17
May
2015
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
Tom Hardy plays the title character in Mad Max: Fury Road, director George Miller's continuation-slash-reboot of his legendary post-apocalyptic action series that began in 1979, and a movie boasting a central figure who might be the most powerful, intimidating, and deeply empathetic ass-kicker of 21st Century cinema. It's not Hardy, but he's pretty great, too.
LES MISÉRABLES
The first trophy handed out at the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony was for Best Cinematography, a prize that I predicted would go to The Tree of Life but that instead went to Hugo. (Seriously, after his undeserved losses for 2006's Children of Men and now the Terrence Malick film, exactly whom does Emmanuel Lubezki have to do to win an Oscar?) But that was actually my second incorrect assumption of the evening, because as soon as host Billy Crystal stepped on stage, I said to the others at my viewing party, "Here comes the standing ovation," and the audience - despite giving the man a warm reception - remained seated. Did the crowd have a collective premonition of just how spectacularly Crystal would bomb last night?
