I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately, prepping for the upcoming Oscars. They’re on Sunday, February 9th, 2020. I always make several copies of the printable list of nominations that they post on their website, then try to find and watch everything I can so the show makes more sense when I watch it. I enjoy it probably as much as most football fans enjoy the SuperBowl each year. It’s even always on a Sunday, just like the SuperBowl. If some of my favorite movies of the past year are nominated, I think it’s much like if someone’s favorite team makes it to the SuperBowl. It makes it that much more enjoyable.

I bet it’s very difficult for the average person to enjoy the Oscars as much as I do, because unless you go see nearly every single movie that releases, you don’t see even half of the movies that are nominated, and the “shorts” and foreign films nominated are even harder to find than the mainstream movies. I have some personal techniques and methods I use each year that help me a great deal in this regard, so fortunately I am able to have much more available for me to watch than I can consume before the actual Oscars air. So I watch everything I can that looks like it might be interesting in the weeks before Oscar day, and I think I do pretty good. Not with my picks, mind you, but with the percentage of nominated content I watch. My picks are often horrible compared to who actually wins, and many times I’ll go back and watch some winners again just to figure out what I missed.

This reminds me of back in the day when I working at AMC/Chrysler and Gene Decker and I used to make our Oscar picks and discuss the movies, giving everything a “star” rating from one to five, a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, Siskel and Ebert-style. Roger Ebert’s picks were also heavily discussed (and very often disagreed with), and everything eventually always came back to “What’s The Best Movie Ever Made”? If you didn’t say “Citizen Kane” you were an idiot, you didn’t know what you were talking about and certainly weren’t a movie buff. We always laughed at that. Citizen Kane put me to sleep. I think it had a similar effect on Gene too. For it’s time I’m sure it was Epic. Maybe you had to have seen it when it was first released to really appreciate what it meant, the story and how it was told, but it certainly wasn’t what I thought it would be going in. Maybe it was just the fact that it was in black & white, but I can usually dismiss this if it’s a good story. And it was, don’t get me wrong, but I just didn’t think, after watching it, that it was the best movie of all time. I could go on and on about that one, but I’ll stop there.

Let’s get back to this year’s nominees:

“Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood“. There are a lot of nominations for this one. I only made it halfway through this one and I got bored and moved on to something else. It just didn’t grab me. Now that I see all of these nominations for it, I’ll have to go back and watch the entire movie before the Oscars.

“1917” – I haven’t watched it yet, but I plan to.

“Marriage Story” – I watched this one with Sandy. It was good, we enjoyed it. It’s a divorce story though–not a happy outcome. I wonder if it’s much better for those who haven’t gone through a similar situation, or worse. Sandy’s been there. I was with her through the second half of hers. It basically just ends open-ended, probably in the best light it could have, as everyone is just sort of trying to move on after the divorce issues are all settled.

“Joker” – This is a really good, intense movie. Don’t mistake it as being a super-villian comic book movie. It’s an “origins” story about The Joker from the Batman comics. Very dark and depressing, but well-acted and filmed. It gets deep into how the Joker came to be and how he evolved into The Joker.

“Pain & Glory” – one of those foreign language movies. Lots of subtitles to read. Might be worth it though, I might try to watch it.

“Parasite” – Another foreign language film, but a horror movie. The reviews say it’s really good though, definitely going to watch this one.

“Ford v Ferrari” – Watched this one. Excellent movie. I just wish the ending was a little clearer. I had to look up more details on the web about what happened in real life at the end, and it was pretty horrifying. I think they played it down way too much in the movie with very vague details. Other than that though, it was a great movie.

“The Irishman” – Excellent movie on Netflix. Joe Pesci, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino… You can tell just by the main cast members what kind of movie it’s going to be, and it didn’t disappoint. It was really long and epic, as it should be. It’s the story of Jimmy Hoffa (played by Al Pacino) and the crime families involved. Good stuff.

“Jojo Rabbit” – I watched about 30 minutes of this one and was pretty confused, so I stopped and did a little research. I’ll go back and watch the whole thing before the Oscars, now that I see it’s nominated in several categories. It’s about a German kid, around the time of World War II, who has Hitler as an imaginary friend. Yes, you read that right. Silly sure, kind of an awkward comedy of sorts. Now I’m very curious though.