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My Predictions For The 2024 Academy Awards

The 97th Academy Awards will be taking place on Sunday, March 2nd, as it was originally set. With the wildfires that happened in the Los Angeles area at the beginning of January, it was decided to scale the show back a bit. The information about how scaled back the show will be is not complete. One thing that has been made public is that there will not be performances of the nominated songs.…

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Movie Review: The Wild Robot

This year is one Oscar year where predicting the Best Animated Feature winner will be difficult. One of the favorites is The Wild Robot. Does it have what it takes to win? The film begins in a remote forest land on an uninhabited island unblemished by human intervention. The coast soon becomes an unintentional wash-up ground for Universal Dynamic’s ROZZUM robots coming from a capsized ship. Only…

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Oscars 2024 Short Films Review: Documentary

You’re not done with watching the short films until you’ve seen the documentaries. Many of this year’s mix of nominees are of dark subject matter and are bound to spark discussion. There are two lighter documentaries based on the theme of music. Anyways, here are my thoughts on the nominees for Best Documentary Short Film: Death By Numbers (dir. Kim A. Snyder) -The film focuses on Samantha…

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Oscars 2024 Short Films Review: Animation

Normally each year when they show the reel of the nominated films for Best Animated Short Film, there’s normally enough time in the reel to include one or two films that made the shortlist. This year’s crop of nominees are so long, their combined time length is enough to make for the whole reel! Makes sense. Each film does tell an awful lot in their time. It may be humorous or it may be serious.…

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Oscars 2024 Short Films Review: Live-Action

With the Oscar nominations come the annual showing of the nominated short films. Once again, I had the luck of seeing the short films nominated for this year’s Academy Awards. Only one is an American-made film. The rest are from multiple countries. Here’s my review of the films nominated for Best Live-Action Short Film for 2024: A Lien (dirs. Davit Cutler-Kreutz and Sam Cutler-Kreutz) – The…

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Oscars 2024 Best Picture Reviews: Part Five

All this writing does get tiring after awhile. Despite it, I have no problem blogging my thoughts on the Best Picture nominees. So here’s my fifth and last blog on the nominees: The Substance If you were to have a debate on the one genre of film that the Oscars seems to neglect the most, I’ll bet horror will come out on top. Only seven horror films have been good enough to get nominated for…

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Oscars 2024 Best Picture Reviews: Part Four

The thing about the Oscars is that each year, there are Best Picture nominees for films of subject matter that most people would normally not want to see. In some cases, films of unwatchable subject matter end up Best Picture nominees. A lot of these unwatchable things are based on people or events that actually happened, like these two films. For these next two films, I wouldn’t say they’re…

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Oscars 2024 Best Picture Reviews: Part Three

At first I intended for my Best Picture blogs to be three in total. When it became clear how much writing I did for the first two films, I decided dividing them into blogs of two reviews each is more worth it.  So in the meantime, here’s the third of my five Best Picture review blogs: Dune: Part Two The reboot of the Dune series has been so far the biggest movie action of the 2020’s. The…

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Oscars 2024 Best Pictures Reviews: Part Two

It does seem awkward for me to do five blogs of Best Picture contenders. It’s all about my writing. Last year my writing was so over the top, I had to post individual reviews instead of all ten within three blogs. This time as I was writing, I felt doing blogs consisting of two reviews each is a nice steady dose of my writing. Hope you like them. Now on with my next two reviews: A Complete…

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Oscars 2024 Best Picture Reviews: Part One

Ten is not a set number for the maximum number of Best Pictures nominees. Nevertheless it’s still nice to have ten as the total of nominees. This year, there are a wide variety of films nominated from science fiction to two musicals to a musicography to a dark comedy to a horror movie to many types of dramas. Here  are my first two reviews of the Best Pictures nominees: Anora This is quite the…

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My Predictions For The 2024 Academy Award Nominations

It’s finally coming tomorrow, but it would be wrong to be impatient for them. The Oscar nominations were originally planned to be announced on Friday, January 17th, but the wildfires in the various areas of Los Angeles changed everything. At first, the AMPAS Academy changed the date to Sunday January 19th and then to Thursday January 23rd. That’s the thing. It is a troubling time but the show…

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VIFF 2024 Ends On A Good Note

I know that VIFF ended over two months ago, but I lacked the drive to write for a long time. Since we’ve passed Christmas, I figured it’s enough wasting time and to get out the wrap-up blog. Last year, the Vancouver International Film Festival ended the Sunday before Canadian Thanksgiving. This year, they end on Sunday October 6th: a week before Canadian Thanksgiving. Still, it was an excellent…

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VIFF 2024 Review: The End

I find it quite fitting that the last film of VIFF I saw was titled The End. It’s also interesting that there would be an attempt to create a musical on a subject one would not normally create a musical about. The musical begins in what appears to be a home of a wealthy family. The son is happy with the diorama of America he has. The father and mother consider it the idea life or the dream life.…

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VIFF 2024 Review: Frewaka

Clare Monnelly plays a student nurse who senses something troubling and beyond her control in her patient’s house in Frewaka. It’s very rare to see a film in the Gaelic language at the VIFF. Frewaka, from the Altered States series, is that film and a lot more. The film begins in 1973. There’s a wedding in a local village. The wedding is crashed by village locals in traditional fashion wearing…

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VIFF 2024 Review: Marlina The Murderer In Four Acts (Marlina si pembunuh dalam empat babak)

Marlina: The Murderer In Four Acts is a thought-provoking drama about Marlina (played by Marsha Timothy, right) and her friend Novi (played by Dea Panendra, left) deal with the mysogyny around them. Not every film at the Vancouver Film Festival is a film from 2024 or 2023. Marlina: The Murdered In Four Acts is an Indonesian film made in 2017. It was one of four films in the Leading Lights…

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VIFF 2024 Review: The Piano Lesson

Samuel L. Jackson (left) and Ray Fisher (right) are among those that debate the heirloom status of a piano in The Piano Lesson. You feel that? That’s your family. That’s your blood. Every year, the VIFF features films that are bound to spark a lot of Oscar buzz. One that I saw is The Piano Lesson. The story and acting are bound to stimulate a lot of buzz this Oscar season. The film begins…

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VIFF 2024 Review: Flow (Straume)

A small dark grey cat (far right) tries to lead animals to shelter after a massive tidal wave in the animated film Flow. Is it possible to like an animated film with absolutely no human dialogue? The Latvian film Flow attempts to do just that. For the sake of this film, I will give the animal characters names related to their species. For example, I will refer to the cat as Cat, the main dog in…