TEA TO POUR
01 May 2024
Housekeeping for Beginners (2024)
Housekeeping for Beginners (Домаќинство за Почетници) is good. Goran Stolevski is an interesting filmmaker who really has a way with writing characters. I wish this film surprised me a bit more, but although it started off with some twists that were very interesting it moved into more familiar territory in act two. Still, I liked this despite its rather conventional ending.
Monkey Man (2024)
I love Dev Patel. I think he’s beautiful and I think he has good ideas. I’m glad he got funding to make this very very expensive movie, and I’m glad he made this movie. I’m glad lots of people went to see this movie. But I did not like this movie.
25 April 2024
Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)
Holy shit! Looking for Mr. Goodbar is pretty incredible. It’s so intense and intriguing. It’s a fascinating character study and a pretty extraordinary portrait of female freedom amid a deeply misogynist world. It also has truly great performances from Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Tuesday Weld, William Atherton, and Tom Berenger.
The ending is… shocking and kind of insane and I feel completely stunned.
Honestly this is good. I know a movie like this could basically not be made today, but that’s what makes it so interesting. I am not at all sure why Goodbar is out of print, but you can't find it streaming anywhere and it's never been released on DVD.
Femme
29 March 2024
Godzilla x Kong: the New Empire
When I originally saw the trailer for Godzilla x Kong: the New Empire I thought Wait didn't we already see this movie? Everything in the trailer looked like something from Adam Wingard's 2021 offering Godzilla vs. Kong. As it turns out, this is a sequel to that movie, and it has new monsters if not new visuals.
08 March 2024
Oscar Nominations 2023: 9 of 9 (with Final Predictions)
I just barely squeezed through! Neon finally released Perfect Days for VOD on Tuesday, and so I was able to watch it last night. None of these movies will win on Sunday, but they are our last three:
- International Feature: Japan (Drive My Car, Shoplifters, Departures, The Twilight Samurai, Muddy River, Kagemusha: the Shadow Warrior, Sandakan No. 8, Dodes'ka-den, Portrait of Chieko, Woman in the Dunes, Kwaidon, Koto, Immortal Love, The Burmese Harp, Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto, Gate of Hell, Rashomon)
- International Feature: Germany (All Quiet on the Western Front, Never Look Away, Toni Erdmann, The White Ribbon, The Baader Meinhof Complex, The Lives of Others, Sophie Scholl: the Final Days, Downfall, Nowhere in Africa, Beyond Silence, Schtonk, The Nasty Girl)
- International Feature: Italy (The Hand of God, The Great Beauty, Don't Tell, Life Is Beautiful, The Starmaker, Mediterraneo, Open Doors, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, La Famiglia, Three Brothers, Dimenticare Venezia, The New Monsters, A Special Day, Seven Beauties, Scent of a Woman, Amarcord, Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, La Ragazza con la Pistola, The Battle of Algiers, Marriage Italian Style, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, 8 1/2, The Four Days of Naples, La Grande Guerra, Kapò, Big Deal on Madonna Street, Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, The Bicycle Thief, The Walls of Malapaga, Shoeshine)
- Best Picture: Oppenheimer
- Best Director: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
- Best Actor: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
- Best Actress: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
- Best Adapted Screenplay: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie
- Best Original Screenplay: David Hemingson, The Holdovers
- Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
- Best Supporting Actress: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
- Best International Feature: United Kingdom, The Zone of Interest
- Best Animated Feature: The Boy and the Heron
- Best Documentary Feature: 20 Days in Mariupol
- Best Film Editing: Jennifer Lame, Oppenheimer
- Best Cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer
- Best Production Design: Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, Barbie
- Best Original Score: Robbie Robertson, Killers of the Flower Moon
- Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Barbie
- Best Sound: Johnnie Burn and Tarn Willers, The Zone of Interest
- Best Visual Effects: Nojima Tatsuji, Shibuya Kiyoko, Takahashi Masaki, and Yamazaki Takashi, Godzilla Minus One
- Best Makeup & Hairstyling: Mark Coulier, Nadia Stacey, and Josh Weston, Poor Things
- Best Original Song: Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell, Barbie
- Best Animated Short Film: War Is Over!
- Best Documentary Short Film: The ABCs of Book Banning
- Best Live-action Short Film: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
03 March 2024
Oscar Nominations 2023: 8 of 9 (Animated Shorts)
Here are the five animated short films. (I've decided to skip the documentary short films and the live-action short films – they're always so bad, and I've already suffered through Golda and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.)
- Animated Short Film
- Animated Short Film
- Animated Short Film
24 February 2024
Oscar Nominations 2023: 7 of 9
We are scraping the bottom of the barrel, nomination-wise, with these five films. These are traditionally the categories that include the worst films, but we will start with a movie that I think everyone liked:
- Original Song – "The Fire Inside": Diane Warren (Tell It like a Woman, Four Good Days, The Life Ahead, Breakthrough, RBG, Marshall, The Hunting Ground, Beyond the Lights, Pearl Harbor, Music of the Heart, Armageddon, Con Air, Up Close & Personal, Mannequin)
17 February 2024
Oscar Nominations 2023: 6 of 9 (Animated Features)
For some reason, each of the animated feature films only received one nomination. Usually one or two get an Original Score nomination or an Original Song nomination, and sometimes screenplay nominations or even Best Picture, but not this year. The other key thing about 2023 – and every year – is that you can generally expect the movies to be split between the studios. This is why there's almost always a random Netflix nominee you've never heard of, one nominee from Japan, and another nominee from Europe in addition to the big studio usual suspects from Disney–Pixar and Dreamworks. I assume this is because the Animation branch votes in blocs. Anyway, here are this year's five nominees.
13 February 2024
Silence Is a Falling Body (2017)
12 February 2024
Oscar Nominations 2023: 5 of 9
The rest of the movies that got Oscar nominations all got only one nomination. Some of these will be hidden gems (usually the International Feature nominees), and some of these will be completely abominable (usually the Original Song and Makeup & Hairstyling nominees), but I still watch them all. This post only has three films because the next post will have five:
- Original Score: John Williams (The Fabelmans, Star Wars: Episode IX – the Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars: Episode VIII – the Last Jedi, Star Wars: Episode VII – the Force Awakens, The Book Thief, Lincoln, War Horse, The Adventures of Tintin, Munich, Memoirs of a Geisha, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Catch Me If You Can, Artificial Intelligence: A.I., Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The Patriot, Angela's Ashes, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Sleepers, Nixon, Sabrina, Schindler's List, JFK, Home Alone, Born on the Fourth of July, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Accidental Tourist, Empire of the Sun, The Witches of Eastwick, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The River, Return of the Jedi, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, The Towering Inferno, Tom Sawyer, Cinderella Liberty, Images, The Poseidon Adventure, Fiddler on the Roof, The Reivers, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Valley of the Dolls)
10 February 2024
Oscar Nominations 2023: 4 of 9
The next four movies on our list:
- Sound
- Visual Effects
- Sound
- Visual Effects
- Original Screenplay: Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik