Belle (2021) – ***½ (The original Japanese title, 竜とそばかすの姫/Ryū to Sobakasu no Hime, translates to “The Dragon and the Freckled Princess.”) You may hear Belle described as an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast and assume that the title – the name of the main character’s virtual-reality avatar – is a reference to it. But…
Month: January 2022
Awards Season 2021-22: PGA, DGA, WGA, and ACE Eddie Nominations
Today’s the big day for the guilds. Three of the four most important precursors are announcing today. Obviously the BAFTA nominations next week will help us even more, but this should shore up a few front-runners…and possibly clear out a few also-rans. We’ll start with the producers, who nominated ten films: Being the Ricardos Belfast…
Cannonborough Raspberry Mint Review
Yes, it’s time for the first soda review of the year. Why is it time? I don’t know. I just know that it is. The sodas I’ve got in my fridge have been waiting a while. I do hope they’re not flat. But I’m reviewing them regardless. And I’m starting with another of Cannonborough’s unusual…
The Weekly Gravy #73
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn/Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc (2021) – **** Bad Luck Banging is the kind of film Adam McKay wishes he was making and is more genuinely daring and incisive than Vice and Don’t Look Up put together. (I’ll still defend The Big Short.) I’m being bluntly provocative, but we’re…
Awards Season 2021-22: Awards Round-Up 1/17
It’s Monday, which means a lot more critics’ awards! This will actually be the last big batch of them; a few more groups have yet to announce, but I may wait a few weeks to make sure I get them all. Anyhow, this week we’ve got 10 more groups: African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA)…
The Weekly Gravy #72
This will probably end up being a shorter post than usual, since I was busy or out of town most of the weekend, and didn’t watch any movies (well, I watched about half of the Judy Garland A Star is Born) until Tuesday. It happens. The Lost Daughter (2021) – ***½ I went into The…
Awards Season 2021-22: SAG Awards Nominations
The Screen Actors Guild announced their nominations this morning. And in the parlance of our time, they chose violence. Let’s just start sorting through this mess with… Actor in a Leading Role: Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog Andrew Garfield, tick…tick…Boom! Will Smith, King Richard Denzel Washington, The Tragedy…
Awards Season 2021-22: Awards Round-Up 1/10
Another week, another batch of awards to go over. This week, we’ve got: Chicago Indie Critics (CIC) Critics Association of Central Florida (CACF) Columbus Film Critics Association (COFCA) DiscussingFilm Critics Association (DFCA) North Carolina Film Critics Association (NCFCA) National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) Oklahoma Film Critics Circle (OFCC) San Diego Film Critics Society (SDFCS)…
Awards Season 2021-22: 79th Golden Globes Winners
How’s this for a start: I totally forgot the Globes were tonight until someone posted the hilariously inappropriate tweet above (shared by the official Globes account!) on Facebook. I won’t say I had better things to do, but I won’t say I didn’t. Anyhow, let’s go over the winners right quick: Motion Picture – Drama:…
The Weekly Gravy: 2021
To keep the main page for Weekly Gravy posts from becoming unmanageably large, I’m putting all the posts that went up in 2021 – #s 21 through 70 – here: #21: The Moment of Truth, The Jet Benny Show, Hello Down There, The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood, News of the World, Paths of Glory, King Kong (1933)…
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