Film Review: A Dog’s Way Home (dir by Charles Martin Smith)

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’ll admit it right now. I’ve never really been a dog person.

That’s the way it’s been my entire life. According to my sisters, I was bitten by a dog when I was two years old. Needless to say, I don’t remember that happening but that still might explain why, when I was growing up, I was scared to death of dogs. Seriously, if I was outside and I heard a dog barking or if I saw a dog running around loose (or even on a leash), I would immediately start shaking. It didn’t help that, for some reason, I always seemed to run into the big dogs that wanted to jump and slobber all over me. (“Don’t be scared,” one dog owner shouted at 10 year-old me, “that’ll just make him more wild,” as if it was somehow my responsibility to keep his dog under control.)

As I grew up, I become less scared of dogs but they still definitely make me nervous. I still cringe when listening to the barking and I still reflexively step back whenever I see a big dog anywhere near me. Now that I know more about dogs, I have to admit that I feel a little bit guilty about not liking them more. Knowing that dogs actually blame themselves for me not liking them is kind of heart-breaking and I have been making more of an effort to be, if nothing else, at least polite to the canines who lives in the neighborhood. That said, I’m a cat person and I’ll always be cat person. Cats don’t care if you like them or not nor do they blame themselves if you’re in a bad mood, which is lot less of an emotional responsibility to deal with.

With all that in mind, I have to say that I still enjoyed A Dog’s Way Home. It’s a family film that was released last January, dealing with an adorable dog named Bella. Bella (whose thoughts are heard courtesy of a Bryce Dallas Howard voice-over) is raised underneath an abandoned building by a cat. (“Mother cat!” Bella shouts as the audiences goes, “Awwwwwww!”) When the building is demolished by an unscrupulous businessman, Bella is adopted by Lucas (Jonah Hauer-King). Lucas works at the VA and Bella is soon a hit with everyone from the patients to Lucas’s mom (Ashley Judd). In fact, the only people who don’t love Bella are the corrupt animal control people. They not only declare Bella to be a pit bull but they also say that it’s illegal for her to live in Denver.

In order to keep the city of Denver from putting Bella down, Lucas and his mom make plans to move to a suburb. However, until they can move, they arrange for Bella to stay at friend’s house, 400 miles away. Bella doesn’t understand what’s happening. She just wants to get back home to Lucas. And, when she hears someone utter the words “go home,” this leads to Bella attempting to do just that. Escaping from her temporary home, Bella spends the next two years making her way to her real home.

Along the way, of course, Bella has adventures. For instance, she discovers that humans really suck sometimes. When a cougar is killed by hunters, Bella adopts and raises the cougar’s child. (Bella calls her “Little Kitten” and then, after a few months pass, “Big Kitten.”) She also discovers that sometimes, humans can be okay, like when she’s temporarily adopted by a couple who love her but who just aren’t Lucas. And, when she’s temporarily the property of a homeless man, Bella learns about the comfort that a pet can bring to someone in need….

There’s nothing surprising about the film but it’s well-done and, like Bella itself, blessed with a genuinely sweet nature. (I started crying about five minutes into the film and I teared up several times afterwards.) Though the corrupt animal control officers seem like they stepped out of a bad Disney film from the 60s, the rest of the cast does a pretty good job of bringing some needed sincerity to even the most sentimental of scenes and it’s impossible not to be touched by Bella’s determination to return to Lucas. It’s a sweet movie, one that can be enjoyed even by someone who isn’t much of a dog person.

Film Review: The Curse of La Llorona (dir by Michael Chaves)

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Curse of La Llorona is a boring film about a scary legend.

The legend of La Llorona is a well-known one in Mexico and the southwestern half of the United States. It’s a story that I was told by both my mom and my aunts and, as a result, I never went off with a stranger while I was growing up. Of course, I also had some pretty intense nightmares but that’s kind of the point. If someone tells you the story of La Llorona and you don’t end up having a nightmare about being drowned by a weeping woman, they didn’t tell the story correctly.

La Llorona was originally named Maria. She lived, in a rural village, with her family and she was famous for both her beauty and her virtue. When a wealthy nobleman saw her and immediately proposed to her, Maria accepted. However, the nobleman’s father was upset that his son was marrying into a poor family and he refused to accept Maria as his daughter-in-law. Maria and her husband ended up having two sons and living in a house by the river. Maria’s husband doted on their sons but he ignored her and eventually, Maria learned that he was having an affair.

In a fit of blind rage, Maria drowned her children in the river. After realizing what she had done, Maria died of grief. However, when she arrived at the gates of Heaven, she was asked why her children were not with her. When Maria explained that she had lost them, she was told that she would not be allowed to enter Heaven until she found them. Now, known as La Llorona (or “the weeping woman”), she wanders the Earth, crying and looking for her children.

Where does one find La Llorona? It depends on who is telling the story. Some stories say that you’ll only see her near a body of water. My mom used to tell me that La Llorona could be anywhere, including under my bed or in the bedroom closet. Regardless of where you might find her, La Llorona is always wearing her wedding dress and she’s always sobbing. Approach her and she’ll grab you and either kidnap you or drown you, all the while begging for forgiveness. Many have seen La Llorona but few have survived to tell the story.

“And that is why we do not talk to strangers,” my mother would say while I looked out the bedroom window, searching for the sight of La Llorona walking through the Texas night….

Unfortunately, The Curse of La Llorona never comes close to being as scary as the stories that I used to hear when I was growing up. Instead, the film is a standard Conjuring-Insidious-Paranormal Activity type of film, with La Llorona continually popping up out of the shadows to frighten a social worker and widow named Anna Tate-Garcia (Linda Cardellini), and her two children. The film has a few jump scenes but it never creates enough atmosphere to be consistently scary and, even worse, it reduces La Llorona to just being a typically malevolent spirit in a wedding dress. In the end, the film itself doesn’t seem to really understand what La Llorona wants nor does it have a clear idea of what she can or cannot do. As such, the whole movie has a slapdash feel to it that makes it difficult to really maintain any suspense.

Technically, The Curse of La Llorona is a part of the Conjuring Universe. Not only does the film take place in the 70s (which was apparently the decade when all the ghosts and spirits went crazy) but there’s also very brief flashback featuring that ugly Annabelle doll. However, neither Patrick Wilson nor Vera Farmiga puts in an appearance, which is a shame because The Conjuring films really only work because of their chemistry. Instead, Raymond Cruz shows up as an exorcist named Rafael. Cruz gives a likable performance but, again, one gets the feeling that the film wasn’t sure what exactly it wanted to do with him.

Anyway, The Curse of La Llorona is a disappointment. Fortunately, there’s a lot of good and genuinely frightening Mexican horror films about La Llorona. I recommend checking out 2006’s Kilometer 31.

The Weeping Woman (1937, Pablo Picasso)

Film Review: Avengers: Endgame (dir by the Russo Brothers)

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Minor Spoilers Below! Read at your own risk.)

So, how long does the no spoiler rule for Avengers: Endgame apply? There’s so much that I want to say about this film but I know that I shouldn’t because, even though it had a monstrous opening weekend, there are still people out there who have not had a chance to see the film. And while this review will have minor spoilers because, otherwise, it would be impossible to write, I’m not going to share any of the major twists or turns.

I will say this. I saw Avengers: Endgame last night and it left me exhausted, angry, sad, exhilarated, and entertained. It’s a gigantic film, with a plot that’s as messy and incident-filled as the cinematic universe in which it takes place. More than just being a sequel or just the latest installment in one of the biggest franchises in cinematic history, Avengers: Endgame is a monument to the limitless depths of the human imagination. It’s a pop cultural masterpiece, one that will make you laugh and make you cheer and, in the end, make you cry. It’s a comic book film with unexpected emotional depth and an ending that will bring a tear to the eye of even the toughest cynic. By all logic, Avengers: Endgame is the type of film that should collapse under its own weight but instead, it’s a film that thrives on its own epic scope. It’s a three-hour film that’s never less than enthralling. Even more importantly, it’s a gift to all of us who have spent the last ten years exploring the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The film itself starts almost immediately after the “Snap” that ended Avengers: Infinity War and we watch as Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner, returning to the franchise after being absent in the previous film) finds himself powerless to keep his family from disintegrating. After often being dismissed as the Avengers’s weak link, both Clint Barton and Jeremy Renner come into their own in the film. As one of two members of the Avengers who does not have super powers, Clint serves as a everyperson character. He’s a reminder that there’s more at stake in Endgame than just the wounded pride of a few super heroes. When Thanos wiped out half the universe, he didn’t just wipe out Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and Groot. He also left very real wounds that will never be healed.

When the film jumps forward by five yeas, we discover that the world is now a much darker place. When we see New York, the once vibrant city is now gray and deserted. Our surviving heroes have all dealt with the Snap in their own way. Clint is now a vigilante, killing anyone who he feels should have been wiped out by Thanos but wasn’t. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) drinks and eats and feels sorry for himself. Captain America (Chris Evans) attends support groups and, in one nicely done scene, listens as a man talks about his fear of entering into his first real relationship in the years since “the Snap.” Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is living as a recluse and is still blaming himself. Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is now an avuncular, huge, and very green scientist. Only Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) remains convinced that the Snap can somehow be undone. She’s right, of course. But doing so will involve some unexpected sacrifices and a lot of time travel….

And that’s as much as I can tell you, other than to say that the film takes full advantage of both the time travel aspects (yes, there are plenty of Back to the Future jokes) and its high-powered cast. With our heroes — which, along with the usual Avengers, also include Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and Rocket Racoon (Bradley Cooper) — hopping through time and space, we get a chance to revisit several of the films that led up to Endgame and it’s a thousand times more effective than it has any right to be. Yes, one could argue that the cameos from Robert Redford, Tom Hiddleston, Hayley Atwell, and others were essentially fan service but so what? The fans have certainly earned it and the MCU has earned the chance to take a look back at what it once was and what it has since become.

Indeed, Avengers: Endgame would not work as well as it does if it hadn’t been preceded by 21 entertaining and memorable movies. It’s not just that the MCU feels like a universe that it as alive as our own, one that is full of wonder, mystery, sadness, and love. It’s also that we’ve spent ten years getting to know these characters and, as a result, many of them are much more than just “super heroes” to us. When Tony Stark and Captain America argue over whether it’s even worth trying to undo the Snap, it’s an effective scene because we know the long and complicated history of their relationship. When the Avengers mourn, we mourn with them because we know their pain. We’ve shared their triumphs and their failures. Tony Stark may be a guy in an iron suit but he’s also a man struggling with his own demons and guilt. Steve Rogers may be a nearly 100 year-old super solider but he’s also every single person who has struggled to make the world a better place. As strange as it may be to say about characters known as Iron Man, Captain America, and the Black Widow, we feel like we know each and every one of them. We care about them.

Needless to say, the cast is huge and one of the great things about the film is that previously underused or underestimated performers — like Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Rudd, Don Cheadle, and Karen Gillan — all finally get a chance to shine. As always, the heart of the film belongs to Chris Evans while Robert Downey, Jr. provides just enough cynicism to keep things from getting to superficially idealistic. Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo get most of the film’s big laughs, each playing their borderline ludicrous characters with just the right combination of sincerity and humor. Of course, Josh Brolin is back as well and he’s still perfectly evil and arrogant as Thanos. But whereas Thanos was the focus of Infinity War, Endgame focuses on the heroes. If Infinity War acknowledged that evil can triumph, Endgame celebrates the fact that good never surrenders.

As Endgame came to an end, I did find myself wondering what the future is going to hold for the MCU. A part of me wonders how they’re going to top the past ten years or if it’s even possible to do so. Several mainstays of the MCU say goodbye during Endgame and it’s hard to imagine the future films without their presence. It’s been hinted that Captain Marvel is going to be one of the characters holding the next phase of the MCU together and, fortunately, Brie Larson is a quite a bit better in Endgame than she was in her previous MCU film. Hopefully, regardless of what happens in the future, Marvel and Disney will continue to entrust their characters to good directors, like the Russo Brothers, James Gunn, and Taika Waititi. (Wisely, Disney reversed themselves and rehired James Gunn for the next Guardians of the Galaxy film. Of course, Gunn never should have been fired in the first place….)

And that’s really all I can say about Avengers: Endgame right now, other than to recommend that you see it. In fact, everyone in the world needs to hurry up and see it so we can finally start talking about the film without having to post spoiler warnings!

For now, I’ll just say that Avengers: Endgame is a powerful, emotional, and entertaining conclusion to one of the greatest cinematic sagas ever.

Here’s The Trailer for 21 Bridges!

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

To be absolutely honest, the trailer for 21 Bridges looks pretty generic. Everything about it — from the New York setting to the tough dialogue to the casting of J.K. Simmons as some sort of authority figure — looks like what you would expect from an action film in 2019.

Still, the film might be interesting because it features Chadwick Boseman in a role outside of the MCU. Now, of course, Boseman made many non-MCU films before he was cast as the King of Wakanda. He played everyone from Jackie Robinson to James Brown to Thurgood Marshall. Still, for most people, Boseman is best known for playing T’Challa in Black Panther. 21 Bridges will give us a chance to see if the same audience that loved that film will follow Boseman over to a non-Marvel action film.

21 Bridges, which Boseman produced along with the Russo Brothers, will be released on July 12th. The trailer is below!

Film Review: Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (dir by Errol Morris)

Posted on April 24, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 1999 documentary provides a disturbing portrait of an absolute moron.

Of course, when we first see and hear Fred Leuchter, Jr., he doesn’t seem like a moron. He definitely comes across as being a bit eccentric and maybe just a little bit off but, at first sight, he’s actually kind of likable. As he explains it, he grew up in the United States prison system. His father worked in prison administration and one of Fred’s earliest memories was sitting in an electric chair. Fred grew up to be an engineer and, concerned that America’s execution methods were cruel and potentially dangerous to even those who weren’t being executed, he decided to dedicate his life to redesigning electric chairs and gas chambers. He even built his own lethal injection machine, all designed to make sure that the condemned felt as little pain as possible while dying. As Fred explains it, he supports capital punishment but “I don’t support torture.”

Fred Leuchter soon came to be recognized as one of America’s leading experts on execution devices. As he himself admits, that’s largely because he was American’s only expert on the way that people are legally executed. Whereas most people deliberately went out of their way not to learn the specifics of what happens when someone is put to death, Fred made it his life’s purpose. After redesigning an electric chair in Tennessee, Fred was soon being summoned to other states so that he could refurbish and, in many cases, redesign their execution machinery. For the first 30 minutes of the documentary, Fred explains what it’s like to be an expert on executions and it’s hard not to like this nerdy, self-described “humanitarian.” If anything, you spend the first part of this documentary considering the oddness of finding a humane way to execute the condemned. America prides itself on both it’s rejection of cruel and unusual punishment and it’s willingness to put criminals to death. It’s an odd combination and, briefly, Leuchter seems like the embodiment of those two contrasting positions.

This changes during the documentary’s second half. That’s when we learn how, in 1988, Leuchter was hired by a German anti-Semite named Ernst Zundel. Zundel was being tried in Canada, charged with publishing and shipping works of Holocaust denial. For a fee of $30,000, Leuchter spent his honeymoon in Poland, went to Auschwitz, and personally “inspected” the gas chambers. Because Leuchter brought a camera crew with him, his every action was recorded.

We watch as Leuchter and his assistants sneak into the gas chamber and proceed to clumsily start chipping away at the walls. We listen as Leuchter goes on and on about how he doesn’t feel that the gas chamber was actually a gas chamber because it just seems too impractical to him. If they wanted to executed a large group of people at once, why didn’t the Nazis use the gallows? Leuchter wonders. (They did.) Why didn’t the Nazis use firing squads? Leuchter asks. (They did.) Even before Leuchter returns to America, he’s made it clear that his mind is made up. He can’t understand why the Nazis would have done what they did and therefore, in his mind, that means they didn’t do it. After all, Leuchter’s an expert. He’s Mr. Death.

He’s also a moron and, by the time he starts cheerfully talking about all the effort that went into smuggling the wall chips out of Germany, whatever likability he once had has vanished. Watching this film, I found myself wishing for a time machine so that I could go back in the past and throw something at him. You just want him to shut up for a minute and realize that what he’s saying makes no sense. Not that it would make any difference, of course. Leuchter is too proud of himself for having discovered “the truth” to actually consider that he could be wrong.

When Leuchter’s samples are tested for trace amounts of poison gas, they come back negative. Leuchter announces that this means that the Holocaust never happened and he writes up the infamous Leuchter Report, which is still regularly cited as evidence by Neo-Nazi groups and anti-Semitic historians like David Irving. However, as Dutch historian Robert Jan van Pelt explains (and, as we’ve already seen in the video that Leuchter himself shot at Auschwitz), Leuchter not only did not take a big enough sample but he was so clumsy in the way that he transported it that he diluted the sample as well. Even beyond all that, it would be very unusual for cyanide residue to still present after forty years of everyday wear and tear.

None of this matters, of course, to Fred Leuchter. With the publication of the Leuchter Report, he becomes a fixture on the Holocaust denial circuit. (We see an edition of the Leuchter Report that was published and distributed by the Aryan Nations.) Suddenly, Leuchter has fans. In his own sad and pathetic way, he’s become a celebrity and we see him beaming as he stands on the stage of a Neo-Nazi conference. Meanwhile, his wife leaves him. And prisons stop using him as a consultant, especially after they discover that he was never actually licensed to practice engineering. Financially bereft, Leuchter even resorts to trying to sell one of his beloved “execution devices,” putting an ad in the classifieds. (Needless to say, things don’t go well.) Looking over the ruins of his life, who does Leuchter blame for his troubles? “Jewish groups,” he says before then going on to assure us that some of his best friends were and are Jewish. Was Leuchter always an anti-Semite or did he become one because he needed someone to blame for his own self-destruction? That’s a question that the viewer will have to answer for themselves.

Mr. Death is a disturbing portrait of a rather sad and pathetic figure, a man who fell victim to his own arrogance and hubris and who, as opposed to seeking redemption, instead allied himself with the only people ignorant and hateful enough to still embrace him. As is his style, documentarian Errol Morris interviews Leuchter’s critics but refrains from personally arguing with Leuchter, instead basically giving the self-described execution expert just enough rope to hang himself. (Morris does, at one point, ask Leuchter if he’s ever considered that he might be wrong. Not surprisingly, Leuchter claims that he has not and seems to be confused by the question.) In the end, it’s impossible to feel sorry for Leuchter. The nerdy humanitarian who opposed torture had been replaced by a self-pitying Holocaust denier. By the end of the film, Fred A Leuchter, Jr. and his report have become a reminder of the damage that can be done by one dangerously ignorant man.

Here’s The Trailer For Gemini Man!

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Young Will Smith tries to kill Old Will Smith in …. Gemini Man!

At least, that would appear to be the plot of this upcoming sci-fi film. To be honest, it sounds kinda generic and it’s definitely hard not to look at that plot description and think, “Okay, so it’s Looper but instead of time travel, it’s just clones.”

Well, here’s why you maybe should be kinda sorta interested in seeing Gemini Man:

It was directed by Ang Lee!

Honestly, I will watch anything that Ang Lee directs. He could release a three hour documentary about dermatology and I would totally ask someone to buy me a ticket. Everyone seems to pretty much agree that Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain should have been named Best Picture over Crash. To be honest, I would argue that, even more than Brokeback Mountain over Crash, Life of Pi deserved to win over Argo. If nothing else, Lee certainly earned both of his directing Oscars.

(How forgotten is Argo? I actually had to remind myself that it was the film that defeated Life of Pi at the Oscars.)

So, will Gemini Man see Ang Lee returning to the Oscar conversation? Hmmm …. well, probably not. I mean, it’s an Ang Lee movie but it’s also a Will Smith science fiction film. I mean, the last time that Lee tried to do a “genre” film, the end result was the Hulk, which wasn’t really appreciated until nearly a decade after it was initially released.

Still, anything is possible! One could argue that the recent nominations of Get Out and Black Panther have proven that the Academy is no longer totally biased against well-made genre films, especially if those films have the type of thought-provoking subtext that a director like Ang Lee can bring to a project. As always, we’ll see what happens. For now, here’s the first trailer for Gemini Man:

Here’s The Trailer For See You Yesterday!

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The trailer for See You Yesterday dropped earlier on Monday. Originally, there was some confusion on twitter because someone said that this was Spike Lee’s newest movie, which led to others assuming that Lee had directed the film. Actually, Lee served as the film’s producer while Stefon Bristol is making his feature directing debut. (According to the imdb, Bristol previously directed a handful of short films. In fact, See You Yesterday appears to be an expansion on a short film that Bristol wrote and directed in 2017.)

Judging from the trailer, See You Yesterday appears to combine science fiction with social commentary. Two African-American teens discover the secret of time travel and attempt to save the life of their brother, who was previously gunned down by a member of the NYPD. However, it appears that changing the past is just as difficult as changing the present. It also appears that there’s only a limited number of times that they can travel through time. I’m intrigued by the concept. If Bristol manages to strike the right balance between entertainment and commentary, this has the potential to be a powerful film.

See You Yesterday will be released on May 17th. Here’s the trailer:

Remembering Avicii: Avicii: True Stories (dir by Levan Tsikurishvili)

Posted on April 20, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It was a year ago today that we learned of the passing of Tim Bergling, who was better known as Avicii. For those of us who loved Avicii’s music and who followed him throughout not only his career but also through his multiple health issues and his widely publicized retirement from touring, the loss of Avicii is one that we have yet to recover from.

On this sad anniversary, I’m thinking about the first time that I watched Avicii: True Stories on Netflix. This documentary, which covered the majority of Avicii’s career — from his rise to his eventual retirement, was released in Europe six months before his death. In the U.S., it was released on Netflix on December 14th, 2018. It’s not always an easy documentary to watch but I recommend it to anyone who loved Avicii’s music or to anyone who is just curious about the pressures that go with being a star.

Featuring interviews with not only Avicii but also his collaborators, the film follows Avicii as he quickly goes from being just being one of the many people posting remixes on online forums to being one of the top and most important DJs in the world. We watch as Avicii maintains a hectic schedule of nonstop touring, often sacrificing both his physical and mental health in the process. Avicii ends up in the hospital, suffering from acute pancreatitis. Later, he again ends up in the hospital, this time to have both his appendix and his gall bladder removed. The film makes no attempt to hide the decadence that goes along with touring but, in its best moments, it also highlights the conflict that arises from having to be both Tim Bergling, an anxious young man who finds a much-needed escape in music, and Avicii, the superstar who has to be on every night.

When we first meet Tim, he seems young and hopeful and enthusiastic. Halfway through the film, an exhaustion starts to creep into his voice and, by the end of the film, he’s become far more world-weary. As we watch Tim struggle with the weight of being Avicii, we’re also aware of the people around him, whose careers and finances are pretty much dependent on making sure that Tim never stops being Avicii, regardless of how much damage it does to him mentally and physically. Throughout it all, one thing remains consistent and that is Tim’s love of music. It’s only when creating and talking about music that Tim seems to be truly happy. It’s his escape from a world that often seems like it’s conspiring to swallow him whole.

The film ends on what should have been a happy note. Tim announces his retirement from touring and the film ends with him, in good spirits, on a beautiful beach. Tim seems like he’s finally found some happiness and a chance at the inner peace that stardom often denied him. Beyond a title card (which was added for the film’s U.S. release), Avicii: True Stories does not deal with Tim’s death but it still haunts every minute of the film. Watching this documentary, it’s impossible not to mourn what the world lost when it lost Tim Bergling. The film stands as both a tribute to his talent and a portrait of a good and likable man struggling to escape his demons.

Tim “Avicii” Bergling, rest in peace.

Here’s The Trailer For — Deep Breath — Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Posted on April 12, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s the new trailer for an obscure little art film called …. Stars Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker!

My first reaction, to be honest, is that the title is extremely unwieldy. I imagine that most people in the real world will just call it “the new Star Wars film” while people on twitter will demand that it only be called “Episode IX.” I’m not going to speculate on which Skywalker is rising. The majority of them seem to be dead. Perhaps the film will end with Adam Driver taking over the universe and destroying it, Thanos-style. That would be kind of fun.

I’m not really big into Star Wars. You may have already guessed that. While everyone else is going crazy over this trailer, I have to admit that my first reaction was, “Again with the desert?” But, snarkiness aside, it’s a nicely done trailer. There’s no way not to be excited by that scene of Rey doing a back flip over that cruiser. And any trailer that ends with mocking laughter is okay with me. Apparently, the Emperor is back. And so is Billy Dee Williams.

(For that matter, Carrie Fisher will be in the film, as well. Director J.J. Abrams has said that there was enough unused Fisher footage from the previous two sequels that Leia will be able to play a role in The Rise of Skywalker.)

It’s always somewhat weird to me to see how controversial the Star Wars films have become. I really don’t have enough shrug emojis available to me to express how I react whenever I see people on twitter debating whether or not the last movie was any good or not. I liked The Force Awakens and I respected the fact that Rogue One killed off the entire cast. I was kind of indifferent to both Solo and The Last Jedi.

But, let’s hope the best for The Rise of Skywalker! Apparently, the Star Wars franchise will be going on a bit of a hiatus after the release of this one. (That said, if The Rise of Skywalker does better at the box office than Solo or The Last Jedi, that hiatus could be a short one.) So, let’s hope that they (temporarily) end on a good note!

Lisa’s Way Too Early Oscar Predictions for April

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

To repeat what I say every month, it’s pretty much a fool’s errand to try to guess what’s going to be nominated for an Oscar this early in the year. Some of the choices below — A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, The Irishman, Little Women,Once Upon A Time In Hollywood — are there because of their directors or their stars. Some — like Cats and 1917 — are there because they sound like they’re either going to be brilliant or total disasters. Call of the Wild and Fair and Balanced are listed because of my own instincts, for whatever they’re worth. Harriet is listed because Clayton Davis over at Awards Circuit is currently predicting that it will be nominated and he’s got a pretty good track record as far as predicting these things is concerned. Queen & Slim is listed because I saw a few people on twitter raving about a preview of it that they were lucky enough to see. Myself, I have no idea what Queen & Slim is about, beyond the fact that it deals with two people on a date who are pulled over by the police. (That’s according to the imdb.) See how random this is?

So, I guess what I’m saying is that you should take these predictions with a grain of salt. In fact, you should pour salt all over these predictions. The Oscar race usually doesn’t even start to become clear until around September.

The Cannes Film Festival will be held next month. Sometimes, Cannes lends some clarity to the Oscar race. (Tree of Life and BlackKklansman both stated their Oscar campaigns at Cannes.) Just as often, Cannes turns out to be totally useless as far as being predictive tool is concerned. Though the official lineup has not yet been announced, it seems probable that Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and perhaps a few more contenders will be screened at Cannes next month. We’ll see what happens!

If you’re interested in more predictions that you shouldn’t pay too much attention to, be sure to check out my Oscar predictions for January, February, and March! See how my thinking has progressed. Check out just how random my guesses occasionally are.

Best Picture

1917

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

Call of the Wild

Cats

Fair and Balanced

Harriet

The Irishman

Little Women

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Queen & Slim

Best Director