But this morning it nabbed no nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting, etc. I would have almost loved to have seen Jared Leto get nominated, alas, zilch. Gaga and Leto campaigned their hearts out this awards season. Anne Thompson had mentioned that Gaga’s campaigning felt nauseating and self-indulgent, which may have turned off some voters. Fact of the matter is that “House of Gucci” just isn’t very good, it’s watchable, but not Oscar-worthy, that’s for sure....

In the Leading Actress category, it’s quite clear now that the industry wasn’t that taken by Kristen Stewart’s performance in “Spencer.” K-Stew was snubbed in of Respect’s Jennifer Hudson. Now, the question isn’t whether Stewart is the frontrunner in this category, but whether she will even be nominated. SAG also paved the way for Lady Gaga to enter the conversation as a sure-fire Oscar nominee. This could turn out to be Gaga’s second acting Oscar nomination in as many movies....

The timing of the film couldn’t have been better, with Hollywood now greenlighting rock biopics left and right because of the $1 billion success of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” If the Freddie Mercury biopic decided to tame it down in regards to its lead’s over-the-top sex life, well, according to a new report from The Daily Mail, that’s exactly what the team behind “Rocketman” seem to be doing as well. The Daily Mail is reporting that Paramount has asked “Rocketman” director Dexter Fletcher and producer Matthew Vaughn to cut a 40-second scene which shows Taron Egerton’s Elton and manager John Reid nude in bed, butt cheeks exposed, exchanging a little erotic time alone....

A few months back, in a podcast appearance, Agustín Almodóvar, film producer and younger brother of Pedro, confirmed that his famous sibling was set to direct an adaptation of “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” starring Cate Blanchett:‘Manual’ is a collection of short stories and Pedro has, supposedly, managed to adapt five of them into one linear narrative. Almodovar created a single character out of the five stories with Cate Blanchett set to play her....

Every once in a while I try to remind people that a comedy like “Tropic Thunder” would just not be able to get made today. Not in this heavily politicized world. Sure, go ahead and disagree with me, but remember in 2018 when athlete Shaun White dressed up as Stiller’s Simple Jack character for Halloween and caused total uproar, to the point where White had to issue an apology to the Special Olympics....

A 40 on Metacritic (based on 23 reviews). It wasn’t supposed to be this mediocre. This is getting worse reviews than “Don’t Worry Darling.” Zemeckis is not a bad filmmaker, he’s technically brilliant and can churn out the odd good movie here and there. Plus, you have Tom Hanks starring in if. What happened? The film feels misguided the minute it starts. This very nicely paves the way for Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio” to make a major splash in December....

86-year-old Roman Polanski has made one of the very best movies of his entire career. No, really. His Venice-winning “An Officer and a Spy” is the real deal. The legendary director has crafted his film with absolute surgical genius. Only a master can make a film as sublimely atmospheric and textural as this one. Set during “Belle Epoque” Paris, Polanski tackles the notoriously infamous true story of Alfred Dreyfus (Louis Garrel), a French Jew wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment by antisemitic and scapegoating authorities in 1894 France....

On a side note, they both hated “Babylon,” and prefer Austin Butler to Brendan Fraser in the Best Actor race. As far as other Acting contenders go, Blanchett was mentioned by one of them, ditto Chastain in “The Good Nurse”. Every year it’s the same story. Oscar pundits spitball the contenders, trying to shape the race the way they deem most satisfying to their tastes, then the Academy screenings begin in late October and the race changes....

More than 100 voters, selected by the prestigious film magazine, have produced a list of the 50 best movies of 2019 British-born Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir” took top honors, followed closely by Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” and Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman.” Hogg’s film, a tale of a female director both looking back and moving forward, garnered rave reviews when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past January. The film has an impressive 92 on Metacritic and is at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes....

The movie has popped up on iTunes’s Top Movie List alongside Oscar nominees “Joker,” “Ford v. Ferrari,” “Parasite,” “Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood” and “Hustlers.” Written by Scott Z. Burns, “Contagion” features an aensemble that includes Marion Cotillard, Bryan Cranston, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and Jennifer Ehle. The film, which is astonishingly topical at the moment, reunited Soderbergh with his long-time screenwriting partner Scott....

What would a year be without a new Soderbergh movie. This one has a stunning ensemble, Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Jon Hamm, Matt Damon, Julia Fox, Kieran Culkin, Ray Liotta, and Amy Seimetz. Wowza. The plot, according to IMDB, has to do with a group of criminals brought together under mysterious circumstances who have to work together to uncover what’s really going on when a heist goes awry. This sounds like Soderbergh going back to familiar “Oceans 11” and “Logan Lucky” territory and we’re not complaining one bit about it....

Full transcript: “It was the most divisive Oscar season since “Saving Private Ryan” lost Best Picture to then-upstart Miramax’s “Shakespeare in Love” (produced by 2019 Oscar producer Donna Gigliotti). In the final weeks, a narrative emerged that revealed just how threatened the major studios are by streamer Netflix. According to such gung-ho “Green Book” advocates as Academy governor Steven Spielberg, who helped writer-director Peter Farrelly find a home for the Participant Media movie at Universal, a vote for “Green Book” was a vote for cinema itself....

Wells went into investigative mode and, first of all, managed to get “West Side Story” lead actress Rachel Zegler to tweet back “our movie is not 3 hours long.” Then, Wells found that West Side Story’s Wikipedia page links to New Zealand’s United Cinemas chain and a title card that says it runs 156 minutes. That would make Spielberg’s version three minutes longer than the 1961 original. This means … “Licorice Pizza” 133 minutes, “Nightmare Alley” 139 minutes, “Don’t Look Up” 145 Minutes and “West Side Story” 156 minutes....

If it were up to me, I’d totally scrap the Leto projects and concentrate on Phoenix, who might just be the most talented actor to have ever partaken in this type of movie, and, yes, I am including Heath Ledger, whose legendary performance as The Joker in 2008’s “The Dark Knight” will surely be very hard to beat. Todd Phillips has been tasked in directing the Phoenix/Origin Joker flick. How did he manage to nab the job?...

There has also been conflicting messaging in regards to whether the in-person screenings will actually be happening this year. Variety reported last week that, for now, the Berlinale is going on as planned, whereas I’m hearing iy could shift to something similar to last year’s format for press and industry and public screenings being held in the summer. It’s very unlikely they’ll allow online public screenings, like Sundance.Regardless, the lineup announcement is on the 19th, and the majority of the competition is already locked in....

Today we learned that the venerable director hasn’t quit cinema ust yet. According to Variety, Wong’s next movie will be an adaptation of Jin Yuchen’s novel “Blossoms.” IndieWire described the plot in 2017 as “following the lives of Shanghai residents from the end of China’s Cultural Revolution in the early ‘60s through the end of the 20th century, with some scenes set in San Francisco.” Wong further elaborated his personal connection to that film saying “Shanghai is my hometown and the time that the book describes is the time of my absence from Hong Kong because I went to Hong Kong when I was 19, in ’63, I hadn’t been back to Shanghai until the early nineties....

Whether the film is greeted with positive notices or not, don’t expect Dolan to slow down. According to new reports, the writer-director is already shooting his next film, titled “Matthias & Maxime,” which will have him going back to his Quebecois roots. We have no details on the plot, but Twitter has posted official photos which have a bunch of millennials partying it up in a living room. The tweet also mentions the cast, which will include Dolan, Anne Dorval, Antoine-Olivier Pilon, Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas, Pier-Luc Funk, Samuel Gauthier, Adib Alkhalidey, Catherine Brunet, and Marilyn Castonguay....

Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)Fernando Meirelles (The Two Popes)Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story)Bong Joon Ho (Parasite)Lulu Wang (The Farewell) MAJOR THREATS: Todd Phillips (Joker)Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood)James Mangold (Ford v Ferrari)Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit)Olivia Wilde (Booksmart) POSSIBILITIES: Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers)Anthony Russo & Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame)Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems)Trey Edward Shults (Waves)Pedro Almodovar (Pain and Glory)Dan Bradley & James Gray (Ad Astra)Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse)Rian Johnson (Knives Out)Destin Daniel Cretton (Just Mercy)LONG SHOTS: Jon Favreau (The Lion King)Alma Har’el (Honey Boy)Joe Talbot (The Last Black Man in San Francisco)Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman)Rupert Goold (Judy)Ben Harper (The Aeronauts)Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4)Steven Soderbergh (The Laundromat)Terrence Malick (A Hidden Life) STILL TO SEE: J....

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, but here we are, eight months later, and it is about to be screened as “Special Presentation” at the Toronto International Film Festival this coming September. We also have to mention that “Honey Boy” currently has a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (that will change after this review). So, why didn’t I write anything about “Honey Boy” back when I saw it January?...

The film opens like one of Matthew McConaughey’s Wild Turkey Whisky adverts as he sits, smoldering into the distance before uttering the movie’s first words to himself in his all too captivating tone. What follows is a mishmash of a first act in which the only real highlight is Hugh Grant’s cockney caricature ‘Fletcher’ Monologuing away to the severely fed-up Raymond (Charlie Hunnam). Following McConaughey’s Mickey Pearson and his attempts to sell-up his British Weed empire, the story hits both glorious and bum notes along the way....