Simon Boccanegra

I thought this was every bit as good as it was said to be, really a stunning achievement. It's one of those movies that make me realize how we usually live on crumbs. When you've seen a lot of movies, you're glad to get one that just does one or two things really well. Then, once in a blue moon you get something like this, which does about twelve things well, It blows past refusing to hew to a formula; it doesn't even confine itself to a genre. I really had no idea what was going to happen next most of the time, and I wasn't trying to anticipate some dopey "twist." It all unfolded seamlessly, inevitably. I have only seen one of the director's prior films, Snowpiercer, and that utterly failed to prepare me for the mastery of this. And all this talk about Oscar acting snubs, focusing on mega-celebrities like Jennifer Lopez...there are a half dozen people in this cast who did work on the level of the performances represented in the four acting categories. It was the actors' triumph too. I don't think it's just the internet. That gave them easy access to information on some specific topics, like the daughter with her "art therapy," but they had a greater level of polish and sophistication because that family was of an aspirational type. At the time the film starts, we can already tell they are bright kids who have set out to do better than the previous generation, the way it's supposed to work, but what they have innately has only taken them so far. They've hit a hard ceiling.

I have to give it up to Knives Out for having impressive legs. I waited a while to see it, and when we went on Saturday, we got the last two tickets. That's something I expect to hear about a new movie, not something that has been in wide for nine weeks. Apparently, a lot of people are going back to see it multiple times. They weren't shouting the dialogue along with the characters or anything, but there was that "knowing" vibe in the crowd, and I noticed when the lights came up at the end that a few were dressed in homage to one of the characters in the movie. There were Chris Evans sweaters and Jamie Lee Curtis red pantsuit approximations that I don't think were coincidence. It's all a bit mystifying to me. I didn't like the movie very much, and wondered if it really had one of the five best original screenplays. But obviously people were ready for a murder mystery with famous actors chewing the scenery.

I agree, and I actually thought it was something that gave the movie an interesting hook. A safer play would have been making a #metoo movie about women the audience for a #metoo movie would find wholly admirable. This had a messy layer of complication: women the audience might be ambivalent or worse toward. Sometimes that is where good drama lives. It was fascinating to me to see Megyn Kelly (or this script's version of her) saying so defensively "I'm not a feminist!" not once but two or three times. She was defensive about being seen as a feminist the way someone in a different media company would be defensive about being seen as a racist. Just wanting equitable treatment for women was a scarlet letter to fear having affixed to you in this place...and she and Carlson did thrive in that toxic system, and they made their contributions to it. But then, I do sympathize with them for the reason you give, and I respect them for pushing back. Their name recognition and stature gave weight to the similar claims of a larger group. For those who have not seen the film, I'll add that it does touch on the stories of some other women at FOX who really weren't political on-air talent, but who were harassed or propositioned and then made to disappear. There were some. FOX does at least pretend to be a news-gathering organization, and there are producers and reporters who were breaking into the business and ended up working there because it's the network where they could get a job. All that said, it's still a case where I think a better film was in the subject. It has qualities and scenes I'm happy to have seen, but it's only fitfully good. So I can't passionately argue that anyone should plunk down [whatever insane amount is your city's median] to catch it in a theater.

She has never said she acquiesced to sleeping with him. The scene/line in the film refers to a claim she made in 2016, about her early time at FOX. Here is how she worded it in a Good Morning America interview: “It culminated in a physical attempt to be with me, which I rejected in his office. He tried to kiss me three times. So I rejected that. And when I rejected that, he asked me when my contract was up.”

Like some others here, I thought this was just okay. It might have played better at home on television; it has that glossy TV-movie quality. It was best in the scenes involving Margot Robbie's invented character, both with and without Kate McKinnon. The scene with Kayla in Ailes's office, being pressured to raise her skirt more and more, was so strong, so excruciatingly perfect in its execution, that it cried out for a really great film to surround it. For the most part, it was very much the Vice of 2019: flashy, not so deep, with the primary interest being seeing well-known actors playing famous conservatives of recent history, with superb prosthetic and cosmetic assists. If Bombshell wins that makeup/hair Oscar, I will be in support. A small bow to Australian actor Ben Lawson, who played one of the Murdoch sons. I recognized him immediately from a quickly canceled and forgotten legal drama I watched ten years ago (The Deep End). His credits suggest I have seen him in nothing since. I'm going to chalk this up to some memorable look or presence he has rather than any remarkable memory of my own for faces, because I'm one of those people who frequently see closing credits and think (about much more famous actors) "He was in this? Who did he play? Oh!" I see now that Ben Lawson's brother Josh was the other Murdoch son. Seriously, though, whatever one thinks of Kelly or other FOX News women, the reaction video below is worth watching. It almost made me think more highly of Bombshell. They should get permission to include it as a bonus feature when the movie makes it to home video.

Are you sure you didn't stop watching sooner than that? It looks like a stalemate to me. Lee knocks the Pitt character down (point to Lee), Pitt tosses Lee into a car (point to Pitt), and then they just tangle for a while with no real advantage before it gets shut down. Everyone leaves the scene under his own steam. No one gets beaten up. If the surviving family members of dead people sued every time a public figure received a less-than-flattering portrayal in a movie, there would be no end to movie-related lawsuits.

Having seen all of them except Erivo now (I will before the end of the month), I can say the one I'd pull to make room for Nyong'o is Charlize Theron. This is not to say she's bad at all. She nails Megyn Kelly's mannerisms and voice. But it always plays like a good impersonation she's working to maintain; neither she nor Kidman really seems "settled." Also, the screenplay doesn't go very deep into the issues it pokes around in, so there's that working against them (and others). Margot Robbie, playing the composite/fictional figure, is the one who manages a triumph. Ronan, Johansson, and Zellweger, I think, would be strong nominees in any year. I've never really been a Zellweger fan, but I won't mind much if the conventional wisdom wins out and she takes it. The movie itself is just one of those serviceable "troubled star" biopics that have an Oscar-bait moment on every other page, but she steps up and does her part of being what we'll remember it for.

True. Even when it was 5 and 5, there were famous examples of the categories not lining up. Bruce Beresford wasn't nominated for directing the year his film (Driving Miss Daisy) was the night's big winner. David Lynch has three Best Director nominations (all deserved, in my opinion), but only one of his films was nominated for Best Picture (The Elephant Man). Last year, Peter Farrelly was the Gerwig, in that his Green Book was nominated for Screenplay and Picture (it won both) but not Director.

Are war films really that plentiful among Best Picture nominees in modern times? I had read this a few times, here and elsewhere, and it didn't match my own recollection. I just thought of them as one among several genres the Academy favors (e.g., literary adaptations, historical dramas/biopics, films about race relations), and not first among equals, as many years have had no war film in the running. So I looked at the 193 nominees since 1990. I ruled out any films about mythical conflicts, such as Hobbit movies and Avatar. It had to be an historic war. Also, a significant amount of time had to be spent on the battlefield. Something like The Irishman, with that one-minute flashback to Sheeran's service, didn't count. Best Picture nominees since 1990 I would classify as "war films," with an asterisk for winners: Braveheart (*), Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Hurt Locker (*), War Horse, American Sniper, Hacksaw Ridge, Dunkirk, 1917. Best Picture nominees since 1990 set against the backdrop of a war, but really about other things: Dances with Wolves (*), Schindler's List (*), The English Patient (*), Life Is Beautiful, The Pianist, The Reader, Inglorious Basterds, The King's Speech (*), Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, The Imitation Game, Darkest Hour, Jojo Rabbit, Little Women 2019. Difficult to classify: Atonement. Its middle section does follow the progress of uniformed soldiers, including a spectacular recreation of the Dunkirk evacuation, and Wikipedia does go with "romantic war drama." I'd say it's about a writer's guilt and a doomed romance above all, and thus category 2. Edit: Thanks in return, Shannon L. I am seeing 1917 later this week.

It will be available for rental on January 28, well before the Oscars. I haven't made it to that one yet either, and it's actually still playing where I live, but I have so many films that are movie theater "musts" (based on recency of release) that I'm going to couch-watch Parasite on VUDU.

I've never read the novel, and my only prior experience with the story was one viewing of the 1994 film, which I liked very much. I remember my mother watching the allegedly horrible television miniseries. I'll admit, for the first 10 or 15 minutes, the Gerwig approach was a little disorienting ("Europe! Concord! Older! Younger!"). It does assume familiarity. But then I caught on to it, with the color grading and other context clues. It was a quick adjustment, and I've loved other movies that shuffle the past and present rather than being in strict chronological order (Manchester by the Sea, for example). I thought Gerwig was inventive in the way she contrasted scenes, and the Adapted Screenplay nomination this morning was astute. I ended up liking this film as much as the 1994 one, just for different reasons. I think 2019 is a more intense and pointed version. The 1994 -- again, going on the long-ago memory of one viewing -- was more of a "classical" adaptation, and it was mellower in tone. The actors were more obviously making an effort to convince that they were 19th-century people via their bearing and speech. Gerwig seems to have liberated her cast from that, and her film plays like a non-updated update. I think its more directly about the experience of a writer, specifically a female writer.

That's not the way things have happened at all. Ronan was favored by one of the producers of Lady Bird, Scott Rudin, who hoped to get a "name." It was a small film that could benefit from that. Gerwig wasn't on board at first, because of Ronan's being Irish, but she said when she heard Ronan read for the part, she changed her mind. Obviously, she loved the resulting performance, as did many people who saw Lady Bird (including awards voters), and was agreeable to making her the lead of a second movie. I'm not sure that constitutes an obsession.

Seriously. That was possibly her best film performance ever. She got to channel her talent into a complex person, rather than a boilerplate sassy truth-teller in feel-good pap. But the Academy prefers her as the latter, based on the nominations for The Help, Hidden Figures, and The Shape of Water -- three movies I got through with gritted teeth. I didn't have a strong feeling against the character, but she's also deserving for playing the character's different ages. If she's not exactly convincing as 12, she's good enough that the scenes play and the movie doesn't go off the rails. And she's superb as the more mature version of the character.

Visually beautiful and thematically timely. The screenplay is substantive enough, and enough of it survived Terrence Malick's editing process, that the lead actors (August Diehl and Valerie Pachner) can create real characters within the impressionistic Malick style: "poetic" voice-over, angled close-ups of faces, blades of grass, the sky, mist, shadows on walls. The performances are often touching, and this time I do think the many scenic views around the human figures are apposite. They give us a sense of the natural wonders of a world the main character loves but is willing to risk giving up, so appalled is he by evils of the regime demanding his loyalty. Jörg Widmer's cinematography and James Newton Howard's score are award-worthy. But it's now hard to believe that the young Malick made his reputation with two classics only about 95 minutes each (Badlands and Days of Heaven). Since his return from a long hiatus in 1998, he's been every bit as solemn but heavier of hand, also less concerned with narrative momentum. From the point that Franz is imprisoned in the second hour (of three), the tempo of the film becomes a crawl, and points are made repeatedly. There are too many scenes of the wife and children being ostracized by former friends in their village, and Pachner has been directed to respond to all of them in a way that makes the character look slow on the uptake. The scenes of Franz in prison are similarly repetitious, and the film becomes obsessive and insistent rather than dramatic. There's a great deal of virtue on display here, both artistic and human. Isolated scenes and images are remarkable. But it's a punishing film.

A Wikipedia page says it appears in a 1974 rough draft of the screenplay as well as in the novelization of the 1977 Star Wars. I knew it had to have been in use before the '90s, because when I was a kid, I knew his title was "Dark Lord of the Sith," even though I didn't know exactly what it meant. It may have been in other novelizations of that trilogy, and possibly other tie-in merchandise of that era (e.g., comic books, trading cards).

When reviewers such as Ty Burr in the Boston Globe are reporting stray giggles that swell into uproarious, deafening laughter, at a scene that isn't supposed to be funny, it's all but guaranteed the movie will develop a "So bad it's good" following. But usually that doesn't happen in time to help a movie's first-run grosses. It happens over time, as more people rent/stream the movie for home viewing or catch it on television. I originally had no interest in Cats, but when I saw it was pulling a score in the teens on Rotten Tomatoes, and I started reading the pans, I did think, "I must see this!" Just not any time soon.

Driver and Oscar Isaac are two of the best actors of their generation. They were already well along in establishing their reputations before 2015, as both had had parts for major directors: Baumbach, Chandor, Eastwood, Refn, Spielberg, the Coens (the Coens even put them in the same film). They were great acquisitions for Abrams/Kennedy/et al., and I am sure they will both be hitting new highs for a long time. Their presence may even add to this trilogy's retrospective appeal.

Every year, there are those anonymous-voter pieces after the nominations in which people admit they didn't see everything. They turned off Gosford Park after 15 minutes because they couldn't keep the characters sorted; they didn't watch Brokeback Mountain because it makes them uncomfortable; they didn't watch Amour because they hated some other movie the director made; they didn't watch Manchester by the Sea because they heard it was depressing, and so on. If Academy members are that negligent even when they have a finite number of titles and a deadline, I'm less than surprised that members of the HFPA didn't watch everything potentially good leading up to the balloting. I just don't think there's a way to create a perfect system and then to supervise it. I'm even less sure there will ever be a year when nominees are announced for any film awards (or any music awards, or television awards) and everyone will be pleased with all the choices. However, as you mention "another war movie" specifically, is 1917 one you feel was an unworthy entrant in the Globes's dramatic category?

That's a good comparison. And I have not seen Return of the Jedi in a while, but as I recall, Lando really wasn't all that prominent once the opening rescue mission was complete. He was contributing, but his screen time was with the minor players, rather than in the on-ground adventure with Leia, Han, Chewbacca, and the droids. Pauline Kael, a Williams fan, commented on it in her 1983 review ("Billy Dee Williams’ Lando, the gambling man, has been made a general in the rebel forces; perhaps the high rank is meant to compensate for his being on the margins of the movie. He checks in now and then to remind us of a war that’s supposed to be going on somewhere"). Rose and her story with Finn were among the things I disliked about TLJ, so I was okay with this development. I didn't like Kelly Marie Tran's performance either, but I wouldn't avoid her in future movies. I just don't think any of the new characters in that movie were well conceived or integrated, and my suspicion is that more experienced actors like Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro were better equipped to make the best of it.

It's like an amusement park ride you've been on before, not once but several times. It's in good working order. It does the job. It's still a lot of fun. But you know every turn and dip so well you can time them, and their familiarity keeps you from getting those dizzying thrills. I saw it in 2015 and then streamed it again myself recently. I had really disliked The Last Jedi, but a friend put up a passionate argument on its behalf, so I thought I should give it another shot. Then I thought it (The Last Jedi) might work better if I brushed up on what had come immediately prior. The answer was both yes and no on that. It was helpful as story reorientation, but it threw into sharper relief what a different tack the 2017 film took. TLJ was really beautiful visually. One of the high points in the series as far as that goes, and it goes a long way in this kind of movie. I just found it better as design and as a nervy departure than as something well thought through and executed. I haven't seen Rise of Skywalker yet, but the tug-of-war of vision within the so-called Sequel Trilogy is an interesting subplot. It should be a cautionary tale to other franchise filmmakers. (Inasmuch as something that makes billions can be "cautionary.")

Yes, but he wasn't telling the story of his own marriage and divorce. That difference between fiction and reality is just one of many. Jennifer Jason Leigh certainly didn't appear in one famous teen-sex film and then decamp from Los Angeles. She was an award-winning, in-demand film and television actress for 20+ years before marrying Baumbach. Nicole has nothing like that résumé. I think he was drawing on his own experience and putting the emotional truth of it into the screenplay without intending to dramatize it. I thought Nicole's motivation was strong enough, even if it is familiar from other divorce movies. Charlie remains sympathetic, largely because of Adam Driver, but the more we see of him, the more plausible it is that he really didn't listen to her. And it is sad that this turned into such an impasse, when they obviously were well matched in a lot of ways and still cared about each other, but it happens.

I just caught up with this. It's easy to see both why it has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and why it's not on many best-of-year lists or getting much awards attention. On paper, it invites cheap shots (a troubled actor who isn't even 35 is already writing and starring in his own self-pitying show-biz memoir?), but then it turns out to be a substantive, seemingly heartfelt film. It's also a flawed one. It begins and ends with high points. Har'el has directed music videos, and she puts her skills to good use with the opening montage. The 22-year-old Otis (Hedges) repeatedly yells "No" before getting yanked backward on a harness during the making of a Transformers-type film. Then, to a hip-hop score, he walks off the set and there is a scramble of drinking alone in his trailer, sex, more film-set business, a car accident, an arrest. It's hard to tell what in this montage is is taking place in the "outer" film versus the "inner" one (sometimes we're fooled), and that's the point. There isn't really a line between acting and real life for Otis anymore, if there ever was. We're joining him in progress at a point where it all just passes in a haze. Then, the movie's ending is a kind of reconciliation that provides a payoff for some symbolism, and it is imaginatively and lyrically done. About what comes between, I had reservations. The actors all try hard, Jupe gives a great child performance, and Har'el (her first feature) expends a lot of style to make it more than a been-there-done-that downer about stage parents and substance abuse. But for a relatively short film (1 hour, 34 minutes), it isn't exactly lean and purposeful. It tends to meander and repeat itself, and the shuffling between 1995 and 2005, as well as a heavy use of dream and fantasy imagery, short-circuits the narrative momentum in both halves. Both the father/son Lort relationship in the depressing motel and the adult Otis's stay at a rehab facility (where his therapist is Laura San Giacomo and his roommate is Byron Bowers) have a basic shape to them that we can see looking back, but scenes don't satisfyingly build upon each other. The film just cues us to its major points. It evokes sympathy for Otis and complex feelings about his father, James; it says something worthwhile about familial cycles of toxicity; but it isn't as resonant or affecting as it might have been. It's elusive, watery. I can only give this a soft recommendation. Perhaps one to wait to stream or rent, unless you have an especially keen interest in the subject or are a big fan of someone in it.

Russell also verbally abused Amy Adams on American Hustle. She said a couple years later that she wouldn't work with him again, at least not any time soon, even though she had received acclaim and awards attention for both of her collaborations with him, that one and The Fighter. ("It's not OK with me. Life to me is more important than movies [...] It really taught me how to separate work and home. Because I was like, I cannot bring this experience home with me to my daughter"). Often when I hear her praise one of her other directors now, like Denis Villeneuve (who seems to be an especially generous and collaborative person) or Paul Thomas Anderson, I can detect a bit of "unlike some people who shall remain nameless" under it. She and Nicole Kidman were doing one of those actor-interviewing-actor things, and Kidman said she loves "tough" directors (I think she mentioned Kubrick), and Adams pointedly said that she does too...except when the screaming starts. (DIsclosure: I like a lot of Russell's work, and it was apparent to me that he had something special from the start, with Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster. But there's no excuse for how he reportedly runs his sets.)

In the case of Golden Globes 2020, it isn't an assumption. Five men clearly did have the most support, which is why this conversation is going on. But I'll put the question to you. If you were filling out the director category on a ballot for an awards organization, you had however many slots to fill, and your first choices were all men, would you swap one or more of the names out in order to be more gender-inclusive? Assume none of the women that particular year was among your top choices, but several good female directors were on the bubble. It's an understandable impulse, but I don't fault people for not doing it. In any case, one of the producers of the Globes now has floated the idea of expanding the category to more than five names. That would allow more people to have "Golden Globe-nominated director" before their names, but I don't know if it's a good solution to anything. Mind you, after a decade, I still don't like the Academy's expansion of its Best Picture category to as many as ten titles, even though I know it was a reversion to the rules of the '30s and '40s. It's hard to compare Tarantino to Penelope Spheeris or Sam Taylor-Johnson on those films you mention, though. Columbia/Sony didn't decide to make a movie this year about Hollywood in 1969 and hire Tarantino to direct it. He conceives the projects he writes and directs. One way I think women have historically been at a disadvantage in accumulating a significant body of work is that they were not allowed to fail. A Michael Cimino could fail on a scale serious enough to bankrupt a studio (Heaven's Gate) and still have a directing career. In fact, he never had another successful movie after his first, and it's not as though his post-Deer Hunter movies were heralded as artistic triumphs that brought prestige to all involved even though they lost money. But Elaine May never got to direct a film again after Ishtar; her past successes became distant memories. There are other examples. Kathryn Bigelow was one of the fortunate ones. She had more than one costly flop, such as Strange Days (well regarded by many today, but a mega-bomb in 1995), but somehow hung in there to have a great second act.

Well, I legitimately would have gasped if the announced nominees for 2019 had been a lineup of Lulu Wang, Greta Gerwig, Marielle Heller, Lorne Scarfia, and Martin Scorsese. These days, we all have access to various predictions in the days before nominations are announced, so true shocks are rare. Some of the women on Alma Har'el's list were on the second and third tiers of possibilities; none was considered a lock. It may happen someday that there are at least three female finalists for best director in one of the significant competitions, but I think it's some time off, partly just on the basis of statistical reality. Women in recent years have directed within a range of 8 to 11 percent of the movies released, and only a fraction of movies released are awards contenders. Plus, so many of the established "great directors" are male, and usually at least a few of them will have something new in a given year. Phillips's Joker film was one of those polarizing ones that turn a lot of people off but also have passionate supporters. So he was the closest thing to a surprise. I will not be surprised if the Oscars' equivalent of this category is the same as the Golden Globes', but with Noah Baumbach replacing Phillips, as Marriage Story seems to be picking up steam. Scorsese, Jong-ho and Tarantino seem sure things. (Edit: Almodóvar's another wildcard, but he could just get relegated to the Foreign-Language ghetto.) But one thing critics and awards voters do have in common is that both a good review and a name or title on a ballot are an endorsement of something, rather than a vote against something else. When a critic writes a good review of a film s/he's just seen, it's about that film as an experience in isolation. I don't think many people who chose Scorsese, Tarantino, Mendes, et al., for the year's best directors were thinking about keeping other people out, even though others directed good films too. Even when the Best Picture Oscar goes to something I believe doesn't deserve it and is going to age terribly as a representation of that year (which happens more often than not, frankly), I don't doubt that in the moment, the people who voted for it really thought it was the best of the choices. Sometimes I'll actually know people who think the dumb thing was as good as movies get. And that's the depressing thought on which to conclude: in matters of taste, there really are no resolvable disputes.