The Call of the Wild Review

From 20th Century Studios… not 20th Century Fox… comes another confusing production with “The Call of the Wild” that Disney inherited when they purchased Fox. We’ll get to all of the confusing production stuff here in a bit, but the first thing that caught my eye was that name 20th Century Studios. I was hearing buzz that Disney was rebranding Fox, but to see that new logo caught me off guard. If I’m not mistaken, “The Call of the Wild” is the first movie to officially display the new name and logo. Disney has also switched Fox Searchlight to Searchlight Pictures, so I guess the idea is to phase out the Fox name since the two studios are no longer affiliated with the current Fox Corporation that’s not owned by Disney. So I guess that makes sense, but my brain is going to have a hard time getting used to that. I never used the full name of 20th Century Fox. It was just Fox. But now that Disney is phasing out the Fox name, am I supposed to use 20th Century as the short name? Or simply use the full name of 20th Century Studios? Neither of those are connecting in my brain at the moment, so I will apologize to Disney for being rebellious and still call this Fox. Sue me. But whatever name you want to call this studio now, they have a movie out and it’s time for us to discuss it.

“The Call of the Wild” started off as a novel by Jack London, published in 1903. The novel takes place in the late 1800s, during the gold rush. The central character is a dog named Buck that is a St. Bernard-Scotch Collie mix. At the start of the story, he is a happy dog living with an owner in California, but after a series of events, he gets stolen and sold as a sled dog in Alaska. It’s one of those stories where the dog passes hands through several different owners as he slowly becomes adjusted to living solely in the wild rather than in a domestic situation with an owner. But that’s the book. For me personally, I wasn’t 100 percent sure what this specific adaptation was doing based on all of the trailers because the marketing focused heavily on his time with Harrison Ford and I wasn’t even able to determine what the time period of this was. So I’m not sure what Disney was really thinking with this marketing or if they really cared much for this adaptation. “The Call of the Wild” is a book that I have read. I don’t know when. My guess is that I read it during grade school at some point, possibly for school. The details are vague in my mind. I just know that when I saw it on the schedule about a year ago, it piqued my interested because it sounded like something that I was familiar with.

 The pleasant surprise for me when I actually dove into the movie was that they actually did follow the novel fairly closely. Yes, my specific experience with the novel is a bit vague, but thanks to the fact that the internet exists, I familiarized myself with the story, thus reminding myself why this actually is considered a classic novel. So the fact that this is a movie that follows the source material is a positive thing. It’s not just a random thing with Harrison Ford hanging out with a dog in the wilderness. The movie is about this dog named Buck and his experiences being taken from his home and learning to adapt to his circumstances. Harrison Ford shows up briefly in the first half of the movie, but isn’t really part of the story until the second half of the movie. Now in compared to the novel, this is a more condensed version of the story. In the novel, Buck goes through several different hands before being united with John Thornton, who is played by Harrison Ford in the movie. But in this movie version, there’s a few different characters that are combined into one and thus there’s less owners that Buck has throughout the movie. And I thought that worked just fine. The writers here did a great job of cutting out what they needed in order to write a story that flowed well.

A perfect adaptation of the novel, in terms of including everything, would be something that would either be really long or would be one of these 8-10 episode Netflix miniseries. And that could be fun if the execution was done well, but I think this was a solid adaptation from book to screenplay. There was just enough stops along the way for the journey to mean something and for there to be progression for Buck, but at the same time it was concise enough to flow well as a solid movie. I also think that each point along the way came with great acting that really sold the drama and emotion here. And I’m not just talking about Harrison Ford, who was fantastic in this movie, but Buck’s other owners were also really well acted. I especially liked his sled dog team owners, Perrault and François, played by Omar Sy and Cara Gee. In fact, as great as Harrison Ford was, I personally enjoyed this first half of the movie a bit more. Omar Sy as Perrault was such a loving and caring owner. With Buck being in such a rough transition period in terms of just being taken from his home, Perrault did a fantastic job of helping him reach his potential and that’s the point of the movie where there was the most character development.

There was also some interesting drama among the team of dogs at this point. The lead sled dog was a Husky named Spitz, who was mean and aggressive. Once Buck got settled in as a member of the team, he slowly gained more respect among the other dogs, which caused Spitz to get jealous that Buck was starting taking over as the leader of the dogs. Eventually it builds up to a confrontation between Spitz and Buck which was fairly intense. However, there is a giant elephant in the room here that I’ve dodged because I’m not really that interested in writing up the same exact review as everyone else on the internet. But the drama between the dogs isn’t as intense as it could be because all the dogs are CGI and the CGI is quite bad. This has been a popular point of conversation surrounding this movie and I’m personally a bit conflicted. I think this is something that adults and critics will be bothered by, but in terms of this being a movie directed at family audiences, I honestly don’t think family audiences, especially younger kids, will care at all. Younger kids might have more of a problem with the movie keeping their attention as this is not necessarily a movie directed at kids specifically, but if they enjoyed all of the other recent dog movies, then they’ll probably love this one.

Me personally, I was more distracted with the fact that Buck had a lot more human qualities than he should’ve. If the filmmakers are going to decide to use CGI dogs, they should make them all act like dogs. Buck’s facial expressions, many of his reactions and a lot of his actions were very human. The biggest example of this came in the second half of the movie when Buck seemed to be super concerned about Harrison Ford’s drinking problem. And he took his bottle of alcohol away from him towards the beginning of their partnership, which made no sense. A normal dog wouldn’t have any knowledge about what that drink was or why it was bad for a human to drink it. Little things like this happened the entire movie. Thus Buck reminded me a lot of Scooby-Doo in the way he acted. Granted, Scooby-Doo’s humanlike characteristics work because it’s a comedic take of a dog that is not going for realism. So it works. Everyone loves Scooby-Doo. But “The Call of the Wild” is trying to be a serious drama about a dog going through a lot of hard experiences, so it becomes tonally conflicting when you have a cartoonish, humanlike dog in a movie that’s otherwise trying to be super realistic. And if they hadn’t relied so heavily on CGI, they wouldn't have had that problem.

The other thing that makes this super confusing is that the decision to have such a CGI-heavy production rose the price tag on their movie significantly. The reported production budget is $125-150 million, which is insane because this movie was never going to come close to that. In looking at our recent four dog movies, “A Dog’s Purpose” was the biggest earner with $64.5 million domestically and $205 million worldwide. The other three, “A Dog’s Journey,” “A Dog’s Way Home” and “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” averaged $30.3 million domestically and $62.1 million worldwide. “The Call of the Wild” is off to a great start compared to all four as it opened to a surprising $24.8 million when it was expected to open to $10-15 million, but still. The general rule of thum is that a movie needs to at least double or triple its production budget given that said budget doesn’t include marketing costs and the studio doesn’t get back 100 percent of the box office earnings, especially not internationally. So “The Call of the Wild” might need to make at least $200-300 million worldwide to be a success after their choice of using CGI. The other four movies used real dogs and their production budgets averaged out to be $18.5 million.

Yes, I realize that this movie has a higher percentage of dangerous scenes included in it, so I feel like the filmmakers decided that they weren’t going to even attempt to put their trained dogs in any sort of peril in order to avoid any sort of controversy. And when you have dogs leading sleds, dogs fighting other dogs, and dogs going up against bears and wolves, that all makes sense. But I feel like there are filmmaking tricks with these animal movies that allow them to pull off scenes that appear to be really dangerous, yet the animals were never in any sort of harm. I don’t know what these tricks are, but I do know that animal movies have been made for a long time. Heck, this exact book has been adapted several times throughout history, beginning as early as the silent film era in the 1920s, and all of those adaptations didn't have the technology available to CGI all of the dogs and they made out just fine. Rather, my conclusion is that they felt a bit lazy and didn't want to put in the effort of training dogs doing the necessary filmmaking tricks to pull this off, so they just CGI-ed everything, which was an expensive lazy decision. I think they saw movies like "The Jungle Book" and decided to follow suit. And that's an unfortunate decision that compromised the quality of this film.

Did all of the CGI dog stuff ruin this film for me? No, it didn't. As I said, this is a well-written, well-adapted movie with some great sequences, great acting and great character arcs. I think it captures the spirit of the novel in an appropriate way that makes for an enjoyable experience. And all that makes this a bit frustrating because this could've been a great movie that lived up to the legacy of a lot of the excellent animal-led movies that have graced the screen over the decades. But that lazy decision to CGI all of the animals holds back this movie's potential and also cost them big time in terms of profitability at the box office. And I think it's funny that they decided to play it safe and not figure out ways to film certain sequences with real animals, because they also played it safe in terms of the danger in the movie. The original novel is a lot more intense and honest with what happens to certain dogs in the story. The movie could've portrayed that brutality since all the dogs were CGI, but they decided not to. They also changed the novel's villains in the final act from Native Americans to a mustache-twirling white dude who had significantly more depth and character progression in the original novel. So there's plenty of kinks in this movie's armor, but I'm still giving it a 7/10.

Sonic the Hedgehog Review

Here's a movie that's been through quite the adventure over the course of the last year. Despite video game movies rarely working out, someone at Paramount thought it would be a good idea to make a "Sonic the Hedgehog" movie. Or, better yet, someone in the world came up with the idea, pitched it to Paramount, and Paramount signed off on the project. That alone can be seen as a bit of a strange turn of events, but whatever. "Detective Pikachu" worked out rather well, so I suppose Sonic could, too, right? Haha, yeah... but not with that initial plan. This movie was supposed to come out this past November and when they decided to start advertising it, the most horrific sight you'll ever see graced the internet and no one was happy about it. This Sonic movie was about to become the laughing stock of this generation. A movie to be made fun of for the rest of time. Until the unprecedented happened. Director Jeff Fowler took to Twitter shortly after the trailer dropped, told us all he's heard our complaints, and that they're going to fix it. Say what? I was rather shocked. Filmmakers who actually listen to the fan response, pause production on their film, and set out to do what the fans want? Color me impressed. Regardless of the quality of the movie, that act just earned them my $10.

As it turned out, the revamped Sonic looked rather impressive. Part of me wonders if this was all part of some strange master plan by Paramount where they purposely designed enough of a bad-looking Sonic to create a fake trailer, but had the real version ready to go in their back pocket when they got the horrible reaction that they were going for. So they "paused production" in order to "fix" Sonic, sat back and relaxed for a few months, then kicked things into gear. OK, that probably wasn't what happened. But if it did, it would've been rather genius. Because that bad Sonic certainly got everyone's attention, as did the announcement of them stopping production to redesign Sonic. Finally, when the actual trailers started to show up, the audience reaction was at a complete 180 degree turn from what it was before. And as the frosting on top of the cake, February turned out to be a much better release date for the movie. Instead of having to deal with the likes of "Frozen 2," "Jumanji" and "Star Wars" over the holidays following a November release, Sonic has the family audience in February all to itself. Lucky for them, "Dolittle" was a massive disappointment in January and "Onward" is a whole month away in March. All the stars seem to have aligned for a breakout hit.

Despite all of this commotion, this didn't necessarily satisfy all of my personal concerns about this movie. Yes, the initial design of Sonic was atrocious. And yes, I'm glad that they fixed it. But I think there was a deeper, root issue that stemmed from the fact that I don't know if a live action Sonic film really was a good idea. Why does everything have to be live action these days? And it what world does it make the most sense to bring Sonic into the human world? I think that if we HAD to do a Sonic film, it should be an animated Sonic movie from someone like Illumination or DreamWorks, or Sega joining the animation game with their own new animation film studio. That would seem like the best option. But even then, I'm not sure of the narrative in the games is strong enough to warrant a film adaptation. As a child of the 90s, I liked the Sonic games just as much as the next person. I was much more of a Super Nintendo kid than a Sega Genesis kid, but whenever I got my hands on a Sonic game, I enjoyed it. But the fun of the games was running fast through the hoops, collecting coins and stopping villains. It's like Mario or Donkey Kong. A narrative exists. But that's not what makes the game fun. So how is this all going to translate?

The answer to this is, if I'm being bluntly honest, is that this doesn't translate super well. And I don't know if I really get this fascination of bringing Sonic into the human world. Since I mentioned "Detective Pikachu" at the beginning of this review, perhaps I should say that a Pokemon film makes a lot more sense as a live action production in the human world because the premise of Pokemon is already set in a human world and the specific "Detective Pikachu" game is a lot more centered around a narrative rather than just wandering around, catching Pokemon and defeated gyms. Bringing Sonic into the human world and making him live action feels a lot more like a Smurfs treatment. They didn't need to be live action and they didn't need to be in our world, but the filmmakers decided to anyways and thus they found that there wasn't quite as much to do with it. Now before I get too far down the negative rabbit hole here, I will say that even though the premise doesn't necessarily set this up for the highest level of success, everyone involved in this project does their absolute best to make this work anyways. And for that I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised at the final results here. This could've been a whole lot worse, but instead it ends up being satisfactory.

The actual premise of the movie involves Sonic transporting to Earth at a rather young age, then spending most of his life staying hidden on Earth in a little Montana town called Green Hills. There's a family he gravitates towards, but instead of formally introducing himself, he hides in the shadows and stalks them. However, one night many years in the future after Sonic initially arrived, he gets super lonely and in a bit of a rage, he runs super ultra fast and causes a power outage across the town. This causes the government to deploy the crazy Doctor Robotnik to investigate what is happening. Robotnik discovers Sonic. Sonic reveals himself to his secret family he's been stalking. James Marsden's character named Tom agrees to help Sonic out and the two of them go on a wild adventure trying to run away from Robotnik, with Sonic's eventual endgame being to use his gold rings to transport himself into a different world so that he can go back into hiding. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the movie. It's a very simple premise because there's not a whole lot you can do with a Sonic movie. And most of it is this buddy comedy with James Marsden and Sonic trying to escape from Robotnik, with plenty of gags, jokes, and action sequences along the way.

Even though it seems unnecessary to throw Sonic into a human world, the human actors all do a great job. James Marsden, Jim Carrey and Tika Sumpter could've taken this as a simple paycheck film, but they all take their roles super seriously. And by that I mean they put their heart and souls into this project in order to make it something that others will actually enjoy watching. Because Jim Carrey is anything but serious in this movie. And that's what makes his character of Doctor Robotnik rather fun.This is Jim Carrey once again embracing his old, wacky 90s self and there's a good enough makeup and hairstyling team to go along with him to make it look like he's not a 57-year-old Jim Carrey, but rather a Jim Carrey who is back in his prime. This is classic Jim Carrey and he's absolutely bonkers in this role, which is exactly what I want from a Jim Carrey performance. But it's not just him. James Marsden is also someone who found the fountain of youth because he looks like he's in his 20s in this movie rather than looking 46. Him and Tika Sumpter as husband and wife make a great young couple even though neither are too terribly young in real life. Better yet, James Marsden has great chemistry with Sonic, which was vital to make this work.

So yeah, there's not much of a plot here and maybe the idea behind this wasn't great, but I found myself really enjoying these adventures of James Marsden and Sonic. Sonic himself is voiced by Ben Schwartz. After looking up Ben Schwartz's IMDb page, I learned that he's done a lot of different voice work, which made him a great choice for Sonic. He does a great job of bringing Sonic to life. As he should be, Sonic is full of energy, making all of his scenes really entertaining. They even take a page from X-Men's Quicksilver in throwing together some super slow motion stuff just for the heck of it and it's rather amusing. I think what impressed me the most is that there's a fair bit of emotion sprinkled in. I didn't think I would care at all for how lonely Sonic was, but there were several scenes where that really showed up, both in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. That got to me. It made me care about Sonic and it made me want him to find true love and friendship. And when that happens with his team-up with James Marsden, there's some solid resolution that makes for a satisfying character arc. All of this I think will be extremely effective when it comes to families and young kids. Even if the kids don't have a pre-established attachment to Sonic, I think they'll fall in love with him.

In wrapping this all up, this is much better than it had any right to be. I think we were all ready to kick this into the dirt as a failed project that should've never come into existence, but instead it really feels like director Jeff Fowler really wanted to make this work as a fun family film that was also nostalgic enough for us adults who grew up with Sonic in the 90s. It's also possible that he had no other choice if he wanted his career to take off. If this was any other experienced director, maybe there wouldn't have been as high of a level of care because one bump in the road wouldn't be the end of the world. But all Jeff Fowler has done in terms of directing is a 2004 short film called "Gopher Broke." If his feature-length directorial debut was a wretchedly awful Sonic film, he can kiss his directing career goodbye. But now I think he's proved himself to be a competent director that deserves to be given additional opportunities following this film. Given that there's a significant tease in the end credits of this film that we all could've seen coming miles away, if Sonic becomes a huge financial success, I would love to see him take on the sequel that the movie definitely wants to do. Sure, this is far from perfect, but as a competently done Sonic film, I'll award "Sonic the Hedgehog" a 7/10.

Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn Review

How's that for a movie title? "Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn" is quite the fun title for a movie, in my opinion. Although if I type it too many times in this review, it'll take up half the review. So I'll just simply call it "Birds of Prey," even though that's not the most accurate title for this movie, but we'll get to that here in a bit. "Birds of Prey" is actually the first new 2020 release that I am reviewing, which is a bit crazy considering we're nearly halfway through the second month of the year. But, well, I've been busy with other stuff. Sundance took over my January movie viewing and I have no regrets there. Out of all the new January releases (not counting "Just Mercy" or "1917," which were 2019 releases that expanded in January -- both of which I did review), I'm curious about "The Gentlemen." I'll probably catch that eventually. None of the rest looked particularly interesting. And I know "Bad Boys for Life" exploded like crazy, but I've not seen any of those movies, so I don't know if I really have much say in that argument. So essentially I'm choosing to start of my 2020 movie experience with the latest in the ever so confusing DC timeline. But hey, screw the timeline. DC has. And that's the best decision that they've made as a company.

Because, yeah, "Birds of Prey" is all about Harley Quinn. The whole "Birds of Prey" thing is a bit of an afterthought that happens at the end of the movie. And speaking of timeline, since we can't make a Harley Quinn movie without at least mentioning the Joker, it might be a bit confusing for the casual moviegoer as to why we now have two Jokers in this DC world. No, Jared Leto's Joker from "Suicide Squad" doesn't actually show up in this movie, but he gets referenced by Harley Quinn in just about every scene in this movie. This happening four months after Todd Phillips' "Joker" was released in theaters and on the same exact weekend that Joaquin Phoenix won an Oscar for his portrayal of the title character in that movie. But no, Joaquin Phoenix's Joker was just a random side thing. That is until DC tries to convince Todd and Joaquin to do another one given that the movie made over $1 billion worldwide and got nominated for 11 Oscars, the most ever for a comic book film, ahead of both "Black Panther" and "The Dark Knight." But no, that's not the Joker that we're talking about. We're talking about the Joker from "Suicide Squad" that everyone hated. Because it's his Harley Quinn from said movie that this new movie is all about. That all make sense?

If you're still confused, just take a page from "The Flash" and imagine this as an alternate timeline. It's kind of a DC thing to do. And as I said, ignoring the confusing timeline is the best thing DC has done. After "The Avengers" completely caught fire and changed the movie industry forever, Warner Bros. was among the first of many to try to figure out how to replicate that, since it was them that owns DC. So instead of sticking to DC's roots as brand, they tried to copy Marvel by turning "Justice League" into the next "Avengers." But they didn't have the patience spend five movies building up to it, so after making the complete abomination that was "Man of Steel," they crammed five movies into one, called it "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice," then immediately jumped straight to "Justice League." And they wonder why "Justice League" ended up being a thing that kinda just came and went, rather than being the huge event film that it deserved to be. So then they had to pause and figure things out. Lucky for them, "Wonder Woman" was also a thing that happened. Instead of that movie being a studio-mandated project made to expand the DCEU, that was a movie where they let Patty Jenkins simply make a Wonder Woman movie. And it was a massive success.

Now we fast forward here to "Birds of Prey" and we've had a long string of movies where DC have simply decided to make individual movies. In the last year or two, the success of "Wonder Woman" has led DC to make the likes of "Aquaman," "Shazam!" and "Joker," all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. While, sure, I'll defend the likes of "Suicide Squad" and claim that "Justice League" wasn't a complete disaster, I'll also make the claim that "Wonder Woman" was the beginning of a new era for DC and that the movies that have followed have breathed life into a franchise that was about ready to burst into flames. Yet still there's a large group of internet haters that cling onto the philosophy that "All DC movies are terrible pieces of crap" and won't even give movies like "Birds of Prey" a chance, especially since it's technically a spin-off of "Suicide Squad," a movie that is nearly universally panned. I have to practically beg people to see "Shazam!" Even though that was one of my favorite movies of last year, people still won't see it. So we're in a bit of an awkward spot where the general public hasn't yet been converted back to trusting DC. But that'll change here soon. In the meantime, "Birds of Prey" ended up suffering with a measly $33 million opening.

No, it's not all a lost cause given that their production budget was only about $80-100 million. But it does make this a bit of an uphill battle, especially in the realm of me convincing people that it's a movie worth seeing, which I definitely think it is. Anyways, less about the history of this movie and more about the movie itself, this is a movie where they decided to give Margot Robbie the keys to the car and do whatever the heck she wants. Because she's Harley freaking Quinn. And even though that's the line they used in the trailer, we all know that that wasn't the line she used in the movie? Did you know that this movie is a hard R? Yup. And it's rather glorious. But some people haven't known. And I have no idea how you get into a movie where you don't know the rating to. It reminds me of the parents who became furious when they took their kids to see "Deadpool," yet got mad at the movie for the content their kids were subjected to. But apparently that happens. If you didn't know "Birds of Prey" was going in that direction, now you do. No sexual content here, but lots of language and a ton of unhinged violence. A lot of people have been asking for more comic book movies like this. And thanks to "Deadpool" leading the way, we're now getting them.

Granted, I'm not one to advocate a movie getting a certain rating just for the heck of it. I simply prefer to have a good movie, whatever the rating is. But Harley Quinn is such a psychotic, crazy character that her getting a movie where she gets to go bananas is rather fitting and highly amusing. She's not strapped down to a family-friendly "Suicide Squad" style of movie. She gets to do whatever she wants. Like breaking people's legs, blowing up cars and buildings, and cursing up the wazoo when she feels like it. All of that is sticking true to the character of Harley Quinn rather than the movie trying to be purposely gratuitous just to elicit a reaction. So I'm in. A PG-13 straps her down. It's like Wolverine or Deadpool. Did you ever think it was weird that Wolverine has these huge, metal claws, yet no even bled when he stabbed them? Or were you one of the millions who thought it was complete blasphemy that the first time Deadpool showed up on screen, it was with a tied up mouth? These were character decisions made to try to water them down to a kid-friendly rating in order to make money. And I'm glad that we now live in a world where we can simply make the movie that fits the character. And since Marvel is never going to make a movie like this, I'm glad DC now can.

And that's why I really liked this movie. Not because of the letter on my ticket stub. But because they took one of the greatest DC characters in Harley Quinn and gave her a movie that truly fit her. Sure, they should've simply titled this movie "Harley Quinn" instead of titling the movie "Birds of Prey," then not show the name Harley Quinn until the last part of the giant subtitle. That might've confused too many people. And now apparently some theater chains have actually started advertising the movie as "Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey," which I think is a strange thing to start doing this late in the game. But whatever. That title kinda fits more than the real movie's title. Harley Quinn has moved on from Joker. She's tired of living in his shadow and thus she is ready to make her own mark on the world. And now that she's moved on, she's learned that she's made a lot of enemies along the way who are all now more than willing to go after her now that she's left the shadow of the Joker and No. 1 on that list, for now anyways, is Ewan McGregor's iteration of Black Mask. No, he's nothing like the comic book version of Black Mask, a habit this movie makes with most of its characters, but Ewan McGregor relished in the chance of being a villain and thus does an excellent job.

With a proper villain chasing her, and utter chaos at her fingertips, Margot Robbie really shines as I think the quintessential version of Harley Quinn. She's not someone who is simply trying to be Harley Quinn or is emulating something better. She is Harley Quinn. Much in the same way that Heath Ledger is the quintessential version of the Joker or Gal Gadot is the quintessential version of Wonder Woman. Margot Robbie was able to take a classic character, and with "Suicide Squad" as her audition, she has now become an iconic comic book presence. It'll be hard to see anyone else try to be this character since Margot Robbie is now so perfect. And that's the reason why I thoroughly enjoyed the movie from start to finish. The movie is completely bonkers and a ton of fun. And it's all because Margot Robbie is owning this role and is able to do so completely unrestrained. Her presence throughout and the fun that she was having was instrumental in helping me overlook some elements of the movie that were a bit lackluster. The first part I will mention real quick is that narratively this movie is a bit all over the place. Given that Harley Quinn is the one narrating this, that kinda makes sense since she is completely unstable, but it still makes for a bit of a jarring journey.

The real issue I had with this movie comes with the actual Birds of Prey stuff. Margot Robbie is absolutely the quintessential version of Harley Quinn. Jurnee Smollett-Bell is 100 percent NOT that for Black Canary. This is where my Arrow fandom kicks in. Even though I'm not yet caught up on the final season, I've still seen Katie Cassidy portray Laurel Lance for most of her 153 episodes that she's shown up. Even though the writers royally screwed up her character halfway through, Katie Cassidy still owned it as the character or the Earth 2 version of her that they called Black Siren in the later seasons. In the last half of the show, they brought in Juliana Harkavy as Dinah Drake, a slightly alternate version of Black Canary. And if we're getting really technical, my girl Caity Lotz has also played a version of this character in the show, even though they called her White Canary. So yeah, there's options as to how to portray this character. And I'm sure the comics that I'm not as familiar with has it even different, but Jurnee Smollet-Bell's version of Black Canary, who they decide to call Dinah Lance, is only similar in name alone. She's this punk street girl who does the dirty work of Black Mask. She eventually turns "good," but she looks and acts nothing like Black Canary.

Unfortunately, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the same story for The Huntress. Granted, in "Arrow," Helena Bertinelli, aka The Huntress, only showed up for four episodes across the first few seasons, but she made a huge impact as this intimidating, powerful presence. In "Birds of Prey," they give her an elaborate backstory that provides plenty of strong motivation, but they spend most of the movie making her this mysterious presence, but when she finally shows up and starts talking, she's an unconfident wimp who is extremely disappointing. She's kinda cool with her crossbow, but she was a huge missed opportunity. So when the main ladies supporting Harley Quinn really fall flat, I have a hard time buying the concept of the Birds of Prey. If they ever do a movie version of Green Arrow, I'm really hoping they simply recast Jurnee Smollet-Bell because I don't want this version of Black Canary anywhere near Oliver Queen. Black Canary is a glorious character who deserves to be done right on film. And The Huntress is such an awesome character who deserves her own spin-off film. But I don't think Mary Elizabeth Winstead getting her own Huntress movie would be the least bit interesting. As a DC fan, I'm really upset that they fumbled big time with these iconic characters. 

And that's not even getting into Cassandra Cain, who is one version of Batgirl in the comics, or Renee Montoya, who round up this Birds of Prey gang. I'd have zero interest in seeing any of them return to the DC universe, but I really hope we haven't seen the last of Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. She deserves plenty more screenplay. And I have this underperformance at the box office doesn't cause the people at Warner Bros. to shy away from bringing her back in some capacity. There's all sorts of rumored projects that DC has been toying with, like a Harley Quinn and Joker spin-off or a Gotham City Sirens. I'd like to see some of them happen. At the very least, I'm hoping that James Gunn does a good job with her in his 2021 "Suicide Squad" sequel/reboot thing called "The Suicide Squad," because, yeah, I want to see lots more of her. Now on Facebook when I came out of the movie, I said that this is another home run for DC. OK, fine, maybe that was a slight overreaction to just getting out. This is not quite on the level of the "Joker," "Wonder Woman" or "Shazam!" But this was still a highly entertaining movie. And I hope that DC is still willing to take these experimental risks, even if it means lowering financial expectations, because I'm totally on board. My grade for "Birds of Prey" is an 8/10.

The 92nd Academy Awards: Predictions

It's Oscar time again! Albeit a bit earlier than I'm used to, which certainly throws me off in several categories. Usually the Oscars are in late February or early March. I'm not sure why they decided to have them in early February this year. Perhaps they just wanted to move the Oscars closer to the actual year they are honoring as opposed to getting too far into the year. For me, though, that throws me off because I usually spend a decent percentage of February catching up on some of the Oscar nominated movies that I missed. I tried to do the same this year, but I simply just ran out of time, especially since January was a bit of a busy month for me. But oh well. It is what it is. Life moves on. Even though said ceremony is a bit earlier than normal, I'm still here making my annual predictions post. As always, I'm also going to make my personal selections as to what I think should win. And that's the part that's going to be affected most by this early date. I'm going to have to abstain in more categories than I would like. As far as the predictions go, I honestly think this is going to be a straightforward year with few surprises. But if I'm wrong and I end up doing terrible with these predictions, all the better. A crazier night is often more exciting. So let's dive into these predictions!

Documentary Short Subject:

Nominations:

- "In the Absense" - Yi Seung & Gary Byung-Seok Kam
- "Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl) - Carol Dysinger & Elena Andreicheva
- "Life Overtakes Me" - John Haptas & Kristine Samuelson
- "St. Louis Superman" - Smriti Mundhra & Sami Khan
- "Walk Run Cha-Cha" - Laura Nix & Charlotte Sandstedt

Will Win:

- "In the Absense" - Yi Seung & Gary Byung-Seok Kam

Should Win:

- "In the Absense" - Yi Seung & Gary Byung-Seok Kam

With these predictions, we start with the smaller awards and progress forward to the bigger awards. So we start with the shorts. The short film categories I always enjoy, so it's advantageous putting them first because I can raise awareness. If you have some time to watch them, which you should since they're all fairly short, you should do so. With these documentary shorts, I've only seen three of them because "Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone" and "St. Louis Superman" were two that I didn't have any access to. So of the three I've seen, "Walk Run Cha-Cha" was kinda boring, while "In the Absence" and "Life Overtakes Me" were both quite educational. I choose "In the Absence" as my personal winner because that's the one that shocked me the most and is thus the one I'm going to tell people to watch. As far as the predicted winner, I went by IMDb score last year and that worked out quite well, so I'm trying that again. With that in mind, "In the Absence" also had the highest score.

Animated Short Film:

Nominations:

- "Dcera (Daughter)" - Daria Kashcheeva
- "Hair Love" - Matthew A. Cherry & Karen Rupert Toliver
- "Kitbull" - Rosana Sullivan & Kathryn Hendrickson
- "Memorable" - Bruno Collet & JeanFrançois Le Corre
- "Sister" - Siqi Song

Will Win:

- "Kitbull" - Rosana Sullivan & Kathryn Hendrickson

Should Win:

- "Hair Love" - Matthew A. Cherry & Karen Rupert Toliver

The only two I've seen in this category are "Kitbull" and "Hair Love." The others are nowhere to be found on the internet at the moment. So it's a bit unfair for me to pick a personal favorite of the bunch. Although the two that I have seen come from Sony Pictures Animation and Pixar and that's what I'm guessing the winner is going to come down to. Kitbull is one of Pixar's SparkShorts and it as a rather adorable and emotional story about a pitbull and a black cat. "Hair Love" was shown at the beginning of "The Angry Birds Movie 2" and it was the only good part of that theatrical experience for me. Both are also on YouTube. I think voters might resonate more with the Pixar short. And it has the highest IMDb score. But "Hair Love" is a really emotional story about a dad, a daughter and their sick mom/wife. It resonated with me a little more than "Kitbull," but both are solid.

Live Action Short Film:

Nominations:

- "Brotherhood" - Meryan Joobeur & Maria Gracia Turgeon
- "Nefta Football Club" - Yves Piat & Damien Megherbi
- "The Neighbor's Window" - Marhsall Curry
- "Saria" - Bryan Buckley & Matt Lefebvre
- "A Sister" - Delphine Girard

Will Win:

- "A Sister" - Delphine Girard

Should Win:

- n/a

This is where I need to practice what I preach. I tell people to watch the shorts, but I haven't seen any of these, even though three of them are on either YouTube or Vimeo. I blame the early Oscar date for why I wasn't able to get around to these. So that makes predicting a bit hard and picking a favorite impossible. With the prediction, I'm going off my IMDb strategy here and predicting "A Sister" to win, even though I'm not quite sure what it's about. Although there's a part of me that wants to break my strategy and go for "Nefta Football Club" because I feel that one is the most accessible to people and also has a good audience reaction. But despite that, I'm sticking with "A Sister."  

International Feature Film:

Nominations:

- "Corpus Christi" - Poland
- "Honeyland" - North Macedonia
- "Les Misérables" - France
- "Pain and Glory" - Spain
- "Parasite" - South Korea

Will Win:

- "Parasite" - South Korea

Should Win:

- n/a

They changed the name of this category from best foreign film to best international feature film this year. In case you were curious. And I'm abstaining from making a pick for my personal favorite because the only one I've seen is "Parasite." Given that "Parasite" is my No. 2 film of the year, the other three would have to be quite phenomenal for me to claim in retrospect that they are better. I do want to see "Les Misérables" and "Pain and Glory," but neither have expanded far enough for me to even give them a chance, which is usually the case with this category. And "Honeyland" is going to come up again in the documentary section. I meant to watch it as it's on Hulu, but I ran out of time. "Parasite" is going to win this award, though. That's a done deal.  

Documentary Feature:

Nominations:

- "American Factory" - Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert & Jeff Reichert
- "The Cave" - Feras Fayyad, Kristine Barford & Sigrid Dyekjaer
- "The Edge of Democracy" - Petra Costa, Joanna Natasegara, Shane Boris & Tiago Pavan
- "For Sama" - Waad al-Kateab & Edward Watts
- "Honeyland" - Ljubo Stefanov, Tamara Kotevska & Atanas Georgiev

Will Win:

- "For Sama" - Waad al-Kateab & Edward Watts


Should Win:

- n/a

This category sees the most immediate consequences of the early Oscar date. I didn't get around to watching any of them and they're all accessible except for "The Cave." "Honeyland" is on Hulu. "American Factory" and "The Edge of Democracy" are on Netflix. And "For Sama" is on PBS's YouTube channel. And probably also their main site. I'll get to them. I promise. But not before posting this. As far as my prediction, this one is a bit difficult as none of them jump out at me as a front runner. I can see any of them sneaking out a win. I was going to go for "Honeyland" because of the double nomination. Maybe that's a sign that the Academy really likes it? But then I looked up the reviews of all of them. I wasn't planning on using that as my method of predicting, but the reaction to "For Sama" is through the roof, so that seems like the most obvious selection. And it did win the BAFTA award for best documentary, so that's what I'm going with. Mostly, though, I'm a bit annoyed that "Apollo 11" didn't get nominated. Did the people nominating simply think that it was less of a documentary and more of some archival footage thrown together? That's the only explanation I can come up with. That's a silly reason to not nominate it, but whatever. 

Original Song:

Nominations:

- "I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away" - Randy Newman ("Toy Story 4")
- "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again" - Elton John & Taron Egerton ("Rocketman")
- "I'm Standing with You" - Chrissy Metz ("Breakthrough")
- "Into the Unknown" - Idinia Menzel & AURORA ("Frozen 2")
- "Stand Up" - Cynthia Erivo ("Harriet")

Will Win:

- "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again" - Elton John & Taron Egerton ("Rocketman")


Should Win:

- "Stand Up" - Cynthia Erivo ("Harriet")

The Academy is going to give Elton John his Oscar. That seems like a done deal. And I have no problem with that, especially since I want "Rocketman" to get recognition in some way and this was the only category where it got nominated. But when I pick my favorite from this category, I often lean on the song that made the biggest impact in its movie and "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again" was only in the end credits. So what do I go with? The "Toy Story 4" song is a bit weird, so that's out. I'm a bit shocked that a little Christian film in "Breakthrough" got anything in terms of nominations, so it's not winning. Solid song, though, and good movie. So that leaves us with two. I love "Into the Unknown," but I'm not sure if it's the song from "Frozen 2" that had the biggest impact. That leaves me with "Stand Up," which is a strange selection since I haven't even seen "Harriet." But YouTube exists. And even if I throw out my philosophy of the song that had the biggest impact, this song is the best song of the bunch. Plus, in listening the the lyrics, I feel that it had to have had a big impact as the message is strong and the singer is the lead actress in the movie. Those who have seen "Harriet," am I right?

Original Score:

Nominations:

- "Joker" - Hildur Guðnadóttir
- "Little Women" - Alexandre Desplat
- "Marriage Story" - Randy Newman
- "1917" - Thomas Newman
- "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" - John Williams

Will Win:

- "Joker" - Hildur Guðnadóttir

Should Win:

- "Joker" - Hildur Guðnadóttir

This one is a tough choice. Hildur Guðnadóttir has been winning all of the precursors here, so I feel this is close to being a done deal, although I wouldn't be surprised if Thomas Newman snuck in a win given that I'm predicting a big night for "1917." As far as a personal choice, the scores for "Marriage Story" and "Little Women" are good, but feel like more traditional movie scores. And "The Rise of Skywalker" score is one of John Williams' least impressive Star Wars scores. With the other two, I've been listening to both of the scores for "Joker" and "1917" as I type up this post and I'm having a hard time choosing. Both scores made a huge impact on their movie and both scores are phenomenal. But I'm leaning ever so slightly to "Joker" here because it is the score that stands out as more unique. As great as the "1917" score is, you could probably plug that into any intense war movie and it would fit well. Hildur Guðnadóttir's score fits more specifically to "Joker." When you play it, I do feel it's one of the scores that will be immediately recognizable as coming from "Joker."  

Visual Effects:

Nominations:

- "Avengers: Endgame" - Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Matt Aitken & Dan Sudick
- "The Irishman" - Pable Helman, Leandro Estebecorna, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser & Stephane Grabli
- "The Lion King" - Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones & Elliot Newman
- "1917" - Guillaume Rocheron, Greg Butler & Dominic Tuohy
- "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" - Roger Guyett, Neal Scanlan, Patrick Tubach & Dominic Tuohy

Will Win:

- "1917" - Guillaume Rocheron, Greg Butler & Dominic Tuohy

Should Win:

- "The Lion King" - Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones & Elliot Newman

Typing that up just killed me. This is a category with four great movies and to have something as lifeless as the 2019 remake of "The Lion King" beating them would feel wrong. But I have to be objective here. "The Lion King" may have been a bad movie, but those visual effects were absolutely stunning. It looked like a national geographic documentary at times, but it was all done on a computer. That I have to give props to. As far as the winner, it does feel a bit unfair that Avengers and Star Wars are going to walk away empty handed when "1917" steals this award away as this is usually the only category that the Academy gives love to the big blockbusters. But I do think that "1917" is going to sweep a lot of the technical categories.  

Sound Editing:

Nominations:

- "Ford v Ferrari" - Donald Sylvester
- "Joker" - Alan Robert Murray
- "1917" - Oliver Tarney & Rachael Tate
- "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" - Wylie Stateman
- "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" - Matthew Wood & David Acord

Will Win:

- "1917" - Oliver Tarney & Rachael Tate


Should Win:

- "Ford v Ferrari" - Donald Sylvester

These sound categories should go to "Ford v Ferrari" simply because of the racing sequences. I'm not the best judge of sound mixing and sound editing, but when I do my best to think about the sound, "Ford v Ferrari" is the only one that really jumps out to me. But like I said with the previous category, I feel "1917" is going to walk away with most of the technical categories. And I can't get mad at that in this instance. Creating the sound for a war film is one of the more critical elements of the genre.    

Sound Mixing:

Nominations:

- "Ad Astra" - Gary Rydstrom, Tom Johnson & Mark Ulano
- "Ford v Ferrari" - Pual Massey, David Giammarco & Steven A. Morrow
- "Joker" - Tom Ozanich, Dean Zupancic & Tod Maitland
- "1917" - Mark Taylor & Stuart Wilson
- "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" - Michael Minkler, Christian P. Minkler & Mark Ulano

Will Win:

- "1917" - Mark Taylor & Stuart Wilson

Should Win:

- "Ford v Ferrari" - Pual Massey, David Giammarco & Steven A. Morrow

See my comments in the sound editing category. It's a bit redundant typing it up twice. As far as why "Ad Astra" got in on mixing while "The Rise of Skywalker" got in on editing is a bit of a mystery to me. But it's whatever. "Ad Astra" is one of the year's overlooked films, so I'm happy it got something. I think more people should go see it.  

Makeup and Hairstyling:

Nominations:

- "Bombshell" - Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan & Vivian Baker
- "Joker" - Nicki Ledermann & Kay Georgiou
- "Judy" - Jeremy Woodhead
- "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil" - Paul Gooch, Arjen Tuiten & David White
- "1917" - Naomi Donne, Tristan Versluis & Rebecca Cole

Will Win:

- "Bombshell" - Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan & Vivian Baker

Should Win:

- "Bombshell" - Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan & Vivian Baker

I mean, do I even have to have seen "Bombshell" in order to say it deserves this win? If so, I'm sorry. Because that's what I'm doing. I haven't seen the movie, but when I saw the trailers, all the makeup and hair work done on our lead ladies was impressive. I imagine that was a lot of hard work that had to be done everyday on set in order to make the movie work. And I think that the Academy is going to award it for that because otherwise I don't see what else takes this one home. Granted, this is the category that won "Suicide Squad" an Oscar, so you never know. Maybe they'll do something crazy and give this to "Maleficent." Or maybe "1917" takes this, too, in it's sweep of Oscar night. And if you're curious, this is the first year that they went five nominees in this category. I'm not sure why they didn't do that before. 

Film Editing:

Nominations:

- "Ford v Ferrari" - Michael McCusker & Andrew Buckland
- "The Irishman" - Thelma Schoonmaker
- "Jojo Rabbit" - Tom Eagles
- "Joker" - Jeff Groth
- "Parasite" - Yang Jinmo

Will Win:

- "Ford v Ferrari" - Michael McCusker & Andrew Buckland

Should Win:

- "Ford v Ferrari" - Michael McCusker & Andrew Buckland

Why in the name of all things good is "1917" not in this category? Granted, I don't think the filmmakers are going to be feeling left out as I feel it's going to win a lot. But the editing in this movie was pure wizardry. The whole concept of giving the illusion of this being done in one shot is what made the movie. "Birdman" also missed out on a nomination here, too, so maybe the editing branch of the Oscars don't like this technique or think it's not worth editing. That's an absolute shame. But with "1917" out of the way, I have to give this one to "Ford v. Ferrari." The editing work in the race sequences was breathtaking. And I think that's the way the Academy goes, too. I have no idea what else they would give it to. Now sometimes this category reflects on best picture, so if "Parasite" is in for a big night, it could steal this award.     

Costume Design:

Nominations:

- "The Irishman" - Sandy Powell & Christopher Peterson
- "Jojo Rabbit" - Mayes C. Rubeo
- "Joker" - Mark Bridges
- "Little Women" - Jacqueline Duran
- "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" - Robert Richardson

Will Win:

- "Little Women" - Jacqueline Duran


Should Win:

- "Little Women" - Jacqueline Duran

Can this please be the category where we all agree to give "Little Women" an Oscar? Maybe I'm a sucker for period pieces, but there's a lot of work done in dressing these ladies up. Although as I think about it, "Jojo Rabbit" and "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" also had to have good costume work to give the feel of their specific time periods, but I feel more work was probably done each day for "Little Women." And honest question. Why is "Joker" nominated here? There was ONE good costume made. The rest were normal people. Why not take out "Joker" and put in "Rocketman" instead? Dressing up Taron Egerton as Elton John in each sequence was probably the most impressive costume work of the year. "Joker" had 11 nominations total. No one working on that movie would lose any sleep if they had one less.  

Cinematography:

Nominations:

- "The Irishman" - Rodrigo Prieto
- "Joker" - Lawrence Sher
- "The Lighthouse" - Jarin Blaschke
- "1917" - Roger Deakins
- "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" - Robert Richardson

Will Win:

- "1917" - Roger Deakins

Should Win:

- "1917" - Roger Deakins

Need I even elaborate here? If we're not giving "1917" an editing nomination, at least we're making up for it and giving it cinematography. Roger Deakins gets his second Oscar and we go home happy. If I had to pick a second favorite here, "The Lighthouse" is it.  

Production Design:

Nominations:

- "The Irishman" - Bob Shaw & Regina Graves
- "Jojo Rabbit" - Ra Vincent & Nora Sopková
- "1917" - Dennis Gassner & Lee Sandales
- "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" - Barbara Ling & Nancy Haigh
- "Parasite" - Lee Ha Jun & Cho Won Woo

Will Win:

- "1917" - Dennis Gassner & Lee Sandales

Should Win:

- "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" - Barbara Ling & Nancy Haigh

Again, I think "1917" is going to walk away with most of the technical categories. If it doesn't, we might have an upset on our hands when it comes to best picture. This one is certainly deserved. Recreating World War I was an impressive feat. I actually had to sit and ponder for a second for my personal pick because recreating World War I and 1960s Hollywood were both quite impressive. But in this case I'm leaning more towards 1960s Hollywood and giving Tarantino's team my personal vote. With the other three, I'm not sure the sets in the movie really stood out that much in comparison to the aforementioned two.

Animated Feature Film:

Nominations:

- "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World" - DreamWorks Animation
- "I Lost My Body" - Xilam Animation
- "Klaus" - Sergio Pablos Animation Studio
- "Missing Link" - LAIKA
- "Toy Story 4" - Pixar Animation Studios

Will Win:

- "Toy Story 4" - Pixar Animation Studios

Should Win:

- "Toy Story 4" - Pixar Animation Studios

I am not confident in predicting this category. All the precursors have been all over the map. And even though Disney and Pixar often do quite well here, the one kryptonite for both studios on Oscar night is the sequels. Even if the sequels are well liked, the Academy often doesn't reward them. And I think it would be great if "Klaus" or "Missing Link" walked away with an Oscar in an upset. And I think it's highly likely that it happens. But the fact that "Frozen 2" completely missed out on a nomination I think gave this one to "Toy Story 4" because all the big Disney voters in the Academy no longer had to be split in their vote. They can all team together to give "Toy Story 4" the Oscar. As far as my personal choice, "Toy Story 4" was my favorite animated movie of the year and was the top honorable mention when it came to my end of year list. I was the biggest and most stubborn doubter leading up to its release. But it turned out to be the Toy Story finale that I didn't know I needed.   

Adapted Screenplay:

Nominations:

- "The Irishman" - Steven Zaillian
- "Jojo Rabbit" - Taika Waititi
- "Joker" - Todd Phillips & Scott Silver
- "Little Women" - Greta Gerwig
- "The Two Popes" - Anthony McCarten

Will Win:

- "Jojo Rabbit" - Taika Waititi

Should Win:

- "Jojo Rabbit" - Taika Waititi

I sometimes get confused with this category. Is it best adaptation of the source material or is it the best screenplay that just happened to be adapted? I always lean towards the latter. In which case, it's not about the movie itself. It's about the movie that had the best screenplay. And even though I put th lieks of "Joker" and "Little Women" higher on my end of year list, the idea behind "Jojo Rabbit" was absolutely genius. Who would've thunk that doing a comedy that makes light of Hitler and Nazi Germany would work so well? But lest you think that's all there is to it, the journey that Jojo goes through in thinking that Nazis are the greatest ever to learning the truth about them is quite brilliant. And the movie's commitment to following his point of view is magical. Thus of course I have to pick it as the best screenplay in this category. And it's been winning all the major precursors, so I feel quite confident in my selection. If there's a spoiler here it's Greta Gerwig with "Little Women." 

Original Screenplay:

Nominations:

- "Knives Out" - Rian Johnson
- "Marriage Story" - Noah Baumbach
- "1917" - Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns
- "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" - Quentin Tarantino
- "Parasite" - Bong Joon Ho & Han Jin Won

Will Win:

- "Parasite" - Bong Joon Ho & Han Jin Won

Should Win:

- "Parasite" - Bong Joon Ho & Han Jin Won

Another solid list of screenplays here. I like all of these. The screenplays in each of these movies go a long way in making the final product work. But in dissecting this category, "Parasite" was just off the walls bonkers. The concept of doing a socially relevant heist film was great. But the directions the movie goes in the final half had me absolutely stunned. So I think it's by far the best screenplay and I think this is where the Academy gives Bong Joon Ho his Oscar. If there's a spoiler here, I think it would go to Tarantino. Although if Rian Johnson took it for "Knives Out," I would love that.  

Actress in a Supporting Role:

Nominations:

- Kathy Bates - "Richard Jewell"
- Laura Dern - "Marriage Story"
- Scarlett Johansson - "Jojo Rabbit"
- Florence Pugh - "Little Women"
- Margot Robbie - "Bombshell"

Will Win:

- Laura Dern - "Marriage Story"

Should Win:

- Scarlett Johansson - "Jojo Rabbit"

The acting categories I think are going to be pretty straight forward here. Laura Dern has been winning everything up to this point and I don't think there's much of a chance that there's an upset. But the fun part of this conversation is my personal selection because there's four excellent performances here. And I'm sure there's also a fifth with Margot Robbie. She's always great. But I haven't seen "Bombshell." I'm really happy that Kathy Bates got in because "Richard Jewell" was great and the best actor category was too crowded to put in Paul Walter Hauser. Florence Pugh also had a great year with three solid performances via "Fighting with My Family," "Midsommar" and "Little Women." In the latter, she was a great highlight and I wasn't sure if she was getting in, so I'm happy that she did. But my favorite performance here comes down to the Laura Dern and Scar-Jo. And although Laura Dern was fantastic in "Marriage Story," and I'm glad we'll be honoring the movie is some way, she was such an awful character in terms of how despicable she was that I think I learn more towards Scar-Jo giving a performance that left more of an impact for me. It's a quiet and a subtle performance, but it's honestly one of her best. And even when she's not in the movie, she's making a huge impact. 

Actor in a Supporting Role:

Nominations:

- Tom Hanks - "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"
- Anthony Hopkins - "The Two Popes"
- Al Pacino - "The Irishman"
- Joe Pesci - "The Irishman"
- Brad Pitt - "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood"

Will Win:

- Brad Pitt - "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood"


Should Win:

- Al Pacino - "The Irishman"

This category is tough to pick a favorite because I'm honestly not the biggest fan of these performances. I don't think there's a performance that screams Oscar win, especially since there were a lot of other performances that would've been great, like Sam Rockwell for "Richard Jewell." Brad Pitt is, of course, winning this Oscar. And I'm happy about that. He's one of today's legendary actors and this will be his first Oscar win for acting. But it's between him and Al Pacino for my favorites in the category. Honestly, both of them are essentially playing themselves in their respectively films. But I think there's a slight bit more energy and passion from Al Pacino, which is why he's my choice.

Actress in a Leading Role:

Nominations:

- Cynthia Erivo - "Harriet"
- Scarlett Johansson - "Marriage Story"
- Saoirse Ronan - "Little Women"
- Charlize Theron - "Bombshell"
- Renée Zellweger - "Judy"

Will Win:

- Renée Zellweger - "Judy"

Should Win:

- Saoirse Ronan - "Little Women"

This is another category wherein the early Oscars ceremony killed me. I know that Renée Zellweger is winning. She's been sweeping the board here. But I have not seen three of these movies, that being "Judy," "Harriet" and "Bombshell." I was going to at least watch "Judy" and "Harriet" this week. But again, I ran out of time. So I'm picking between Scar-Jo and Saoirse. Although honestly, knowing my personal history, I tend to lean more towards acting performances wherein a historical figure is perfectly portrayed. So had I been diligent, I think I may have gone with Renée Zellweger. But between the two I have seen, I lean ever so slightly towards Saoirse. She's honestly one of my favorite actresses today and she gives a passionate, powerful and relevant performance in "Little Women." So did Scar-Jo in "Marriage Story." But in that movie, I think I'd say Adam Driver is the one that made the biggest impact on me. And since Scar-Jo is a double nominee this year, I gave her the Oscar for "Jojo," so it's love across the board here. Although the bigger story here is why the frack did Lupita Nyongo not get in for "Us"? That was easily the best performance by an actress this year.  

Actor in a Leading Role:

Nominations:

- Antonio Banderas - "Pain and Glory"
- Leonardo DiCaprio - "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood"
- Adam Driver - "Marriage Story"
- Joaquin Phoenix - "Joker"
- Jonathan Pryce - "The Two Popes"

Will Win:

- Joaquin Phoenix - "Joker"

Should Win:

- Joaquin Phoenix - "Joker"

If we didn't live in a world where Joaquin Phoenix's performance as Joker wasn't a part of this category, this would be a tough one to pick. There's a huge part of me that wants Adam Driver to win an Oscar. And Leo was also great, as always. Antonio Banderas I'm sure was great, too, but "Pain and Glory" didn't expand fast enough for me to see it. I do like the sentiment of him finally getting an Oscar. He's done so many great things that I was surprised to learn that this was his very first. So I can accept that. Jonathan Pryce did fine in "The Two Popes," but with so many great options in this category, he might've been 20th on my personal list. I wanted Adam Sandler to get in for "Uncut Gems" and/or Taron Egerton for "Rocketman." But all of that is moot both in terms of predictions and in personal picks. Joaquin Phoenix gave a legendary performance in "Joker" and I'm glad that he's been unanimously selected for this category.  

Directing:

Nominations:

- Martin Scorsese - "The Irishman"
- Todd Phillips - "Joker"
- Sam Mendes - "1917"
- Quentin Terantino - "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood"
- Bong Joon Ho - "Parasite"

Will Win:

- Sam Mendes - "1917"

Should Win:

- Bong Joon Ho - "Parasite"

I often have a tough time judging the directing of a movie because most of that work is behind the scenes stuff that you aren't always privy to as an audience. But if I do my best anyways, I think "Parasite" had a lot more moving pieces that required the director's hands on work to make it all come together. With Martin Scorsese, Todd Phillips and Quentin Tarantino, I feel we had actors doing a big portion of the heavy lifting to make those movies work. And with "1917," it was a lot of the technical marvels that made it special. Which is why I lean towards Bong Joon Ho as my personal choice. But I think all five did great work in their movies, so I won't be upset at whoever wins. But based on the buzz I'm hearing, this seems like it's coming down to Sam Mendes and Bong Joon Ho, with Mendes as the front runner. But I think the Academy is going to give Bong Joon Ho the Oscar for best original screenplay, which is why I'm saying Sam Mendes gets best director. A split could happen, though.

Best Picture:

Nominations:

- "Ford v Ferrari" - 20th Century Fox
- "The Irishman" - Netflix
- "Jojo Rabbit" - Fox Searchlight Pictures
- "Joker" - Warner Bros.
- "Little Women" - Columbia Pictures
- "Marriage Story" - Netflix
- "1917" - Universal Pictures
- "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" - Columbia Pictures
- "Parasite" - NEON

Will Win:

- "1917" - Universal Pictures

Should Win:

- "Joker" - Warner Bros.

In terms of all of these best picture nominees, I honestly think this is one of the best years for this category in recent memory. There's nine nominees and seven of them made my top 10 list of the year. In all of the years that I've done top 10 lists, which dates back to 2011, I've never been so in sync with the Academy. And I'm not sure if this will ever be repeated. So really, I'm happy with any of these movies winning best picture. As far as my prediction goes, I just think "1917" has all of the momentum right now and it's been winning most of the important precursors. When it comes to the best picture category at the Oscars, the voting is done my preferential ballot, which means it's often less about the movie that people love the most, but rather the one that they hate the least. And I think that also helps "1917" because it seems like the safest choice. With every one of the others, I could come up with a reason as to why people wouldn't like that. That's harder to do with "1917." At this point, I think "Parasite" is the spoiler with an off chance that "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" gets the win. The other six I think are out of the race. Given that I'm picking "1917," don't be surprised if "Parasite" pulls it off because I've actually been wrong on my best picture prediction for several years straight. As far as my personal choice, "Joker" was my favorite movie of the year. So do I really need to do any elaborating there? I think that pick is pretty straightforward.   

Movie Preview: February 2020

The first month of the new decade is in the books and it was a bit of a doozie. At least for most of the new arrivals. "Bad Boys for Life" was the one exception as it broke out in a big way with the second largest January weekend ever, behind only "American Sniper." It totaled $135.6 million in January alone and will end up with a lot more than that before its run is over. Outside that, there were four horror releases that were all almost dead on arrival, "Dolittle" earned just $50 million domestically in January despite a reported $175 million production budget, while "The Rhythm Section" set the record for worst opening weekend ever for a movie to open in at least 3,000 theaters. Although as is often the case for Januaries, holdovers from the previous year dominated, with "1917," "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" and "Jumanji: The Next Level" being main contributors in that category, leading the month to a respectable $897 million total. And now as we turn the corner to February, 2020 looks like it's going to finally kick into gear with a few notable titles hitting theaters this month before things really take off starting in March and moving consistently big throughout the summer. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's stop here and take a close look at February.

February 7th - 9th-

First up is what's most likely going to be the biggest hit of the month with DC's Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). After a bit of a rocky start to DC's attempted cinematic universe, which culminated in the glorious failure of the "Justice League" movie, DC has actually had a solid run of late when they decided to give up on this idea of copying Marvel and instead focus on simply making good, individual movies. What they've sacrificed in the process is an overarching timeline that now makes no sense, especially with Jared Leto's Joker making a big offscreen presence in "Birds of Prey" as the movie sees Harley Quinn dealing with her separation from him. This coming only a few months after Joaquin Phoenix's new Joker was introduced in October. So DC has two Jokers running around somewhere. But if the quality of the movies is strong, does the consistency across the timeline really matter? For "Birds of Prey," Margot Robbie returns as Harley Quinn, while notable additions include Mary Elizabeth Winstead as The Huntress and Jurnee Smollett-Ball as Black Canary, with Ewan McGregor playing the villainous Black Mask. The movie is expected to open around $50 million, which is about on par with last year's "Shazam!"

February 14th - 17th-

After only one new wide release during the fist weekend of February, the second weekend of February will have three new wide releases all hoping to take advantage of the double holiday weekend with Valentine’s Day on Friday and President’s Day on Monday. Leading the way will be the arrival of the live-action adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s been quite the unique production for this movie as it was originally on the calendar for November 2019. However, after the initial trailer was released in May 2019 and met with widespread hatred, director Jeff Fowler announced that they have listened to the response and postponed the movie in order to completely redesign Sonic. Upon the release of the redesigned trailer a few months later, fans generally speaking seemed to be impressed with the new design. All of this might ultimately help Sonic at the box office. Not only does the movie get avoid competing with the likes of “Frozen 2” at the November box office, but the market is currently wide open for the family market in part due to the underperformance of “Dolittle” in January. At about this exact time two years ago, “Peter Rabbit” debuted to $25 million, which seems like a fair mark for Sonic. Although some reports say this could pop as high as $40+ million.

As previously mentioned, January was a rough month for the horror genre as it was overstuffed with four horror movies, all of which failed miserably, partially due to the lack of quality and partially due to them cannibalizing each other. However, despite this, 2020 is not done trying as the fifth horror movie of the year, that of Fantasy Island, will look to buck this trend. Despite the recently sour trend being a bad omen for “Fantasy Island, there are a few things in this movie’s favor that could help it out. First off, there is some brand name recognition as this is based off of the 1970s TV series of the same name that had a similar concept. People would be brought to a mysterious island where they would granted a wish of their choice, which seems all fine and dandy until they realize all their wishes are being twisted into becoming more of a nightmare than a dream come true. In addition to said brand name recognition, this is also a horror movie produced by Blumhouse, which is a studio that has a habit of releasing a lot of low-budget horror movies to a good profit. Said budget of “Fantasy Island” is only $7 million, meaning the bar here for success is quite low. Finally, the movie stars Michael Pena as the mysterious Mr. Roarke, which adds some star power.

And finally, hoping to specifically cash in on date night for Valentine’s Day on Friday will be The Photograph. The plot of this movie is pretty straightforward. It follows the estranged daughter of a famous photographer who falls in love with the journalist assigned to cover her late mother. Those wanting to watch two people fall in love on Valentine’s Day have the potential to swarm in and see this romance drama, especially the teenage girl crowd. The two lovers are played by Issa Rae (“Little,” “The Hate U Give”) and Lakeith Stanfield (“Straight Outta Compton,” “Sorry to Bother You”), two fairly well known up-and-coming stars. Now despite this being a well-timed movie with two likable lead stars, the marketing of the movie hasn’t necessarily been through the roof, nor does the excitement level seem to be too high. There’s been plenty of examples of huge Valentine’s Day romance films. This does not look to be one of them. Instead, one might look to director Stella Meghie’s 2017 film “Everything, Everything,” which opened to $11. 7 million. Granted, that movie opened in May and not on Valentine’s Day,” but that still might be around the same mark that “The Photograph” is look at. Best case scenario might be an opening close to $15 million for the three-day.

February 21st - 23rd-

After what could be a busy double holiday weekend in the second weekend of February, the third weekend of February should be a bit more quiet, giving whatever wins the previous weekend a chance to repeat. But of our two newcomers, Disney and Fox's The Call of the Wild should comfortably come out on top, landing somewhere in the top five. We've had a lot of dog movies in the past few years, but this one does seem a bit different as it's not a movie narrated by a dog. It's just simply a movie about a man and his dog, with Harrison Ford being said man. "The Call of the Wild" is, of course, based on the book written by Jack London, which was published in 1903 and is considered classic literature. The book has been adapted numerous times, with film adaptations coming in 1923, 1935, 1972 and 1997. The original novel follows a dog named Buck who is stolen from his California home and sold into service as a sled dog in Alaska. This takes place in the 1890s during the Klondike Gold Rush where sled dogs were in high demand. How closely this specific adaptation follows the novel remains to be seen, but we are showcased plenty of scenes with Harrison Ford and the dog out in the wild trying to survive. It's expected to open to about $10-15 million.

The other movie of the weekend is horror movie No. 6 of the year with Brahms: The Boy II. Unlike horror movie No. 5 and the upcoming horror movie No. 7 that we'll get to in a bit, "The Boy II" doesn't look to be quite as promising. Its predecessor was the 2016 movie "The Boy," which opened in January of that year to just $10.8 million. It wound up making $35.8 million domestically and $64.1 million worldwide on a budget of just $10 million, so it pulled a decent profit. However, that wasn't the type of profit that screams sequel, so it's a bit curious that they came up with one anyways and took four years to get it released. That's not a good formula for success when it comes to horror sequels. To add to the trouble, "The Boy II" has been pushed around the schedule quite a bit before finally settling here in February 2020. What's worse is that STX didn't release the trailer until early January. Based on the commentary in the trailer, there also seems to be a bit of confusion as to why the trailer seems to be leaning so heavily on a supernatural doll when, SPOILER ALERT, "The Boy" was a movie where a man in the wall was secretly moving the doll around. Said man was named Brahms, hence the title here. Needless to say, this is probably not going to do super well.

February 28th - March 1st-

Yes. Horror movie No. 7 on the year. At least in terms of wide releases. This latest horror movie is The Invisible Man and it is also the only wide release of the final weekend of February, which dips into March a bit. Despite being the seventh horror movie of the year, "The Invisible Man" could arguably be called the first high profile horror movie as the story behind this movie stems all the way back to 1933. Although perhaps not quite as popular as titles like "Dracula" or "Frankenstein," "The Invisible Man" was nevertheless one of Universal's original monster movies. The reason why a modern remake currently exists is partially due to Universal's recent attempt to set up their new Dark Universe. They had all sorts of plans to remake old monster movies, but all of that got thrown in the trash when Tom Cruise's "The Mummy" failed spectacularly. However, Jason Blum stepped in and said he wanted to do this one, so here we are. This 2020 remake is a modern take on the story with Leigh Whannell, director of 2018's "Upgrade," helming the project. Trailer reaction has led to strong buzz that suggests this could be a breakout hit that opens with at least $20 million. Considering the production budget is just $9 million, that would be great news for Universal.

Sundance 2020 Recap

The month of January is now in the rear view mirror and you may have noticed the lack of January movie reviews on this blog. In fact, the only movies I even saw in a regular theater were "1917" and "Just Mercy," two 2019 releases that were expansions, not new releases. That means I didn't see any new January releases. But don't worry, it's not because I'm slacking. Yes, it's true that there was a huge lack of quality releases, but I was mostly preoccupied by the Sundance Film Festival. As such, I didn't get around to "Bad Boys for Life," "Dolittle," "The Gentlemen," or any of the four horror movies that were released. And I don't really know if or when I will. Regarding Sundance, I've lived most of my life within an hour of the festival, yet never even went to a single showing prior to this year, which is a huge injustice. My friend and I tried to remedy that last year, but failed epically. So we learned from the experience and remedied it this year, meaning I have four movies that I saw that I want to talk about. Also, since I researched a whole ton of Sundance films in order to figure out which ones I wanted to see, I do want to quickly mention a handful that I didn't get tickets for that I am looking forward to seeing whenever they get their regular theatrical or streaming releases.

WORTH

The first of four movies is honestly the one that I'm the least ecstatic about, but it's still a fairly interesting film that gives a perspective on 9/11 that I hadn't considered. It tells the story of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and all the controversies surrounding it when Kenneth Feindberg first set it up. Michael Keaton stars as Feindberg, with Amy Ryan playing one the people who helped him out and Stanley Tucci playing perhaps his biggest critic. All three of these people do an excellent job in their roles, yet it's Stanley Tucci that was the standout for me. He's adamantly against everything Feindberg is setting up, yet his approach is so calm and civil that catches everyone off guard, both the characters in the movie and me watching the movie. I think the biggest issue for me here is that the movie drags on quite a bit as it tries to fill two hours of run time, despite the content being better suited for a 45-60 minute documentary instead of a feature-length drama, so a lot of the sequences felt a bit repetitive. But it does also touch on the interesting subject of what the value of life is. Is it even morally right to assign a number value? Personally I'm used to stuff like life insurance and whatnot, so I didn't get the huge fuss. But the questions raised were still provocative. 

KAJILLIONAIRE 

This here was the highlight of my Sundance experience. It's funny, though. After my initial research, there was a reason why I put this on my list, but after we got the tickets and were waiting in line, I forgot what that reason was. Given that no reviews to these movies are available prior to their release here, I had literally no idea what I was getting myself into. And after seeing the movie, I have no idea how to properly describe this to you. The movie is just so wacky and bizarre that giving a brief summary doesn't do it justice. The initial setup involves a family of three who live by committing small heists and scams just to get by. All three are somewhat disconnected from reality in terms of their mental state. From that initial setup, the movie goes in so many strange directions, none of which I saw coming. Yet I loved every second of it as I was hysterically laughing the entire time. With this type of summary, "Parasite" is actually the best comparison I can come up with, although it is more comedy and less thriller, making something like "Napoleon Dynamite" another good comparison. The wackiness is infectious and there's enough heart in there to make you actually care. A24 purchased the rights to this. As soon as they release this, I will let you all know.

RELIC

If you've ever watched "The Babadook," this next film is the one you need to see. "The Babadook" is an excellent horror film because it's not just a creepy and intense ride, but it also has a lot to say about mental illness. Casual audiences complained about "The Babadook" not being scary enough or not revealing the monster. But I claim anyone who says that completely missed the whole point. I bring up "The Babadook" here because "Relic" is a horror film that follows the exact same formula. It's about a mother and daughter visiting their grandmother, who is not well. This old lady is both charming and sweet, yet extremely scary and crazy when she loses it. While the sequences of her chasing the two younger girls around the house do make for some classic horror sequences as it also combines reality with the supernatural, the movie is essentially a metaphor for dementia, meaning the themes here will last a lot longer than your average horror film if you give yourself enough time to digest it. The movie does leave some things open to interpretation, but lucky for me the director walked on stage afterwards and talked all about her movie, which helped make everything click. Gothic horror and some Eastern, Asian horror were some of her influences.

LOST GIRLS

Last but not least, the final movie I saw was perhaps the one I was most looking forward to. When I created my list of movies I wanted to see, this was at the top of the list and I was happy that we got tickets to it as it seemed right up my alley. The movie is a crime thriller focusing on the true story of the Long Island serial killer, a yet to be apprehended (or even identified) killer who preyed mainly on female prostitutes over a span of nearly 20 years from 1996 to the mid-2010s. What makes this movie fascinating, and quite somber, is that it tells the story from the perspective of the families who are missing their daughters/sisters. A huge injustice took place in this investigation because law enforcement didn't seem to care too much due to the victims being prostitutes. Yet the movie attempts to show that, even though perhaps these girls' lifestyles aren't the greatest, they are still human beings with families and lives who deserved better. In the previous three showings I saw, a loud round of applause ensued when the credits rolled. With "Lost Girls," no such applause took place because we were all in stunned silence with how sad and somber this is, which is a powerful sentiment in its own right. Netflix has the rights to this one and they will be releasing it in the U.S. on March 13.

OTHER MOVIES TO LOOK FORWARD TO:

As I said in my introduction, in addition to talking about the four movies I saw, I also wanted to bring up some movies that I didn't see that I am looking forward to. There were 118 movies that played, making it impossible to see all of them, even if I was rich enough to do so. When you choose to see a Sundance movie, you're taking a big chance because you don't know which movies are the ones to see. I think my friend and I made four good selections, especially with "Kajillionaire," but here are some other ones that I will anxiously waiting their release.

- "Minari" -- This one wasn't on my radar at all, but it won the Grand Jury Prize, Sundance's top award, so it is on my radar now.

- "Promising Young Woman" -- This is the movie that I thought was going to win the Grand Jury Prize because this is the movie I was hearing the most buzz from. This is a thriller starring Carey Mulligan that apparently has a lot of crazy twists or some sort of shocking events that had audiences floored. So it now has my attention.

- "Palm Springs" -- This is a comedy led by Andy Samberg that broke the record for biggest purchase out of Sundance... by 69 cents. $17,500,000.69 was the official price tag. The movie is also a time loop movie surrounding a wedding. I'm a sucker for that type of movie. And this seems like a unique take on it with the romcom time loop angle.

- "Save Yourselves!" -- A movie about a couple who decide to disconnect from the world and ditch their phones for a weekend, causing them to completely miss an alien invasion that happens. That premise alone is crazy enough for me to be intrigued. 

- "Shirley" -- I'm not exactly sure what this movie is or the genre it belongs in, but the premise involves a couple who moves in with a 1900s horror and mystery writer named Shirley Jackson, intending on starting a new life, only to be caught in a psycho-drama that inspires her next novel.

- "Zola" -- A movie that is based on a tweet thread that went viral. That right there is enough to grab my attention as that's not often a source for movies. But said tweet thread was 148 tweets long and was about this girl's trip she took in Florida with a stripper named a stripper named Jessica. I need to make sure the content is safe enough before jumping right in, but I'm intrigued by the idea and the source material it came from.

- "Ironbark" -- This was a movie on the top of our lists when we were researching and planning out, perhaps because of the presence of Benedict Cumberbatch. It was also one that was really hard to get tickets to, which is part of the reason why we didn't see it. So the popularity factor seemed positive. It's also a true story about a man who helped the CIA penetrate the Soviet nuclear program during the Cold War, so there's potential there.

- "Tesla" -- A biopic of Nicola Tesla. Biopics can go either way, but this has a good cast, led by Ethan Hawke in the lead role and is currently at 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. That's an extremely early score, but it suggests that the reaction was positive.

- "Amulet" -- My friend and I knew that we wanted to see a horror film given how many good ones have come out of Sundance. I think we made an excellent choice with "Relic," but "Amulet" seemed to be the other horror film that was getting strong buzz, so it's on my radar whenever it comes out.

- "Bad Hair" -- This movie is another horror film we considered, although this one is more of a horror comedy about someone whose hair is haunted. I broke up in laughter when I read that premise and wanted to see it right away. The reaction was mixed, but the buzz was that it's a self-aware, B-movie type of horror film. So it makes sense that not everyone is on board.

- "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" -- This is a movie that is coming to theaters pretty quickly. Focus Features is releasing it on March 13. It's about two teenage cousins who embark on a journey to New York City following an unplanned pregnancy. Reading the premise made me think this could go either way in terms of quality, which is why we didn't pursue getting tickets, but so far it's among the large handful of Sundance films that have an early 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, so it's looking quite positive at the moment.

- "The 40-Year-Old Version" -- This will be the last movie I bring up, but there's obviously a lot more. Feel free to search them out on your own and get excited for their releases. In regards to "The 40-Year-Old Version," it's about a New York playwright who becomes a rapper at age 40. It also took home the award for best directing at Sundance and also carries a 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment, so that tells me it's worth looking out for.