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Film Lists

How to Stream All the 2020 Oscar Winning Movies

Its not too late to find out what all the hype is about.

Hair Love | Oscar®-Winning Short Film (Full) | Sony Pictures Animation
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The Academy Awards have the power to cement certain films into our collective cultural consciousness.

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FILM

#ByeOscars: Media Outlets Are Finally Starting to Boycott the Oscars

#ByeOscars

Warner Bros.

The Oscars are bullsh*t, and it's hard to understand why anybody watches them anymore.

I say this as someone who absolutely adores movies. Heck, I majored in film and I write about entertainment every single day. But for the life of me, I just don't get why anybody who isn't a Hollywood celebrity would care about such a masturbatory award show.

Theoretically, an Academy Award should be the highest honor in film––an award given to the year's absolute best movie, as chosen by the people who best understand the medium. In practice though, the Academy is overwhelmingly white (84%) and male (69%), chock full of racist opinions, and heavily influenced by whichever movie's marketing team runs the most expensive Oscar campaign.

Want to hear a Hollywood secret? A large chunk of voters don't even watch every movie, especially for less high-profile categories like "Best Short Film (Live Action)." The truth is that, like many other things in America, the Oscars boil down to who has the most money and the most power.

Green Book winning "Best Picture" last year––the same year that Boots Riley's incredible Sorry to Bother You wasn't even nominated––should have absolutely crushed whatever faith anyone still held in the Academy's taste. Then again, Sorry to Bother You was a confrontational fable about racism and classism written from a black POV, and Green Book was a white guy's reassurance to other white guys that "I have a black friend" is a valid defense. It's no wonder the Academy loved it.

Thankfully, in 2020, some media outlets have finally had enough.

In a statement released by Bitch Media titled "#ByeOscars," the Bitch Media team explained why they are officially boycotting the Oscars. "Once again, the Academy Awards is white as ever, even as the ceremony is touted as the pinnacle of a production or an actor's success...Having a single year (or two) where the nomination pool is more diverse doesn't account for a long history of nominating white, straight people at the expense of people from oppressed communities, so why should we cover a ceremony that shuts out the communities we serve over and over again?"

The Mary Sue followed suit with a post titled "We're Joining Bitch Media in Boycotting the 2020 Oscars." Rallying behind #ByeOscars, The Mary Sue stated, "While we'll discuss any emerging issues surrounding the awards and are ardent in our support of Parasite and JojoRabbit, the Academy's failure to nominate more than one person of color (Cynthia Erivo for Harriet) in its sprawling acting categories, or any women for its top directing award, shows how out-of-touch the Oscars remain."

Plenty of other female media professionals agree.

Well, for what it's worth, this white male Internet writer agrees, too. To be clear, Parasite absolutely deserves "Best Picture" this year, by a longshot. I doubt that the Academy's voting body will allow an international film made by a non-white director to win the top award in their "Western Media Supremacy" circlej*rk, but I'd like to be wrong. Bong Joon-ho deserves all the accolades he can get. But even if I am wrong, even if Parasite really is the first ever international film to win "Best Picture," the larger point stands.

In many ways, boycotting the Oscars is an act of solidarity with underrepresented people who the Academy continues to ignore. By refusing to watch, acknowledge, or report on the winners, we can show the Academy that if they insist on upholding a majority-white hegemony, then they risk losing whatever influence we give them in the larger social sphere. Everything in Hollywood runs on money, and a large chunk of that money is based on perceived clout. If we take that clout away by refusing to engage, viewership numbers decrease, and profits do too.

The Academy Awards are no longer relevant, and despite the fact that movies are one of my biggest passions in life, I won't be tuning in.

#ByeOscars

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The Golden Globes Still Pretend Female Directors Don't Exist

The Best Director nominations for the 77th Golden Globes completely omit women, but who's surprised?

Photo by: Official website of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association® and the Golden Globe® Awards

Today, the nominations for the 77th Annual Golden Globes were unveiled.

It was a good year for Netflix productions, Scorcese, and Tarantino, but history has repeated itself in that women are, yet again, entirely absent from the Best Director category and immensely underrepresented throughout.

The Best Director nominees are Bong Joon-ho for Parasite, Sam Mendes for 1917, Todd Phillips for Joker, Martin Scorsese for The Irishman, and Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. (Other categories, including Best Motion Picture and Best Screenplay, were significantly male-leaning.) But as always, it's not like women haven't flashed their directing chops this year. Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers), Lulu Wang (The Farewell), Olivia Wilde (Booksmart), Greta Gerwig (Little Women), and Alma Har'el (Honey Boy) are all deserving of nominations at the very least—hey, that's enough to fill the entire category! Nominate them all!

Though the Golden Globes' glaring ignorance towards women hurts, it sadly doesn't come as a shock. Barbra Streisand is the sole woman to ever win Best Director in over seven decades of the Golden Globes; only four others have been nominated. Looks like Natalie Portman's viral call-out while presenting at the 2018 Golden Globes will remain evergreen.

Natalie Portman Notes the All-Male Director Nominees

Awards ceremony celebrating the best in TV and film; Seth Meyers hosts; Oprah Winfrey receives the 2018 Cecil B. de Mille Award.

Check out the very manly nominees below.

Best Motion Picture – Drama

"The Irishman" (Netflix)

"Marriage Story" (Netflix)

"1917" (Universal)

"Joker" (Warner Bros.)

"The Two Popes" (Netflix)


Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama

Cynthia Erivo ("Harriet")

Scarlett Johansson ("Marriage Story")

Saoirse Ronan ("Little Women")

Charlize Theron ("Bombshell")

Renée Zellweger ("Judy")


Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama

Christian Bale ("Ford v Ferrari")

Antonio Banderas ("Pain and Glory")

Adam Driver ("Marriage Story")

Joaquin Phoenix ("Joker")

Jonathan Pryce ("The Two Popes")


Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

"Dolemite Is My Name" (Netflix)

"Jojo Rabbit" (Fox Searchlight)

"Knives Out" (Lionsgate)

"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (Sony)

"Rocketman" (Paramount)


Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

Ana de Armas ("Knives Out")

Awkwafina ("The Farewell")

Cate Blanchett ("Where'd You Go, Bernadette")

Beanie Feldstein ("Booksmart")

Emma Thompson ("Late Night")


Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

Daniel Craig ("Knives Out")

Roman Griffin Davis ("Jojo Rabbit")

Leonardo DiCaprio ("Once Upon a Time in Hollywood")

Taron Egerton ("Rocketman")

Eddie Murphy ("Dolemite Is My Name")


Best Motion Picture – Animated

"Frozen 2" (Disney)

"How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World" (Universal)

"The Lion King" (Disney)

"Missing Link" (United Artists Releasing)

"Toy Story 4" (Disney)


Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language

"The Farewell" (A24)

"Les Misérables" (Amazon)

"Pain and Glory" (Sony Pictures Classics)

"Parasite" (Neon)

"Portrait of a Lady on Fire" (Neon)


Best Actress in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture

Kathy Bates ("Richard Jewell")

Annette Bening ("The Report")

Laura Dern ("Marriage Story")

Jennifer Lopez ("Hustlers")

Margot Robbie ("Bombshell")


Best Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture

Tom Hanks ("A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood")

Anthony Hopkins ("The Two Popes")

Al Pacino ("The Irishman")

Joe Pesci ("The Irishman")

Brad Pitt ("Once Upon a Time in Hollywood")


Best Director – Motion Picture

Bong Joon-ho ("Parasite")

Sam Mendes ("1917")

Todd Phillips ("Joker")

Martin Scorsese ("The Irishman")

Quentin Tarantino ("Once Upon a Time in Hollywood")


Best Screenplay – Motion Picture

Noah Baumbach ("Marriage Story")

Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won ("Parasite")

Anthony McCarten ("The Two Popes")

Quentin Tarantino ("Once Upon a Time in Hollywood")

Steven Zaillian ("The Irishman")


Best Original Score – Motion Picture

Alexandre Desplat ("Little Women")

Hildur Guðnadóttir ("Joker")

Randy Newman ("Marriage Story")

Thomas Newman ("1917")

Daniel Pemberton ("Motherless Brooklyn")


Best Original Song – Motion Picture

"Beautiful Ghosts" ("Cats")

"I'm Gonna Love Me Again" ("Rocketman")

"Into the Unknown" ("Frozen 2")

"Spirit" ("The Lion King")

"Stand Up" ("Harriet")


Best Television Series – Drama

"Big Little Lies" (HBO)

"The Crown" (Netflix)

"Killing Eve" (BBC America)

"The Morning Show" (Apple TV Plus)

"Succession" (HBO)


Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama

Jennifer Aniston ("The Morning Show")

Olivia Colman ("The Crown")

Jodie Comer ("Killing Eve")

Nicole Kidman ("Big Little Lies")

Reese Witherspoon ("The Morning Show")


Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama

Brian Cox ("Succession")

Kit Harington ("Game of Thrones")

Rami Malek ("Mr. Robot")

Tobias Menzies ("The Crown")

Billy Porter ("Pose")


Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy

"Barry" (HBO)

"Fleabag" (Amazon)

"The Kominsky Method" (Netflix)

"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" (Amazon)

"The Politician" (Netflix)


Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy

Christina Applegate ("Dead to Me")

Rachel Brosnahan ("The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel")

Kirsten Dunst ("On Becoming a God in Central Florida")

Natasha Lyonne ("Russian Doll")

Phoebe Waller-Bridge ("Fleabag")


Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy

Michael Douglas ("The Kominsky Method")

Bill Hader ("Barry")

Ben Platt ("The Politician")

Paul Rudd ("Living with Yourself")

Ramy Youssef ("Ramy")


Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

"Catch-22″ (Hulu)

"Chernobyl" (HBO)

"Fosse/Verdon" (FX)

The Loudest Voice (Showtime)

"Unbelievable" (Netflix)


Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Kaitlyn Dever ("Unbelievable")

Joey King ("The Act")

Helen Mirren ("Catherine the Great")

Merritt Wever ("Unbelievable")

Michelle Williams ("Fosse/Verdon")


Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Christopher Abbott ("Catch-22")

Sacha Baron Cohen ("The Spy")

Russell Crowe ("The Loudest Voice")

Jared Harris ("Chernobyl")

Sam Rockwell ("Fosse/Verdon")


Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Patricia Arquette ("The Act")

Helena Bonham Carter ("The Crown")

Toni Collette ("Unbelievable")

Meryl Streep ("Big Little Lies")

Emily Watson ("Chernobyl")


Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Alan Arkin ("The Kominsky Method")

Kieran Culkin ("Succession")

Andrew Scott ("Fleabag")

Stellan Skarsgård ("Chernobyl")

Henry Winkler ("Barry")

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FILM

Stop Listening to Film Kids: "The Lighthouse" Is Actually Really Bad

Can we just get some feminine energy in a movie?

The Lighthouse

Last night, sitting in a full-for-a-Monday movie theatre, munching on lukewarm popcorn, I was struck by an odd wave of nostalgia as the first few frames of Roger Eggers' The Lighthouse flashed monochromatically across the screen.

The film tells the story of two weathered men, Ephraim (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas (Willem Dafoe), who have been tasked with keeping a lighthouse, located on the edge of nowhere, running for four weeks. Thomas, the older man, soon proves to be manipulative and short-tempered, bossing the withdrawn Ephraim around and intentionally provoking him. He also refuses to let Ephraim into the light at the top of the lighthouse, causing Ephraim to fixate on gaining access. As the claustrophobic film progresses, tensions rise and the audience begins to wonder which man will lose his mind first. The movie features voracious masturbation scenes, ample violence, disturbing imagery, and even a glance at a mermaid vagina.

The Lighthouse

At first, I thought I was merely reminded of the black and white films of my youth—before quickly remembering that I'm 23-years-old, and the movies of my youth were in full color and featured Third Eye Blind soundtracks, not this string-heavy score playing over images of Willem Dafoe with a tangled beard. But still, I couldn't shake the feeling that, somehow, I'd seen this film before. As the sparse 1890's dialogue and long moments of tense, shadowed eye contact played out before me, the source of my deja vu struck me like one of the thousands of crashing waves featured in the film's B-roll.

Let me invite you for a moment to the hallowed halls of Emerson College: a liberal arts university in Boston, Massachusetts that I attended for four years that offers students concentrations in theatre, communications, and, of course, film. There, in the concrete buildings facing the Boston Commons, hundreds of young men congregate every fall to lie about their favorite movie (no one's favorite film is Citizen Kane, it just isn't), learn how to operate a 16 mm Bolex in order to post shaky, otherwise unusable footage on their Instagrams, and, according to them, mature into the next Quentin Tarantino. That's right, this is a school full of Film Kids™.

Film Kids™ can be spotted easily. Just look for cigarette-stained fingers, a sense of having a divine calling that translates to an introverted self-importance, and the tendency to use "Do you act?" as a pickup line at house parties. Film Kids™ also occasionally make films, though of course not nearly as often as they talk about making films. When a film is actually completed—only when the celestial bodies, the Film Kid's™ parents' credit cards, and the schedule of that one hot acting major all align—there are a few things you can be certain of about said film:

1. There will be no shortage of heavy-handed symbolism (ex. I once saw a student film in which all the female characters wore large phalluses outside their clothes to represent…something, probably.)

2. It will be shot in black and white. Why? Because ART, that's why.

3. There will be a naked woman, even if a female character doesn't appear at any other point in the film.

4. It will, 9 times out of 10, center on some sort of masculine identity crisis.

5. There will be A LOT of close ups on tense faces.

6. The male protagonists will be set up sympathetically, even if they are inherently unsympathetic.

7. There will be several fight scenes.

As I sat watching The Lighthouse, I realized that I had seen this film before, many times, just with a much lower budget and much less famous actors. This was the film that every kid with the beanie made and insisted I see. This was the film that a junior made for his directing class and subsequently invited me to play the role of "girl who lies naked in bed beside protagonist when he receives important phone call in middle of the night." This was every student film made by a white male I'd ever seen during my years at Emerson.

Indeed, Eggers' sophomore film is so heavily stylized, so completely self-important, so steeped in masculine energy, that I was almost tempted to review it positively, in the exact same way I was tempted to tell that beanie wearing Film Kid™ that I loved his movie. Why? Because Film Kids™, like Eggers, have the ability to make non-Film Kids™ feel like they should have loved their work, as if the blatant symbolism and gratuitous, arrogant visual composition must be good because they're just so...much.

The Lighthouse


The Lighthouse practically shouts its themes in your face: sexual repression, guilt, isolation, violent tension turning erotic and then violent again, not to mention the countless allusions to Greek myths, specifically Proteus and Prometheus. But when you start to unpack what exactly all of these cinematic devices come together to say, you inevitably come up with some vague bullsh*t answer about a lighthouse representing an erect appendage and light representing freedom from oneself, or maybe coming or something. Frankly, what the film does offer by way of meaning could have easily been gleaned from the trailer.

While there are plenty of positive things about The Lighthouse, including its masterful creation of tension, often excellent acting from Dafoe and Pattinson, and the film's ability to immerse its audience in a shadowy, grey world of harsh elements, all of this is overshadowed by the extraordinary self-importance that infects every moment of the movie.

So, as I wish I had told that beanie wearing 19-year-old with the Pulp Fiction poster on his wall when I was a sophomore in college, no, I did not like the film. Even beyond its sense of its own grandeur, there was a feeling of exclusivity to the whole movie, a glorifying of the struggle of the white man that I was excluded from just as surely as I was excluded from my college film department's weird house parties. Sure, the film is meant to depict an insular, isolated world; but, frankly, I'm tired of stories that paint white men as sympathetic victims of a cruel universe. I'm tired of seeing movies where the only woman in the film is naked, beautiful, and half-fish. I'm tired of homoeroticism being depicted as a shameful, often violent, impulse. I'm tired of trying to assign some kind of transcendent meaning to two sad little men spending their time making love to holes in their mattresses. I'm tired of having to pretend that I like Film Kids™' weird inaccessible, and pretentious movies.

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"Dolemite Is My Name" Revives Two Icons of Cinema

Murphy's performance as Rudy Ray Moore is his best work in decades.

Eddie Murphy is funny...right?

I mean, I know I loved The Nutty Professor as a kid, though I probably wouldn't go back to it. Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, and Coming to America are all classics—I'll always watch at least a few minutes if they're on TV. They also all came out before I was born. Other than that, uh… Mushu? Donkey? Do those really count?


Coming To America (All of the Barbershop Scenes) 1080p HDwww.youtube.com


Back in the '80s, Murphy was considered one of the best working stand-ups, and he became a huge crossover success with a series of timeless comedies. He followed up that success with Norbit, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Meet Dave, and a dozen mediocre family-friendly hits (Bowfinger being the notable exception). But he did not make his name being family-friendly. At his peak, Eddie Murphy was crass, real, and raw. It became too easy, as time went on, to write him off as a sell-out—another bland Hollywood comedian slotting into the wacky dad role—but Eddie Murphy is better than that. And Dolemite Is My Name, which started streaming on Netflix last Friday, is the perfect vehicle to remind us of that.

The story follows the true story of a blaxploitation icon, with Murphy portraying Rudy Ray Moore, an aging would-be entertainer who's working in a record store, running from a share-cropping childhood, and still clinging to the scraps of his ambition. He wanted to be a comedian, singer, and actor, but the work he started doing to support his passions soon became his permanent gig, and everything else fell away. The only creative work he does now is a little sanitized stand-up that no one cares about while opening for his friend's band. And while his arc is all about embracing escapism, the world Moore inhabits is realer than any world depicted in Murphy's previous movies.

South Central Los Angeles in the early 70s was faded from the heyday of Jazz and populated by homeless men with ravaged faces. In this environment, Moore is the paunchy, balding everyman who's continuously clawing and fighting for some recognition, some new avenue for making something of himself. The inevitability of Moore's failure seems obvious to everyone but him. Snoop Dogg, playing the record store DJ who refuses to put Moore's old singles into rotation, tells him that "we missed our shots." And Moore laments to his friend, "When did my life become so small?" It's at this point that Moore finds an act that can direct this energy into something empowering: a strutting, signifying, make-believe pimp named Dolemite.


Dolemite is his name, and f*cking up motherf*ckers is his game. He is the stuff of African American folklore, constructed out of the rhyming braggadocio recited by the homeless man who begs in the record store. He's a sexual dynamo so potent he can bring "a she-elephant to tears" and literally bring down the ceiling of the bedroom where he's plying his trade. Blended with the inherent toxicity of a pimp with a "stable" of kung fu-whores, is the embrace of absurdity and the obvious artifice of the hyper-masculine front.


Dolemite! THE SIGNIFYING MONKEYwww.youtube.com


He is an afro wig and a colorful suit, a driving beat and a pile of machismo in rhyming couplets. A synthesis of badass bravado that's halfway between fantasy and caricature. Is he Shaft, or is he Austin Powers? Dolemite resists the idea that there should be a difference, and for a community that is struggling and suffering, he provides a foul-mouthed catharsis—rejecting the norms and conventions of what's polite and acceptable.

He is not a nice man telling "family stories," as Moore's aunt says admiringly of Bill Cosby, nor does Moore have any ambition to make the kind of stodgy, staid white comedy that alienate him and his friends when they go to see The Front Page in a theater full of white people. Dolemite says and does whatever he wants, as only a caricature can, and he empowers Moore to push past all the people telling him that there's no audience for anything so vulgar.



As the movie progresses, Dolemite's act evolves from a night-club act to a series of hit albums, and finally to his immortalized action-comedy heroism. He overcomes every gatekeeper who tells him no, and delivers escapism in the form of kung fu, comedy, explosions, and nudity. He never sanitizes or tones it down. He doesn't make a mediocre, family-friendly comedy. He goes all out and produces the rhythmic, rhyming and norm-deriding foundations of rap, and a quintessential piece of absurd cinema that went on to birth seven sequels.



Moore, who passed in 2008, could hardly have hoped for a better representation than Eddie Murphy gives him here. And in his sweet, sensitive and hilarious portrayal of Moore, Murphy pays homage to his own bold and vulgar roots, while tapping into a realism he's never touched before. Clearly, Dolemite is not the only cinematic icon this movie has restored.

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Best Emmys Moment: Kardashians Heckled

Is the Kardashian dynasty finally ending?

Kim Kardashian

Photo by Evan Agostini

Love them or hate them, you have to respect the Kardashians for managing to keep the American public enthralled with their lives and careers for over a decade.

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