Reaction Shots

“ Pa inting..is an instrument of war.” - Picasso “Shut up and act (or write or play football or do anything but talk about political issues)” - Too many people who know nothing about art or politics. I didn’t really do much to celebrate the Academy Awards this year because my mind has been elsewhere. That said, I did see all of the best picture nominees and a few others, but if I’m honest, I’ve weighed in on the movies I genuinely cared about. Well, except   Nickel Boys , which was gripping and used first-person camerawork to good effect.  Emilia Pérez was a disappointment that I’ll have more to say about, below, as well. I feel I should at least give these films some due. They made it to the nominations and while one is more engaging and challenging than the other, I’m reluctant to completely dismiss the other.  More to the point is that I didn’t watch the show this year. I checked out Conan O’Brien’s monologue and enjoyed it well enough, but I figured I’d catch the win...

What a load of sap that was! I’ll cut to the chase; Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise and that’s fine. He is in many ways something of a lingering echo of a bygone Hollywood. I’ll return to more thoughts about Tom later. Let’s take a quick look at another movie in the running for Best Picture. Is it bad that, out of the gate, I started laughing? The first notes of “Danger Zone” and I was dying to see a cameo by Sterling Archer. Having said that, though, a lot of the grinning I did do was based on a kind of fondness for watching a film that accomplished what it set out to do. In this regard,  “Top Gun: Maverick” is not so very different from “Cocaine Bear.” It is, by turns, rousing, and by other turns, actually kind of touching. Let me be clear: I did not like “Top Gun”; I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hated it, but I didn’t like it. Tony Scott’s opus was peak Reagan Era militaristic, jingo-ridden bullshit with the barest sketches of characters populating a vapid, arid pl...

I wouldn’t say that any of these are bad films. “King Richard” is the weakest of the three and if I sound like I’m judging harshly, it is because of all the nominees for “Best Picture”, it has, despite a great performance at the center and strong ones all around, the weakest showing as a film. I realized that as of this writing, I have seen most of the nominees for Best Picture for the 2022 Academy Awards and I feel it incumbent on me to do the write thing. I know it’s a lousy pun. Sue me. I loved “CODA”, really liked “Belfast”, and admired Will Smith’s performance in “King Richard”, though the movie overall didn’t completely resonate with me (and it’s a good film!) Given that parenthetical remark, maybe it’s not out of place to remind ourselves that we can experience a work of art, a film, a concert, and while recognizing its merits, it may just not completely takes us by storm. I think I’ve said elsewhere that criticism often reveals more about the critic than the work under revi...