I had really bad luck with books interfering with my pleasure in movies this year: both Hard to Be a God and Carol were victims of this. In the case of HTBAG, I mostly loved it for the same reasons you did, but it's awfully drawn-out for something with such a fairly simple arc that eliminates most of the nuance from…

Yeah, seconded to everything here. It's enjoyable, it's funny, it's not going to change anyone's life. Speaking of crossover, it was fun to see 30 Rock, Parks & Rec, and SNL supporting cast members mingling.

Very often a problem with foreign films. Sometimes you have to just roll with it. There's stuff in Hard to Be a God that non-Russian audiences just aren't going to get without explanatory footnotes, but the movie's managed something of a following anyway. No way to put Western viewers in the "right" headspace, so you…

I'd have a hard time picking a Best Actor this year, much less filling out a slate of nominees. Actress, on the other hand…

Your right to revoke jesse's right to claim greatness has been revoked. Please leave your badge on the table on your way out.

I think the only "for the ages" performance I saw this year was Nina Hoss in Phoenix, even though I have problems with the movie overall. I did love Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina, though.

Yeah, I was left pretty cold by Inside/Out: whatever the mix of elements involved, it just didn't work for me. I bawled at the appropriate times during the movie, but nothing really stuck.

Instead of ranking in order, I'll do this (alphabetically by each group):

Even though it won't at all affect the Oscars, Indiewire's tracker has the current leader in "Best Actor" wins as… Paul Dano for Love and Mercy.

Funny enough, I don't think he was robbed for either of those, in the sense that other nominees those years gave better performances (Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List, Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master, neither of whom won, either.) But when DiCaprio's been nominated for lead, he's generally been up against some…

If they played Titans in an Attack on Titan adaptation, that'd be appropriate to their acting range.

Neither "donors" nor "poll numbers against GOP candidates" is what decides a primary vote, and the primary polls - the ones that ask "who are you voting for in the actual primary?", are overwhelmingly in Clinton's favor. That's not an inevitability, but it's a pretty strong indication where things are likely headed.

It may just be a coincidence, but when there's a quasi-dream sequence in a ruined church with trees growing on the inside, it's hard not to think of Tarkovsky's Nostalgia, especially since I really think it's supposed to be an Orthodox Church? I don't know if the production designers were making a nod to Russia's…

You can probably guess why, but if not: here's a spoiler.

Well, that's not quite what he is - this is one of the few places where I disagree with Dowd's review: the movie makes clear that, despite any actual experience on the frontier, he's been sent to lead an expedition because it's a family-owned business. The fact that he sticks out so much as soft and weak is exactly…

There's room for both of us! It's a Radisson so you know it's pretty good.

You could do a lot worse.

Armond White has a 10,000 word essay ready to go on why Jar Jar Binks is Lucasfilm's only major contribution to world culture, the first authentic cinematic creation since Carl Theodore Dryer's Joan of Arc, his eyes communicating a singular ineffability matched only by the medium's sole living master, Adam Sandler.

Haha, I hope you and your family have a good witness protection program available.

It might work for you more than it did for me - the movie has a lot of those pieces, but it doesn't really aim at that level of capital-M Mythic. I think that, for something so seemingly straightforward, it's serving too many masters - the survivalist stuff approaches procedural, the flashback stuff approaches high…