I also thought The Post ended up being somehow underrated. When it got middling reviews I took that as code for "probably sucks," because - between the subject matter and the lead actors - that movie was specifically built as one for critics to line up and give it a tongue-bath, and for whatever reason they just chose not to. I enjoyed it a lot.

I really enjoyed Once Upon A Time in Hollywood & Ford v Ferrari, although I'd agree the latter isn't "special".

Yes, The Shape of Water being a best picture winner is ridiculous.

2011 is fantastic, if you ever feel like goin back and watching I'd recommend all of- The Black Swan, The King's Speech, 127 Hours, The Fighter, Inception, The Social Network, True Grit, Toy Story 3, and Winter's Bone. LOL I guess that's all but one, and most people seem to enjoy The Kids Are Alright, but I'm not the biggest fan. I'm sure you've seen plenty of them, but if you happened to miss any I'd def give em a look bc that's an elite collection of films.

There's one I'll never understand. Don't get me wrong I thought Lady Bird was enjoyable, but I don't see what makes it SO much better than all the other good/great coming of age dramadies. For example, "Shithouse" that came out very recently is one of the best coming of age movies I've seen in a long, long time, and it won't get 1% the recognition Lady Bird has.

There was a time when I was going to start making a point of back-filling all of my film-watching resume to include the major Oscar nominees from the many years I've missed, but it's a project I didn't stick with. I should really get back to it. There's clearly a bunch of great movies out there I just haven't bothered to get to yet.

Of that 2011 crop, I loved the True Grit remake and Toy Story 3. Inception and Social Network were not as great for me, though I feel like I watched Inception in a distracted state and owe it another watch.

BTW I hated when they increased the number of Best Picture nominees from 5 to 8. It’s basically nomination inflation where all that happened was adding 3 more jobber films that have no chance to win.

Yeah, fully agree. I don't like that either.

By the way, the movie Boyhood was pure nothingness and it was strange to me that the Academy allowed themselves to be bullied into recognizing it simply because of the gimmick of the film being shot over a number of years.

What the hell was the plot?

A boy is growing up.
Okay, what happens?
Well, his parents don't have a great marriage, and they end up getting divorced.
Okay.
Mom starts dating some other guys.
What happens with them?
Well they're flawed in various ways, and the kid doesn't really get along with them.
I...okay, so?
When the parents split, the dad was bad about being around. But then he becomes better about being around.
Sounds pretty common.
Yeah, but then the boy becomes a teenager. Over time, he experiments with drugs and alcohol, and also becomes interested in girls.
...you could have stopped at "becomes a teenager."
Okay, but then he's going to go to college!
Oh, is that where the plot kicks in? What happens next?
The credits roll. That's the whole movie.
...

I feel like a lot of enjoyment is lost when not seeing a Nolan film in IMAX, too.

I should start knocking off the last decade of Best Picture nominees. Maybe seen a quarter of them.

I don't give a flying **** about guns, car chases, explosions, super heroes. Haven't even seen Black Panther and that's supposedly pretty good.

Lately I really enjoy stuff set 100-200 years ago. What a curious time on the Earth.

Not for me. I get that others get a lot out of a movie's visuals, but that's just really low on my list of priorities in enjoying a movie.

It looks like I saw almost every Best Picture nominee from 2015 through 2018, the one exception being Lion for some reason. I haven't seen that much from the 2010 through 2014 nominees. Also haven't seen anything from the nominee classes of 2019 through 2021.

I've had periods where I get really into binge-watching TV shows and I guess have mostly left movies for dead during those times.

Alright, I watched Nomadland.

For the first half of it, I was borderline miserable attempting to sit through it. It did get better from there, but comes nowhere near being a great movie IMO. Touching ending, I'll give it that. My snap-reaction is that, if it is indeed winning tomorrow night, it's a weaker winner even than The Shape of Water.

All of that said, it made me happy to see Wall Drug get randomly spotlighted in a major motion picture.

It's a -600 favorite to win Best Picture.

What boggles my mind even more than that is that it's a -300 favorite to win Adapted Screenplay. It's by far the weakest part of the movie. Hopefully The Father can at least pull an upset there.

Just finished The Trial of the Chicago 7. It was quite enjoyable. If it pulled the upset then I would far prefer that over Nomadland winning, though I understand that it's a big dog.

Even if it did win, I wouldn't regard it as a very strong Best Picture. I say it was "quite enjoyable," but I'd give it like a 7.5/10. Nomadland I think I'd give about a 5.5/10. Maybe a 6? I'm still digesting, but I certainly don't expect to wake up tomorrow and suddenly think it was great.

By the way, I definitely struggled to identify Jeremy Renner in this movie, and finally had to just give up and look up who the **** I was watching since the familiarity of his face was gnawing at me.

I love Renner on Succession. He was very good here too.

Pretty sure you mean Jeremy Strong.

Anyhoo, I thought Trial of the Chicago 7 was okay, but I'm not as big a fan of Sorkin's shtick as many. And the ending was pure cringe.

I guess I'll root for it over Nomadland, especially if the latter wins screenplay and director, because Nomadland is nowhere near good enough to be blessed with "sweeps the Oscars" headlines.

Dammit, yes I meant Jeremy Strong.

I agree about the ending being pretty cringey. I kind of hated everything about that Joseph Gordon-Levitt character even though I didn't have any issue with his acting.

I was like wow I must have missed something because I didn’t remember Jeremy renner in it at all

It was an entertaining movie but it would have never struck me as a best candidate

Yeah, like I said, I don't think it would have been a strong winner, but I just really didn't care for Nomadland. I do think it goes down as the weakest winner I've seen (granting that there are more I haven't seen than those I have).

My "Jeremy Renner" flub is twice as funny since I'm like a week removed from laughing hysterically at someone in OOT writing an extensive post about Dumb and Dumber and repeatedly referencing Jeff Bridges as one of the co-stars.

Anthony Hopkins winning over Chadwick Boseman was Brock Lesnar over The Undertaker level shocking.

Between that and screenplay, clearly the bettors underestimated how much the Academy would like The Father.

I now really need to see that movie.

It really is a great movie.

I may be personally biased because my wife's grandmother had dementia and the screenplay writer either experienced the same thing or really did his homework on the subject.

That said, I'm still LOLing at the producers rearranging everything, bucking the tradition of awarding Best Picture last, only to have Anthony Hopkins win and not even be present for a speech.

Yeah, unfortunately dementia/Alzheimer's has a foothold in my bloodline. My grandma on my mom's side wasted away from it, both of my dad's brothers got it and one is gone now. Those diseases are ugly as hell, and I have to figure that their prevalence in my family means I'll see more of them, and I'll feel fortunate if I dodge that sort of extreme mental deterioration myself some decades down the line.

Watching stuff like that is extremely hard. But I appreciate the art when it's done well, and I won't shy away from watching unpleasant stuff it it's good art. I thought Still Alice was quite good despite being tough to take. Awfully weird to cast Alec Baldwin in the sympathetic husband role though. As a viewer I kept thinking that he would probably start cheating on his Alzheimer's-afflicted wife or something, purely on the basis that he's Alec Baldwin. It was as if the mere casting of Alec Baldwin was some sort of weird red herring meant to throw the audience off.

It's like that, but significantly better and significantly tougher to take.

“Significantly tougher to take” is pretty intimidating. There’s only so much further to go.