I’ve written a lot about the Oscars in the past 12 months: I implored voters to recognize feminist musical dramas, I highlighted how women’s alliances laid the foundation for many of 2019’s films, and I drew the historical relationship between silent female performances and Oscar love. (Sadly, I also had to call Academy voters to account for fearing a changing world.) And thus concludes another roller coaster-like Oscar season. (Justice for Adam Sandler, J.Lo, and everyone in

This was a busy year for me and the Academy Awards! First, I started prognosticating for Movie City News’ Gurus o’ Gold series and then was interviewed by BBC radio this past Friday about my predictions for the telecast. (Check out my segment at 52:18.) I think race relations will be this year’s overarching political message. Also, expect some cringeworthy Jussie Smollett jokes. Anyway, here are my picks for the 91st Academy Awards: Best Picture Will win: Roma  Might upset: B

Tomorrow morning is my version of Christmas. I get up early, bubbling over with anticipation, and wait nervously for the inevitable joy and pain. (The excitement of surprises and favorites, the anger of snubs or bad choices.) Arguably, Oscar nomination day is better than the awards show itself. By that time, the front-runners have already been identified; watching the same folks win over and over again is pretty boring. But tomorrow – tomorrow tells you everything you need to

Top 10 films Released in 2018 10. The Tale There’s a moment in Jennifer Fox’s The Tale that is so real and so startling, I’ll never be able to think of memory the same way again. In the film, Jennifer (Laura Dern) reexamines a “relationship” she had with an older man when she was a young girl. She flashes back to her teenage self in the first moments of thrall with her horse riding instructor (Jason Ritter) – the young actress playing her a solidly mature-looking 15-year-old.

2017: The year I was never so happy to be so wrong. When Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announced La La Land  Best Picture, no one in the Dolby Theatre blinked an eye. It was just par for the course, the film having racked up a bunch of major awards, including Best Actress and Best Director. La La Land is the rare original musical, and one that served as an ode to Old Hollywood. It’s not a great musical, nor is it an especially moving story. But, of course, the Academy loves

Tomorrow is my version of Christmas. I get up early in the morning, giddy with excitement, and I wait for catharsis after a year’s worth of anticipation. Will I get what I want? Will my heart break into a thousand pieces if I don’t? Arguably, Oscar nomination day is better than the awards show itself. By that time, the frontrunners have already been identified and its fairly boring to watch the same folks win again and again. (Last year’s Best Picture fiasco notwithstanding.)

I’ll be honest – 2016 was not my favorite year for film. While movies like American Honey, The Edge of Seventeen, Moonlight, and Manchester by the Sea astonished me (and Lion made me cry uncontrollably from the first five minutes until the end of the credits), I find myself less impressed with most of this year’s Oscar hopefuls. La La Land, which my fiance and I have nicknamed “Blah Blah Bland,” is just another example of Hollywood autoanilingus. (Does anyone even remember Th

Another year, another Oscars. The 88th Academy Awards are just a day away and it’s a wide open race this spring for Best Picture. The guild awards have spoken… and they all disagree. With the PGAs going to The Big Short, the DGAs to The Revenant, and the SAGs to Spotlight, there’s a good chance many prognosticators this year will be dead wrong in their predictions. But with a major win at the WGAs, I think The Big Short will eventually wrench the top prize from The Revenant,

The question of male violence is at an impasse in the United States right now. With the growing prevalence of technology and social media, images of police brutality are now immediately accessible in a way that mounts the almost 25-year-old Rodney King video as sadly par for the course. Ruby Ridge-wannabe militants can hold an honest-to-goodness standoff for a month in the name of anti-government protest while few people blink an eye. And mass shootings – at elementary school

The crime of summer horseplay is enough to imprison the five Turkish sisters at the heart of Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s captivating but tepid “Mustang,” France’s current Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film In a small, provincial village where women sheath themselves head-to-toe in colorless drapery and keep a watchful gaze on the behavior of neighborhood girls, the orphaned sisters (ranging roughly in age from eleven to seventeen) are at once raucous, flirtatious,