It’s always easier to focus on the negatives, especially during a decade as dismal and pathetic as the 2020s. While 2021 generally feels like an improvement over the previous year, that’s only because it didn’t have as many unprecedented events as 2020 did. But don’t get it twisted — most of the things that were wrong in 2020 continued into 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic continued to rage on, misinformation kept spreading on the internet like wildfire, and millions of Americans still refuse to admit that the 2020 election was not stolen. That doesn’t even include all of the celebrities that we have been losing left and right, including Betty White, Sidney Poitier, and Bob Saget. I thought this was 2021, not 2016.
Even the movies suffered. While there were generally more movies released this year compared to 2020, that by extension does also means that we have seen more bad movies come out than usual. That’s why for the first time on this website, I will be covering my 10 least favorite films of 2021.
I’ve never published a worst-of list before for several reasons. One reason is because I usually don’t see that many bad movies in a given year, and definitely not enough to make a bottom 10. Another reason is because I generally don’t like spending more energy on a film that has already wasted enough of my time. But perhaps more simply, I just like focusing on the positive more. Even during a year as catastrophic as 2020, I love looking back and reflecting on the movies that made me feel the most throughout the year. After all, year-end lists should be about celebrating the year’s biggest accomplishments — not beating down its biggest failures one last time.
But I’m doing a worst-of list this year for many different reasons. One reason is that, unlike most other years, I actually have seen a lot of bad movies, which made filling out a bottom 10 list much easier. But more importantly, these abysmal films should serve as a call of action to all filmmakers out there — a general guideline on what not to do when making a movie. After all, the pandemic is still going strong, and the box office still hasn’t fully recovered from 2020. If there is ever a time for movies to justify their existence, it’s now. The movies on this list just simply didn’t do that.
So without further adieu, here are my 10 least favorite films of 2021, starting with…
Just as soon as the quality of video game movies was beginning to pick up with the likes of Detective Pikachu and Sonic The Hedgehog, here comes the newest reboot of Mortal Kombat to remind us all that at the end of the day, video game movies just suck. Mortal Kombat is lined with a massive all-star cast, with Hiroyuki Sanada’s Scorpion, Joe Taslim’s Sub-Zero, and Josh Lawson’s Kano being among the most memorable characters. And when the action is fast and free-flowing, the movie is at its most fun and exciting. Unfortunately, its script is straight-up nonsense, with one character after another dropping into the plot to offer their trademark fatalities before being violently removed from the story. It also doesn’t help that the film rests squarely on Lewis Tan’s shoulders, because he’s so bland and unappealing in the lead that he makes Jean Claude-Van Damme look like a good actor. Hopefully the sequel will be better, because until then, Mortal Kombat’s mediocrity is its biggest fatality. Two stars.
A failed fusion of genres if I’ve ever seen one. The Harder They Fall starts with a disclaimer saying that while all of the characters are real, the story that they’re in is fictional. Glad they clarified that, because the story is absolutely unbelievable in every sense of the word. This revisionist hip-hop western blatantly rips off Quentin Tarantino in a desperate bid to mimic the success of Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight. But what those movies had in wickedly clever dialogue, humor, and character is everything that The Harder They Fall lacks. The characters are dumber than a sack of potatoes, throwing themselves into needlessly dangerous situations just because the screenplay calls for it. At two hours and 19 minutes, the movie drags on at a glacial pace and does not pick up until the third act. And the movie predictably leads exactly where you thought it was going to go: into a larger-than-life shootout that they could have just jumped into an hour earlier. The Harder They Fall could be considered a misfire if the gun was ever loaded in the first place. One and a half stars.
A dull, boring, and lifeless film that thinks filling a movie with an overabundance of gunfights and sharp snapshots of the hero’s jawline can replace a clear and coherent story. In this prequel to Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Michael B. Jordan plays John Kelly, a Navy SEAL who seeks vengeance after his pregnant wife is murdered by Russian mercenaries. Michael B. Jordan is as intense as always, but the premise is so shamelessly generic that you could copy and paste the screenplay from other and better movies. It doesn’t help that the editing is so choppy that it leaves you dizzy while watching it, with characters coming into and out of the narrative so frequently that you forget who’s who by the time you arrive at the film’s confused and incomprehensible ending. Without Remorse is the third time Hollywood has tried to reboot Tom Clancy’s characters for the big screen, and it’s such a disappointment that I’m okay with never seeing another Tom Clancy production ever again. That includes the Splinter Cell movie that’s currently stuck in development hell. One and a half stars.
Contrived, convoluted, and unbearably cliche, The Little Things commits the most cardinal sin the movies should never do: it wasted our time. Denzel Washington and Rami Malek star as a pair of detectives tracking down a serial killer that’s rampaging through Las Vegas, and they uncover secrets that will haunt the rest of their lives forever. Washington and Malek are fine in the movie, and Jared Leto offers a chilling portrayal as one of the movie’s bigger suspects. But by and large, this is a movie that collapses under the weight of its own ambitions, with the plot having absolutely zero idea where it wants to go or how it wants to get there. The final straw comes with the movie’s conclusion, which ends on a note so flat and disappointing that it renders the whole film completely pointless. The Little Things just reinforces that you can make a bad movie from a good script, but you can’t make a good movie from a bad script. One and a half stars.
An unbelievably moronic and insipid film that throws logic right out the window in exchange for mindless action sequences and poorly-rendered CGI. Chris Pratt plays a high school biology teacher who gets wrapped up into a futuristic war between aliens and mankind as he becomes humanity’s last hope to yadda yadda yadda, blabitty, blabitty, blah. This time travel plotline is so cliche and has been done and redone several times over to the point where it just feels stale. Chris Pratt is likable enough, but when the action kicks in, all of his charisma is forgotten as the messy visual effects take over. This could have been an interesting movie about family, fate, and the inevitability of time. Instead we get yet another silly action movie that ends with the hero literally punching aliens that could eat him in two seconds. One and a half stars.
The worst superhero movie of the year by a long, long mile. Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson go head-to-head in this symbiotic matchup between two of Spider-Man’s biggest supervillains, Venom and Carnage. But what could have been a dark and exciting exploration into both of these characters’ psyches just turns into yet another generic actionfest. Tom Hardy is great as both Eddie Brock and Venom, but the movie throws its strongest asset right out the window by splitting them up for most of its runtime. Woody Harrelson doesn’t fare much better, pathetically whining about how not being loved enough as a child drove him to become a mass murderer. The action is fine and the post-credit scene was exciting at the time, but after it led to nothing in Spider-Man: No Way Home, the post-credit scene became just like the movie itself: utterly pointless. One and a half stars.
A film that thinks it is way, way, WAY smarter than it actually is. Anthony Mackie produces and stars in this film about an android lieutenant leading his new pupil through the front lines of war, but in the process, they both get wrapped up in this nuclear conspiracy that could destroy the world. Mackie is fine in this film, but unfortunately, he is not playing the lead. That role is fulfilled by “Snowfall” actor Damson Idris, and he’s so sickeningly flat and generic that I would rather Steven Seagal play his part. The movie flip-flops between themes relating to violence, drone warfare, and technology, but it’s way too distracted and doesn’t know how to focus up and make an impact with one central message. A spastic, haphazard, brainless mess that blew up in its own face. One star.
A bizarre, off-putting, and deranged experience that has no point, no identity, and no sense of self. Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard co-star in this musical about a comedian and opera singer starting a family together when they have a daughter who is made entirely out of… wood? Driver and Cotillard’s talents are completely wasted as their characters dance aimlessly from one scene to the other. The music, meanwhile, is just straight-up garbage. I’ve watched multiple musicals this past year, and I could not recall a single note or lyric from this picture. The plot is straight-up nonsense as director Leos Carax drags you through one pointless scene after another. And by the time you reach its strange and confusing ending, I wanted nothing more but to wipe this film from my memory as soon as possible. A wasteful, mindless picture that I wish I never heard of. Half a star.
Yet another sequel/reboot that nobody asked for nor wanted. Space Jam: A New Cashgrab comes 25 years after Michael Jordan teamed up with the Looney Tunes in the original movie. LeBron James is taking the lead this time around, and man oh man is he going for the Razzie on this one. This is an awful, soulless, lifeless husk of a film that has not one original thought or idea in it. LeBron has zero heart in his performance beyond the paycheck and it shows in his delivery that feels like he’s line reading. The Looney Tunes have no point or reason for being in this story beyond the fact that this is supposed to be a Space Jam sequel. The cameos and Easter eggs are obviously manipulative and the costuming and production design is worse than a YouTube video. There were two scenes that were funny. The rest of the movie deserves to be blown up by Acme dynamite. Half a star.
And finally, my most hated film of the year. This film was so awful that I quite literally could not watch it all in a single sitting. I had to divide it up into 15-minute increments, and it was still the least pleasurable experience I had at the movies this year. This movie was cringey. This movie was torturous. This movie was…
Never again. Don’t ever let this sh*t happen again. Even when Home Alone stopped releasing movies in 1997, none of its sequels ever measured up to the original, with each new installment becoming sequentially worse one after the other. Now here comes Home Sweet Home Alone, and it’s so rotten to the core that it makes the rest of the franchise look enjoyable by comparison. Archie Yates, who previously played the lovable Yorki in Jojo Rabbit, is straight-up unbearable as this spoiled little brat whose biggest hangup is that his family isn’t paying him enough attention. Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney play the couple trying to break into his home, and these two are so stupid they could mistake dog poop for chocolate fudge. Not a single character in this movie is either remotely appealing or intelligent, and they all get caught up in slip-ups so silly and slapstick that even Adam Sandler would think it’s too much. Home Sweet Home Alone embodies everything wrong and exploitative with modern-day Hollywood, and for that reason it is the worst film of 2021. This film deserves its zero stars, and I would give it less if I could.
And that’s it for my first (and hopefully last) worst movies list of the year, folks. Tune in next week as I break down my favorite films of 2021, my first yearly best-of list in… two years? God, 2020 sucked.
To say that Spider-Man was an important part of the foundation of superhero cinema is a severe understatement. In many ways, he paved the way for many superhero films to come after, including Daredevil, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America: even The Avengers.
Today Spider-Man continues to pave new paths forward, whether its Andrew Garfield and his quick-witted, off-brand sense of humor in the Amazing Spider-Man movies or Miles Morales crashing into other multiverses in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. Now Tom Holland is doing his own multiverse-crashing in Spider-Man: No Way Home, a movie that is bigger and bolder than anything we’ve ever seen from Spider-Man in the movies yet.
WARNING: This will be a very spoiler-filled analysis of Spider-Man: No Way Home. If you have not seen Spider-Man: No Way Home yet, don’t read this article. I have a shorter, spoiler-free review you can read here. You have been warned.
When Spider-Man: No Way Home begins, we think the premise speaks for itself. The whole world now knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, his family and friends’ lives are ruined just because they know him, Peter enlists in the help of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to try and make the world forget his secret identity only for it to go horribly, horribly wrong in every way that it can. Now all of these villains from other Spider-Man movies are pouring into Peter’s universe trying to kill him. The whole plot seems pretty straightforward… until it isn’t.
One of the most brilliant aspects of this movie is easily its villains. For years, Sony has struggled to reboot Spider-Man’s villains as successfully as they did with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. After all, Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina already gave us the definitive versions of Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies. Even in the unpopular Spider-Man 3 and Amazing Spider-Man films, Thomas Hayden Church, Rhys Ifans, and Jamie Foxx also delivered excellent portrayals of Sandman, Lizard, and Electro respectively. How could the MCU possibly hope to reboot these characters and make them feel more realized than their previous iterations?
Well, they don’t. The genius move that No Way Home pulls is bringing all of these villains into the MCU while retaining the original essence that made them excellent characters in the first place. When Doc Ock reappears on the bridge after Peter’s spell goes haywire, he remains driven by madness and tragedy like he was in Spider-Man 2. Lizard is more animalistic and savage in his reappearance and has reverted to an even more reptilian state since The Amazing Spider-Man. And when Electro and Sandman surface at the power plant, their respective themes blossom into nostalgic bliss as they lash out in confusion at this new world they stumbled onto. When these villains are reintroduced, we not only don’t have to waste time with their backstories since we already know them: we’re able to quickly cut to the chase and get to the heart of this story.
And what exactly is this movie about? Mercy. When these villains are brought into the fold, Doctor Strange tells Peter that they all die fighting their respective versions of Spider-Man. So by sending them back to their world, they would essentially be dooming them to their deaths. By imposing this moral dilemma, the movie is introducing a conflict much more interesting than the usual punching and acrobatics you’re using to watching in most superhero movies. Instead it asks if you could save the life of a total stranger, would you?
Now if it were me or any other cinematic cynic out there, my response would be to hit the button, say “adios” to these loonies, and then sleep like a baby afterwards. But Peter is better than most people and believes in second chances, even for people that don’t deserve them. That’s why he’s committed to helping these people, even if they are quote-unquote “bad guys.”
This fundamental difference leads Peter to one of the most interesting fights in the movie — not against another villain, but against Doctor Strange himself, who sees this issue more like a cosmic inevitability rather than a moral question that has to be answered. Pitting their ideals against each other was one of the more interesting moments of the movie, and seeing them fight against each other in the upside-down physics of the the Mirror dimension made excellent use of each other’s abilities.
And the way Spider-Man beats Strange is just so darn clever, using his geometry smarts to spin a web and trap Doctor Strange inside his own spell. To see this kid who used to need a hand from Iron Man now overcome the Sorcerer Supreme himself shows just how much the character has grown over the years and how much he can stand on his own without needing help from another Avenger.
Peter and his friends resolve that the only way to send these villains back home without killing them is by curing them of their abilities so they’re less of a threat to their own Spider-Men. He starts by replacing Doc Ock’s inhibitor chip, placing him in control of his arms rather than the other way around. Then he puts a power dampener on Electro that will revert him back to normal.
Peter begins to move on to curing the other villains when a sinister persona emerges from the deep recesses of Norman Osborn’s mind: the Green Goblin. Willem Dafoe’s return to this character was one I was most looking forward to, not just because this is his first time playing the role in 20 years, but also because his costume design looks starkly different from his last big-screen appearance. I knew from the trailers that he wasn’t going to have his iconic mask from the original Spider-Man movie. The question I was left with was how well that would work for the film overall? Would he be as terrifying, as loathsome, as unsettling a presence as he was in the first movie, or would he just be stuck feeling like wimpy old Norman Osborn?
Well surprisingly, the omission of his mask actually added to his portrayal. When the Goblin reveals himself, Willem Dafoe’s twisted, sinister expression emerges from Norman’s warm and friendly face, his sick and disturbing laugh echoing from behind his throat. It reminded me of that scene from the original Spider-Man where Norman was talking to himself in the mirror. It also reminds the audience that the thing to fear most about the Green Goblin isn’t his suit, his glider, his pumpkin bombs or even his mask: it’s his bloodlust and his vicious capacity for violence.
Peter and the Goblin fight, and man this fight is hard to watch: easily the grittiest and most brutal fight out of the entire Homecoming trilogy. Goblin is throwing Peter through walls, Peter is frantically punching him in the face, only for the Goblin to maniacally laugh at his feeble attempts to stop him.
Then at the very end of the fight, Goblin does the most shocking thing of all: he kills Aunt May. He summons his glider, stabs May in the back, and even chunks a pumpkin bomb at her for extra measure. And before May collapses in Peter’s arms, she passes on that iconic line “with great power comes great responsibility” before she dies.
This scene is so great for so many reasons. One is because Willem Dafoe’s performance as the Goblin is just so frightening and sadistic. He genuinely feels like the Green Goblin from the comics, the one that hates Peter so much and desires nothing more than to hurt him in the deepest and most personal ways possible. The fact that he specifically targets May just to hurt Peter makes him feel that more nefarious as a villain. In many ways, Dafoe’s performance as the Goblin here outdoes previous adaptations of the character. That does, by the way, include his appearance in the original Spider-Man.
But on a deeper level, this is a much more significant character-defining moment for Peter. By uttering that iconic line moments before she dies from a villain born from Peter’s mistakes, she becomes the catalyst for his growth as Spider-Man. She’s essentially become the MCU’s Uncle Ben, which is why I’m okay if he’s never referenced again in future Spider-Man movies: because Aunt May’s death has now become Peter’s main motivation for continuing his crusade as Spider-Man, not Uncle Ben.
But right at Peter’s lowest moment, two new contenders enter the fray: Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man. You see, Strange’s spell also summoned them into this universe alongside their respective villains, and it’s their words that push Peter to keep going. After all, they’ve been at the same hopeless place Tom Holland’s Peter is at right now. If anybody understands what he’s feeling, it’s them.
Long rumored to appear in No Way Home, I can’t tell you how exciting it was to finally see Tobey and Andrew suit up as Spider-Man again after hanging up the mask for over seven years. We learn a lot about both Peters after their stories concluded in Spider-Man 3 and Amazing Spider-Man 2. Tobey Maguire’s Peter married MJ and grew a life with her while juggling his double-life as Spider-Man. Andrew Garfield’s vigilantism took a darker, more violent turn after he failed to save Gwen Stacey in his last movie.
But the important thing to take away from both of these Peter’s monologues is their wealth of experience. It isn’t just their fates that we’re interested in: we’re invested in their words of wisdom and what they can pass on to Tom Holland’s Peter during his time of need. I love the fact that some of my favorite moments in this movie aren’t high-stakes action of fight sequences: they’re character-building moments between the three different Spider-Men. Their dialogue and chemistry with each other just feels so natural, like three brothers meeting up together after a long time apart.
It really demonstrates that each of these actors brought something unique and distinct to their respective portrayals of Spider-Man, and none of them have deserved the animosity they’ve received from Spider-Man fans over the years. They’re all special in their own ways, and I hope No Way Home finally helps fans realize that.
I also really like that despite each of these actors having their own moment in the film, neither Tobey or Andrew steal the spotlight from Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. This is, after all, still his movie, and it is his arc that we’re invested in. Tobey and Andrew are more like mentors to Tom Holland, and they fit perfectly as the most important supporting cast members in the movie.
The three Spider-Men collaborate to cure the remaining villains as they set a trap on the Statue of Liberty. Electro, Sandman, and Lizard appear as the three Spider-Men duke it out against their respective villains. Sandman and Lizard are both turned back into their normal human selves, Doc Ock shows up and helps the remaining Spider-Men cure Electro, and the two Peters share a heart-to-heart with the villains, telling them that they never wanted them to die and only ever wanted to help them. Andrew Garfield even experienced a full-circle moment saving MJ from a fatal fall, redeeming himself from his failures in Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Then Green Goblin shows up again and nearly ruins everything. He blows up the box that Strange used to contain the spell, allowing the multiverse to break open and have an infinite number of Spider-villains pour into their universe. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and Goblin fight again at the base of the statue, brutally trading punches as they’re committed to killing each other. Tom’s Spider-Man ends up webbing Goblin in place as he lands one blow after another, then in a fit of rage, picks up the Goblin’s glider, ready to end his life.
Only he doesn’t kill him. As he brings down the glider, Tobey’s Peter jumps in the way and stops Tom’s Peter from landing the killing blow. As they struggle against each other for a moment, Tom slowly eases himself and sets the glider down, only for Goblin to stab Tobey in the back at the last second.
This is yet another great full-circle moment that speaks to the hearts of these characters. Tom’s Peter is still in a state of grieving, and in a moment of weakness, gives in to his hate to try and kill his greatest foe. Tobey’s Peter steps in to stop him, giving him this piercing, firm gaze that tells Tom’s Peter that he has to be better than this. And in a throwback moment to the very first Spider-Man, Goblin stabs Tobey’s Peter in the back, something he tried to do the last time they faced off. It shows in a very powerful moment that not only is doing the right thing sometimes hard to do: in many ways, it can also backfire on you in very personal ways. But taking the right path is often not the same thing as taking the easiest path: that’s what makes taking it so virtuous and noble.
Andrew throws Tom the anti-Goblin serum and they succeed in injecting it, effectively killing the Goblin while still saving Norman’s life. But the Goblin’s damage has already been done, and the villains are beginning to pour into their universe. So Peter does the only thing he can do: he asks Doctor Strange to make everybody forget Peter Parker ever existed. By doing this, he sends both of the Spider-Men home, the villains go back to their respective universes, and the multiverse is saved from collapsing.
But in the same stroke, both MJ and Ned forget everything they ever experienced with Peter, and the following montage is probably the most tragic moment out of the whole picture. Because you see Peter approaching the coffee shop MJ is working at, rehearsing his lines, ready to reconnect with them after they’ve lost all memory of him. But when he sees that she has a cut on her forehead from his battle on the Statue of Liberty, he forgets the whole plan and walks away. Loving her has only put MJ in harms way every time he suits up as Spider-Man. If keeping her out of his life means she’s safe, that’s a small price to pay for Peter: even if it means he ends up all alone.
This is what I love most about this movie, and really what most of these Spider-Man movies have been missing since the original Sam Raimi films. More than any other movie in the Homecoming trilogy, more than most other movies in the MCU, Spider-Man: No Way Home shows the sacrifice that comes with being a hero. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man was having fun web-zipping around the city as an excitable teenager, while in Spider-Man: Far From Home he needed to step up and stand on his own as the world wrestled with its mightiest heroes being gone. No Way Home is the first movie in Tom Holland’s trilogy where it shows the true cost of being Spider-Man. Aunt May said it best in Spider-Man 2 where she says that sometimes being a hero means giving up the thing we want the most: even our dreams.
There are some things that don’t work quite as well in the movie. For instance, Sandman and Electro’s costume designs aren’t as interesting alongside their supervillain counterparts, with Thomas Hayden Church looking like a literal CGI sand man while Electro looks as generic as an electrical worker. Some of the movie’s multiversal logic also doesn’t hold up that well, especially when you begin to question when these villains specifically got pulled from their universes. Because if they got pulled moments before their deaths, then Peter’s actions in this movie could end up meaning nothing anyway.
There was also a post-credits scene involving Tom Hardy’s Venom that was just straight up DUMB, and I do mean it with the all caps. Here was Venom: Let There Be Carnage, teasing Venom’s appearance in No Way Home and what it could mean for Venom in the MCU. Then not only does the movie decide not to use him at any capacity: they decide to send him back without any further interaction. If you weren’t going to use him in the movie, then what on Earth was the point to teasing him in Venom: Let There Be Carnage? Couldn’t you have just cut both credit scenes from those movies, shave down the run time, and save the audience the frustration?
Aside from those irritations, Spider-Man: No Way Home shows Peter at his most human: his most flawed, fallible, and vulnerable. By the end of the movie, Peter gives up everything he cares about most: his Aunt May, his best friend, his true love, even his literal identity. Yet he gives it all up anyway just to do the right thing. Because at the end of the day, that’s what being Spider-Man is all about. It’s not about the webs, the cool Stark suits, the wall-crawling or the amazing adventures. It’s about wielding great power, and bearing the responsibility and the sacrifice that comes with it.
It’s amazing how universal the language of loneliness can be. When COVID-19 came to our front door last year and forced all of us to socially distance from one another, a lot of us found ourselves staying indoors isolated from any human connection whatsoever. This has led to many of us being trapped not just inside our homes, but inside our thoughts, our emotions, our insecurities, and ultimately everything about our very being. I got to know David Dunn very well during my time quarantined with him last year, and I can tell you with utmost confidence that I don’t like him very much. I still don’t.
In Inside, Bo Burnham also finds himself locked in with himself (or at the very least, a caricature of himself) and struggling with the same emotions many of us experienced last year. In this new Netflix special, Bo writes, shoots, edits, directs, and performs everything all by himself inside of his apartment for a whole year to stop himself from “putting a bullet” into his head. Creating is no longer merely a source of enjoyment or fulfillment for him. Instead, it has become a literal means of survival, or at the very least, an attempt at some semblance of sanity or well-being.
I’m taking a break from my self-imposed hiatus to talk about Inside for a number of reasons. One is because I relate closely with the subject matter Bo explores here, and another is because I know Bo is a funny and introspective entertainer that evaluates deep and complex ideas and enjoys savagely deconstructing them for his viewers. But perhaps most simply, I genuinely felt inspired to talk about Inside. It’s funny how for the past year, I felt my reviews contributed nothing of significance to the general public during a pandemic, an election, and a racial and cultural reckoning that’s been long overdue. I still don’t, but I at least understand a lot of what is being explored in this film, and I think that’s worth talking about.
When Inside opens up, we see Bo’s younger self walk into his apartment, which is surprisingly a seamless transition from the ending of his last comedy special Make Happy five years ago. After the title screen, we see a gradual progression from the pale, baby-faced Bo we’re used to seeing into his older, bearded, lethargic self that sings about how exhausting menial tasks such as getting up and sitting down have become for him. Then in his first musical number “Comedy,” he reflects on how pointless joking seems in a time like this to the sounds of artificial laughter echoing in the background. His first words feel the most helpless: “I wanna help to leave this world better than I found it, and I fear that comedy won’t help, and the fear is not unfounded.”
It’s not even five minutes into the special, and we’re already fully immersed into the sentiment of what it was like living through 2020. The rest of the film is like that, observing deep social issues through the personalized lens of one guy locked inside his room for a full year. I think it’s funny how many films released last year tried to cheaply cash in on the COVID-19 pandemic, whether it was unbearable romantic comedies like Locked Down or the grossly manipulative horror film Songbird. Yet with Inside, Bo beautifully portrays what it was like living through 2020 better than any other film has so far.
It’s hard to know where to start with Inside, because so much of it is just so clever, ingenious, and original. Obviously, one of Bo’s most distinguishable elements as an artist is his music, which has always been equal parts funny, catchy, memorable, insightful, and incredibly entertaining. But while his quirky piano melodies and clever lyrics have always been his strongest suit as a performer, Bo is operating on a whole other level with Inside. He experiments and toys with multiple musical styles and genres throughout the film, whether it’s with the jazzy pizzaz of “Unpaid Intern,” the ’80s workout tunes of “Problematic,” or the folksy guitar strums of “That Funny Feeling.” Musically speaking, Bo is at his most versatile here and has never been better.
But it isn’t just his musical styles that stand out: his lyrics are equally mature, oddballish, and incredibly thought-provoking. In the innocent, adolescent sounds of “How The World Works,” Bo dispels of societal misconceptions with the help of a sock puppet facing an existential crisis, while in “30” he laments on growing older and becoming the quote-unquote “boomer” that he used to make fun of. One of the very best songs in the film is “Welcome To The Internet,” where he parodies the internet in a performance that can only be described as a millennial James Bond villain and monologues how he aims to take over every intimate, personal, chaotic moment of your whole life. The most eerie and sinister line comes in the chorus, where Bo asks “Could I interest you in everything all of the time?”
Surprisingly one of the most standout elements of this special is the visuals. I know, I know, a film shot entirely in one room over the course of a year doesn’t sound like it would be that eye-catching. But Bo makes excellent use of the space he’s confined to, composing captivating, sharp, and visually stimulating shots more so than even some filmmakers do on big-budget movie sets. During “FaceTiming With My Mom,” the dark blue hues of his room nicely complement the isolated feeling of being locked inside as the framing shrinks to the 16:9 ratio resembling a smartphone. Meanwhile in “Problematic,” the saturated oranges and reds shine vibrantly like a workout video, with a sweaty Bo riding on an exercise bike asking his viewers to “hold him accountable.”
The most visually impressive sequence lies in “White Woman’s Instagram,” where he hilariously parodies social media tropes inside of the 360:360 squares you’d normally see on Instagram. Not only is the song funny enough on its own, but the images and shots you see here accurately recreate some of the same photos you might see on Instagram. I’m not even kidding. Whether it’s latte foam art, an avocado, or a stunning light display, every image he captures could be pulled from the film and published on Instagram, and nobody would question it. It is that distinct and on-point.
All of these elements make Inside an entertaining comedy special, but not necessarily a unique one. What truly makes Inside stand out is its tone and emotional complexity. Throughout the picture, Bo visibly struggles with his isolation, anxiety, and depression, and this is further emphasized in the mood between cuts. During the musical numbers, the room is brightly lit up, the colors and their hues are shimmering and shining, and Bo seems genuinely happy, or at least entertained, while playing his piano and singing. But in between the music and skits, Bo is noticeably more solemn, somber, and sluggish: like it’s a challenge for him to even breathe sometimes.
I’ve seen this type of behavior before in myself last year. Whenever I was on Zoom calls, hopping onto daily FaceTime sessions, talking on the phone, or filming in front of my camera, my room and face was lit up with the same vibrancy and life that was on Bo’s. But whenever the cameras were shut off and I sat in my dark room scrolling through Twitter or Facebook, I felt a tightening around my chest like the world was closing in around me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I feel like many people experienced this sensation last year, and Bo brilliantly recaptures the essence of that emotion with stunning detail… quite possibly because he went through that too.
The film’s most powerful moments come in the lead up to his second to last single “All Eyes On Me,” where Bo collapses into tears as he experiences a full-on mental and emotional meltdown. During the song, Bo asks us to pray for him in a mesmerizing symphony of sorrow, where he reveals he had struggled with panic attacks his whole life and was just getting better right before the pandemic hit last year. Again, I relate way too closely with this. Not only have I suffered from my own panic attacks as well, but I was just getting serious about seeking professional help last year before the pandemic shut everything down. The last verse most captures my emotional state last year: “You say the whole world’s ending? Honey, it already did.”
Finally in his last single “Goodbye,” Bo reflects on how much he’s changed over the last year and how he can never go back to who he once was. As I saw his younger, friendlier, familiar face fade into the grimy, unkempt appearance of a man as emotionally drained as he was exhausted, I cried as if I was saying goodbye to a dearly beloved friend I had known my entire life. I feel like in a way, Bo was saying goodbye to his old self in the song as he comes to realize he’s now a different person at the end of it all. Truthfully, the same thing happened to me last year too. I doubt any of us came out of 2020 being the same person we were at the beginning of it.
And throughout the whole special, you’re rooting for Bo to step outside, just once: to have the sun shining on his face, free from that crummy, dark, claustrophobic room, just trying to live his life one day — one breath — at a time. I am going to spoil it for you by saying he never does go outside. Instead, there’s a filmed bit where he steps outside to a spotlight shining on him and the sounds of applause cheering for him, but when he tries to go back inside, he panics when he discovers that he’s locked out while the audience laughs at him and his misery. The final shot is him watching this scene from his projector, and while the audience is laughing, he lets out a small smile from the corner of his mouth.
For some reason, I find this ending to be a much more fitting, much more powerful ending for the film rather than some melodramatic conclusion where he epically flings the door open and leaves his room forever. And the reason why is because it completely fits his character and where he is at by the end of the film. Throughout the picture, Bo struggles with his identity, his self-worth, and how he sees himself. After all, when the world is on literal fire outside of your home, how small and insignificant must you and your struggles feel compared to all of the misery and suffering going on outside of the world? But by the end of the film, Bo has come closer to a place of acceptance and self-realization. While there are things about himself he may never like and he may never get over, he has grown to be more comfortable — more aware — of himself, so much so that he can even utter out a small laugh at himself and not feel insecure for doing so.
To me, that’s more encouraging and sincere than a theatrical, over-the-top Hollywood ending ever could be. That shows growth. That shows progress. That shows hope that not only one day Bo may be truly comfortable with himself, but that he can one day maybe live his life free of the anxiety and panic that has plagued him for so long. Hope that one day, he may be able to step outside and not be afraid of doing so.
“I don’t like my mind right now. Stacking up problems that are so unnecessary. I wish that I could slow things down. I wanna let go, but there’s comfort in the panic.”
– Chester Bennington
First of all, I wanted to thank my readers for sticking with this website for as long as you have. Since 2013, I’ve been writing reviews on this website because I love talking about the movies and sharing my experiences with others. It has never been easy for me to connect with people on a personal level, and the movies have always helped me break through some of those social barriers I’ve always had. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for following me and for always being interested in my opinions on the movies. Your support is what has kept me going all of these years.
Secondly, I want to apologize for all of the inactivity you’ve seen on my website for the past year. Since the pandemic hit in March last year (God, it feels so good to refer to 2020 as “last year”), I was under the impression that I would be able to publish content on my website like never before. For once in a rare occasion, I was not bound by the release schedules of new movies coming out or the cycling of unwanted sequels, remakes, and reboots pouring into movie theaters. I had even more freedom to watch and review whatever I wanted from home. A smarter critic, or a more stable one, would have leapt at the opportunity to invest in themself and their portfolio.
I began with a decent-ish start. I reviewed one of the best movies released last decade, a Spanish film by Alfonso Cuaron called Roma, revisited The Invisible Man and Sonic The Hedgehog, finally got to review the emotionally-stirring Spike Lee epic Malcolm X, and even got to follow up on his newest release Da 5 Bloods. And just last month, I got to write a spoiler-filled review of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Man, that was fun.
And when I say that I couldn’t review them, I really do mean that I couldn’t review them. I’ve struggled with writer’s block in the past, whether I’m writing for my own website or for publications outside of it, but 2020 delivered writer’s block like I’ve never dealt with before. I don’t even know what caused it. Maybe I wasn’t feeling inspired. Maybe I felt intimidated by the blank page in front of me. Or maybe I was just tired. God knows 2020 gave me more than a few reasons to feel that way.
This is a strange sensation I feel, and it makes me feel trapped in a way I have never experienced before. In past years, no matter what I was going through, I could always turn to the movies to help me escape from my own reality and immerse myself into another’s. No matter whether I was dealing with issues in my academics or jobs, a dramatic breakup, anxiety attacks, or the death of my grandmother, the movies were always there to help me break away from my own experiences and empathize with someone else’s. Having the privilege to experience that and share that with others is easily one of the greatest gifts I have ever had. No feeling comes close to connecting to someone else through your words and your shared experience in the theater together.
2020 sullied that experience for me for a number of reasons. For one thing, the shut down of movie theaters affected me much more than I expected it to. Whenever theaters closed and everyone stayed cooped up at home, I thought the movie-watching experience would just be a change of scenery. I was grossly mistaken. The theater has another level of immersion to it — the lights dimming, the stereo sound swelling up around you, the screen lighting up in bright and vivid colors as the music crescendoed into its first dramatic note. Whenever you’re in the movie theater, you’re genuinely immersed into the film, its characters, and the story that they go through. It doesn’t become just a movie at that point: it unfolds with a life of its own.
But at home on my couch, you notice that life, that vibrancy, is diminished. Not gone by any means, but diluted into a smaller experience. You notice how the TV screen captures fewer details of the film on it, the sound on the speakers not popping with the same impact, the plumbing and the pipes making sounds around you, your neighbors yelling next door, and the kids shouting outside while they’re playing. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m abundantly grateful we were even able to stream movies at all from home this year. If I had to pick between streaming and not having movies, I’m picking streaming no questions asked. Regardless, there’s no denying that streaming is a different experience from watching movies in a theater. It’s like going from an amazing four-course meal at a luxurious steakhouse to eating at Red Lobster.
Also, different platforms limit access to some of these movies for families that have one streaming service or another. For instance,Soul and the live-action Mulan remake streamed exclusively on Disney+, while Wonder Woman 1984 is on HBO Max. Da 5 Bloods, The Outpost, and The Devil All The Time, meanwhile, were all streaming exclusively on Netflix, and subscription cancellations surged eight times since that whole Cuties fiasco earlier last year. Can you imagine how pointless it would have been to review The Trial of the Chicago 7 a month after several hundred people canceled their subscriptions and can’t even watch the damn thing?
That’s not even getting into the myriad of other horrible, horrible issues the nation was dealing with, including thousands dying from the dreaded pandemic, record unemployment numbers, an economic recession, millions of evictions, food banks under crisis, ongoing cases of police brutality, the resulting protests and riots, and a hotly-contested presidential election where people to this day still refuse to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost and would rather believe in illogical conspiracy theories alleging the election was rigged. Seriously, out of the thousands of issues plaguing this year, who honestly gives a rat’s ass what score a snobby movie critic gave a film on RottenTomatoes?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that 2020 discouraged me in a way I had not experienced before — in a way to where it froze my muscles, wiped my mind blank, and erased the words I was ready to pour out onto the page. That hurts. More than anything else from that crummy, crummy year, being unable to express myself through my reviews was a loss I’ve experienced unlike no other this year. It’s robbed me in ways I didn’t even think I could be robbed.
Now please don’t get me wrong — I understand just how much of a first-world problem this is, especially during a pandemic. If I had to pick between being sick with COVID-19, being unemployed, evicted, homeless, or hit a creative dead zone, I would pick the situation I currently am in now. I’m not a fool. I know without a doubt that circumstances could be worse, and indeed, they may even be down the road. But nevertheless, I’ve lost an important piece of myself in 2020. Coming to that realization is a pain I hope few have to experience.
What does this mean for me and my website going forward? I’m not quite sure. With movie theaters reopening and more and more people getting vaccinated, some people are letting their guard down thinking life is returning back to normal. I for one am not as confident. Although I am fully vaccinated, 60% of the country is still unvaccinated, while in Texas it’s 65%. I’d feel terrible if someone caught COVID-19 from going to see a movie I recommended, or even worse, died from it. Either way, I don’t feel comfortable resuming my movie reviewing like everything is all normal again, because the truth is it isn’t. Not even close.
Besides, I feel like 2021 needs to be more about myself than it needs to be about my portfolio. I need to re-discover my love of writing, invest in my physical and mental health, and re-learn to appreciate movies on their own terms rather than trying to hyper-analyze them all the time. Writing is not my job: it is my passion, and it needs to stay that way. Because of this, I feel like the healthiest thing for me to do at this point is to step away from my website and focus on more urgent priorities that require my attention at the moment.
Understand that this doesn’t mean I am quitting publishing altogether. You’ll still see my byline in Southlake Style magazine and The Waxahachie Sun, and maybe even a video or two on my YouTube page. And a few months down the road if everything truly does go back to normal, maybe I’ll start regularly posting on this website again. Until then, I feel like I need to take the pressure off of posting on here and prioritize myself and my emotional health. It’s something I’ve put off for a long time now and I’ve finally reached a point to where I can no longer ignore it.
Thank you so much for understanding dear reader, and thank you as always for keeping up with me and supporting my website. I’ll be back as soon as I am able, and whenever that happens, I look forward to sharing the cinematic experience with you as I always have.
I’ve debated for a long time whether or not I wanted to write this piece. After the four-year nightmare of the last administration, a heavily contested presidential election, and an insurrection that killed five people and threatened our democracy, I needed to step away from politics for a minute to take care of myself and give myself the mental and emotional break that I needed. But after toiling the past few years in my head the last few months, I can no longer be silent. I have to express myself freely here, even if it is just for my own sake.
The first time I became interested in American politics was during the 2008 presidential elections. Back then I identified as a constitutional conservative, and I was rooting for John McCain to win the presidency. There were many reasons why I identified as a conservative back then. For one thing, most of my favorite presidents were all Republicans, including my number one favorite president Abraham Lincoln. For another thing, the Republican Party had a long history of promoting liberty and fighting oppression, and I was especially disgusted by the Southern Democrats’ sordid history with slavery. And for another more simple reason, I just agreed with their platform more. Whether it was regarding free trade, taxes, supporting the police and military, and general social causes, I more closely aligned with Republican policies and thought it led to a stronger nation more than the Democrats’ identity-driven politics did.
But more than anything else to me, the Republicans genuinely seemed to be more interested in free speech and open debate with others they disagreed with, while the Democrats were more inclined to bullying and mocking their political opponents just because they thought differently than they did. I found that kind of repression and belittling to be disrespectful and pointless. If you’re trying to convince me of your argument, you’re never going to get there by calling me names or by treating me with hostility. That’s a piss-poor way to get me to like you, let alone to try and understand your viewpoint.
I genuinely believed all of this in my heart of hearts until Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination in 2016. To me, there was no part of him that behaved like a true conservative, even less so a president. For one thing, I found his policies to be egregious and excessive even by conservative standards. While we needed border security, I thought the wall was a stupid and wasteful idea and there were better ways to protect our country than by building a giant brick that immigrants could either swim, dig, walk, or climb their way around. I also knew that Mexico was not in a million, billion years going to pay for it, and people who genuinely believed that were either foolish, willfully ignorant, or quite possibly both. His flip-flopping on the issues was also quite concerning, as he couldn’t clearly dictate whether he was pro-choice or pro-life, would accept refugees or deport them all, or protect LGBT communities or discriminate against them. Hell, he even struggled with accepting or rejecting endorsements from the KKK. At least with Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein, you knew where they stood on the issues and could confidently vote for or against them. Donald Trump was more inconsistent than Paul Ryan, and that’s saying something.
But the worst part of his campaign to me was his conduct. From encouraging violence at his rallies to blatantly disrespecting war heroes to mocking a disabled reporter to the thousands of disparaging remarks he’s made about women, including in the now-infamous Billy Bush tape, there was no part of Donald Trump that embodied the decency and the respect that I believed Republicans were capable of. I thought Democrats could be rude and condescending, but Donald Trump was so rotten to the core that he pushed me away from the Republican Party and made me even consider voting for Clinton. In the end I didn’t vote for either major party candidate because, in my view, neither of them deserved the presidency. I still question whether or not that was the right decision to make.
Against all of my better wishes, Donald Trump won the election and became president. And unbelievably enough, I had hope for his presidency. I had thought that imbued with the high power and responsibility of the Oval Office, he would elevate himself to the White House’s standards and be the president that all of America needed. I vastly overestimated his capabilities. From his lies to his racist dog whistles to his multiple emolument violations to his two impeachments to his draconian immigration policies to his inhumane and heartless family separations to his shitty, shitty, SHITTY response to the coronavirus, there was no bottom for how low Donald Trump and his presidency could sink. It’s like he dug himself a 6-foot grave and then kept digging, and digging, and digging, digging, digging, digging, digging, digging, digging, and digging until he popped his Oompa Loompa face out on the other end of the Earth and emerged from China (or Chiy-nah, as the former president likes to pronounce it).
But to me, all of that wasn’t even the worst part of his presidency. Not even close. Because at every turn, at every tweet, at every stupid, cruel, and incompetent decision he made, at every jab at his critics, at every broken precedent, at every disrespectful swipe at his constituents, at every racist, sexist, homophobic statement, at every spit in the face to our constitution and our union, Republicans stood by Donald Trump, defended him, and absolved him of any responsibility or accountability. It’s one thing to support a particular policy a president supports and advocates for. It’s another thing entirely to enable bad, abhorrent behavior and spoon-feed excuses to the baby-in-chief year after year after year after year. It’s like they jumped into the 60-foot grave with the disgraced ex-president and happily started digging along with him.
When Donald Trump obstructed an FBI investigation into his campaign’s contacts with Russia at least 10 times, Republicans supported him by saying the investigation was purely political, despite the fact they all supported a lengthy investigation into Benghazi that resulted in zero arrests or convictions.
When Donald Trump attempted to cancel DACA and jeopardized over 800,000 Dreamers’ lives, Republicans defended it as “good politics” and used it as a scapegoat to try and build the wall.
When Donald Trump was accused of sexual assault by 25 different women, Republicans tried to switch the conversation to Joe Biden’s eight allegations while simultaneously dismissing all of Trump’s accusers as liars and political opportunists.
When Donald Trump separated over 5,000 families and deported over 500 children’s parents, Republicans blamed the Obama administration despite the fact that it wasn’t their policy and that we have seen the attorney general’s memorandum to prove it.
When Donald Trump shut down the government three times due to his own ignorance and refusal to work with Congress, Republicans blamed their Democratic peers despite their numerous attempts towards bipartisan solutions.
And when Donald Trump’s clumsy, incompetent, idiotic response to COVID-19 cost us over 584,000 lives and counting, Republicans deflected to Obama’s epidemic responses despite the fact that Donald Trump lost 46 times more lives in one pandemic than Obama did in four epidemics.
For me, there was no last straw when it came to Donald Trump’s Republican Party. It was more like they dumped the wheelbarrow of all of its straws, set it on fire, then ripped the wood from the barrow and threw it into the fire to keep it burning. Then they detached the wheels and handles and burned that shit too before they threw the bolts in as well. But if I had to pick a last flaming disaster when it came to Donald Trump and his Trumplicans, it would have to be the 2020 election and their subsequent response to it.
Because if you paid attention to Donald Trump’s rhetoric, behavior, and actions at all over the last six years, none of what happened with the 2020 election’s outcome came as a surprise to anyone. Everything, from Trump’s refusal to concede, to whining that the election was stolen from him, to claiming without proof that the Democrats cheated, to demanding that Republicans overturn the election to launching a God-damned attack on the Capitol, all of it is in line with who he is and how he behaves. And that is, in a few words, childish, immature, repulsive, sickening, and deplorable.
What is surprising is how many Republicans supported his efforts to overturn the election — indeed, continued to support him even after his supporters attacked the Capitol. Shortly after the attack had ended, 147 Republicans voted to overturn the election and the will of the American people. After the certification of the votes, 240 Republicans voted not to convict Trump for inciting a riot onto the Capitol despite all of their empty condemnations of his behavior. Around 45 percent of them then said they supported the Jan. 6 insurrection, voted to oust Rep. Liz Cheney for refusing to say the election was stolen, and then voted against creating a commission to investigate the facts surrounding the attempted coup. Indeed, if Donald Trump were to announce his run for the 2024 GQP nomination today, 66 percent of these idiots would support him again despite everything he did to try and usurp our democracy. That’s how beyond decency, reasoning, and common sense most of these Congressional Republicans have become.
I don’t know what changed with the Republican Party. I genuinely don’t. I don’t know how they’ve gone from resisting tyrants during our country’s founding to now suddenly worshipping one in their own party. I don’t know how they’ve gone from advocating for limited government to now being perfectly okay with authoritarian government as long as it fits their agenda. I don’t know how they go from supporting legal immigration to criminalizing it, from saying all lives matter to only some lives matter, from claiming to be pro-life to suddenly not giving a rat’s ass about other lives the minute they leave the womb. I don’t recognize this party at all from the one I grew up with. More terrifyingly, I wonder if it ever existed at all or if I was fooled into thinking it was ever anything other than what it actually is.
To me, the modern-day Republican Party is not one of fiscal responsibility, limited government, legal immigration, liberty, independence, free speech, pro-life, or even “family” values. It is the party of embracing lies and conspiracy theories over truth and reality. It is the party of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. It is the party that celebrates cruelty and isolationism over unity and progress. It is the party of intolerance that will bully you and yell “fuck your feelings” if your views don’t line up 100% with theirs. It is the party of hypocrisy and double standards that will hold their political opponents to the strictest standards while simultaneously giving themselves a free pass on breaking every precedent in the book. It is the party that cares when Bill Clinton gets a blow job but doesn’t even bat an eye when Donald Trump obstructs multiple investigations, tries to overturn an election, and incites an attack on the Capitol.
That is why I no longer identify as a Republican or as a conservative. Today’s Republican Party does not stand for American values, if they ever stood for them at all. They only stand for Donald Trump and their own reelection prospects. At this point, I not only refuse to support or endorse any Republicans in future elections: I actively advocate that the modern-day Republican structure needs to be torn down brick by brick until only moderates and Never-Trumpers are left. Anything less than complete and utter obscurity for them will continue to threaten our nation now and into the future.
To be clear here, I have not abandoned all conservative beliefs entirely. I still believe that capitalism is a healthier economic model than socialism is, I’m still a full supporter of the second amendment, and more than anything else, I still believe in the importance of free speech and expression. And if Republicans behaved differently over the last few years and refused to exalt one man over our country, our constitution, and our union, then maybe I wouldn’t feel as strongly about them as I do today. But the modern-day Republican Party no longer represents decency, civility, or indeed anything resembling even an inkling of bipartisanship, if it ever did at all. Instead of reinforcing moderates like Liz Cheney, Justin Amash, and Mitt Romney, the Republican Party instead celebrates the far-right conspiracies of Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, and Marjor-Pain-In-The-Ass Taylor Greene. I refuse to entertain or consider a party that won’t hold its more radical members accountable for their own actions. That is not a political party at work there. That is a cult.
I have one last thing I’d like to say before I wrap this up. Years ago when Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination, I was concerned that he would poison and pollute how people see the conservative movement — that he would harm the Republicans’ image and he would poorly represent the party. Now he has become the perfect representation for what it is today, and that saddens me more than anything I can even express.
I used to be afraid that Donald Trump would destroy the Republican Party. Now I’m afraid that he didn’t.
Spoiler warning ahead for Zack Snyder’s ‘Justice League.’ Seriously. You’ve been warned.
Can a filmmaker’s vision be fully translated to the big screen 100%? When their final product is released in theaters, are we watching their vision as originally intended, or are we watching an amalgamation of the director’s vision, the studio’s stipulations, and the fans’ expectations all at once? In Zack Snyder’s Justice League, we face an unusual circumstance where all three converge into one without interfering with the other. The result is a groundbreaking four-hour epic that challenges the very fabric of what superhero movies are and what they can be. It’s safe to say that there is no other film quite like it out there, and it’s highly likely there will never be another one like it in the future, unless Warner Bros. decides to come out with a six-hour cut of Justice League 2 or something.
If any film has ever had a troubling production, it was Justice League. Before the movie was even released in 2017, Zack Snyder suddenly exited the film halfway through production and Avengers director Joss Whedon was hired to finish rewrites and post-production in his place. The reasons for Zack’s sudden departure are still heavily up to speculation. Some say Warner Bros. was dissatisfied with Snyder’s intentions and forced him out to go in a different direction. Others feel that Snyder left due to his daughter Autumn committing suicide. More likely than not, Zack’s reasonings for leaving were probably a combination of all of his problems, both personal and professional.
Either way, Joss Whedon ended up rewriting and reshooting a good chunk of the film, ending up with what viewers call The Joss-tice League. And surprisingly enough, it ended up being just as bad as Batman V. Superman was. The colorization was way too bright, the tone was jarring and did not flow well at all, this awkward humor persisted throughout the movie, and Zack Snyder’s grounded and edgy tone seriously clashed with Joss Whedon’s fun and light-heartedness.
Say what you will about Batman V. Superman (and there is plenty to say about it): at least you can say it is one man’s whole and complete vision of what he thought a Batman and Superman movie was supposed to be. The theatrical cut of Justice League didn’t even feel like a movie: it felt like a strangely amalgamated Frankenstein’s monster of four different movies crammed into one. Nobody knew what it was supposed to be, let alone how we were supposed to feel about it. So yes, while Batman V. Superman and Justice League are both failures, at least Zack Snyder owned both his strengths and shortcomings with Batman V. Superman. You didn’t know who to blame for Justice League’s outcome, and that was the worst part of it all: it didn’t feel like it really belonged to anyone.
So when news came out that some of Zack Snyder’s original footage was still out there and just needed to be edited together, fans rallied around the director demanding that Warner Bros. #ReleaseTheSnyderCut. And I’ll be honest, whenever that news originally came out, I thought it was nonsense. After all, filmmakers’ passion projects go unfulfilled all the time, from Guillermo Del Toro’s At The Mountains Of Madness to Martin Scorsese’s Frank Sinatra. Zack Snyder’s situation wasn’t particularly unique, so why would he get the chance to remake his own movie when so many other filmmakers were never afforded their own chance?
Well never underestimate the power of the fans. After Gal Gadot, Ben Affleck, and Ray Fisher also came out in support of the so-called “Snyder Cut,” Warner Bros. finally caved in and provided an additional $70 million to fund Zack Snyder’s original vision of the movie. The result is a four-hour film split up into six parts, and whatever you were expecting, I guarantee you that it’s better.
The film starts in an eerie and ominous tone, quite different from the innocent cell phone footage of Henry Cavill’s CGI mustache in the theatrical cut. After Doomsday kills Superman at the end of Batman V. Superman, Superman’s final breath sends out a shockwave across the universe, illuminating everyone that, as Lex Luthor puts it, “the God is dead.” This is already a much better opening than the theatrical cut because it sets the tone of what to expect from the movie. While the original opening of Superman talking to these kids was clunky and hokey, this opener is much darker and foreshadows what’s coming to the planet. It’s a fantastic reintroduction and it really informs the audience why Batman (Ben Affleck) feels the need to assemble a team in Superman’s place.
There are other noticeable changes to other character’s intros too. Aquaman (Jason Mamoa) vanishes into the sea like Batman vanishes into the night, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) rams through terrorists in London like she’s Supergirl, Cyborg (Ray Fisher) is given a lengthy backstory into how he became a metahuman, and Flash (Ezra Miller) hilariously saves some girl from a truck collision while simultaneously scoring a job as a dog walker. They’re funny, dramatic, intriguing, and sometimes heartfelt introductions that really set up who these characters are and who they’re supposed to be. While I missed a few of the scenes from the original cut here or there, most of these reintroductions are an improvement over the theatrical cut.
At last, we are reintroduced to the film’s big baddie Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) as he arrives in Themyscira to steal one of the sacred Mother Boxes from the Amazons. In my original review, I pointed out how badly Steppenwolf was originally developed, both in his character and his visual effects. He looked like an awful Playstation 3 boss that you had to fight, and his character was about as fleshed out, serving as a carbon step-in for the big baddie we really wanted to see (more on that later). Here, he stands on his own not as a smirking villain, but as a vicious bull powering through his enemies like he’s seeing red. He hacks Amazons and Atlanteans left and right with his battle axe, he throws horses like he’s tipping cows over, and when he’s shot with arrows, his armor snaps them off like a snake shedding its skin. It’s such a great reintroduction for the character, and unlike his original debut, he has an actual presence that you can feel and are more fearful of. The fact that this mammoth answers to an even bigger threat makes him all the more terrifying.
One of the biggest changes between the theatrical cut and the Snyder cut is the inclusion of Darkseid (Ray Porter), Steppenwolf’s master and ruler of Apokolips. While his role in this new cut is minor and Darkseid doesn’t have many lines, he is a prominent, powerful presence that chills you to the bone. His first appearance is in the flashback where his armada fights the old Gods on Earth, a role Steppenwolf originally fulfilled in the theatrical cut. The fight is so brutal, violent, and unflinching that it felt like you were watching one of the epic battles in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. His other appearances throughout the film are just as terrifying, whether he’s giving a cold-blooded speech to Steppenwolf, destroying the world in a Knightmare vision, or just eerily staring at our heroes through a portal to Apokolips. The last line he says in the movie is the most chilling: “Ready the Armada. We will use the old ways.” The flashback sequences already show us what the “old ways” are, and they aren’t pretty.
By the time we reach the halfway point, Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and the Flash just came together to fight Steppenwolf for the first time beneath Gotham Harbor. And surprisingly enough, this is one of the few scenes that I felt was done better in the theatrical cut. For one thing, Flash is much more confident in the Snyder cut, whereas in the theatrical release he questioned himself and was much more hesitant to fight. That was when Batman stepped in and told him to save one person, and when Flash asks what then, Batman responds “You’ll know.” It’s a great exchange and a great character-building moment for both of these heroes. Unfortunately, Snyder decided to cut that out in exchange for more action. I’m happy to watch it, but it just feels less fulfilling than the theatrical cut did.
Also, the scene on a technical level just has some weird changes that doesn’t make sense. When Cyborg enters Batman’s Knightcrawler, the theatrical cut presents him in clear view, while the Snyder cut obscures his appearance through a broken windshield. Even if that is his view, wouldn’t it be more clear to cut to his perspective inside the cockpit rather than outside of it? Also when Flash speeds up and taps Wonder Woman’s sword to her in slow motion, he did that in the theatrical cut because she was being attacked by Parademons, whereas in the Snyder Cut he’s doing it just because she’s falling. That was a strange omission from Snyder because the theatrical cut showed there was a purpose for tossing her the sword, while in the Snyder cut it was just unnecessarily for the sake of style.
But then we come back at the Batcave, and yet another scene is performed better in the Snyder cut: resurrecting Superman. While in the theatrical cut the decision to resurrect Superman felt forced, the decision here feels much more weighty and consequential, like the heroes are playing fire with forces they barely understand. And even right before Superman is resurrected, Cyborg gets a startling vision of a future that might come to pass from Superman’s resurrection. Wonder Woman is dead. Darkseid murders Aquaman in Atlantis. Superman grasps onto Lois’ charred body. And after Darkseid gently places his hand on his shoulder, Superman can be seen hovering over a crumbled Justice Hall as Darkseid’s armies siphon the Earth. It is a chilling moment and provides a dark connotation to a moment we were expecting to be uplifting from the movie.
And surprisingly, everything surrounding Superman’s arc is done beautifully in the film. From his death, to Lois and Martha’s grief, to his resurrection, to fighting the Justice League, to revisiting his family farm, to re-embracing his Kryptonian heritage, everything regarding Superman’s return felt monumental and meaningful. I was surprised by this, because the death and return of Superman is actually one of my most hated arcs in the comic books, even more so in Batman V. Superman. Here his return feels like a new tomorrow: a coming of hope the heroes weren’t expecting but so desperately needed. Again, a creative decision that felt incredibly underwhelming in the original cut is breathed with new life in this version.
Cyborg’s dad Silas (Joe Morton) dies in Zack Snyder’s version, and to be honest I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I like Whedon’s version how he’s alive at the end and he and his son make amends and work towards rebuilding their relationship together. The ending even pays homage to Cyborg’s traditional look in the comics, and you know I always love a good Easter egg. On the other hand, I do like how it adds to Cyborg’s tragic arc in the film and emphasizes just how much he’s lost in his life. In truth, both versions work well and neither one is done poorly. I think it just comes down to personal preference depending on which ending you like more.
We then arrive at the film’s climax, and holeeeee crap are the stakes raised. Batman is shredding through Parademons, Wonder Woman and Aquaman are fighting Steppenwolf, Flash is building up speed, Superman pops in out of nowhere to lay the literal smackdown against Steppenwolf, and Cyborg is connecting to the Mother Boxes desperately trying to stop them from unifying. But close to the film’s finale, something unexpected happens. The Mother Boxes unify, they incinerate the planet, and Darkseid portals to Earth. The Justice League loses.
And then, right before everything is lost and the Earth is destroyed, Flash runs beyond the speed of light, reverses time, and stops the Mother Boxes from unifying. Flash literally undoes their loss. He saves the world.
I love this sequence for a number of reasons. For one thing, the score by Junkie XL is epic and moving and really swells into the emotion of the moment. For another, Ezra Miller’s performance is phenomenal and he does a great job showing off his dramatic chops aside from his usual comical lines. But one of the things I love most about this sequence was just how unexpected it was. It’s so rare for a superhero movie to show our heroes losing, even rarer to have one of them undoing that loss mere seconds later. It was such a cinematic moment, and eons better from having Flash save one family before awkwardly muttering “Dostoyevsky” in the theatrical cut.
Finally after Cyborg separates the Mother Boxes in an emotionally moving moment where he acknowledges that he is neither broken nor alone, Aquaman, Superman, and Wonder Woman unite to give Steppenwolf a much-deserved decapitation. Then the film wraps up mostly in the same way the original did: with the heroes going their separate ways, having their own adventures, only uniting at the Justice Hall when they are needed.
Interestingly enough, the film’s weakest moments come in its last hour, which doesn’t behave so much like it’s part of the movie as much as it is additional content included under the DVD extras. The brief exchange between Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) and Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello) has a few different lines in it. The Knightmare sequence, while more ominous and forbearing than it previously was in Batman V. Superman, is equally irrelevant (although I did like Jared Leto’s return as Joker quite a bit).
The jarring inclusion of Martian Manhunter (Colin Powell) is the most perplexing. He appears twice in this movie, and in both scenes he feels like he doesn’t belong in either of them. In his first appearance, he’s masquerading as Martha Kent (Diane Lane) while having a heart-to-heart with Lois Lane (Amy Adams) about Clark’s death. This was a very human moment — one of the best in the film — and it did a great job talking about loss, grief, and the importance of moving on. Having such a raw and real moment interrupted by an alien shapeshifting from Martha was so out of place and robbed the scene of whatever sincerity it had. Did it ruin the moment? I don’t think so, because regardless of the would-be Martha, the words still meant something to Lois anyway. But it does change the implication of the dialogue, and that bothers me more.
In the second scene, Martian Manhunter appears on Bruce’s balcony warning him of Darkseid’s arrival, but Bruce’s reaction is so underwhelming that it feels less like he’s reacting to meeting an alien and more like he’s annoyed that some homeless guy walked up onto his house unannounced. His nonchalant “Can I help you?” feels so casual that it sounds like somebody is asking him for directions rather than warning him that the literal planet is at stake.
Overall if I had to describe Zack Snyder’s Justice League in one word, it would be “self-indulgent.” It’s indulgent in its action, it’s indulgent in its characters, it’s indulgent in its visual effects, its comic book lore and universe, and more than anything else, it’s overly indulgent in Zack Snyder’s vision of these characters and how they’re supposed to be. Then again though, maybe what this movie needed was a little more indulgence. While Warner Bros. and Joss Whedon were strictly thinking about the commercial landscape, Zack Snyder’s Justice League genuinely feels like a labor of love and deep fulfillment of a dream he’s always had. It’s rare to find filmmakers that believe in their projects as much as Zack Snyder does his own. And while many of his films lack refinement or coherency, you can’t take away the deep appreciation he has for his work and his characters.
I am confused by the #RestoreTheSnyderverse movement, which asks that Warner Bros. continue to follow the storyline being pursued in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Aren’t they already? Of the six upcoming films being released by Warner Bros., five of them are in the DC Extended Universe, including The Suicide Squad, Black Adam, The Flash, Aquaman 2 and Shazam! 2. Sure a Justice League sequel isn’t on the books, but it would be a simple thing to add it back to the slate. All you would have to do is kill off Cyborg’s father in between movies, and you’re back on track with the same continuity. So maybe the hashtag shouldn’t be #RestoreTheSnyderverse as much as it should be #ReleaseJusticeLeague2. Either way, it’s confusing and doesn’t lend much to the conversation at hand.
So which movie is better? The theatrical cut or the Snyder cut? In my opinion, the Snyder Cut is vastly superior, even if some of Whedon’s better lines and scenes were cut out. Still, we’re witnessing a special moment with the Snyder Cut’s development and release. This is the first movie, in a very long time, where the filmmaker, the studio, and the fans all converged into one very special moment they got to share with each other. More than anything else, I’m happy that Zack got to fulfill his dream and his vision of the Justice League: it’s a privilege many, many other filmmakers don’t get to experience very often.
Four years ago, I started my Justice League review paying tribute to Autumn, and I will end this article by doing the same thing. Zack Snyder’s Justice League gets three stars out of four. Autumn Snyder gets four. So does Zack Snyder.
I’m gonna say it: this is the worst Oscar ceremony I’ve seen in a long time. I’m not just talking about the winners and nominees, which are so random and lopsided that a literal pandemic could not have made them worse if it tried. I’m talking about the ceremony itself, which was so poorly produced it felt more like we were watching the Golden Globes. Yes, I am actually comparing the Academy Awards to the Golden Globes. It more than deserves the comparison.
So many things were lacking in this year’s ceremony. For one thing, none of the categories had previews for the nominees that were being honored. That’s fine for the acting or directing categories if you want to save time (indeed, the Academy straight up skipped over them in the 2017 ceremony). But even the technical categories were overlooked. Visual Effects didn’t show any of layering effects, Sound didn’t show any snippets of their sound engineers working in the studio, Cinematography and Film Editing showed no sequences demonstrating their craft, and even Makeup and Costuming skipped over showing stills of the nominees’ phenomenal work. It’s frustrating that when the crew is constantly overshadowed by the actors headlining their craft, the Academy has the perfect opportunity to show them off, and then they just… don’t. I’m used to the Academy snubbing one or two films in the Best Picture category out of pure snobbery. I’m not as used to them snubbing filmmakers’ work outright just for the sake of saving time.
The telecast also screwed up with something they should especially never mess up at any Oscar ceremony: the In Memoriam segment. In previous years, the Academy may have had some slip-ups, from the choice of a musician to omitting people from the segment altogether. This year though, they did the most disrespectful thing they could have done: they quickly glossed through everyone in the montage, as if they were on a strict time limit and they couldn’t go past it. We lost a lot of amazing artists in 2020, not just with Chadwick Boseman, but also with Ennio Morricone, Kirk Douglas, Christopher Plummer, Sean Connery, Ian Holm, Max Von Sydow, Olivia de Havilland, and so, so many others. And how did the Academy choose to honor them? By timing their tributes to the music. This resulted in many artists being passed over briskly with every beat, while others were stayed on longer due to the swelling of the music.
I understand due to how late this year’s ceremony was held that more people were included in the segment. 2020 was a terrible year, after all, and we all lost much from the year. But you honor these artists the best by giving them the time they deserve on the screen: not by giving each one barely a second and moving on. It was a rude, pitiful, and disrespectful tribute to the artists, and quite frankly, the Academy would have been better off if they just cut it from the ceremony entirely and just release a YouTube video separately. At least then you could spend as much time on each person for however long as you want without interfering with the telecast. This presentation was just pathetic, and I can’t help but feel for the families that lost so much this year and deserved so much better of an effort from the Academy.
But as per usual, the worst part of the ceremony comes with the winners, and the Academy keeps up that tradition even with this year’s ceremony. With a year as bad as 2020, you think it would be impossible for the Academy to choose some of the least deserving winners imaginable. But you’ve gotta hand it to the Academy: even a pandemic couldn’t stop them from making some of the worst decisions imaginable for the 93rd Academy Awards.
Best Picture:Nomadland predictably won Best Picture this year, which officially makes it the most boring Best Picture winner this decade (I know, the decade has only started. Give the Academy time). It’s no shocker that Nomadland won Best Picture. After all, it was sweeping Best Picture awards left and right all season long, so it’s no surprise that it won the biggest award on Oscar night as well.
What is surprising is which order Best Picture was presented. In previous ceremonies, the Academy presents Best Picture last to cap off the evening and end the ceremony with a bang. This year Best Picture was presented third to last, right behind Best Actress and Best Actor. I can only assume the Academy did this because they predicted who was going to win in the remaining categories, which they were embarrassingly wrong about. Either way, it makes for a very weird placement and a very strange way to wrap up the ceremony.
For now, I’ll say congratulations to Nomadland for its Best Picture win. Nearly all of the Best Picture nominees were more deserving, but hey, who am I to rob Frances McDormand of yet another Oscar?
Best Director:Chloe Zhao won Best Director for Nomadland, making her the second woman to win in this category and the first woman of color to win the Oscar ever. That’s about the biggest accomplishment to come out of this movie, because as I already said, it is a snooze fest from start to finish. Regardless, the movie does have some sweet, sincere moments in it, and I especially liked how she brought in real-life nomads into the film’s narrative. As far as uniqueness goes, that’s about everything that makes Nomadland special though, and I would have much rather the Oscar have gone to Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman or Lee Isaac Chung for Minari. Either way, congratulations to Mrs. Zhao. I look forward to watching Eternals later this year. Aaron Sorkin was still snubbed in this category for The Trial of the Chicago 7 regardless.
Best Actor: This is the biggest upset of the night and it easily ruined the whole ceremony for me, especially since this category concluded the telecast. Despite giving a career-best performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and winning over the hearts of fans and critics alike, the late Chadwick Boseman lost Best Actor to Anthony Hopkins for his role as an elderly man battling Alzheimer’s in The Father.
I have so many problems with this that I don’t even know where to start. First of all, with Chadwick sweeping the majority of awards season from the Golden Globes to the SAG Awards, it seemed like Chadwick pretty much had this win in the bag. And why wouldn’t he? He gave a great performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and outshined even the titular character on that project. His character was crass, headstrong, confident, cocky, smooth, sassy, pained, and tragic all at the same time. Few actors possess all of those characteristics, let alone in one performance. He was very much the driving force of that film and deserved all of the praise that he received.
Compare that to Anthony Hopkins in The Father, which barely generated much conversation or impact until it was nominated for awards. I have not seen The Father thanks to its overpriced rental of $20, but judging from what I have seen, the film tackles heavy themes regarding losing your memory, your grip with reality, and in a way, a part of yourself. It’s for sure a challenging topic and performance to take on, but no more challenging than say, a metal drummer losing his hearing, a drunken screenwriter taking on the media moguls of Hollywood, and a struggling immigrant trying to provide for his family.
What I’m saying is that amongst all of the nominees, Chadwick’s performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom felt unique and stood out amongst his fellow nominees. Hopkins in The Father, in comparison, felt like an honorary mention that rarely elevated to the influence of his peers. The fact he couldn’t even tune in to accept his Oscar remotely makes his win even more awkward.
I’ve heard some commentators remark that fans are more motivated by Chadwick’s tragic passing than they are the merits of his performance for the award, but I genuinely don’t think that’s the case. Before Ma Rainey, I thought Riz Ahmed was the clear standout for Sound of Metal and thought that Chadwick was getting the sympathy vote. Then I watched Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and was completely blown away. He immediately sold himself as this overly ambitious musician with dreams of reaching the top, only to be roadblocked by white America around every corner. He made the movie, and after watching it, Chadwick became my only favorite to win the Oscar.
Consider also, that Hopkins has already won a Best Acting Oscar in 1992 for Silence of the Lambs. Meanwhile, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was Chadwick’s first and only nomination. It feels like he deserved stronger consideration for the award, especially since this was his last performance before he died. And before some of you come at me with “bUt tHaT wAs hIS FIrSt nOminAtiOnnn,” Anthony Hopkins’ first Oscar win also came with his first nomination for Silence of the Lambs. It isn’t unprecedented for that to happen, and a stronger case definitely should have been made for Chadwick.
I could be wrong, of course, and I very well may feel differently after I watch The Father later this year. Until then, this snub feels like if Heath Ledger’s Oscar for playing the Joker in The Dark Knight went to someone else: and that really, really stings.
Best Actress: I got this one wrong as well, but I was already on uncertain grounds with a four-way deadlock between Carey Mulligan, Frances McDormand, Viola Davis, and Andra Day. McDormand ended up securing the win for Nomadland, made an awkward remark about including karaoke machines in the ceremony, and then left the stage right after howling like a wolf. Again, I feel like her performance in Nomadland was more muted and less expressive than some of her more memorable performances, especially in comparison with her 2018 Oscar win for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Compared to her fellow nominees that crafted a very vivid presence in their respective films, her performance in Nomadland feels more transparent, like a surrogate for audiences to channel themselves into.
Regardless she now has three acting Oscars under her belt, tying her with Meryl Streep herself. She should feel honored just for that comparison. Hopefully the Academy doesn’t decide to nominate her even further into the future, otherwise good ol’ Meryl might get jealous.
Best Supporting Actor:Even though he was literally the lead in the movie, Daniel Kaluuya won Best Supporting Actor for playing Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah. Again, I have no idea how he won Best Supporting Actor for a role that was very much non-supporting when Chadwick literally went home with nothing. Was the Academy somehow convinced that Levee Green was a supporting character and should have been nominated in this category instead? If that was the case, why wasn’t Kaluuya nominated for Best Actor? Would he have lost to Anthony Hopkins for The Father anyway? Does anyone even care enough to examine the Academy’s weird justifications anymore?
Either way, congrats to Kaluuya for his much-deserved Oscar win. It was nice to see him on stage accepting the award, as well as interacting with his old Get Out co-star Lil Rel Howery. And his message of unity in his acceptance speech was especially uplifting and powerful. He deserved an Oscar for that speech alone.
Best Supporting Actress:Yuh-Jung Youn has been called the Meryl Streep of South Korea, so is it really that surprising that she won Best Supporting Actress for Minari? She was just as playful and endearing as her character was in that movie, and her fun little poke at presenter Brad Pitt was especially amusing.
Best Animated Feature:As expected, Soul won Best Animated Feature, marking it as Pete Docter’s third Oscar win and 11th Oscar win for the Pixar team as a whole. Much congratulations for everyone involved with that phenomenal film. Personally I felt Onward was just a bit better, but it’s a win for Pixar either way. At this point, the Academy should just preemptively award the Pixar nominee every year before the ceremony and call it a day.
Best Documentary Feature:In a particularly tight race, My Octopus Teacher beat out its competition to win the Best Documentary Oscar this year. I personally feel for the Collective team since they’ve lost twice this year in both the documentary and international film category, but My Octopus Teacher has a very interesting subject and a unique way that it approaches it. I look forward to watching it in a few weeks, right after trying to understand why Time has so many viewers riled up.
Best International Feature:Thomas Vinterberg won for Another Round, and he gave a very powerful tribute to his late daughter during his acceptance speech. Congratulations to him for his much-deserved win. I’m glad he got to experience this honor in her memory, and I hope he continues to make movies that inspire him as much as this film has.
Best Original Screenplay:As expected, Emerald Fennell won Best Original Screenplay for her wickedly clever and smart portrayal of a woman fighting sexism in Promising Young Woman. I still feel a stronger pull for Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 and would not have been upset at all if he had won this award instead of her. Regardless I am glad both of the nominated female directors this year got to walk home with a prize, especially since women are very often overlooked in the writing categories. So much congratulations to Mrs. Fennell. She very much deserved to win this one over her male peers.
Best Adapted Screenplay:In the night’s first surprise twist, The Father beat out Nomadland for Best Adapted Screenplay. I was fine with this win because 1) The Father seems centered on a very strong emotional foundation, and 2) The awards circuit seemed annoyingly obsessed with Nomadland, so any opportunity where it can be overlooked I’m mostly fine with it. I’m just glad the Oscar didn’t go to Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Can you imagine how annoying it would have been circumventing nine screenwriters onto that blasted stage? I barely have the patience for even two of them, so thank God we didn’t have to suffer through that social distancing nightmare.
Best Film Editing:The underdog Sound of Metal prevailed over the likes of its stronger nominees in The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Promising Young Woman. While I preferred those titles over the winner, Sound of Metal does have a solid assembly of its shots and paints a vivid and somber picture of a man losing a big piece of his life. That’s a hard thing to capture and tell, and Mikkel Nielsen does a great job getting us to sympathize with this character. Plus, he took away this Oscar from the likes of Nomadland and The Father. That’s good enough for me.
On another note, Harrison Ford presented this category with a very funny story about how critics initially reacted to a screening of Blade Runner. I could take Harrison’s annoyed scowl hosting the entire ceremony and that would be enough to keep me tuned in for the whole night.
Best Cinematography: Of all of the nominees for Best Cinematography, the biggest contenders were also the two most boring nominees out of the whole pack: and Mank cliched it from Nomadland, barely.
As much as I love Nomadland getting overlooked in one category after another, cinematography is one I will disagree with and am actually very frustrated about it losing. For one thing, the best thing about Nomadland was easily its cinematography, capturing life on the road and these vast, wide, open shots of the landscapes the nomads get to see and experience. As dull, long, and overbearing as that film is, it is also visually beautiful and does a great job capturing the nomads’ perspectives. It was amazing camerawork, and Joshua James Richards easily outshined his fellow nominees.
Compare that to Erik Messerschmidt, who won the Oscar for essentially copying Gregg Toland’s canted cinematography from Citizen Kane in Mank. I find so many issues with his win, especially since his cinematography is 1) Redundant 2) Plagiarized 3) Contrived and 4) very underwhelming. His work on Mank was nowhere near as striking or memorable as The Trial of the Chicago 7, Judas and the Black Messiah, News of the World, and especially not as much as Nomadland. At the very least, Erik Messerschmidt does not deserve the Best Cinematography Oscar over David Fincher’s frequent collaborator Jeff Cronenweth, who has been nominated for Best Cinematography on Fincher’s last three projects and has not won once. A pity that creative and captivating cinematographers are getting egged to the side while Orson Welles knock offs are going home with the gold. But that’s Hollywood for you, I guess.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling:Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom won Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Hey, if Chadwick wasn’t going to win the Oscar, Ma Rainey deserved to win something, right?
Best Costume Design:Again, Ma Rainey won. I have a tough time deciding whether she or Emma. deserved to win. Either way, it’s funny to see Pinocchio trending in these categories after people realized a live-action remake came out last year. Was the pandemic really that bad, to where viewers genuinely did not realize a Pinocchio movie came out in 2020? Or is that just the result of bad marketing? Either way, congrats to Ma Rainey for the costume win, though I much would have preferred the Oscar gone to Chadwick.
Best Production Design:As previously expected, Mank won for production design, and it was the only Oscar it deserved to win out of the whole night. Next.
Best Musical Score: I was genuinely nervous for a minute when Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ names were read, as I was worried that Mank was going to win yet another very undeserved Oscar. Then the Academy read Jon Batiste’s name too, and I was instantly relieved when I realized Soul won instead. Congrats to all three of these amazing composers. They definitely deserved it for the amazing, refreshing sounds they provided not just for the film, but for our hearts.
Best Original Song:In yet another tight category, H.E.R.’s “Fight For You” won against One Night In Miami’s Leslie Odom Jr. for Judas and the Black Messiah. I was split 50/50 under this category and preferred “Speak Now’s” quietly soulful vibe, but if it wasn’t going to win, “Fight For You” was definitely my second favorite pick. Congrats to her either way. With her recent wins at the Grammys, H.E.R. has been having a great, great year.
Best Sound:Sound of Metal won the newly-named Best Sound Award. Duh. It was kind of a given it was going to win since the word “sound” is literally in its title. Either way, congrats to the amazing sound design team. They did a brilliant job capturing what the deaf experience was like for Ruben Stone.
Best Visual Effects:As already expected, Tenet won Best Visual Effects. Congratulations to Christopher Nolan’s visual effects team for the much-deserved win. Good luck explaining the plot to anybody though.
And as per usual, I lost in all of the short categories this year save for If Anything Happens I Love You’s win for Best Animated Short.That leaves my final tally for 16 out of 23 categories predicted correctly this year.Good for me I guess, but it doesn’t take away from the pain of Chadwick’s Best Actor loss. I will never let the Academy live that one down, ever. I cannot imagine what snub could possibly be worse this decade, but the Academy has outdone me before. Let’s give them time to see how else they can infuriate me for 2022.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going back to watching Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Some of us appreciate icons when we see them.
I don’t know about you guys, but this year’s Academy Awards feels a lot stranger than usual. Doesn’t it for everybody? Even though the nightmare that is 2020 is behind us, I feel like a lot of what happened carried over into 2021 and changed how we approach pop culture and public events as a whole.
Case in point is the 93rd Academy Awards. In any other year, the winners would have already been announced and we would have been well on our way to talking about the newest cinematic release, like Godzilla vs. Kong or Black Widow. This year the nominees came out several weeks after the awards ceremony would normally take place, and this year’s ceremony isn’t even until two weeks away. It feels weird to still be talking about awards season this late in the spring, let alone in April.
Either way, the Academy Awards are right around the corner, and I’m excited for a number of reasons. For one thing, it’s the first taste of normalcy many of us have had since, well, March of last year, so it’s nice to get back into the swing of things when many of us didn’t even know what the state of the Academy Awards would be this year. Several of my favorite films are nominated, including Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Sound of Metal, and of course, The Trial of the Chicago 7. And the best part: no Oscar host again this year. After all of the coronavirus and political crap we dealt with in 2020, the one thing I did not need was yet another forgettable Oscar host. Thank God the Academy listened to viewers on that one.
But there are several other things I’m less pleased with in this year’s ceremony. For one thing, Mank, one of David Fincher’s most boring and forgettable films ever put on life support, got a whopping 10 nominations at this year’s ceremony. I don’t know how it even got five nominations, let alone 10. Other amazing movies like The Invisible Man, The Devil All The Time, and Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods all got zero nominations at this year’s ceremony. And for the select few that are nominated, it looks like my favorites are mostly going home empty this year, which is always disappointing.
Regardless, it’s nice to be back trying to outguess the Oscars this year. Without further adieu, here are my predictions for the 93rd Academy Awards.
Best Picture: Ah, Best Picture. We meet again. You’ve gotten the better of me these past few ceremonies. The first half of the decade, I predicted all of your winners correctly, from The King’s Speech to Birdman. Then came 2015, and you just screwed with me in every way imaginable.
First Spotlight won Best Picture while winning only one other Oscar from the night, the first time a Best Picture winner has done so since The Greatest Show On Earth in 1952. Then Moonlight beat La La Land for Best Picture during its embarrassing announcement mixup (but hey, I’m not complaining much). Then The Shape of Water became the first science-fiction film to win Best Picture, followed by Green Book stupidly winning over Roma, BlacKkKlansman, and Black Panther. Finally, Parasite became the first Foreign-language film to win Best Picture… ever. Again, I’m not complaining, but it definitely should not be the first… or last.
This year seems, SEEMS, more straightforward than in previous years, and I’m knocking on wood when I say that. Nomadland has been racking up so many Best Picture wins this awards season that you’d think it was Meryl Streep. I have no idea why it has the momentum that it does. After all, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Judas and the Black Messiah, and Sound of Metal are all far more invigorating and powerful than that movie was — and amazingly enough, none of those movies are nominated for Best Director. But we’ll get to that later.
Still, I think Nomadland is going to nab the top prize. The only other real competition it has is The Trial of the Chicago 7 because of its SAG Award win for Best Ensemble Cast. Even then, it isn’t looking to get a lot of love in many other categories, which is a shame because it is such an outstanding film. All the same, Nomadland does have its wholehearted moments and it deserves to be commended for that, if not saturated in praise already.
Best Director: First of all, shame on the Academy for snubbing Aaron Sorkin in the Best Director category for The Trial of the Chicago 7. In a year where America was slammed by multiple epidemics, both social, political, and racial, The Trial of the Chicago 7 presented those same issues under a new light with heart and humor. It’s rare that a film feels as simultaneously as important as it does entertaining, yet Sorkin finds the right balance both as director and writer. Sorkin has every reason to be included on this list, while Another Round’s Thomas Vinterberg has zero reasons. I don’t care how good that movie is: Another Round has zero chances of winning, while The Trial of the Chicago 7 is more than deserving of a seventh nomination. Heck, you could even trade David Fincher’s nomination for Sorkin as well. God knows Mank doesn’t deserve to be recognized here.
Regarding the rest of the nominees, Chloe Zhao has been racking up Best Director awards left and right this awards season, including the Director’s Guild, so it makes sense that she’d win Best Director at the Oscars as well. Again, I don’t know why she’s the favorite over the likes of Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari or Emerald Fennel’s Promising Young Woman. Both of those films clearly have the director’s fingerprints on them, while Zhao’s direction on Nomadland is more nuanced than anything else. But hey, it’ll at least be nice that an Asian woman has finally won a best directing Oscar. Plus, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will finally have an Oscar-winning director under its belt when Chloe releases Eternals later this year.
At the very least, let’s be grateful David Fincher won’t be winning his first Oscar from Mank. Hang in there Dave: your time will come soon, and with a better movie.
Best Actor:This one is pretty much a done deal: Chadwick Boseman will win Best Actor for his final performance as a cocky and overconfident trumpet player in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Besides the obvious tragedy regarding Chadwick’s sudden passing last year, the Academy has a slight preference towards awarding posthumous performances in the acting categories, with the last posthumous award going to Heath Ledger in 2008 for The Dark Knight. If Chadwick does win, he will have more than earned it, as his performance as Levee Green was smart, crass, witty, passionate, and filled with life, just like all of his performances were. I won’t be emotionally ready for this award when it comes around.
Best Actress: Okay I gotta be honest here: I have absolutely no idea who is winning Best Actress this year. I seriously don’t. That’s because awards season has been completely bonkers with handing out its actress statuettes this year, and there’s no clear-cut winner thanks to everybody working on a different page.
It’s easier to pick who won’t win than it is to pick who will win Best Actress this year, which is why you can cross Vanessa Kirby off of the list right now considering she hasn’t won diddly-squat all season for Pieces of a Woman. And despite her BAFTA win, you can also cross Frances McDormand off of the list since she already won Best Actress two years ago for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
That leaves Viola Davis for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Carey Mulligan for Promising Young Woman, and Andra Day for The United States vs. Billie Holliday. Andra won the Golden Globe for her performance in that film, but unfortunately so did Glenn Close for The Wife and she still lost the Oscar to Olivia Coleman for The Favorite. That leaves Viola and Carey to duke it out for the Best Actress Oscar.
And here’s the thing about that: neither of these actresses are solidly in the lead. Davis recently won the SAG Award, which would normally makes her the best bet, but every year the Oscar deviates from at least one SAG Award winner at its ceremony (see Idris Elba in 2016, Denzel Washington in 2017, Emily Blunt in 2019). Carey Mulligan, meanwhile, has won the Critics’ Choice Award, but that’s even more inconsistent when it comes to trying to pick the Oscar winner. What to do?
Screw it. I’m going against the grain here and picking Carey Mulligan for Promising Young Woman.Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom already has one win secured with Chadwick Boseman anyway. It doesn’t need to get greedy with the Oscars now.
Best Supporting Actor: Again, why is Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield nominated for supporting actor with Judas and the Black Messiah? Obviously they deserve to be nominated somewhere because they were both just so outstanding in that movie, but these two leads literally got top billing for that project. Their faces were on the dang poster, for crying out loud. First the Academy snubbed Dev Patel of a Best Actor nomination for Lion five years ago, now they’ve gone and done the same thing again to the leads for Judas and the Black Messiah. What exactly is the Academy’s criteria for actor and supporting actor anyway? Do any of their rules make sense to anybody anymore?
That being said, Daniel Kaluuya probably stands the best chance for winning Best Supporting Actor here. Not that Sacha Baron Cohen, Paul Raci, and Leslie Odom Jr. weren’t equally as amazing in The Trial of the Chicago 7, Sound of Metal, and One Night In Miami…, but Kaluuya was just so prominent and powerful a presence as Black Panther leader Fred Hampton that it would frankly be disrespectful to him if anyone else won. Good luck explaining to me why he’s nominated for supporting actor over Best Actor though. Maybe the Academy wanted to equally recognize Chadwick Boseman and Daniel Kaluuya in the same ceremony? If that’s true, then that’s the best reasoning why he’s nominated in this category.
Best Supporting Actress: First thing’s first, why on God’s Green Earth is Maria Bakalova nominated for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm? Was the year really so desperate that this movie needed to be nominated for acting? No doubt she was brilliant in it, but I’ve always been under the presumption that mockumentary films never got nominated at the Academy Awards. If we’re suddenly allowing them for consideration now, then where was This Is Spinal Tap’s nomination in 1984?
Outside of that strange nomination, this is an unusually competitive category this year, with nominees including Hillbilly Elegy’s Glenn Close and The Father’s Olivia Colman. My pick for Best Supporting Actress, however, is Youn Yuh-jung, who plays Jacob’s grandmother Soon-ja in Lee Isaac Chung’s tender and sweet childhood drama Minari. Besides her being just as adorable and precious as any caring grandma could be, Yuh-jung carries international star power none of the other nominees possess, credited with over a hundred roles in her 50-year career. If all of that wasn’t enough on its own, she’s also been called the Meryl Streep of South Korea — and we all know how much the Academy loves Meryl Streep.
Best Animated Feature: Can we just start calling the Best Animated Feature Oscar the Best Pixar Feature already? Pixar has won so many of these Oscars that it’s just getting ridiculous at this point. This year their chances of winning are doubled with not only the larger-than-life Soul getting nominated, but also the endearing and touching brotherhood fantasy Onward.
While Onward is my personal favorite out of the nominees, Soul has a more dedicated following and explores more profound themes of life and purpose in its seemingly simple story. Even though both of Pixar’s nominees are equally worthy of the award, I think Soul will end up winning Best Animated Feature.
Best Documentary Feature: Again, no idea who will win Best Documentary. At first glance I thought Collective would stand the best chance at winning since it’s also nominated for Best International Feature. But then I remembered that was the same case for Honeyland last year, and look at how that turned out. My next thought went to Time for touching on issues such as incarceration, the prison system, and poverty, but that film has a very mixed reaction amongst audiences, and I don’t think the Academy would go with it given its divisive reception.
The next best bet then is My Octopus Teacher, and admittedly it is a unique premise about a filmmaker befriending an octopus in the ocean for a year. In recent years, interesting documentary subjects have won over the Academy more than interpersonal ones have (see Icarus, Free Solo). For that reason, I’m going with My Octopus Teacher.
Best International Feature: All of the nominated films for Best International Feature seem to be on equal footing here with one key exception: Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round. Besides Best International Feature, Vinterberg is also nominated for Best Director and is the only other Best International Feature nominee to secure two nominations at this year’s ceremony. That pretty much assures Another Round’s win in this category, as it is historically unusual for a filmmaker to be nominated for Best Picture or Director and not end up winning Best International Feature. At least Minari isn’t foolishly nominated in this category like it was at the Golden Globes. I guess the Academy learned from the Hollywood Foreign Press’ mistake.
Best Original Screenplay: This category could go to to one of two nominees on Oscar night: Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 or Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman. Between the two nominees, I adore The Trial of the Chicago 7 more not just for its subject matter, but for its brilliant handling of it. It emotion and gravitas, smart and electrifying dialogue, witty sense of humor, and stark parallels to modern society give power and purpose to this politically-charged drama, and all of that is thanks to Sorkin.
Emerald Fennell, however, has also crafted an ingenious and well-thought-out narrative behind the black comedy thriller Promising Young Woman. Handling a subject matter as serious as rape and sexual assault is always a difficult and delicate matter, but Fennell handles it well with grit, intelligence and striking commentary. It’s a close call between the two nominees, but if we’re going off of who has the better chances, it’s probably Promising Young Woman since Aaron Sorkin already won a writing Oscar in 2011 for The Social Network. If Fennell does win, it will be well-earned, although I kind of hope Sorkin would win his second Oscar for The Trial of the Chicago 7. But hey, maybe it’s better this way. At least the Academy gets to avoid the wrath of the feminists for another year.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Again, can someone please explain to me how the hell Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is nominated for best screenplay? No, better yet, why is it nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay? While the rest of the nominees were based off of books or plays, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is based on the character of Borat, which is just as dumb as when Toy Story 3 was nominated for being based on its characters, or when Whiplash was nominated for being based on its own short film. Don’t even get me started on the Writer’s Guild of America, who unbelievably had the gall to name the Borat sequel the winner for Best Adapted Screenplay. I don’t care whether or not it can be considered a contender at the Oscars: the movie doesn’t deserve a nomination, let alone a freakin’ win. For that reason I’m knocking it off from my list of contenders. It doesn’t even warrant a nomination, and I’m not about to give it what it doesn’t deserve.
Now then, looking at the four other nominees, there’s only one real other contender I see from the pack: Nomadland. While it’s questionable how Chloe Zhao chose to adapt Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction novel into a fictional narrative, the story she does weave is just as earnest as its source material, and she does a great job integrating the real-life nomads featured in the book and casting them as themselves in the movie. There are quite a few moments in the film where these nomads are talking, and you’re wondering if they’re actually acting or if they’re reliving their life experiences that brought them here. That level of authenticity is rare in the movies, and for that reason I think Nomadland is most primed to win Best Adapted Screenplay.
Best Film Editing: Of all of the categories the Academy Awards recognizes on Oscar night, Best Film Editing has the least respect. Not because film editors aren’t artists of their own craft, but because for the past few years, the Academy Awards has chosen the literal worst winner they could among its pack of nominees. Dunkirk was a choppy and incomprehensible mess of a movie that couldn’t assemble a concise narrative if it wanted to, while it’s a straight-up crime that Ford v. Ferrari won the editing Oscar when Rush wasn’t even nominated. Don’t even get me started on Bohemian Rhapsody winning the bloody Oscar over the likes of The Favourite, Vice, and BlacKkKlansman. Spike Lee is upset that he lost Best Picture to Green Book, while I’m more upset that BlacKkKlansman lost to John Ottman literally ripping up the celluloid for Bohemian Rhapsody.
The good news is this year’s pack of nominees doesn’t have anyone that’s as outwardly bad as the aforementioned winners are, just nobody that really sticks out like Whiplash, Argo, or The Social Network did. My personal favorite is Alan Baumgarten for The Trial of the Chicago 7, not just because of his smart assembly of events playing out throughout the picture, but also because of his great intercutting between characters’ dialogues alongside each other. Plus he’s been nominated before for 2013’s American Hustle. If I had to pick the most worthy winner out of these nominees, it’d be The Trial of the Chicago 7 hands down.
However editing isn’t just fast-paced intercutting between action and dialogue — it’s also knowing when not to cut and letting events play out naturally to understand what our characters are going through. Sound of Metal does a brilliant job with the latter, as whenever Ruben Stone begins to lose his hearing, the loss of sound plus his facial expressions makes for painting a beautiful yet tragic picture of what he is experiencing.
It’s a tough one, but I’m personally going to go with Sound of Metal. The quick editing techniques really haven’t sold itself in recent years with nominees The Big Short and Vice going home empty, plus I kind of like the idea of an indie favorite like Sound of Metal beating out the big production company-prowess of The Trial of the Chicago 7. Either way, let’s be grateful Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t taking home the award this year. I would probably lose my mind if it got a lifetime achievement award in editing or something like that.
Best Cinematography: It’s amazing to see how quickly the Oscars can elevate someone to the level of their well-established peers. Take Best Cinematography nominees Sean Bobbitt, Dariusz Wolski, and Phedon Papamichael. In any other year, they would be considered the biggest contenders in this category, with their credits including not only the recently released Judas and the Black Messiah, News of the World, and The Trial of the Chicago 7, but also The Martian, Prometheus, Pirates of the Caribbean, Alice In Wonderland, 3:10 To Yuma, Ford v Ferrari, and 12 Years A Slave. At the Oscars, artists’ careers speak for themselves, and these nominees definitely carry very impressive ones.
As loaded as these cinematographer’s filmographies are, they are amazingly enough the underdogs this year next to Nomadland’s Joshua James Richards, who has worked alongside collaborator Chloe Zhao since her director debut Songs My Brother Taught Me in 2015. And his work on Nomadland is stunning, eloquently capturing both the beauty and isolation of life on the road as a nomad. I don’t advocate for Nomadland for several awards this Oscar season, but I happily will for cinematography because it’s just that lush and gorgeous. Again, another filmmaker might be able to pull an upset, but considering all of the love and adoration behind Nomadland it isn’t likely.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Here’s a rarity for the Academy Awards: the makeup category once again has five nominees under consideration. Normally Best Makeup only has three nominees, but this is the second time the Academy has filled all five makeup slots, right after Bombshell won this Oscar last year. That’s great for the Academy and even better for the nominees. Still, it doesn’t make my predictions any easier.
As far as this year’s nominees go, I quite like the makeup work turning Federico lelapi into a wooden puppet in Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio, as well as Hillbilly Elegy for turning Amy Adams and Glenn Close into some convincing-looking southern hicks. But if I have to look at the most striking makeup work, it has to be Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Its transformation of Viola Davis into the Mother of Blues herself Ma Rainey is just too impressive to miss, whether you’re looking at her blush makeup or her several exotic hairstyles. Sometimes it’s the transformation of one key character that sets the winner over the edge (see Vice, Darkest Hour and The Wolfman’s Best Makeup wins). If we’ve gotta bet on one leading lady, it’s got to be Ma Rainey.
Best Costume Design: Another tough category, and man am I sick of saying that. The matchup for Best Costume Design comes down to the snazzy and stylish jazz suits and dresses of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and the elegant and enchanting wardrobe of Emma. Looking at the nominees themselves doesn’t make the matchup any easier, because not only has Ann Roth and Alexandra Byrne both been nominated five times: they’ve also both won Oscars already, Ann for The English Patient in 1996 and Alexandra for Elizabeth: The Golden Age in 2007. So who the heck is going to win the award this year?
It could be my bias speaking again, but I think Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom has just the slightest edge over Emma. One, the costumes are just as striking and spectacular as the film’s titular character is. Second, from a numbers perspective, Ma Rainey’s is just more loved by the Academy than Emma. is. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is nominated five times at the Academy Awards, while Emma. only has two nominations. Ma Rainey’s is literally the only film tied in nominations with Best Picture nominee Promising Young Woman, and it isn’t even nominated for Best Picture. Films nominated in more categories is usually bound to get more accolades, which is why Ma Rainey’s is the safest choice for costume design.
Best Production Design:With an unbelievable 10 nominations under its belt, Mank was bound to win in one category or another, and production design is Mank’s moment to shine. Not only do the sets evoke the feel and sensation of 1930s Hollywood, but it also does a brilliant job recreating the era through the black-and-white lens of Citizen Kane. Still, as far as positives go that’s one of the few the film can fairly claim, and I have no idea why the film is also nominated for Best Picture or Director since it’s more dull than an E.L. James novel. Either way, its production is outstanding, and if Mank does win the Oscar, it will be the only one it has rightfully earned.
Best Musical Score: Shoutout to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for being nominated not once, but twice in this category. Not only did they score the snazzy and sensational ‘40s jazz soundtrack of Mank, but they also provided a lo-fi vibe to the heavenly and uplifting sounds of Soul. Either one could win on Oscar night, but my money is on Soul. Not only does its mesmerizing score go perfectly with the movie’s heavenly premise, but it’s also simply so beautiful and euphoric to listen to on its own. Mank might be able to pull an upset, but considering all of the love and adoration behind Soul, it isn’t likely. Whichever film wins the Oscar, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have already won.
Best Original Song: It’s interesting to see how many songs in this year’s Oscars are dedicated to social causes compared to previous ceremonies. H.E.R. offers a beautiful and soulful R&B single with Judas and the Black Messiah’s “Fight For You,” while Celeste gives an emotional plea for help in The Trial of the Chicago 7’s “Hear My Voice.” But the most powerful track comes from Leslie Odom Jr.’s “Speak Now” for One Night In Miami…, where he offers simple spoken word on listening and unifying against injustice before crescendoing into a monumentally moving chorus.
The Oscar could go to any one of these amazing nominees on awards night, but my pick is Leslie Odom Jr. Not only is “Speak Now” my favorite song nominated, but his star power also elevates him slightly above his fellow nominees. Be honest now: do you really think the Academy Awards will pass up on the chance to recognize a Hamilton star? Then again though he does play Aaron Burr, so if the Academy does decide to snub him, they’re somewhat justified for doing so.
Best Sound: First of all, props to the Academy Awards for finally wising up and condensing the sound editing and mixing Oscars into one category. I know many sound editors may understandably be frustrated by the decision, but come on. Several elements go into all of the technical categories. You don’t see separate categories for Best Cinematography, Best Framing, Best Panning, Best Lighting, and Best Focusing. The Academy Awards are meant to recognize outstanding efforts overall, not pander to every single department of a production.
That said, let’s plunge into the newly-named Best Sound category. It’s easy to predict who will win this year, and frankly, it isn’t even close: Sound of Metal. Given that the premise of the film revolves entirely on the sounds Ruben Stone does and doesn’t hear, it makes sense that so much effort goes into this film’s sound production. Still, I can’t overstate how masterful the editing and mixing of this film is. Not only are the sounds crisp and clear when they need to be, but they’re also equally distorted, messy, and compressurized, giving us a clear understanding of what Ruben is experiencing when he’s going deaf. It’s brilliant work from Sound of Metal’s sound engineering team, and frankly, no other nominee in this category is anywhere near as deserving.
Best Visual Effects:Tenet. While not the most refined Christopher Nolan film, it does offer some dizzying visual effects, with objects and people moving forward and backwards through time like a clock’s two hands moving in opposite directions. In another year, maybe Tenet would be considered the dark horse compared to the rest of the nominees. But 2020 was a dismal year, and its competition is monsters, CGI animals, and a bad live-action Disney remake. Wor a in raey driht a rof debbuns eb t’now soidutS levraM tsael tA.
And at last, we arrive at the dreaded short categories, the films I’ve never seen but am nonetheless asked to predict anyway. For documentary and animated short, I’m picking “A Concerto Is A Conversation” and “If Anything Happens I Love You” only because those are stimulating titles and nothing else. And “The Letter Room” has the only actor I recognize out of all of the short nominees thanks to Oscar Isaac, so that’s the one I’m going with for Best Live Action Short. Easiest shorts predictions ever.
Well that’s it for now folks. I’ll see you on Oscar night. Remember to wear your mask.
Does anyone else feel like 2021 isn’t so much a new year as much as it is an epilogue to 2020? In just three months, we saw our former President incite an attack on the United States Capitol, got kicked off of Twitter, impeached again by the House of Representatives, only to later be acquitted by his loyalists in the Senate, then banished into private life, only resurfacing once or twice to send out one of his idiotic would-be tweets via press release. That’s not even accounting for all of the crazy things going on down here in Texas such as all businesses opening up 100%, the mask mandate being lifted, and oh yeah, a bloody SNOWSTORM crippled the state’s power grid, leaving millions without power for several days and killing over a hundred Texans from hypothermia. But hey, at least Ted Cruz was nice and warm in his private jet to Cancun. Thank you AOC, for doing Ted’s job for him.
Regardless of all of the crazy 2021 has offered so far, it does have its positive points. For one thing, Joe Biden’s presidency was certified for the 60th time, so yes QAnidiots, Joe Biden is in fact your duly elected President. And thanks to the unlikely election of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock (which Georgia Republicans are desperately trying to overturn), everybody received $1,400 stimulus checks, so thank you Georgians for having some common sense for a change. And thanks to the fast-acting response from the current administration, millions of Americans are getting vaccinated from COVID-19 daily, so it’s possible we’re going to reach the 200 million threshold very soon. With all of these wins after a year as dismal and pathetic as 2020, I might be lucky enough to go back to a movie theater soon, though I’m knocking on wood when I say that.
Either way, 2020 is behind us, and there’s no better way to celebrate than by looking at the absolute worst the last decade had to offer. So without further adieu, here are my 10 most hated films from the last decade.
Holy crow, it’s finally here: the 93rd Academy Award nominations are out. For the longest time, I questioned whether we were even going to have an Academy Awards ceremony this year due to, you know, a global pandemic going on. And even though the ceremony was delayed by two months, the nominations still came out a few weeks shy of when the actual ceremony is normally held. Hey, if we get through this pandemic and host the Oscars during its regular schedule year after year, I will never complain about the Academy Awards ever again. Except for its snubs: those will never be overlooked even if we’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
The first Best Picture nominee leading the pack with 10 nominations is David Fincher’s drama Mank, which tells the true story of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his writing of the 1941 classic Citizen Kane. No surprise there as not only has Mank been the leading contender for the Golden Globes, the Satellite Awards, and the Critics Choice Awards, but it’s also related to Citizen-freaking-Kane. If David Fincher directed a drama about the toilet scrubber working on set of The Godfather, the Academy would give it 12 nominations just for the association alone. But I am happy for David Fincher as this is the first year where one of his movies has received the most nominations at the Academy Awards. Will it lead to a gold statuette? Possibly, but it really could go either way on Oscar night. There have been ceremonies where the most-nominated picture swept at the Oscars (The Shape of Water and Birdman in 2018 and 2015) to winning literally nothing (American Hustle in 2014).
What follows is a very interesting predicament, and something I personally have not seen at the Academy Awards since… well, ever. The next six Best Picture nominees all have six nominations each. Yes, dear reader: six Best Picture nominees with six nominations each. That’s been unheard of at the Academy Awards for quite some time. Usually there’s one or two other favorites that has seven or eight nominations apiece, then the other three or four nominees share the rest of the nominations. This year, most of the Best Picture nominees are on unusually equal footing, which makes this year’s Oscars more difficult to predict compared to previous ceremonies.
One of the early leaders in contention at the moment is Nomadland, an Indie drama darling directed by Chloe Zhao and starring Frances McDormand as a widow traveling the land after her husband died. I recently reviewed the movie on my buddy Andy Branca’s show “The Critics Corner,” and we both felt a bit underwhelmed by the movie’s slow, groggy, and overbearing pace. However, I do feel like the movie’s subject of grief and isolation resonates well with many people, especially in a year as terrible as 2020. Plus, the camerawork by Joshua Richards is gorgeous and for sure a contender in the Oscar’s cinematography category. Everything else, from director to actress to film editing to adapted screenplay, is up in the air. But personally, I’m shocked the movie wasn’t nominated for a best sound editing Oscar for those vivid sound effects of McDormand pooping in her van. Those sounds were very convincing.
Another contender is the Aaron Sorkin-directed historical drama Trial of the Chicago 7, which tells the true story of seven anti-Vietnam War protestors charged with incitement to riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention. The movie is a brilliant, funny, affectionate, and eerily relevant movie for the times we live in and a great look back at one of our most contentious moments in American history. But I’ll be honest: I was expecting it to get nominated in several more categories than what it was nominated for here. Besides Best Picture, Trial of the Chicago 7 was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Original Song with Celeste Waite’s “Hear My Voice,” and Best Supporting Actor for Sacha Baron Cohen. Personally I think it could have also gone for Best Production and Costume Design, and Sorkin was definitely snubbed in the Best Director category, especially with Another Round’s Thomas Vinterberg nominated despite not also being nominated for Best Picture.
Funny enough, Trial of the Chicago 7 isn’t the only Best Picture nominee to feature Black Panther leader Fred Hampton: he’s also the subject of Shaka King’s shocking biographical epic Judas and the Black Messiah. What’s surprising about this movie isn’t the fact that it it has six nominations, including Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Original Song for H.E.R.’s “Fight For You.” What’s surprising is two of its nominations come in the same category, with leads Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield both being nominated in the supporting actor category. Why does the Academy keep doing this? Five years ago, Dev Patel was given a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Lion despite playing the freaking lead. Now Judas and the Black Messiah is given the same treatment for not one, but two of its leads. Is that just the Academy’s prerogative during a pandemic: to screw with the audience? Either way, Kaluuya and Stanfield’s chances for winning probably stand better here than in the Best Actor category, where they would have had to gone up against the likes of Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, and the late Chadwick Boseman. Still, it’s frustrating to see the Academy shortchange actor’s performances and label them as “supporting” roles when they’re literally the heart and soul of a movie.
Other indie darlings recognized with six nominations apiece include the amnesiac The Father, the tender and sweet Minari, and the progressive banger Sound of Metal. I’m happy to see Riz Ahmed get a much-deserved Best Actor nomination for Sound of Metal, as well as his supporting co-star Paul Raci, and am even happier to see it even elevated for Best Picture consideration. I also love seeing the Korean cast and crew of Minari recognized in these same categories and not in the Best International Film category, something the Golden Globes famously screwed up in its past ceremony. It’s also nice to see The Father nominated in so many categories despite being such an under-the-radar sleeper hit.
The other surprise comes in Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, not because it’s nominated, but because of how many times it is nominated. Besides Best Picture, Promising Young Woman is also nominated for Best Actress with Carey Mulligan, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Screenplay and Director for Emerald Fennell. That last nomination is especially exciting, because the Academy Awards has been historically biased towards female nominees in the director category. Greta Gerwin wasn’t even nominated for Best Director last year for Little Women, and the last time a woman won Best Director was 2010 with Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker. Alongside Chloe Zhao, this is the first year where two women are being considered in the Best Director category. Even if neither of them win, congratulations are owed to them both, and we can only hope the preverbal glass ceiling will continue to break from here.
Unsurprisingly, the Oscars still managed to squeeze out a few snubs despite how few films they had to consider thanks to the pandemic. Da 5 Bloods, for instance, was overlooked in all of the acting categories, and even the technical categories too like cinematography and editing. The Outpost was equally overlooked at this year’s ceremony, and Caleb Landry Jones was straight up robbed for supporting actor. So too was Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson in The Devil All The Time, though with how gritty and queasy that film is, I’m not too surprised that Academy voters decided to distance themselves from it. The most maddening snub, to me, is Leigh Whannell’s remake of the horror icon The Invisible Man. Visuals effects, cinematography, production design, Elisabeth Moss’ horrified performance: you couldn’t find room for The Invisible Man in any of its categories? Really?
Regardless, I’m excited that the Oscars aren’t just happening this year, but they’re happening with a (mostly) stacked pool of nominees. It says something about the film industry that it endures a financially devastating event as massive as the coronavirus pandemic, yet it’s able to continue to produce amazing storytelling and performances despite all of the adversities it faced in 2020. Here’s to the Academy Awards finally arriving in 2021, and here’s to me continuing to bag on them.
DAVID DUNN 