For the record ...

 

  Every week, the number of movies released threatens to become more unmanageable. Some films creep into the market where I work without opportunity for advance viewing. That makes the critics' job difficult. And given the onslaught of releases, particularly as the year draws to a close, playing catch-up can be daunting.

 So where am I going with this?

 I've been looking for a way to call attention to movies I believe deserve consideration, although I may not offer full reviews. I hate to see movies of interest fall through the cracks. 

  So, here are two movies I found worth my time and may well be worth yours.

  Let's begin with Nouvelle Vague, director Richard Linklater's movie about the making of Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard's groundbreaking 1960 movie. By 1960, the French New Wave had already broken on the shores of world cinema. Godard was late to chime in, but he made his presence felt.

  Beautifully filmed in black-and-white, Nouvelle Vague features Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, who was 29 when Breathless hit world screens, a little old to be a cinema enfant terrible, but still young enough to begin a career that lasted 70 years.

  Aubry Dullin portrays Breathless star Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Zoey Deutch appears as Jean Seberg, his co-star. 

  Nouvelle Vague reminds us of a time when audiences were discovering movies that felt fresh, invigorating, and full of promise. The future seemed open and expansive, as if something vital was happening -- not just in one movie but across the cinema board.

   And that's the key. We don't necessarily yearn for  something "new" at the movies. We yearn for something "fresh," movies that reignite our excitement by making cinema feel alive and putting us in touch with aesthetic sensibilities that awaken the senses, and -- in rare cases --point us toward truth.

Christy tells the story of Christy Martin, nee Christine Salters, a woman who boxed professionally from 1989 to 2012. A West Virginia native, Christy became known as "The Coal Miner's Daughter," which, in her case, was literally true. Her dad was a miner.

   Sydney Sweeney, who reportedly gained 30 pounds to play Christy, looks fiercely credible in the ring as a hard-punching boxer driven by fury and ambition.

  Christy's sexuality -- she's a lesbian -- gives the movie another focus, shedding light on her relationship with her trainer, Jim Martin (Ben Foster). Martin coerced Christy into marriage and took charge of her career, convincing her that no one else could help her advance.

   The movie charts Christy's rise in conventional ways, but  her relationship with her husband makes for an increasingly wrenching domestic drama, made all the more painful by the Svengali-like control Martin exerts over Christy and which culminates with a shocking display of violence.

   Sweeney and Foster are in fine form. Additionally, Merritt Wever gives a scalding performance as Christy's censorious mother, a woman more worried about public perception than her daughter's well-being. Similar kudos for Chad L. Coleman, who plays boxing promoter Don King, a man who could charm but who always lets those around him know who’s in charge.

The lights dim on a Broadway legend

 

 Blue Moon takes a tightly focused look at a humiliating final chapter in the life of Lorenz Hart, the fabled lyricist whose 20-year collaboration with composer Richard Rogers produced such hit tunes as Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, I Didn’t Know What Time It Was, Thou Swell, My Funny Valentine, and Blue Moon. 

  An alcoholic who became a prominent figure in the history of Broadway musicals, Hart died in 1943 at the age of 48. By then his partnership with Rogers, who owed his career to Hart, had deteriorated, and Rogers had begun collaborating with a new partner, Oscar Hammerstein.

   Set on the opening night of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, Blue Moon takes place in Sardi’s, a renowned Theater District restaurant where Rogers, Hammerstein. and other luminaries gather for a post-opening party.

   Embittered wit makes fine fuel for a drama, and Ethan Hawke makes the most of it, continuing a series of movies he has made with director Richard Linklater, notably Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2024), Before Midnight (2013), and the masterwork Boyhood (2014). 

    His hairline pushed to drastic levels of recession, Hawke turns Hart into a witty, talkative, and at times, movingly vulnerable figure who despises Oklahoma!. Hart expresses disdain for any title that requires an exclamation point to assert itself, deriding the show’s romanticized serving of middle-American corn.

     Hawke owns most of the movie’s dialogue, and, in some ways, Blue Moon can be viewed as a monologue with supporting characters, notably the bartender (Bobby Cannavale), who treats Hart’s claims at newfound sobriety with gentle derision. Andrew Scott signs on as Rogers, a composer who makes it clear that Hart’s drunken unreliability ruined their collaboration; and Simon Delaney plays Hammerstein as a man trying his best to be deferential toward a contemptuous Hart.

      But the key supporting role belongs to Margaret Qualley, who appears as Elizabeth Weiland, a 20-year-old Yale student who becomes an intoxicating love interest for the bisexual Hart, who — in this telling — turns her into a kind of redemptive presence who could love him in a way that no one else ever had. That's what he wants.

       Qualley’s performance reveals a student who  appreciates Hart’s genius, but also sees him as a stepping stone for a career in the theater. In a lengthy confession to Hart about how she spent the night of her 20th birthday, Elizabeth rejects the lyricist in a way that’s devastating to him, all the worse because her dismissal is couched in admiration and respect.

        Like many of the moments in Blue Moon, the scene brings Hart's humiliation into painful focus.   Hawke makes us understand that despite his self-aggrandizing pronouncements, Hart realizes the pathetic state into which he had fallen.

       Considering Hart’s theatrical background and the movie’s narrow focus, I wondered whether Blue Moon might not have worked better as a play. Linklater and cinematographer Shane F. Kelly mostly defeat the limitations of a single-setting story dominated by a character whose ability to annoy others sometimes spills off the screen, irritating us.

      Still, Blue Moon showcases a memorable Hawke performance as Hart marinates his talent in bitterness and rue. Hart, by the way, says he hates Blue Moon -- the song, not the movie -- which became one of his most popular creations.

        

  

The life of a faux hit man

 

   I'm generally sympathetic to movies that arrive without proclaiming themselves to be major cultural landmarks.

   Although it played at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, director Richard Linklater’s Hit Man arrives without a pushy pedigree. It does,  however, have a taste for devious fun, which turns out to be better than a ton of hyped-up flash.

    Based on a true story adapted from an article in Texas Monthly, Hit Man introduces us to Gary Johnson (Glenn Powell), a college professor who does gig work for the New Orleans Police Department. 

   Sitting in a truck equipped with recorders, Johnson joins a team that documents sting operations that nab those looking to hire killers to solve their problems.

   The movie’s major twist occurs early on. Johnson is asked to fill in for a detective (Austin Amelio) who built his reputation by posing as a hitman, but who has been suspended for using excessive force. 

   Powell gives an engaging performance as a philosophy professor who blossoms when he assumes different identities -- adopting new attitudes along with them. He learns that every encounter requires a pitch-perfect performance. He brings a lively imagination to the task, and his life is energized by  newfound success.

    Angry that he's been replaced by a "non-professional," Amelio's Jasper never joins the Johnson fan club. He represents potential trouble.

   Complications arise, and it's here that the movie presumably veers from Johnson’s real-life story. In Linklater’s telling, Johnson falls for Maddy (Adria Arjona), a woman who wants him to kill her abusive husband. 

   Instead of busting Maddy, Johnson tells her to leave the lout.  He's infatuated, and we know that sex and love will follow -- not with Gary Johnson but with his cool alter-ego hitman, Ron.

  Johnson's on a slippery slope: He begins to become the roles he's playing, a kind of quiet endorsement of the fake-it-'til-you-make-it school of philosophy. Can the ruse be sustained? How and when might it all blow up? 

   Linklater plays with issues of identity, dangles red herrings, and piles on twists — not all of them credible. But Powell’s appealing string of poses and ploys keep Linklater’s Hit Man on an entertaining track. 

'Bernadette': flat where it should be sharp

Cate Blanchette plays a deeply depressed woman who's losing it in Seattle.

Bernadette lives in a large Seattle house that seems to be falling apart around her, although trace elements of a re-design can be seen. A sparsely furnished modern-looking bedroom, for example. Bernadette's husband works for Microsoft and has become a Ted-talking star in the world of high tech. Her whip-smart daughter is bound for Choate, a prep school that very likely will ensure her a place on the success track. Bernadette spends much of her time talking to Manjula, a Seri-like digital assistant in India.

Of course, she’s miserable.

Such is the life of Bernadette (Cate Blanchett), the title character of Where’d You Go Bernadette, director Richard Linklater’s adaptation of a well-received 2012 novel by Maria Semple.

Smart, judgmental and misanthropic, Bernadette can be a pain in the butt, and her contempt for what she calls “life’s banalities” doesn't seem to have led her toward anything resembling a cultural high ground. After years of ignoring her strange behavior, Bernadette's husband (Billy Crudup) has decided his wife needs help.

I can’t say I believed any of this because Linklater's movie can’t find a way successfully to blend satiric observation and character study while also giving his movie a bit emotional heft. As social satire, the movie takes hit-and-miss swipes at middle-class parents, over-achieving kids, annoyingly progressive schools and Seattle's tech-crazed world.

Even Kristen Wiig, as a neighbor and nemesis of Bernadette, isn't able to break through; she's playing a character who's so steeped in her "liberal" values that she's turned her life into a form of parody.

Bernadette's daughter Bee (Emma Nelson) narrates a story that gradually lets us know why Bernadette has lost her grip. She was once a star architect who won a MacArthur Grant for her genius. She designed houses that others envied, but after one of her vaunted projects met a tragic end, she vanished from the Los Angeles scene. She and her husband moved to Seattle, a city she says she hates.

Bee announces that she wants her parents to take her to Antarctica as a reward for something or other. Bernadette reluctantly agrees, even though the trip means she won't be able to avoid the horror of mingling with other passengers on a cruise ship.

Linklater's best movies are conversational gems that catch moods and moments, movies such as Slacker, Dazed and Confused and Before Sunrise. He's also made observant comedies, as those of us who enjoyed Bernie and School of Rock can attest. Boyhood may have been Linklater's best and most deeply felt movie.

Here, Linklater's working in a commercial vein while trying to retain the sharp idiosyncrasies of Semple's novel. The movie's most outrageous moment arrives in the form of a mudslide that disrupts a fund-raising party at the home of Wiig's character. It lands with a thud.

There's one very nice scene in which Bernadette encounters a former colleague (Laurence Fishburne) from Los Angeles. She regales him with a dizzying monologue about what she's been doing for the last 20 years. It's one of the few times Blanchett's amped-up theatricality proves revealing.

By the end, Bernadette starts delivering on-the-nose dialogue, offering its message in a form that comes close to bromide. Someone as creative as Bernadette must create or she'll go nuts. She'll become a menace to others. She's not cut out for ordinary suburban life.

Well, I thought, who really is? And, as I said, I didn't feel as if Linklater made me believe in Bernadette or her vast array of problems.

Three Vietnam veterans take to the road

Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying , a moderately successful mix of humor, sorrow and the bonds of brotherhood.

In director Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying, three Vietnam veterans reunite for a sad task. One of them has lost a son in Iraq. The mission: To bury a young Marine.

Two former Marines are played by Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne. Steve Carell 's Larry Shepherd -- nicknamed Doc -- served as medic in the Navy and wound up alongside Cranston and Fishburne's characters in the heat of Vietnam combat.

Last Flag Flying is based on novelist Darryl Ponicsan's sequel to The Last Detail, which was made into a 1973 movie starring Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid and Otis Young. Ponicsan co-authored the screenplay for Last Flag with Linklater, and the movie has some (but not all) of Last Detail's comic bite.

It's 2003: The movie's principals may have thought that their war-time experiences were safely locked in the vaults of the past, but their journey forces them to come to grips with their war-time behavior as well as with the nature of the sacrifices all young men make when they go off to war.

Low key and steeped in the kind of naturalism Linklater favors, the director's moderately affecting look at the deep-rooted impact of war begins when Doc tracks down Cranston's Sal Nealon, a boisterous fellow who owns a Norfolk, Va., bar where he seems to drink as much as he sells. The two then set out to find Fishburne's Richard Mueller, a tightly wound former Marine who has tried to push the war and his wild youth out of his consciousness. He has become a reverend.

Doc, who was dishonorably discharged from the Navy, is younger than the others and going through a particularly bad patch. Not only has son been killed in action, but he recently lost his wife to cancer. Doc refers to his Bad Conduct Discharge (BCD) as a Better Career Decision, but it's clear that the military made Doc something of a goat. Doc has not had an easy time of it, but somehow has avoided trapping himself behind bars of bitterness.

Questions arise about how Doc's son died. The Marines want to enshrine the young man as a hero, but the details of the young man's death turn out to be more horrific than heroic.

When Doc learns the truth, he refuses to have his son buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Despite the urging of a Marine colonel (Yul Vazquez), Doc won't allow the Marines to propagandize his son's death. He insists on burying the boy in his hometown of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Military protocol requires that the young man's body be accompanied to its resting place. J. Quinton Johnson plays the young Marine assigned to this grim task: He joins the three older men as they make their way north from Delaware, where they have traveled to pick up the body.

As is the case with any road movie, the personalities of the men emerge as the trip unfolds: Cranston's Sal is happily boorish; Fishburne's Mueller has given up drink and tried to live a life of serenity and prayer, but you get the feeling that his newfound propriety can't entirely protect him from his past. "Doc" proves the quietest of the trio, a man whose soul droops with the weight of grief and regret. Doc found stability and peace in family life -- but, now, even that has been taken from him.

There's plenty of bickering as the men move toward the movie's sad finale, and some of the screenplay's bits feel labored: Sal's attempts to bring his compatriots into the 21st Century by buying them cell phones, for example.

Linklater mutes any political messaging. By the end, he makes it clear that these men aren't interested in honor or even patriotism. They claim a devotion to the Marine Corps, but what they really seem to cherish is their relationship to one another, bonds forged by a shared experience none of them ever will fully digest and which always will threaten to consume them. Still, like the Dude in The Big Lebowski, they abide -- psychic wounds and all.

Herzog probes the mysteries of the Internet and a look at the work of Richard Linklater

Werner Herzog's latest documentary, Lo and Behold, isn't really a documentary at all. For me, it makes more sense to think of Herzog's exploration of the mysteries of the Internet as a cinematic essay, a wide-ranging and sometimes disjointed look at the issues and people that seem to have captured the director's interest. Divided into chapters, the movie begins with the founding of the Internet, and moves steadily toward the darker side of global interconnection. Toward the end, Lo and Behold becomes an ominous cautionary tale about the havoc that would befall the world if a major solar flare wiped out all interconnectivity. Pay attention to the movie's subtitle -- Reveries of the Connected World. It provides a clue about the movie's structure and fascinations. Herzog being Herzog, you probably won't be surprised that Lo and Behold sometimes strives for mind-bending kick. An example: Herzog asks one expert whether the Internet can dream? It's impossible to watch any Herzog film without being stimulated and provoked and Lo and Behold fills that bill, even if it's successes arrive in piecemeal fashion.

RICHARD LINKLATER, PRAISED AND ADMIRED

Director Richard Linklater (Slackers) qualifies as a true pioneer of Indie cinema, although the director occasionally swims in mainstream waters (School of Rock). Richard Linklater: The Dream is Destiny examines what now has become a fairly prolific career. Director Louis Black (a co-founder of the Austin Chronicle and of SXSW) makes little attempt to conceal his admiration as he interviews Linklater about his work. Black supplements the director's comments with interviews from such Linklater stalwarts as Ethan Hawke, Matthew McConaughey and Julie Delpy. If you're a Linklater fan, Richard Linklater: Dream is Destiny also serves as a review of the director's body of work -- from Slackers to Before Sunrise to Boyhood to Everybody Wants Some. There's plenty to be learned about filmmaking in the '90s, about working outside of Hollywood in Austin and about Linklater's approach to material. The movie notes some of Linklater's less-well-received works (The Newton Boys, for example), but it's mostly an appreciation. Wherever the movies have been or wherever they may be headed, we're lucky that Linklater is around to make his contribution. If you needed reminding of that, Dream is Destiny will do the job.

A college party movie set in Texas

Director Richard Linklater transitions from Boyhood to college in a movie about partying student athletes.

Director Richard Linklater will be 56 in July. Although he's drifting past middle age, the Austin-based director still seems intrigued by youth, perhaps because it's a period when characters are able to test life's waters and try on different styles.

Linklater spent 12 years working on the masterful Boyhood. Now, he's taking aim at adolescence -- albeit of a particular kind, that of college baseball players at a small Texas school during the early 1980s.

Everybody Wants Some!! takes place during the several days before classes begin; the movie's ballplayers drink, look for sexual adventures and jockey for position in the ramshackle house where they've taken up residence.

It's possible that if anyone but Linklater had made the loosey/goosey Everybody Wants Some!!, it would have been greeted with shrugs, a patchy attempt to chart what happens when an 18-year-old jock (Blake Jenner of Glee fame) arrives at fictional Southeastern Texas State for what he hopes will be a great career as a pitcher.

Equipped with a winning smile, Jenner's Jake easily finds a place among his teammates, crude and raucous ballplayers who might be '80s extensions of the frat boys from Animal House.

A bit more sensitive than his teammates, Jake eventually establishes a relationship with a theater major (Zoey Deutch).

But Jake also joins his new pals as they try various party modes -- from disco to punk, all set to a strong and nostalgic soundtrack that includes work by The Knack, Patti Smith, Jermain Jackson, Dire Straits, Devo and The Cars.

Standouts in the baseball playing group include Finn (Glen Powell), a pipe smoking student with a relaxed, know-it all manner, and Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), a stoner who proudly sets the record for the school's longest and deepest bong hit.

Willoughby occasionally philosophizes in the manner of the Linklater characters who populated his hang-out movie, Dazed and Confused, which was set during the 70s.

To the movie's credit, Linklater's characters don't exactly qualify as stock figures.

Tyler Hoechlin portrays McReynolds, the cockiest athlete, a power hitter who disdains pitchers and treats them as a lower order of being.

J. Quinton Johnson appears as the team's only black player, a second baseman.

There's also a good-ole country boy (Will Brittain), a young man who looks like he might have skills, but who could evolve into the kind of player who dribbles the juice from chewing tobacco down the front of his jersey.

I've still got enough adolescent in me to have chuckled as Linklater works his way through his plotless helping of dudes in search of a movie but having too good a time to care if they actually find one.

A couple of Linklater's observations are worth noting -- the way these young men turn nearly anything into a competition, for example.

But for the most part, Everybody Wants Some!! is a shambling, rambling look at young people who have yet to become interesting. Judging by the movie, they may never actually achieve that status.

Pointedly, the movie -- which shows very little baseball -- concludes on the first day of classes with Blake and another teammate (Temple Baker) falling asleep moments after the professor arrives. It's meant as a comment, I suppose, but it's not exactly one that shakes off the movie's party-hardy cobwebs.

Hitchcock/Truffaut, an illuminating duo

A documentary that takes us inside the mind of a master.

Most serious film lovers are familiar with Hitchcock/Truffaut, a book first published in France in 1967. The book offered a meticulously edited version of a week-long conversation between two very different directors, Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut.

In this essential volume, Hitchcock not only reveals his ideas about cinema, but engages in detailed discussions of how he achieved some of his most notable effects.

Unlike many books, Hitchcock/Truffaut can be opened almost anywhere and still yield abundant rewards. Credit Truffaut -- who began his career as a critic for the vaunted French publication Cahiers du Cinema. Truffaut venerated and understood Hitchcock, and was intimately familiar with his work.

Now comes director Kent Jones's documentary of the same name, another essential work that either will serve as a welcome amplification for devotees of the book or an introduction to it for cinema newbies.

Using segments of the recorded conversation between Hitchcock and Truffaut, well-selected clips from Hitchcock's films and commentary by a variety of current directors, Jones has assembled a film that deserves to become part of every film lovers collection.

Happily, those commenting on the films are not the usual suspects, aside from director Martin Scorsese, who always adds something valuable to any film about film in which he appears.

Jones also includes insights from other directors, notably James Gray, David Fincher, Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, Olivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader.

Of course, few can do a better job of describing Hitchcock's work than Hitchcock himself, and he does so with the kind of candor and generosity that he might only have been able to achieve with another filmmaker.

At the time of the book's initial publication, Truffaut hoped that a comprehensive look at Hitchcock's work would help change the view that some held of the "master of suspense." Truffaut believed that in the U.S., Hitchcock was regarded as a talented entertainer who made commercially successful thrillers. No more.

That view seems remarkably dated now: Few knowledgeable filmgoers would dispute the inseparability of Hitchcock's visual and narrative mastery, and most of us are willing to acknowledge that art and commerce needn't be irreconcilable enemies.

It's encouraging to hear a new generation of filmmakers talk about what they learned from watching Hitchcock's movies. Gray marvels at the perverse genius of Vertigo, for example.

But perhaps the best thing about Hitchcock/Truffaut is that it reaffirms what it means to take a serious approach to film -- not pompous, overly academic or self-impressed, but one that delights in rich analysis and deep appreciation.

As a result, Hitchcock/Truffaut provides us with abundant and durable pleasures.

It's almost over -- Oscar season, that is

Birdman and Boyhood in tight race for best picture.

Current wisdom has it that 2015 has given us one of the tightest Oscar races in years. Clear frontrunners have yet to emerge in several important categories, namely best picture, best director and best actor.
That may be true, but I have to confess that even several tightly contested races haven't gotten me psyched for Sunday's Oscars. In truth, the moment I'm most eagerly anticipating is the end of what feels like another interminable awards season.
Having said that, I suppose it's incumbent on me to make a few Oscar predictions, so here goes:

Best Picture
Birdman will win.
The competition has narrowed to a battle between Boyhood and Birdman. It's entirely possible that Boyhood will prove victorious, but Birdman seems to have received a boost of inevitably from victories at the Producers and Directors Guild awards, where it won best picture and best director honors respectively.
Besides, I know moviegoers whose judgment I respect who believe Boyhood doesn't quite live up to its reputation. A little underwhelming, they argue.
I'm going against my gut by picking Birdman, but my gut often finds itself out of alignment with Hollywood thinking.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope Boyhood takes best picture, but I'm prepared for Birdman to fly.
Best possible upset: Selma surprises everyone and wins best picture.

Best director
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
It's not unreasonable to expect a split vote for best picture and best director with Birdman winning best picture and Richard Linklater (Boyhood) winning best director.
A favorable outcome for Linklater might depend on whether the Academy decides that this well-regarded indie director -- who spent 12 years making his movie -- can't go home without some recognition.
But ...
It may be difficult to stop Inarritu since he's already won the Directors Guild award and because his movie bowed much later in the year than Boyhood, which had its premiere more than a year ago last month at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
Of course, there's yet another possibility: Inarritu wins best director, but Boyhood snags best-picture honors.

Best Actor
Eddie Redmayne will win for The Theory of Everything.
Lots of folks think Birdman's Michael Keaton will take home Oscar gold for his portrayal of a desperate Hollywood actor trying to make a comeback on Broadway.
Keaton, who hasn't starred in a movie in a while, certainly makes for a better Hollywood story than Redmayne: Veteran actor re-emerges to wow voters or something like that.
But the Screen Actors Guild award went to Redmayne, and actors make up the Academy's biggest voting bloc. Ergo, my pick.
Besides, Redmayne was terrific as physicist Steven Hawking; he deserves credit for keeping Theory of Everything from falling into disease-of-the week sentimentality. He portrayed Hawking's ALS-related disabilities with alarming accuracy, but never lost sight of Hawking's wit, brilliance and humanity.
If there's a dark horse here, it's Bradley Cooper. How could a Cooper victory happen? If Redmayne and Keaton wind up splitting voters, Cooper has a chance.
Besides, even people who don't admire American Sniper concede that Cooper gave one hell of a performance as Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.

Best Actress
We're now crossing into safer terrain for predictions.
Julianne Moore wins the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of a college professor battling a rapidly advancing case of Alzheimer's. This is a strong category, but Moore deserves to win -- not only for her performance in Still Alice, but for a career geared toward excellence -- with a few digressions, of course. Let's not talk about her first movie of 2015: The misbegotten Seventh Son.

Best Supporting Actor
The Oscar goes to J.K. Simmons. Why go against the wave of support Simmons already has received with Golden Globe and SAG awards?
If you think Simmons was scary and intimidating as a sadistic music teacher in Whiplash, you've forgotten his portrayal of a white supremacist in 56 episodes of HBO's Oz.

Best Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette will win.
Arquette may not have quite as much support as Simmons, but she'll have enough to win an Oscar for her work as an often-frustrated single mother in Boyhood.

Now for some quicker hits:
Look for The Imitation Game to emerge victorious in the best adapted screenplay category. I'm betting that The Grand Budapest Hotel will win best original screenplay for Wes Anderson , although -- for my money -- the movie is more a brilliant display of visual wit than anything else.
I'm going to skip most of the so-called technical categories, except to note that Birdman will win a cinematography Oscar for Emmanuel Lubezki, who also won in that category last year for his work on Gravity. Talk about being on a roll.
As for documentaries: It doesn't look as if anything can stop Citizen Four from taking home an Oscar, although I can't help but wonder whether Academy voters have at least some mixed feelings about Edward Snowden, the film's subject.
I'm thinking the Polish film Ida will win best foreign-language film, although this category can (and has) produced upsets. If I had a vote, it would have gone to Leviathan.
I'll be watching and Tweeting Sunday evening, contributing to the great snarkfest that now accompanies every awards show.
I believe the annual gathering at which Hollywood celebrates itself is fair game for snark.
Let's face it, the lengthy telecast seldom proves entertaining, and the results don't necessarily reveal anything essential about the cultural moment in which we're living.
We watch because ... well ... because we do.
Let's face it, being movie lovers often necessitates putting ourselves in the position of rejected lovers who refuse to take a hint. No matter how many times the Oscar show bores or disappoints us, we always seem to return for more.

'Boyhood' wins best picture at BFCA awards

The Broadcast Film Critics Association also honored Julianne Moore as 2014's best actress. Moore played a professor suffering from Alzheimer's in Still Alice.

Look, I understand that the awards season can feel interminable. But as a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association, and as someone who always posts the Association's nominees, I feel I should share this year's winners with you.

The Critics Choice Awards were given out Thursday evening in Los Angeles, the same day as the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced its nominees. You'll note a few differences.

Here are the winners:

Best Picture – Boyhood
Best Actor – Michael Keaton, Birdman
Best Actress – Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Best Supporting Actor – J.K. Simmons, Whiplash
Best Supporting Actress – Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Best Young Actor/Actress – Ellar Coltrane, Boyhood
Best Acting Ensemble – Birdman
Best Director – Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Best Original Screenplay – Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Armando Bo, Birdman
Best Adapted Screenplay – Gillian Flynn, “Gone Girl”
Best Cinematography – Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman
Best Art Direction – Adam Stockhausen (Production Designer), Anna Pinnock (Set Decorator), The Grand Budapest Hotel
Best Editing – Douglas Crise, Stephen Mirrione, Birdman
Best Costume Design – Milena Canonero, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Best Hair & Makeup – Guardians of the Galaxy
Best Visual Effects – Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Best Animated Feature – The Lego Movie
Best Action Movie – Guardians of the Galaxy
Best Actor in an Action Movie – Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
Best Actress in an Action Movie – Emily Blunt, Edge of Tomorrow
Best Comedy – The Grand Budapest Hotel
Best Actor in a Comedy – Michael Keaton, Birdman
Best Actress in a Comedy – Jenny Slate, Obvious Child
Best Sci-Fi/Horror Movie – Interstellar
Best Foreign Language Film – Force Majeure
Best Documentary Feature – Life Itself
Best Song – Glory, Common and John Legend, Selma
Best Score – Antonio Sanchez, Birdman

A few notable divergences from Oscar: The BFCA's best animated feature -- The Lego Movie -- was overlooked by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which didn't nominate it in the animated feature category. Although he didn't win, David Oyelowo (also snubbed by Oscar) was a BFCA nominee for best actor. Oyelowo portrayed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. Selma director Ava DuVernay (overlooked by the Academy, as well) was nominated by the BFCA for best director. She didn't win, either, but made the short list. The BFCA honored Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) for writing the best adapted screenplay. Flynn, who adapted her own novel, was ignored by Oscar, too.

If you're one of those folks who enter Oscar contests, you may want to peruse the BFCA list as you begin to decide where you'll be casting your votes.

An amazing portrait of boyhood

Boyhood -- director Richard Linklater's 12-year portrait of contemporary childhood -- stands as a time-capsule-worthy movie about the kind of fragmented family lives that have become increasingly common.

Linklater's movie may not be flawless, but it's brave and thorough, and it may make you realize just how difficult growing up has become. I don't know if Boyhood describes a new normal, but it's an eminently credible look at the realities that confront an awful lot of today's kids.

The story focuses on Mason, following him from the age of six to the age of 18. Mason's the son of parents who married too early and subsequently divorced. He lives with his mother, who has notably bad judgment when it comes to men, eventually entangling herself in a second marriage to an abusive drunk.

During his young life, Mason is forced to change residences and schools. He must also navigate a relationship with his biological father, a good-hearted guy who hasn't really grown up himself.

Linklater shot his movie in 39 days over the course of 12 years, employing the same cast throughout the entire project. As a result, we get to watch the young people in the movie grow and mature, a process that takes them through stages of cuteness and ungainliness and finally deposits them on the cusp of adulthood.

We feel as if we really know these youngsters, and as they get older, we're constantly looking for traces of the children they once were. We live with these characters.

To his credit, Linklater doesn't fill the movie's 2 1/2 hours with wall-to-wall confrontation. Although there are a couple of tough emotional outbursts, Linklater mostly allows his characters to live their lives unhurriedly, often struggling to do the best they can.

In that sense, Boyhood is a movie about the ways in which we learn to live with imperfection, to adjust to it as time passes.

Young Ellar Coltrane provides the glue that holds Boyhood together. He gives the movie a strong center as Mason's moves toward young adulthood.

Linklater's daughter Lorelei, who plays Mason's older sister, is equally good, although her character doesn't get equal time with Mason.

In an early scene, Lorelei Linklater and Coltrane battle in the backseat of a car in ways that will be distressingly familiar to any parent who has lived through similar moments with a contentious set of siblings.

The rest of the cast does strong work, particularly Patricia Arquette as Mom and Hawke as Dad. Marco Perella plays another man in Mom's life, a guy who tries to over-control his kids because he can't control himself. His alcoholism eventually turns mean.

Mom later takes up with an Iraq war vet, another guy who's clueless when it comes to women and kids.

It's fair, I think, to regard Boyhood as a collection of telling moments: a kid watching his parents argue and us knowing that the moment is spring-loaded to have later impact, for example.

Late in the movie, we see Mason's first serious relationship with a girl (Zoe Graham).

As I watched Boyhood, I kept wondering when melodrama would strike, when the dramatic chickens would come home to roost. That never really happens.

Yes, circumstances can be difficult, but the characters muddle on. Some fall by the wayside -- or are pushed. Some grow and prosper. Mom, for example, becomes more independent, although she also sees the hollowness in a life that has left her on her own.

Hawke's character finds a second wife and starts a new family. He puts irresponsibility behind him, and trades his beloved GTO for a mini-van.

Throughout, Dad remains in touch with the kids from his first family. A scene in which he takes them to meet his new wife's parents typifies the way Linklater plays against expectations.

Grandma and Grandpa are Bible-toting churchgoers, and Grandpa's a gun enthusiast, but they're also people with a natural sense of generosity.

When Grandpa (Richard Andrew Jones) gives 15-year-old Mason one of this prized shotguns (his father gave it to him), the moment becomes truly touching.

Shifting cultural references pop up as we go. We get scenes during the height of the Harry Potter craze. Cell phones crop up. Musical tastes evolve. Mason changes hair styles, and eventually dons earrings.

But Linklater seems significantly less interested in shifting styles than in the substance of the lives he's observing.

When Mason begins to mature, he becomes interested in pursuing a career in art photography. It's clear that he's dealing with adolescent confusion, but also that he's smart and sensitive.

Besides, there could be a good side to the emotional distance that Mason learns to maintain, a hint of wariness that should serve him well in a world that's not always waiting for us with open arms.

In its later stages, Boyhood begins to feel like a talk-heavy Linklater movie in the Slacker and Waking Life vein: Characters reveal themselves (or not) through conversational riffs. And the movie overstays its welcome with a prolonged final act.

But taken as a whole, Boyhood represents an impressive achievement, a beautifully observed portrait of contemporary life, rooted in Texas but not confined to the peculiarities of the Lone Star state.

For all of its difficult detours, Boyhood qualifies as an optimistic movie, expressing Linklater's belief that most of us survive, get along and do our best keep going. We try.

Jesse and Celine on the rocks?

Talk is the action in director Richard Linklater's gem-like Before Midnight.
Director Richard Linklater's Before Midnight is a welcome rarity, a movie that digs deeply into the core of a relationship that's been going on for almost 20 years. At a time when insipid rom-coms tend to dominate the nation's multiplexes, a smart relationship movie can seem like a cultural antidote: fragile, tentative and absolutely essential.

This third in a series of films about two lovers who first met in Vienna in 1995 (Before Sunrise) and who reunited in Paris in 2004 (Before Sunset) continues and perhaps even strengthens Linklater's talky, introspective inquiry into the nature of love between two people who can't always get out of their own heads.

As those familiar with the previous two movies know, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) have had their problems: However, travel deprivation isn't one of them. This time, Jesse and Celine, now married to each other, find themselves in beautiful Greece with their twin girls.

The movie begins with Jesse feeling blue and a bit guilty because his son Hank (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) is about to rejoin his mother in the U.S. Looming separation triggers one of Jesse's nagging issues: Although he and Celine have two beautiful daughters, Jesse hasn't been the father Hank, his offspring from a previous marriage, needs or deserves.

Jesse's talk about moving back to Chicago upsets Celine, who believes she's already sacrificed a lot for the sake of their relationship. A dedicated environmentalist, the French-born Celine just has landed a job that allows her to pursue her career in an ideal European setting. The last thing she wants is to uproot and move to the U.S.

Say this: Jesse and Celine know how to suffer in comfort. They're the guests of a novelist (played by the cinematographer Walter Lassally) who has invited Jesse and his brood to spend time at his very pleasant villa.

Linklater is one of the few directors working today who makes no bones about directing talk-heavy films. Conversations evolve during a meal that Jesse and Celine share with a group of friends. Jesse and Celine stake out more turf, as they stroll about town. A hotel room provides the setting for what begins as an opportunity for romantic renewal but quickly degenerates into a fight.

Jesse and Celine's marriage may be shaky, but Before Midnight isn't a hand-wringing, soul-rending look at a marriage in its death throes. As was the case in the previous two movies, there's an exploratory quality to the conversations between Jesse and Celine, although this time, there's also plenty of anger, particularly on Celine's part.

Meanwhile, Jesse -- who earns his living as a writer -- mulls ideas for a new novel and continues his on-going inner monologue, which occasionally presents itself in the form of conversation with others.

Hawke and Delpy give such impressively naturalistic performances that they leave us hoping that Linklater will check in with Jesse and Celine again -- even though he's running out of times of day to provide these movies with names.

And keep this in mind: Despite the loose and deceptively informal nature of Before Midnight, it takes focus and discipline to keep a movie such as this feeling relaxed, unstudied and real.

The rise and fall of a Texas funeral director

A flower blooms in a small Texas town -- and his name is Bernie.

Bernie Tiede was a solicitous assistant funeral director in the tiny Texas town of Carthage. Marjorie Nugent was Carthage's richest widow, a woman known for her meanness of spirit. Bernie (Jack Black) prided himself on providing service with a sensitive smile and praise to Jesus. Perhaps convinced that even the town ogre couldn't help responding to his irresistible warmth, Bernie befriended Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine).

Bernie eventually gave up his job at the Carthage funeral home to become Mrs. Nugent's aide and confidant. He prospered. He traveled with her. She found someone to assuage the loneliness she wouldn't admit to having, but she never lost her taste for delivering a punishing remark. No matter what else happened, Marjorie never allowed Bernie to forget that he had been put on this Earth to respond to her every demand.

One day or maybe it was in one frustrated moment, Bernie snapped. He shot Marjorie four times with a rifle. She died, a fate that often befalls those who suffer multiple rifle wounds.

Bernie, a seriocomic movie from director Richard Linklater, is based on a true story taken from a magazine article by Skip Hollandsworth, who co-wrote the movie's screenplay with Linklater. Mixing actors and real Carthage townsfolk, Linklater comes up with a movie that should be celebrated -- not because it deals with murder -- but because it exudes the kind of regional flavor that's difficult to come by in today's homogenized movie climate. Linklater's movie is Texas to the core.

Black's fans are in for a surprise. His Bernie is a Jesus-loving graduate of funeral director school who also preaches and sings at the local church. Bernie prides himself on his neat-as-a-pin appearance, and has a slight mincing quality to his gait. Bernie may be light in the loafers, as one townsperson unoriginally puts it, or he might just be a kind of rare Texas flower that blooms in a small town that can't always tell the difference between sincerity and salesmanship. Hell, neither can Bernie?

I couldn't look at Black without thinking that Bernie probably overdoes it in the cologne department.

Looking as if someone had just force fed her a lemon, MacLaine creates a character who seems to have been born sour and remained that way.

Black and MacLaine -- as unlikely a screen pairing as I ever expected to see -- are terrific together. She hectors and bullies Bernie. He tolerates her until the moment he loses his patience and picks up that rifle.

Linklater spends a lot of time introducing us to Bernie and to Carthage. In an early scene, Bernie addresses a group of aspiring funeral directors, teaching them the finer points of mortuary science, things like how to keep the eyes of the deceased from popping open, always a cause for alarm.

The second half of the picture deals with the way in which Bernie tries to cover up his crime and the trial that follows his arrest.

In district attorney Danny Buck, Matthew McConaughey has found a role he really was born to play, a country bumpkin whose strategy involves turning Bernie into an effete alien who knows things like which color wine goes with which kind of food and who can pronounce a few common French words. Scandalous.

Buck finds himself at odds with the good people of Carthage, some of whom think that Bernie may have done the world a small favor when he sent Mrs. Nugent to her eternal reward. They're outraged that Buck has been granted a change of venue for the trial, shifting the proceedings to another small Texas town where (as one character puts it) the people are likely to have more tattoos than teeth.

Linklater, the director of movies as wide-ranging as Slacker, Waking Life, Before Sunset and Me and Orson Welles, has come up with a winning oddball of a movie. Having real people -- most of them naturally funny -- comment on Bernie and Mrs. Nugent makes us appreciate the comic tone Linklater has chosen for the movie. It's not imposed on the material, but stems from a living, breathing reality.

Bernie may be guilty of minimizing murder a bit, but it also maximizes local flavor. And that's something movies very much need.