Pacific Rim Uprising Review

"Pacific Rim" is a dumb movie. I want to make that abundantly clear. It is a really dumb movie. But it's the type of really dumb movie that was mostly self-aware enough to be as equally entertaining as it is dumb. I mean, there's not much in terms of story. Idris Elba was a freaking awesome character that delivers one of the best movie speeches, but outside him, the human characters are either extremely wooden or mostly forgettable. There were monsters that climbed through rifts in the Pacific Ocean to terrorize the world and to fight them the government decided to build giant robots with overly complex established rules like drift compatibility that I think the filmmakers involved kinda forgot about halfway through. It's a movie that's really easy to pick apart due to the extreme lack of intelligence involved in much of the writing. But do you know what? The now Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro didn't care. He just wanted to live out his childhood fantasies by making a big, dumb movie about giant monsters fighting giant robots. If you turn off your brain and just enjoy the ride, it is extremely entertaining as your inner 9-year-old will have a huge grin on your face the entire time. Enough so that you will most likely be able to overlook all the glaring issues.

A sequel with a repeat performance of that is all I wanted with "Pacific Rim Uprising." It's a sequel we almost didn't get due to "Pacific Rim" flopping pretty hard in the United States. But thanks to strong overseas totals, especially from China, it's a sequel that was financially justified. And I was really happy about that. I was excited to get back to this alternate universe where giant monsters are roaming the earth and we have giant robots to fight them. Yeah, sure, the critics score on Rotten Tomatoes was uncomfortably low at 45 percent, but just like a 9-year-old might not even know or care about what Rotten Tomatoes is, I didn't care about the score. Slightly over half of the critics are hating on this movie? Big deal. As I've explained, the first movie is a really dumb movie that probably doesn't even deserve its 71 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. A 45 percent score for that movie would probably seem more fitting. So why should I care that this sequel is really low? I mean, the trailers look awesome enough and they promise me that this movie is going bigger and better with the monsters and the robots, seemingly being extremely self-aware. Yeah, sure, Guillermo isn't back in the directing chair this time around, but I was still super excited walking into the theater.

Turns out I have to begrudgingly concede that the critics were right this time around. I really wanted to love this movie. I was willing to set nitpicks aside for an entertaining romp with monsters and robots. But holy freaking cow did this movie not give me ANYTHING to love. It's 10 years later and the government has done an absolutely atrocious job at preparing for the chance that the Kaiju might return. Like, seriously, there's very few grown adults that know how to successfully pilot a Jaeger and the team in charge of the Jaeger all seem very uneducated and juvenile. Our only two real adult pilots are John Boyega, the son of the late Idris Elba in this universe, who, spoiler alert for the first movie, sacrificed himself at the end of the film, and Scott Eastwood. The two of them are barely drift compatible as it is and John Boyega starts the film out living a rebellious life because, as he narrates in the beginning, he is nothing like his father and only wants to steal old Jaeger parts to trade for his... Cap'n Crunch and Oreos? Some rebel. So we seemingly have a story arc like that of Michael B. Jordan in "Creed." That lasts five minutes until he is back as a Jaeger pilot because this crew has no one else to turn to. Go figure.

On top of that we have a 15-year-old girl, who is actually pretty cool in the movie. Our one character worth caring about. She actually build her own mini Jaeger. Say what? How did she do that? Is she the next Anakin Skywalker? But whatever. Because she's super cool, she is recruited into the small school of young Jaeger pilot cadets. Who we eventually turn to pilot all the Jaegers to fight the Kaiju. Because, again, we have no one else to turn to. Then we have other characters that do things. I really couldn't tell you much about anyone else because all of them make the boring cast in the first movie seem like top-notch, Oscar-worthy characters. The only thing that I can even think of pulling out and talking about is that someone gave Charlie Day one of the worst scripts in recent memory with a hilariously awful character arc and reveal. Poor guy had to do something with that atrocity and it never really works out. More stuff happens and we go quite a while without even having any action sequences at all. Just a whole ton of setup with these dull characters. Eventually we get a rogue Jaeger showing up to cause trouble and our team has to figure out what in the heck is going on as they battle this thing along with a handful of Kaiju-infected Jaeger minions.

Now I don't want to be one to complain at the fact that our Kaiju don't even show up for the longest time because the best monster movies in history force the audience to wait for the big reveal and "Pacific Rim" is something that did that all wrong by revealing all the monsters in the first five minutes of that first movie. In fact, I think that spoiled people into hating the 2014 "Godzilla" movie because Godzilla didn't show up for quite some time and people who had just watched "Pacific Rim" the year before had decided that they didn't care about world-building and plot setup as they just wanted a mindless Godzilla movie where Godzilla is fighting the other bad monsters for the entire run time like the Kaiju vs. Jaeger battles in "Pacific Rim." But for crying out loud, if you're going to go away from that formula that the first movie set up in favor of a more classic monster movie feel, give me a build up worth caring about. I was bored to tears for most of the movie. I didn't care about any of the plot. Most of the characters were complete garbage, including John Boyega. The 15-year-old girl was the only one worth caring about and she didn't do enough to make the movie worth watching. I just wanted some dumb fun from a "Pacific Rim" sequel and I didn't get that.

So check this out. Because I was so bored and there weren't very many people with me in the theater on a Monday afternoon, I pulled out my tablet and decided to calculate some of the timing from this movie. My showtime was 4:00. I didn't take note of exactly when my movie started, but there's usually 15 minutes of trailers and given that the credits finished at about 6:07 and the movie is only 1 hour 51 minutes long, the movie starting at around 4:15, give or take a few minutes, makes sense to me. The first time a Kaiju in its full glory shows up in this movie? Not counting the Kaiju-infested Jaegers or the Kaiju shown in flashbacks? 5:35. We have to wait 1 hour 20 minutes for a Kaiju to show up and start destroying Tokyo, I think it was. They were somewhere in Japan. And remember, this movie is only 1 hour 51 minutes long. I also decided to time the battle between the Kaiju and the Jaeger. It clocked in at 19 minutes long from when they first started fighting to when the battle was finally over. And there's about a 5-10 minute break in there where our depleted team of Jaegers, comprised solely of our young kids fighting alongside John Boyega and Scott Eastwood, have to regroup as the mega Kaiju is running towards Mt. Fuji.

Then there's this curious case of this battle. After being bored for the first 80 minutes of the movie where little happened, I was finally excited to see the fun action sequences that I paid to see. And sadly it was rather disappointing. It felt like the sparse leftovers of something much better. There were only three Kaiju that they had to wrangle up and in the first movie, it would've been a piece of cake. But no one from this team was very good at being a Jaeger pilot. I mean, this was mainly a group of kids with no prior experience of fighting in actual Jaegers. So the Kaiju mopped the floor with them for most of the battle. When the Jaeger team was winning, the battle became more like that awful final battle in "Man of Steel" with Superman and Zodd where Superman didn't seem to care about the lives of the millions of people he was ending while trying to stop Zodd. Neither do these kids in these Jaegers care about the humans around them as they grab entire buildings that are probably full of people and throw them at the Kaiju or grab cars on the ground and throw them at the Kaiju. There were zero consequences in this movie. They were determined that this was their opportunity to save the world. But what about the millions of people they were killing in the process?

If you watched the trailers for this movie and became intrigued because it looked like an extremely self-aware movie full of giant Kaiju fighting giant Jaegers, know that nearly all of the action sequences from the trailers, as well as John Boyega's speech, are from this final battle during the last 20 minutes of this movie. You can say they spoiled the movie in the trailers. But they had to because they chose to do jack squat in the first 80 minutes of the movie. I've heard some saying this is like "Independence Day Resurgence" to "Independence Day." And I kinda agree with that, although "Pacific Rim Uprising" isn't as bad as "Independence Day Resurgence" and "Pacific Rim" isn't as good as "Independence Day," which I think is slightly overrated anyways. But the principles apply. This is a half-hearted, boring, lazy sequel to a highly entertaining yet dumb original. I found "Uprising" about as entertaining as last year's "Transformers: The Last Knight," which, granted, isn't the worst Transformers movie, but is still a mostly worthless pile of empty nonsense that barely snuck onto my worst movies of the year list. I think I gave the original "Pacific Rim" a 7/10 back in 2013, which seems about right. For "Pacific Rim Uprising," I'm giving it a 5/10 and even that feels a bit nice.

Tomb Raider Review

March has recently become known as early summer in Hollywood as recent years have seen "The Hunger Games," "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" and "Beauty and the Beast" celebrate $150+ million opening weekends in March. Hollywood has definitely taken note of this phenomenon as major studios have felt comfortable releasing their big tentpole releases in March. This March hasn't been quite so lucky, though, as "A Wrinkle in Time," "Tomb Raider" and "Pacific Rim Uprising" have all failed to even hit $50 million. There's one final chance with "Ready Player One" opening on Thursday of this week, but that probably won't get too much higher than the three aforementioned films. But the fact that Hollywood tried with all four of these films does support the fact that studios are comfortable opening movies in March, still, as these movies seem like the type of movies that fit the bill for a big summer blockbuster. That said, I've already covered the highly disappointing outing for Disney in "A Wrinkle in Time," so it's time to move onto "Tomb Raider" and hopefully I'll get to "Pacific Rim Uprising" and "Ready Player One" before the week is finished. I'm not expecting much out of these titles. I just want some simple, fun entertainment out of them.

In regards to "Tomb Raider," I'll admit that I was never fully on board with this movie. Instead of being like, "Oh my gosh, we're finally getting another 'Tomb Raider' movie," I was like, "Why are we getting another 'Tomb Raider' movie? Is that something that anyone really asked for?" When the trailer was released, it did nothing for me and thus my question remained the same. Why was this happening? In fact, I was so uninterested in this idea that I put this on the bad section of my 2018 movie preview. The movie looked really bad and the recent history of video game movies suggested that this wasn't going to work out. I mean, if both "Warcraft" and "Assassin's Creed" were disasters, why should a reboot of "Tomb Raider" be the movie to reinvigorate the genre? Can't we just give up and let movies be movies and video games be video games? Transferring video games to the big screen is clearly not a transition that works out well. So yeah, my expectations for "Tomb Raider" were in the basement. And quite honestly I think those extremely low expectations actually helped me enjoy this movie. This is by far no masterpiece and I'll have many complaints to get to, but I walked out feeling decently entertained. Certainly one of the better video game adaptations.

As far as the plot goes, this is where I admit that it's already slightly fuzzy in my head. I saw this movie about a week ago in 2D IMAX for $5 Tuesday, a pretty sweet deal if you ask me. Normally I don't admit in my reviews exactly when I saw the movie in relation to the review. I just stay with the philosophy that I'll get my review out when I get it out and my readers can be patient with my schedule. In this case, though, I feel the information is pertinent because the movie is admittedly very forgettable. It's been only six days, yet I'm already having a hard time recalling the plot. Compare that to something like "Annihilation" where a month has gone past and I haven't been able to get that movie off my mind at all. But in jogging my memory, this version of Lara Croft has been abandoned by her father, who disappeared seven years prior and everyone assumes he is dead. He was a very rich businessman, so the people in charge of the company have been waiting for Lara to sign the deeds and take over her rightful inheritance, but she doesn't really want to as she would rather live on her own, making her own way in life. However, she's about to give in and sign the papers when she is given a clue to her father's whereabouts, resulting in an adventure to a mysterious island.

The first thing that immediately jumped out to me while watching this movie is how committed Alicia Vikander was to this role of Lara Croft and that commitment level alone was enough to keep me interested in her character and the journey she's on. As far as my history with the "Tomb Raider" franchise as a whole, I'll admit that I've never really played the games as I'm not much of a gamer anyways. And I can't even remember if I've seen the two Angelina Jolie movies all the way through. But as the original movie came out when I was 12, I was very well aware of its existence and how my fellow male teenage friends reacted to the movie and to Angelina Jolie. She was a popular celebrity crush, to say the least. That's because she was very sexualized in the movies. I mean, video games targeted at teenage boys often sexualize the female characters, giving them tight clothing or little clothing while having disproportionate body sizes. That's how Lara Croft was in the early games and that's how the early movies were with Angelina Jolie, causing teenage boys around the world to drool all over themselves while watching this hot girl in tight clothing kick butt in some extremely cheesy action flicks that definitely weren't meant to take seriously at all.

I mean, if someone comes up to you claiming they absolutely love the 2001 "Tomb Raider" movie, take note of their gender and do the math in your head to figure out how old they were when it was released. Chances are they were a teenage boy at the time. Thus proving my point. I mean, that movie carries a 5.8 on IMDb and a 20 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, two figures that are significantly lower than the 6.8 and 50 percent that this updated version has at this moment. So it's not like it was praised as a masterpiece. In fact, the general consensus is quite the opposite, that it's a piece of trash. Unless you were a teenage boy when it was released. Thus when it comes to this new one, I was really nervous that they were going to give Alicia Vikander the same treatment and that idea disappointed me because my girl Alicia deserves a lot better. Turns out I was pleasantly surprised as Alicia's Lara Croft is NOT sexualized. She's a normal girl living a normal life, at least initially, and she has a normal female body type with normal female clothes that aren't super tight the whole time. Thus she fits in well to 2018 as a strong female character who can appeal to both genders and a variety of ages, rather than being treated as eye candy for teenage boys.

Given that I've loved Alicia Vikander since 2015 (and I'm happy that I finally learned the correct pronunciation of her first name that she herself revealed in a recent Wired Google autocomplete interview -- uh-liss-ee-uh), as she was great in her triple feature of "Ex Machina," "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "The Danish Girl" that year, winning an Oscar for "The Danish Girl," I'm glad that she was given good treatment in this movie. And, as I said, she completely owns this role, proving to be a bonafide action star deserving of even more major roles. If we truly learned our lesson from last year's "Wonder Woman" that female-led superhero movies can make a lot of money, Marvel and DC should give Alicia a good, long look for their next big female-led superhero movies as she'd be great. Being that this movie as a whole has received very mixed reviews, yet I've not heard one complaint about Alicia as everyone loves her in this movie, even if they hate the movie itself, I think that shows that this is more than just me being biased towards an attractive female my age who I've loved in every role I've seen her in. It's impressive to me that she can take a fairly generic movie with generic action sequences and do so well that I actually enjoy the movie as a whole because of it.

But yeah, you'll notice with this review that I've spent the whole time talking about Alicia Vikander and how amazing she is while not really talking much about the movie itself. I didn't know much about the plot going in, even though it apparently closely follows the recent games of which I've never played, but it was really easy to figure out exactly what was going to happen. Her dad was missing and he sent her a letter to burn his research on a particular subject so that it doesn't get into the wrong hands. Of course that means she was going to be disobedient and find where he was and said information was going to get into the wrong hands when she got to the island where he was at. And yeah, that's exactly what happened. Evil dude played by Walter Goggins is evil just for the sake of being evil and he does dumb things that cause conflict and eventually they go tomb raiding on this island, searching for this supernatural mummy thing that was supposed to release a dangerous power that would destroy the world if it got out and of course evil dude didn't believe that, which is going to set up action sequences him, Lara and the rest of the evil stuff in the tomb. If this sounds like a combination of, like, 10 different movies, that's because it is, thus leaving me disappointed.

However, the visual effects in the movie were still pretty good. And seeing it in IMAX made the sound design quite impressive and engaging. Even though I was two steps ahead of the plot the entire time and was not treated to any twists and surprises, I was mildly entertained by the action sequences in the movie. The tomb sequences felt like a poor man's "Indiana Jones," especially reminding me of the finale of "The Last Crusade" when they're in the one tomb-like place searching for the Holy Grail. I laughed at how easy it was for Lara Croft to solve all of the fancy puzzles and riddles that were impossible for everyone else. None of the other actors in this movie struck me as bad, but outside Alicia Vikander, they all felt like they were just there for the paycheck while Alicia was the only one that took her role seriously. There were a lot of sequences where I just wanted to kick back and enjoy myself with a silly, cheesy action flick, but given that the movie took itself super seriously, I had to take it super seriously as well and it doesn't hold up that well. Yet Alicia Vikander does so good that she made me want more as she does one heck of a good job in this. So let's put a good cast and crew around her for the sequel so they can get this right. My grade for this movie is a 7/10.

A Wrinkle in Time Review

If you haven't heard the news recently, Disney is on a mission to take over the world. Pretty soon we might have to rename Earth to Disney World. They already owned Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. Now they're in the process of purchasing Fox. On top of that, they're on fire with their own live action releases, with the biggest highlights being "Beauty and the Beast" making $1.26 billion worldwide last year and "The Jungle Book" making $966.5 million worldwide the year before. Next year looks to be a huge year for their live action movies with "Dumbo," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" all on the slate. Then they have "Toy Story 4," "Frozen 2," "Star Wars: Episode IX" and two more Marvel movies with their other branches. Topping things off, they already have dates scheduled for 11-12 movies each year from 2020 to 2022, even though they're not revealing all of the titles yet. But before we get to all of that, we have to make our way through 2018, which has a lot of question marks in pretty much every category for Disney except for on the Marvel front. And they've unfortunately started off on the wrong foot here with the perplexing disaster that is "A Wrinkle in Time." Perplexing because there was a lot of talent that combined together for this pile of dog crap.

In terms of Disney's live action films, this obviously doesn't fall into the category of a live action remake of their own classic property like "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Jungle Book." Rather this is Disney taking a chance on a popular novel that some have claimed is impossible to successfully translate to the big screen. "Challenge accepted," said Disney. So they gave the keys of the car to Ava DuVernay, an extremely popular up and coming director responsible for "Selma" and the popular Netflix documentary "13th," got an all-star cast to jump in the car along with Ava, and together they put the pedal to the metal for this risky adventure... only to drive it straight into a brick wall and watch the whole thing go up into flames, leaving me baffled while watching this disaster, trying to figure out where this all went wrong. Sure, if this was in fact an impossible task to begin with, maybe we point the finger at Disney executives for even trying to make this work by forcing creative minds to solve an unsolvable problem. But even if that was the case, the final product should've been much better than it was as there were basic filmmaking techniques that outright failed across the board and I'm going to do my best to unpack all of this because there's a ton to get to.

First off I want to start by giving the disclaimer that I know nothing about this novel. It's possible that the core problems could lie in the novel. If that's the case, I can't comment. I can only comment on the film that I saw. The initial setup here, at least on paper, is a solid setup. We have two scientist parents played by Chris Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Chris wants to solve all the mysteries of the universe while Gugu wants to focus on the small things. Solid setup there with potential metaphors that could be used later on. Fast forward four years and Chris has gone missing, causing the life of his daughter, played by Storm Reid, to be rather chaotic. As is often the case with the loss of a loved one, there's a lack of desire on her part to reach her potential. Because of that, her classmates hate and bully her. She struggles with her teachers and her principal. Her relationship with her mom isn't even where it should be. These are solid, real life, emotional problems that could've made for a fascinating first act. And I don't feel it would've taken a whole lot of effort to make that aspect of the film work. A well-written screenplay, great directing and solid acting should've done the trick. With the talent on board, there's no reason to believe that I wouldn't be hooked by this setup.

But that's the problem. I didn't care at all. The whole thing just felt wooden to me. We have a cliche group of bullies who apparently hate Storm Reid. Why? I don't know. They just do. I find the cliche bully character in these grade school dramas to be annoying in the first place, so it's especially bad when these group of girls do a horrible job of selling it. Then as we continue through school, the teachers don't seem to have any apathy for this girl, the principal deserves to earn the award for worst principle and Gugu as the mom gives the most phoned in, lazy performance as Storm's mom. There's no emotion from any characters. The screenplay is lazy and basic. And Storm Reid, bless her heart, is the only actor who seems to care about the movie. She does great. No one else does. Not the teachers. Not the principal. Not the classmates. Not the mom. Not the extremely annoying little brother. Not the boyfriend who's randomly madly in love with her despite like no setup or warning at all. No one. I was rather shocked at this. Storm Reid was the only one that seemed to care about this movie. So then when Reese Witherspoon shows up in their living room one night, I was like, good. Get us out of this boring town. Let's go on a fun adventure through space.

That's when this movie gets weird. I don't know what the plural form of Mrs. is, so I'm just going to use it as is, but we have the three Mrs. that show up. And I'm not even sure what they are. Some sort of masters of the laws of this strange universe. We have Reese Witherspoon as Mrs. Whatsit, Oprah as Mrs. Which and Mindy Kaling as Mrs. Who. Reese is abnormally bubbly in this. I kinda liked her character at certain points and I appreciated the fact that Reese seemed to be having a lot of fun with this role because everyone else seemed bored. Oprah was there to spout out random nuggets of wisdom in a very Oprah-like fashion. She was also a giant hologram for a while and that was strange. Mindy as Mrs. Who is, well, there. I'm not actually sure what her point was. She didn't really do much. I guess the writers of the book and/or screenplay just felt there needed to be a trio of wise ladies, but didn't quite figure out specific roles for all three of them. Why did this trio of ladies show up? Well, to help them find their dad. Chris Pine is out there somewhere and he needs to be rescued. OK. That works for me. Let's go on a crazy space adventure through this bizarre universe and hopefully I can have a bit of fun in the way I have had with previous trippy sci-fi adventures.

Sadly, though, fun is the wrong word to describe this adventure. Boring is probably a better word. And weird. When I watched the trailers for this movie, I had a feeling that this was going to be a trippy film, but I had no idea if it was good trippy or bad trippy. Unfortunately this is bad trippy. I definitely don't mind weird. If we go on random, crazy adventures, I prefer to be fully engaged and have the feeling that I am watching something epic, even if I don't understand what it all means. The most classic example is "2001: A Space Odyssey." That's the strangest movie you'll ever see. But in an epic sort of way. A more recent example is last month's "Annihilation." That's a very strange journey, but it's a layered one with a lot of depth and meaning. With " A Wrinkle in Time," we just did weird for the sake of being weird. There's no rhyme or reason. And there's a bunch of odd rules in place that I highly doubt anyone on this team had any idea what they actually were. It just seemed like they tried to come up with what weird sequence they could come up with next or what random rule to throw out of left field at the audience. And it almost had the feel that they were coming up with everything on the fly as if they started filming before finishing the screenplay.

But at least this was going to be a visually stunning film right? Add in some breathtaking cinematography to make the experience even better where you then have to go find this on the biggest screen possible. And it was like that. Until it wasn't. One moment we'd have a visually stunning film. Then next moment it was painfully obvious that the whole scene was done in a studio with everyone in front of a green screen. Granted, that happens in a lot of films. But in 2018, we have enough technology that even decent filmmakers should easily trick me into thinking the world around them is real. Instead there were moments where it felt about as real as the weather man or traffic man on your local news. The images behind them looked so fake. At these moments, I think I was supposed to be feeling emotion as this story progressed, but I was so distracted by the awful effects that I didn't even care. And I didn't feel bad because Storm Reid was still the only actor in the movie at this point that cared about the project and now it seemed like the visual effects people also didn't care. Did Ava care as she was directing this whole thing? Did the writers care when they attempted to adapt this novel for the big screen? I honestly don't know. It didn't seem like it to me.

And then we have the final problem that just did it in for me. Again, I remind you that I have zero knowledge of this novel. But it felt like there was a lot more to this adventure than was portrayed in this movie. It reminded me of the movie "Eragon" when they took several scenes from the book and combined them into one scene to save time. I don't know how big or small the novel "A Wrinkle in Time" is, but this adventure through the universe felt like it should've been a lot longer because the second act of this movie feels extremely short. We wander around in a field. Take a fly through the sky. Visit a couple of random places. Then we're onto act three. We briefly bump into Zach Galifianakis and Michael Pena along the way, literally for five minutes or less each. Then we're at the finale. It felt like this could've been a 13-episode Netflix series, but what we have instead is the pilot and finale getting the proper time while episodes 2 through 12 get crammed into 20 minutes. The movie clocks in at 11 minutes short of two hours and that's with credits. They gave themselves no time to develop this story. I'd say they should've added 30 more minutes, but with the lack of passion across the board, the 109 minutes as is was excruciatingly painful to get through.

I was going to go really low with my score. But I'm bumping it up a notch for one reason. Chris Pine. We got 90 percent of the way through this movie and up to that point, the only person who cared was Storm Reid and a little bit from Reese Witherspoon, who at least seemed to be having fun. But then when we finally got to Chris Pine, he also showed that he cared about this and there were some genuinely good father/daughter moments that gave me the feels for a few minutes at the end. I still didn't care for the rest of the movie, and there's more atrocities in the form of spoilers that I didn't even get to, but the Chris Pine and Storm Reid moments were solid. But overall, this is still a big no from me. A huge misfire from Disney. I went into this hoping the 42 percent from critics were them just being Grinches to another family film. Instead, I feel that score is too high. And I hate to say it, but I think a good portion of that 42 percent were simply too scared to trash a movie made by a black, female director in 2018. Yes, I want more female and minority directors, too. But they also can make bad movies. It's OK to trash them when it happens. I still love Ava and I hope she recovers from this. But the fact of the matter is she made a really bad movie and I'm giving it a 4/10.

The 90th Academy Awards: Predictions

The 90th Academy Awards will take place tomorrow night and, as tradition, here are my annual picks and predictions as to what I think is going to happen as well as what I want to happen. What's made this year so unique is that there really hasn't been a front runner in this race. Usually there's two or three movies that set themselves apart from the rest and we go into Oscar night with a favorite to win. Then we all sit and watch to see if everything plays out as expected or if there's any big surprises. That's not the case this year. There's no favorite to win and there's almost no expectations going into the night, outside a few categories here and there. It's hard to even look at the other awards shows to make predictions as most of them have gone in completely different directions. Personally this makes it really exciting to me and it also makes these predictions really hard. A lot of these categories felt like I was closing my eyes and throwing darts at the wall and they could all be wrong. And that's OK with me. As far as the order of this post, last year I started with the biggest categories and worked down to the small categories. This year I'm going in the opposite direction as I start with the smaller categories and work my way up. Best picture is always announced last, so I will follow suit.

Documentary Short Subject:

Nominations:

- "Edith + Eddie" - Laura Checkoway & Thomas Lee Wright
- "Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405" - Frank Stiefel
- "Heroin(e)" - Elain McMilion Sheldon & Kerrin Sheldon
- "Knife Skills" - Thomas Lennon
- "Traffic Stop" - Kate Davis & David Heilbroner

Will Win:

- "Edith + Eddie" - Laura Checkoway & Thomas Lee Wright

Should Win:

- "Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405" - Frank Stiefel

I don't always get around to these shorts, but this year I made a concerted effort to do so and I watched all of them that were available for me to watch, which happened to be every single one of them in this category. "Heroin(e)" is on Netflix and the other four you can find on YouTube. I've really come to love documentaries and I actually really enjoyed all five of these. Each one of them has their strong points and I wouldn't be surprised if any of them one. Personally I think most people are going to be attracted towards "Edith + Eddie," a story of an interracial couple who got married in their 90's. It would be a well-deserved win. It was hard for me to pick my personal favorite, but I chose "Heaven is a Traffic Jam in the 405" because I found it to be the most powerful as it tells the story of a woman who has gone through severe depression and anxiety in her life, yet managed to come through on the other side. 

Animated Short Film:

Nominations:

- "Dear Basketball" - Glen Keane & Kobe Bryant
- "Garden Party" - Victor Claire & Gabriel Grapperon
- "Lou" - Dave Mullins & Dana Murray
- "Negative Space" - Max Porter & Ru Kuwahata
- "Revolting Rhymes" - Jakob Schuh & Jan Lachauer

Will Win:

- "Dear Basketball" - Glen Keane & Kobe Bryant

Should Win:

- "Dear Basketball" - Glen Keane & Kobe Bryant

Again, I've watched all of these animated shorts. "Revolting Rhymes" is on Netflix and I found the others on YouTube. As far as "Revolting Rhymes" goes, I found that to be hilariously bizarre as they take some classic fairy tales in some crazy directions. But I didn't feel like considering it because it's an hour long. "Garden Party" and "Negative Space" were decent, but somewhat forgettable. "Lou" is the animated short that played in front of Pixar's "Cars 3" and while it would be easy to pick that one to win, Kobe Bryant's farewell to basketball really got to me as someone who's loved basketball since I was six. Kobe Bryant is a player I really respect and the game is going to miss him. Initially I wasn't convinced it was actually going to win. I mean, how many of these Oscar voters really care about basketball? And then it hit me. Most of the voters are from Los Angeles. Kobe's been their guy. So I think they're going to give him the Oscar. It doesn't hurt that the animation to go along with the farewell note is really good. If Kobe doesn't win, I think it means they defaulted to "Lou."

Live Action Short Film:

Nominations:

- "DeKalb Elementary" - Reed Van Dyk
- "The Eleven O'Clock" - Derin Seale & Josh Lawson
- "My Nephew Emmett" - Kevin Wilson Jr.
- "The Silent Child" - Chris Overton & Rachel Shenton
- "Watu Wote / All of Us" - Katja Benrath & Tobias Rosen

Will Win:

- "DeKalb Elementary" - Reed Van Dyk

Should Win:

- n/a

This category I really wanted to watch, but I had no way of doing so, which means I have to admit that I have seen none of these. But the second they find their way online in some fashion, I will get to them. That's why I can't make my personal pick. But I did watch all of the trailers and that's when I learned that "DeKalb Elementary" is a short film about a school shooting, making it extremely relevant. Since the Oscars are often political, I think this will be a perfect opportunity for them to give this a win, which will lead to a powerful speech.

Foreign Language Film:

Nominations:

- "A Fantastic Woman" - Chile
- "The Insult" - Lebanon
- "Loveless" - Russia
- "On Body and Soul" - Hungary
- "The Square" - Sweden

Will Win:

- "A Fantastic Woman" - Chile

Should Win:

- n/a

I really do like this category, I just always get around to these movies like a year later when they finally decide to show up on a streaming site. Last year's winner, "The Salesman," was really good. But I didn't watch that until like a month or two ago. The only one available to me right now is "On Body and Soul," which just showed up on Netflix. But I don't think it's fair to judge a category after only seeing one of the films, so I'm abstaining from making a personal pick. But I closely examined the box office totals, read the reviews and watched all of the trailers. Doing so has made me gravitate towards "A Fantastic Woman," but I think "The Insult" could also be in play. I don't think we're going to feel like giving an Oscar to Russia at this point and the other two don't seem like Oscar winners, but we'll see if there's a surprise in store. 

Documentary Feature:

Nominations:

- "Abacus: Small Enough to Jail" - Steve James, Mark Mitten & Julie Goldman
- "Faces Places" - Agnès Varda, JR & Rosalie Varda
- "Icarus" - Bryan Fogel & Dan Cogan
- "Last Men in Aleppo" - Feras Fayyad, Kareem Abeed & Søren Steen Jespersen
- "Strong Island" - Yance Ford & Joslyn Barnes

Will Win:

- "Icarus" - Bryan Fogel & Dan Cogan

Should Win:

- "Icarus" - Bryan Fogel & Dan Cogan

I hear great things about "Faces Places" and as soon as it's made available to me, I will check it out, because, again, I've come to really love documentaries. I have watched the other four and I could see this going any way. "Abacus" doesn't feel like a winner to me, but that is a good Frontline documentary. If you like those, check that one out. "Last Men in Aleppo" and "Strong Island" could be in play as "Aleppo" is about the bombings over there in Syria while "Strong Island" is about the director's brother, a black man who got killed by a white man who never even got a trial. But "Icarus" speaks to me the most. I actually watched this quite some time ago after someone on ESPN recommended I go watch it. It's about the guy who accidentally uncovered the huge doping scandal in Russia, which got the country banned from the most recent Olympics. It's probably the biggest sports scandal in history, thus something this unique in a documentary deserves to be watched and showered with awards. It's on the level of "CITIZENFOUR," the Edward Snowden documentary, for me. It and "Faces Places" seem to be the strongest two candidates, so I'm throwing my cards at "Icarus." 

Original Song:

Nominations:

- "Mighty River" - Mary J. Blige ("Mudbound")
- "Mystery of Love" - Sufjan Stevens ("Call Me by Your Name")
- "Remember Me" - Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez ("Coco")
- "Stand Up for Something" - Diane Warren & Lonnie R. Lynn ("Marshall")
- "This is Me" - Benj Pasek & Justin Paul ("The Greatest Showman")

Will Win:

- "Remember Me" - Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez ("Coco")

Should Win:

- "Remember Me" - Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez ("Coco")

I'll spare you my rant on "The Greatest Showman" and the song "This is Me." I don't like either. I'd say ask me later if you want to know why, but at this point I'd be surprised if you didn't already know my take. That aside, when it comes to best original song in a motion picture, "Remember Me" from "Coco" is the dictionary definition of the type of song that SHOULD win that category. It's not just a good song that plays at some point during the movie. Different versions of the song recur throughout the film and the themes from the song are woven throughout the whole run time. "Remember Me" IS "Coco." Even on its own, it's a song with a lot of depth and meaning to it. The other three songs not named "This is Me" are also really good, especially "Mystery of Love." But none of them had the same impact on their movie that "Remember Me" had on "Coco." Because of that, I almost predicted "This is Me" to win, just because it seems like the Academy ALWAYS gets this category wrong. I mean, they gave the win to that dumb Bond song from Sam Smith a couple years ago. But I decided that if "Coco" loses, I lose, too. And I've seen it get enough wins to give me confidence.

Original Score:

Nominations:

- "Dunkirk" - Hans Zimmer
- "Phantom Thread" - Jonny Greenwood
- "The Shape of Water" - Alexandre Desplat
- "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" - John Williams
- "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" - Carter Burwell

Will Win:

- "The Shape of Water" - Alexandre Desplat

Should Win:

- "The Shape of Water" - Alexandre Desplat

I really love listening to movie scores as I study, write blog posts or other things like that. It's the perfect music to help keep my mind focused. Thus after the nominations for this category came out, I've gone through all of these at least once and some of them several times. I enjoy all of them, although I'll admit that Hans Zimmer's score for "Dunkirk" is too repetitive, so I haven't gone back to that one much. Jonny Greewood's score is good, but also fairly basic orchestral stuff. Carter Burwell gives a score that fits "Three Billboards" perfectly as it is extremely mellow and depressing. And of course John Williams always gives a good Star Wars score, even if "The Last Jedi" isn't his best. But that score of "The Shape of Water" is fantastic. Not only is it like a character unto itself in the movie as it feels very aquatic, but I can listen to that for hours on repeat as I do things. And I have. There's been a lot of times in the last month or so where I've gone to the library to type a blog post and immediately turned to it while I type. So it's an easy pick for me. And the buzz I hear is that the Academy is on the same page with me, but if they give it to Williams or Zimmer, I won't be shocked.

Visual Effects:

Nominations:

- "Blade Runner 2049" - John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert & Richard R. Hooper
- "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" - Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Jonathan Fawkner & Dan Sudick
- "Kong: Skull Island" - Stephen Rosenbaum, Jeff White, Scott Benza & Mike Meinardus
- "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" - Ben Morris, Mike Milholland, Neal Scanlan & Chris Corbould
- "War for the Planet of the Apes" - Joe Letteri, Daniel Barrett, Dan Lemmon & Joel Whist

Will Win:

- "Blade Runner 2049" - John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert & Richard R. Hooper

Should Win:

- "War for the Planet of the Apes" - Joe Letteri, Daniel Barrett, Dan Lemmon & Joel Whist

This is the one category devoted to the big blockbusters that the Academy otherwise chooses to ignore. And this is a tough one to pick. "Guardians," "Kong" and "The Last Jedi" are probably just there as a courtesy, so it's down to "Blade Runner" and "Apes." I'm not 100 percent sure which one is going to win, but up to this point the Academy hasn't cared about "Apes," so why would that change now? I'm leaning towards them giving it to "Blade Runner" and I certainly won't be upset as I almost went with that myself. Visually speaking, "Blade Runner" is phenomenal. I love the world that they set up in that. But c'mon man. Andy Serkis has done something truly special with motion capture as those apes in "War" look real. 

Sound Editing:

Nominations:

- "Baby Driver" - Julian Slater
- "Blade Runner 2049" - Mark Mangini & Theo Green
- "Dunkirk" - Richard King & Alex Gibson
- "The Shape of Water" - Nathan Robitaille & Nelson Ferreira
- "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" - Matthew Wood & Ren Klyce

Will Win:

- "Dunkirk" - Richard King & Alex Gibson

Should Win:

- "Baby Driver" - Julian Slater

I really love that "Baby Driver" was given some love in this category, because it's well deserved. And I really want the Academy to give both these sound Oscars to "Baby Driver" as Edgar Wright crafted something extremely special here. But I have a feeling that both of these will instead go to "Dunkirk." And I won't be mad at that. I may have my reservations towards the movie as a whole, but I can't argue with the idea that a lot of the technical aspects of the movie are amazing. If there's ever a war film in this category, I have no problem with it winning because I envision that the sound design takes quite a bit of effort to make the movie work.

Sound Mixing:

Nominations:

- "Baby Driver" - Julian Slater, Tim Cavagin & Mary H. Ellis
- "Blade Runner 2049" - Ron Bartlett, Doug Hemphill & Mac Ruth
- "Dunkirk" - Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker & Gary A. Rizzo
- "The Shape of Water" - Christian Cooke, Bran Zoern & Glen Gautheir
- "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" - David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce & Stuart Wilson

Will Win:

- "Dunkirk" - Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker & Gary A. Rizzo

Should Win:

- "Baby Driver" - Julian Slater, Tim Cavagin & Mary H. Ellis

Believe it or not, this is the first time that these two categories have had the exact same nominations. And I have a feeling that they might split it, giving "Dunkirk" one and "Baby Driver" the other, but I have no idea which one to predict in where, so I'm going to play it safe and just predict that "Dunkirk" wins both, because that could very well happen, too.

Makeup and Hairstyling:

Nominations:

- "Darkest Hour" - Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski & Lucy Sibbick
- "Victoria & Abdul" - Daniel Phillips & Lou Sheppard
- "Wonder" - Arden Tuiten

Will Win:

- "Darkest Hour" - Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski & Lucy Sibbick

Should Win:

- "Darkest Hour" - Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski & Lucy Sibbick

Spoiler alert. Gary Oldman is going to win an Oscar. We'll get to that one in a bit, but a huge part of the reason why his performance was so believable is because they managed to make Oldman look like Winston Churchill when the two look absolutely nothing alike. So this HAS to go to "Darkest Hour," right? But if "Wonder" gets an Oscar win, I won't be upset.

Film Editing:

Nominations:

- "Baby Driver" - Paul Machliss & Jonathan Amos
- "Dunkirk" - Lee Smith
- "I, Tonya" - Tatiana S. Riegel
- "The Shape of Water" - Sidney Wolinksy
- "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" - Jon Gregory

Will Win:

- "Baby Driver" - Paul Machliss & Jonathan Amos

Should Win:

- "Baby Driver" - Paul Machliss & Jonathan Amos

Editing in a film is often hard to notice because when they make they movie flow seamlessly without the viewer noticing all the cuts in the film, they've done their job. But occasionally a movie comes around where the editing was so sharp that you can't help but notice and be absolutely stunned. Such is the case with "Baby Driver." The way those scenes were edited took my breath away. The way that "I, Tonya" was edited was also pretty clever, so that would probably be my No. 2. I'm going off on a limb here to say that the Academy also noticed and will reward "Baby Driver." I do think it'll get something and since I predicted "Dunkirk" in both sound categories, I'm predicting "Baby Driver" will get the win. Although this category does sometimes go with a best picture nominee, so if either "Three Billboards" or "The Shape of Water" sweeps the night, they could pick up this one along the way.

Costume Design:

Nominations:

- "Beauty and the Beast" - Jacqueline Durran
- "Darkest Hour" - Jacqueline Durran
- "Phantom Thread" - Mark Bridges
- "The Shape of Water" - Luis Sequeira
- "Victoria & Abdul" - Consolata Boyle

Will Win:

- "Phantom Thread" - Mark Bridges

Should Win:

- "Phantom Thread" - Mark Bridges

The movie about costume design is going to win the Oscar for best costume design, right? Do we even need to discuss this? Although I personally liked Belle's dress, so I'd be cool with giving that an Oscar. And we do have some good period pieces thrown in there as well, so this is a good category. Question, though. Does the fish suit in "The Shape of Water" count as a costume or as visual effects? Because I'll fully admit that was a pretty sweet design.

Cinematography:

Nominations:

- "Blade Runner 2049" - Roger Deakins
- "Darkest Hour" - Bruno Delbonnel
- "Dunkirk" - Hoyte van Hoytema
- "Mudbound" - Rachel Morrison
- "The Shape of Water" - Dan Lausten

Will Win:

- "Blade Runner 2049" - Roger Deakins

Should Win:

- "Blade Runner 2049" - Roger Deakins

For crying out loud, can when give Roger Deakins his Oscar already? This is the perfect time to do it because his work in "Blade Runner" may be some of his best work. It wouldn't just be a career achievement award. I examine these five movies and this is easily the best of the bunch, with "Dunkirk" coming in a distant second for me. I worry that they may give this to "The Shape of Water," which might cause me to throw something at my T.V. 

Production Design:

Nominations:

- "Beauty and the Beast" - Sarah Greenwood & Katie Spencer
- "Blade Runner 2049" - Dennis Gassner & Alessandra Querzola
- "Darkest Hour" - Sarah Greenwood & Katie Spencer
- "Dunkirk" - Nathan Crowley & Gary Fettis
- "The Shape of Water" - Paul Denham Austerberry, Shane Vieau & Melvin

Will Win:

- "The Shape of Water" - Paul Denham Austerberry, Shane Vieau & Melvin

Should Win:

- "Blade Runner 2049" - Dennis Gassner & Alessandra Querzola

I think it's possible that "The Shape of Water" sneaks in and steals a bunch of these technical categories away from some of the more deserving films. This category feels like the strongest category where it may do so, so that's why I'm predicting it to win. And I suppose I can't complain too much. There's good work there. But again, everything about the visuals, cinematography and set design of "Blade Runner" took my breath away, even though I felt the movie itself kinda retreaded worn out themes. The movie was a marvel to behold on the big screen, so it deserves these wins. I hope it at least gets a couple of them.

Animated Feature Film:

Nominations:

- "The Boss Baby" - DreamWorks
- "The Breadwinner" - GKIDS
- "Coco" - Pixar
- "Ferdinand" - Blue Sky
- "Loving Vincent" - Good Deed Entertainment

Will Win:

- "Coco" - Pixar

Should Win:

- "Coco" - Pixar

This is the easiest category to predict. Of course "Coco" is going to win. And it's deserved. But if you haven't seen "The Breadwinner," it's currently up on Netflix and is an amazing animated film that's well deserved of this nomination. Unlike two other movies listed here. I mean, come on. I know this was a fairly weak year for animation, but there were better choices than "The Boss Baby" and "Ferdinand." You can't look me in the eyes and tell me that either of those movies are better than "The LEGO Batman Movie." If you did, I would consider slapping you because that's an offense to film. Heck, I'd take "Captain Underpants" instead or another foreign film or two. Speaking of which, whenever "Loving Vincent" becomes available to watch, I totally want to check that one out. As of now, though, it hasn't been available.

Adapted Screenplay:

Nominations:

- "Call Me by Your Name" - James Ivory
- "The Disaster Artist" - Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
- "Logan" - Scott Frank, James Mangold & Michael Green
- "Molly's Game" - Aaron Sorkin
- "Mudbound" - Virgin Williams & Dee Rees

Will Win:

- "Call Me by Your Name" - James Ivory

Should Win:

- "Logan" - Scott Frank, James Mangold & Michael Green

This feels like an easy category to predict. "Call Me by Your Name" is a well loved film. For good reason, might I add. The Academy also loves it as they gave it several major nominations. Yet in most categories, they won't be able to give it the win due to something else, so this is their chance to give it a win. The other four feel like courtesy nominations. If I'm picking my personal favorite, though, of course I'm taking "Logan." That's one of the best superhero films ever made and that screenplay, which was adapted from a well-loved comic in "Old Man Logan," is something special. They way they wrote the characters for Logan and Charles Xavier and intertwined them with all the other characters in such a beautiful story managed to successfully transcend the superhero genre. If it were up to me, I would've given it a lot more love. Nominations for Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and of course a best picture nomination. But hey, at least they gave it one nomination. That's progress.

Original Screenplay:

Nominations:

- "The Big Sick" - Emily V. Gordon & Kumail Nanjiani
- "Get Out" - Jordan Peele
- "Lady Bird" - Greta Gerwig
- "The Shape of Water" - Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor
- "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" - Martin McDonagh

Will Win:

- "Get Out" - Jordan Peele

Should Win:

- "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" - Martin McDonagh

Unlike the adapted screenplay section, original screenplay is a lot more tricky this year because that's where all the heavy hitters have landed. As far as the winner, this is usually attached to the best picture winner, but not always. With how uncertain this race is, they could decide to spread the love here. Or they could give everything to one of our three favorites. You'll have to continue reading to see which one I've settled with there, but I am not so confidently leaning on them deciding to let Jordan Peele have his turn on the stage here. I really want to see that happen in some form on Oscar night. As far as my personal pick, this is even trickier because I'm judging the screenplay, not the movie as a whole. And with some of these movies, I think they succeeded because of solid acting and directing while on paper the movie could've read as quite basic. But "Three Billboards" has such a complex story that goes in so many different directions with layered characters. Yes, the directing and acting is solid. But out of this group, I feel the writing itself is what makes the movie work.

Actress in a Supporting Role:

Nominations:

- Mary J. Blige - "Mudbound"
- Allison Janney - "I, Tonya"
- Lesley Manville - "Phantom Thread"
- Laurie Metcalf - "Lady Bird"
- Octavia Spencer - "The Shape of Water"

Will Win:

- Allison Janney - "I, Tonya"

Should Win:

- Laurie Metcalf - "Lady Bird"

The acting categories have been pretty straight forward this season. There's a big four in play that have been winning everything so far and I'm not going to predict an upset, although I'll be interested to see if the Academy surprises us. Quickly on Mary J. Blige, Lesley Manville and Octavia Spencer, all three of those ladies gave good performances, but I didn't think any one of them gave Oscar-worthy performances. And neither have any chance of winning. So it's Janney vs. Metcalf. I'm playing the odds with my official prediction because Janney has been winning everything so far, but with my personal prediction, it came down to which mom performance I liked best. Janney did an amazing job, but I think it's slightly easier to play someone is grouchy and angry in every scene, whereas Metcalf gave a deep, layered performance. "Lady Bird" worked so well for me partially because of how perfect this performance was in helping me completely buy this honest, real relationship. 

Actor in a Supporting Role:

Nominations:

- Willem Dafoe - "The Florida Project"
- Woody Harrelson - "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"
- Richard Jenkins - "The Shape of Water"
- Christopher Plummer - "All the Money in the World
- Sam Rockwell - "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"

Will Win:

- Sam Rockwell - "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"

Should Win:

- Christopher Plummer - "All the Money in the World

I hear Willem Dafoe did an amazing job in "The Florida Project." I'm upset that I missed that movie, especially because he could win. As soon as it becomes available to me on DVD or on a streaming platform, I plan on giving it a shot. Yet Sam Rockwell has been winning everything, so I'm again playing the odds here. I really loved his character arc in "Three Billboards" with how complex he was. If you label as the racist cop and leave it at that, I think you missed the point. Yet I'm picking Christopher Plummer as my personal favorite because I there's something special there. Not only does recasting Kevin Spacey send a message to Hollywood that sexual misconduct will not be allowed, but Plummer absolutely owned that role, to the point where I can't see anyone else playing the character. He was perfect. And he did such a great job in such a small amount of time, which was even more impressive to me. I do have to give a shout-out to Michael Stuhlbarg from "Call Me by Your Name," though. Had he been nominated, he might've been my pick here. Yet sadly he got snubbed.

Actress in a Leading Role:

Nominations:

- Sally Hawkins - "The Shape of Water"
- Frances McDormand - "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"
- Margot Robbie - "I, Tonya"
- Saoirse Ronan - "Lady Bird"
- Meryl Streep - "The Post"

Will Win:

- Frances McDormand - "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"

Should Win:

- Frances McDormand - "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"

Saoirse Ronan's character in "Lady Bird" was by far the character I connected most with this year. But I'm not judging best character here. I'm judging best performance. When I watched "Three Billboards" back around Thanksgiving, I walked out of that theater thinking that we should just give Frances McDormand the gold trophy right then. And I saw that movie AFTER "Lady Bird." I decided, though, that I should be fair and give everyone else a shot to impress me before I jump to conclusions. But no. I never found a female lead role that I enjoyed more. And apparently everyone agrees with me because she's been winning everything, so why pick against here? If the unthinkable happened and an upset did occur, then I would lean towards it being Sally Hawkins if "The Shape of Water" does a complete sweep on the night.

Actor in a Leading Role:

Nominations:

- Timothée Chalamet - "Call Me by Your Name"
- Daniel Day-Lews - "Phantom Thread"
- Daniel Kaluuya - "Get Out"
- Gary Oldman - "Darkest Hour"
- Denzel Washington - "Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Will Win:

- Gary Oldman - "Darkest Hour"

Should Win:

- Gary Oldman - "Darkest Hour"

I will fully admit that I am a sucker for actors perfectly pulling off a beloved historical character. Thus when it comes to Oldman, his suit that will win "Darkest Hour" best makeup and hairstyling was only half of the story here. Yes, they made him look like Winston Churchill. But Oldman also perfectly captured his voice, style and mannerisms. Luckily we live in a day where YouTube exists and Churchill is recent enough for actual footage of his speeches to have been recorded. When you go listen to real Churchill speeches, then watch the movie "Darkest Hour," you'll be shocked at how perfect this imitation was from Oldman. Thus for me this makes it easy to pick. No one came close. And Oldman has literally won everything. It's like all the awards voters got together months ago and predetermined that Oldman was going to win everything. In a distant second place, I do have to give a shout-out to internet favorite Timothée Chalamet, who completely blew me away in "Call Me by Your Name." He'd be my pick if Oldman wasn't here. And if this is truly Daniel Day-Lewis' last role, he went out on a high note with another great performance in "Phantom Thread."

Directing:

Nominations:

- Paul Thomas Anderson - "Phantom Thread"
- Guillermo del Toro - "The Shape of Water"
- Greta Gerwig - "Lady Bird"
- Christopher Nolan - "Dunkirk"
- Jordan Peele - "Get Out"

Will Win:

- Guillermo del Toro - "The Shape of Water"

Should Win:

- Greta Gerwig - "Lady Bird"

Regardless of what happens in the best picture race that has me completely in the dark, Guillermo is taking home his trophy. This is another category where I'm playing the odds because he's been winning everything. And I can't argue too much with that, even though I personally would pick Gerwig, Jordan Peele and PTA instead. This was a tough choice for my personal favorite as I think there was great directing work all around, but with "Lady Bird" being my favorite movie of the year, I give most of the credit to Greta Gerwig for having a vision for this movie and directing it in such a way to make it feel like a personal story, not just for her as someone from Sacramento, but for everyone. The characters. The story. The way everything flowed. The way the story was constructed. All the little details and decisions that added together to make it work. It was all on her as the director. Even all the acting in the movie was because the whole cast bought into her version for this movie. If that's not worthy of best director, I don't know what is. And yes, it would be cool to see a female win this award. But that's not the reason why I picked her as who I want to win.

Best Picture:

Nominations:

- "Call Me by Your Name" - Sony Pictures Classics
- "Darkest Hour" - Focus Features
- "Dunkirk" - Warner Bros.
- "Get Out" - Universal
- "Lady Bird" - A24
- "Phantom Thread" - Focus Features
- "The Post" - 20th Century Fox
- "The Shape of Water" - Fox Searchlight
- "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" - Fox Searchlight

Will Win:

- "Get Out" - Universal

Should Win:

- "Lady Bird" - A24

I've never been so conflicted in trying to predict the best picture winner. Usually I'm able to detect a favorite going into the night, but all I know this time is that it's between "Three Billboards," "The Shape of Water" and "Get Out." Yet I literally have no idea which one is going to win. "Three Billboards" has won the more of the other awards ceremonies, but the Academy didn't give it best director, which throws me off. And there's a lot of racist controversy that could knock it down. "The Shape of Water" has the most nominations this year, so do I go with that? But hey, "La La Land" had even more nominations last year and didn't win, so I'm not fully convinced there. They could just hand Guillermo best director and call it good. Yet I think what's ended up swaying me the most is this idea of preferential voting, which is explained in that link right there. The gist of it is that the Academy voters rank the nominations from best to worst. The winner isn't necessarily the movie that had the highest percentage of initial first place votes. It's the movie that's consistently higher up on more ballots. The least disliked movie, if you will. With how consistent the praise has been for "Get Out" across the board, I think it fits that specific bill best.

And do I really need to explain why my personal pick is "Lady Bird"? It was my favorite movie of 2017. And when my favorite movie of the year is nominated for best picture, well that's the easiest choice of the night. Yet for as long as I have been following the Oscars, my favorite movie of the year has never won best picture, so that declaration back in January essentially disqualified "Lady Bird" from winning the award. If you want more on why I love "Lady Bird," feel free to dig up my review or my favorite movies of 2017 list. 

Movie Preview: March 2018

February was "Black Panther" month at the domestic box office as the Marvel sensation has now become the third highest grossing movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of right now, a mark it hit after just 11 days in theaters. Its 13-day total in the month of February ended up being a massive $428.8 million, which represented 43 percent of the overall business at the domestic box office, the highest mark for any February movie. In fact, this enormous box office total pushed February 2018 to record-breaking marks as the highest grossing February in history, narrowly missing out on becoming the first February to hit the $1 billion mark with $996.4 million. Had the other February releases shown up, it could've easily hit that mark, but no other February release was able to even top $100 million in February and only "Fifty Shades Freed" and "Peter Rabbit" were able to cross $50 million. And now we move onto March, where "Black Panther" is looking to make upwards of $250 million more, meaning it could end up as the highest grossing movie of March, too, as March 2018 doesn't look quite as strong as in past years and thus won't come near to the $1.17 billion record mark set last March. But there's a lot of big titles that will try their best, so let's dive in and look at them.

March 2nd - 4th-

After celebrating a $111.7 million last weekend, the highest grossing second weekend ever in the MCU, "Black Panther" will top the domestic box office for a third weekend straight with anywhere between $60-65 million, and perhaps even a bit more if our two new releases fail to register as they battle it out for second place. Of those two releases, the highest profile of the two is Red Sparrow. This is the Jennifer Lawrence suspense thriller that re-teams her with director Francis Lawrence, who she worked with in the final three Hunger Games movies. In "Red Sparrow," Lawrence plays a Russian ballerina named Dominika Egorova who is then forced to go to Sparrow School, where she, along with other men and women, are trained on how to use their bodies to seduce the enemy and obtain classified information. The movie is based on the 2013 novel written by Jason Matthews, a former CIA operative. A review of the novel by the CIA says the novel gives accurate insight as to how espionage around the world is conducted. Whether that translates into film or not is another story as the film is currently trending downwards with mixed reviews. It currently sports a 52 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. An opening around the $18.3 million of last year's "Atomic Blonde" seems likely.

While "Red Sparrow" is trending downwards, trending upwards of late is the Eli Roth action film Death Wish. Eli Roth is a director known mostly for his gore-fests, which appeal to a more niche audience, yet don't typically experience mainstream success. Of his four films that have had a wide release, "Hostel" is his biggest opening weekend with $19.6 million. The other three all opened with less than $10 million. The advantage that "Death Wish" has is that it stars Bruce Willis and Vincent D'Onofrio, star power that has never headlined an Eli Roth film. It's also a remake of the 1974 film of the same name, which is in turn based on the novel by Brian Garfield. So that adds a bit more recognition to this movie. The story is about a family man who goes on a violent killing spree after his family is brutally attacked. If it ends up matching the opening weekend of "Hostel," it could end up beating out "Red Sparrow" for second place. It's also worth noting that male-led action movies this year such as "The 15:17 to Paris," "The Commuter," "12 Strong" and "Den of Thieves" all opened in the $12-16 million range, which feels like a realistic landing spot for "Death Wish."

March 9th - 11th-

In its fourth weekend of release, "Black Panther" will be looking to take in another $40 million to the bank, give or take a few million either way. And for the first time in its incredible run, it'll have actual competition to take away that box office thrown away from it as fellow Disney movie A Wrinkle in Time will hit theaters. It's certainly been a great time for Disney in the last several years as in addition to owning Marvel and Lucasfilm, their own live-action affair have been doing incredible, highlighted recently by "Beauty and the Beast" earning $1.26 billion worldwide last year and "The Jungle Book" earning $966 million the year before. More heavy-hitters come next year with live-action remakes of "Dumbo," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" all on the schedule. In the meantime, they'll be delivering "Christopher Robbin," "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms" and "Marry Poppins Returns" this year. Those titles coming after they take on their own adaptation "A Wrinkle in Time" this weekend. The movie stars Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Pena and David Oyelowo along with a handful of youngsters leading the way. It's directed by Ava DuVernay, director of "Selma" and "13th." Current projections peg "A Wrinkle in Time" opening around $50 million, which it'll need to top "Black Panther."

A trio of smaller releases will be joining the market alongside "A Wrinkle in Time," all of whom will be hoping for a place in the top five, but might have to settle for a spot just outside that region depending on how things turn out. Leading the way here will most likely be The Hurricane Heist. This is a movie directed by Rob Cohen, who the marketing is pushing heavily as the director of "The Fast and the Furious" and "xXx," the first movies in each of those franchises. What the marketing is mostly likely purposely choosing to ignore is that in the 15+ years since those two movies, Rob Cohen entire directorial filmography includes "Stealth," "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," "Alex Cross" and "The Boy Next Door," all of which are hovering around 10 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. So the man doesn't exactly have the best track record. But marketing team is hoping that his connection to "The Fast and the Furious" and "xXx" is good enough to get a few people out to see another ridiculous action movie where a team attempts to pull of a major heist while a category five hurricane is on its way. Cohen's previous two movies opened in the $10-15 million range.

Next up, STX will be releasing the comedy Gringo in about the same number of theaters as "The Hurricane Heist," so they could open up around the same in box office as well. "Gringo" is directed by Nash Edgerton, the brother of Joel Edgerton, and probably non-coincidentally, stars Joel Edgerton as the head of a business, along with Charlize Theron, who has developed a weed pill, which has simplified medical marijuana into a pill. Edgerton and Theron send David Oyelowo, who plays an employee of the company, down to Mexico to handle the marketing, but Oyelowo ends up getting kidnapped by the cartel. In response, Edgerton sends Sharlto Copley down to rescue Oyelowo, but the two end up getting stuck in various situations in the process. Director Nash Edgerton has previously worked mainly as a stunt coordinator, with acting and directing being mainly a side thing. That lack of experience raises some concerns, although it also reminds one of "John Wick,"  whose directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch worked solely in the stunts department before successfully transitioning into the directing realm. So that does bring some hope here.

The final release of the weekend is the horror sequel The Strangers: Prey at Night. This movie is a sequel to the 2008 horror film "The Strangers," which was a home invasion thriller where a young couple was terrorized by three masked assailants over the course of an evening. The movie did quite well, actually, opening a hair under $21 million and making $52.6 million total on a budget of just $9 million, despite mixed reviews. Had this sequel come out a year or two after the original, then the potential for this film would've been really good. As is, though, a release 10 years after the fact, following a troubled production, means many people have probably forgot the original movie exists, thus meaning this is essentially like starting from scratch with an mostly identical premise, this time a whole family being terrorized by a group of masked assailants. The positive note here is that, even though it would've probably made a lot more money had it come out eight years ago, the budget on these types of horror movies is never too high, so this probably doesn't need to make a ton of money in order to make a profit. Aviron will be distributing this movie and they previously released the movie "Kidnap" last year to the tune of a $10 million opening and $30.7 million total.

March 16th - 18th-

There is an outside possibility that "Black Panther" wins a fifth weekend straight at the box office, as it'll look to make another $20-25 million, but if that does happen this weekend, it's a bad omen for March's new releases as it will mean both "A Wrinkle in Time" and this weekend's big new release, Tomb Raider, will have vastly underperformed. For "Tomb Raider," that wouldn't be a huge surprise as not many really asked for this franchise to be rebooted and video game adaptations have a poor history anyways. The most recent high-profile disasters in the genre were "Warcraft" and "Assassin's Creed," both in 2016, as they made $47.3 million and $54.6 million respectively at the domestic box office with budgets over $100 million. In terms of video game adaptations, it's worth noting that the highest grossing movie in the genre domestically is the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider movie in 2001, which opened to $47.7 million and made $131.2 million total. The filmmakers here would be ecstatic if they could replicate that success with Alicia Vikander in the lead role this time around. Although looking at the 2003 sequel provides interesting metrics as "The Cradle of Life" opened to $21.8 million on its way to $65.7 million. Reviews for the film will be key here. If they come in as bad or average, "Tomb Raider" could wind up with numbers similar to "The Cradle of Life."

Opening alongside "Tomb Raider" is the teen high school drama Love, Simon. This movie is based on the book "Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda" and follows a high school student named Simon Spier who is a closet gay who has fallen for an anonymous classmate online who also claims to be gay. Simon says he deserves to have a good love story, but has to balance his family and friends with his decision of whether to come out as gay or not. This is from the producers of "The Fault in Our Stars," which was a mega hit for this teen romance genre in 2014, and is directed by Greg Berlanti, the producer of the Arrowverse on The CW, which now includes "Arrow," "The Flash," "Supergirl," "Legends of Tomorrow" and "Black Lightning." The LGBT angle for "Love, Simon" could be what separates it apart from other teen romance dramas and it certainly helps that it has a solid cast led by Nick Robinson as Simon, Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Garner as his parents, and other fellow classmates played by Katherine Langford ("13 Reasons Why"), Alexandra Shipp ("X-Men: Apocalypse"), Miles Heizer ("Nerve"), Talitha Eliana Bateman ("Annabelle: Creation") and Keiynan Lonsdale ("The Flash"). An opening close to the $12.7 million of "Paper Towns" feels appropriate.

The final movie of the weekend is the Christian film I Can Only Imagine. This movie is about the MercyMe song called "I Can Only Imagine," which was released in 2001 and did pretty well for a Christian song, peaking at No. 71 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 5 on the Adult Contemporary, No. 27 on the Adult Top 40, No. 52 on the Hot Country Songs and No. 33 on the Mainstream Top 40. That in addition to being No. 1 on the Christian charts, of course. This movie is the story of how MercyMe's lead singer Bart Millard wrote the song and stars J. Michael Finley and Dennis Quaid. Christian films have a bit of a spotty track record at the box office as more often than not they struggle to get an audience beyond their target Christian audience. Being released close to Easter can change that, although this probably won't be the Easter hit of 2018. We'll talk about that one later. This one will probably play closer to the documentary about another Christian Band, Hillsong, in their movie "Hillsong - Let Hope Rise," which opened to $1.3 million in September 2016 and made $2.3 million total.

March 23rd - 25th-

Regardless of what happens with "Black Panther," "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Tomb Raider," this weekend will have a new box office champion and that should be Pacific Rim Uprising. "Pacific Rim" is an example of a movie that was initially seen as a flop when it opened to just $37.3 million in July 2013 on a budget of $190 million. Warner Bros. was looking for a whole heck of a lot more than that. Its final domestic total wound up as a mere $101.8 million. It ended up not being a flop thanks mostly to China, where it made $111.9 million after opening to $45.3 million. It's total foreign gross wound up being $309.2 million for a worldwide total of $411 million. Thus is why a sequel was justified. With 75 percent of that movie's gross coming overseas, what "Uprising" does in the U.S. almost doesn't matter. But it should do close to what the original made, at least. The filmmakers here with this sequel have gone all in with bigger monsters fighting more advanced robots in order to make your inner 9-year-old even happier than before. The disadvantage that "Uprising" has, outside the fact that it's now been five years, is that Guillermo del Toro is not back to direct. Instead we have Steven S. DeKnight in his feature film directorial debut after previously working in various writing, directing and producing roles in such T.V. shows as "Daredevil" and "Smallville."

A potential contender for the crown this week, if everything worked out in its favor, is Sherlock Gnomes. This is another belated sequel, this one dating back to February 2011 when "Gnomeo and Juliet" opened to $25.3 million on its way to almost hitting $100 million total with $99.97 million. And we get more garden gnome puns with this franchise as we move from Romeo and Juliet to Sherlock Holmes as the garden gnome version of Sherlock Holmes comes to investigate the disappearance of various garden ornaments. The disadvantage this movie has is that it's been eight years now since "Gnomeo and Juliet" came out, and that movie wasn't one with a whole lot of demand for a sequel in the first place. The trailers also indicate that this movie will be chalk full of fart and poop jokes throughout, which will probably have 3-year-olds laughing hysterically, but anyone much older facepalming, meaning the target audience seems directed specifically at young children without trying to please anyone else, thus limiting its box office potential. The biggest advantage here is that family audiences have been fairly underserved in 2018, so this could fill a void and perform well with no additional kid-targeted animated movies coming until "The Incredibles 2" on June 15.

While "Samson" ended up being dead on arrival last month and "I Can Only Imagine" might attract a small Christian audience this month, the big Easter movie this year that will attract the biggest audience will be Paul, Apostle of Christ. This, of course, tells the story of the apostle Paul in the New Testament, who started out as one of the most agressive persecutors of Christ's church at the time to being one of Christ's most devoted apostles, who ended up being responsible for most of our current New Testament. The specific vantage point this movie takes is when Paul is older and in prison at Rome. Luke, who was a very important figure in Paul's life, sneaks in to bring solace to Paul and together they decide they need to get Paul's story to the world, which is the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles being written. Jim Caviezel plays Luke in the film while James Faulkner stars as Paul. As far as a box office comparison, this movie comes from AFFIRM Films, a label of Sony Pictures, who were responsible for the movie "Risen," which opened to $11.8 million around Easter 2016, and made $36.9 million total. Other Easter comparisons are "Miracles from Heaven," which opened to $14.8 million a few weeks after "Risen" and made $61.7 total and "The Shack," which opened to $16.2 million this time last year and made $57.4 million total.

Continuing along with this busy fourth weekend, we have the romance drama Midnight Sun, which, much like last year's "Everything, Everything," is about a girl who has a condition that prevents her from being able to go out in the sunlight. The conflict comes in when she meets a guy and wants to be with him, but she can only go out at night and is not sure how to tell him about this. Our obligatory dreamy young couple in this particular romance drama are played by Bella Thorne and Patrick Schwarzenegger. If this were to follow the exact box office trajectory of "Everything, Everything," it would mean an $11.7 million opening and a $34.1 million total. However, this is Open Roads distributing this and they haven't had a $10 million opener since "Nightcrawler" in 2014. Of their six movies last year that they opened in at least 1,000 theaters, the average total was $5.9 million. Thus this could hit around that mark, or a bit lower like our other two smaller romance dramas in 2018 so far, "Forever My Girl," which opened with $4.2 million, and "Every Day," which opened with $3.0 million.

Our final wide release of this weekend is a small horror film called Unsane. This is a horror film from three-time Oscar nominated director Steven Soderbergh, who got a best director win for "Traffic," yet is probably most well known in the public's eye for directing "Ocean's Eleven," "Ocean's Twelve" and "Ocean's Thirteen," as well as last year's "Logan Lucky." Believe it or not, "Unsane" is a movie that was shot on an iPhone in 4K, which might open the eyes of some as far as what can be done with something you currently hold in your pocket right now if you know how to use it. "Unsane" opened at the Berlin International Film Festival to decent marks as it holds a 72 percent on Rotten Tomatoes through 18 reviews. The movie is about a girl who checks herself into a behavioral center, but then gets held longer than she initially signed up for when the doctor's, and later herself, start to question her sanity, especially when she thinks she starts seeing her stalker that she's been trying to get away from. This could have potential if Bleeker Street figures out how to market it, but their two wide releases last year opened to $7.6 million and $3.8 million respectively, the former being their highest opener to date, so history suggests this stays small.

That does it for wide releases this weekend, but a sixth movie that'll start in four theaters this weekend needs a quick mention and that is Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. When I talked about "Sherlock Gnomes," I mentioned there were no other kid-targeted animated movies coming out until June. I subtly threw in "kid-targeted" in there because I knew I wanted to mention "Isle of Dogs," which is also an animated movie, but is not exactly targeted towards kids as its PG-13 rating suggests the target audience here is fans of Wes Anderson, who is known for his strange, quirky films. Anderson's most recent film, "The Grand Budapest Hotel," was nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture, winning four of them. So he has some good will built in from that which should trickle over to "Isle of Dogs," which has the animation style of Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox." The movie is set in Japan and follows a young boy's journey in trying to find his dog. The movie has already opened in three different European film festivals this year to great early reviews as it holds a 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, suggesting a good run in its future and potential awards consideration. At the very least, it seems like an easy write-in for the best animated feature category.

March 30th - April 1st-

The fifth and final weekend of March, which sneaks into April by the end of the weekend, is home of the movie with the most potential of the bunch and that is Ready Player One. This movie will actually get a head start on the weekend by opening a day early on Thursday, March 29. Although most of this movie's run will take place in April, it's the easy bet to end up with the most money of all the movies released in March. The biggest reason for that is "Ready Player One" gives off the vibe that this is classic Steven Spielberg. While the master himself has definitely put out some good movies of late, it's safe to assume that the 21st century hasn't been quite as nice to him as the 70's, 80's and 90's were. Yet with so much nostalgia vomit dumped into "Ready Player One," this feels like we've been taken back in time for a movie experience taken straight from Spielberg's golden era. And as "Stranger Things" has taught us, nostalgia vomit works really well in the modern era, especially when the 80's is a big focus. Although fans of the "Ready Player One" book are quick to point out that this story isn't just nostalgia vomit. There's a valuable lesson to be told here as our characters dive into this virtual reality world called the OASIS, searching for the creator's Easter Egg.

Poised to debut in second place of our three new releases is Tyler Perry's Acrimony. Tyler Perry has a pretty loyal fan base that usually show up for his movies, but admittedly the biggest draw for his fans is when he steps into his Madea suit. "Acrimony" not only sees Perry step away from Madea for a moment, but is also him going away from comedy altogether by directing a serious thriller. This is not completely out of the ordinary for Perry, but it's not his typical wheelhouse, which also means it probably won't be on the high end of his movies in terms of money earned. "Acrimony" stars Taraji P. Henson as a woman who goes crazy when she learns that her husband who she's been loyal to for so many years is now cheating on her and engaged to someone else. So definitely not anything new when it comes to the thriller genre. This will be the second lead role for Taraji this year after "Proud Mary" disappointed to just a $9.9 million opening. The Tyler Perry connection well probably help this movie go a bit higher than that, although poor reviews might cause this one to be left in the dust a bit. The eight Madea movies have averaged an opening of $26.1 million for Perry, but his non-Madea movies that he's directed average an opening of $18.8 million. "Acrimony" will either hit that average or be one of the movies that brings it down, but it probably won't help raise it.

Last and, well, possibly least is the third movie in the now God's Not Dead trilogy is God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness. Pure Flix is out to prove for a third time that, no, God is still not dead. In the first movie, they proved it in a classroom as student debated with an atheist professor. In the second movie, they proved it in a courtroom after Sabrina the teenage witch, now a non-magical teacher, got in a lot of legal trouble when she brought God up in her classroom. And now the evil non-believers who are all going to Hell if they don't start believing in God have burned down Pastor Dave's church because it's not welcome in their community. An event that *totally* happens in our day. Yeah, a bit of tongue-in-cheek there, but the strong evangelicals will happily show up for this one, just like they did for the first two. But the rest of the world will probably ignore this, as was shown by the sharp decline from the first to the second movie. While "God's Not Dead" made a fantastic $60.8 million total in 2014, "God's Not Dead 2" made only a third of that with $20.8 million total in 2016. It wouldn't be surprising to see that total decline again, although probably not quite as drastically.