Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 10 of 11

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

8. Animated Short Films

9. Live-action Short Films

This year's nominees are:

Jurassic World: Rebirth

1 nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain, Ed Skrein, Adam Loxley, Niamh Finlay

For some reason this is a movie about sadness? Like, everyone, in Jurassic World: Rebirth is so sad and unhappy, and it was really difficult for me to invest in any of these people. This has some cool sequences, but it’s such a downer. It’s Jurassic Park as a disaster film, and because it approaches its subject matter earnestly, this means feeling every loss in the disaster and taking time to mourn the fallen characters whom we never got to know in the first place. The leads are competent—Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, and Rupert Friend are all great and perfect in their parts. But there’s also an annoyingly earnest B-plot, with four actors I’ve never seen before. They all do a fine job, but Gareth Edwards doesn’t introduce them to us until 25 minutes into the movie, so they feel like an afterthought for the rest of the running time, though I think Edwards thinks they’re supposed to be the emotional center of the movie or something like that. The whole thing is ridiculous. And the big bad at the end is disgusting-looking. Mostly, though, I just don’t understand why an adventure–monster movie needs to be so deeply invested in processing depression and lack of fulfillment. Why couldn’t this be more fun? Why make a monster movie that’s a drag? This ends up being one of the worst movies of the year.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #95 out of 98

The Lost Bus

1 nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Paul Greengrass

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera, Yul Vazquez, Ashlie Atkinson, Kimberli Flores, Levi McConaughey, Kay McConaughey, John Messina, Kate Wharton, Danny McCarthy, Spencer Watson

Fellow visual effects nominee The Lost Bus is an infinitely better film than Jurassic World: Rebirth with a bigger movie star, but this was an AppleTV+ film and so almost no one saw it. This is very very unfortunate because The Lost Bus is really strong. It’s a fast-paced action film that mounts tension expertly and beautifully pays off. McConaughey and the rest of the cast are excellent, but the star here are the extraordinary effects and the sure hand of Paul Greengrass, who has been giving us great politically focused action movies for two decades. It's a movie about climate change without being a movie about climate change, and it highlights the very hard work that real firefighters, schoolteachers, and other real people (not politicians or finance executives) did to save lives during the Paradise fire in California. This movie's great. Unfortunately none of us can watch it on big screens. 

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #21 out of 98

Kokuho (国宝)

1 nomination

• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Lee Sang-il

Cast: Yoshizawa Ryo, Yokohama Ryusei, Takahata Mitsuki, Terajima Shinobu, Kurokawa Soya, Koshiyama Keitatsu, Tanaka Min, Ken Watanabe, Nana Mori, Takahiro Miura, Ai Mikami, Masatoshi Nagase, Shimada Kyūsaku

Epic! At three hours this is a bit of a prohibitive watch, but it's filed with excellent performances and—especially—some wonderful kabuki on film. The central figure in this is a bit of an enigma, and perhaps because the film jumps temporally as much as it does, we get less insight than we probably should into who he is. We get much, much more insight into his partner's world, the man who is not nearly as good of a kabuki performer in the film. Yokohama Ryusei is wonderful in this. The movie itself is messy, but it kind of doesn't matter. The whole thing is immensely compelling. (Incidentally, Kokuho means national treasure, which makes sense in the context of the film, but of course one could never call this film "National Treasure" in English.) One more thing: it's odd that gender doesn't come up at all in this movie except for two little moments at the end of the second act and beginning of the third. An audience member assumes that Kikuo is a woman and wishes for something more but then becomes violent when he understands that he's a man; then two scenes later two men refer to a 90-year-old onnagata as "the old lady" but then correct themselves. These are intriguing moments, but the film itself does nothing with them. Lee Sang-il is simply not interested in the complex gender experience of these men who play women onstage. And I guess that's a little weird to me, but the movie's definitely still worth watching.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #32 out of 98

The Smashing Machine

1 nomination

• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Benny Safdie

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten, Lyndsey Gavin, Zoe Kosovic, Oleksandr Usyk, Satoshi Ishii, James Moontasri, Yoko Hamamura, Paul Cheng, André Tricoteux, Marcus Aurelio, Roberto "Cyborg" Abreu, Jerin Valel, Raja Flores

This is a weird film. It’s weird because—in the first place—it’s a sports film that really avoids quite a few of the sports-movie tropes, and this makes the movie better than those movies but not quite as satisfying emotionally as most of them. It’s also weird because—in the second place—Safdie is invested in us having complex feelings about his characters and the things they do, and we aren’t used to that. I don’t know, though… for me this was good but not great. It has some excellent elements—the sound is incredible, the score is so great, the makeup is amazing—but much of The Smashing Machine consists of melodramatic, petty fights. And those were not very interesting to me. (Except for this one moment when The Rock smashed a door in a room where there really should not have been a door in the first place.) In any case, The Smashing Machine doesn't build tension the way a usual Safdie Brothers movie would. This is a true story, and its dependent on its real subject matter, but I suspect that the screenwriter amped up the Emily Blunt part so the actress could have more to do. This works well for Emily Blunt, but it makes the movie a good deal less enjoyable; she really shouldn't be the focus of this movie.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #44 out of 98

All 2025 Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

8. Animated Short Films

9. Live-action Short Films

10. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

11. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!

Newzzzzzzz of the World

News of the World is very well made. It's shot beautifully and scored beautifully, and the production design is gorgeous. 

So why is this movie so boring? With all of the goodwill and excellent work poured into it, News of the World has no right to be as boring as it is. I really don't understand, but this thing is truly a snooze. Greengrass gets a couple of moments where he gets to do what he's great at doing – viz. a pair of runaway horses and a wagon crash – but this kind of movie doesn't play to his strengths as a director at all. 

Also maybe I just think Tom Hanks is kinda boring.

Oscar Nominees 2014: Part 2 of 14

Dallas Buyers Club

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Matthew McConaughey
• Original Screenplay: Craig Borten
• Supporting Actor: Jared Leto
• Film Editing: John Mac McMurphy
• Makeup

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée

Cast: McConaughey, Leto, Jennifer Garner, Steve Zahn, Denis O'Hare, Dallas Roberts, Griffin Dunne, Deneen Tyler

I didn't really care for this, but six nominations including Best Picture, Film Editing, and Original Screenplay (especially in a year with so many good original screenplays) is a lot of love. The Academy clearly really likes this picture, and there's no reason to think it's going to stop loving it any time soon. McConaughey, who has been doing respectable work for three years now (after all of those years of silly rom-coms) is the overwhelming favorite for his category, and Leto (also never before nominated) is the favorite in his. The other Makeup nominees are The Lone Ranger and Bad Grandpa, so I will expect DBC to win in that category too. In fact, I should probably bet on this to win Screenplay while we're at it, but I just can't bring myself to do so.

Will Win: Actor, Supporting Actor, Makeup

Could Win: Original Screenplay

My Rating: #58 out of 73

Nebraska

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Alexander Payne (The Descendants, Sideways)
• Actor: Bruce Dern (Coming Home)
• Original Screenplay: Bob Nelson
• Supporting Actress: June Squibb
• Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael 

Director: Payne

Cast: Dern, Will Forte, Squibb, Bob Odenkirk, Stacy Keach, Mary Louise Wilson, Rance Howard, Angela McEwan, Tim Driscoll, Devin Ratray,

This has gotten better and better in my mind upon reflection. I think, however, that the opposite is probably true for the Academy. This is a pretty good picture, but one that will have worn out its welcome with voters by the time the Awards roll around. It's a quirky movie, too: a funny film that's subject matter is aging and mortality. It's gorgeously shot, but much of the time the camera's gaze is directed at dilapidated old buildings or claustrophobic interiors. Everyone acknowledges that the acting is stellar, but no one feels as though they know Bruce Dern or June Squibb, and both play characters that are not exactly lovable. Six nominations is a lot of love, but Nebraska is an also-ran this year.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #40 out of 73

Captain Phillips

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Billy Ray
• Supporting Actor: Barkhad Abdi
• Film Editing: Christopher Rouse (The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93)
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing 

Director: Paul Greengrass

Cast: Tom Hanks, Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, Corey Johnson, Michael Chernus, David Warshofsky, Chris Mulkey, Catherine Keener

Big surprises on this front on the morning of the nominations. Captain Phillips was supposed to get a Best Director and a Best Actor nomination, as well. You can see from the love for the film's screenplay and its editing, that a majority of Academy members really loved this picture – its USAmerican imperialist/superiority theme surely helps on this front – and yet Tom Hanks (who is absolutely excellent in the movie) and Paul Greengrass (who was nominated before for his excellent film United 93) were no-shows when the names were read out. It's an odd thing, and I am not sure I know why this happened except that The Wolf of Wall Street really took the slot where this picture would've appeared in the Best Actor and Best Director categories. Maybe if it had been released just a little bit later... who knows. In any case, six nominations or not, don't expect Captain Phillips to go home with any little gold men. It is out of the running in all categories.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #50 out of 73

Lone Survivor

I've been told by Dayne that this is "a very drunk post", and I did write it after drinking half a bottle of rosé, so be forewarned.

Here's the thing: when you title your film Lone Survivor and you show the audience who that survivor is in the film's first five minutes, it becomes difficult to maintain the tension a survival film needs.

As far as I am concerned, Peter Berg was in trouble as soon as we started. If I was invested in the four men who go on this mission to kill a random dude (and I was invested in them), I also knew – again, from the film's first few minutes – that they were all going to die except for the, ahem, lone survivor, played by Mark Wahlberg.

I'm actually sort of baffled by the way this film was made, because it really is a high-quality thing for much of its running time. The sound is awesome. The makeup is awesome. The photography is top-notch. The acting is great (I love me some Mark Wahlberg, as you probably know I see everything he does, and I absolutely fucking adore Ben Foster – who is as fantastic in this as he is in everything else). Better yet, this could've been a pretty great survival movie. And who doesn't love a survival movie? Deliverance is very good, but 2012's totally fantastic The Grey by Joe Carnahan is totally worth your time.

Lone Survivor just isn't that, though. Instead it is a picture about four guys who go out to kill some random Arabs about whom we know absolutely nothing. So they go off to do this and then people start shooting at them and stuff. And, well, I sort of understood why people were shooting at them. And I still don't know what we're doing in Afghanistan. And the word Taliban is used a lot, but I am not really sure what that means anymore, and in the context of Lone Survivor it only means "bad".

Mr. Foster, Mr. Hirsch, and  Mr. Wahlberg: not doing so hot.

This isn't to say that I didn't like these guys. They were great guys – funny, charming, interesting. I'd probably have a great time having a beer with any of them. But their deaths were inevitable from the film's first frame, and the deaths of the dozens and dozens of Afghanis also seemed inevitable.

I find all of this killing troubling, as you might imagine, but I also find it troubling that the film is fundamentally not interested in interrogating questions about who deserves to live and who deserves to die. There is a long-ish Deliverance-inspired conversation at the beginning of act two about precisely this question, but the arguments never even reach the level of intelligence of Burt Reynolds' monologue in Boorman's film. We remain well entrenched in clichés. And the possibility of being on CNN as the next Lynndie England is more important to these men than moral obligations or ethical decisions.

I was not unmoved by Lone Survivor. Ben Foster, when he dies, talks about his wife and brotherhood and the Navy, and I really responded to that. But Lone Survivor wears out its welcome. It's twenty minutes too long, and it never manages to justify all of the killing it puts on display. As for the lone survivor himself, he's intense and never boring to watch as a performer. The film he's in, however, had me checking my watch. When do we get to the end – which, I may remind you, we've already seen at the film's opening?  

Are we there yet?

(Sober) Addendum

I forgot to say, too, that I was just stunned by the amount of U.S. military firepower that is mobilized at the end of the film. This is something that Lone Survivor has in common with Captain Phillips. In both films, it is as if the U.S. military is a kind of sleeping giant that doesn't enact its full power unless truly angered. In other words, instead of U.S. military tactics subtending the entire action of these films, both Lone Survivor and Captain Phillips behave as though USAmerican agents act on their own (in Phillips, an unarmed naval crew, in Survivor a heavily armed but isolated foursome) and are not actually supported, trained, funded, protected, and armed by the U.S. military. But once the men get into trouble in both films, the (apparently) full might of the United States descends onto the small number of men who have dared to test this sleeping giant. In both films, the military acts as a kind of exercitus ex machina, triumphantly, impossibly, and with unimaginable power, sweeping in and saving the day.

But this is all a trick – a trick of narrative that serves a specific ideological function. The U.S. military has caused everything in Lone Survivor. The men get sent onto this mountain as a military directive. They get abandoned on the mountain because the military is stretched too thin in Afghanistan. They are there, in fact, to kill the man who then fights back and attempts to kill them. And then when the Navy's four foot-soldiers do not succeed in killing the two men that it has all-along planned to kill, the Navy sends in a large number of helicopters and guns down everyone in sight. Why it didn't do this in the first place and why it allowed all of the soldiers who died to die is the Navy's business, of course, but the film pretends as though it isn't. Lone Survivor pretends that all along the four SEALs are fighting against an army much bigger than them. With its army-from-the-machine narrative device, however, Lone Survivor exposes the lie at its center: all of these deaths – the three SEALs, the rescue troupe, the Afghan fighters – have been, if not carefully, at least deliberately, orchestrated by U.S. military policy in Afghanistan.

An Adventure with Pirates

Captain Phillips is a good movie. It is well acted. It is a tense, nail-biting action movie for the entirety of its running time, and it is supremely well edited. But I never really warmed to it. I am not a huge Tom Hanks fan anyway, so perhaps that contributed. There are more reasons, though, I think.

Lots of good things, first: the trailer for Captain Phillips sort of makes one feel as though the film follows a cargo ship for a while and then pirates come and everyone freaks out and Captain Phillips plays the hero. But Greengrass is smarter than that. Phillips is not some good-guy, bad-guy film. This isn't an action movie like a Bond movie or one starring Jason Statham or something. Instead, after we follow Hanks's drive to work in the morning, the film follows the film's pirates and their lives. The film explains why they're hijacking ships in the first place, what the incentives are for them, the choices that are provided for them in Somalia, etc. These pirates are fleshed-out characters, and one feels as though one knows them individually from the first. It is a smart storytelling move that allows us to sympathize with and understand all five of the characters who make up the film's final act: the USAmericans and the Somalis.

And the film's finale is just extraordinary. I've never seen anything like it. If I was frustrated with Captain Phillips for much of its running time, the way Greengrass ends his film seemed to me unique and bizarre and just great. It was moving and uncontained and Tom Hanks is extremely good in this last sequence of the movie.

The thing is: Captain Phillips – for all of its excellent suspense and action sequences – couldn't make me stop thinking about money. There is no security on this cargo ship. An odd thing considering that everyone knows that there are pirates in the waters off the East coast of Africa. And then everyone is ordered to do their jobs. Phillips keeps the ship on course instead of moving into safer waters because the shipment needs to be delivered on time (in order to keep costs down, clearly).

But then the ship is boarded. And the military flies in and-I-quote half the U.S. Navy to rescue these guys. Millions of dollars are spent. Three giant military ships surround Captain Phillips. Staff are working around the clock. And all I could think the entire time was one single dude with a machine gun could've prevented this. Presumably that man wasn't hired in order to keep costs low, but the result of that cost-cutting is the enormous, ludicrous level of expenditure that is a U.S. military rescue mission. This isn't what the movie is about, really, but I couldn't help thinking that private security would've solved a problem that this USAmerican company instead asked the U.S. military to solve.

In the first place, this is what we do in the United States: depend on the government and find reasons to make government bigger. And in this way, pro-military factions of the government are just as dependent on big government as politicians who want more money spent on domestic social programs. In fact, smaller government for the neo-conservatives has never actually meant small government at all: it means, in fact, less social spending and more military spending. A real small government would mean that the U.S. military would never have been involved in a hostage situation like Captain Phillips's. Because the company sailing in international waters off of the east coast of Africa would be taking care of itself instead of looking for a government bailout. Bailout, handout, what's the difference? The difference is scale. Helping out people out home costs a good deal less than the technologies it takes to police the rest of the world.

In the second place, I now read in the New York Post that the real Cpt. Phillips is not a hero at all but contributed to the capture of the ship through his own willful negligence. He ought to have been 600 miles off of the coast and he was only 235 miles away. Why was he so close to the coast of Somalia? I'm gonna guess it has to do with money.

As for Oscar: Captain Phillips will probably grab several nominations next year. Tom Hanks seems like an easy get for Best Actor (he is so good), and his foil Barkhad Abdi will likely snag a supporting nomination. Editing, Directing, and Picture seem like obvious nominations as well. I'm not sure how everyone feels about Captain Phillips but I doubt it can be ignored come awards season. It is the most tense 2 hours I've spent in a really long time.

Ooo Corruption!

I've been in a let's-watch-some-people-blow-some-shit-up kind of mood. The B-movie love started with Sunshine, which, as I believe I've already mentioned, is awesome.

And then, of course, the third movie in the Jason Bourne franchise was just released. Now, as you might recall, I really liked the second movie, The Bourne Supremacy, and though I still cannot figure out what the fuck the titles in this series of movies mean, I also really liked The Bourne Ultimatum. Matt Damon is totally serious and very cool, and Paul Greengrass sure knows how to make an action picture. (You might also recall that I rated his United 93 as my #2 movie from last year.) Ultimatum delivers on all the promises of Supremacy. The fights are awesome, especially an extended hand-to-hand battle with Joey Ansah that happens late in the movie. The Bourne Ultimatum also boasts about a hundred cameos of well-known actors (the first two movies did this too). Daniel Brühl shows up for a single scene (in the first good movie he's been in since Good Bye, Lenin!) and Paddy Considine gets a couple of cool scenes. The best thing about Ultimatum, though, is that it never really lets up. The movie starts in medias res and just keeps going at the rapid pace it sets at the beginning. It's a thrill-a-minute film with a great car chase, some awesome fight sequences and beautiful locations. Definitely worth checking out.

Also, the villain in this movie is, as seems to be common in action movies nowadays, the United States Government. Filmmakers find it very easy to cast our government as the source of evil and criminality. This obviously has to do with the American people's mounting distrust of the president, the Congress and all top levels of government. I mention it because another film I recently saw, Antoine Fuqua's Shooter has a similar theme. Now, I haven't seen a Fuqua movie since Training Day, but it seems like the man has still got a lot of talent. Shooter is a strictly straightforward tale of good guys/bad guys, guns, bombs, explosions, torture, revenge, etc. But it does what it promises well enough. The good guys are likable (you know I love Mark Wahlberg, and I don't know anyone who doesn't love Michael Peña) and the villains all wear suits and make decisions from ivory Washington D.C. towers. The hero of Shooter doesn't quite have the amazing survival skills of Jason Bourne, but he comes kind of close. He makes homemade pipe bombs and tear gas from stuff he got at WalMart and he is able to perform minor surgery on himself after getting shot in the arm and in the side. True to Antoine Fuqua form, of course, there are lots and lots of dead bodies. I should have counted how many, but I probably would have lost track. It's a little out of control.

One exceptionally cool thing about Shooter is a scene with Ned Beatty on top of a mountain. It's an obvious nod to my favorite film of all time—Network—a clever update to Ned Beatty's very famous monologue in that film, where he says "There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians.There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West." In Shooter Ned says "There are no Shiites; there are no Sunnis. There are no Republicans; there are no Democrats." Kudos to whatever genius thought that a nice echo of Paddy Chayefsky's cynicism fit nicely in a 2007 action movie with Mark Wahlberg. It put a giant grin on my face.

The Nominees: Part III of VIII

LITTLE CHILDREN

3 Nominations:

Best Actress: Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Iris, Titanic, Sense and Sensibility)

Best Supporting Actor: Jackie Earle Haley

Best Adapted Screenplay: Todd Field (In the Bedroom) and Tom Perotta

Director: Todd Field (In the Bedroom)
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, Noah Emmerich, Jackie Earle Haley, Phyllis Somerville, Jane Adams

This movie was predicted as one of the big prestige pictures of 2006. A screenplay nomination is a very big deal, so it still looks as though a lot of people paid attention to and liked this film, but it seems like reception to the film is overall more cool than anything else. This is to be expected for a film that worked hard to create distance from its audience. Still, three nominations is a lot of love and the Jackie Earle Haley nomination was a welcome surprise on nomination morning. This is Kate Winslet's fifth Oscar nomination. Make a note. She has yet to win.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Supporting Actor
My Rating: #51 out of 69

CHILDREN OF MEN

3 Nominations:

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También), David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Otsby

Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki (The New World, Sleepy Hollow, A Little Princess)

Best Film Editing

Director: Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Y Tu Mamá También, Great Expectations, A Little Princess)
Cast: Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Julianne Moore, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam, Pam Ferris

This is my favorite movie of the year. Blame its weak showing at the Academy on a too-late release date (this is Universal's fault) and on subject matter (sci-fi is not usually their thing.) But a film this good doesn't need a whole lot of Oscar nominations. People are going to be talking about how great this movie is for years to come. At any rate, Emmanuel Lubezki deserves to win in his category hands down. Hopefully by then, members of the Academy will all have seen this gem.
Will Win: Best Cinematography
Might Also Win: Best Film Editing
My Rating: #1 out of 69

APOCALYPTO

3 Nominations:

Best Sound Mixing

Best Sound Editing

Best Makeup

Director: (Crazy) Mel Gibson (The Passion of the Christ, Braveheart, The Man Without a Face)
Cast: Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead, Carlos Emilio Baez

This is a good movie, for the most part, though its subject matter and director obviously make it a tough pill for Hollywood to swallow. Still, The Passion of the Christ got Oscar nominations and so did this film. Winning anything is a different story altogether, and the presence of Pan's Labyrinth in the makeup category means Apocalypto will go home with nothing on Oscar night. That said, the makeup in this film (as in Gibson's last film) is extraordinary and the nomination is well-deserved.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #26 out of 69

UNITED 93

2 Nominations:

Best Director: Paul Greengrass

Best Film Editing

Director: Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, Bloody Sunday, The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, The Theory of Flight)
Cast: David Alan Basche, Cheyenne Jackson, Christian Clemenson, Trish Gates, Khalid Abdalla, Lewis Alsamari, Omar Berdouni, Jamie Harding

These nominations are a big surprise. Critics loved this film, and clearly so did the Academy's director's branch, which is—in general—more discriminating than the body as a whole. But audiences didn't seem to take notice of this movie, despite critical enthusiasm about it. I personally loved the film and it sat at my number one spot for almost the entire year. It's a superbly directed film. I can't wait for Greengrass's next offering: The Bourne Ultimatum.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Film Editing
My Rating: #2 out of 69

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

2 Nominations:

Best Actress: Meryl Streep (Adaptation., Music of the Heart, One True Thing, The Bridges of Madison County, Postcards from the Edge, A Cry in the Dark, Ironweed, Out of Africa, Silkwood, The French Lieutenant's Woman; she has Oscars for Sophie's Choice and Kramer vs. Kramer but hasn't won in 24 years.)

Best Costume Design: Patricia Field

Director: David Frankel (Miami Rhapsody)
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Adrien Grenier, Simon Baker

The Best Actress nomination was a given, but the Best Costume Design nomination is a big surprise. The Academy usually likes to nominate period films and fantasy films in this category. Contemporary costume work usually gets left behind. This bodes well for the future. Streep hasn't won an Oscar since 1983. It is time to hand her another trophy, people! Her work is always stellar, never even slightly sub-par, and it always feels like you never knew her before when she's onscreen.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Costume Design
My Rating: #47 out of 69

Hijackings and Fighting Back

United 93 is the must see movie of the weekend. I saw it tonight and I can say that I found it intensely moving, gripping, totally engrossing and very respectful. There are no movie stars. It's unsentimental. And it's harrowing and terrifying and completely fucking awesome.

I'm not going to talk about it anymore tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

Review: The Bourne Supremacy

Yeah, my boss is an idiot. I could've stayed late to help him out. Nope.
I went to the movies. He called me with a question as the movie started. I pressed "ignore," and I meant it. He wants passwords to the computer. These are passwords he should already have. He shouldn't be bugging on my time off.
We had a computer guy at work setting shit up today. He was actually just fixing some network hookups that Steve fucked up.
Steve let the guy go early, though, because he figured out that I could do everything that was left.
Not that I did any of it. I went to the fucking movies.
My roommate is leaving until Monday. I will be doing some repairs to the condo since he ain't gonna be here.

REVIEW:
The Bourne Supremacy fucking rocked. Anyone who says the camera was hard to follow doesn't watch enough movies. The real problem with the film was the editing. It's too fast in general, but especially in the Munich fight sequence and the Indian car chase. The editing is so fast that you can't get a hold on what's going on. The fight in Munich looked real, too, so it was weird that they chopped it up so bad. It could have looked so much better. Paul Greengrass's work is great; I also really loved Bloody Sunday, but he should have watched Kill Bill: Vol. 1 before he chopped the Munich sequence.
The Bourne Supremacy has the best car chase sequence I have ever seen, bar none. This beats The French Connection, Ronin, The Bourne Identity, The Italian Job (2003), all of them. I promise. The chase is fucking brilliant. My mouth was literally hanging open. It's amazing.
Matt Damon is very cool. Very very cool. But he's not a likeable guy. I think I like him because of guilt. I feel like it's our (America's) fault that he's out there getting shit done to him. And he is cool, but he's not really very nice to anyone. I mean, I wouldn't want to be involved in a relationship with him, or even grab a burger or anything. And forget riding in a car with that guy. I rooted for him and all, but I didn't really like him. (That said, it was kinda cool when he scared the shit out of Julia Stiles's ass.)
The assassin who goes to kill Damon is the hottest guy! And I was trying to figure out where I knew him from until I saw his name: Karl Urban.

What a hottie! He has slimmed down like crazy for The Bourne Supremacy and he looks even hotter than he did in The Two Towers.