Oscar Nominations 2024: 10 of 11

And now for the remaining three movies nominated for visual effects:

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

1 nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Wes Ball

Cast: Owen Teague, Freya Allen, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, William H. Macy, Eka Darville, Travis Jeffery, Lydia Peckham

This was pretty strong. It had lots of good surprises and the main character is great. But act two is kinda boring, I’m afraid, and I frequently felt ahead of our protagonist, Noa. Still, I had lots of fun, there was much good action, and the visual effects were very good. I am ok with them continuing to nominate the Planet of the Apes movies in this category—even if they don't win. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was nominated in 2012, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2015, and War for the Planet of the Apes in 2018. This movie doesn't really live up to the greatness of those three movies, but they were really good, so I can't be too mad. This had a lot to live up to, and if the pacing of Kingdom wasn't quite great, the effects were still absolutely top notch.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #57 out of 99

Alien: Romulus

1 nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Fede Álvarez

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Aileen Wu, Spike Fearn, Robert Bobroczkyi, and a CGI version of Ian Holm voiced by Daniel Betts

I am not really into this kind of movie, but this works. It’s just so fucking gross. I know that's part of the appeal of this kind of horror—the fluids and the sheer disgust of it all—and I guess it's not for me. I also find the Alien universe’s interest in babies and pregnancy to be really nasty, as well. Like, as soon as one of the cast of characters in this film (played entirely by models, apparently) told us she was preggers I thought uh oh here we go: it’s Alien: Prometheus all over again. This movie’s third act is pretty great though. I was enjoying myself a lot... while also screaming about how nasty everything was. I felt gross for hours afterward. This is why I don’t watch stuff like this. Yuck. In other words, Alien: Romulus does what it promises it will do.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #73 out of 99

Better Man

1 nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Michael Gracey

Cast: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Raechelle Banno, Kate Mulvaney, Frazer Hadfield, Damon Herriman, Jake Simmance, Alison Steadman

This movie is a conventional musical biopic that is made insanely, amazingly unconventional—to the point of being deranged—by the fact that Robbie Williams, the musician in question, is portrayed for the entire length of the film as a chimpanzee. He is a very realistic looking chimpanzee, too! The effects are great. The musical numbers here are really the highlight, though. Gracey had a movie musical hit with The Greatest Showman, and this is just as much of a musical. “Rock DJ” is insanely good; it's a total blast. “She’s the One” is excellent too. In fact, the whole thing really works. The reason I didn't love this movie is that Better Man's plot is just so conventional. You've seen this story a hundred times. And this makes its overly long running time—140 minutes—very silly indeed. For me, the chimpanzee gimmick really doesn't run out of steam; it keeps working for the entirety of the movie's length. But the story the movie has to tell is not nearly as cool as the style in which it is told, and for the last twenty minutes of this film, I was impatient for it to end..

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #63 out of 99

More 2024 posts:

1. Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

3. The Substance, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu

4. I'm Still Here, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot

5. Nickel Boys, The Apprentice, A Real Pain

6. Flow, September 5, Maria

7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Girl with the Needle, Gladiator II

8. Inside Out 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail

9. Animated Short Films

11. A Different Man, Elton John: Never Too Late, The Six Triple Eight

Bryan Breaks Down The Martian's Golden Globe Win

Bryan: Bigger miscarriage of justice: Steve Avery or The Martian winning best comedy? Ok, maybe that was too soon.
Aaron: Haha. Too soon?? Too flippant, maybe, but I don't mind. Fuck The Martian. But the Golden Globes are so stupid anyway.
Bryan: Seriously.
Aaron: They're just a bunch of starfuckers. Is The Martian even a comedy? Shut the fuck up.
Bryan: But doesn't this mean The Martian basically has to get a Best Picture nod? ... I fear for this nation.
Aaron: No it does not. I mean, it might anyway, but I don't think it's a sure thing at all. This is a very odd year. But The Martian is not showing up a lot with the guilds. I honestly think Sicario has a better shot at Best Picture than The Martian.

Bryan: I'm for The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials over The Martian.
Aaron: Hahaha. I don't think I am. But I would vote for Insurgent over The Martian.
Bryan: I would definitely be for Maze Runner 1 over The Martian; that's not even a question.
Aaron: I love Maze Runner 1. But Maze Runner 2 is kinda dumb. Zombies??
Bryan: Yeah.... but I really wanted to see how those characters developed.
Aaron: Which? Are we still talking about The Maze Runner? This is the longest any two adult males have ever talked about The Maze Runner.
Bryan: True – Did you notice the dude spinning poi in The Maze Runner 1? Festival aesthetics. Just sayin'.
Aaron: Totally. Maze Runner 1 was great. That hybrid-robot-brain thing was the tits.
Bryan: The main dude was really enthralling when he ran too.

Aaron: Seriously. I love a film with running people. This is why I like those Divergent movies too. Just keep running, small children!
Bryan: Watch it again. He's really good at looking back with intensity as shit explodes behind him without breaking stride.
Aaron: Hahaha. I don't believe I'll be watching it again. Anyway, there's a third film on its way: I'll watch that.

Bryan: I did see a play once, and I'd read the play, and the play was stupid. But when they staged it – this stupid existential dialogue – they just had two main characters running around in a circle the whole time... and it was in a group of one-acts that were all existential dialogues. But the fact that they were running really made that one stand out. I see an essay: "The Hustling Body in Performance".
Aaron: THE HUSTLING BODY! I love it. Did you actually see #2?
Bryan: Yeah, haha. I actually watched it last night

Aaron: I think the whole Haha! What you didn't know is: This was a test too! thing is out of control. But I liked Giancarlo Esposito.
Bryan: Oh for sure... he was great. I think they should have been put in another maze in 2 – like in Taken 2, where the premise is literally the same as Taken. Or Hunger Games. 
Aaron: I know! I needed them to be in a new maze too. Instead there was that pseudo-maze sideways-building thing. Which was not a maze.
Bryan: They could have done more with the sideways building. Did they have to pay a royalty to Inception?
Aaron: Haha.
Bryan: At least the art director.

 Run, Dylan O'Brien! Just. Keep. Running.

The Scorch Trials

This movie is not about another test that the children go through, thankfully. So the "trials" in the title are not really trials at all. Thankfully. But this film, like the film before it, is filled with these sort of absurd peripities where we think we're watching something real and then it turns out that it is all being plotted by someone behind the curtain. This got extremely tiresome in the first Maze Runner, and it continues to be tiresome in The Scorch Trials.

This movie is fairly asinine, and I was annoyed through most of it. (This one, by the way, is about zombies, which replace the first movie's cool spider-robot-brain creatures. Oh well.)

In fact, there isn't much that can be said to redeem The Scorch Trials except that I was glad that Giancarlo Esposito had a nice meaty role that let him show off his abilities. Otherwise, this is utter silliness, although I continue to enjoy these films where twentysomethings playing teenagers run as quickly as they can from things that are chasing them. See: Insurgent.

The Maze Runner

I was into The Maze Runner for most of its running time.

The moment it tries to explain why the maze exists, why whomever is in charge is actually murdering many, many children, this film totally goes off the rails and loses any semblance of credibility.

But none of that really mattered to me while watching. The movie is about a this cute young man (Dylan O'Brien) who runs really fast and doesn't listen to any of the garbage that his society feeds him. He does things his own way.

The trick of The Maze Runner is to create a series of metaphors for consciousness. The boys (a whole bunch of racially diverse but not linguistically diverse young men most of whom look to be about 21) all live in the middle of this maze and according to the rules of the boys' society, they don't really ask questions about this. They just "do their duty" or something (I wasn't really listening.)

Outside of where they live ("the grove", they call it) is a giant maze, with enormous cyborg spider-creatures. And there's also another way the maze can kill them – there's some kind of weird poison that the spider cyborgs sting them with, but there are other ways of administering this poison that I didn't fully understand, as well.

Into this maze throw a young, eager, white boy who wants to know what is beyond. He "doesn't want to live like this". He knows "there's more out there for us". He doesn't follow the rules. And he's also not afraid. In short, he is totally badass and he's gonna get them out of this maze.

How is his hair always coiffed?
Where does he get the product?

The grove inside of the maze is a metaphor, right? For our own culture and the way that we accept the norms and mores of our society. We should all be like the little maze runner, and do what we feel is right, bucking tradition and rejecting what we understand as our own level of consciousness in favor of feelings that we have about how society really ought to work.

The maze, of course, is rusty metal and stone and filled with cyborg spiders. There are all sorts of terrifying ways it could kill a young twentysomething. But once they all get out of the maze, we are told that it was all a test, a trick. Whoever is in charge – big government? scientists? – was just testing the young men.

This means there is A) more to come (sequel!) and B) all of this is a metaphor for yet another level of consciousness. The explanations this movie offers at the end are basically more dei ex machina. We aren't going to make sense of this movie for you viewers out there, but we will be sure to tell you that we haven't told you all of the things that we the filmmakers know. Come back for the sequel and we promise to tell you more things! As for this being a metaphor for yet another level of cultural conditioning, the maze runner breaks through one thing that he understands, rejecting the culture of the boys at the center of the maze, but then there is the culture outside the maze – the science and testing and whatever will happen in the sequel. So far even the maze runner seems to believe that this is "real". But he is a badass and a rebel, so I'm sure he'll figure out, like Michel Foucault, that there is no outside of biopower or, like Guy Debord, that this is all the spectacle.

I am being really sarcastic, I know, but this is a really bad movie.

Yet... it is not without its pleasures. The movie is good and scary at points, and all of the attractive young people are doing their best with the bad dialogue on their lips and the green screens behind them. It moves quickly, and it isn't too sentimental. It is also almost pure action – no pining away for younger sisters whom one has left behind, no falling in love, no sad parents. It's asinine, but I kinda liked it.