Discovering good movies, one bad movie at a time

Greetings, AE-lien life forms! Last week I had the pleasure of sitting down virtually with some of the cast and crew of The Orville: New Horizons. Please enjoy our conversations and remember to check out the show, which premieres exclusively on Hulu on June 2. The Orville: New Horizons follows the crew of the eponymous ship, led by Captain Ed Mercer (show creator Seth MacFarlane) along their mission of exploration […]

Kirsten Johnson’s 2016 feature-length documentary Cameraperson is one of the great non-fiction films of the last decade, a personal memoir that doubles as an inquiry into the “meaning” produced by the photographic moving image. For a while, it seems like her follow-up, Dick Johnson Is Dead, will end up splashing in similar thematic waters, as Johnson interrogates what it means to stage fictional versions of a non-fictional event, and whether […]

I’m in a state of perpetual, complete mental exhaustion – you have perhaps noticed the “once a fortnight” review-posting schedule – but not so much that I couldn’t participate in the most ridiculous of all film nerd rituals: predicting what will win Oscars on Sunday, 12 March. This is, across the board, the hardest year to predict that I can remember, with three of the four acting categories feeling almost […]

The 2019 anti-mystery Knives Out has a game cast and an interestingly annoying structural conceit, buried (but not very deeply!) below some very dumb social satire and “extremely online” cultural touchstones. It is very much a “fix this one thing, and you’ve really got something here” proposition, but unfortunately, it was written and directed by Rian Johnson, who is plainly gripped by the misguided belief that he has something smart […]

Jump to: Tim’s Predictions | Rob’s Predictions | Carrie’s Predictions TIM’S PREDICTIONS BEST PICTURE 1917 Ford v Ferrari The Irishman Jojo Rabbit Joker Little Women Marriage Story Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood Parasite Will win: 1917 Should win: Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood Should have been here: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood This category has been skewing more and more towards nice character stories in recent years, […]

If you’re into dark alternate origin stories, you might be pretty psyched to see Todd Phillips’ Joker with the most 2020 Oscar nominations at 11 nods including best picture, best director, and best actor. You’ll also see some love for a few of my favorites, Little Women and Jojo Rabbit, along with Marriage Story, The Irishman, Parasite, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and more. Scarlett Johansson in particular had […]

The Oscar nominations are upon us, and I would hate myself if I didn’t register my official predictions for what I expect to be nominated on the morning of Monday, 13 January. PICTURE 1917 The Irishman Jojo Rabbit Joker Little Women Marriage Story Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood Parasite I am formally predicting only the above eight films. If there is a ninth nominee, I expect it to be: […]

There’s been a lot of speculation by fans of a certain scene in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker where Finn desperately tries to tell Rey something before he [SPOILERS!] thinks he’s doing to die sinking into some kind of quicksand. But we never actually find out what he intended to tell her. I found out exactly what Finn wanted to tell Rey… In the scene where Rey, Finn, Poe, […]

To talk about Knives Out in any remotely sensible way, I’m going to have to tell you something that happens about one-quarter of the way through the 130-minute movie. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem at all – the convention I have always followed is that spoilers are things that happen in the second half of the film, and anything before that is just set-up – but there’s been a […]

Classic whodunits have been a mainstay of our crime-loving hearts for decades (nay, a century!), and joining the ranks of some of our faves (Murder on the Orient Express, Clue, Memento, Vertigo, and more), comes Rian Johnson’s Knives Out. With a throwback mystery aesthetic and a jam-packed cast of favorites, this murder mystery is a definite thinker. So what happend in the plot of Knives Out and how do all […]

Hey everybody, movies are coming back! In three of the last four months, there have been fewer than 10 wide releases in North America, and while August had a whole lot, nearly all of them were the kind of underperformers that get quietly dumped and make no money. Ah, but in November, we have no fewer than 17 movies to think about, plus the first big wave of Oscar hopefuls. […]

There’s nothing too sensitive in here, spoiler-wise, but there’s not nothing. I will try to warn you any time I talk about that occurs after the first 20 minutes or so. The obvious praise first: Star Wars: The Last Jedi swings for the fences, and of course that’s something to be grateful for. Particularly for a film that costs this much; particularly for a film made by such a challenge-averse […]