OSCAR PREDICTIONS 2018: The race for Best Picture

Throughout the awards season, I’ve been tallying the minor and lead-up award winners in all of the Oscar categories on the 2018 Awards Tracker as a big source of my prognostication data. In this seventh post, we look at the race for Best Picture. As I say every year, stick with me and I will win you your Oscar pool!

2017, 2018, Best Films, Column, Editorial, SPECIALDon ShanahanFebruary 28, 2018Best Picture, The race for Best Picture, Best Motion Picture of the Year, Academy Award hopeful, Academy Award nominee, Awards Talk, Academy Award, Academy Award winner, Academy Award nominees, Awards Tracker, Awards seasons, Award Prediction, Awards, Awards Predictions, Awards bait, Oscar Predictions, Oscar nominee, Oscar nominations, Oscar winners, Oscar snubs, Oscar hopefuls, Oscars, Oscar talks, Oscar contenders, Oscar Checklist, Oscar, Oscar surprises, Oscar bait, #OscarsSoWhite, Oscar race, 90th Oscars, 90th Academy Awards, 2018 Academy Awards, 2018, 2018 Oscars, 2017 films, Academy Awards, Academy Award nominations, Best Director, Call Me By Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing MissouriComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Darkest Hour

Darkest Hour and Gary Oldman exhibit tremendous fight to match the vigor of the era. The film builds its mounting prospects of calamity and clashes of dissension with polish and gumption, avoiding many of the dull notes normally saddling most other behind-the-war-room yak-fest. The screenplay shrewdly skips laborious biographical notes and tautly fixates primarily on the two weeks of debate leading up to Operation Dynamo

2017, 4 STARS, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanDecember 5, 2017Landmark Century Centre CinemasWinston Churchill, Darkest Hour, Joe Wright, Lily James, Kristin Scott Thomas, World War II, Operation Dynamo, Dunkirk, Clementine Churchill, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Harry Potter, The Dark Knight, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actor Oscar, Gary Oldman, Dario Marianelli, Atonement, Pan, Stephen Frears, Valerio Bonelli, Bruno Delbonnel, Amelie, The Theory of Everything, Anthony McCarten, Ben Mendelsohn, Prime Minister, King Edward VI, film critic, movie critic, film review, movie review, film commentary, movie commentary, 2017 Holiday Films, Churchill, life lessons, life lessons from film, life lessons from movies, life lessons from films, Oscar contenders, Donald Shanahan, Don Shanahan, Every Movie Has a Lesson Comments

MEDIA APPEARANCE: Discussing July and the top films of 2017 on the "Reel Talker" podcast

Fellow CIFCC critic and director Jim Alexander of Reel Talker extended the invitation for me to co-host a new episode of his podcast. On this installment of the Reel Talker podcast, Jim and I discuss the July movie releases and which we consider hits or flops. Also, he and I disclose our Top 10 movie lists through the halfway point of 2017. Jim and I had very different picks, chock full of surprises!

MEDIA APPEARANCE: YouTube guest on YPA Reviews talking all things "Dunkirk"

YouTube creator extraordinaire Mike Crowley of the "You'll Probably Agree" channel, a.k.a. YPA Reviews, invited me as an on-camera guest for the second time. This past May, we ranted on the overrated qualities of Terrence Malick. This time, we throw down on all things Dunkirk, including full reviews, fighting and tempering Christopher Nolan fandom, and the state of art house vs. Netflix. Mike's show can be digested in three parts: the Dunkirk review, the sidebar talk on Nolan, and the full uncut version of all topics.

MEDIA APPEARANCE: Guest on Eman's Movie Reviews audio podcast for "Dunkirk"

If you're like me and friend-of-the-page Emmanuel Noisette of Eman's Movie Reviews, you might be feeling masterpiece-labeling pressure and Dunkirk review fatigue. For Emmanuel, guest extraordinaire Harry Egbo, and I, the film didn't resonate with us emotionally, but we had plenty of superlatives to talk about mingling with the challenges and questions. This is a SPOILER-FILLED audio discussion and the ethnic music in the background is all bonus gravy!

MOVIE CLASSROOM: Dunkirk

As a big Christopher Nolan fan and supporter, this review was difficult. Critic after critic is calling Dunkirk Nolan's masterpiece and best film to date. I simply can't do that and no filmmaker should ever get a pass. In fact, it might be the worst of his films I have seen, but that's like slipping from a king-size Sleep Number mattress to a king-size pillowtop mattress. The fall isn't far. Allow me to explain. Here's my "Movie Classroom" interactive whiteboard presentation of the audio form of my written review as it appears posted on Every Movie Has a Lesson's YouTube channel.