The 91st Annual Academy Awards

With no host and no stupid skits, the 91st Oscar ceremony went smoothly and relatively quickly, only going 20 minutes over the appointed time.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the winners. This is real, tangible progress of a more inclusive Academy, especially with 'below the line' nominations - Which were all aired.

#9: At Eternity's Gate

The cinematography for this is wild. Close ups, tilts, swerves, downright setting the camera on the ground - on it's side! - and turning it to an upright position. Which you may not care for, there are points that feel a little disjointed. You can consider it a parallel to Vincent's behavior if you like.

Unlike last year's "Loving Vincent", where we saw snippets of the artist through the subjects of his work, this one is a front-seat to a visionary of things we can't see, clinging to any person who remotely likes him.

It's about how Van Gogh feels things so deeply in nature, in wanting to insert every emotion into his paintings, that he loses himself for minutes at a time.

I enjoy movies like this with strong biopic leanings but do not start out from birth to death in a Power-point esque production. There's time to stop and admire things as Vincent does.

Sexual Assault of Men Played for Laughs (TW: Sexual Assault).

#8: Kim Possible (2019)

For those unaware, Kim Possible was an amazing show that aired on Disney Channel in the early to mid 2000s about a teenage crimefighter name Kim Possible.

The kicker? It wasn't a secret. Everyone knew who she was and what she did. She had to balance an after-school job, work, and cheerleading practice with saving the world and stopping crime.

Why Disney decided to reboot it into a live-action movie isn't surprising - Girl power. In fact, they give Kim a female friend earlier than they did in the show, and they also beef up the cast with her mother and grandmother being former fighters as well - ...but why they decided to make it a TV movie is.

Disney Channel Original Movies are cheap; As much as I love the Descendants franchise, it looks and feels cheap and silly.

#7: Alita: Battle Angel

I kind of liked the original working title of "Battle Angel Alita" better, but whatever.

The more I sat on this, this more I realized I was always going to see it.

I'm that person who loved "Jupiter Ascending" and "Valerian" and thought, while they had some bad elements, there was much more good in them, and they deserve sequels, damn it!

So cheesy, expensive adaptations of foreign comics and manga is clearly right up my alley. And a $4 DBOX ticket helps.

The action shines, helped extraordinarily by DBOX and fantastic, clear fight choreography.

This...is extremely dense. Heavy, intricate material. I don't know how much of the manga they put in here, how many volumes, but it ends with a clear open door for a sequel, which I really hope we get.

While some of the effects on the side characters are a little iffy (The bounty hunter after Alita especially, Ed Skrein doesn't look so bad), Alita herself (Rosa Salazar) is a marvel. The eyes are still uncanny - That's the point.

Special note; Law enforcement is now part of the gig economy. Which is kind of amazing. God knows we couldn't have that in America.

SPOILERS

#6: Zootopia

I have always been a humongous lover of anthropomorphic animal tales. I talked about Redwall, but there's also Mistmantle, and Geronimo Stilton, and Hermux Tantamoq and I totally understand that I just said a bunch of gibberish and you don't know what any of it is but it meant the world to me as a child.

Just 7 short years after making their first black princess a frog for most of her movie, the geniuses at Disney Animation Studios made a bare-bones, kind of muddled story about discrimination. Is Judy discriminated against because she's a rabbit? A herbivore? Small?

It's about Prey vs. Predators, and you can fill in the power imbalances yourself with whatever you like! Mayor Bellwether (My favorite character) talks about a "Mammal Inclusion Initiative" but mammals can be predators or prey.

Yeah, this movie doesn't have the bite of actually making a clear allegory, but the people who made it are mostly white men, and while their lives have had individual challenges, they don't immediately understand that everyone outside of that demographic has had far bigger challenges because of race and gender.

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