The Quite Nerdy Blog

At this point, in real life and on the blog, I feel like my anger over Bohemian Rhapsody has become very well known. I never actually reviewed it and while it's definitely too late to review it now (and I think that might require a second viewing which is out and out not happening), I wanted to take the time to properly lay out what it is I don't like about it. See, when the film first came out, there was a critical mauling which I fell very clearly on the side of. I saw it the day it came out and assumed I'd probably never have to think about it again, at which point it became a hit. It made almost $900 million (and still counting), was briefly on the IMDb Top 250 and won more Oscars than any other film did in this years ceremony. People love it. So yeah, I think you could say we have unfinished business. I also just wanted to make this post to spare my poor housemates who have had to listen to me ranting about it since October and by using my blog as an outlet for my ...

We're finally done with the 2019 Awards Season and as I try and keep my Bohemian Rhapsody anger bottled up to save my housemates anymore rambles, it's time to look back over the last couple of months at the people and films who were unfairly left behind. As I do every year, I'm only going to be including films and people who were actually part of the conversation, meaning that favourites of mine like Suspiria and Bad Times at the El Royale will not be making the list because they just aren't those kind of films. Rankings are done by weighing up both the quality of film/person and how unrecognised they ended up being. One example of which would be... 7. The Favourite On paper, this seems like a bad choice for a list like this, seeing as The Favourite won a bunch of BAFTAs, was nominated for ten Oscars (joint highest this year) and had one of the most memorable Oscar wins of the year for Olivia Colman. In reality however, it's hard not to feel like The Favouri...

Edit: this post has been edited to reflect the depressing reality that we live in post-Oscars 2019, where any correct predictions are highlighted in green and any incorrrect predictions are highlighted in red . There's also a little tally at the bottom of how many I got right. We finally made it. The worst awards season since I've been interested in films is finally starting to come to a close but before it does, there's one last wave of pointless predictions to be made. Now that all the nominees are in, I'm going to try and predict all the winners for the 2019 Oscars ceremony. Last year I actually managed to correctly predict all but one so fingers crossed for similar luck this year. As with all other years too, this is a blog that exists to get my trash opinion out there so I will also be saying which nominee I think most deserves to win. So come on friends, one last push and then we can get into dumb blockbuster season, just a little closer to the release of Hobbs...

Nominated for 3 Oscars, including Best Original Score and Best Adapted Screenplay If Beale Street Could Talk is both the follow up to director Barry Jenkins' critically acclaimed indie darling Moonlight and also one of the most cruelly snubbed films of the 2019 awards season. For those who are unaware, this film was not nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars and quite frankly, that is an absolute disgrace, hence my stance on saying fuck it and just reviewing this film anyway, because it deserves all the love and praise we can heap on it. It's an adaptation of the book of the same name by James Baldwin (which I haven't read but am now eager to), about a young couple, Tish and Fonny. Fonny is in prison for circumstances that aren't explained to us until later in the film but feel sadly predictable and while in there, Tish discovers she is pregnant with their child. The narrative weaves its way between their exquisite past, a tale of them falling deeper and deeper i...

Nominated for 3 Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay. Can You Ever Forgive Me? is not one of the bigger Oscar movies but look, the big Best Picture films I've either not seen in months and am not interested enough in revisiting them or it's Green Book and I just haven't got around to it yet so I'm reviewing a film that's at least been in some of the conversations that I saw a few days ago. It's the real life story of Lee Israel, a writer who has most notably written biographies and essentially just made a career out of transforming her writing style into that of anyone else. Unfortunately for her, that career just isn't paying as much anymore and so she ends up faking letters from famous figures who are dead and selling those letters on to collectors. It's always hard to work out how to judge the quality of a story that is "real" but I suppose with CYEFM, it tells the story it has fairly well. You likely won...

Nominated for 10 Oscars (joint highest this year), including Best Cinematography, Best Director and Best Picture. Roma is the newest film from beloved Mexican Auteur Alfonso Cuaron, director of awards friendly films like Gravity, personal pieces like Y Tu Mama Tambien and technically complex works like Children of Men which I haven't seen yet but I'll watch it soon, I SWEAR. Anyway, Roma is a combination of all those aspects and very neatly so. It's the story of a woman called Cleo who is something of a housemaid for a middle class family in Mexico City. She cooks for them, cleans up after them and maybe she's even really cared about by them. It's not really about that though, it's about her and her inner turmoil over the period of about a year. As with many movies like this, it's largely fairly plotless. Stuff happens, there is a narrative thrust to the film that I'm still not sure I want to reveal two months on, but that's not what matters. It...

Nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Picture. Vice is the much anticipated follow-up to The Big Short which, I can confirm, still holds up brilliantly. This time though, director Adam McKay is aiming his satirical gaze at ex-Vice President and all around dick head Dick Cheney. He's not a familiar figure to many here in the UK (or at least, not many my age) but fortunately, that's what the film is all about, no prior knowledge of him needed. It careens wildly through his life, flash forward and backward with little abandon, from the time when he was a college dropout getting drunk all the time, to when he was first working in the White House, all the way to when he was Vice President of the United States of America. One of the most interesting things about the film for me was that I didn't know the story, so getting to hear it (from an admittedly anti-Cheney standpoint) was interesting. What I didn't like was that the story is tol...

My first review of the Awards Season is quite an exciting one because it's a film that has really captured me in a fascinating way and by the time you read this, we'll know how well it's done at picking up nominations but for the record, I think this film is probably going to lead the nominations. Anyway, I'm talking about The Favourite, the new film from weirdo Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. Maybe the weirdest thing about the film is that the plot is relatively normal, on paper just a typical period drama. It's about Queen Anne (a real life figure) who is suffering from gout and will therefore often hand over her regal duties to her friend, adviser and lover Sarah Marlborough. This however is complicated when Sarah's cousin Abigail rocks up into town and seems to be trying to usurp Sarah's position. Their struggle for that position of huge power and what their motivations behind that are make up for the majority of the film, in that I would be hard pu...

Edit: this post has been altered to reflect what did and didn't get nominated this year with correct predictions in green and incorrect predictions in red . Total correct predictions at the bottom Oscars Season is here again and that means it's time to celebrate movies that are quite good while the ones that I thought were the best typically get sidelined. Regardless, it's a solid crop this year already but not all of them can be nominated. Some great films are not going to make it and that's my job here, to try and work out which films those are. As such, I largely am keeping my opinion out of the main predictions but there will be a little entry in each whose work was brilliant yet may get sidelined. So, let's predict some nominations for some bullshit awards that really don't mean much! Best Cinematography Likely Bets: Alfonso Cuaron for Roma Robbie Ryan for The Favourite Linus Sandgren for First Man Unlikely but Worthy: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom for S...