Review: "Collateral Beauty"

by Chris Feil

When the aliens discover Earth, long after the ice caps have melted, I hope we leave a time capsule that includes Collateral Beauty to explain ourselves. No seriously: there's something to the film's off-handed cruelty and blasé emotional platitudes that shows how dunderheaded we humans can be. However this is only one of the film's many accidents, coming from its lack of self-awareness rather than its content. Collateral Beauty thinks itself holistic and clever, but its actually deeply, fundamentally stupid.

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Ten Little Linkies

Coming Soon Lin-Manuel Miranda composing an original musical for Sony Animation? Who at Disney lost their grip on him? Mistake!
MNPP Chris Pratt got all banged up
NY Post emotional advice $2
/Film a La La Land scene recreated in Austin Texas

IndieWire reviews Cate Blanchett in Manifesto, a new art film installation 
Variety Ryan Reynolds gets his star on the Walk of Fame and talks about the Green Lantern valley before the Deadpool peak 

List-Mania
Daily Beast Jen Yamato is apparently feeling some rage. Her super violent top ten includes Green Room, The Witch, and Train to Busan
Tracking Board best of everything with lots of Lin-Manuel Miranda and blockbuster hits
Variety names worst movies of the year including right-wing fact-free propaganda "documentaries" and movies you forgot came out this year like The Brothers Grimsby and Nina -- unfortunately they also slam Tate Donovan right and left for his direction of Girl on the Train. Leave Tate Donovan alone, Variety. He doesn't direct and he's in Manchester by the Sea this year, not that thriller. Editor? Anyone?
AP's top ten has the usual suspects La La Land and Moonlight, a few documentaries but mixes it up with The Edge of Seventeen

"Dreamgirls" at 10

by Chris Feil

With La La Land, isn't it great to have a musical out in front again this Oscar race, especially one that brings such joy (sideyeing you specifically, Les Miz)? And as Nathaniel pointed out, that shouldn't be taken for granted.

Ten years ago, Dreamgirls was a more traditional genre high, and ulitmately taught us not to get too comfortable with a musical's Oscar chances after it landed that year's highest nomination tally but missed Best Picture and Director. But maybe that miss resulted from voters tiring of a campaign that started a full year before release, and not from the quality of the film.

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Foreign Film Long List Overachieving Recap!

Tonight or tomorrow -- depending on how quick they are with the press release -- we'll learn which foreign film submissions made the finals for the Oscar nominations. There are always nine. We don't know why they settled on that number as 10 makes more sense (in a 50/50 kind of way) and 15 would make this category more symmetrical with the other specialty category of Documentary Feature. But if you're curious about how the process of whittling all this down works, you should check out Anne Thompson's breakdown.

One thing that's easy to forget about this complex process is that the actual five Oscar nominations that come from this nine-wide finalist list are decided on by yet another panel, one that changes each year and usually includes a few big names: Florence Foster Jenkins co-stars Streep & Grant were both on that final nominating committee last year for example.

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"Paris Is Burning" and "The Breakfast Club" Among National Film Registry's Class of 2016

By Daniel Crooke

Founded in 1988 as a way to protect and preserve the heritage of “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant” American cinema, the Library of Congress has announced their annual list of films to be inducted into their National Film Registry – and it’s packed with inspired choices. While most of the internet is consumed with Top Ten fever as the year winds down, let's detour from the contemporary cinema and take a look at this list of twenty-five classics...

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