PODCAST: Oscars 2021 Round-Up [Movie RobCast]

Episode 114 rounds up the 2021 Oscars.

Yep, the time rolls around so quickly, even if this one was delayed by two months. The Robs run through the scaled-down affair, the changes made from the normal Oscar ceremonies, what worked, what really didn’t work and all in-between.…

PODCAST: Oscar Nominations 2019 [Electric Shadows]

Rob Daniel & Rob Wallis touch the sore tooth that is Oscar nominations 2019.

They discuss the insanity, or at least inanity, of nominating Bohemian Rhapsody for Best Picture, and how safe the Best Picture nods are in general. They’re happy Spike Lee finally has his Best Director nomination, and acknowledge a few other things the Academy got right.…

Youth captures some of the mixed magnificence of life

 

One of the few statements you can make about life as a whole is that it’s much of a muchness— and that it ends.

The counter-intuitively titled Youth sees two older gentlemen, a retired composer and Stravinsky pupil, Frank (Michael Caine), and still-working director (Harvey Keitel), Mick, both coming to terms with this while on holiday at a Swiss spa; a spa inhabited by red-robed Buddhist monks, a Middle Eastern woman in a hijab, a morbidly obese celebrity with a Karl Marx back tattoo and Maradona hair.…

Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s latest, The Revenant, is a bit of an endurance test

Okay, so I have a problem with The Revenant.

It’s not the same issue I had with Argo back in 2012 (a decent retro thriller, not a Best Picture) or even with The Theory of Everything or American Sniper last year (good performances, not much else — also by no means indispensable).…

Trumbo is a barnstorming triumph of cinematic liberalism

 

From Sunset Boulevard to Argo, Hollywood has always been in the business of self-mythologizing.

It’s not often, though, that the industry takes its licks for the mistakes it’s made along the way.

Writ large among them is, of course, the blacklist, which saw scores of talented, Left-leaning film-makers left out in the cold as the paranoia surrounding Communism reached fever pitch.…

Spotlight digs deep and finds light in the darkness

 

Spotlight opens at a police station circa 1976 where representatives of the Church, in conjunction with an Assistant DA, are participating in hushing up one such incident.

“I guess the Father was ‘helping out’”, a stocky old-timer wryly comments to a redheaded rookie as a likely sex offender is ushered into the back of a snow-frosted black sedan and away from prosecution.…

Creed has boxing and cinema in its blood

Few film series have taken the beating in their time that Rocky has.

After a triumphant first bout that launched Sylvester Stallone into the big-time, the series steadily descended into cheesy self-parody. After the judge’s decision of Rocky IV — great villain, hilarious overuse of musical montages — and the knockdown loss of Rocky V — which ended with the Italian Stallion beating some ginger lout in a street brawl — Rocky Balboa allowed the former champ (both the title character and Stallone himself) to make a semi-graceful exit.

Room is a minor masterpiece in microcosm with two miraculous performances

 

We take a lot for granted out in the world.

It’s full of space and objects, enough so that we can overlook just how much “thingness” there is to our everyday existence. Imagine a world then of only ten feet by ten feet, a world where every item has a sense of permanency to it: Bed, Wardrobe, Skylight.…

Rampling and Courtenay shine in 45 Years

 

What do you do when you discover your life is built on a lie — or, if not a life, a truth half-told?

That is the dilemma that Kate Mercer (Charlotte Rampling) finds herself in after 45 years of marriage to Geoff (Tom Courtenay); a childless couple comfortably set in their ways after more than half a lifetime together — closer to two-thirds in fact.…

The Big Short goes long on edudrama and it pays off – magnificently

You wouldn’t think the recent global financial crisis would be the stuff of comedy, but The Big Short makes it funny – and educational, and genuinely moving.

Directed and co-written by frequent Will Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and with an all-star cast, including Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, and Ryan Gosling, The Big Short makes for a highly entertaining (and instructive) study of greed, fraud, and three groups of people who sought to profit from the meltdown before it happened.…