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?
(To see the results of last year’s Grouches, go here. For the year before, go here. To see the first Grouches, which also carries a significantly more complete version of my criteria, go here.) Last year, we at the Grouches decided that we were going to go whole hog into being Oscars counterprogramming and for… Read More 4th Annual Grouches: 2022 Movie Year Awards
You can find the introduction and index for this series here. Film Director Year Type Before Sunrise Richard Linklater 1995 Narrative feature Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky 1996 Documentary Scream Wes Craven 1996 Narrative feature Waco: The Rules of Engagement William Gazecki 1997 Documentary The Thin Red… Read More 100 American Movies to Save: Pugilism (1995-2003)
For each movie in the top 100, I’ve written a question to answer. (It would get very, very boring for me to have to write some variation on “boy howdy, you’ll never believe how good this movie is” one hundred more times.) There’s no exact sentence or word count I’m holding myself to here, but… Read More Top 250 American Movies: 21-30
Steven Hyden introduced his five-albums test more than a decade ago as a third way to judge a band, short of its popularity or its critical acclaim. While this one is not meant to stand on its own—for example, he’s not sure that either Bob Dylan nor the Rolling Stones had made five great albums… Read More The Five-Movies Test or: Which Director Has Had the Best Stretch of Consecutive Feature-Length Films in English?
To see the entire list of my 100 top movies of last decade, or to find the landing page for the other years in this series, click here. To read the first half of this post, click here. 51) The Lost City of Z, directed by James Gray I like to use the example of… Read More Top Movies of the Decade (2010-2019) — 2016, Part 2
Dir. Richard Linklater. Starring Cate Blanchett, Emma Nelson, Billy Crudup Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a truly rare thing: a movie that runs at about 105 minutes that really ought to run about 135. Anyone who’s watched an Oscar movie will know that the opposite is so much more often the experience, but like Nocturnal Animals,… Read More Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019)
Tim: Happy Super Bowl Sunday, buddy. May the Pats be struck down. Matt: Now and forever, amen. Tim: (This is going to look worse when this goes up and the Patriots win by thirty two hours later.) Speaking of championships, ha ha, today we chat a smidge about this championship belt project that both of… Read More Baumann and Burch Conversations #12: Belts
One of the Grantland legacies I’m fond of, although I’m sure the idea didn’t start there, is the championship belt (RIP Grantland, long live Barnwell and Hyden). The purpose is to go year by year and create a list of who’s at the top of some field, which is a deceptively simple task, and one… Read More Anglophone Director Championship Belt, 1918-2018
The following is from my series of Oscar Best Picture rankings, as well as my strongly worded suggestions for what should have won from among the nominees. For an introduction to the project, click here. For a way to vote on some Oscar-related ideas, click here. If I’ve written a review on any of the… Read More Better than the Oscars: 65-61
Seeing Things Secondhand 