For our last episode of 2019, we’re celebrating the career of an Australian superstar Nicole Kidman on the occasion of the release of Bombshell, a media biopic in which she co-stars as former Fox News talking head Gretchen Carlson. Kidman costars alongside Margot Robbie as Kayla Pospisil, Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly, Alice Eve as Ainsley Earhardt, and John Lithgow as Roger Ailes in a narrative examination of the taking […]

This week’s column: on the occasion of Nicole Kidman’s 46th birthday, a list of my favorite performances from her estimable career.

Greetings and welcome back to Raspberry Picking, where we look back at Golden Raspberry Award winners and decide whether they really deserve to be called the worst movies ever. This time, we’re looking at Catwoman, nominee for six Razzies, winner of three (including, of course, Worst Picture), and the widely acknowledged Turd Standard for superhero movies of the 21st century. But first! ‘Twas January of last year when the overlords of Alternate […]

Thanks to Patreon Oscar-level member Jack, we are discussing horror-comedies this month! We’re starting with a big one: Mel Brook’s YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, which Tim loves and Brennan finds completely falls flat. Digressions include a discussion of the love required to make a parody and shocking revelations about Nicole Kidman’s AMC Theaters ad bumper. ******************************************************************* Love the Young Frankenstein episode? Leave us a review! Other places to follow Alternate Ending. Facebook […]

I’m always a sucker for films that tell us early on how we are to approach them, and The Northman – the third feature film directed by Robert Eggers after 2015’s The Witch and 2019’s The Lighthouse, and the one where I’m comfortable declaring in front of all the world that he’s officially my favorite new American filmmaker of the last 10 years – is particularly obliging on that front. […]

We’ve had two massive box hits in the last four months, but more importantly, we’re starting to get modest successes again (I am here thinking mostly of Dog and The Lost City, the latter of which I hope to finally get to very soon) and that, I think, is the best sign we’ve had in two years and one month that theatrical movies are back, mostly. Not in huge numbers […]

Alternate Ending’s chief critic, Tim Brayton, and contributors Brennan Klein and Chris Trengove share their predictions for what will win at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, 27 March. TIM’S PREDICTIONS Jump to Brennan’s predictions | Jump to Chris’s predictions Best Picture Belfast CODA Don’t Look Up Drive My Car Dune King Richard Licorice Pizza Nightmare Alley The Power of the Dog West Side Story Will Win: CODA Should Win: […]

Some folks love the Oscars, and obsessively follow them every year, nomination announcements to award campaigning to treating the grand ceremony like their Super Bowl. On the other hand, some folks hate the Oscars, and think it’s simply Hollywood patting themselves on the back, while largely ignoring both quality big-budget populism and great arthouse cinema in favor of vanilla, middle-of-the-road “crowd-pleasing” formula (AKA Oscarbait). And then there are folks who […]

Tomorrow, 8 February 2022, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces its nominees for the Oscars for the recent shortened year – 1 March through 31 December 2021. Because of the specific ways in which my mind is broken, I’m compelled once again to offer my predictions for the nominees in all 23 categories. And a very big thanks to our new contributors, Mandy Albert and Chris Trengove, […]

It can be to keep it in mind, especially with the memories of the grisly 2020 Oscar-baiting Trial of the Chicago 7 so fresh in memory, but there is in fact something Aaron Sorkin does very well. He’s great at writing a very particular kind of procedural narrative, in which egocentric, talented people involved in some form of communications media are confronted with a series of ultimately fairly petty setbacks […]

Hi Friends! As we emerge from 2020 very scathed, we’re looking forward to new beginnings, on many fronts.  In that vein, we would be ever-so appreciative of your thoughts on Alternate Ending, as we move forward into 2021 with a fresh look at everything we share with you.  We always joke that the benefit of having such a kind community is that we don’t really deal with much of the […]

There’s no real reason that a film adapted from the 2016 stage musical The Prom needs to be as extraordinarily bad as the one that we have now been given by the professional mediocrity vendors at Netflix and gay terrorist Ryan Murphy. I have not seen it nor heard a scrap of the cast recording – it was not a financial success and its critical affection was warm but not […]