Time for the first awards round-up of the season! Before we get started, I want to list the AFI's Top 10 films: Avatar: Fire and Ash Bugonia Frankenstein Hamnet Jay Kelly Marty Supreme One Battle After Another Sinners Train Dreams Wicked: For Good And they gave their Special Award to It Was Just an Accident. They're a solid Oscar bellwether; they went 8/10 three of the last four years and 7/10 the other.

Wake Up Dead Man (2025) - ***½ After seeing Wake Up Dead Man, I realized I should really give Knives Out another chance. I might still cringe at the vomit-as-lie-detector gimmick, and I might still think a large chunk of the impressive cast is underused, but some of my frustration with the film as a mystery might have been misplaced - with this series, I think Rian Johnson is using the whodunnit format as a means of exploring other themes, rather than simply crafting an elaborate mystery.

It's NBR day! It's not quite Oscar nomination morning, but it's one of my favorite days of awards season nonetheless, because the National Board of Review always does a bit of its own thing. This year it seems like they didn't get too wacky, but let's just see what the good Board has up their collective sleeve... Best Film: One Battle After Another…

Awards season hits the ground running this week: among others, we have the Gotham Awards today, the NYFCC Tuesday, the NBR Wednesday, and the LAFCA on Saturday. I'll do separate posts for the NBR and the Critics Choice nominees (Friday), but otherwise I'll cover the rest in my weekly round-up posts starting next Monday...the same day as the Globe nominees.

Blood Red/Západ (2025) - ***½ I was approached by a rep from Taskovski Films to review Blood Red because I'd reviewed Satantango and Béla Tarr served as a kind of mentor/advisor on this film. That I haven't yet seen any of Tarr's other films means I'm no expert on his work, but watching Blood Red I could definitely see his influence: stark black-and-white cinematography, long takes, deliberate pacing, and moments of overt horror.

I'm not sure I've mentioned it on here, but I adopted my father's cat last year. This is Tuxedo. I'd hoped to do a more elaborate post for my birthday, but life, so to speak, got in the way. No matter. It's been an eventful year (hell, it's been an eventful month, and it's not over). I've faced personal tragedy…

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) - *** I'm a few weeks late for Erik Beck's birthday, but I'm sure he saw this a lot sooner, and quite possibly liked it a lot better than I did. You need only read this post to see how much he cares about Springsteen and how long a relationship he's had with The Boss' music.

Die My Love (2025) - ***½ Alongside Tully and Nightbitch, Die My Love joins the small but dedicated genre of films dealing with postpartum depression; the former two were definitely comedies, while Die My Love, elements of dark humor aside, crosses solidly into drama in my book - and while it surpasses Nightbitch on several fronts, not least in terms of cinematic style, it's not an unqualified triumph.

The War Game (1966) - **** A few factors led me to watch The War Game when I did. First, director Peter Watkins died on October 30, a day after his 90th birthday (and only a few weeks after I'd rewatched The Gladiators). Second, I needed a scary film for Halloween (or the wee hours of All Soul's Day), and this famously harrowing film fit the bill.

Blue Moon (2025) - **** It's obviously too early to say if Ethan Hawke will win the Oscar for Blue Moon; technically it's too early to say if he'll even be nominated. But I'll be shocked if he's not nominated and fully supportive if he wins, whether or not he remains my own winner in Best Actor. I don't know if any his co-stars will join him or if the film and/or its script will get recognized as well, but they would be reasonable choices as well.

Let's get it started in here. The Gothams have pretty well sold out, as some of these nominations will make clear, but you know I'll take any opportunity to discuss film awards - and this at least gives us the first salvo of the 2025-26 season to consider. Best Feature: Bugonia East of Wall Familiar Touch Hamnet If I Had Legs I'd Kick You…

I don't know who Justin Jefferson is. I think the Jetta is a car. I do know that, given the opportunity to make his own cereal by General Mills, he blended Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Strawberry Lemon Cheerios, and the result was on sale the other day. And here I am, curious and hungry, to see what I can discern about Justin Jefferson based on this cereal.

The President Goes to Heaven! (2011) - Dreck After my first taste of Tom Charley (or ctom, as true fans call him) with Song of the Blind Girl, I knew I'd have to go back for more. Back then, I said he was "the most incompetent director I’ve yet seen who dared to charge money to see his films," and…

Night of the Demon (1957) - *** I wonder where some films get their reputations. I first learned about Night of the Demon (or Curse of the Demon, as it was called in America where it was released shorn of 14 minutes) in Danny Peary's Cult Movies 2; I don't recall most of his commentary, other than that he defended the titular demon appearing on screen - a choice made against the wishes of director Jacques Tourneur.