"Steve Jobs" chronicles soul-bearing small measures of the real man behind the public persona of genius. The blood feuds and many glorious shouting matches deliver one narrative bombshell after another. Using a unique three-act structure, the artistic result is nearly perfect. Superior to its peers in so many areas of technique and performance, "Steve Jobs" stands boldly as one of the finest films of 2015.
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Once one awards season ends, another one begins! The winners from last night's 87th Academy Awards can bask in the glow of immortality for a while. Meanwhile, business in Hollywood will quickly shift and move on to the 88th Academy Awards that will happen in February 2016. Before the year of 2015 is out, we will soon learn and adopt another crop of competitive films to equally revere and nit-pick. Here are 16 films to watch for the 2016 Oscars.
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It's time to begin making my formal and official Oscar predictions. In this sixth post, we climb into the acting areas of "The Big 8" Oscar categories. Here, we look at the male acting awards of Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. Let's do this and pick some winners! I've said it all season. Stick with me and I will win you your Oscar pool.
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It's time to begin making my formal and official Oscar predictions. In this fifth post, we start to get the acting areas of "The Big 8" Oscar categories. Here, we look at the female acting awards of Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Let's do this and pick some winners! I've said it all season. Stick with me and I will win you your Oscar pool.
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It's time to begin making my formal and official Oscar predictions. In this fourth post, we start to get the beginning three of "The Big 8" Oscar categories. Here, we look at the writing and directing awards for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Let's do this and pick some winners! I've said it all season. Stick with me and I will win you your Oscar pool.
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It's time to begin making my formal and official Oscar predictions. In this third post, we look at the minor film categories that include animation, documentary, and shorts. Let's do this!
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It's time to begin making my formal and official Oscar predictions. In this first post, we look at the visual and artistic technical categories that include cinematography, production design, costumes, makeup/hairstyling, editing, and visual effects. Let's do this!
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The Oscar nominations for the 87th Academy Awards were announced this morning. Directors J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuaron mapped out the little categories and then actor Chris Pine and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs drops some bombs this morning. As always, there are plenty of surprises and plenty of snubs. Through it all, the frontrunners have already emerged and this race is taking shape, so much so that I could probably name the eventual winners already today.
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"The Theory of Everything" elected for the safe side of risk as a biographical film. Adapted from "Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen," the memoirs of Jane Wilde Hawking, the first wife of renowned theoretical physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking, by New Zealand playwright Anthony McCarten, the film is the second feature effort from Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker James Marsh ("Man on Wire"). To its credit, "The Theory of Everything" takes decidedly different route than one would expect from a documentarian telling the life story of a world-famous scientist.
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With the arrival of "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies," we have made it to the payoff. This big story gets its ending, its tidy bow, and its cherry-on-top. Even if you think the movie studio was milking you for three movie tickets over three years out of a book that probably could have fit into a single film, you now get to see your patience rewarded and your virtue justified. You will realize it was worth it. You will feel like you stuck around to see "Superman" save the world, you survived the walk down those basement stairs in "Psycho," and you partied with the Ewoks and spirit Jedis in "Star Wars."
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When I call "Wild" a "chick flick" of the highest order, I don't mean the tropes, cliches, and stereotypes. I mean the label from the empowerment and importance standpoint. "Wild" is the positive kind of "chick flick" that isn't made enough and is drowned out by other crappier efforts targeted at women. With its true story tale, "Wild" is a strong and substantial film for female audiences. I do not say this next statement lightly. "Wild" is truly a film that every woman should see and one they should put on a more preferred pedestal for ideals compared to the "chick flicks" that ruin women's good sense. Better yet, it's an accessible film for all movie-going clientele, not just the ladies.
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"Foxcatcher" was a passion project for Bennett Miller that he immersed himself into for over two years since 2012. He spent the better part of 2013 and 2014 solely editing this very meticulous film. What results, in my opinion, is a flawed sculpture where the artist spent so much time whittling over the immensity of the project and its details that he lost sight what the piece represented. Without a doubt, the effort and the talent is there in front of and behind the camera, but, somewhere, this film drowned itself out and lost the core of what really mattered.
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