All posts by Alex Brannan

2026 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2026 Academy Awards Predictions — Best Costume Design, Production Design, Makeup (Part 4)

Academy Awards predictions. Part 4. Trust me when I say that these are the most important predictions for your Oscar ballot. You will lose your office pool if you don’t pay careful attention to the next few paragraphs. They will seriously up your game.

Nah, I’m just kidding. This is mostly just a prolonged conversation about Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. Enjoy. (Or don’t. It’s up to you.)

Here’s Part 1. Don’t forget Part 2. Part 3 is magical.

Best Costume Design

Frankenstein is the heavy favorite in this category, and for good reason. It has a type of period costuming that the Academy adores. And, frankly, Continue reading 2026 Academy Awards Predictions — Best Costume Design, Production Design, Makeup (Part 4) →

2026 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2026 Academy Awards Predictions — Best Casting, Cinematography, Editing, VFX (Part 3)

Ah yes, Part 3. It’s kind of like a trilogy…except we aren’t halfway through yet. So it’s like a trilogy, if…you don’t understand prefixes. Getting technical with this one, so bust out your kinetograph, your Rolodex, your splicing tape, and your 3D rendering software of choice.

Here’s Part 1. Don’t forget Part 2.

Best Casting

The inaugural Best Casting field is a very good one. This race mostly replicates the Best Picture race, in that Sinners and One Battle After Another are the two obvious choices. The most comparable major award to this is Continue reading 2026 Academy Awards Predictions — Best Casting, Cinematography, Editing, VFX (Part 3) →

2026 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2026 Academy Awards Predictions — Best Supporting Acting and Screenplay (Part 2)

It’s Part 2 time. It’s like a Part 1, but a second one. We’re in the second half of the “above the line” categories. So keep your eye out for the line. It’s arbitrary and antiquated, so it’s easy to miss. But from what I understand, there is a line, and we’re about to pass it.

Here’s Part 1.

Best Supporting Actor

I don’t fully understand the Sean Penn aspect of One Battle After Another. I don’t personally dislike him in the film, but on a performance level I find him the least interesting of the principle characters. Benicio Del Toro, meanwhile, is the best performance in the film, some (and I) argue. While Penn is the favorite to win Continue reading 2026 Academy Awards Predictions — Best Supporting Acting and Screenplay (Part 2) →

2026 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2026 Academy Awards Predictions — Best Picture and More (Part 1)

Having arrived very late to the Oscar prediction party this year, I am splitting up my ballot into 4-5 articles, just to get them out in the most timely possible fashion. Currently, you are in the sweet spot of the headliner categories (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress). The big categories are usually among the easier to predict, but not this year!

Best Picture

Sinners could very well walk away from Oscar Sunday with the most awards, and it has a real shot at winning Continue reading 2026 Academy Awards Predictions — Best Picture and More (Part 1) →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

Cloud (2025) Movie Review

The Internet is filled with scams. Scalpers have been around as long as there have been tickets to sell, presumably. Snake oil salesmen before that. So long as there is a way to make a quick buck on a rube, people have tried.

The anonymity of these individuals is part of their strength. Shadowy individuals scoop up as many hot-item concert tickets as possible and mark them up by many multiples. Who are these people? Conventional wisdom would suggest: apathetic scumbag, opportunistic scumbag, scummy scumbag.

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa only challenges this conventional wisdom enough so that we understand Continue reading Cloud (2025) Movie Review →

Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Best Movies of 2025

I usually start these year-end lists with some perfunctory and entirely unnecessary recap of my feelings of the previous year. Not this year. Let’s move on. Our tomorrow must be better than our yesterday.

(The movies were OK).

Honorable Mentions: Sorry, Baby; The Secret Agent; Black Bag; Souleymane’s Story; The Ugly Stepsister; Marty Supreme; On Becoming a Guinea Fowl; Wake Up Dead Man; Eephus; The Mastermind; Hamnet; Caught by the Tides; Weapons; The Naked Gun; Left-Handed Girl

10. KPop Demon Hunters

I arrived very late to Kpop Demon Hunters, the surprise cultural sensation of 2025. And the film lives up to its reputation. Watching it, I couldn’t help but Continue reading The Best Movies of 2025 →

Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Worst Movies of 2025

2025 certainly was not a bad year in cinema, but I also found many films did not move the needle. Some films were major disappointments. And then, as always, there were the dregs. These five films were, save for one exceptional case, the least enjoyment I got out of film-watching this year.

The Electric State

Many hands have already been wrung over the supposed price tag of this little ditty from the brothers Russo. It is an exacerbating factor in the film’s already negative reception (How could it be this bad and this expensive?) It is a blemish that is difficult to Continue reading The Worst Movies of 2025 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Sugar Rot — Fantasia Festival 2025

Sugar Rot had its Quebec premiere on Aug 1 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Sugar Rot is billed as a feminist, punk rock, body horror film. It does involve the horrific transformation of a body, that of the protagonist fittingly named Candy (Chloe Macleod). One location in the film presents a few punk rock bands performing. And the John Waters-esque story world produced by director Becca Kozak is obsessed with female body standards and the normalization of the exploitation of women’s bodies. So, check, check, and check on the billing. At face value, at least.

There is a cruel contradiction at the sugary core of Sugar Rot. As Candy’s body becomes candy (literally), every character wants to Continue reading Review: Sugar Rot — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Lurker — Fantasia Festival 2025

Lurker had its Canadian premiere on Aug 1 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Alex Russell’s debut film Lurker is about obsession. It is in one sense about the parasocial relationships fostered by celebrity, but more accurately it is about the mind of a person who manipulates the world around him in order to embed himself within one celebrity’s orbit. It is a film about a sociopath, essentially.

Matthew (Theodore Pellerin), this sociopathic personality, works at a clothing store occasionally patroned by an up-and-coming musician named Oliver (Archie Madekwe). Matthew plays a song over the speaker that is calculated to get Oliver’s attention. When he gets it, he pretends to have never heard of Oliver’s music. He, of course, has heard it. In fact, he relentlessly stalks Oliver’s social media to gain Continue reading Review: Lurker — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: $POSITIONS — Fantasia Festival 2025

$POSITIONS had its Quebec premiere on July 30 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

It is hard to shake the resemblance between Brandon Daley’s $POSITIONS and Benny and Josh Safdie’s Good Time. The two brothers at the center, the economically motivated premise, the ill-conceived choices, the propulsive synth score. The two films are so similar, in fact, that by the time this review goes live, every other person on the Internet will likely have already made the comparison.

The biggest difference between the two films is in the tone, where $POSITIONS is more overtly comedic. More specifically, it is a comedy of errors meets grossout comedy sort of cringe comedy. And its gags get so Continue reading Review: $POSITIONS — Fantasia Festival 2025 →