Safe to say from now on, I will remember this event as The Day Mikey Madison and Some Other People Won Golden Statues.

A lot of weird decisions at this year’s Oscars - the James Bond tribute, when to do clips and when not to do clips, not actually following through with the Lithgow frown for overlong speeches - but the awards themselves turned out rather well.

This is 100% why I’ve ended up kinder to CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD than a fair amount of people. Clearly a movie that never got a good final draft, but it served as the pure bit of escapism I needed in the wake of my experience.

Never been through a theater experience in which someone in the audience has a seizure and stroke and leading the theater to completely pause the movie, you can file that under “things that will scar me for life”.

I'M STILL HERE is a few drafts away from figuring out its own ending, but the way it creates tragedy from the absence of moments to process pain does give it serious heft. Never thought I would see stoicism take the form of persistent smiles, but Fernanda Torres sure found a way.

now that I've seen all the Best Picture nominees for this year, time to rank em:

The Great Ones:
DUNE PART TWO
THE SUBSTANCE
ANORA

The Good Ones:
THE BRUTALIST
I'M STILL HERE
WICKED

The Decents:
CONCLAVE
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN

The Mids:
NICKEL BOYS
EMILIA PÉREZ

so has the 1978 SUPERMAN movie always felt like three movies rolled into one?

Not going to back down on my love for TRAP, sorry haters…

And yes, even I’m baffled as to why I bothered watching the RYAN’S WORLD movie

As someone who found A COMPLETE UNKNOWN most engaging when it was focused on Joan Baez, I am delighted that Monica Barbaro got some Oscar love

with all due respect to EMILIA PÉREZ, the real winners of the Oscar nominations are the Brazilians

Time to put THE BRUTALIST, I'M STILL HERE and NICKEL BOYS at the top of my watchlist...

So locked into my 2024 catch up that I already got a ticket to see SING SING tomorrow…

Happy to find that the CGI ape gimmick in BETTER MAN is merely a Trojan Horse for the real gimmick of literalizing self-hatred to the most extreme degree. Though I will admit the latter works wonders partly due to the former.

Either way, they successfully make the music biopic feel fresh again!

time for Georgie Porgie to make a Muppet movie

Ended 2024 with one of my most pleasant movie surprises, and started 2025 with the following:
Dusting off one of my Criterion Blu-rays
Disliking a much-acclaimed 2024 release
Watching a much-beloved movie for the first time

GODDAMN DID I GO OUT OF MY WAY TO START ON THE WRONG FOOT

Films that will no doubt make my 2024 top 10 come Oscar time:
HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS
DUNE: PART TWO
THE SUBSTANCE

Films that will most likely make the top 10:
ANORA
LOVE LIES BLEEDING
NOSFERATU
PROBLEMISTA

Films that might make the top 10:
CHALLENGERS
CIVIL WAR
LOOK BACK
THELMA
TRAP

I'd love to share my top 10 films of 2024, but I feel like I need to catch up with these films before locking the list:

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT
THE BEAST
THE BRUTALIST
A DIFFERENT MAN
FLOW
GLADIATOR II
HERETIC
NICKEL BOYS
QUEER
A REAL PAIN
RED ROOMS
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG
SING SING

Can't say I watched that many older movies in 2024, but here are my top four favorite first-time watches:

1. BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1992)
2. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)
3. MAD MAX 2 (1981)
4. AFTER HOURS (1985)

I don’t expect my 2024 cramming session to let up until that Oscars ceremony…

Lily-Rose Depp is so captivating in NOSFERATU that my willingness to forgive her for being in YOGA HOSERS is now above 0%

Had the same reaction to Eggers’ NOSFERATU as I did with Gerwig’s BARBIE: script is less polished than anything else they’ve done, but their handling of tone and big-scale visuals is so good that it doesn’t feel like their lowpoint as a filmmaker

I admire how much JUROR #2 refuses to be subtle. In this tale of uncertainty in the face of alleged facts, one of the attorneys is literally named Faith!

talking about the movies here…

SONIC 2 is pretty good as a cartoonish ensemble movie and SONIC 3 is shockingly good as a revenge tale, but both are severely held back by jokes that are unamusing and go on for wayyyyyy too long

revenge guac

between most of the MCU movies and WICKED having flat and gray color palettes, I’m starting to think these things are being color graded with the mindset that most people will be watching them at home with the contrasty Standard/Vivid picture modes

imagine a hybrid of the late 30s sparkly logo and the current logo and you have a good idea what the thing looks like

the custom Universal logo at the start of WICKED PART 1 slaps so hard that I was going to like the whole movie even if it sucked (which it didn’t)

As a story about someone starting a new life vastly different from their previous one - never mind her being trans, she starts a campaign for finding missing people - it’s rather effective. It just needed a filmmaker who knows how to adapt it into musical form.

For every musical moment in EMILIA PEREZ that beautifully weaves heightened melodies and emotions with a gritty setting, another comes along that sees the contrasting tones lead to a disastrous outcome (the scene with Zoe Saldaña in the red suit is downright cringeworthy).