CategoryFilm and TV

Reviews and comments on movies & television

Oscars 2024: Best Picture Nominees

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It’s that time of year again! The eve of the Academy Awards. For those who are interested, here are my thoughts on 9 of the 10 Best Picture nominees. It was a pretty strong year for films, IMO. My favorites were American Fiction, Barbie, and Past Lives, but all have their virtues and rewards. Note: there may be some spoilers here, so beware if you care about that. American Fiction, dir...

2023 Oscars nominees

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The beginning of this year has been much more full of work than I’d like, so I have not had time to engage in many recreational activities. But I have managed to see all but one of the Oscars best picture nominees as well as quite a few others in the major categories. It was a strong year for films (but a bad one for donkeys). Read on for more details, which I have tried to keep (mostly) non...

Noirvember, 2021

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Humphey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon

Last month I learned about a movie-watching challenge called Noirvember that was founded by “cinema fanatic” Marya E. Gates. The goal is to watch one film noir movie a day during the month of November. It was a daunting prospect, but I’ve always been interested in the genre, and this month happened to be a mostly fallow period in my TV viewing schedule, so I jumped in by signing up for a 2-week...

Thor, Ten Years Later

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Thor with Coffee Mug

After watching the first season of Loki on Disney+ (highly recommended!), I realized I barely remembered the events of the first Thor movie in which Loki was introduced. Plot points from the film are mentioned several times in the show, so I decided to rewatch it, and just for kicks write a full-on recap – an activity that is particularly fun when the film being recapped isn’t great art. Spoiler:...

Recent TV Viewing, May 2021

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I’ve been watching quite a bit of television this spring, and some of it has been quite good! Read on for more about the highlights as well as my thoughts on a couple of mixed bags. Mare of Easttown Kate Winslet plays a dumpy detective in suburban Pennsylvania who is struggling to process the death of her son while also dealing with a lot of other family drama. And Jean Smart plays her...

2021 Oscars Best Picture Nominees

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I didn’t make as much of an effort to prepare for the Academy Awards this year, because… pandemic. I’ve had less energy to engage in projects that take a lot of time and concentration, and I’ve been reluctant to shell out $20 to digitally “rent” some of the nominated films. However, I did manage to see six out of eight of the best picture nominees as well as a smattering of the rest. Below are...

2020 Oscars Best Picture Nominees

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Despite all the craziness in the world recently (or perhaps because of it), I’ve been all about movies in the past few weeks. Specifically, prep for the Oscars! This year I made an effort to see all of the Best Picture nominees before the awards ceremony — and I succeeded! My thoughts on the films are presented below, in the order in which I watched them. There are some minor spoilers...

Thoughts on Star Trek: Discovery

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Image from Star Trek Discovery's Opening Credits

To be clear before I start, I am a huge science fiction nerd, in all media forms — books, TV, movies, comics, games… everything. But I am not what I would call a fan of Star Trek. Have I watched a lot of it? Absolutely. For long stretches of time, Star Trek (in various incarnations) was the only SF on television, and for much of my life it has been a wonderful bonding experience to...

Best of 2018

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Best of 2018 Collage Image

As always, I remain fairly indifferent to spoilers, so continue at your own risk. MOVIES Faces Places (2017) A documentary about a road trip around rural France that is also a documentary about itself and the growing friendship between the directors, New Wave legend Agnès Varda and “photograffeur” JR. There’s a free-wheeling openness to experience and the people they meet as well as a touching...

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