An early and serious contender for 2017’s Best Picture is a movie that may not have found its way to a theater had it not garnered so much critical acclaim. Dee Rees’s (Pariah) Mudbound is a Netflix original movie, and had it not been for The Academy of Motion Pictures’ rule of all Oscar-nominated films be available to the public via movie theaters, who knows where it would have landed. This is not Netflix’s first movie to receive so much praise that the movie had to be released in the theaters. 2015’s Beasts of No Nation faced a similar fate. However, the kudos that Beasts of No Nation originally received faded as Oscar season approached, and the movie ultimately did not receive a single nomination. The same won’t be the case for Mudbound, which very well could earn a Best Picture nomination as well as nominations for Best Supporting Actor (Jason Mitchell Detroit, Straight Outta Compton), Best Supporting Actress (Mary J. Blige), and Best Adapted Screenplay just to name a few. Of course, it’s an early prediction, and I have yet to see any of the other contenders, but this does feel like a poor year for movies. I would be shocked if Mudbound is not nominated for Best Picture, and I would be surprised if it doesn’t win at least one award in one of the other categories before cinema’s biggest night of the year is complete.
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Category Archives: Jonathan Banks
Horrible Bosses 2 (2014)
Horrible Bosses wowed audiences ($117 million) and won over most critics (69% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) in the summer of 2011. The unlikely comedy starred three guys in their late 30’s/early 40’s who absolutely hated the bosses they worked for so much that they plotted ways to get even with them for making their work lives so miserable. With an unlikely group that had TWO Best Actor Academy Award (Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx) winners from the last fifteen years signed on as supporting characters, this cast was a list of who’s who in Hollywood. The movie is hilarious and is very much worth a view. It seems, however, that the same critics who lauded the Horrible Bosses seem to be the same ones crushing Horrible Bosses 2 (just 35% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). While I wouldn’t go so far as to say the sequel was better than the first one, it was comparable in terms of laughs. While the formula is the same, the jokes are new and original, and the payoff is just as good as the original. With that said, I hope that this franchise quits while it’s ahead. I could see a potential Horrible Bosses 3 resulting in an utter disaster.
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