lot of people didn’t go see, it was a small production with a pretty limited release, but I’m so glad I had the opportunity to watch it. Ethan Hawke gives one of his best performances as the tortured priest of a small congregation in upstate New York. I’m not afraid to admit that I have a lot of personal bias towards liking this film. It deals with subject matter very close to me as Hawke’s character struggles to reconcile his faith with the tragedies of the world around him. There are sections of this film that are deeply uncomfortable, but I appreciate this movie for having the gall to go there.

#4: Love, Simon

Yeah, the campy teen rom-com about a gay kid is in my top five of the year. What are you gonna do about it? This movie is spectacular, it’s fun, heartfelt, and well-crafted. It manages to stay relatable to an older audience without making it’s characters feel out of place. They feel like high schoolers, I mean don’t get me wrong there are a few moments that are just spectacularly cringy, but I think that was intended, because high school as a whole is a pretty cringy experience. It’s got big goals for itself and it meets those goals almost effortlessly.

#3: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse

Gah! This movie was just awesome. The animation is almost perfect, (there are a couple of times that it didn’t really vibe with me, but that’s mostly me nit-picking) the casting is beyond brilliant, the story is engaging, heartfelt, and really funny. Into the Spider-verse, along with Guardians of the Galaxy, is proof that with love, care and skilled filmmakers even the weirdest parts of superhero stories, like the existance of alternate dimensions and corresponding spider-mans can be made into a fantastic films.

#2: Upgrade

Alright, back to the kind of movies you’d expect me to rate really highly. Upgrade is a dark, gritty and violent revenge thriller that absolutely no one saw. It’s a surprisingly great performance by the lead, Logan Marshall-Green who blends the line between grief-stricken husband and curious avenger remarkably well. The plot stays just interesting enough that you don’t get bored without getting too convoluted to confuse you. It finds this nice happy place so that people focus on the incredible action and camera-work rather than getting caught up in the nitty-gritty details of the story.

#1: Green Book

I’ve pointed out a few times on this list how impressed I was with the performances given by these films. Green Book stands out to me in part because it presents not one, but two phenomenal performances. Can we all just agree that Viggo Mortenson is just the best and that Mahershala Ali just oozes brilliance on screen? This movie just works so well and it’s mostly because of the brilliant chemistry between these two actors. Not to also mention that it’s got a tight well-written story that keeps things going at a wonderful pace. If I were to make any complaints about this movie it would be that it ended.

Ok that’s my list. Hopefully you haven’t seen some of these movies you’ll go check them out. I really think they’re worth your time. Later!

Top Shelf

With me saying goodbye to my MoviePass I thought it would be worthwhile to look back and see just how much value I really got out of it, and I certainly extracted a lot of value. I had MoviePass for 8 months, meaning I paid about 80 dollars into it. I saw exactly 50 unique films with it, averaging $1.60 per film. Pretty good stuff if you ask me.

But watching a lot of movies is one thing. Did I actually watch more good movies because of MoviePass? To figure that out I went through each of the 50 movies I saw and compared my expectations with the reality of each film. I split these movies into 4 categories and over the rest of the week, I’ll give you my thoughts on each category and where each movie fits into that.

I’m gonna start at the with the very best. The top shelf of movies I saw in the last 8 months. Let’s get into it.

The Top Shelf: These are the absolute best movies I saw with a MoviePass. There are 13 of them, which constitutes just over 25% of all films I saw with a MoviePass

Phantom Thread

Expectations: Daniel-Day Lewis will give an exceptional performance.

Reality: Daniel-Day Lewis and Vicky Krieps give exceptional performances in the most interesting love story I’ve seen in years.

Lady Bird

Expectations: A quirky coming of age film.

Reality: One of the most relatable movies I’ve ever seen that conveys the many struggles of reaching adulthood and trying to figure out who you are in a way that Hollywood just cannot seem to understand. Also a criminally underrated soundtrack.

Thoroughbreds

Expectations: A competent teen drama focused on the petty revenge of the super-rich.

Reality: A super bizarre, but clever and heartfelt look at the nature of friendships and moral relativity.

Love, Simon

Expectations: Teen romance movie, but with a gay kid.

Reality: pretty much that, but super well-executed version.

The Death of Stalin

Expectations: An absurd historical parody with no sense of accuracy or reverence.

Reality: Exactly that.

Blockers

Expectations: A sub-par raunchy comedy.

Reality: An astoundingly funny raunchy comedy that manages to turn a few of teen sex comedy cliches on their heads without getting preachy.

A Quiet Place

Expectations: I’ve never really enjoyed horror, so I didn’t have high hopes for this going in.

Reality: F$%#%#$ terrifying.

Isle of Dogs

Expectations: A Wes Anderson film.

Reality: A Wes Anderson film with really well done stop motion animation.

(For those out of the loop on the majesty of Wes Anderson, these sketches can fill you in.)

Avengers: Infinity War

Expectations: Something along the lines of Age of Ultron, but a bit better.

Reality: A masterclass on managing time and the best Marvel villain to date.

Upgrade

Expectations: A very run of the mill revenge movie with some neat camera movements.

Reality: A story signifigantly more interesting than it had any right to be, a mind blowing performance from Logan Marshall-Green and also yeah, some really neat camera movements.

First Reformed

Expectations: Ethan Hawke is a really good actor.

Reality: Ethan Hake is a REALLY good actor.

Incredibles 2

Expectations: It’s Pixar so something awesome.

Reality: Something pretty awesome that also makes it’s original look really dated in terms of animation.

Mama Mia! Here We Go Again

Expectations: An absurdly silly yet joyous musical with awkward Pierce Brosnan singing.

Reality: The most fun movie of the summer that doubles down on the silliness and the infectiousness fun of its original. Not enough awkward Pierce Brosnan singing though.

Aight so those were the best of the best, next up are the good but not great movies as I work my way to the bottom. Later