Oscar the grouch

[calimac]

I've seen four and a bit of a fifth of the movies nominated in this year's Academy Awards, which is more than average for me. I saw Tár because I was curious to see a movie about a symphony conductor. I found it intriguing but baffling. I saw Everything Everywhere All At Once because it was highly praised in circles I frequent. I found it clotted and unnecessarily incoherent: it tried but failed to make its messiness a delight. I saw Turning Red because it was supposed to be a good animation about a girl on the fringe of adolescence: not bad, but a sad runner-up in a world with Encanto in it. I saw Top Gun: Maverick for the heck of it, because I'd enjoyed other recent Tom Cruise blockbusters: also not bad, and far more watchable than its predecessor, but the plot was naked button-pushing that broke the implausibility meter. Other action movies go over the top with glee and gusto; this one just went. And I started Glass Onion, because it also has been highly praised in circles I frequent, and the opening scenes were impressively imaginative, but it soon settled down to being a country-house murder mystery, a genre I have no interest in, so I turned it off. And Daniel Craig was hideously miscast. To think he used to play James Bond, yeesh.

There's not much else on the nomination list I want to see. I might see The Fabelmans mostly because I'm curious about an autobiographical film by someone who used to live in my neck of the woods. I don't want to see Avatar: The Way of Water because one of those was enough. I don't want to see The Banshees of Inisherin because I don't want to see a movie about friends having a gruesome argument. I don't want to see Living because I don't want to see a depressing story that's merely a showcase for great acting. And I don't want to see Women Talking because I already know that men are scum, I don't need it pounded in.

Comments

[sartorias]

I enjoyed Glass Onion, though I don't like country-house murder mysteries much. (I've yet to finish an Agathe Christie novel--I'm bopping along fine, but as soon as the body is found, I start skimming past the gross parts, and when the characters become talking heads sifting clues, I fall right out)

[ranunculus]

I really love this post. This is exactly why I have seen about one film in the last 5 years. Almost none of them have anything I want to watch in them.
Donald saw Tar and enjoyed it, but mostly for some of the musical theory that he felt a lot of people wouldn't understand.

[calimac]

For years now I've been titling my Academy Awards roundup posts "Oscar the grouch." It seems fitting.

[andrewducker]

I feel the same way you do about Women Talking about She Said. I already know Harvey Weinstein was an awful human being, they're going to need to do more than just tell me that again to pull me in.

(I did enjoy The Big Short and Spotlight, where I essentially knew the story, but they were both really well made human stories on top of that.)