Jojo Rabbit

In another year this could very well have been my choice for Best Picture. Instead of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood winning, it might … oh, wait. That didn’t win, did it? Once more the Academy fucked up, as it did recently with Green Book, The Shape of Water, Moonlight, Spotlight, Birdman, 12 Years a Slave, Argo, The Artist, The King’s ... Read more »

Joker

Once more I broke my vow of not bothering with superhero movies, since this one was nominated for Best Picture. I guess the Joker isn’t a superhero, and technically, Batman isn’t either, he’s just a very rich, inventive, and athletic guy. Still, it’s a movie made from comic books, and though I know some good movies have resulted from “graphic novels,” I can’t recall any that were about ... Read more »

Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind, A Life Story

Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s I doubt that I ever put a Joni Mitchell record on the player. Not once. I didn’t have to. My ex-wife played them till she wore holes in the vinyl. I know all the early albums by heart to this day.

I liked Joni, I liked her a lot, but she was totally in love. Then Joni recorded Mingus, and we ... Read more »

Joy

For some reason this reminded me of another little gem about a spunky housewife and mother, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. (My mother was born and raised on a farm outside Defiance!) Looking into it, it seems this one is like most “inspired by true events” stories; that is, only partially true. Joy Mangano did invent the Miracle Mop, and used it and other ... Read more »

Joyeux Noël

… and Fröhliches Weihnachten, if you please. This is a film about the “Christmas Truce” during the winter of 1914. It actually happened, at several places along the trenches, though many details are unconfirmed and possibly apocryphal, including a soccer match between the enemies, Scots and French on one side, Germans on the other. This tale has ... Read more »

The Judge

Robert Duvall and Robert Downey, Jr. Gotta be a heck of an acting lesson, right? And it is, as both of them do a great job. The story isn’t quite up to it all, though. Daddy is the small-town judge, son is the sort of defense lawyer you (well, maybe not you, but certainly me) just really hate. Willing to try any dirty trick to get his always-guilty clients off. There is no love lost ... Read more »

Judgement at Nuremberg

In 1947 four German judges are themselves on trial for having enforced Nazi laws concerning eugenic sterilization and race. One is an unrepentant Nazi, two are party hacks who did what they were told, and one (Burt Lancaster) was a highly respected jurist. Spencer Tracy is the homespun country judge tapped to head the three-judge panel in the winding-down days of the Nuremberg war crimes ... Read more »

Judy

Strangely enough, I have only seen one of the other Oscar-nominated performances for this year: Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story. It’s possible that Cynthia Erivo, Saoirse Ronan, or Charlize Theron were better than Renée Zellweger … but I strongly doubt it. This is one of those uncanny performances where the actress channels the part so strongly that she ... Read more »

Juggernaut

I suppose there have always been disaster movies, but the real fad for them began in 1970 with Airport. (Wikipedia has a pretty exhaustive list, running to hundreds of films, and you’ll see that the vast majority of them were made in the 1970s and later.)

They are almost invariably ponderous, with standard plug-in characters and situations, and most of the ... Read more »

Julia

Here’s the story of a woman who is such a train wreck, such a toxic waste dump of a human being, that I was surprised she survived through the credits, much less made it to the end of a 2½-hour movie. She gets involved in a hare-brained kidnapping scheme, pretty much making it up as she goes along. She is so awful, so unsympathetic that no one but the great Tilda Swinton could have carried ... Read more »