Academy Awards 2020 - Predictions

My predictions of the 2020 Academy Awards.

Best motion picture of the year: “Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood”
Best performance by and actor in a leading role: Joaquin Phoenix, “Joker”
Best performance by an actress in a leading role: Renée Zellweger, “Judy”
Best performance by and actor in a supporting role: Brad Pitt, “Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood”
Best performance by and actress in a supporting role: Laura Dern, “Marriage Story”
Best achievement in directing: Sam Mendes, “1917”
Best original screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, “Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood”
Best adapted screenplay: Greta Gerwig, “Little Women”
Best cinematography: Roger Deakins, “1917”
Best achievement in film editing: Andrew Buckland and Michael McCusker, “Ford V Ferrari”
Best achievement in production design: Barbara Ling and Nancy Haigh, “Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood”

Best achievement in costume design: Jacqueline Durran, “Little Women”
Best achievement in makeup and hairstyling: Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan and Vivian Baker, “Bombshell”
Best achievement in music written for motion pictures (original score): Hildur Duđnadóttir, “Joker”
Best achievement in music written for motion pictures (original song): Elton John and Bernie Taupin, (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again, “Rocketman”
Best achievement in sound mixing: Mark Taylor and Stuart Wilson, “1917”
Best achievement in sound editing: Oliver Tarney and Rachael Tate, “1917”

Best achievement in visual effects: Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Matt Aitken and Daniel Sudick, “Avengers: Endgame”
Best documentary feature: “American Factory”
Best documentary short subject: “Learning to Skateboard”
Best animated feature film: “Toy story”
Best animated short film: “Hair Love”
Best live action short film: “Brotherhood”
Best international feature film: “Parasite”

10s Movie Review - Good Boys

Director: Gene Stupnitsky
Genre: Comedy
Runtime: 90 minutes
Year: 2019
Starring: Jacob Tremblay, Keith L. Williams, Brady Noon, Lil Rey Howry, Will Forte

Description: Three 6th grade boys ditch school and embark on an epic journey while carrying accidentally stolen drugs, being hunted by teenage girls, and trying to make their way home in time for a long-awaited party.

Review: “Good Boys” opening credits take you along the walls and across the desk of a boys' room. It's one like so many, with model airplanes, picture frames and toys lying around. When the main actors and production workers are introduced to the public, the image comes to rest with an average boy, about twelve years old, playing games in bed. And as in so many films of this genre, this kid is going to experience an enormously recognizable milestone in his life. A milestone after which everything will be different, and not in the way he had in mind. Max, as he's called, is going to his first kissing party soon.
The film follows a fairly common, and generally quite successful, pattern. Max goes to the kissing party with his two best friends Lucas and Thor, but not before some increasingly unsolvable problems have been overcome. A number of unlikely and recurring friends, enemies and jokes are made, all of which coincide in an insane apotheosis, in “Good Boys” the kissing party, where everything goes slightly different than planned. Put the course of this film next to that of “Superbad” or “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle”, and the similarities are obvious.
The two pillars on which such films rest are the recognizability of the situations and the quality of the jokes. Unfortunately, in “Good Boys” there is a lot to be said for both, although both aspects certainly have their strong points. For example, writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg constantly succeed in making children's experiences recognizable in a playful way. There is nothing in the world as important as that one kissing party. However, this youthful innocence and ignorance are also an important source of jokes. They make fun of the endearing innocence and the bubble the kids are sitting in is pierced repeatedly, usually for a cheap laugh.
At the same time, the second point of criticism: the jokes. In this genre, good humor can keep the whole thing going, regardless of the quality of the rest of the film. Usually the humor is a bit juvenile, but also sharp and on the edge, especially on the edge of good taste. However, the choice of three children as the main characters makes it difficult for the humor to get past the slapstick level. A first kiss and a sneaky sip of beer aren't as outrageous as shooting your virginity or shooting at a police car, although a twelve-year-old might think so. The running gags are good, that is, but not strong enough to keep the whole thing exciting for an hour and a half.

Rating: 2,5 / 5

Movies to Look Forward to - February 2020

January is almost over, so time to look forward to the shortest month of the year.

February 6th – The Lodge
Director: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz
Starring: Riley Keogh, Richard Armitage, Jaeden Martell, Alicia Silverstone
Description: A soon-to-be stepmom (Riley Keogh) is snowed in with her fiancé’s two children at a remote holiday village. Just as relations begins to thaw between the trio, some strange and frightening events take place.

February 19th – The Call of the Wild
Director: Chris Sanders
Starring: Harrison Ford, Karen Gillan, Dan Stevens, Bradley Whitford, Omar Sy
Description: A sled dog struggles for survival in the Alaskan wild.

February 20th – The GentlemenDirector: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Colin Farrell, Michelle Dockery, Henry Golding, Eddie Marsan
Description: A British drug lord tries to sell off his highly profitable empire to a dynasty of Oklahoma billionaires.

February 27th – Underwater
Director: William Eubank
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, T.J. Miller, John Gallagher Jr.
Description: A crew of aquatic researchers work together to get to safety after an earthquake devastates their subterranean laboratory. But the crew has more than the ocen seabed to fear.

10s Movie Review - Man Up

Director: Ben Palmer
Genre: Comedy/ Romance
Runtime: 88 minutes
Year: 2015
Starring: Lake Bell, Simon Pegg, Rory Kinnear, Sharon Morgan, Olivia Williams, Phoebe Waller-Bridger

Description: Single Nancy takes the place of a stranger’s blind date, which leads to finding her perfect boyfriend (Simon Pegg)

I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR MY 2020 MOVIE CHALLENGE.
WEEK 4: A BRITISH COMEDY

Review: A whimsical twist of fate or coincidence is always a tasty entry to a romantic comedy. If at least one of the upcoming lovebirds is deliberately cheating on the whole thing, it's actually even better. The lie is revealed early on in the story, which creates a whole new dynamic between the characters. As far as plot is concerned, the British romcom “Man Up” is not that special, it’s the leads that level it up.
Director Ben Palmer, best known for his television work, was allowed to work on a screenplay by Tess Morris for his second feature film. With “Man Up”, Morris focusses primarily on the blossoming romance between Jack and Nancy. She portrays the female protagonist as a hard to match wallflower who would rather sit in her bathrobe in her hotel room watching “The Silence of the Lambs” while enjoying lots of candy than showing herself at a wedding party with far too happy thirty-somethings.
Once on the train, sighing about the lack of direction and love in her life, she meets the bitchy Jessica who reads a self-help book and especially advises Nancy to take it up herself. She leaves the book, which serves as recognition for her blind date, to Nancy. At London's Waterloo station, Nancy comes into contact with Jessica's date Jack and she decides to break through the rut of her life by playing along with the game while bluffing. It's easy to guess that the two of them feel a huge connection and have a great afternoon and evening ahead of them. With fear and trembling it is looking forward to the moment that Nancy's big secret will come out, just because it all went so well.
The two, played by Lake Bell and Simon Pegg, have great chemistry and they are the heart of the film. Pegg has been one of my favorite comedic actors for a while and he proofs why. But even in this film some jokes just don’t work. The entrance of character Sean, an old classmate of Nancy, add a little ridiculousness to the film. Jokes revolving around him are a bit tasteless at times and a bit silly. Here it feels more like an American comedy. But overall the humor is strong and subtle and the characters are relatable.
“Man Up” is a fun British comedy with charming leads.

Rating: 3,5/ 5

10s Movie Review - Blinded by the Light

Director: Gurinder Chadha
Genre: Music/ Drama/ Comedy
Runtime: 118 minutes
Year: 2019
Starring: Viveik Kalra, Dean-Charles Chapman, Kit Reeve, David Hayman, Kulvinder Ghir, Nikita Mehta, Rob Brydon, Meera Ganatra, Hayley Atwell, Aaron Phagura

Description: In England in 1987, teenager Javed (Viveik Kalra) from an Asian family learns to live his life, understands his family and finds his own voice through the music of American rock star Bruce Springsteen.

Review: Don’t let resistance, adversity and misfortune in life stop you. Don’t give up your dreams and hope, even if they seem so far away. we all have the right to our own lives and feelings. There are just some of the messages Bruce Springsteen has put into his music over the years. It has earned him many dedicated fans worldwide. For the British-Pakistani Sarfraz Manzoor, Bruce became a lifelong inspiration and obsession. “Blinded by the Light” is based on his life, written by him and an ode to both Bruce Springsteen and how we can be connected anywhere in the world through empathy.
Safraz Manzoor, in the flm called Javed, moves to England when he is two-years old. He grows up in Luton, a town in South-East England. He doesn’t have a happy childhood and doesn’t British or Pakistani. Javed doesn’t have any connection with his birth country, but also with the countru he currently lives in. He wants to, but on the one hand there is his strict father, with whom he has a bad relationship and of whom he doesn’t like much. On the other hand there is the racism of white Britons, who call him ‘paki’, piss through the mailbox and once put a pig head on the local mosque.
But then Javed discovers the music of Bruce Springsteen, thanks to a friend. Not a Pakistani Muslim, but a Sikh of Indian descent who had the same identity struggle in the eighties. Bruce Springsteen’s music and especially his lyrics appeal to them so much that they almost feel that he wrote the songs for them. because even though Springsteen is a lot older and comes from America, he writes about universal feelings and themes from his own perspective, in such a way that Javed recognizes himself in it that he becomes an obsessed fan for life. Against the will of his family, Javed want to be a writer and journalist.
Besides a look at the cultural identity of second-generation immigrants and racism in England, “Blinded by the Light” is also mainly an ode to Springsteen and the strong points of his music and poetry. There are as relevant today as they were to Javed in the eighties, while the images of demonstration by the right-wing extremists are strongly reminiscent of similar (neo-) fascist movements today.
Nevertheless, “Blinded by the Light” is a cheerful, even sentimental feel-good film about finding an identity and daring to follow your dreams. Precisely the clichéd feel-good moments at the end of the film, and some of the early quarrels with his father, are fascinating and moving. With “Blinded by the Light” the real-life Javed gives the same hope and joy of life that Bruce Springsteen’s music once gave him.

Rating: 4,5 / 5

TV Show Reviews - Don't F**k with Cats (Limited Docu Series)

Season: Limited Series
Genre: Documentary/ Crime
Number of episodes: 3
Year: 2019
Starring: Deanna Thompson, John Green, Claudette Hamlin, Antonio Paradiso, Anna Yourkin, Benjamin Xu

Description: A group of justice seekers track down a guy who posted a video of him killing kittens.

Review: The three-part true-crime series “Don’t F**c with Cats” has the most effect on people who watch the series without any prior knowledge. Maybe that’s why Netflix launched the series the day before Christmas, relatively low-profile; yet the documentary spread like a social media hype in just a few days.
The title refers to the first rule of the internet, tells casino employee and internet nerd Deanna Thompson, aka Baudi Moovan. Anyone who dares to hurt kittens a hair will be hunted by a driven community that will not rest until the culprit is found.
“Don’t F**k with Cats” director and Emmy-winner Mark Lewis doesn’t show the three gruesome movies in which a perverted young man tortures and kills young kittens. But the suggestion is enough: the viewer immediately understands why the Facebook group that Deanna and her internet friend ‘John Green’ create is doing everything they can to find and punish the perpetrator.
As fully-fledged detectives, they study all the clues offered by the videos: where is that bedspread for sale? Can that vacuum cleaner only be ordered in the US? Is that Russian music we hear in the background? However, the actually insane undertaking degenerates into a real-life manhunt when the deranged animal torturer seems to shift his field of activity by torturing and killing people.
“Don’t F**k with Cats” is, partly due to the avalanche of astonishing archive and news images and the energetic editing, so much more that a three hours of ‘talking heads’ reconstructing an already bizarre enough story itself. Above all, it is a bizarre and bloodcurdling thriller, the outcome of which cannot be guessed until the last moment and which no writer could have invented.
But in the meantime, director Lewis also paints an accurate picture of the pros and cons of the role that the digital world has come to play in our modern lives in a short space of time. Lonely people can, if they join forces behind their computers, actually be able to track down hyperintelligent killers. But at the same time, the world wide web also offers a stage to disturbed people who enjoy all the attention they get. “Don’t F**k with Cats” is one of the best crime docu series I have seen in a long time.

TV Show Review - The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann (Limited Docu Series)

Season: Limited Documentary Series
Genre: Documentary/ Crime/ Drama
Number of episodes: 8
Year: 2019
Starring: Anthony Summer, Gonçalo Amaral, Robbyn Swan, Jim Gamble, Ernie Allen, Robert Murat, Susan Hubbard

Description: “The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann” takes a detailed look at the disappearance of the three-year-old Madeleine McCann, who vanished from he seaside resort of Praia de Luz in Portugal, while on holiday with her family.

Review: May 2007. The then three-year-old girl Madeleine McCann disappeared from an apartment in Praia de Luz. Nobody knows what happened and nobody has an answer to where she is right now. It is the most famous missing persons case ever and every year it is revisited. So in 2019 Netflix came up with the new documentary series: “The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann”. In the series of eight episodes Netflix tries to show all sides of the huge case.
The documentary series consists of eight episode. Each episode tells part of the story. Dozens of people are given the floor: police officers who were investigating at the time, investigators, journalists, eyewitnesses, friends of the family. “The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann” gives a very broad spectrum of varying opinions and discusses possible theories in eac episode. Also, the series is made in chronological order, from the day of her disappearance to where the investigation is now. Each time, the days of how long she has been missing are added up.
It's a true story and everything is shown is based on investigations and statements of witnesses. But because know one knows what really happened to Madeleine McCann, it’s build on speculations, acquisitions and conspiracies. There is no answer to the question of where Madeleine is. But someone knows, as the title of the last episode implies. And that title gave me the chills, because someone on this planet knows what happened to her and where Madeleine is.
It’s a fascinating story, which does drag a bit ever once in a while. It only consists of speculation on what might have happened and who was involved. But it’s especially the feeling of unease that gets you in the end.