Best Picture nominee? Don’t Look Up? Really? This movie had a wide December release. It earned less than one million dollars at the box office and was out of the theaters in under two weeks. Its 56% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes further suggests that this is different from a film one would deem to be selected by the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as one of its ten best films of 2021. Yet (sigh), here we are. The biggest tragedy might be that this isn’t a bad film but is unfairly getting bashed for its affiliation with the other nine movies up for Best Picture in arguably the worst collection of films for any year.
Category Archives: Tyler Perry
Vice (2018)
Adam McKay’s (The Big Short, Anchorman – The Legend Of Ron Burgundy) Vice almost suffered from a trailer that depicted a movie that looked like a spoof. With The Killers’ hit song Who’s The Man playing in the background and a nearly unrecognizable Christian Bale (Hostiles, American Hustle) almost dancing to the beat in between intermittent lines of him hyping himself up or talking about how he’s going to break all the rules when he becomes Vice President of the United States, McKay’s latest movie plays more like the Will Ferrell/Zach Galifianakis underrated comedy The Campaign that it does a biopic in the realm of Nixon, Lincoln, or Thirteen Days. Its nomination category at this year’s Golden Globe awards was “Comedy.” But while Vice is constantly entertaining and is filmed in a way that, at times, feels like a mockumentary, it is very much a drama, one that you’ll sometimes feel guilty laughing at even during the moments that are meant to be humorous.
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Gone Girl (2014)
Halfway through Gone Girl, I thought I was watching this year’s movie to beat. It had everything I wanted in a terse murder mystery/thriller. First, it had the small town file (which I love). We know who the main potential suspect may be from the film’s opening minutes. But this likely suspect may also be the film’s protagonist. And we are left guessing about his guilt or innocence throughout most of the film. We like him. We don’t like him. We hate him. We love him. We go through the gamut of emotions, leaving us exhausted as we sit on the edge of our seats. But the movie unravels in the last 45 minutes with more absurdities than a Jim Carrey movie. Suddenly this well-thought-out thriller becomes a bit of a mockery of itself in an attempt to separate it from other whodunit movies.
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