Juror #2 is Clint Eastwood's latest (and probably last) film. The trailer gives us an idea of what the movie is about. Even at 94, Eastwood is so obviously a good director. They don't make 'em like they usta. The film is about a man who hits what he thinks is a deer. Maybe it wasn't a deer. Then he is called to jury duty on a case where a man is accused of having killed a woman -...

It's a 9/12 Weeks for the modern age. It is a world people involved in it understand and know very well. Babygirl is part of the lingo of the dom/fem dynamic, along with "good girl" and "daddy."  It's the kind of dirty fun we don't get in movies in our puritanical age. When the movie played in Venice there were grumbles. The Me Too era has meant women must always be the victims and men always the predators. But...

For this next segment, rather than spotlighting ALL of the acting categories, it is important to go through each of them individually to fully dissect what is possible and what is probably wishful thinking. Best Actor The Best Actor field, though at first glance somewhat barren of a large number of options, is full of strong performances that many pundits think make this an exciting race to watch. At the moment, three actors are not just vying for a...

I first saw Kris Kristofferson in the Barbra Streisand remake of A Star is Born. I can't say that as a child I fell in love with the guy. But over time, as I grew up, I began to appreciate him for everything he offered us - as an actor, as an artist, as a man. Martin Scorsese has been in the habit of sending out statements each time one of his good friends passes on. Here is his...

Netflix has released the full trailer for Jaques Audiard's Emilia Perez. It's a strange film, light on plot but high on ideology. It is, for a certain segment of the population, "everything, everywhere all at once." Not the movie but the concept. I would put this movie in the same category, however, as a hybrid of this crazy life we're all living with everything coming at us online, trying to make sense of it all. It's a mad scramble...

When I asked my 26 year-old daughter yesterday if she'd heard anything about what her generation calls "Oscar movies," I already knew the answer. I was almost embarrassed to say the titles out loud, like "Conclave." I said, "Have you heard anything about Saturday Night?" No, she had not. I explained to her that it was about Saturday Night Live's first episode. But Saturday Night doesn't matter to her because Saturday Night Live doesn't matter to her. Like Saturday...

Best Picture has not revolved around an exceptional male hero as much as it used to, last year's winner notwithstanding. Was Oppenheimer a one-off, or does it signal a return to the way things once were? The Oscar race was centered on the singular male protagonist for many decades. I used to write and complain about it all of the time.  But then I saw the fix: swapping out masculine heroes for tough females, a thing I should have...