Author: Sam

Prometheus: The Positive (Mostly) Review

p8815605_p_v8_abThis entire post is because I lost a bet. Over the summer of 2014, my friend Ashlee and I did a Summer Box Office Challenge, which is to say that we each picked 10 movies opening from May to August and tallied up how much each made in its opening weekend. Ashlee won, and as my punishment for losing, I am being made to write a positive review of a movie I hate.

And boy, do I hate Prometheus. I saw it in theaters with my now-husband and Ashlee herself, and as we walked back to the El, they both more or less shrugged and thought it was fine, and I erupted in a violent fury of flailing arms and exasperation. I hate Prometheus. It’s egregiously terrible in a great many ways. But I’ll write a separate post to enumerate them (which is HERE), because per the terms of my loss, this post is supposed to be only the positive review. Sorry, Ashlee, this is as close as I got.

Okay, deep breath. Here is a comprehensive list of things that are good about the movie Prometheus. (note: spoilers. But that shouldn’t matter, because no one should ever see this movie, and therefore it cannot possibly make a difference whether you know what happens or not) Continue reading →

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Ex Machina

ex-machina-posterEx Machina, a reasonably slick, reasonable interesting sci-fi movie about the plausibility and applicability of artificial intelligence, raises one very important question: shouldn’t all sci-fi movies have spontaneous choreographed dance breaks in the middle?

The answer, of course, is yes. The answers to other questions raised by the movie are more nebulous, questions like “Did this reclusive, slightly nutty billionaire of a Google-like corporation (Oscar Isaac) actually create artificial intelligence?” “Will the very smart programmer (Domhnall Gleason)who may or may not have been randomly selected to evaluate the AI (Alicia Vikander, as the robot) determine that it passes a Turing test?” “What happens if the AI passes?” and, naturally, “What happens if it doesn’t?” Continue reading →

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Oscars 2014 Recap

everythingisawesomeWe survived! With the telecast clocking in at just over 38 hours, it became a bit of a slog, but we’ve all come out the other side just fine, except maybe Idina Menzel’s face, which is surely starting to slough off from the acid secreted by John Travolta’s hands.

We’ll take things in sections, because order must be imposed in all things, even Oscar blogging. Continue reading →

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Oscar Bowling 2014

Here are my picks in one place, ranked by my confidence in them. If you get the number of points associated with each category, it adds up to a perfect 300. I will not get 300, but I will always try to get close.

 

24 Supporting Actor: JK Simmons
23 Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette
22 Actress: Julianne Moore
21 Documentary: CitizenFour
20 Foreign: Ida
19 Actor: Eddie Redmayne
18 Original Song: Glory
17 Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki
16 Production design: Grand Budapest Hotel
15 Visual Effects: Interstellar
14 Costume design: Grand Budapest Hotel
13 Makeup and Hair: Grand Budapest Hotel
12 Animated Feature: How to Train Your Dragon 2
11 Film editing- Boyhood
10 Original Score- Theory of Everything
9 Sound Editing: American Sniper
8 Sound Mixing: Whiplash
7 Documentary short: Crisis Hotline
6 Live action short: The Phone Call
5 Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
4 Picture: Boyhood
3 Adapted Screenplay: Whiplash
2 Original Screenplay: GBH
1 Animated short: Feast

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Oscar Predictions 2014: Who the Hell Knows

BirdmanSo to continue with the predictions, we’ve already covered all the safe ground. Now we verge out into The Complete Unknown. We’ll break them into two categories for this post; they’re all pretty equally up in the air, but there are pretty clearly the ones that people care about, and… everything else.

Everything Else

Film Editing

American Sniper Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach
Boyhood Sandra Adair
The Grand Budapest Hotel Barney Pilling
The Imitation Game William Goldenberg
Whiplash Tom Cross Continue reading →

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Oscars Predictions 2014: The Easy Ones

grandbudapesthotelLast year, I had a whole week of predictions in every category, and it was awesome. This year, the ceremony is in two days and I still haven’t seen two of the freaking Best Picture nominees. You win some, you lose some. It’s obviously not stopping me from blogging anyway, since as we all know, actual quality has a vague and inconsistent correlation with the Oscar winners anyway.

There will be three total posts: this one, with the first half of the annotated picks, then the rest of the annotated picks, and then on Sunday I’ll post my actual picks list so you have it in one convenient place to mock me with. Continue reading →

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Oscars 2014 Nomination Reactions

grandbudapesthotelHoo boy has it been a morning (ahem… three days ago. This may have sat as a draft for longer than I meant). Pretty disappointing all around, to be honest, so let’s take it bit by bit. As with the Golden Globes, we’ll divide this in four categories this time, along the twin axes of Surprise vs. Not Surprise and Good vs. Bad.

Quick note: as a reminder, as a general rule, you cannot complain about something being a snub if you can’t also say who should have gotten the spot instead.

Unfortunately, the category of Unexpected and Bad easily has the most notes, so let’s start there and get it out of the way: Continue reading →

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Oscars 2014: Nomination Predictions

theoryofeverythingIt’s that time again! Today and tomorrow are the most exciting days of the awards season year. Today is the day of posting wild speculations on who’s going to get nominated, and tomorrow we already get to see if we were right. The Oscars themselves are great, but it’s also the end. This is the high point of the season, with the maximum number of possibilities still in play. Whee!

Best Picture

Let’s start off with a bang. As I said a bit in the Golden Globes prediction piece, the two frontrunners are Boyhood and Birdman, with the addition here of Selma. Both of the British Mid-Century Genius Biopics have held on strongly, and Grand Budapest Hotel has gotten so much traction that it’s hard for me to not imagine it getting a nomination. Foxcatcher has been getting pushed hard, it feels like. As we all remember, there can be between 5 and 10 nominations in this category. I am sure the following films are getting nominated. Continue reading →

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Golden Globes 2015: Movie Reactions

BirdmanTime for the post-mortem! Quick and dirty version because it’s already Wednesday…So things break down into three possible categories as we analyze the options between Expected and Unexpected and whether the win was Good or Bad. If things went as expected, they aren’t bad, because it means I was right. If things did not go as I expected, they were either right or wrong (and don’t worry, I will tell you all about it. As though that’s a thing you would worry about.)

In the Expected category, we have most of the evening. Boyhood won for Drama and Richard Linklater won Best Director for directing it, Julianne Moore won in Actress – Drama, Michael Keaton won for Actor – Comedy/Musical, Patricia Arquette won for Supporting Actress, and JK Simmons won for Supporting Actor. Those were all chalk, and can reasonably be considered as frontrunners in their respective categories at the Oscars. At a minimum, expect them to all be nominated on Thursday.

Now let’s do the Unexpected, and we’ll go least surprising to most surprising. Continue reading →

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Golden Globes 2015: Movie Predictions

nightcrawlerIt’s an admirable thing, to put on one’s To Do list on October 26th, “Write too-early Oscars post.” It’s kind of less admirable when you don’t get that post written by January, by which time the critics associations and most guilds have given awards, half the movies have already come out, and oops, the Golden Globes already have nominations out. To say I’m behind on this Oscar season is an understatement.

But that’s not going to stop me! Let’s talk arbitrarily about the Globe nominations before the ceremony happens and I miss it all, shall we? Continue reading →

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