A doc can get away with an unexciting, even bland presentation so long as the story it tells captures and holds your interest, and directors Mila Aung-Thwin's and Daniel Cross' 2014 documentary Atanasoff: Father of the Computer kept me interested, and quite invested, through the whole of its too-short 45 minutes.

The January 24 reveal of this year's Oscar nominees brought with it the usual amount of pleasures, disappointments, and surprises, as well as our annual reminder that not every movie voters get to see is one Quad Citians have been able to see. Two of the stragglers, however, managed to secure local releases this past weekend. Another contender has been available for rental and purchase for weeks, but found itself as perhaps the title that Academy Awards completists wanted/needed to catch up with above all others.

I, personally, found the experience of Skinamarink extremely tiresome and legit-scary for maybe 100 seconds of its 100-minute running length. Dammit, though, if I can't get this thing out of my head.

Over the course of three hours and nine minutes, there's one sensationally effective, entertaining, and even educational sequence in Damien Chazelle's Babylon – even if, like everything else in this wildly indulgent and obnoxious old-Hollywood saga, it, too, eventually gets royally effed up.