Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 2023

The Contenders:

Anatomy of a Fall (winner)
The Holdovers
Maestro
May December
Past Lives

Get a Gift Receipt

Film: Oddity
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

I frequently do full reviews on newer horror movies with the thought that it is possible that they will appear on future versions of the They Shoot Zombies list. This is especially true when the films are highly acclaimed, by critics, audiences, or both. I’m pretty confident that Oddity will show up in a year or two; the list tends to drag a few years behind release dates.

Oddity is a film that is going to attract a very particular type of horror fan. Gorehounds are going to find it dull and slow, and if your interest is in blood and severed limbs, there isn’t going to be a lot for you here. Oddity spends about the first two-thirds of its running time building up an atmosphere. Some of that is what you expect—it's going to be the sort of dread and sense of danger that we tend to get from the average horror movie. There’s also a very distinct sense of menace coming from one character, but that’s what the actual review is for, right?

Monsterpiece Theater

Film: Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0)
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

I’m not really a kaiju guy. I don’t actively hate them the way I hate televangelists or people who leave their shopping carts in the middle of a parking space, but I don’t generally go out of my way to watch giant monster movies. It’s not quite a “when you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all” thing, but it’s in that ballpark. Godzilla Minus One (or Gojira -1.0 if you prefer) got a lot of acclaim, though, and also won the big lizard his first Oscar, so it was hard to resist.

My ambivalence to kaiju is almost certainly related in part to early Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, which were rife with Gamera movies. Sure, it’s fun to watch a giant turtle fly through space and attack another dude in a rubber suit, but there are a bunch of them right in a row, and it gets tedious. These movies also went through a strange evolution. Godzilla, Gamera, and the rest started as giant beasts created by radiation or pollution taking out their rage on the Japanese countryside. Over time, though, they became the heroes, fighting monsters worse than they were, causing destruction like superheroes. The buildings still got knocked down, but our hero kaiju were doing it to defend Japan rather than destroy it.

What I've Caught Up With, December 2024 Part 2

I managed to do something unpleasant to my knee a few weeks back, which means I wasn’t able to do anything in the gym for a few weeks. I had to give up on Peaky Blinders as my workout show, so instead of finishing it at the end of the year as planned, I’m only about halfway through. I did watch a few shows, though, getting through both seasons of Altered Carbon, finishing Killing Eve, and watching Death and Other Details. This really wanted to be a variation of the Benoit Blanc movies and really wasn’t. I also watched Exploding Kittens on NetFlix. You can (and should) get through it in an afternoon. I’m in the middle of the sixth season of Parks and Rec, and have also started Doom Patrol, which is the right kind of weird.

What I've Caught Up With, December 2024 Part 1

So I finished the year with 366 movies watched. Of those, about 285 or so were new to me, with the rest being rewatches. On the They Shoot Zombies list as it currently stands, there are 205 I haven’t written reviews for, and ten or so more than that that haven’t been posted and I have in reserve or for Halloween. The big list of movies that have been recommended to me dropped under 1000 briefly, but with 2024 to not catch up on, it’s ballooned back up. Feel free to recommend anything from 2024 that is worth watching.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Animated Feature 2023

The Contenders:

The Boy and the Heron (winner)
Elemental
Nimona
Robot Dreams
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Sacre Blech!

Film: An American Werewolf in Paris
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

Sometimes, when someone drops a sequel years after the original movie, it turns out decently. Sometimes, you get An American Werewolf in Paris. This is a movie that very clearly wants to capitalize on the vastly superior first film that is more than a decade and a half older. Honestly, it feels like a cheat. If you’ve seen An American Werewolf in London, you’re likely to go into this with expectations. Those expectations are not going to be met. This is equally true if you thought it was instead a riff on An American in Paris.

In terms of the set-up, you don’t really need more than the title of the film and the knowledge of the London version. This time, there’s a trio of Americans, and this time, they’re not walking across the moors but instead find themselves in the City of Lights. Andy (Tom Everett Scott), Brad (Vince Vieluf), and Chris (Phil Buckman) are touring Europe and attempting extreme thrills. Andy, who we are going to be following here, is behind on points, but plans on upping his total by (sigh) bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower, because that’s something that you won’t get caught doing.