It’s Oscar time! Jonathan Crabb returns this week to talk all about the 2018 Academy Award-nominated films ahead of this Sunday’s awards ceremony. “Fan service well done is a good movie.” Jordan kicks off...
I’m an unapologetic fan of the Oscars. First and foremost, I enjoy the movies. But there is a certain political dance to the award season that I also find very entertaining (as if watching politics wasn’t aggravating enough for me).
This year I actually managed to watch every Best Picture nominee before the awards ceremony (this Sunday) and it’s a fine crop of films. From my favorite to least favorite:
On the surface, “Spotlight” is about the Boston Globe investigative team that broke the story of the dozens of priests had committed sexual abuse against disadvantaged youth and how the Catholic Church had covered up cases of child abuse to shield these abusive priests.
The reason I wasn’t interested in this movie is because I know about this story. I mean … who doesn’t? The knowledge of the Catholic Church’s shame here is practically a part of our culture. There are dozens of movies, books, and documentaries on this disgrace chapter of the Church. What more could Spotlight possibly bring to the table?
Ignore the subprime loan shop talk and Margot Robbie in a bubble bath for a second (if you can) and think of “The Big Short” as a pulsing, kaleidoscopic exercise in 21st-century filmmaking—because that’s what it is, a uniquely modern marriage of dusted-off Hollywood staples and shiny zeitgeist.
A little bit Vox, an awful lot BuzzFeed, “The Big Short” is the film equivalent of your daily flipping between Chrome tabs: a Wall Street Journal piece on interest rates, the latest People magazine cover interview, an in-depth New York Times something that you skim, and a quiz asking “What Kind of Hamburger Are You?”
“Fury Road” isn’t yet another male-centric action flick—it’s an incredibly bizarre yet strangely beautiful visual epic with a story arc that glorifies women.
I was curious about how many of the eight films nominated this year passed the Bechdel test with a scene, however brief, where two women with names exchange one or two sentences about something other than a man.
Here are my favorite patterns for picking Oscar films to watch.