At the 96th Academy Awards, Diane Warren failed to win Best Original Song for the fifteenth time in fifteen tries. Shockingly, “The Fire Inside,” written for the movie about the guy who did not in fact come up with the idea for hot Cheetos, did not win. On the other hand, I’m willing to wager… Read More The Warren Index: Will They Win a Competitive Oscar Before Diane Warren?
With the Oscars around the corner, I’m doing blurbs for each of this year’s Best Picture nominees in lieu of full reviews. (I don’t plan anything I do, so I’ve linked to ones with reviews already published…) I’ve ranked the films from best to worst below as a method of organization. Occasionally I’ll reference my… Read More 94th Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees, Ranked
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Benny Safdie Spoilers! The plot is pretty far from twisty, but maybe you haven’t seen this and you’re looking forward to hearing the dialogue fresh or not knowing what classic music you’ll hear from the 1970s. At the risk of sounding like a stan or a… Read More Licorice Pizza (2021)
To read my introduction to this set of rankings, go here. I’ve broken the twenty-three movies from this franchise into tiers of irregular size. I still have a fairly firm ranking in my head for each of them, but I include the tiers to give a sense of what movies roughly match each other in… Read More Infinity Saga/Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranking – Part 2
To read my introduction to this set of rankings, go here. I’ve broken the twenty-three movies from this franchise into tiers of irregular size. I still have a fairly firm ranking in my head for each of them, but I include the tiers to give a sense of what movies roughly match each other in… Read More Infinity Saga/Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranking – Part 1
Dir. Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. Starring Josh Brolin, Zoe Saldana, Robert Downey, Jr. For about six months now I’ve been casually watching these MCU movies, typically watching a couple at a time and then leaving them alone for a couple weeks. Infinity War was part of a double feature with Thor: Ragnarok for me, a movie which I’d… Read More Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Dir. Bradley Cooper. Starring Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Sam Elliott We could talk about spoilers, but the concept for this movie is eighty years old, and let’s face it, we all know what happens. The politics of A Star Is Born are what we might euphemistically call “old-fashioned.” They are the politics of whites in… Read More A Star Is Born (2018)
Seeing Things Secondhand 