What’s Good: 12 Netflix Picks

There’s a lot of disagreement in the air these days, in case you haven’t noticed. The one thing everyone can agree on right now is that streaming entertainment is our lord and savior, a recently elevated equivalent to food, shelter, and oxygen in our current hierarchy of needs, and we need some goddamn more of […]

The Best Of The Rest Of Film: 2019

Another strong year at the movies means, once again, I can’t stop at ten. Top Ten lists are so limiting! And there are many films in this roster of 15 more that, for me, will be equally defining of the past year in film. We were fairly spoiled in 2019, not just in the quality […]

Not-Oscars 2019

Hello, and welcome to the awards announcement you have not been waiting for, The Not-Oscars! My annual list of accolades is not the talk of the town during awards season. The nominees are not thrilled to be nominated… because they will never even hear about it! The winners would not like to thank the Academy […]

Not-Oscars 2017

Welcome to another Not-Oscars, where I call out the year’s best craft and performances, including plenty of good work that was not nominated by the Academy. In many years, this list feels pressing to correct some of the Academy’s egregious blunders. This year, I’m pretty happy with the crop of nominees in every category.

Top Ten Films: 2017

It was a very good year. (At the movies, anyway.)

Molly & Tonya & Lady Bird, Oh My: The Women Of 2017

Attention, please, gentlemen: 2017’s Best Actresses are not taking any more of your shit. It wasn’t planned this way. No one could have predicted the seismic events that hit Hollywood in the last quarter of 2017, beginning with Harvey Weinstein and continuing with seemingly everyone else. It’s much too soon for awards hopefuls to incorporate […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Not-Oscars 2015

Every year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences releases a roster of the pictures and performances they think are most deserving of accolades. And every year, I put together this list to tell them what they got wrong.

Top Ten Films: 2015

“Inspired by the true stories of daring women.”