Remember the collective delusion that overcame the movie business and critical group in 2009 and 2010, when folks insisted that James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar was going to chance cinema forever? It didn’t, and those endlessly-promised sequels are nonetheless nowhere to be seen.
The Marvin Hamlisch rating (adapting Scott Joplin tunes) is still great, though. No one will ever confuse this with Frank Capra’s best film — or possibly even certainly one of his ten finest? This is still type of baseline Capra, with Jimmy Stewart in a role he’d be higher at in later Capra movies — nevertheless it’s nonetheless, you know, Jimmy Stewart.
But the movie did get a huge number of Oscar nominations, regardless of garnering solely technical wins. Every year on the Oscars, there are nominees that are totally predictable—motion pictures whose inclusion in the race feels so inevitable from day one, it is exhausting to … Read More