The National Board of Review, which is generally considered to be the first major precursors of the Awards Season, announced their picks for the best of 2019 earlier today and it was a good day for both The Irishman and Adam Sandler.
I haven’t seen Uncut Gems yet but, from a historical point of view, I’d love to see Adam Sandler pick up an Oscar nomination because that would seriously be the plot twist that, just a few months ago, no one saw coming.
Here are the National Board of Review’s selections!
Best Film: THE IRISHMAN
Best Director: Quentin Tarantino, ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
Best Actor: Adam Sandler, UNCUT GEMS
Best Actress: Renée Zellweger, JUDY
Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt, ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
Best Supporting Actress: Kathy Bates, RICHARD JEWELL
Best Original Screenplay: Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, Ronald Bronstein, UNCUT GEMS
Best Adapted Screenplay: Steven Zaillian, THE IRISHMAN
Breakthrough Performance: Paul Walter Hauser, RICHARD JEWELL
Best Directorial Debut: Melina Matsoukas, QUEEN & SLIM
Best Animated Feature: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD
Best Foreign Language Film: PARASITE
Best Documentary: MAIDEN
Best Ensemble: KNIVES OUT
Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography: Roger Deakins, 1917
NBR Icon Award: Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino
NBR Freedom of Expression Award: FOR SAMA
NBR Freedom of Expression Award: JUST MERCY
Top Films (in alphabetical order)
1917
Dolemite is My Name
Ford v Ferrari
Jojo Rabbit
Knives Out
Marriage Story
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Richard Jewell
Uncut Gems
Waves
Top 5 Foreign Language Films (in alphabetical order)
Atlantics
Invisible Life
Pain and Glory
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Transit
Top 5 Documentaries (in alphabetical order)
American Factory
Apollo 11
The Black Godfather
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
You would think that I would be super excited about the fact that my favorite MCU character, the Black Widow, is finally getting her own solo film. (That Brie Larson’s anemic Captain Marvel got her solo film before the Black Widow is an injustice that I’ll never get over.) And I guess I am excited. The trailer, which you can watch below, is pretty good. It looks like an attempt to bring some Bourne/007 action to MCU and that would seem like the perfect approach to take to the character.
If I’m less than enthusiastic, it’s because 1) I’m still upset over what happened to the Black Widow in Avengers: Endgame and 2) this film is a prequel as opposed to a sequel. Which means that, despite starring Scarlett Johansson, the film is not going to open with the Natasha coming back to life. (You have to wonder if, with recent events. anyone in the MCU regrets killing off one of their best characters as opposed to letting Jeremy Renner’s archer take the fall.) Florence Pugh, in Black Widow, is playing a character who apparently took over the Black Widow name in the comic books so here’s my fear: the film will feature a mid-credits scene of Florence Pugh at Natasha’s grave, announcing that she’ll carry on her legacy. That’s my fear.
The Annie nominations were announced earlier today. The Annies honor the best in animation and, this year, a lot of attention is being paid to them because the race for Best Animated Feature seems to be wide open. It’s easy to imagine either Toy Story 4 or Frozen II winning the Oscar but it’s also just as easy to imagine a dark horse like Missing Link or maybe Klaus sneaking away with the award.
I’ve seen all of these except for Klaus, which I’ll be watching this sometime this week. Still, if I was guessing, I’d say that these five films will probably also be the eventual nominees for Best Animated Film. As of right now, I’d go with Toy Story 4 for the win but, again, I haven’t watched Klaus yet.
Hey, I hear you, sister. We live in a stressful world. I mean, it’s the holidays. Not only do I have to make sure that all the members of my family have a merry gift-giving season but I also have to make sure that they know exactly what to buy me. On top of that, I’ve got a hundred movies that I still need to see, I’ve got Oscar season to keep up with, and I’ve got to keep this site updated with interesting information. Seriously, I can understand how you can get stressed to death….
Of course, the lead character in the Lifetime film, Stressed to Death, is suffering from maybe a little bit more stress than even I am. Having served in the middle east, Maggie (Gina Holden) has finally returned home and is now working as an EMT. She’s still haunted by flashbacks to one particularly harrowing firefight but she’s determined to get on with her life. She’s got a loving husband, Jason (Jason Gerhardt), and a daughter and a job that allows her to help people. But then, one night, she comes across a robbery taking place in a convenience store. An obviously deranged man has shot one man and is pointing his gun at a pregnant woman. When Maggie enters the store, she explains that she’s just an EMT and she’s here to save lives. She says that she just wants to take the man and the woman out of the store and get them medical attention. The gunman replies that she can only take one of them out of the store and he demands that she choose which one. Maggie chooses to save the pregnant woman. The robber than shoots the man to death.
Ten years later, Maggie is still haunted by that night. Her husband has a good job and they now live in a big house. Her daughter, Jane (Taylor Blackwell), is now a teenager and, while she’s somewhat of an outcast at school, she’s also extremely intelligent and appears to have a great future ahead of her. Maggie thinks that she’s ready to return to work as an EMT but, as her supervisor tells her, PTSD is nothing to take chances with.
Jason’s boss, Victoria (Sarah Aldrich), often complains that Jason isn’t ruthless enough. While Jason always wants to be a nice guy, Victoria insists that Jason should take no prisoners when it comes to making money. As critical as Victoria is, she also says that she appreciates the fact that Jane is tutoring her son. Of course, what neither Jason nor Maggie know is that Victoria is the widow of the man who was murdered in that convenience store. Victoria has waited ten years for vengeance and now, she’s determined to get it….
Stressed to Death starts with an interesting idea but then it eventually becomes a standard Lifetime abduction film, as two hitmen kidnap Jane and Maggie tries to rescue her daughter. The PTSD angle is never explored as much as the film’s title might lead you to expect. I mean, yes, Maggie is stressed but I imagine that even someone who has never served in the military would be equally stressed if their daughter was kidnapped by two hired killers. That said, Gina Holden did a good job in the role of Maggie and I liked that the character of Jane wasn’t just another typically perfect daughter. Instead, she was kind of quirky and easy to root for. As played by Sarah Aldrich, Victoria was an interesting villain. Though her plans were evil, you could sympathize with her pain and that’s an important thing. She wasn’t just a cardboard evil person. Instead, she was someone who was suffering just as much Maggie, Jason, and Jane.
It’s hard not to feel that Stressed to Death missed a few opportunities but it was still a diverting Lifetime film.
In a Lifetime film, the value of social media often depends on what time of year the film is taking place.
If it’s a Christmas film, social media is an amazingly helpful tool that helps single young women meet handsome carpenters and which also allows them to keep tabs on whether or not their hometown is going to be able to afford to put on the annual nativity pageant. Want to find the perfect Santa Claus? Well, just hop on Facebook and look up Kris Kringle! Want to discover that, because of a snow storm, you’re going to have to spend the Holidays in a Christmas-themed inn? Just check on twitter!
Of course, any other time of year, social media is portrayed as being the tool of the Devil. Social media is how con artists steal identities and how psychotic children track down their birth mothers. Social media is how lies are spread and how revenge porn pics are sent to everyone on Sunday morning and how stalkers can keep track of your every move. With the exception of the films that air during Christmas, Lifetime spends most of the year telling us that we all need to get off the grid and consider learning more about the Luddites. Perhaps we should all go to a religious retreat in the French wine country. That’s something that my sister Erin and I have often discussed doing. I don’t drink wine but I do speak French. She doesn’t speak French but she does drink wine. A year living offline, we’d make it work and, by the standards of Lifetime, we would both be a lot safer.
Take Instakiller, for instance. Harper (Lizze Broadway) is an aspiring fashion designer and influencer and her account on …. wait for it …. Instapixer (!) has suddenly become very popular. (One thing that I always enjoy about these Lifetime films is seeing the names that they come up with for the movie’s version of real-life social media companies. Degrassi featured two of my favorites, Facerange and MyRoom.) Unfortunately, Harper also has a stalker. He sends her creepy messages. He follows her as she walks home from school and takes pictures. (When confronted by a bystander, he smashes the man’s face into a car hood.) When Harper’s mom, Layla (Kelly Sullivan), forces Harper to delete her account, the stalker sits in his car and screams. Soon, the stalker is attacking people with golf clubs and strangling them with jumper cables.
Who is Harper’s stalker? Could it be one of the customers at her family’s coffee shop? Could it be one of Harper’s coworkers or even one of her friends? There’s one obvious suspect but he’s so obvious that you know from the minute he shows that he’s going to turn out to be geeky but not dangerous. To be honest, the identity of Harper’s stalker is not that shocking, just because there aren’t that many suspects. Once you dismiss all of the obvious red herrings, there’s really only one possible suspect left.
But no matter! Instakiller is an entertaining Lifetime film, which is to say that if you enjoy Lifetime films, you’ll probably enjoy this one. Kelly Sullivan and Lizze Broadway are believable as mother-and-daughter and I imagine that a lot of moms will watch this movie and find themselves totally relating to Sullivan’s character and her confusion as to why Harper is willing to put her life in danger just to have an Instapixer account. Seriously, though, once you hit a thousand followers, the risks are totally worth it….
What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If you were having trouble getting to sleep at one in the morning, you could have turned over to TCM and watched the TCM Underground premiere of a low-budget oddity that was first released in 1976, The Pyramid.
The Pyramid is a collection of disjointed scenes, some of which are unsettling, some of which are rather amateurish, and some of which are oddly poignant. It’s perhaps as strange a film as a film about hippies in Dallas could be. The film opens in North Dallas, with a disturbing scene of an old man having a heart attack while driving his car and crashing into a school bus. (As far as school bus crashes go, it was almost as disturbing as the one that would later open Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue.) Two reporters show up to cover the carnage — supercool L.A. Ray (Ira Hawkins) and his cameraman, Chris Lowe (C.B. Brown). In the style of Medium Cool, they’re both detached from the tragedy and the carnage around them.
The film moves on from the school bus crash, which is never again mentioned once L.A. and Chris file their story. We get a series of scenes that may or may not be connected. L.A. argues with a woman who might be his wife. Chris wanders around Dallas and tries to film people talking about their lives. At one point, Chris and L.A. drive through Dealey Plaza and Chris stares back at the Book Depository Building. At a party, Chris tells a random woman that both Jesus and Richard Nixon were Capricorns. L.A. and Chris smoke weed while driving around. Later, they take part in a slow motion flag football game with a group of hippies. An old man in a steam room suggests that everyone should imagine being dead.
Chris and L.A. stumble across a shoot out involving the police. A young black man is gunned down by the cops. L.A. spends several minutes loudly vomiting. They go to an abandoned church that is sitting in the middle of the countryside and talk to an old man who says that he’s had religious visions. Back at the station, Chris’s boss accuses Chris of shooting out-of-focus footage and accuses him of being pretentious. Chris is fired.
L.A. disappears from the film for a while as Chris wanders around with his camera. Chris interviews a hog farmer who is worried that he’s going to lose his hogs. He covers a vacuous fashion show in the backyard of a Highland Park mansion. In Oak Cliff, he stops to stare at a rooster. (For the record, the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas is famous for its roosters.)
Chris meets a “confrontational therapist” named Merleen (Tomi Barrett). Merleen screams at a middle-aged man until the man starts screaming back, his entire body shaking as if he’s become possessed. Chris meets with his friend Bubba and asks if this is the way that we want the world to be. People gather underneath a makeshift pyramid. An astronaut is interviewed about conducting ESP experiments in space. The real-life suicide of newswoman Christine Chubbuck is crudely recreated and then not mentioned again. The entire cast appears gathered around a pyramid and starts to sing. Meanwhile, the sun rises over the Dallas skyline….
The Dallas skyline and the sun rising over it is a sight that’s often seen in this film. As a Dallas native, I enjoyed that part of The Pyramid. Even though the film was made long before I was even born, I still saw plenty of familiar sights in The Pyramid. It’s rare that I get to watch a movie and yell out, “Hey, I’ve driven through that tunnel!” That part of the movie was fun.
The Pyramid was an odd film. Just from my own research, I discovered that The Pyramid was filmed over the course of at least two years. If nothing else, this confirmed one of my main suspicions about the film. Though production on the film started in either 1972 or 1973, it still features a recreation of Christine Chubbuck’s 1974 suicide. That would seem to suggest that the film itself was kind of “made up” as things went along. (It also potentially explains why the suicide is never again mentioned after it rather abruptly happens.) That certainly explains why the film is such an episodic and disjointed experience.
What’s the film really about? Your guess is as good as mine. In many ways, it feels like a Texas version of Medium Cool but it’s also obvious that the filmmaker’s had grander goals in mind than just paying homage to Haskell Wexler’s classic portrait of alienation. As you can tell by looking at the advertisement at the bottom of this review, The Pyramid was advertised as being “a positive mystical experience.” The ad also states that “For this engagement, the theaters have been energized with pyramid power.” The film suggests that we’re all connected to each other and that we need to seek out and embrace the positive, lest we become so consumed by all the negative and hate that we end up like Christine Chubbuck. It’s a message that’s both naive and kind of sweet. Whatever else can be said about this movie, it can’t be faulted for a lack of sincerity.
The Pyramid‘s a mess but I kind of liked it. Of course, I have a weakness for low-budget passion projects. Whatever flaws this film may have (and it has many), it’s obvious the someone really felt that they had something important to say with this film. It’s not necessary to agree with the film’s conclusion to respect director Gary Kent’s commitment to bringing to life his own vision. That said, it bears repeating that The Pyramid is definitely a flawed film. The acting is frequently amateurish. The sound quality is far from perfect. The narrative momentum starts to seriously drag during the 2nd half of the film. But it has its strengths too. The shots of the Dallas skyline are impressive and there are a few cinema verite sequences that are interesting from a historical point of view. (This film basically is a time capsule of the early 70s.) In the end, it stays true to its own bizarre vision and there’s definitely something to be said for that.
Y’know, I could write up a thousand words or so about this trailer but let’s be honest. That’s not why you clicked on this link. You want to watch the damn trailer and I don’t blame you! Here it is:
Anyway, I’m not going to pretend that I really understand every single thing that’s excited everyone else about this trailer. I mean, it looks like an entertaining movie and Adam Driver looks really good as Kylo Ren but, as I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not really a huge Star Wars person. That said, this looks like it’ll have some exciting moments and I’m looking forward to seeing it. I’m not looking forward to all the twitter debates about whether or not the film is actually good or not but that’s just a part of life.
The Hollywood Critics Association was, up until a few days ago, known as the Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society. Perhaps realizing that HCA just plans looks better than LAOFCS, they announced yesterday that they were changing their name.
They also announced their nominees for the best of films and performances of 2019! While the HCA may not be one of the major precursors of awards season, their nominations do give a fairly good picture of which films and performances are currently being touted as possible Oscar nominees.
And here they are:
BEST PICTURE
“1917”
“Booksmart”
“The Farewell”
“The Irishman”
“Joker”
“Jojo Rabbit”
“Parasite”
“Marriage Story”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
“Waves
BEST ACTOR
Adam Driver, “Marriage Story”
Eddie Murphy, “Dolemite Is My Name”
Joaquin Phoenix, “Joker”
Leonardo DiCaprio, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
“Taron Egerton, “Rocketman”
BEST ACTRESS
Awkwafina, “The Farewell”
“Charlize Theron, “Bombshell”
Lupita Nyong’o, “Us”
Renée Zellweger, “Judy”
Scarlett Johansson, “Marriage Story”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Brad Pitt, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Joe Pesci, “The Irishman”
Shia LaBeouf, “Honey Boy”
Sterling K. Brown, “Waves”
Tom Hanks, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Jennifer Lopez, “Hustlers”
Laura Dern, “Marriage Story”
Margot Robbie, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Taylor Russell, “Waves”
Zhao Shuzhen, “The Farewell”
BEST MALE DIRECTOR
Bong Joon-ho, “Parasite”
Martin Scorsese, “The Irishman”
Noah Baumbach, “Marriage Story”
Quentin Tarantino, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Taika Waititi, “Jojo Rabbit”
BEST FEMALE DIRECTOR
Alma Har’el, “Honey Boy”
Greta Gerwig, “Little Women”
Lorene Scafaria, “Hustlers”
Lulu Wang, “The Farewell”
Olivia Wilde, “Booksmart”
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Bong Joon-ho & Han Jin-won, “Parasite”
Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, & Katie Silberman, “Booksmart”
Lulu Wang, “The Farewell”
Noah Baumbach, “Marriage Story”
Rian Johnson, “Knives Out”
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Anthony McCarten, “The Two Popes”
Lorene Scafaria, “Hustlers”
Scott Silver and Todd Phillips, “Joker”
Steven Zailian, “The Irishman”
Taika Waititi, “Jojo Rabbit”
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR OR ACTRESS 23 AND UNDER
Kaitlyn Dever, “Booksmart”
Julia Butters, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Noah Jupe, “Honey Boy”
Roman Griffin Davis, “Jojo Rabbit”
Thomasin McKenzie, “Jojo Rabbit”
BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE
Jessie Buckley, “Wild Rose”
Kelvin Harrison Jr., “Waves”
Paul Walter Hauser, “Richard Jewell”
Taylor Russell, “Waves”
Zack Gottsagen, “The Peanut Butter Falcon”
BEST CAST
“Avengers: Endgame”
“The Irishman”
“Knives Out”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
“Waves”
BEST FIRST FEATURE
“Brittany Runs a Marathon”
“Booksmart”
“Honey Boy”
“The Peanut Butter Falcon”
“Queen & Slim”
BEST INDEPENDENT FILM
“Booksmart”
“The Farewell”
“Honey Boy”
“Luce”
“Waves”
BEST ACTION/WAR FILM
“1917”
“Avengers: Endgame”
“Captain Marvel”
“Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw”
“John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum”
BEST ANIMATED FILM
“Abominable”
“Frozen II”
“How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World”
“Missing Link”
“Toy Story 4”
BEST BLOCKBUSTER
“Avengers: Endgame”
“Captain Marvel”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
“Shazam!”
“Spider-Man: Far from Home”
BEST COMEDY/MUSICAL
“Booksmart”
“Blinded by the Light”
Dolemite Is My Name”
“Long Shot”
“Rocketman”
BEST DOCUMENTARY
“American Factory”
“Apollo 11”
“Hail Satan?”
“The Kingmaker”
“Love, Antosha”
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
“The Farewell”
“Monos”
“Pain & Glory”
“Parasite”
“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”
BEST HORROR FILM
“Crawl”
“Doctor Sleep”
“Midsommar”
“Ready or Not”
“Us”
BEST ANIMATED OR VFX PERFORMANCE
Josh Brolin, “Avengers: Endgame”
Robert De Niro, “The Irishman”
Rosa Salazar, “Alita: Battle Angel”
Ryan Reynolds, “Detective Pikachu”
Tom Hanks, “Toy Story 4”
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Drew Daniel, “Waves”
Jarin Blaschke, “The Lighthouse”
Lawrence Sher, “Joker”
Robert Richardson, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Roger Deakins, “1917”
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Arianne Phillips, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Julian Day, “Rocketman”
Jacqueline Durran, “Little Women”
Ruth E. Carter, “Dolemite Is My Name”
Mark Bridges, “Joker”
BEST EDITING
Fred Raskin, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Lee Smith, “1917”
Michael McCusker, “Ford v Ferrari”
Thelma Schoonmaker, ‘The Irishman”
Yang Jin-mo, “Parasite”
BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP
“Bombshell”
“Joker”
“Judy”
“Rocketman”
“The Irishman”
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
“Catchy Song” from “The Lego Movie: The Second Part”
I mean, seriously, do you understand what I mean? Sometimes, you just see a film that leaves you feeling so indifferent that it’s a struggle to even think of anything to say about it. That’s the way I feel about The Kitchen, which is neither bad enough to hatewatch nor good enough to recommend. It’s a mediocre film, one that would be totally forgettable if not for a few remarkably inept choices made by the director and the cast.
Melissa McCarthy is Kathy Brennan. Tiffany Haddish is Ruby O’Connell. Elisabeth Moss is Claire Walsh. The year is 1978 and all three of them live in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York. All three of them are also married to men who are involved with the Irish Mob. When their husbands all get busted by the FBI and the new mob boss refuses to help the three women pay the bills, they team up and take over the neighborhood themselves. With the help of their number one enforcer, Gabriel O’Malley (Domhnall Gleeson), the women prove that they can be even more ruthless than their husbands and their competitors.
And really, this should have been fun. I’m all about girl power and I’m half-Irish. If I was going to join the mob, I would definitely join the Irish Mob. But, seriously, The Kitchen is not just a mess but it’s a dreadfully heavy-handed mess as well. I knew that this film was going to suck as soon as James Brown started singing, “This is a man’s world,” over the opening credits because it was just such an obvious choice to go with. To me, picking the song showed that the filmmakers weren’t really interested in giving too much thought to what the film was about. Instead, they just said, “Hey, that’s a really on-the-nose choice! Let’s go with it!” About an hour later, Clare and Gabriel were making love while Carry On My Wayward Son blasted on the soundtrack and I found myself wondering if this film’s soundtrack was put together by listening to a random classic rock station and just jotting down the names of the first ten songs that were played.
Adding to the disappointing atmosphere of the film is a talented cast, everyone of whom appears to be acting in a different movie from everyone else. Melissa McCarthy, for instance, gets all of the dramatic scenes but gives a comedic performance, one that feels like it’s been assembled from outtakes of the “awkward humor” bits of Ghostbusters. Tiffany Haddish is ruthless but it’s a very one-note type of ruthlessness. It gets boring after a while. Elisabeth Moss gives the best performance out of the three but her character often seems to be pushed to the side. Once Claire starts threatening to shoot people, you can tell that the film doesn’t know what to do with her.
You also have to feel bad for the supporting cast, all of whom deserve better than this film. Annabella Sciorra plays a Mafia wife who walks up to the women in the middle of the street and tells them that they’re just like Gloria Steinem and, when she shows up, you can’t help but think that Sciorra would have been a better pick for the role of Kathy than Melissa McCarthy. Then Common shows up as an FBI agent because, for some reason, Common always plays a member of law enforcement in films like this. Margo Matindale gets a few good scenes as an Irish mafia matriarch but her character disappears from the film far too quickly.
It’s a mess of a film. Kathy, Ruby, and Claire’s rise to power happens too abruptly to be credible and none of the subsequent betrayals make much sense. Appropriately, for a gangster film, it’s violent but the violence is so repetitive that it gets a little bit dull after a while. None of the characters are really memorable enough for their subsequent deaths to generate much of a reaction. An hour into the film, you just find yourself thinking, “Oh, hey, that dude’s dead now. Yay, I guess.” Much like Captain Marvel, The Kitchen often seems to only be interested in girl power as a way to disguise the fact that the script kind of sucks. I kept waiting for one of the male gangsters to shout, “The ancient prophecy said that I will be defeated by no man!,” just so Melissa McCarthy could respond, “Yes …. by no man!” It didn’t happen but maybe they’ll get around to it in the sequel.
Through the Shattered Lens 