AARON BILGRAD MOVIE AWARDS 2024

BEST MOVIE THAT BECAME AN INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON LIKELY FOR DIFFERENT REASONS THAN THE CULTURE OBSESSED ABOUT:  BARBIE

It’s a rare perfect storm when a movie that does NOT feature super heroes, Jedi, a complete waste of James Cameron’s talent, or dinosaurs makes nearly $1.5 billion at the box office.  The Barbie movie did just that, leaving people wanting to try and post-game analyze Barbie’s ‘black swan’ success.  It’s interesting to ask why it became such a phenomenon, but this is where the public discourse gets a little hazy.

The most heartwarming and soothing feeling to attribute to Barbie’s success is the movie’s adroit commentary on being a woman in the modern world.  The best example of this being America Ferrera’s now famous speech near the climax of the film in which she passionately laments about the unfair dichotomies of what society expects of women (e.g. “you’re supposed to lead but don’t squash other people’s ideas — you’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the time”).  The Barbie movie is packed with these commentaries.   They’re very well thought out, and I largely agreed with them, but at times the movie felt like just one long essay.  The only analogy I could make, and this is very far-fetched just to make a point, is if Hollywood made a movie based on the HE-MAN toys and cartoon that happened to have a more right wing screenwriter, and Skeletor gave many monologues on how the woke elites are oppressing America and it’s hard to be a villain just surviving paycheck to paycheck.

However, it’s hard to imagine that people all over the world flocked to this movie for the commentary embedded throughout the film.  Some people, sure, but not $1.5 billion worth.  The demographic statistics of the movie stated that 75.6% of the audience was under 29.  Now, I’m rather certain that Barbie isn’t as popular of a doll as it was 30-50 years ago, suggesting that this under 29 age group isn’t going because they loved playing with Barbie’s growing up.  No, I think the more logical conclusion is that moms in their 30s, 40s, and 50s brought their little kids/teenagers — perhaps even several times.

So what did those millions of kids who saw the movie think about it?  Whenever I had the chance, I asked friends and family members’ kids who saw the movie what they liked about Barbie.  They largely said they liked Barbie’s house, all the characters were funny, and that the movie was very colorful.  Fair enough, most of these kids are between 6-10 years old.   But they understandably didn’t make any mention of the empowering commentaries of the screenwriters.  They didn’t laud the screenwriters for their brave attempt to shame the awful male patriarchy.  Thus, we could surmise that at least a portion of the audience, kids under 10, didn’t even… ‘notice’ the theme or message that the movie’s cultural success is attributed to.  And this component of Barbie’s success reminded me of another pop cultural misinterpretation from the past.

In the mid to late 90s, a band named Rage Against The Machine shot to the top of the music charts.  In case you don’t know them, “Rage” as they were sometimes referred to, played highly aggressive rock/rap music that caused thousands of mostly male teenagers to go absolutely berserk at their concerts.  Massively violent mosh-pits would break out while the members of the Rage band exploded with energy on stage, led by lead singer Zack De La Rocha screaming his lyrics into the mic.  Except there was a major chasm between artist and audience.  Zack De La Rocha’s lyrics, while fueled with anger, were politically charged and largely about political subjects he was passionate about such as the unfair treatment of Bolivian farmers or the stripping of Native American rights by the American government.   It is with 100% certainty that the ballistic 15-year old boy covered in sweat who just lost a tooth in the mosh pit is likely far more angry because some girl didn’t agree to be his homecoming date than he is maddened about the unruly corrupt practices of Nicaraguan labor union leaders.  In other words, the teens at the Rage concert were connecting to the music for a different reason than the artist intended, and the passionate commentary provided by De La Rocha through is lyrics was completely lost on the audience.  Except Rage was a highly successful band, selling over 16 million albums worldwide.  Due to this success, after each concert, Zack De La Rocha marched off the stage thinking he had really gotten through to these teenagers — expanding their world view through his lyrics, probably even thinking they might eventually dedicate their adult life to remedying the injustices of Central America that he pointed out.

Thus we MAY be able to conclude these bottom line facts about Barbie to get an accurate cultural narrative of this movie’s success:  A lot of people saw Barbie.  Some people liked Barbie.  Some people went to see it just to see what all the hype was about (me).  Barbie made some important cultural commentaries.  The movie was critically praised for these courageous viewpoints, but Barbie’s whopping financial success was likely the result of parents around the world bringing their kids to see the movie multiple times.  Nothing wrong with this, but it’s interesting to at least have a stronger idea of the proper narrative of Barbie’s success.

As for my personal thoughts on the Barbie movie, I think it should have been written and directed by a man (lol just kidding, just kidding, relax) 

BEST MOVIE THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN (SLIGHTLY) MORE INTERESTING IF THE  VILLAIN WOULD HAVE HID HIS INTENTIONS A LITTLE BETTER:  KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

In Martin Scorsese’s latest unnecessarily long movie, he turns his attention to the true stories of the atrocities that befell the Osage Indian community in the early 1920s.  This is noble territory, and while the intentionally slow-paced film does make for an interesting history lesson, during my entire viewing I couldn’t shake the feeling that the story would be better told if the Robert DeNiro character didn’t constantly unveil his nefarious plan for the Indian people.

As a brief summary, the Osage Indian people discover that their land is on oil-rich territory, thus making their whole community very wealthy.  But they suddenly find that more white people are marrying into their community and, suspiciously, the Osage people are slowly found dead or mysteriously murdered.  The mastermind of this covert effort to rob the Osage people out of all their money is Bill Hail (well played by Robert DeNiro with a Southern accent).  However, he clearly presents himself as a great friend to Osage people, earning the trust of their leaders and showing up at all the funerals (of men and women he ordered murdered) with sincere condolences.

Now, Martin Scorsese has said in interviews that there were several iterations of the script for this movie.  It’s based on a best-selling history book, and those can be tricky to correctly adapt and dramatize.  Scorsese stated that one of the first drafts told the story through the perspective of the FBI agent who comes to town to investigate the murders (Leonardo DiCaprio was supposed to play this FBI agent), but this version was scrapped in favor of telling the story from the vantage point of DeNiro’s nephew (Ernest Burkhart — the role eventually assumed by DiCaprio).  Don’t worry, I’m going somewhere with this.

My point is writers of the film were willing to be flexible on how the story was told.  But in pretty much DeNiro’s first scene with DiCaprio, DeNiro outright tells him the plan to have DiCaprio find an Osage woman to marry.  And shortly after, we watch DeNiro start ordering the murders of the Osage people.  So we the audience clearly know his intentions, but we are still subjected to watching about 16 scenes of DeNiro artificially and insincerely expressing his condolences to the Osage people for all the death and tragedy that has befallen their community.  In each of these “I’m so sorry your husband was murdered” scenes, even the the dimmest audience member would have rolled their eyes and thought “Oh dear — this guy sure is a deceptive snake”.  But since the DeNiro character is thought of as a friend to the Osage people, why not, from a screenplay perspective, hide his evil intentions from the audience?  Why not make it more of a mystery as to who is behind the murders?  Then, towards the end, it could have been unveiled that the seemingly benevolent DeNiro that was behind the killings all along.  In my opinion, this would have made the movie (slightly) more satisfying.

I can only imagine the reason why they chose not to explore this creative choice was due to the fact that Scorsese was more interested in showing the acting talents of Lily Gladstone (nominated for Best Actress), who, easily, gave the best performance of all time for “Woman Sick In A Bed”.  For most of the her screen time, she is sweating, panting, moaning and groaning in such a convincing manner, that I greatly anticipated every one of her 34 scenes of sweating, panting, moaning, and groaning.

BEST MOVIES THAT CONFUSINGLY FOCUSED ON THE LEAST INTERESTING ASPECTS OF A PERSON’S LIFE:  OPPENHEIMER & MAESTRO

About a decade ago I became interested in the logistical and historical circumstances surrounding the building of the atomic bomb during World War 2.  This naturally led me to the life of Robert Oppenheimer, and I read several long books about his life.  He is a wonderfully fascinating man, as are the details of Oppenheimer leading the country’s brightest scientists at The Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico to construct a weapon that had never even been imagined.  Thus, when I heard that Christopher Nolan was making a movie called “Oppenheimer”, I was greatly looking forward to seeing everything about The Manhattan Project dramatized on the screen.

While Oppenheimer was a good movie with some solid scenes, I thought it was a curious and very Hollywood choice to depict and profile Oppenheimer’s relationships with various women.  A lot of the film’s run time is dedicated to these relationships, interactions, and sex with women.  Some of this is to portray Oppenheimer’s alleged association with the Communist party, which, while certainly a facet of his life, is by no means anywhere near what made this brilliant and complicated man so interesting.

By the same measure, Leonard Bernstein is one of the finest musical minds in American history.  His body of work is incredible and to listen to him explain music theory and how it relates to life is an invigorating experience.  But the Bradley Cooper’s Maestro decided to focus on his bi-sexual identity, and how his wife had to tolerate his affairs with men.  Fine, but why tell that brand of story through the lens of a life as outstanding as Leonard Bernstein’s?  Seems like a waste of an amazing person, and I say ‘get over it, lady, he wrote all the music to West Side Story!’  Are you really going to make a biopic on a prodigy of a musician and use it to focus on his homosexuality and how it bums out his wife?  That’s treaded waters, and couldn’t that same story be told through the lens of some average dude who roots passionately for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers but cheats on his wife with men.

It seems a lot of biopics made today become obsessed with the love lives or sexuality of their subjects, as if the audience couldn’t possibly want to delve into any other part of the psyche of such fascinating people.  Imagine a movie about Nelson Mandela in which 30% of the movie is dedicated to scenes of Mandela courting women, arguing with women, and dull pillow talk.  I would be like, “C’mon, let’s get to the apartheid”.

BEST MOVIE THAT SOLIDIFIED THAT NOBODY ACTUALLY CARES WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK OF MOVIES:  AIR

This was a good (not that good) Matt Damon/Ben Affleck movie about Michael Jordan’s first shoe deal and the rise of Nike.  I only bring it up here because the movie was released in April, which is early for a movie with Oscar intentions.  This matters only because if it’s somewhat good, the word of mouth starts to spread at a time where people interested in good, critically acclaimed type movies are not really discussing movies.

Air played in theaters for a short time, but then streamed on Amazon Prime.  Well it created some positive buzz and got people talking.  But throughout April, I had at least a dozen people ask me “Have you seen Air?” or, to be more honest, “Have you heard of Air?” (because nobody actually cared if I had seen it).  If I confirmed I was familiar with the movie, they wouldn’t actually ask me if I had seen the movie or or even what I thought about the movie.  I mention this because I think we have officially entered full-blown “Nobody cares about other people’s opinions on movies” era.  Whatever friend/family member/co-worker thinks of any movie or TV show will have no bearing on your own decision to watch it.  If anything, discussing the movie is just idle chit chat.

Even so, Air was seemingly omnipresent in popular culture as a movie many people were legitimately considering watching, but weren’t sure if they should allocate their 2 hours for.  With the abundance of movie and TV options, I understand how people need to be discerning with their time, but something about this movie induced people to start conversations about Air’s very existence throughout April (“Do you know anything about Air?”  “What is Air?”  “Is Air AIR?”).  I felt an odd sense of power, as if the movie’s success hinged on my response to their question.   Again, I don’t believe that my review would have caused them to watch it or not — it would only answer their actual original question:  Yes, I knew about the movie, and since I do, all they really know as an empirical truth is that Aaron Bilgrad does in fact know that the movie Air exists.

However, I hope you care about other people’s opinions about movies just a little bit, because…

HERE ARE THE BEST MOVIES I SAW THIS YEAR IN DESCENDING ORDER (#1 Being The Best)
*Admittedly, I did not think this was a very strong year.  

14) PAST LIVES
A sweet Korean film about a two childhood best friends who are forced to separate when the girl’s family moves to America.  They reconnect later in their adult life and wonder if they were always destined for each other; a significant challenge given that she is now married.  The movie is intentionally slow-paced, but has some honest characterization and nuanced performances.  It’s up for best picture at the Oscars, but seemingly so is every movie made this year. (Amazon Prime Rental)

13) AIR
This movie does have an interesting story at its core:  How Nike became NIKE by taking a major gamble on the career success of Michael Jordan.  But the absolute best scenes in the movie feature Viola Davis as Michael Jordan’s mother.  She steals the movie towards the end and she absolutely should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress (likely over Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer).  (Amazon Prime)

12) KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
While the cliche criticism that this movie is “too long” certainly holds true, the acting is still strong and the true story of the devastating happenings of the Osage community was quite interesting.  DiCaprio doesn’t deliver his best performance, but the supporting actors and side characters in the film can be very compelling to watch.  The fact that it took me 4 sittings to watch this movie and I was fine with waiting to continue my screening the next day is why the movie is up here at #12. (Apple TV)

11) FAIR PLAY
Making a splash at the Sundance Film Festival, Netflix purchased the Fair Play streaming rights for a whopping $20 million.  They thought they had a hit on their hands, as this movie appeals to the subsegment of their core female audience that watches murder mystery shows and reality shows like Love Is Blind (although I also like Love Is Blind).  While the movie is not a murder mystery, it does take place in the financial world full of deceit, power plays, and rampant jealously between a recently engaged couple.  When his soon to be fiancee surprisingly gets promoted over him, the man becomes slowly spiteful all the while questioning how she pulled it off.  Oddly, this movie never really hit the pop culture zeitgeist — even though the literal description of the movie on Netflix when it first came out was, no kidding, “This is an incredible movie!”  Netflix didn’t even give a plot description — it just wrote “This is great!”.  I always lean towards films with good character performances with charismatic actors, and while the movie is unfortunately not “incredible”, it is very enjoyable and executes its simple premise well. (Netflix)

10) THE HOLDOVERS
I had high expectations going into this movie.  I loved (and still love) the 2004 movie Sideways, and was excited that The Holdovers re-teamed that director, Alexander Payne, with Paul Giamatti.  Basically, a strict but lonely teacher has to stay at a New England boarding school to supervise students who didn’t go home over the winter holidays.  While I liked the movie and Giamatti does give a great performance, as does Da’Vine Joy Randolph (both nominated for acting Oscars), I never felt like the movie got to a higher emotional level than exactly what I anticipated it to be (i.e. some kind of funny scenes, Giamatti eventually letting his guard down and befriending a troubled student).  Again, it’s a good movie, but I had two issues with the movie that kept me from liking it more.  1) I found the main kid kind of annoying to watch.  Wasn’t fond of the casting choice.  2) Giamatti is initially tasked to look after about 5 kids for the winter holidays — the main kid, a bully, a jock, a nerdy kid, and a religious kid.  Keep in mind that all of these kids have NO relationship to each other.  Well, one day, the jock’s super rich father comes and picks up his son in a helicopter to go skiing over Christmas.  But, for some reason I can’t explain, all of the kids leave with this jock and his father on the helicopter as well — and, theoretically, all of the kids go skiing as well with the jock and his family.   The movie does not explain this at all — the kids all just say goodbye and leave.  This Deus Ex Machina (a.k.a. a scene that is too perfect, doesn’t make sense, but solves a problem in a story) gives the movie a better setup for Giamatti to be alone with the main kid and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (the chef) to form a short-term, surrogate family which is the heart of the film.  It just didn’t make sense. In an interview promoting the movie, when Paul Giamatti himself was asked about all of these kids leaving on the helicopter, even he had no idea why the kids left on that helicopter with the jock’s father to go skiing, but that we shouldn’t overthink it.  Ok… but, I, and clearly some others, felt a similar way about this strange concept.  (Paramount +)

9) AMERICAN FICTION
About 3 years ago, I visited a small bookstore where the staff writes index cards about what books they like and why.  I found a book called “Erasure” by Percival Everett that looked very interesting. Of course I put it in my reading queue where it sat on my bookshelf.   When I found out that the highly regarded American Fiction movie was adapted from this book, I immediately read it, proud that I had treasure hunted correctly.  The premise is about a struggling African-American writer (Monk, played by Jeffrey Wright) who is very bitter about the best-selling trash novels that paint the African-American experience as only about about broken families, crime, drug use, and being poor — plus the broken, slang english in which it is written (as indicated by the fake best-seller in the story — We’s Lives In Da Ghetto).  In a moment of utter frustration, Monk writes his own “terrible” book as a joke and it of course becomes a runaway success.  Although, because Monk considers himself to be a serious writer of fiction, he has to make up an alter ego author for the farce of a book he wrote.  The original novel (Erasure) is very good and entertaining, and the writer/director did a nice job of bringing this story to the big screen.  It’s a strong and clever movie, although, like the book, the best parts of the story in both the book and movie are the moments in which the main character (Monk) is at war with the publishing industry and has to keep up with his ruse.  All of the family and relationship elements don’t play as strong (like his mother’s dementia or his romantic interests) and the movie decided to make Monk’s brother (played by Sterling K. Brown) a far bigger character than he is in the book — focusing on the characters ‘coming-out-as-gay’ narrative.  I thought all of these extraneous family and romantic elements of the movie took away from the interesting main premise.  Thus, while I thought American Fiction was a smart movie, I thought the next movie on my list (A Thousand and One); a movie with a premise and texture that American Fiction is largely criticizing, to ironically be a slightly better film.  (Amazon Rental)

8) A THOUSAND AND ONE
This Sundance Film Festival darling never really got much attention in the main stream, but it’s an interesting story with some strong performances that I enjoyed watching.  It centers around an African-American woman (played by the singer Teyana Taylor) recently released from prison who effectively kidnaps her little son and raises him over the next 15 years hoping that nobody will find out about her crime. The story focuses on their relationship as well as a boyfriend that enters the picture (an excellent performance by William Catlett), becoming an unexpected mentor figure to the son.  This movie also had somewhat of a twist ending that I found quite satisfying. (Amazon Prime)

7) OPPENHEIMER
Despite my earlier criticism, Oppenheimer is still quite an achievement.  While all of Oppenheimers’ romantic relationships did bore me, and I found the Communist interrogations to take up too much of the film’s real estate, the movie did have some very strong and satisfying scenes — namely any scene between Oppenheimer and Einstein and the scene between Oppenheimer and President Truman.  This movie will almost certainly win Best Picture, which is fine, but my main concern is that it will result in filmmaker Christopher Nolan getting a ton of money to make an original movie he perceives as highly imaginative, but will be quite stupid. (Amazon Rental)

6) ANATOMY OF A FALL
A unique film about a father who falls to his death, and the investigation and trial that follows about whether it was an accident or if his wife killed him.  It’s a compelling dialogue-driven script, complete with very long but engaging lawyer interrogations.  You are left wondering the whole time what exactly happened as well as what is true and what isn’t, especially as more character-based evidence is delivered throughout the film.  There was so much uproar about Margot Robbie not receiving a best actress nomination for Barbie (a role that certainly didn’t require her to use even half of her immense acting talents), but Margot’s omission in the best actress category was likely to make room for Sandra Huller, the lead in this film, who gives a wonderful and highly convincing performance from front to end.  [Note:  If the Oscars wanted to make a spot for Margot Robbie, they could have easily left out Lily Gladstone’s ‘sick-in-bed’ performance in Killers of The Flower Moon — although the Oscar committee knows that such an omission would have landed them in some bad PR hot water] (Amazon Rental)

5) JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4
This revenge, kill-everyone in front of you Hollywood genre is almost always not my cup of tea, but I have seen all of the John Wick movies, and each one just keeps getting better.  What I love about all of them, and especially John Wick 4, is they lack any pretense whatsoever, which cannot be said for most of the movies on this list.  John Wick 4 knows exactly what it is, takes the time to create never-seen-before action sequences, and has a masterful control over how to make this revenge genre exciting from the first minute to the last.  Keanu Reeves completely understands how to play this part with a mixture of earnestness and tongue-in-cheek humor, and I loved every minute of it.  All of the supporting performances (Donnie Yen, Bill Skarrsgard, Ian McShane) are also such a pleasure to watch.  The most surprising element of John Wick 4, and this blew my mind, is that I found it emotionally affecting.  You have to see it to believe it, but the main job of any movie is to deliver a satisfying personal experience.  John Wick 4 delivered this experience, and I left the theater both smiling and oddly sad that the franchise may have come to an end. (Amazon Rental)

4) THE IRON CLAW
This is the devastating true story of the Von Erich wrestling family.  It didn’t get any attention from the Oscars because it was effectively released too late for all the standard Oscar press.  This would definitely win for “Saddest Movie of the Year”, and while the story was a little clunky at times, the performances of the actors more than makes up for it.  Holt McAllany (one of my favorite actors, and if you haven’t seen him in Mindhunter on Netflix, please make that your next show) is such a joy to watch, and the lead performance by Zac Efron was mesmerizing — both in his physical transformation and emotional ability.  [Side Note:  Zac Efron is quietly turning into one of the better actors of the modern era.  I’ve seen him give terrific performances many times: The Greatest Showman, his role as Ted Bundy in Extremely Evil, Shockingly Evil and Vile, and now his role in The Iron Claw.  Whereas I find the much more popular and accepted Ryan Gosling quite hollow and have never enjoy watching him.  I think Efron still gets stigmatized by his early roles in the High School Musical TV movies.  But, come on, Ryan Gosling was in the Mickey Mouse Club].  Anyway, I strongly recommend this movie if you need to feel just slightly more depressed in life. (Amazon Rental)

3) THE ZONE OF INTEREST
One could fairly describe this movie as brilliant.  Anytime there is an entry into the ‘Holocaust Movie’ category, one must question “what story can you tell that brings something new to the genre”?  We’ve already seen Schindler’s List, so any movie depicting the horrors of the Holocaust would seem gratuitous.  Well, The Zone of Interest provides a unique, never-seen-before perspective on the Holocaust.  The movie is a casual observation of the daily routine of Rudolf Hoss, who was in charge of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and his family as they lead a relatively normal life living directly next door to Auschwitz.  This is not a conventional narrative film and the only real conflict of the movie comes when Rudolf hears that he might have to relocate, causing his wife (played by Sandra Huller from Anatomy of a Fall) to become irritable because she loves their house and current lifestyle so much.  The brilliance of the film comes from the subtlety of the production elements; how unfazed the family is by the trains coming full of Jews, the screams at night from the camp, the plumes of the black smoke from the gas chambers that they see from their window.  Basically, the film shows how many non-Jewish European people felt about the Holocaust at the time… they didn’t give a shit about it. (Amazon Rental)

2) POOR THINGS
It’s unfortunate that Barbie received 100% of the pop culture attention for being the ‘female empowerment’ movie of the year, because Poor Things does a far more fascinating job with this subject matter.  The basic premise could be compared to Edward Scissorhands, only insofar as a medical doctor brings a deceased woman named Bella Baxter (played by Emma Stone) back to life by implanting her body with her own dead baby’s brain and she must learn how to be a human.  But the true essence of the film is how Bella shapes her definition about what it means to be a woman in modern society.  A delightfully outspoken Bella frequently questions why women can’t be free with different forms of expression (namely sexual behavior) and this drives the men around her mad, as they continually say “You can’t do that because it is not part of polite society”.   The dialogue is sharp, the movie is highly stylized and has director Yorgos Lanthimos’ signature bizarre tonality, which absolutely enhances the viewing experience, and Emma Stone’s full inhabitance of the curious Bella is worthy of the Best Actress win.  A very intelligent film that hopefully finds more of an audience given its multiple Oscar nominations. (Amazon Rental or Hulu)

1) BLACKBERRY
As mentioned, I did not find 2023 to be the strongest year for movies.  While the movies mentioned above are all impressive in some way, when it came to picking a #1, I figured it made the most sense to choose the movie I enjoyed watching the most.  And out of all the movies on this list, Blackberry would be the movie I would first choose to watch again, which, to me, is one of the most important qualities of a great film.  Sure, a movie doesn’t need to be re-watchable for it to be an all-time great, but a it’s more fun if it is.  A movie should give you an emotional experience that you want to revisit.  While Oppenheimer is a good movie, I would be just fine if I never saw it again.  Blackberry details the story of the founding of the company that changed the modern technology culture.  If you recall, before the iphone came out in 2008, the ‘had-to-have’ product for the previous 6 years or so was the Blackberry.  Like The Social Network did with the drama behind the founding of Facebook, the origins of Blackberry becomes a story of ingenuity, luck, greed and Shakespearean deceit that is a blast to watch from front to end.  But what makes this movie great is its acting.  The dialogue, energy, vibe, and fly-on-the-wall camera work are also terrific, but it’s the characters that make this movie a true diamond.  While all the characters are so fun to watch, it’s Glenn Howerton who gave my absolute favorite acting performance of the year.  His charisma is unmatched as the co-CEO of the Blackberry company with an enormous chip on his shoulder.  I even found myself actively rewinding scenes just to watch Howerton do things again.  Many movies are intentionally made with Oscars and Awards on their minds.  You can feel it as soon as you even see the trailer.  But they forget that the movie, no matter how serious the subject matter, should still be an enjoyable, engaging, immersive and ideally repeatable experience for the audience.  The goal is to make something ‘special’.  If you can make someone feel like watching a movie again, perhaps the themes and messages the filmmakers are trying to convey will have a bigger impact on someone.  Case in point, with Oppenheimer, which will win its intended Oscars, I was perfectly content when it was over.  I was ready to go.  With Blackberry, I started the movie over just to enjoy it again.  In a time where there are too many choices and too little time, making a re-watchable movie is worth quite a lot.  (Amazon Rental)

To read Aaron Bilgrad Movie Awards from past years, click HERE