My Annual Last-Minute Predictions: The 90th Academy Awards

BEST PICTURE
The Nominees

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
(ROMANCE/DRAMA) 
Produced by Peter Spears, Luca Guadagnino, Emilie Georges, and Marco Morabito 
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Screenplay by James Ivory
Based on the novel by Andre Aciman
Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esthel Garrel, Victoire Du Bois, Vanda Capriolo, Antonio Rimoldi
Rated R for sexual content, nudity and some language.
132 minutes
I haven't seen this movie.

DARKEST HOUR 
(DRAMA) 
Produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce, Anthony McCarten, and Douglas Urbanski 
Directed by Joe Wright
Screenplay by Anthony McCarten
Starring: Gary Oldman, Kristen Scott Thomas, Lily James, Ben Mendelsohn, Stephen Dillane, Ronald Pickup, Nicholas Jones, Samuel West, David Schofield, Richard Lumsden
Rated PG-13 for some thematic material.
125 minutes
I haven't seen this movie.

DUNKIRK
(WAR/THRILLER) 
Produced by Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan 
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Screenplay by Christopher Nolan
Starring: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurnin Barnard, James D'Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy
Rated PG-13 for intense war experience and some language.
116 minutes
One of my favorite movies of last year, DUNKIRK is director Christopher Nolan's best since INCEPTION, bringing an experimental edge to a $100 million WWII film.  Essentially jumping to the third act of the story and diving into the situation of Allied soldiers cornered by German forces on the beaches of Dunkirk while civilian boats race against time to cross the English Channel and English planes overhead fight the German planes attacking the soldiers on the beach, it's an experiential thriller where dialogue is mostly inconsequential, sounds are aggressive and startling, and survival to fight another day is the victory.

GET OUT
(HORROR-THRILLER) 
Produced by Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Edward H. Hamm Jr., and Jordan Peele 
Directed by Jordan Peele
Screenplay by Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, Lil Rey Howery, Erika Alexander, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel
Rated R for violence, bloody images, and language including sexual references.
104 minutes
Made on a minimalist budget, GET OUT is an uncommonly well-manicured horror-thriller that riffs on THE STEPFORD WIVES formula, swapping out gender for race, while finding its own ways to surprise and building clever twists.  The performances are all top-notch, and while I'm not sure how particularly "revolutionary" or "brilliant" it is (at least in terms of ideas, but its acclaim and $255 million box office against a $5 million budget as a racially charged horror movie could be considered revolutionary in terms of the industry), it's directed with precision.

LADY BIRD
(COMEDY-DRAMA) 
Produced by Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, and Evelyn O'Neill 
Directed by Greta Gerwig
Screenplay by Greta Gerwig
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Lois Smith, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Odeya Rush, Jorden Rodrigues, Marielle Scott
Rated R for language, sexual content, brief graphic nudity and teen partying.
94 minutes
Another one of my favorite movies from last year, a lot of movies in 2017 nobly strove to impart ideas about empathy, but most were not as successful as LADY BIRD, Greta Gerwig's humanistic comedy-drama about coming of age in the early 2000s and a caring but fraught mother-daughter relationship.  Anchored by excellent lead performances, it carefully and realistically carves out multiple major and minor characters, and their relationships, with sympathy and humor.

PHANTOM THREAD
(DRAMA) 
Produced by JoAnne Sellar, Paul Thomas Anderson, Megan Ellison, and Daniel Lupi 
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville, Camilla Rutherford, Gina McKee, Brian Gleeson, Harriet Samson Harris, Lujza Richter, Julia Davis, Nicholas Mander
Rated R for language.
130 minutes
PHANTOM THREAD is kind of fun, but it's weird that Oscar noticed it for six nominations including Best Picture and Best Director.  It's not that it's a bad thing, but it's unusual.  Looking from the outside, it seems like a pretty standard Oscar drama with a period setting, lots of beautiful costumes, sharp and witty dialogue and Daniel Day-Lewis himself in what's reportedly his final performance.  From the inside, without spoiling anything, it's more like PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE than THERE WILL BE BLOOD within Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography, about absurdly obsessive artists, how they try to dominate their environments and the people around them, the people who love artists and support them, and in particular, a very weird, bitingly funny romance.

THE POST
(DRAMA)
Produced by Amy Pascal, Steven Spielberg, and Kristie Macosko Krieger  
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Screenplay by Liz Hannah & Josh Singer
Starring: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, David Cross, Zach Woods
Rated PG-13 for language and brief war violence.
116 minutes
Not too subtly pitching itself as a movie for our times and drawing from ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN but with a juicier Spielberg flavor (for better or worse), THE POST is more performance-driven than most of Steven Spielberg's films, but his seemingly effortless direction is what milks the tension and brings the weight to the decisions being made in the film.

THE SHAPE OF WATER
(FANTASY/ROMANCE) 
Produced by Guillermo del Toro and J. Miles Dale 
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor
Story by Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Doug Jones, David Hewlett, Nick Searcy, Stewart Arnott, Nigel Bennett, Lauren Lee Smith, Martin Roach, Morgan Kelly
Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and language.
123 minutes
I've been a big fan of Guillermo del Toro since HELLBOY in 2004, particularly the emotionality and weirdness of his films, but before SHAPE OF WATER, his previous two films, while enjoyable, were a little sterile (CRIMSON PEAK has grown on me, but PACIFIC RIM still feels lacking).  SHAPE OF WATER is a step up from those two and is unmistakably a del Toro work of art, boldly weird, romantic, funny, shockingly violent, and visually beautiful.  It's performances, Sally Hawkins and Michael Shannon, in particular, are excellent.  In many ways, it feels closely related to del Toro's last Oscar darling, PAN'S LABYRINTH.  However, I'm not positive I would say it's one of his best films overall.  Maybe with time, its greatness will become more apparent, but right now, it feels more 'really good' than 'great.'

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
(DRAMA) 
Produced by Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, and Martin McDonagh 
Directed by Martin McDonagh
Screenplay by Martin McDonagh
Starring: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Hedges, Kerry Condon, Abbie Cornish, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Zeljko Ivanek, Clarke Peters
Rated R for violence, language throughout, and some sexual references.
115 minutes
There are a lot of things to like and admire about THREE BILLBOARDS, a multi-faceted story of anger, justified or not, and how it consumes people, how it can burn and destroy but never heal.  It's also about how that anger can be used to attack people, launching an offensive out of anger on the internet, like a billboard, perhaps for things that are true, but without the full picture of those people.  It's a lot of what I've personally been feeling over the past year, and for that, it's a movie that I would really like to like.  In the execution of that all, however, it fails, veering wildly between tones and failing to present even an internal logic to its own depiction of a small American town, where increasingly extreme acts of violence occur as chapters in a sequence without repercussions.  It's a weird, harsh, goofy film that sputters around in extreme fits and starts.

WHAT WILL WIN: 
SHAPE OF WATER
This is one of the few years without even a couple of frontrunners in the Best Picture category.  It's essentially an open game.  Many prognosticators are predicting a win for THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, largely based on its win of the Best Ensemble award from the Screen Actors Guild (the closest thing SAG has to a Best Picture, and SAG makes up the largest proportion of the Academy voters), as well as winning Best Picture at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (usually a good indicator a movie will be nominated at the Oscars for Best Picture as this already has, but not necessarily indicative of a win).  While, overall, THREE BILLBOARDS is favored by a possible majority or plurality of Oscar voters, the award for Best Picture is voted for on a preferential ballot (number one pick, number two pick, and so on, with the average highest-voted nominee wins), and that movie also has many detractors who will put it very low on the ballot, ultimately cancelling it out and giving the award to a more neutral option.  Furthermore, it's pretty rare for a movie to win Best Picture without at least having been nominated for both Best Director and Best Film Editing as well, and THREE BILLBOARDS missed the Best Director nomination (the last movie to win Best Picture without a Best Director nomination was ARGO five years ago, and prior to that, 23 years before was DRIVING MISS DAISY).  SHAPE OF WATER has managed to snatch up the Producers Guild Award and the Directors Guild Award, and has the most nominations overall by far with 13 (the next runner-up being DUNKIRK with 8), indicating a clear admiration by the Academy overall.

WHAT SHOULD WIN: 
DUNKIRK or LADY BIRD.  Neither are particularly outrageous, but they're both exceptional, regardless.  Other than THREE BILLBOARDS, however, there's really nothing that I think clearly doesn't deserve to win out of this lot.

BEST DIRECTOR 

• Christopher Nolan for DUNKIRK
• Jordan Peele for GET OUT
• Greta Gerwig for LADY BIRD
• Paul Thomas Anderson for PHANTOM THREAD
• Guillermo del Toro for THE SHAPE OF WATER

WHO WILL WIN: 
Guillermo del Toro for THE SHAPE OF WATER.  Del Toro has been a rising favorite of the film industry for years now, and THE SHAPE OF WATER is their first chance to big chance to legitimately honor him in a while.  What's more, del Toro already won the Director's Guild Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Feature Film, and the last time the DGA winner didn't win the Oscar was Ben Affleck for ARGO 5 years ago (when he wasn't nominated for the Oscar), and before that was Rob Marshall for CHICAGO ten years earlier.  It's one of the most reliable predictors of any Academy Award category.
WHO SHOULD WIN: 
I really like Greta Gerwig for her directorial debut on LADY BIRD or Christopher Nolan for DUNKIRK, but I'd be just as happy to see del Toro finally get his due, plus he's just so damn likable.

BEST ACTOR

• Timothee Chalamet for CALL ME BY YOUR NAME 
• Daniel Day-Lewis for PHANTOM THREAD 
• Daniel Kaluuya for GET OUT 
• Gary Oldman for THE DARKEST HOUR 
• Denzel Washington for ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ.

WHO WILL WIN:   
Gary Oldman for THE DARKEST HOUR.  This is another category with an already existing strong predictor in the form of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.  Last year, Denzel Washington won the SAG Award for FENCES, but Casey Affleck won the Oscar.  Before that, the last time the SAG Awards differed from the Oscars for Best Actor was for the 2003 film PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, when Johnny Depp won the award (and personally, I believe they got it right that time).  I haven't seen THE DARKEST HOUR, but rendered unrecognizable beneath makeup as a widely-recognized historical figure, it's a typical choice for the Oscars, and Oldman's got a lot of acclaimed performances under his belt that failed to garner a win.  This will be a career win as much or more than a win for a particular performance.
WHO SHOULD WIN: I've actually only seen two of the nominees in this category, Daniel Kaluuya for GET OUT and Daniel Day-Lewis for PHANTOM THREAD, and both were great.

BEST ACTRESS    

• Sally Hawkins for THE SHAPE OF WATER 
• Frances McDormand for THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI 
• Margot Robbie for I, TONYA 
• Saoirse Ronan for LADY BIRD 
• Meryl Streep for THE POST

WHO WILL WIN: 
Frances McDormand for THREE BILLBOARDS.  She's been the favorite since the movie came out last fall, and has already won both the Golden Globe and the SAG Award.  It would be her second Best Actress Oscar, having previously won for FARGO.
WHO SHOULD WIN: 
Sally Hawkins for THE SHAPE OF WATER, with whom much of that movie's heart lies and is infectiously sweet, charming and sensual, all unconventionally.  Saoirse Ronan for LADY BIRD is also be deserving.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR 

• Willem Dafoe for THE FLORIDA PROJECT
• Woody Harrelson for THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI 
• Richard Jenkins for THE SHAPE OF WATER
• Christopher Plummer for ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD
• Sam Rockwell for THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

WHO WILL WIN:
Sam Rockwell for THREE BILLBOARDS.  The Screen Actors Guild portion of the Academy loves the actors in that movie, and between Harrelson and Rockwell, Rockwell was the one they awarded a Best Supporting Actor at the SAG Awards.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
I don't really have an opinion on this one.  Richard Jenkins was good as usual in THE SHAPE OF WATER, but it's not exactly something I haven't seen him play before, and while I don't have any particular problems with the THREE BILLBOARDS performances, they're all part of the same messy movie.  I haven't seen ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD or THE FLORIDA PROJECT.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS 

• Mary J. Blige for MUDBOUND
• Allison Janney for I, TONYA 
• Lesley Manville for PHANTOM THREAD 
• Laurie Metcalf for LADY BIRD
• Octavia Spencer for THE SHAPE OF WATER

WHO WILL WIN:
Allison Janney for I, TONYA.
WHO SHOULD WIN: 
Laurie Metcalf for LADY BIRD.  I'd love to see Metcalf make the surprise win here, but Allison Janney seems like the safe bet, and if we're not playing it safe while making Oscar predictions, then what are we doing really?  Janney's performance as the title character's mom is a caricature and not all that different from characters she's played before outside of the distinctive hair and makeup, and frankly, it's my least favorite of the bunch (although I haven't seen MUDBOUND).  Metcalf's performance, also as the title character's mother in LADY BIRD, is more nuanced and thoughtful, without the gimmicks to back it up.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

• THE BIG SICK
• GET OUT
• LADY BIRD
• THE SHAPE OF WATER
• THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

WHO WILL WIN:
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI.  The screenplay categories are where weirder arthouse movies tend to get their due, which might indicate THE SHAPE OF WATER, however, I'm predicting that wins Best Picture based on the preferential ballot, but THREE BILLBOARDS will succeed in Best Screenplay.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
Again, no particularly strong feelings here.  Best Screenplay is the one category in which I feel I'm actually on board with a win for THREE BILLBOARDS, because, in spite of all it's flaws that are still in the writing, I admire its conceit.  On the other hand, LADY BIRD and THE BIG SICK, while neither are particularly outside the box, are both very fine versions of a kind of film.  THE SHAPE OF WATER exists mostly outside the page in its visual form, and GET OUT's screenplay is one of it's less remarkable aspects.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY 

• CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
• THE DISASTER ARTIST
• LOGAN
• MOLLY'S GAME
• MUDBOUND

WHO WILL WIN:
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME.  Within this eclectic bunch, it's the nominee with the most Oscar love behind it overall and comes with the recognizable name of James Ivory, whose illustrious career has already included a number of acclaimed period dramas as a director.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
No opinion here.  The only one of the nominees I've even seen was LOGAN, and it's cool that it was nominated, but come on.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM 

• THE BOSS BABY
• THE BREADWINNER
• COCO
• FERDINAND
• LOVING VINCENT

WHO WILL WIN:
COCO.  The Oscars like to nominate two or three independent, usually hand-crafted-style animated foreign features each year to draw attention to them, but they almost always go with a mainstream pick, and neither THE BOSS BABY or FERDINAND seem to have a lot of support.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
COCO, I guess.  It's not on the same level as Pixar's best movies, but it's quite lower-tier Pixar either.  One point I'd like to make though is that while some publications have been calling out THE BOSS BABY as a particularly unlikely Oscar nominee, it's actually not so bad.  It's not exactly a hidden gem, but it's fine and sort of funny.  FERDINAND seems like the biggest turd of this bunch.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

• A FANTASTIC WOMAN  (Chile) 
• THE INSULT  (Lebanon) 
• LOVELESS  (Russia) 
• ON BODY AND SOUL  (Hungary) 
• THE SQUARE  (Sweden)

WHO WILL WIN:
THE SQUARE.  I know almost nothing about any of these nominees.  I'm going with THE SQUARE because it won the 2017 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which at least seems like something to go on.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

• ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL
• FACES PLACES
• ICARUS
• LAST MEN IN ALEPPO
• STRONG ISLAND

WHO WILL WIN:
FACES PLACES.  I know almost nothing about these nominess, but FACES PLACES won the Peoples Choice Award for Best Documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival and has some artistic cred behind it with directors Agnes Varda and JR.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT

• EDITH+EDDIE
• HEAVEN IS A TRAFFIC JAM ON THE 405
• HEROIN(E)
• KNIFE SKILLS
• TRAFFIC STOP

WHO WILL WIN:
HEROIN(E).  I don't know anything about these nominees except the subject matter, and odds are, their not particularly at the forefront of the Oscar voters minds either.  Usually, they go with the socially/politically relevant pick, but if possible, an upper rather than a downer.  HEAVEN IS A TRAFFIC JAM ON THE 405 and KNIFE SKILLS sound a little too light, while TRAFFIC STOP and EDITH+EDDIE may be too heavy.  HEROIN(E), dealing with the heroin epidemic is relevant but also deals with recovery, which I think might give it the leg up.

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

• DEKALB ELEMENTARY
• THE ELEVEN O'CLOCK
• MY NEPHEW EMMETT
• THE SILENT CHILD
• WATU WOTE/ALL OF US

WHO WILL WIN:
DEKALB ELEMENTARY.  I have no idea about any of these.  Apparently DEKALB ELEMENTARY has to do with a would-be school shooter encountering a "compassionate employee," which seems hyper-relevant, so I'm going to guess that.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

• DEAR BASKETBALL
• GARDEN PARTY
• LOU
• NEGATIVE SPACE
• REVOLTING RHYMES

WHO WILL WIN:
LOU.  It's the only one in the category that I've seen, and I didn't think it was anything special, but what the hell else am I going to guess?


BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

• DUNKIRK, composed by Hans Zimmer
• PHANTOM THREAD, composed by Johnny Greenwood
• THE SHAPE OF WATER, composed by Alexandre Desplat
• STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, composed by John Williams
• THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, composed by Carter Burwell

WHO WILL WIN:
THE SHAPE OF WATER.  Hans Zimmer's DUNKIRK score created a lot of talk for its integral tension-raising score and experimental instrumentation, but it's the melodically showier Alexandre Desplat for THE SHAPE OF WATER that's most likely to catch the voters' attentions.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
While I'd most often go for the more melodic score, myself, Zimmer's DUNKIRK composition is interesting enough and complimentary enough to stand out above the crowd, and THE SHAPE OF WATER score is a bit too whimsical and unemotional.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

• "Mighty River" from MUDBOUND
• "Mystery of Love" from CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
• "Remember Me" from COCO
• "Stand Up for Something" from MARSHALL
• "This Is Me" from THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

WHO WILL WIN:
"This Is Me" from THE GREATEST SHOWMAN.  THE GREATEST SHOWMAN is a painfully cheap "feel-good" manufactured family musical shamelessly purporting to be based on true story and a celebration of being different while taking a massive shit on everything to do with the true story and everything to do with being different, but my cynical side tells me its single nomination for a show-stopping, glitzy faux-"individuality" number seems to be where it could get noticed.  It's such a piece of shit.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
There's nothing that jumps out as particularly great, but "Remember Me" is an alright sentimental number from the writers of "Let It Go".  It's not amazing, but it's good.

BEST SOUND EDITING

• BABY DRIVER
• BLADE RUNNER 2049
• DUNKIRK
• THE SHAPE OF WATER
• STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

WHO WILL WIN:
BABY DRIVER.  Sound Editing, as opposed to Sound Mixing, refers to the sounds recorded outside of filming, that is, sounds designed in isolation like clapping coconuts together in a recording studio to sound like horse hooves.  BABY DRIVER is a very sound-driven movie with a large part of what makes it work being the manipulation of sound.  Then again, given that the nominees for Sound Editing and Sound Mixing are the same, it's possible the voters aren't placing a lot of difference between the categories.
WHO SHOULD WIN: 
BABY DRIVER seems as good as any.

BEST SOUND MIXING

• BABY DRIVER
• BLADE RUNNER 2049
• DUNKIRK
• THE SHAPE OF WATER
• STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

WHO WILL WIN:
DUNKIRK.  It might not make sense to split up Sound Mixing and Sound Editing, especially when the nominee lineup is the same, but assuming they're reading these categories differently, I think they'd go with DUNKIRK.  Recording over loud IMAX cameras, at the ocean with lots of loud war machinery, guns, etc. they made it work, and war movies are stalwarts of the sound categories.  Then again, the occasional inscrutability of the dialogue while I think it's cool, might be lost on some people.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
DUNKIRK.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

• BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
• BLADE RUNNER 2049
• DARKEST HOUR
• DUNKIRK
• THE SHAPE OF WATER

WHO WILL WIN:
THE SHAPE OF WATER.  Production Design, being the overall sets, set decorations and props, tends to favor period settings and big style, and THE SHAPE OF WATER fits both those bills along with already being a Oscar favorite this year.  It would be the second del Toro film to win in this category after PAN'S LABYRINTH 11 years ago.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
Either THE SHAPE OF WATER or BLADE RUNNER 2049 would be deserving, although maybe BLADE RUNNER 2049 is the bolder of the two.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY 

• BLADE RUNNER 2049
• DARKEST HOUR
• DUNKIRK
• MUDBOUND
• THE SHAPE OF WATER

WHO WILL WIN:
BLADE RUNNER 2049.  Even the joke about how cinematographer Roger Deakins always gets nominated and never wins has gotten old (this his is 14th nomination), but there's no other apparent frontrunner this year, and BLADE RUNNER 2049 is one some of his showier work, so this could very well be his year.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
BLADE RUNNER 2049.  It's too damn long, but it's sure beautiful to look at.

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING 

• DARKEST HOUR
• VICTORIA & ABDUL
• WONDER

WHO WILL WIN:
DARKEST HOUR.  This category has been on life support for the last few years, especially with a lot of what used to be done with makeup now being done in the computer with motion-capture CGI.  Weirdly though, with a memorable makeup creation like the Amphibian Man in THE SHAPE OF WATER this year, that one failed to get nominated.  
WHO SHOULD WIN:
I don't really care.  The only one of the three nominees I saw was WONDER, and nothing about that was special.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

• BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
• DARKEST HOUR
• PHANTOM THREAD
• THE SHAPE OF WATER
• VICTORIA & ABDUL

WHO WILL WIN:
PHANTOM THREAD.  It's a movie about making beautiful period fashion, so it's hard to see the Academy passing that up.  BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is flashier, but it may have gilded the lily too much.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
I don't have any strong feelings here.  I wouldn't want BEAUTY AND THE BEAST to win because it takes concepts that are great in their simplicity and overdesigns everything.  As usual, the nominees are all period setting films, so BABY DRIVER wasn't nominated, but that had some pretty good, eclectic and evocative costuming.

BEST FILM EDITING

• BABY DRIVER
• DUNKIRK
• I, TONYA
• THE SHAPE OF WATER
• THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

WHO WILL WIN:
DUNKIRK.  For the last few years, this category has been going to the Best Picture category's dark horse candidate, and I'm thinking that's DUNKIRK this year, which also interweaves and times three separate threads together in a building tension that's impressive and fresh.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
BABY DRIVER's combination of sound, music and editing is a lot of fun, but I lean towards DUNKIRK as a more impressive feat.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

• BLADE RUNNER 2049
• GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2
• KONG: SKULL ISLAND
• STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI
• WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES

WHO WILL WIN:
BLADE RUNNER 2049.  The BLADE RUNNER 2049 effects and the way they're used are tie into the stunning visual style of that movie, plus it's one category where they can easily recognize the ambitious box office failure.
WHO SHOULD WIN:
Somehow, none of the Andy Serkis-starring Planet of the Apes series have managed to get a win for Best Visual Effects (RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES didn't have the budget to render its effects to their full potential, but it was criminal for DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES to lose out to INTERSTELLAR), and WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES visual effects are a flawless example of performance-capture potential.

Review: PETER RABBIT

PETER RABBIT 
(FAMILY/COMEDY) 
★★★
Directed by Will Gluck
Screenplay by Rob Lieber and Will Gluck
Screen Story by Rob Lieber and Will Gluck
Based on the characters and tales of "Peter Rabbit" by Beatrix Potter
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Rose Byrne, Sam Neill, Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Featuring the Voices of: James Corden, Margot Robbie, Daisy Ridley, Elizabeth Debicki, Matt Lucas, Sia, Ewen Leslie
Rated PG for some rude humor and action.
93 minutes
Verdict: Insane, irreverent as hell, and yes, occasionally obnoxious, Will Gluck's version of Peter Rabbit is more Tex Avery than Beatrix Potter, but also painfully funny in a "burn it all down" sort of way. 

An adaptation of some of the classiest of classic children's literature rendered in a CGI-heavy live action hybrid produced by Sony Pictures Animation with an irreverent attitude and packed to the gills with over-the-top slapstick action and ribald-for-PG humor, the new family comedy PETER RABBIT is practically presenting itself loudly and proudly as a target for critics.  In contrast to the recently critically acclaimed adaptation of another classic British children's character in PADDINGTON 2, a charming, classy and utterly good-natured story about an implacably polite little bear plucked from the storybooks, PETER RABBIT is crass, arguably mean-spirited and thoroughly chaotic, with a character who can easily enough be described as an narcissistic asshole while essentially thumbing its nose at its source material.  I like both, and frankly, it would be tough to argue that PADDINGTON 2 isn't the superior example of filmmaking, but you've got to admire the hutzpah of a movie like PETER RABBIT.  Exposed buttcracks are threatened with carrots.  Characters are violently electrocuted by voltage that sends them flying through the air.  Lit sticks of dynamite are hurled haphazardly at bunnies.  Sam Neill drinks dirty water from a bird bath.  Domhnall Gleeson nearly drinks clean water from a toilet bowl with a straw!  People die!  Dead bodies are jabbed in the eyeball!  What more do you want?!

Will Gluck, whose resume includes surprisingly good raunchy comedies like EASY A and FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, as well as the lackluster updated family musical ANNIE from 2014, directs and co-wrote the screenplay with ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY scribe Rob Lieberman, and seemingly complacent to the fact that a live-action/CGI Sony production must lean toward the A-list celebrity voice casting and low brow humor of family movie dreck in the post-SHREK style, they've decided to go all in and take that to an all new level that's shockingly brazen and even a bit refreshing.  Just when you think they've gone as far as they could possibly take it, they go farther.  I'm not saying it's some sort of surprise masterpiece, and there are moments scattered throughout that feel like the kind of crappy family movie that Sony Pictures Animation has more often been responsible for in the past, but it's like a comedy that throws so many jokes at you that if something is groan-worthy one second, something else hits the after a couple more seconds, so you rarely have to dwell on the crap.

The titular Peter Rabbit in this version, a mostly photorealistic CGI creation from the tech wizards at Animal Logic (HAPPY FEET, THE LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE and THE LEGO MOVIE, among others), is voiced by James Corden, whose performance is the iffiest part of this whole affair and the source of most of those eye-rolling obnoxious moments.  Peter, who wears his deceased father's blue jacket, has a mischievous streak a mile wide and enjoys raiding the cantankerous farmer Mr. McGregor's (Sam Neill) garden on a regular basis, partly for the fruits and vegetables, partly for the glory, and partly for the simple pleasure of tormenting the farmer who caught and killed his father and ate him in a pie.  On these escapades, Peter typically enlists the reluctant assistance of his cousin Benjamin (voiced by Matt Lucas) and his bickering triplet sisters Flopsy (voiced by Margot Robbie, who also narrates), Mopsy (voiced by Elizabeth Debicki) and Cottontail (voiced by Daisy Ridley, best known as Rey from the Star Wars franchise).  McGregor would love to catch Peter and put him in a pie as well, but the rabbits are defended by his benevolent, animal-loving neighbor Bea (Rose Byrne).  One day, when McGregor keels over from a heart attack, Peter tells all the animals that he killed the old farmer and they take over the house, but the triumph is short-lived, when the farm is inherited by the younger McGregor, Thomas (Domhnall Gleeson), who hopes to sell the estate and use the money to open a toy shop, but first, Thomas decides to get rid of the animals, quickly devolving into a manic feud with Peter and his family, escalated further when Thomas develops a bit of a relationship with Bea, much to Peter's jealousy.  That's right: there is a romantic triangle between a human woman, human man and a rabbit.

The "realistically" rendered rabbits are weirdly eye-catching, especially when they make exaggerated reaction faces that should not be on rabbits, and as irritating as Corden's smug delivery can be at times, all three of Peter's sisters are consistently funny.  The comedy is often lowbrow, but rarely lazy, and often falls into the realm of Tex Avery-style antics, with hints of fourth wall-breaking, not-so-subtle references to drug use and sex, not to mention lots of dynamite and explosive destruction, and there's a good few nut shots as well.  Yes, it's pretty contrived the way that Domnhall Gleeson's character finds himself in a situation where he's guarding his crotch with his hands and is being forced to raise his hands in the air, but as he does so reluctantly with the knowledge which the audience holds as well that several bunnies stand at the ready to pummel his nuts with berries and other produce, only the most ardent curmudgeon could stifle even a snicker.  If a movie's aim is to entertain children, which is an easy enough task for most movies with talking animals, PETER RABBIT succeeds in this, but if the aim is to be funny, then PETER RABBIT succeeds at that too, and it's all too willing to sacrifice any respectability to do so.  If you thought from the previews that it looked stupid, congratulations, you're right, it is very stupid.  But I also laughed my ass off, so maybe I should be embarrassed.

                                                                                                                                                                           Images via Sony

Double Feature Review: JUMANJI and THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE 
(ADVENTURE/COMEDY) 
★★
Directed by Jake Kasdan
Screenplay by Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers and Scott Rosenberg & Jeff Pinkner
Screen Story by Chris McKenna
Based on Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg and the 1995 screen story/screenplay by Greg Taylor
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Rhys Darby, Bobby Cannavale, Nick Jonas, Alex Wolff, Ser'Darius Blain, Madison Iseman, Morgan Turner, Marc Evan Jackson, Missi Pyle
Rated PG-13 for adventure action, suggestive content and some language.
119 minutes 
Verdict: Although a marginal improvement on the 1995 original, it has few inspired aspects outside of Jack Black's deft comic performance as a teenage girl.
As great an actor as Robin Williams was himself, many of the movies he starred in were, well, frankly, crap.  The 1995 blockbuster JUMANJI, for example, was an inexplicably mean-spirited "family" thriller with an abundance of bad CGI effects based on a strange and slightly creepy picture book by Chris Van Allsburg about a menacing board game that brings the perils of a fictional jungle to very real life.  It's a good concept, but looking honestly at the original movie, there's a lot to improve upon.  So, crass though it was for Sony to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Williams's death with the announcement of a Jumanji reboot/remake fast-tracked for production, of all the Williams movies to revisit, it was one of the more promising options.  This time, rather than centering the adventure around a main star, JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE brings an ensemble and updates the concept (already done as a board game by the original film and the 2005 movie ZATHURA) to a video game.  Connected to the 1995 movie more by a sense of obligation than any by anything substantial or worthwhile, a prologue sums up how the "Jumanji" board game became a video game of a similar breed, then moves to the present day, where the primitive game console is discovered in a high school basement by four students in detention.  Switching on the game and nonchalantly choosing their avatars from the game's roster, the kids are magically transported directly into the world of the game and transformed into physical manifestations of the characters they chose only moments ago.  Geeky social outcast Spencer (Alex Wolff) becomes the beefy and ultra-capable explorer Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), athletic high school football prodigy Fridge (Ser'Darius Blain) becomes the short-statured zoologist Franklin "Mouse" Finbar, social media-addicted popular girl Bethany (Madison Oberon) becomes the overweight cartographer Sheldon "Shelly" Oberon (Jack Black), and awkward weird girl Martha (Morgan Turner) becomes the sexy martial artist Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan).  Exposition is efficiently dealt out by a non-player character and the quartet are set out on a perilous jounrey through a fantastical jungle to return a mystical jewel to its rightful place in order to return to the real world, while the sinister explorer Russell Van Pelt (Bobby Cannavale) and his forces pursue them.
Perhaps it's appropriate, given the clear nostalgia angle of the production, that JUMANJI feels rather like a kids adventure movie of the 1990s, with an intrusive syrupy sentimentality and specific challenge for each character to overcome and reach the end with a "wow, I really learned something there" vibe by the end.  The effects, while markedly improved on the very dated CGI of the '95 movie, look cheap by the standards of today, and director Jake Kasdan, best known for middling comedies like BAD TEACHER and ORANGE COUNTY, treats the action as obligatory and misses the opportunity for the fun ROMANCING THE STONE/Indiana Jones-style action the premise promises.  The commitment to the video game concept varies, sometimes laying on thick in the interest of comic gags, other times appearing to pander an audience that would more likely stay at home playing video games than be at the theater, and occasionally, it throws it all away for unnecessary exposition scenes with Cannavale's super generic villain.  Three of the four leads, however, are surprisingly well played, with Johnson convincingly adopting the mannerisms of an awkward teenage boy within all his charismatic action star bulk, and Gillan, similarly giving an impressive physical performance as gawky nonconformist trapped in the skin of a sexy video game commando (the movie makes a brief point of commenting on the illogical and arguably misogynist portrayal of a midriff-baring, booty shorts-wearing jungle adventurer, but come on, movie, you're still doing it, too).  The movie's best jokes by far, however, come from Jack Black's enthusiastic performance as the vapid teenage girl Bethany, who suffers from a number of teen cliches like cell phone addiction, but through Black's softened intonations and fascination with her stout male form is derived more than a few solid laughs.  Hart, who has his enthusiastic fans, is a decent comic performer, but stands apart from his co-stars and sticks to his schtick while never venturing very close to reminding anyone who his character is.
In the end, JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE is a shallow and familiar sort of holiday season release, an okay excuse to bring the family to the movies, but neither an especially funny (or unfunny) comedy or a particularly exciting (or particularly dull) adventure.  It's lukewarm, but Jack Black delivers as a teenage girl.

                                                                                                        JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE Images via Sony

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN 
(MUSICAL/FAMILY) 
★1/2
Directed by Michael Gracey
Screenplay by Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon
Story by Jenny Bicks
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zac Efron, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Austyn Johnson, Cameron Seely, Keala Settle, Sam Humphrey, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eric Anderson, Ellis Rubin, Skylar Dunn
Rated PG for thematic elements including a brawl.
105 minutes
Verdict: Either gobsmackingly innocent or utterly full of crap, this flabbergasting family musical's cannot be saved by its scarce moments of true musical showmanship.
When I read a year ago that Hugh Jackman was to star in an original movie musical about the life of P.T. Barnum, it sounded awesome.  We've been getting a bit more since FROZEN and LA LA LAND, but there's something special about a good and glitzy Hollywood musical, and the original ones are even more unique.  So it's especially disappointing that THE GREATEST SHOWMAN's ambitions are so, well, mediocre, and its sensibilities are so dishonest.  Yes, it's a musical, with original songs, the music and lyrics by LA LA LAND's Pasek and Paul (the music for LA LA LAND's songs, however, was composed by Justin Hurwitz), but in almost every other respect, it has the manner of a low-rent holiday season family film, with a main cast that's far above this sort of material.  This is no CHICAGO or MOULIN ROUGE, and it's certainly no LA LA LAND.  This is more like DOLPHIN TALE, or WE BOUGHT A ZOO, or THE BLIND SIDE, but with pop songs.  It's choice of subject matter is flabbergasting, its production is so-so, and its sentiments are either too innocent to be believed, or deceitful and foul in the worst way.  While the truth behind the story is important, even if it were completely unconnected from any true-life figures (and to be fair, aside from the use of names, it practically is that), its ultra-safe, feel-good depiction of 19th century freak show exhibitions can't help but feel wrong.  Its well-marketed anthem, "This is Me", as performed by Broadway actress Keala Settle, who performs the Barnum Circus's bearded lady, is a eye-rolling proclamation for outsiders from the perspective of true social insiders.  It's a version of the story for well-positioned people who think of themselves as outsiders, and it's erroneous.
Jackman stars as a highly-fictionalized version of Phineas Taylor Barnum, a 19th century New York entrepreneur who opens a museum to make his fortune with the full support of his picture-perfect family, including his wife Charity (Michelle Williams) and two daughters, and assembles a collection of biological oddities like the minuscule Charles Stratton (Sam Humphrey), who Barnum promises a chance for respect and to not be laughed at but still exhibits in a Napoleonesque uniform under the moniker "General Tom Thumb," the bearded woman Lettie Lutz (Settle), and Prince Constantine the tattooed man (Shannon Holtzapffel).  There's also Anne Wheeler (Zendaya) and W.D. Wheeler (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), the black brother and sister trapeze performers, whose race plays a contrived moral role in the story.  Soon all the ignorant types and sourpusses in the city are clamoring to have Barnum's exhibits shut down, as portrayed via a seemingly perpetual mob of dockworkers, the sort of broad portrayal of social ignorance that any viewer can happily apply to whatever faction they see as their antagonist.  Nothing complicated, nothing messy, nothing interesting.  The course of the movie follows Barnum as he pursues greater fame and success, not for anything of greed but to "make people happy" and gain a sense of importance.  Along the way, he recruits the fictional aristocrat Philip Carlyle (Zac Efron) to bring a greater sense of legitimacy to his business, and brings the Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson, from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE- ROGUE NATION) to the United States that finally brings him respect in the artistic community.  However, this is the type of lame children's movie where success inevitably changes Barnum and he forgets that without his freak show (for lack of a better term), he wouldn't have gotten to where he is, and lessons have to be learned and it's all very familiar.
It's not entirely without merit.  There are a few brief moments of entertaining, peppy dance choreography and rhythm, most notably in the prologue number "The Greatest Show" and "The Other Side", in which Barnum struggles to convince Carlyle to join his enterprise inside a bar where stools and counters take part in the back-and-forth between Jackman and Efron, both of whom come with previous musical experience.  Certainly for Efron, though, this feels like a regression into High School Musical territory, including a romance with a black trapeze artist (Zendaya) with racial tensions that would feel tame in a Disney Channel original movie.  For Jackman, I guess he was in REAL STEEL, so he does have those weird spots in his filmography, but what he's doing in this, I don't know.  According to Variety, Jackman also brought in his LOGAN director James Mangold to help pick up the slack from first-time director Michael Gracey (whose background is in visual effects) in re-shoots and post-production, but its unclear without further context what impact Mangold has on the finished film.  Michelle Williams, a very fine actress, is in this as Barnum's wife with very little to do, very much in a "behind every great man is a great woman" sort of role that's easy to forget for long stretches is even there and which Williams's talent is wasted in.
If it's simply full of shit, perhaps its just the sort of tribute the famous huckster Barnum deserves, but even then, it possesses barely a modicum of the glitz and glamour of its modern musical peers.  It's a manufactured confection with all the sugar and none of the flavor.  Perhaps it really is as naive as it appears, but it's tempting to be embarrassed for it before remembering that it's such a hypocritical corporate product.
THE GREATEST SHOWMAN is a movie for people who feel that mayonnaise is more than a bit too spicy.  It's for people with squeaky clean reputations but who are fascinated with how "interesting" they are.  It's for people who still think the early Beatles' hair was too long.  It's childlike without the sense of wonder.

                                                                                                           THE GREATEST SHOWMAN Images via 20 Century Fox

Review: STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI 
(FANTASY/ACTION-ADVENTURE) 
★★
Directed by Rian Johnson
Screenplay by Rian Johnson
Starring: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Domhnall Gleeson, Andy Serkis, Laura Dern, Benicio del Toro, Kelly Marie Tran,  Billie Lourd, Gwendoline Christie, Anthony Daniels, Lupita Nyong'o
Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence.
152 minutes

Verdict: With a minimalist plot needlessly stretched into the longest runtime in the series, with a confusingly cartoony and flippant approach, Rian Johnson's entry in the Star Wars saga is among the weakest, despite some strong ideas and visuals.

This review contains details that may be considered minor spoilers.
 
You could say THE FORCE AWAKENS played things safe, but it should be acknowledged how bold and brash that movie was in its efforts to return the Star Wars franchise into something "safe."  In its execution, THE FORCE AWAKENS is a very fun movie, buoyant in tone, filled with inventive but familiar action, evocative imagery and carried by great new characters like Rey, Finn and BB-8; but in story and substance, THE FORCE AWAKENS is hollow, essentially reprising the original 1977 STAR WARS to an absurd degree (listening to Michael Kaminski's exhaustively researched book, The Secret History of Star Wars, recently, it's remarkable how similar even the THE FORCE AWAKENS's superficial differences from the 1977 are to that script's earlier drafts), and going frustratingly out of its way to return the story to the original trilogy's status quo.  Yes, the Rebel Alliance claimed victory over the Galactic Empire at the end of RETURN OF THE JEDI, but by the beginning of THE FORCE AWAKENS, Leia is already commanding a "Resistance" against an improbably well-funded paramilitary organization carrying on the legacy of the Empire, now called "The First Order" (even as they represent the establishment governing body, the New Republic, the Resistance is meant to be a Rebellion-style scrappy band of fighters).  By the halfway mark of the movie, the entire game board has been reset with the complete and utter destruction of the New Republic, and I guess the First Order is supposed to be the new version of the Empire even though they don't really have any established political power, and the Resistance is basically just the Rebel Alliance all over again.  At this point, they're just two paramilitary organizations fighting each other across space for some vague notion of power versus democracy or something.  It's fun in spots, but also lacks meaning.

With THE LAST JEDI, Rian Johnson, the writer/director of LOOPER, THE BROTHERS BLOOM and BRICK, takes a stab at the franchise with considerably more creative freedom than Abrams was afforded by the difficult position of rebooting the franchise ten years after George Lucas's much-maligned prequel trilogy.  For better or worse, Johnson exercises much of that freedom in thumbing his nose at what's come before, frequently subverting expectations more for the sake of being subversive than in service of a worthwhile thematic construct, then earnestly positioning itself as a new direction for the series, but not necessarily a more interesting direction.  Like THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, THE LAST JEDI follows a much more stripped down and looser plot than its immediate predecessor, but THE LAST JEDI does not strive to be the EMPIRE-inspired "dark sequel" of the sequel trilogy.  In fact, it's cartoony.  Not just light in tone, and not humormous in the style that THE FORCE AWAKENS introduced to the series; no, it's goofy.  In addition to sight gags that go beyond the organic cleverness of BB-8 flashing a thumbs-up lighter and into Robot Chicken territory, many of the characters are self-aware archetypes and act in ways that appear to consciously make light of themselves and the narrative.  It doesn't exactly feel like the Star Wars I know and love, while the speechifying about moving forward and not dwelling on what came before tells me I should be okay with that, but if it doesn't feel like Star Wars, what's the point of all this?

The story picks up almost immediately where THE FORCE AWAKENS left off, with Rey (Daisy Ridley) on the Jedi steps at Ahch-To seeking training from the legendary Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who turns out to not be quite what she'd expected after his years in self-imposed exile, following the turn to the Dark Side of his nephew and apprentice, Ben Solo, now known as Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).  Meanwhile, the base of the Resistance has been exposed following their successful campaign against Starkiller Base, so Luke's sister, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher, to whom the movie is dedicated) is forced to evacuate with the help of the skilled but hot-headed Resistance pilot, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac).  During the evacuation, the Resistance sustains heavy losses and is trapped by the evil First Order's forces, led by the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis, beneath CGI performance-capture), Snoke's apprentice Kylo Ren, and the sniveling General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson).  In order to shake the First Order off the Resistance's trail, defected First Order stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) teams up with a maintenance worker named Rose (Kelly Marie Tran, channeling an obnoxiously anime-style character) to find a codebreaker who can help them.

Especially in the context of Star Wars, its worth noting that THE LAST JEDI is 152 minutes long, a whole half hour longer than the original 1977 film, and the longest in the series so far, 10 minutes longer than the next runner up, EPISODE II- ATTACK OF THE CLONES.  Granted, there are longer movies than 152 minutes, and some of them are great movies, but considering that the original STAR WARS is setting up this original fictional galaxy entirely, introducing at least seven iconic characters (Luke, Han, Leia, Vader, Obi-Wan, C-3PO and R2-D2; I'm willing to hear arguments for Tarkin), a religion, politics, and more, while finding ample time for great, stunning action sequences and character development, all in a nice, tight two hours, the fact that a movie that does as little as THE LAST JEDI insists on being a full 25% longer is just obnoxious.  To be fair, EPISODE III- REVENGE OF THE SITH is 140 minutes, and while I'd say that's also too long, it has a lot more to deal with and makes much better use of that time.  This kind of runtime on THE LAST JEDI is lazy and undisciplined, but reportedly, Johnson's rough cut was three hours long, which is head-scratching given how thin and ultimately inconsequential the plot actually is.

THE LAST JEDI is not without its strong ideas.  It attempts to introduce some fresh moral gray areas into the conflict between Kylo Ren, Rey, the Resistance and the First Order, and  like it or not (sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't), there's no denying that the movie expands the view of the Star Wars galaxy into new areas of exploration.  There's lots of little things that fans are likely to love, regardless of substance, such as a moment involving alien creatures with conspicuous udders, but these are the superficial things like Aunt Beru's blue milk.  Everyone who's noticed Beru pouring a cup of blue milky liquid in the original film gets a kick out of references to blue milk, but that's not why people love Star Wars.  Many of the visuals are striking, and there's certainly some gorgeous action sequences, most notably the well-advertised battle between a collection of rusty, low-flying Resistance craft with plows that stir up red dirt against a line of updated AT-AT walkers on a salty white planet surface.  There are a few good moments of starfighter action, in addition to a lot more time spent with Poe Dameron than was in the previous film, but that extra time reveals him not to be so much the cocky and brash but talented pilot as much as he's a borderline psychopath who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake on both sides.  The action is spread fairly thin though over the extended runtime, and most disappointing of all is the distinct shortage of lightsaber action.  There's a good action sequence with a lot of lightsaber carnage, but fans of a good lightsaber duel will be sorely disappointed.

THE FORCE AWAKENS is definitely rocky in spots; rushed and occasionally lazy in its narrative, essentially remaking the original STAR WARS, but it succeeded in introducing a trio of great new characters in Rey, Finn and BB-8, all of whom are reduced to much smaller and less interesting roles this time around.  It's unlikely that J.J. Abrams had much in the way of honest answers for all the questions he left hanging at the end of his movie and was more interested in posing the questions in the first place, and whether its answering them or not, Rian Johnson's film doesn't put a lot of thought into them either.  With the exception of a few well-designed sequences, like the aforementioned AT-AT battle, the visuals are also significant step down from Abrams's admittedly imitative style, and it lacks that movie's sense of joy, hollow or not.
As easy as it is to speak negatively about the film, I didn't hate THE LAST JEDI.  I didn't like it much either.  I hope I'll come to enjoy it more when I get around to rewatching it (although, that extra long runtime doesn't help in that regard), but upon seeing it for the first time, my main thought was, "I'm not sure if it's the worst movie of the series, but I'm not sure it's not."  Previously, I might have put that on ATTACK OF THE CLONES, but for as clunky and poorly executed as that movie is many technical aspects, its concepts are more interesting, its action is more spectacular and fun, and its emotions, overwrought as they may be in practice, are still more engaging.  THE LAST JEDI has better dialogue and acting, but that can only amplify a movie of this kind, not make it.  It lacks a real point.
Thematically, the movie suggests the leaving behind of the old for the ushering in of the new, but it's a cold comfort when the 'new' is a Star Wars movie that doesn't feel like Star Wars.

                                                                                                                                                                    Images via Lucasfilm

Christmas Movies That People Love Even Though They Christmas Suck

An easy way to turn a turd into a multi-generational favorite is to make it a Christmas turd.  The holidays turn some of us into big gooey, sentimental and nostalgic messes, and even when it's crap, anything that reminds us of those happy days of yore benefits from our yuletide emotional vulnerability.  It's a time of year where people will actually buy "traditions," in one of the weirdest phenomenons of capitalism, like that creepy-ass, pedo-smiling "elf" that parents now put on their shelves to drag out the holiday gift-getting, and now they do it year after year because the marketing campaign told them to.  Let's face it, the holidays turn a lot of us into morons, and commerce, including Hollywood, knows it.  It doesn't matter if a movie is "solid-gold shit," as they say; if someone grew up with it, especially as part of their childhood holiday viewing cycle (and God knows, Millennials being so unscrupulously nostalgic and the ABC Family programming churned out in the later part of that generation's adolescence), it's going to become a tradition, maybe even a "classic" of sorts.  That doesn't mean they're not garbage.  These movies are garbage.  It's okay.  You can still like them, but they are garbage.

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS 
(FANTASY/COMEDY, 2000) 
Directed by Ron Howard
Screenplay by Jeffrey Price & Peter Seaman
Based on the book by Dr. Seuss
Starring: Jim Carrey, Taylor Momsen, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Baranski, Bill Irwin, Molly Shannon, Clint Howard, Josh Ryan Evans, Mindy Sterling, Rachel Winfree, Rance Howard, Jeremy Howard, T.J. Thyne, Mary Stein
Rated PG for some crude humor.
104 minutes
The year 2000 was not a great one for movies.  Perhaps it's because everyone in 1999 was so sure the world would end that they thought that movies in the coming millennium wouldn't matter, so they didn't put as much effort in.  Good but not great GLADIATOR won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and the highest-grossing movie internationally was MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II, the sweaty perineum of the Mission: Impossible franchise, while stateside, the biggest movie of the year was a fuzzy green turd soup called HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS.  First, it was classic 1957 storybook from the imagination of Dr. Seuss, then it was a charming, inventive 1966 Chuck Jones animated TV special, and finally, it was new millennium that brought with it this odorous shart.  Jim Carrey, the sometimes good but often obnoxious comedian who soared on wings of obnoxious hyperactivity to 1990s stardom, headlines beneath a furry green fat suit, a silicone mask and yellow contacts as the titular Grinch; a furry, green curmudgeon who lives on a stylish garbage dump mountain overhanging "Whoville", where all the Christmas-loving Whos (basically people except they're ugly as hell with nasty chipmunk teeth and disgusting snouts) live.  THE GRINCH may have been released in November 2000, but it is pure '90s, oozing with that garish Joel Schumacher's Batman/laser tag aesthetic that permeated over-stylized big budget movies of the last few years in the 20th century.  The movie opens with, of all horrible things, a group of teenagers like you might expect to pop up in a cliched horror movie (except that have that nasty-ass Who makeup on their faces), daring each other to get a peek at the infamous Grinch.  There's a whole bunch of weird world-expanding plot threads added to pump the simple story up to a feature-length running time, and it's all informed by a very dated '90s pop culture worldview that's just weird.  There's a love triangle between the Grinch, the Mayor of Whoville (Jeffrey Tambor) and the uncomfortably sexualized Martha May Whovier (Christine Baranski).  A love triangle.  Involving the Grinch.  This is the kind of crap that you're supposed to read about as deleted concepts described on IMDb's trivia page where you can wonder if it's accurate or not, but they put in the movie here.  Oh, and there's a definite acknowledgement of sexuality in the Who experience, so now you have to picture those nasty little Whos with their nasty little noses and innocent-but-in-a-kinky-way personalities doing dirty things in bed.  There's a gag about how Whos are born, that is, they float down from the sky in little gondolas to their parents' doorsteps, and when one would-be father examines the baby that just landed outside the door, he remarks to his wife, "He looks just like your boss."  That means the Whos have affairs.  It's left up to the imagination just how the babies wind up in those gondolas, but it's clear that there's good old fashioned whoopie-making involved.  Soon after, the Who women that the baby Grinch winds up with are having a "key party," which, as anyone who's seen Ang Lee's THE ICE STORM knows, is where swingers drop their car keys into a bowl for drawing later to decide which random person they're going home with to do sex with.  Those dirty, dirty Whos.  Also, the Grinch makes a face-dive right into Christine Baranski's Christmas cleavage.  We've established that it's filthy and looks like a '90s horror movie, which isn't inherently bad, but this soggy toilet sock goes hard for the commercialized sentimentality, too.  Taylor Momsen, who plays Cindy Lou Who (no more than two in the original text, but here, she's about ten and old enough to reminisce about better Christmases), has to look cute, so she has none of the grotesque makeup of the other Whos, but she still looks like a moron, and her false "I just wanted Christmas to be perfect" sincerity is nauseating.  The featured song of the film, "Where Are You Christmas", sung by Taylor Momsen in the actual film and by Faith Hill in the end credits, is a pox on the genitals of the holiday season, a crock of shit pretending to yearn for a purer, less commercialized Christmas while actually standing for the opposite.  Christmas is on December 25, got it?  It's not lost, you insufferable carnival barkers.  As to the Grinch himself, this is where the movie truly shits the bed on an epic scale.  The story of a bitter soul who's become jaded to the materialistic celebration of Christmas, but he's just misunderstood and when he learns what Christmas is really about, his heart grows and he's changed for the better; except this Grinch isn't misunderstood.  He's genuinely a dick.  He's not so much an asshole that he can't quite reconcile leaving Cindy Lou Who to be die in a gruesome post office accident (although he does debate with himself considerably over the issue), but even when he was a kid, before the cruelty of bullies supposedly led him to choose a career in professional dicktitude, the Grinch is a dick.  As an infant, he giggles maliciously at knocking another one of the baby gondolas off-course, he bites the head off of a Santa plate, and as a child, he gleefully destroys other peoples' things in a montage where he makes a Christmas present for young Martha May Whovier in hopes of getting Christmas laid.  So he's already a nasty little shit.  After his supposed change, he's still obnoxious, and in the very final moments of the film, when he's joined the Whos for Christmas dinner and is carving the roast beast, the last lines are of the Grinch asking who wants the gizzard, then claiming it for himself like a dick.  Like, what do you want us to feel, movie?  Ugh, there are few things worse for a movie to be than this kind of cloying, sentimental bullshit without even having a heart to back it up.  Shaggy, green, poo-smelling garbage.  Garbage, I say!

THE POLAR EXPRESS 
(FANTASY/ANIMATED-MUSICAL, 2004) 
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Screenplay by Robert Zemeckis & William Broyles Jr.
Starring: Tom Hanks, Leslie Zemeckis, Eddie Deezen, Tinashe, Peter Scolari, Michael Jeter, Chris Coppola, Charles Fleischer, Steven Tyler, Daryl Sabara (voice), Nona Gaye (voice), Jimmy Bennett (voice), Andre Sogliuzzo
Rated G
100 minutes
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the early era motion-capture animated characters of THE POLAR EXPRESS looks like handsomely-lit dead human bodies being puppeteered like goddamn marionettes.  But hey, if that's what Christmas magic is to you, who am I to argue.  Eh, I don't care.  Other early motion-capture animated movies have had their technological shortcomings but made it work though, and THE POLAR EXPRESS fails most importantly in its clumsy and desperate efforts to tug the heartstrings with nostalgia and feel-good innocence but instead winds up shoving a thick handful of treacly sentimentality up it own ass and trying desperately to keep that interesting for 100 minutes, occasionally tickling the prostate and coming up with extended boring set-pieces for the train to run into, but nobody cares and this movie should go dunk its head three times and pull back up twice.  Outside of the human characters, who look dead and malevolent (like the inferi in the Harry Potter series; dead bodies that have been enchanted by a Dark Wizard's spell, except these inferi have gone rogue and are celebrating Christmas), the production design is sumptuous and the digital medium is ideal for recreating Chris Van Allsburg's clean and luminescent aesthetic.  Robert Zemeckis, writer and director of the film, has a massive hard-on for this kind of technology, and POLAR EXPRESS is beautiful dick painting, swooping with an impossible camera through the wintery landscapes rendered in the computer, lingering for extended, decidedly non-subtle shots on a golden train ticket fluttering improbably through the wind.  That's one way Zemeckis stretches 32-page storybook that's mostly paintings out into a feature run time.  Another way he does this is with boring, drawn-out set-pieces like the train (which is simply on a trip to the North Pole, nothing more) like a big herd of caribou standing in the way, and a particularly absurd stretch in which the train slides off of the tracks and onto a frozen lake, then gets back on the tracks again.  They also find time for a train ghost (Tom Hanks, along with five other roles) who has an absurdly forced laugh and harasses people who don't believe in bullshit with terrifying Victorian-style marionettes.  Ugh, this should have been a short film, like half an hour at most.  But even then, we have this lavishly produced fable for children about how logical thought is obnoxious and it's important to be a sap, which is probably why some people still believe that global warming is a Chinese hoax.  THE POLAR EXPRESS begins with a young boy (physical performance by Tom Hanks, vocal performance by Daryl Sabara) trying to grow the hell up and come to terms with the fact that there's no omnipotent, elderly old man from the Arctic who breaks into his house at night and leaves presents.  I mean, heck, if the kid was struggling with a similarly stupid belief like whether vaccines make you retarded or if legitimate rape causes pregnancy, we'd be rooting for him to him to stop being such an idiot and start acting like we live in the real world here, but if it's about Santa?  Oh God, no, don't stop believing in Santa!  Oh my hell, what a horrible, awful thing to not believe in Santa Fraud!  Guess what, guys?  News flash: SANTA ISN'T REAL!  Dumbasses.

HOME ALONE 
(COMEDY/FAMILY, 1990) 
Directed by Chris Columbus
Screenplay by John Hughes
Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, John Heard, Roberts Blossom, Catherine O'Hara, Angela Goathels, Devin Ratray, Gerry Bamman, Hillary Wolf, John Candy, Larry Hankin, Michael C. Maronna, Kristin Minter, Ken Hudson Campbell, Kieran Culkin
Rated PG for unspecified reasons (slapstick action violence, language, some rude humor and thematic elements).
103 minutes
Kevin McCallister is a huge, gaping, sweaty, taco poo-smelling asshole.  You know what would be really funny?  A movie where Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern give Macaulay Culkin an atomic wedgie and threw him in the garbage before rooting through his rich family's house, clogging the sinks and having a merry Christmas while those McCallister dildos learn a little something-something about what really matters.  Seriously, think about it; the biggest movie of 1990 was the story about an obnoxious kid from a rich family who gets ditched while his family goes to France over Christmas, and while his hot mom harasses everyone she comes into contact with in order to get home to the brat, the kid spends the holiday designing torture traps for poor people.  What a shitty world.  Yay for rich white people, violence, and asshole families reconciling with each other because it's a big, fat asshole Christmas.  Yeah, yeah, kids rule and adults drool, whatever.  The most annoying thing though is how, like THE GRINCH, it's a bunch of mean-spirited, awful people being awful, but then they try to shoehorn in a stupidly sentimental subplot between Kevin and Old Man Marley (Roberts Blossom), an old man who tells Kevin he's not a murderer even though he clearly is.  Where'd you get that cut on your hand, Marley?  Where'd you get that cut?  Why do you need such a big bucket of salt?  You're telling me you only need that much salt to salt the sidewalks?  No mummy bodies in there at all, huh?  What a load of bull.  Catherine O'Hara though, what a peach.

THE SANTA CLAUSE 
(FAMILY-COMEDY/FANTASY, 1994) 
Directed by John Pasquin
Screenplay by Leo Benvenuti and Steven Rudnick
Starring: Tim Allen, Judge Reinhold, Wendy Crewson, Eric Lloyd, David Krumholtz, Larry Brandenburg, Mary Gross, Paige Tamada, Peter Boyle, Judith Scott, Jayne Eastwood, Melissa King, Kenny Vadas
Rated PG for a few crude moments.
97 minutes
On an awkward Christmas Eve shared between a divorced dad and his obnoxious son becomes even more awkward when the dad inadvertently kills (yes, kills) Santa Claus (yes, the Santa Claus) in their own front yard, setting in motion a course of events that will destroy his life as he knows it and damn him to an eternity of servitude and fatness.  What is this off-kilter but chilling Christmas horror fable I'm talking about?  Why, it's only Walt Disney Pictures' blood-curdling holiday classic, THE SANTA CLAUSE!  By mistakenly killing a mythological figure he doesn't even believe in, successful advertising executive Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) is forced into become Santa Claus himself, cursed to surrender his identity and travel the entirety of the world annually to deliver gifts to all the greedy, grubby, gentile children.  He'll no longer recognize his body as it rapidly ages (like that guy at the end of INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE) and as he develops excess fat at an impossible rate.  Even his personality is no longer his own as he begins to crave sweet things like never before, he becomes consistently jolly and good natured, free will be damned... just like poor Scott Calvin.  Trapped in a body that is no longer his, imprisoned in a mind that he can no longer control, he is a slave to the world, surrounded by child-people at the North Pole who claim to be hundreds of years old and may or may not have sex lives even though, by all appearances, they are children (Judy, played by 9-year-old actress Paige Tamada, assumes Scott is hitting on her and tells him that she's "seeing someone in wrapping," although there's also a Denny's waitress named Judy, leading to a misunderstanding involving Scott's relationship to whichever Judy which includes sexual undertones).  The least terrible of these North Pole immortals is Bernard (David Krumholtz), who has the regrettable duty of informing whatever new sad-sack gets dragged into this hellish Faustian bargain that all their hopes and dreams are dead and they now have to be Santa Claus, but even Bernard goes an pulls a dick move like giving Scott's bratty entitled kid Charlie a magic snowglobe that forcibly beckons Santa Scott every time Charlie shakes it.  Imagine that you can't even rely on that sweet ten minutes a day where you can reasonably excuse yourself from dealing with your godawful children to lock yourself in the bathroom and take a dump, because your co-worker gave your shitty kid a magic frickin' snowglobe.  Throw in a third-act sequence of pre-9/11 police station terrorism where a bunch of smug-ass kids dressed like they just came from sanitation workers summer camp and calling themselves "elves with attitude" (oh, for the love of...) break Santa Scott out of jail, tie-up and torture a cop before gagging him with a donut, and we have the makings of yet another holiday family classic.  This is why western civilization is declining.