Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 2024

The Contenders:

Anora (winner)
The Brutalist
A Real Pain
September 5
The Substance

Bad Bunny

Film: Caveat
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

There are times when, to follow a movie where it wants to go, you have to give in to some ridiculous premises. Caveat is a movie like that. There’s going to be a moment early in the film that beggars one’s ability to willingly suspend disbelief. If you can manage to deal with the fact that the movie demands that you accept something completely ridiculous, you’re in for some good scares and an interesting concept.

Isaac (Johnny French) is a man with significant amnesia and no real direction. This makes him the perfect person for a job from his landlord, Moe Barrett (Ben Caplan). Barrett has a niece named Olga (Leila Sykes) who suffers from bouts of catatonia and lives by herself in an isolated house. Barrett wants Isaac to go and stay with her for a couple of days. Essentially, if she is left on her own for too long, something bad can happen to her, because she can zone out for long periods of time. Isaac agrees to the job, especially because he’s going to earn £200 per day.

I Think the Stripper Likes Me

Film: Anora
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

My goal was to get through my set of Oscar films by the end of the year and to save the Best Picture winner, Anora, for last. I did save it for last, but circumstances prevented me from getting it watched until tonight. There was a part of me that didn’t really want to watch it (although I was far less enthused about The Apprentice). There are only a couple of ways for this story to go, and really only one interesting one, and on the surface, the characters didn’t appeal to me at all.

To give the elevator pitch, Anora is a far more realistic version of Pretty Woman. Exotic dancer/escort Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) dances at a club and for a fee frequently has sex with her clients. One night, a customer named Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) wants someone who will speak Russian with him, and Anora gets tapped. Vanya is in New York City from Russia alleged for school, but he spends most of his time playing video games and partying. How can he afford this? His father is a Russian oligarch and a billionaire.

What I've Caught Up With, December 2025 Part 2

When it comes to catching up on television, I knocked out some big shows in December. These include Batman: The Animated Series and the follow-up, The New Batman Adventures (same voice cast, more stylized art). I also finished both Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The Return. The biggest removal, though was Lucifer. It's a fun show, but as often seems to be the case, it started to drag once it moved from network TV to NetFlix.

What I've Caught Up With, December 2025 Part 1

I realize that January 1 of any year is an arbitrary place to start making changes, but it does feel somehow natural. As always, my goal is always to watch 400 movies over the course of the year. Mathematically, this works out to one movie per day plus three additional movies per month. It’s not that much, and yet it’s a goal that I almost always fall short on.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Animated Feature 2024

The Contenders:

Flow (winner)
Inside Out 2
Memoir of a Snail
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The Wild Robot

End of Year Sixteen

I barely cracked 300 movies this year. It’s a little disappointing on the surface, but considering the year I had, it’s actually kind of impressive. 2025 has been a meat grinder for me; I’m not looking for sympathy or pats on the back, and I’m not trying to compare misery dicks with anyone on this. It’s been a rotten year and I’m happy to see it in the rearview.

I have a number of goals for 2026, both on this blog, online in general, and in the real world. I’m waking up more and more to what the world feels like it is and what I feel like it should be, and there is a large gap there that, bluntly, I feel the need to do something about.