Roundtables

Oscars Roundtable: Our Predictions for the 96th Academy Awards

It’s that time again. We all picked our favorites at the end of the year; the guilds have spoken; critics groups have doled out their laurels; and now, three months into 2024 it’s time for the Academy to put a bow on the movies of 2023 with the Oscars. In advance of Sunday’s telecast airing on ABC at 4 pm (PDT) – an hour earlier than usual and on the first day of Daylight Saving Time no less – we gathered round the old roundtable to make our predictions on how the awards will (and should) go when all’s said and done.

Reviews Roundtables

Roundtable: Killers of the Flower Moon

In his review of Killers of the Flower Moon, Chris called Martin Scorsese’s three and a half hour historical film a masterpiece and one of the best movies of 2023. Josh saw it over the weekend and immediately wanted to talk about it, so we fired up a SunBreak Roundtable to hash out some thoughts and feelings about this epic movie. Spoilers, such as they are for a century’s old well-reported true story, follow.

Reviews Roundtables

Roundtable: We Are Become Barbenheimer

Given the monumental event in summer blockbuster history, Chris and Josh collected ourselves and convened a quick roundtable to chat about our experiences with Christopher Nolan’s atomic age biopic and Greta Gerwig’s big budget fantasia about the original American Icon. 

Reviews Roundtables

Roundtable: We crashed Babylon’s spectacular Hollywood History party and lived to tell the tale

Damien Chazelle’s latest movie is a staggeringly ambitious, multi-tiered melodrama that follows several disparate characters amidst Hollywood’s transition from silent movies to talkies. Very much interwoven with this huge technological shift is the extended high that was the late 1920s, followed by the Wall Street Crash that ushered in The Great Depression. Lest we make this sound too highbrow, it is a film that includes car chases, explosive elephant excrement, orgies, projectile vomit, freak shows, bloody injuries, and mountains upon mountains of hard drugs. And don’t forget the snake fight.

Reviews Roundtables

Yep, Jordan Peele’s Nope is the most fun you’ll have at the movies this summer.

After a topsy-turvy couple of years in which big films tiptoed back into cinemas, Nope, the third feature from Jordan Peele lands in theaters this weekend. In a bombastic blockbuster season of big planes and superhero bloat, Peele’s cryptic tale of weird happenings in a lonely gulch of inland California might just be the best time you can have at a movie theater all summer. Chase and I saw a promo screening this week and couldn’t wait to talk about it.

Reviews Roundtables

Our Favorite Films of (the first half of) 2022

Somehow we’re already halfway through 2022. Amid the fireworks and festivities of the long weekend, we took stock of our favorite movies of the year. We each separately compiled our individual lists and in a surprising bit of unanimity we all picked the DANIELS’ maximalist multiverse-spanning sci-fi saga Everything Everywhere All At Once as our favorite.