Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction

Film: One Battle After Another
Format: Streaming video from HBOMax on Fire!

We need a regular reminder that the Oscars are political and rarely correct. I say this because Paul Thomas Anderson is almost certainly going to win Best Director on Sunday and One Battle After Another seems likely to take Best Picture. The reason this is upsetting is that this is clearly not the best movie of this year and not the best directorial performance. However, Paul Thomas Anderson is a top director and much like the year that Christopher Nolan won for Oppenheimer, people have decided that it’s Anderson’s year.

That’s frustrating. Paul Thomas Anderson, to be fair, does have 14 nominations and no wins, so I understand the sentiment that he is due for a win. The problem is that One Battle After Another, while a fine movie, is not anything close to Anderson’s best work. This feels like Pacino winning an Oscar for Scent of a Woman or Paul Newman finally winning for The Color of Money. But, that’s where we are, and in a couple of days, it’s likely that that’s where we’ll remain.

Too Too Solid Flesh

Film: Hamnet
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

My undergrad degree is in English literature. What this means is that there are times when I know at least some of what is going to happen in a movie. You can’t be much of an English student without knowing something of the life of William Shakespeare. Because of this, while I didn’t know exactly where we were going with Hamnet, I at least knew one or two of the major plot points. In this case, that doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the film, but it does mean that there will be people who are shocked at a particular moment that I spent a large part of the film expecting.

With Hamnet, named after Shakespeare’s son (both the movie and the play), we’re not getting a new filmed version of Hamlet, but sort of the story of its creation. This is much more the story of Shakespeare’s (Paul Mescal) tumultuous family life and his tormented relationship with his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley). This was something that surprised me—traditionally, Shakespeare’s wife is recorded as Anne, but no matter.

Take a Ride on the Reading

Film: Train Dreams
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on gigantic television.

At this point, I think the Best Picture race is pretty much limited to One Battle After Another and Sinners with an outside chance of Marty Supreme. Honestly, even Sinners feels like an outsider at this point, with oddsmakers giving OBAA a better-than 60% chance. Train Dreams has virtually no chance of winning, and that has essentially been the case from the moment the nominations dropped. It doesn’t have much of a chance, but I am pleased that it was nominated. Oscar should go out of its way to nominate films like Train Dreams more often, if only to call out more attention to them.

Train Dreams is not the kind of movie that is normally going to get a great deal of attention from the average movie watcher. It is slow to a fault. Not a great deal happens in it. Even the massive forest fire, something that could easily become something like an action sequence is slow. I don’t have a problem with this, but I imagine that some people will.

What I've Caught Up With, February 2026 Part 2

Television-wise, I didn't finish a lot of shows. I completed Jessica Jones. I had watched the first season years ago but never completed the series. I rewatched Season 1 and then the rest of the show. I also caught up with the second season of Hazbin Hotel. My current workout show is Evil, which is essentially the X-Files if it were Catholic. I'm also most of the way through The Good Wife. Interestingly, Mike Colter has a few appearances on Jessica Jones, is a regular on The Good Wife, and a main character on Evil. Other than that, I'm slowly getting through Babylon 5.

What I've Caught Up With, February 2026 Part 1

My yearly goal for movies is 400, which is less than it sounds. To be on pace, I should be at 64 movies at the end of February. I'm a touch behind at 60, but not terribly behind. I'm hoping to catch up a few in March. If I get 34 movies, I'm keeping pace; more than that and I'm catching up. This was a month where I got a lot done in terms of taking movies off the various lists. In the next few months, there may be less, because I'll be looking more at Oscar movies, at least for a bit.

At Least It Wasn't an HOA

Film: The Perfect Neighbor
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

There are too many stories where people of color who are not a threat or acting in a threatening manner are nonetheless gunned down by the police. What we don’t hear about as much, aside from particularly celebrated cases, is the people who are shot as a result of “stand your ground” laws. By some estimates, 700 or more people are killed using this law every year, and particularly in the cases of white people shooting Black people, they get away with it. The Perfect Neighbor explores one such case.

This doesn’t merely explore the situation in question, though. Rather than interview the children of the woman who was killed, or have a roundtable discussion with the neighbors, The Perfect Neighbor uses bodycam and police interrogation room footage to tell the story. This is literally a story told in the words of the people who experienced it, filtered only by what is included in the edit. There’s nothing cleaned up here—no language or action, no matter how ugly or unsettling.

Love for Sale

Film: Rental Family
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Brendan Fraser seems like one of those people who is genuinely a nice person. He’s the kind of person who I want to see succeed; he seems like someone who would be fun to hang out with, or have dinner with. When I first saw the trailer for Rental Family, I was of two minds. First, I thought it looked like the sort of film that Fraser should be doing—a drama with a great deal of heart, but it also looked like a film designed to capitalize on Fraser’s recent resurgence and Oscar win. But I also knew that I would be unable to resist watching it.

This is important for Rental Family, because this is a film that only works if we like Brendan Fraser. Well, we need to like his character. This is very much a film about empathy, and getting to that is going to be hampered if we have none for the main character.