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The 97th Oscars: A Night of Big Wins, Big Speeches, & Big Conan Energy Award season is officially over, and the 2025 Academy Awards  are now in the books. As I do every year, I watched the telecast. This year I watched with my girlfriend, Julie, and we had a small Oscar party, which was a blast. But the real fun? The live interactive chat on my Patreon page , where we had a great crowd of subscribers discussing the ceremony in real-time. We talked about the pacing, debated th

Awards Season officially kicked off with the 82nd Annual Golden Globe Awards , which took place this past Sunday night. The Globes are widely considered a joke because the Hollywood Foreign Press  has such a moronic reputation, and the awards have been given to some questionable winners in the past. Because of past controversy, the HFP nearly disbanded a few years back, and the awards were almost completely canceled. But they made some huge alterations in the organization, an

Last Wednesday, December 11th, the Chicago Film Critics Association  kicked off the film awards season with its annual Awards Dinner at Budweiser Brickhouse Tavern  on Gallagher Way , right next to Wrigley Field (yeah, where the Yum Yum Donuts  used to be). I have been a member of the CFCA, on and off, since the organization began in 1989. I've presented awards, made phone calls, tallied votes, set up chairs, and even driven celebrity presenters and winners to and from the a

I'm putting on my Film Critic pants again. They're a bit tight, so I've got to cut back on the sweets. It's time for some capsule (short) movie reviews of four New Releases for the week of Friday, October 18, 2024. 1) SMILE 2 This was taken at the Press Screening when I was NOT looking forward to the film. Wow, did I feel differently afterwards. Like "The First Omen"  from earlier this year, this sequel to "Smile,"  the horror hit from 2022, is a massive surprise that is so s

The new Demi Moore film, " The Substance ," has been causing quite a stir since its release, and for good reason. It is a shocking, over-the-top, gory example of a scary movie subgenre called Body Horror . I'm a massive fan of Body Horror, but oddly, I wasn't crazy about "The Substance" ( see my capsule review here ). So, I want to share what I consider to be better examples of this subgenre. But before I can share my favorites, I should clarify that at least eight would be

Film Critic pants are on! Time for some capsule (short) movie reviews, so here are my thoughts on four New Releases for the week of Friday, September 20th, 2024. 1) TRANSFORMERS ONE Taken a few minutes before the press screening of "Transformers One." I would be surprised about two hours later. This is the all-new, fully animated origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron , the two most popular characters from the "Transformers" universe. I know that they are the two most p