We Won Best Picture.

What a night! Leave it to a telecast celebrating the films of 2016 to have a shocking surprise in store at the end. Last year, the modest Spotlight bested the bombastic The Revenant in the Best Picture race, even after Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu won Best Director. This wasn’t a total shocker, because The Revenant was […]

The Not-Oscars 2016

It’s just about Oscar time again — though for once, the Best Picture race isn’t exactly the most disappointing contest I’ll witness over the past year. At times like these, the Academy Awards feel somewhat frivolous. It’s possible that some likely winners — The Salesman, Mahershala Ali, The White Helmets, OJ: Made In America, and even […]

Top Ten Films: 2016

Another year, another awards season. But this was no ordinary year. Where to begin, when we speak of 2016? Most years, I just pick my favorite films, and that’s it. But this year, it felt important to really think about these choices, and what they expressed about my feelings this year. That’s not to say […]

Twentieth Century Women: Luminous Ladies Of The 1900s

“The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity […]

Trauma Queen: Isabelle Huppert Leads The Rest Of The Best Actresses

In the movies, if not so much in life, 2016 has turned out to be a very good year for the ladies. While the Best Actor race is suffering from a dearth of truly exciting performances in 2016, the Best Actress race is stacked. You could fill the Best Actress category twice before you come […]

Love In A Hopeless Place: ‘Jackie’ Is A Requiem For The American Dream

She remembers how hot the sun was in Dallas, and the crowds — greater and wilder than the crowds in Mexico or in Vienna. The sun was blinding, streaming down; yet she could not put on sunglasses for she had to wave to the crowd. And up ahead she remembers seeing a tunnel around a […]

Ehh ‘La La’: Damien Chazelle’s Sun-Soaked Ode To A City of Stars

Los Angeles is a city paradoxically known for two things: its sun and its stars. Most of La La Land‘s musical moments revolve around one or the other. For months now, the follow-up from the writer/director of Whiplash has been positioned as the front-runner for Best Picture, with plenty of precedent — 2002’s Chicago was […]

Stronger Together: Amy Adams Anchors ‘Animals’ & ‘Arrival’

Since no studio executive can see into the future, it is impossible to to know if the right date has been selected to launch a film. Sure, 4th of July weekend was a pretty savvy time to release Independence Day back in 1996, and you can consider that a safe bet, but there are moments […]

Monsters In Moonlight: The Year’s Best Dramas Come Out To Play

The “coming out” film has been the cornerstone of queer cinema for at least a couple of decades. For all the progress the LGB… (sorry, I’ve lost track of how many letters are supposed to be attached to that alphabet soup) movement has made in shifting from the niche to the mainstream in that time, […]

Black, White & Wed: A Difficult Year Gets Some Much-Needed ‘Loving’

It’s impossible to ignore the year 2016 when talking about Loving, a film that takes place between 1958 and 1967 and depicts the lives of the titular couple at the center of one of the Supreme Court’s landmark cases of the 20th century. So let’s talk about 2016.

The Perils Of Being A Wallflower: Outcasts Pay In ‘Indignation’

Forgive me. I know it seems much too early to talk about the Oscars, but we’re getting into that time of year now. So far, 2016 has been all but entirely barren of buzzworthy performances. I have a small handful of favorites, but only one or two that are certain to make the cut on […]

Eye Of The Beholder: Beauty Bares Its Teeth In ‘Neon Demon’

I’ve seen a lot of movies. A lot of them contain some pretty shocking stuff. I don’t necessarily like gore or explicitly disturbing subject matter, but my cinematic journeys often lead me toward such material anyway. I’m more adventurous than the average moviegoer. Sometimes, I think I’ve seen it all. After a while, one act of abhorrent […]