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

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