Even with all of its impressive pomp and noise, nothing dramatically radioactive is going to ping your internal Geiger counter higher than a nominal level. And that, like Dunkirk and Tenet before this, is another missed opportunity from one of the best filmmakers in the industry. There’s a pair of lines offered to our main character in Oppenheimer that mirror some of the pushback analysis to Nolan’s good standing. They read, “Don’t alienate the only people in the world who understand what you do. You may need them.” The Brit has his hardcore devotees, but he might be losing more of the rest with each exhausting effort.
Read MoreThe 88th Academy Award nominations will be announced tomorrow morning, January 14, 2016, hot off of the weekend's 73rd Golden Globe awards. I've been following the full awards season over on my Awards Tracker page. Using that data as the tea leaves and a truckload of hunches, I'm going to attempt to closely predict the Oscar nominations for the "Big 8" categories for the third year in a row.
Read More"Sicario" is a raw labyrinth of grit and surprises. This film is a python of suspense. Just when you think the film can't squeeze you any tighter, it chokes you even more. It resets the bar as the best and finest film on drug warfare that Hollywood has ever attempted. "Sicario" is steely, seedy, scary, and jarring in its underlying social and political commentary to bore that out. It's the kind of film that will make you never want to visit Mexico or live in Arizona or Texas.
Read MoreMore and more each year, the Golden Globes have become more an a popularity contest than a true precursor to the Academy Awards. What you're watching on TV is a party thrown by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in an effort to be loved and share some love. To its credit, the awards show still garners legitimate attention and ratings. The winners do get a pretty positive rub and the marketers gain a few more "Winner of..." graphics to put in the newspapers next to their films. Let's take a look at the film categories and pick some winners.
Read MoreGo ahead and continue Tom Cruise's solid streak one more movie with the very entertaining "Edge of Tomorrow" opening this week. The funniest thing is Tom is essentially playing the opposite of his usual macho self and it still works. We're used to the take-charge man-of-action characters out of him, not the wimp and coward he plays here. Because of that, there's a certain unexpected humor coming out of "Edge of Tomorrow" that boosts its doom-and-gloom alien invasion setup.
Read MoreOnce one awards season ends, another one begins! The winners from last night's 86th Academy Awards can bask in the glow of immortality for a while. Meanwhile, business in Hollywood will quickly shift and move on to the 87th Academy Awards that will happen in February or March of 2015. Here are 15 films to watch for the 2015 Oscars.
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