The Speakeasies (or The Year in Movies according to Yours Truly) 2019

The best of 2019 in movies, according to yours truly.

Oscar 2020: The Wills, the Shoulds, and the Should Have Beens

In which I tell you what I think will happen on Oscar night (and what they got and will get wrong.)

Devouring the Oscars -- Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood for Best Picture

In which I make the case for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood for Best Picture.

Devouring the Oscars -- Best Screenplay (Original)

Devouring the Oscars--BlacKkKlansman for Best Picture

In which I make the case for Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman for Best Picture. 

Devouring the Oscars--Actor in a Leading Role

So, who will join the men who came before in the most coveted of acting awards? That's the question offered to me by the great people over at The LAMB. This year's nominees are all, first, perfectly cast, brought in and allowed to shine as full collaborators in the passions of some of our finest filmmakers, even if one of them didn't quite work itself out as a great film.

The most wonderful time of the year...(Part 1)

On the abundance of great movies afforded me by Winter Break (and Movie Pass)

Blind Spot 2017: 'Kramer vs. Kramer'

Devouring the Oscars: Achievement in Film Editing

Blind Spot 2017: Patton

Oscar Nomination Reaction Post

Speaks Picks: The 88th Academy Awards

It's that time, people. Oscar time!

Ever since I was a kid, this has been my Super Bowl, the televised event I wait for all year, every year.

Speaks Reacts: The 88th Academy Awards Nominations

Not long ago, I made a statement about 2015 being just okay. Then December and January came along to slap me right across the face. These Oscar Nominations are totally unexpected and just for me. Almost everything I wanted to happen happened.

Now, I know you're all upset about the lack of love for Carol, but to replace that is some big time love for The Big Short, my favorite and, in all seriousness, the most important movie of 2015. This plays into why I love this year's nods so much. For everything it snubbed, it filled the gap with something equally worthy.

Thursday Movie Picks: Mother-Daugher Relationships

Mid-week has come and gone, and it's time for another entry in Wandering through the Shelves' Thursday Movie Picks. This week we're talking Mother-Daughter Relationships.

Man, did I get to know that relationship growing up!

I never got to meet my mother's mother. She died about four years before I was born. But the sweet and bitter of her relationship to my mother and all my mother's five sisters is ingrained in me. I know the mother-daughter relationship from a past perspective just as I know it through movies. To know my own mother is to know mothers and daughters. To have a younger sister and to see her relationship with our mother is to know mothers and daughters on yet another level.

Many movies portray the mother-daughter relationship. I have focused on the first three that came to me. These are movies driven pretty much entirely by the mother-daughter relationship.

7 Reasons Why: The 87th Academy Awards

I made my Oscar predictions too soon. One week before the big show. At that point, eight days gone now, I was still under the impression that Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" was gonna take the big Best Picture prize and lose everywhere else but Supporting Actress, which was a lock.

I ended up doing just okay with my predictions and still won the ballot at my particular Oscar party. I landed only 16 out of 24 categories. Of course, my biggest miss being that Best Picture win for Alejandro G. Iñárritu's "Birdman." I don't care. I'm glad it won.

The Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts

A shot from the short film, "Parvaneh"

Earlier this week, I noticed that my local art house theater was running the Oscar Nominated Short Films, both Animated and Live Action. I couldn't fit both into my schedule, but I was able to catch the five nominated Live Action Shorts, and I was so impressed.

All of these films tell beautiful stories. Stories of friendship and family and history, and they do so in minute amounts of time. I actually fell in love with a few of these. You will find a personal ranking and predictions at the end of my mini-reviews. They are reviewed in the order they played, which, I have to say, is a genius sequence. This was very well-thought out.

Twenty Years of Oscar: Achievement in Directing

At some point in the late 1990s, probably around '97/'98, I began to realize that there was this job called film director and that it was these creative geniuses that drove the storytelling aspect of movies. Steven Spielberg was my first love. I wanted so much to see all of his movies. I began to learn about filmmaking through him and his love of it. I read about him constantly. "Saving Private Ryan" came to theaters. I went...twice. I was blown away by its power, its greatness.

I got into some Scorsese, "Goodfellas and "Casino." Then, I saw Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia." I became obsessed with the camera. I began to see the differences in directors' various styles.

I began to understand what made a "Best Director" for the first time.

All of the movies mentioned below are Oscar choices that I just fully agree with. Most of these are for "groundbreaking," even controversial films. All of them are visually masterful pieces of cinema from truly visionary filmmakers.

Twenty Years of Oscar: Actor in a Leading Role

I want to go ahead and get something out of the way: I love Tom Hanks. Now, he didn't make this list because I'm in constant struggle about "Forrest Gump" and whether it's actually a great movie or not. I haven't seen it in years, and I fear it may not be as powerful as I once considered it to be. Also, while his win as Gump was deserved, I am still bitter about his loss in 1998 to that Italian Jumping Bean guy. If Hanks had won for "Saving Private Ryan," he would be on this list.

Anyway, we've reached Day Three in my "Twenty Years of Oscar" extravaganza. Best Actor...it's a biggie. And it is so often one of the tightest races each year. Some are runaways, including most of the picks you'll find below, but it always finds itself a hot topic this time a year. This year, especially. Can't wait 'til Sunday.

Thursday Movie Picks: Oscar Winning Movies

Oscar is in the air. "The mood is tense!"...sort of. This week's edition of the Wandering through the Shelves Thursay Movie Picks Meme is all about "the big enchilada, ya dig?" You know, Best Picture, the last one of the night. But Oscar gives out more than one "Best Picture." Yeah, to spread it around, there's a category for Best Foreign Language Film and one for Best Animated Feature. Since it's an option and I'm doing another Best Picture post this weekend, I've decided to go ahead and spread it around myself. I'm giving you a favorite from each of the aforementioned Oscar categories, in order.

Twenty Years of Oscar: Screenplay

So, OK. Anyone who knows Oscar knows about "The Big Five," which are Writing, Directing, Actress, Actor, and Picture. Only a few films have won them all in the same year: "It Happened One Night" (1934), "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), and "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991). Most recently, "American Beauty" (1999) got close, winning four of the five. Annette Bening got beat out for Best Actress.

Anyway, this is the first in a series of posts that will contain "Top Five" lists on the "Big Five Academy Awards" categories. We start...with writing.

The Academy Award for Writing...there are two. One for an Original work, conceived for the screen alone. The second for an Adaptation, something not initially thought of as a movie.

Since 1994, there have been some absolutely groundbreaking scripts written, several of which have actually changed movies for the better forever. Those are the ones I tried to capture here. Surely, there are many more than ten great scripts in the past twenty years, but these are the ones that meant something to me, and, from my perspective, movies, in general.