Tag Archives: 2018

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

Winchester (2018) Movie Review

Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren), owner of the Winchester repeating rifle company, lives in an elaborate, labyrinthine mansion of an estate. “There are almost 100 rooms in the house,” Sarah Snook’s character says early in the film. “It is easy to get lost.”

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She says this to doctor Eric Price (Jason Clarke), who is called on to judge the state of Sarah Winchester’s mental health. This is due to concern that other Winchester stock holders have over Sarah’s obsession with the idea that her house is haunted by Continue reading Winchester (2018) Movie Review →

2018 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2018 Academy Awards Predictions – Best Animated Short Film

Ah, the short film categories. Categories that I tend to predict before seeing the majority of the nominees, then I forget to come back and re-write the articles once I’ve seen them all. This year will be no different, no doubt, so keep that in mind.

That said, the animated short category is never all that hard to parse.

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The Nominees:

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2018 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2018 Academy Awards Predictions – Best Production Design

In 2018, the five nominees for Best Production Design are exceedingly diverse. None of these films have sets that look like the rest. Kinda makes my job a little harder, huh?

Oh well, no one asked me to do this in the first place.

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The Nominees:

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2018 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2018 Academy Awards Predictions – Best Editing

Editing. It is a fundamental component to the film form. Without it…oh man, I’m getting sick of writing the preambles in these articles. Best Editing is an Oscar category. We all know this. Let’s get into it.

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The Nominees:

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2018 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2018 Academy Awards Predictions – Best Visual Effects

Best Visual Effects is a fun Oscar category. Historically speaking, at least. I googled this award for like two minutes and was delighted at what I found. Just the growth of the award as technical capabilities have excelled. It’s fascinating. Just a little over a decade ago, the category only held three nominees. In some years, the category wasn’t even a competition; they just gave it to a film.

More about this in a bit. For now, let’s look at the nominees.

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The Nominees:

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2018 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2018 Academy Awards Predictions – Best Costume Design

Best Costume Design is never the hardest category to predict. In general, the most ornate or baroque costuming lends itself to a winning film. Most years, there are only one or two clear front-runners to choose from.

This year is not entirely different, but there are a few different scenarios in which this category could go.

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The Nominees:

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2018 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2018 Academy Awards Predictions – Best Documentary Feature

The Best Documentary category features one of the more prominent snubs of the 2018 Oscar nominations. The arguable front-runner in the category, Jane, did not appear in the final five (I disputed this front-runner status in favor of Agnes Varda’s Faces Places, but I in no way foresaw Jane not even earning a nomination).

With that film out of the running—as well as other notable docs like City of Ghosts not showing up—the conversation around the Best Documentary category has changed drastically. So let’s have that conversation!

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The Nominees:

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2018 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2018 Academy Awards Predictions – Best Cinematography

Best Cinematography is shaping up to be an exciting, if not predictable, category in 2018. A couple of bits of trivia. Roger Deakins, the front-runner, has been nominated for Oscars 14 times in the past and has never won. The man essentially invented the way movies are color graded today, so he kind of deserves the recognition.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the nomination for Rachel Morrison for Mudbound marks the first time in Academy history that a woman has been nominated for Best Cinematography. I remember at some point in my academic career I was given a statistic that the number of employed female DPs in Hollywood only make up about 3% of DPs (don’t quote me on this exact number). It is surprising how the world of cinematographers is still a boy’s club, and thus this nomination for Morrison is a pretty big deal.

So…should we talk winners and losers now?

mudbound-2017-movie-review

The Nominees:

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2018 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2018 Academy Awards Predictions – Best Animated Feature

Whelp, it’s time to pat myself on the back for getting these five nominees correct—including the long shot The Boss Baby—in my previous article.

…

That was fun. Now let’s move back to the present. That these are the five that ended up getting the nod actually makes this job a bit easier, so let’s get into it.

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The Nominees:

Continue reading 2018 Academy Awards Predictions – Best Animated Feature →