by Ken Bakely
A mostly solid (though sometimes oddly paced) Oscars ceremony came through in the end, with a jaw-droppingly thrilling and history-making finale in the form of a victory for Parasite.
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Thoughts on stuff.
BLOG: 2020 Oscar Nomination Predictions
by Ken Bakely
Off we go into another awards season. It seems like many of the categories at this year’s Oscars are defined by a set of heavy frontrunners, followed by one or two wild card positions, where any one of many contenders could sneak their way in on Monday morning. This makes it both fun and challenging to predict, as we try to read both the tea leaves offered to us by guild precursors, and intuition about where Academy voters’ tastes might lie, to make (at least somewhat) informed predictions of what this year’s nominations will look like. There are ample opportunities for excitement and surprise.
As always, I will be offering my nomination predictions in some of the top categories. For each category, I will rank the top contenders based on my perceived likelihood of the nomination, with one potential spoiler (or two for Best Picture, since there can be up to twice as many nominees there as in other categories).
After the nominees are announced, I will go back and edit this column, tallying my scores and offering my thoughts. These additional notes will be listed in blue.
And with that, here we go.
UPDATE (January 13): My scores and reactions have now been added in blue.
The Year in Review – 2019
by Ken Bakely
Another year has gone by, as has another decade. While other, more seasoned critics can surely offer far more meaningful and detailed evaluations of the last ten years, it’s certainly apparent to me that the 2010s have ushered in wide transformations in how movies are made and viewed, and I will comment on one particular portion of that change in this column. But this isn’t a decade-best countdown – making a list for just one year provides me enough overthinking as it is – just a place to single out the movies of the past 12 months that have moved and impacted me the most.
BLOG: Three Movies from the First Half of 2019, Reviewed
by Ken Bakely
Now that we’re about halfway through the year, the time has come to look back on the last six months. This week, I caught up with three critically acclaimed 2019 films that I had not yet seen. Here, you can read my short-ish reviews of them.
A Host of Surprises: Thoughts on the 91st Academy Awards
by Ken Bakely
Throughout the tumultuous sprawl of this Oscar season – specifically in conjunction with the actual production of the Oscar ceremony itself – I’ve had a lot of changes of heart with past opinion. My belief that the show should be as short as possible was challenged when the Academy tried to grotesquely edit the program’s schedule to make that happen. The kind of time-cutting measures I once thought I wanted turned out to feel disastrous and unbecoming of an evening intended to celebrate all aspects of film production. But as reliably as the Academy introduced bad ideas, they seemed pretty consistent at walking them back after they incurred tremendous backlash. By the time Oscar Sunday rolled around, the only remaining question mark going in was the lack of a host. Countless jokes were made about the calamitous 1989 Oscars, the last to go without an emcee, and the embarrassing musical numbers used to fill up space that year. And as Sunday’s show began with an otherwise stirring performance by Queen and Adam Lambert – which ended up serving as an immediate reminder that Bohemian Rhapsody, an aggressively mediocre concert film directed by Bryan Singer, was nominated for five Academy Awards (and would go on to win four of them) – it felt like anything could happen.
BLOG: Fyre Sale
by Ken Bakely
It seems like some kind of bizarrely fitting joke – the kind of of-course onslaught that seemed to mirror the source material’s surreal slew of events – that two documentaries about the ill-fated Fyre Festival would premiere the same week. Watched in tandem, the collective surrealism of their anecdotes presents a distorted, funhouse mirror effect of the combined input of social media advertising, a voyeuristic pleasure that many took in watching the affluent-millennial-aimed music festival crash and burn, and the delusions of grandeur that were behind the scheme in the first place. Both Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason’s Fyre Fraud, and Chris Smith’s Fyre, rightly paint the festival’s creator – venture capitalist Billy McFarland – as a con artist, but his actions are viewed differently in a broader spectrum, thus creating interesting fodder for how even the slightest changes in filmmaking approaches and access create radically different narratives. They present fascinatingly mounted investigations, but neither comes close to the sweeping conclusions that they aim for – though that’s not to say that they don’t each have their share of evocative achievements as they pursue their own ideologies, and have an odd synergy when taken together.
BLOG: 2019 Oscar Nomination Predictions
by Ken Bakely
Another year, another awards season. And this one has been particularly chaotic: from upset wins to wide arrays of controversies, it’s impossible to tell exactly who or what is in the lead for many of the big prizes in this year’s Oscar race. But tomorrow, the nominees will be announced and we’ll know who our finalists are. As with every year, I’ve compiled some predictions for the top categories. They’re ranked by my estimated likelihood of nomination. Listed are my predicted five (or ten for Best Picture), plus one possible contender that could upset (or two for Best Picture).
Without further ado, let’s get started.
UPDATE (January 23): Like last year, I have added my accuracy score and initial thoughts on the final nominees to each category. Continue reading
The Year in Review – 2018
by Ken Bakely
You can’t say that 2018 was a particularly relaxing year. But looking at the year’s pop culture, it was certainly one that showed how better representation can wield positive results that have clear social value and make a strong mark on the cultural discussion, as movies like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians proved. Female directors and/or directors of color were at the helm for many of 2018’s most acclaimed features: from films as varied from If Beale Street Could Talk to Sorry to Bother You, and Shirkers to Madeline’s Madeline, this year took big steps in employing a wide diversity of voices and perspectives in filmmaking. Certainly more work is needed on this front, but it will be exciting to see what more progress can be made in the years to come. As Hollywood Reporter writer Rebecca Sun pointed out, diversity isn’t a passing trend or buzzword: it’s a reality that has simply been ignored for too long. And even though this year has dealt its share of dismaying setbacks for all the leaps forward made, I thought I would use this post as an opportunity to celebrate what has been accomplished on film, and what gives me hope for a brighter future.
BLOG: For Your Consideration – 5 Underseen Movies from 2018
by Ken Bakely
As the end of 2018 approaches, critics everywhere are drawing up lists and countdowns to commemorate the year in movies. While I plan to compile a traditional top 10 list, I still have a few 2018 releases to catch up on, and so I’m not ready to debut it just yet. However, I would like to take this opportunity to share capsule reviews on five movies from the past year that I didn’t have the chance to write full reviews for, but would strongly recommend seeking out before you fill out your own retrospectives for the year. They’re listed in alphabetical order.
BLOG: What Makes the Kids Alright
I’m about to talk about two recent coming of age movies, and neither of them are Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird. Though I do mention it a few times, it’s not the primary focus of this column, and the sole purpose of this image and caption is to remind you to watch Lady Bird if you have not already.
by Ken Bakely
I’ve recently caught up with two of 2018’s most discussed coming of age films – Greg Berlanti’s Love, Simon and Vince Marcello’s The Kissing Booth – and, beyond the notion that the quality of the two films are intensely disparate, it provides a point of interest in the contemporary thematic and aesthetic expectations of movies about teenagers.
There’s a misconception that movies about, and made for, teenagers are a one-size-fits-all proposition. Looking at them from a more literal level, yes, they’re mostly set in high school, about tumultuous social relationships, and carry a gentle set of problems; depicting the low-stakes, high-tension rapid gossip spread through locker-clad hallways that anyone who’s graduated thanks God that they no longer have to deal with. And when Lady Bird, a classically molded coming of age movie which carries the format to such ecstatic heights that it rode its way to a Best Picture nomination, has caused such a splash in the film world, perhaps there’s a bit of subconscious attention directed to what this subgenre means.
