The 92nd Annual Academy Awards telecast is scheduled to air at 7 p.m. CST on Sunday, February 9, and before getting into the nitty-gritty of what I think might win, I'll tell you right away why 1917 is destined to receive a whole bunch of Oscars including Best Picture: If it doesn't get at least six, the Best Picture champ from 2010-2019 that amassed the most trophies is going to be The Artist. Remember The Artist? That silent, black-and-white, French comedy from 2011 that you kept meaning to see and never did? That's gonna be immortalized the decade's biggest winner. Liberal bona fides or not, Academy members would never let that happen.

This past weekend, The Turning became only the 21st wide-release movie – though the second in three weeks (after The Grudge) – to ever receive an “F” grade from audiences as reported by CinemaScore, the market-research firm that has been polling crowd reactions for more than two decades. Why was the grade for this timeless haunted-house tale so abysmal? And why, despite the film's considerable strengths, was it kind of deserved?

Overstated though most of them seemed to be, I enjoyed the mean-spirited take-downs of Cats as much as the next guy. But I think I've figured out why director Stephen Gaghan's new family adventure Dolittle – a far worse movie – hasn't suffered nearly the critical indignities of Tom Hooper's musical train wreck: It's so tediously by-the-numbers, and so predictably awful in all the expected ways, that it simply saps your will to mock.

Although many audiences would disagree, not all movies need to be fun, and Sam Mendes' 1917 is the perfect example of a film that's not only more fun than it needs to be, but more fun than it should be.