I thought I was finished with 2017 films, but any film that involves mostly children that Matt Cale gushes over, certainly gets my attention. The Florida Project is a unique film created by Sean Baker of Tangerine fame. This movie is about Americans who are on the margin of a society of people who live […]

The Breadwinner is an animated movie. I generally avoid this type of movie, but even at my old age I’m trying to broaden my movie-watching horizons. This award winning movie was also nominated for an Oscar for best animated film of 2017. The animation was simple, stunning; the story sobering and terrifying. This film depicts […]

The Death of Stalin is a blistering satire and coal-black comedy that chronicled the actual events surrounding the death of one of the most evil human beings in history. Armando Iannucci created a film that made genocide, gulags, random murder, child rape, high-level paranoia, backstabbing and paralyzing incompetence, all hilarious. After the death of Joseph […]

Ruthless and The Oscars Well, it is almost the time of year that we love to hate. The Oscars. As you know, the Academy seldom gets things right and cannot please everyone. Last year’s Oscar Ceremony was a debacle. Some knuckle-headed accountant was texting instead of taking care of business and threw Warren Beatty under […]

I, Tonya (2017) concludes my movie viewing before the Team Ruthless Oscar article. This was a very good movie with terrific acting. I also conclude that the characters portrayed within this film are a somber portrait of why we have Donald Trump as President. I, Tonya is a hybrid of a documentary, a dark comedy, […]

I have always liked Armie Hammer. Who doesn’t? The last 3 of his movies reviewed were The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Nocturnal Animals and Free Fire. I enjoyed those movies immensely, but nothing prepared me for the masterpiece Call Me By Your Name. Armie was brilliant, but Timothee Chalamet (Lady Bird) owned it as the 17 […]

The Shape of Water has been nominated for an incredible 13 Oscars. That’s about 12 too many. Kevin tried to warn me about this film, but at the urging of a friend, I saw it anyway. Guillermo Del Toro made Pan’s Labyrinth, which was a beautiful film, and one of my favorites. The cinematography in […]

With Phantom Thread we have a movie set in England in the boring 50’s. This is a film about a dressmaker, a very good dressmaker. Reynolds Woodcock was more than just a designer of womens’ dresses. He was a genius, a high level artist, and one who was so good that all sorts of born-rich […]

Molly Blum was not the wife of the fictional Leopold Blum in the unreadable book Ulysses, but a real-life Olympic skier. She was also a daddy-baiting, Freud-hating, and impossibly gorgeous savant with a strange, situational ethics moral compass. Instead of pursuing a career in law or another high-paying discipline, she decided to stick it to […]