Mike Goes To Movies

Parasite: Ushering In A New Era For The Oscars? Last night's Best Picture win by Parasite was a major milestone for the Academy Awards. It marked the first time in history that a foreign-language film won the Oscars' highest accolade. As many voices are currently discussing, this may be the precursor to a new era of internationalism for the Academy Awards, as well as, for Hollywood and Western cinema.  Firstly, let's just say with certainty that Bong Joon-Ho's Parasite deserved the myriad of awards it received last night: Best International Feature, Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. Notably, making the wins even more special was the fact that it was the first time a South Korean had been nominated for either Best Picture or International Feature. Parasite really is a marvelous film though, and one that should be seen by all. The film is about a 'parasitic' lower-class family who slowly infiltrate an upper-class family through various i...

Free Solo (2018) So, I'm not going to lie here... at no point last night was I comfortable watching this year's Best Documentary winner, Free Solo . Yes, it is an incredible documentary, but I personally do not do great with heights and so this documentary was a bit of an endeavour for me to get through. Throughout the entirety of my watching experience my hands were doused in a perpetual layer of sweat and my stomach wrenched tightly in my chest. Unlike Alex, my amygdala was very much being stimulated, perhaps to a dangerous degree, as I watched him free climb a number of mammoth and unrelenting sheer rock faces including the plat du jour, El Capitan. Free Solo really is an utterly remarkable documentary though. It is an adrenaline-pumping, majestic and fascinating look at one man, Alex Honnold, an interesting character himself, and the limits he must push himself to in order to conquer El Capitan, a mountain that has never before been free soloed. The training, both m...

Is This The New Legitimate Era of Netflix? Though Netflix remains the controversial behemoth that it is - loved and hated in equal measure - this past weekend at the Academy Awards, the streaming service finally won big time... like really big time. During Sunday's awards show, the Mexican feature, Roma , directed and written by Alfonso Cuaron won three acclaimed Oscars for Best Foreign Film, Best Cinematography and Best Director. Now, Netflix has been nominated in the past and has actually won before, all of the wins and most of the nominations being in documentary categories. But with Roma,  the implicit acclaim of the awards it received boosts Netflix's credibility, most notably, to the naysayers within the film industry who continue to pan Netflix and other streaming services for diminishing the 'film experience', arguing that such services' content should not be eligible for film festivals or awards. Well, this past weekend's awards have pretty much cl...

Today is the big day! For now, I am going to keep this post more positive and optimistic and simply talk about this year's nominations and my predictions and hopes. In another post I may discuss some of my disappointments with this past year's general output of quality films. I have now officially seen all of the Best Picture nominees as well as a healthy dose of other general nominees. Generally, I am going to predict all of the categories, even though, for some of the categories, I have not seen any of the nominations at all. Therefore, for a category such as Best Documentary Short, my thoughts will likely be quite arbitrary and possibly based on something as trivial as the name or subject of the piece... Jump further down the list for the 'bigger' awards. Short Film (Animated) Prediction - Bao Hope - Bao Short Film (Live) Prediction - Skin Hope - Fauve Production Design Prediction - First Man Hope - The Favourite Makeup and Hairstyling Predictio...

Green Book (2018) My first proper review! Last night, I finally got the chance to see the past year's hottest ticket, Green Book, ahead of its probable multiple winnings this coming Sunday. Expectations for the film have been fairly cemented in my mind since its premiere at TIFF this past fall where it won the festival's acclaimed People's Choice Award and, since its wide release, it has gone on to garner quite unanimously positive reviews. It's in these instances that my often pessimistic self likes to buck the trend and endeavour to find fault where most have been unable to, especially with a 'wholesome' type of film such that Green Book has been categorized as. It's for these reasons that, upon finishing Green Book, I was pleased to find that I had enjoyed the film and that it had met the high expectations I had for it. Yes, the movie is, in fact, quite the wholesome story and one who's plot does not contain much surprise. However, when a film ...

Mike's All-Time Top 10 To ease into things a bit, I thought I would be self-indulgent and list off some of my favourite films. This list may not be entirely accurate... Numbers 1 and 2 have been clear in my head for a long time in those respective positions. The rest of the list, however, I just thought up now, and so, they may be somewhat interchangeable with one another, and also, had I thought longer about this list, other films may actually more deservedly hold those spots. A few thoughts about this list: 1) Yes, I am still fairly childish; many of these films are genre films: horror/sci-fi/fantasy, they are simply ones that I grew up with, 2) I do not have any comedies here because I find that where I place them frequently changes over time (maybe I'll do a separate comedy list at some point), and 3) in some of these cases, I simply wanted to do service to a particular director and so I chose one that I thought represented them well. This list is of my favourite fil...