Notes from awards committee: The year 2019 was the very best year of the 2010 decade for movies made for a grown-up target audience. I am hard pressed to name another year with so many great motion pictures featuring the most memorable male performances in recent times. How did this bounty come upon us in 2019? Movie Magic and serendipity is the only explanation; just smile and be grateful. And surprisingly as far as the 2020 Oscar Best Picture nominations are concerned, the Academy nominations were, as we target shooters say, on the paper, but nowhere near the bull’s eye. We agreed with 5 out of 9 noms, and those 5 were really, really good films. The best picture of the year was undoubtedly Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; Quentin Tarantino’s best-ever film with a clear social reflection of the 1960’s while rejecting the 60’s cultural celebration of moral decay. Leo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt set a new standard for Buddy Films. Somebody has to say it – the Academy Best Picture winner, Parasite, is the most grossly overrated movie of the decade. We were appalled by the film’s immoral justification of violent class warfare as per the likes of mass murderers Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Is this a wet dream of woke Hollywood? It is strangely both dumb and naïve that woke Hollywood would jump on the class warfare bandwagon because that bandwagon will be driving them straight to the Guillotine near their exclusive, gated neighborhoods. Both Ford vs Ferrari and Midway are celebrations of American greatness, and would have won a Best Picture Simpson award any other year. It is an honor to award Christian Bale a much deserved Best Actor award for his outstanding portrayal of Ken Miles, the ace race car driver in Ford vs Ferrari. It was perfection. Fun Surprises The biggest surprise of the year had to be JoJo Rabbit – it takes a certain genius to make Nazism LOL funny, and Roman Davis as JoJo is the best child actor I have seen since the outstanding debut performance in 2010 by Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit. Best Actress of the year, Scarlett Johansson, as JoJo’s mother is filled with wisdom, compassion, humor, grace and courage in a truly memorable performance. The Highwaymen - This is an extremely engaging, entertaining and true myth-busting of the “legend” of the Bonnie and Clyde bloody robbing and murder spree in the 1930’s. After Hoover’s FBI team fumbles their pursuit of Bonnie and Clyde, it was old fashioned police work by two veteran Texas lawmen that put an end to their violent spree using the maxim: “Mustangs and Outlaws always return home.” And for you horror fans, no monster movie, vampire nor mad slasher flick can build the tension and creeping dread and suspense better than Chernobyl – the HBO mini-series about the Russian class 7 nuclear reactor disaster in 1986. It is a true masterpiece of the docu-dramas. The standout documentary of the year was Apollo 11 – the hands-down winner. Relive the glory days of the NASA manned space program. We will never see its likes again. Disappointments The Irishman was yet another mafia-worship movie with annoying, unlikeable characters that leave a sour taste. I am not saying the film is unwatchable, but rather just not worthy of the big accolades.
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AuthorWritten by Ben Clark. Copyright 2016-2023. All rights reserved. Archives
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