Mostly Movies Up For Best Picture

 

This week was my attempt to sit through all the movies nominated for 2025 Best Picture at the Oscars. With the extreme pain of remembering having done this once before (Moonlight, The Shape of Water, LaLa Land), I soldiered on. Four not on this list Dune 2, A Complete Unknown (previously reviewed) and The Brutalist (only available in sheistervision).

 

Anora  2024/ 7.1/ 139 min   Oscar Nominee      So.....the first half of this movie is pretty much soft core porn. So, I’d say not a family flick....unless you have a really weird family dynamic or are from Tenessee. Super rich Russian kid marries a hooker. Surprisingly his parents don’t approve. Movie requires some subtitle reading. Downside, no guns or explosions. Upside, major boobage. Movie sucks though, so I give it 5.8

Nickel Boys  2024/ 6.7/ 140 min      Oscar Nominee   Shot in first person format with a shaky hand held camera, this movie is very hard to watch. Then they insert video clips that seem to have nothing to do with the movie to confuse you. When you’re already at the WTF stage, they start jumping back and forth between past and present. The movie is about black kids trying to survive a reform school (Nickel) in the south late 1960’s. Plotwise, not terrible. The movie itself, unwatchable. I give it 4.8

The Substance   2024/ 7.1/ 141 min    Oscar Nominee    An aging actress takes a black market drug that makes her give birth to her younger self, a weird version of natural childbirth. Hilarity ensues. No, just kidding. Its sci-fi meets high drama. Not sure why Demi Moore felt the need to be naked (a lot) one more time in front of the camera. In the end she turns into Gollum. This movie was at least watchable although overly long. In fact at the end you’ll be saying “Why won’t this movie die!!!  I give it a 6.5

Amelia Perez    2024/ 7.0/ 132 min    Oscar Nominee   Wow. Who picks these turds? To start, this a musical, in Spanish, about a Mexican drug lord getting a sex change. She then fights with her ex-wife over the kids. The ex has her kidnapped. At the end, he tells her who he is just before they both die in a fiery car crash. I normally don’t put spoilers in my reviews, but I’m pretty sure nobody else is going to watch this. I give it a 4.6

Conclave  2024/ 7.1/ 120 min  Oscar Nominee  The pope dies and the movie is about electing the new pope. What goes on next is like a version of  TV’ s Survivor with different factions, lies, deals, and backstabbing. At least that’s what I think Survivor is like because I’ve never watched it. Turns out a lot of the Cardinals have dark secrets they are hiding. I was shocked by this turn of events. I expected sitting through this to be like eating razor blades, but it wasn’t. I give it a 6.8

Wicked   2024/ 6.9/ 162 min  Oscar Nominee     I don’t normally like prequels cause you know what happens to characters in the next movie. For all the amazing powers Elphaba (wicked witch of west) was not smart enough to walk around in a wetsuit? She could have ruled Oz but she flies off on her broom to become an animal rights activist. Movie had wayyyyy too much singing and was wayyyy to long. The one thing that kepy running through my head the whole time.....is how much I hate plays.  So I feel generous giving it 5.8

Flow   2024/  8.3/ 85 min  What a weird animated movie. The animals aren’t cute and cuddly, they’re realistic. Not a human voice or song in the whole movie. A giant unexplained flood results in a cat, dog, capybara, and a monkey all trapped in a boat together aimlessly sailing around. I kept waiting for them to starve to death and wondered how the boat didn’t fill up with animal feces. All the reviews proclaim this Latvian movie a masterpiece and it is up for an Oscar. I give it 6.2

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire  2024/ 6.6/ 115 min  If you saw the original Ghostbusters, this is a trip down memory lane. All the original ghostbusters are brought back including a really old looking Bill Murray and the black guy nobody knows. With all the CGI used in the movie, I thought they could at least have the ghost of Harold Ramis (Egon), who wrote the original movie, in it. I liked it and give it 7.0

Elevation   2024/ 6.4/ 91 min  Monsters take over the earth killing 95% of the population but they won’t go above 8000 ft. Movie takes place in the mountains above Boulder. A man, has to fight his way down to Boulder to get medicine for his kid.  The monsters look enough like giant bugs that you expect to see Ant Man riding one. You have to watch a couple minutes into the credits to get the final clue as to what happened. Not bad, a 6.9 movie.

Gladiator II   2024/ 6.8/ 148 min  I did not rewatch the first one, and luckily, I didn’t need to know what was going on in this one.  Maximus’ kid (now grown) gets hauled to Rome as a slave. He fights his way to the top in much better gladiator matchups than the first movie. The emperors, twins, are terrible and pretty much every dies. That sums up this epic. I give it its 6.8

A Dozen Movies I Watched

 

Twisters 2024/ 6.8/ 123 min   This one was way better than the 1996 Twister movie. It had better characters, better vehicles, better CGI , and a more interesting plot. I expected blah, like the ‘96 one, but was pleasantly surprised and entertained the whole movie. My only disappointment was not seeing a house land on a wicked witch. Aunty Em Aunty Em.  I give this a 7.4

Fly Me To the Moon  2024/ 6.9/ 132 min Another movie I didn’t  have high expectations for, but I found it pretty entertaining. Woody Harrelson kinda steals this one. I’m not sure if it would be as good if you weren’t alive in 1969, and remember the moonwalk (not Michael Jackson’s) live. Or did I ?? Movie makes me wonder.  I give it 7.2

The Forge  2024/ 8.3/ 123 min  I was on a roll with 2 good movies and wanted to keep it going with a highly rated one.  What I got was a two hour church service. I’ve seen so many movies with plot twists, I kept waiting to find out that they were pedophiles or secretly a satanic cult. Nope. No plot twists. Just a two hour recruitment movie for Christianity. I gave it a 5.0 and will probably go to hell for it.

Dune: Part 2  2024/ 8.2/ 167 min   I had to go back and rewatch Dune 1, because I really didn’t remember it which makes this one a 5 hour investment.  Movie started right where the last one ended, and I thought it was better than the first one. More epic battle scenes with the locals using the terrain to max advantage.  My only gripe about this one is, while it wraps up all the immediate loose ends, it leaves it open for future epics. By the time a part 3 comes out , I will have forgotten the first two and have to start all over again.  I give this one the 8.2 the masses gave it.

The Wild Robot  2024/ 8.4/ 102 min  I’m not really sure why this movie is rated this high, but it is pretty original instead of a sequel. The movie is cute, with interesting characters (the opossum mom my favorite). The robot raises a duck. That’s pretty much the movie. I give it a 7.6

Buffalo Kids  2024/ 6.8/ 83 min An actual western that was enjoyable. Funny that it was made by a foreign country.  Two Irish orphans are stranded in NY and must go to San Francisco to meet their uncle. You get train robbers, Indians, and buffalo (hence the name of the movie). Bout time some foreigners made a decent western even if it is without a Ennio Morricone soundtrack.  I give it 7.4

Abigail   2024/ 6.8/  109 min  The moral of this movie is, be careful who you kidnap. This bloody vampire gore-fest is a little slow starting but then the plot twists kick in. Good special effects keep it interesting and luckily the ballerina stuff is kept to a minimum. I give it a 7.4

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire  2024/ 7.2/ 115 min  I don’t know why I’m sitting through my hundredth Godzilla or Kong movie.  I’ve never really thought they were that good, clear back to the Godzeera days.  This one was pretty much the same as all the others. I give it a 6.3

Saturday Night  2024/ 7.0/ 109 min  For anybody ancient ( that’s as old as I am) that remembers when Saturday Night Live started and remembers the original cast members, this movie was really interesting. For anyone else, it’s 109 minute of the chaos that went into airing the first show. They did a god job of casting, finding people who at least resemble the cast and the people involved. I gave it a 7.5 for the nostalgia and some really good jokes.

Bad Tidings 2024/ 7.5/ 80 min Hear me out on this one. A made for British TV movie?? Sounds like my worst nightmare. I was wrong. The movie is basically Home Alone but with adults. Two feuding neighbors must team up to keep their neighborhood from being burglarized. And the best part....no Macaulay Culkin.  I agree with the masses and give it 7.5

The Six Triple Eight  2024/ 7.7/ 130 min  This was pretty good true movie about an all women black company in WW II that gets assigned to sort mail. I was shocked to find out that they weren’t always accepted and were sometimes treated rather rudely. And people used the n word pretty freely. It reminded of the movie Hidden Figures which was also a good movie. I give this 7.4

If  2024/ 7.2/ 104 min   A bittersweet movie about a girl coping with her mom’s death and her father’s illness. The imaginary friends (IF) are pretty cute and there are some laughs there, but this wasn’t the comedy I expected.  I do have to give it credit for originality. I felt a little screwed over that when I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up a cute imaginary friend, I got nada, bupkis. So I give it 6.7