The “perfect film”. (Source) I haven’t delved into my personal life much on this blog, yet as sure as I’ve written every word myself, you can be sure each word came from sen…

Ben-Hur (1959) - ***½ "Long-winded but deservedly famous 3½ hour epic; the length into itself is almost a pretension, but the set-pieces are lively and the acting is far above adequate." That was what I wrote about Ben-Hur in my old Film Guide, at some point before March 2004. That was certainly the only time I would've seen the whole film, but going back to it so many years later, enough of it felt unfamiliar that I wonder whether I actually watched the whole thing.

On Friday my car died suddenly on my way to work; this morning I learned that the engine had actually seized, which means at best an expensive repair and at worst I need a new car. And yesterday, my computer stopped connecting to my home internet. My hands are a bit full these days, as you might expect. As such, I'm probably going to push a few things back.

André Holland has to decide between who he was and who he is (which includes dating Gemma Chan) in the fascinating The Actor. Another year, another set of films that either impressed me, or left me wanting, more than most viewers. This year it was a little trickier to decide on the overhyped films, but as ever there were quite a few films that were greatly underappreciated because, well, only so many films can get the level of attention the best films deserve.

How Green Was My Valley (1941) - **** Of John Ford's four Oscar wins for Best Director, only How Green Was My Valley won Best Picture as well - and happened to beat Citizen Kane, ensuring that once Kane secured its position as an all-time classic, Valley would suffer for it. But returning to the film after many years - one of the only aspects I clearly remembered was Huw Morgan's (Roddy McDowall) suffering at the hands of his cruel teacher Mr.

Before I get into the reviews, I want to note that, as I write this, I have by my count 15 films with Oscar nominations I still need to see: Arco (Animated Feature) Diane Warren: Relentless (Song) If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (Actress) Kokuho (Makeup and Hairstyling) Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (Animated Feature) The Lost Bus…

The big day is here. And as I explained in my predictions article, things felt a lot less certain this year in part due to our not having several precursors to draw on. And the Academy still managed to surprise me a couple of times! Let's jump right in. Picture: Bugonia F1 Frankenstein Hamnet Marty Supreme One Battle After Another…

Nuremberg (2025) - *** It's pretty much impossible not to compare Nuremberg to Judgment at Nuremberg, which 65 years leavened the sense of triumph that came from putting Nazi leaders on the trial with the political considerations that haunted the trials at the time and the looming fact that the story was not over; Judgment ends with the information that all of the living defendants of the Nuremberg trials have been released from prison, while…

The Globes were last night, and the winners were a nice mix of the expected and the unexpected: Picture - Drama: Hamnet Not Sinners, notably. I'll be a touch annoyed if this wins the Oscar - it's a very good film but there are several contenders I much prefer - but not angry. Picture - Musical/Comedy: One Battle After Another…

It’s looking like a good year for horror at the Oscars. I'm starting this post way early (December 13 - over a month before the actual nominations) in part because we're going to be missing a couple of major precursors. Most notably, the BAFTA nominations won't go up until five days after the Oscar nominations (although we will get the longlists…

Resurrection/狂野时代 (2025) - **** Resurrection is a profoundly difficult film to describe, but it's the rare film where describing in terms of its antecedents doesn't feel like a dodge; "Inception as directed by Guy Maddin" was my reaction, and my friend Ethan, who thinks even more highly of it than I do, suggested "Holy Motors for the Chinese century." Both fit, but neither do full justice - as such descriptions rarely do - to what Bi Gan's ambitious dream-epic has to offer.

I don't know if I'll manage to keep to a monthly schedule in 2026. I should probably just go back to a quarterly schedule, but I had a hard enough time sticking to that when that was my model. (I sometimes wonder how I've managed to keep up with my weekly movie-review column.) Anyway, since I've got four books to talk about, I'm going to try and cover them as quickly as possible.

We're back! And as I'm typing this up, the Critics' Choice Awards have just concluded, meaning that our first major precursor has spoken. This week, we've got: Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ) Critics' Choice Awards (CCA) Georgia Film Critics Association (GAFCA) Iowa Film Critics Association (IFCA) Minnesota Film Critics Association (MNFCA) New Jersey Film Critics Circle (NJFCC) National Society of Film Critics (NSFC)

To keep the main page for Weekly Gravy posts from becoming unmanageably large, I’m putting all the posts that went up in 2025 – #s 223 through 273 – here: #223: A Miracle (1973), Heavy Metal Parking Lot, Academy Leader Variations, The Plague Summer, House of Cards (1947), The Fanatic #224: A Time for Dying, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Rising Sun, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?

The White Reindeer/Valkoinen peura (1952) - ***½ Finnish cinema has a long history before Aki Kaurismäki became the first Finnish director to break through internationally, but if one knows about Scandinavian cinema before the 1980s, one likely thinks of Sweden and Denmark; to the casual observer, Finnish culture might well begin and end with Jean Sibelius. I've since dug a bit deeper, but when I first learned of…

This post is a bit of stopgap. My master list of **** continues to grow, and my goal is to do a more elaborate and extensive post when it reaches 500, which I should reach within a couple of months, even if I just rewatch some old favorites that I know will score that high. So unlike previous years, I won't do a top 450 or whatever; I'll just save that for the top 500 post when it comes.

2025 might not have broken any Gravy records - nor was I attempting to do so - and indeed it reflects the mystery of just what people want to read and what they'll seek out. A look at the most popular posts of the year will review a mix of old and new, of defunct soda reviews and detailed write-ups of films that few writers have bothered discuss in much detail at all.

Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) - ***½ Not unlike The Final Reckoning earlier this year, I find myself a bit surprised by the disappointment, in some quarters at least, in Fire and Ash. While it has some of the faults which marked its predecessors, including some dubious screenwriting (one early scene is so perfunctory it's laughable), and while it does, in the final stretch, hew too closely to the thrilling third act of…