Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Love Lies Bleeding (2024): A tale of lust, love, quiet desperation and outbursts of violence in a dysfunctional family whose delicate balance is upset when a stranger comes to town, a female bodybuilder with her own dark secrets. Realism is interspersed with moments of surrealism that make you go, "WTF". B-

Max

Caddo Lake (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Casdo Lake (2024): Texas's only natural lake is the setting for a spooky supernatual, mysterious something. It affects multiple generations of one family over many decades and causes seizures and disappearances and wolves, and maybe...time travel? Just figuring out how everyone is related is challenging enough in this half-baked mystery. C-

Max

Juror #2 (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Juror #2 (2024): Courtroom drama directed by Clint Eastwood. Think 12 Angry Men with Nicholas Hoult playing the holdout. The twist comes very early, but then the trial and jury deliberations all go as you expect. The abrupt ending is the only thing that isn't spelled out for the audience. B-

Max

Zero Day (TV 2025)

Rotten Tomatoes

Zero Day (TV 2025): A cyber attack takes out the electric grid, comms, and transportation systems, but just for an hour. Robert De Niro plays a respected ex-President tasked with finding who is behind it, before they strike again. The plot gets too complicated for its own good, with too many unresolved plot points for my liking. C+

Netflix

Disclaimer (TV 2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Disclaimer (TV 2024): Award-winning journalist (Cate Blanchett) finds herself canceled when a secret from her past is revealed. Classic kind of she-said/she-said story told through narration and time jumps from the present to the past incident. B-

AppleTV+

The Gorge (2025)

Rotten Tomatoes

The Gorge (2025): Two sharpshooters in watchtowers face each other across an isolated gorge. Sci-fi, Cold War, post-apocalyptic thriller zombie movie? Also it's a romance, released on Valentine's Day. WTF? Contrived and incoherent. Bad, but not so bad to be unwatchable. C+

AppleTV+

Say Nothing (TV 2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Say Nothing (TV 2024): Dramatized history of IRA terrorism in Northern Ireland. Focuses on the involvement (or not) of a young Irish woman in the disappearance of an innocent (or not) young mother. This TV series changed my mind about the IRA and the violence used as a political weapon to unify Ireland. A-

Hulu

Here (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Here (2024): Heartwarming story about generations of families who lived in a single house. Story keeps jumping around in time. Some families get short shrift. Too much story telescoped into short scenes to feel the emotional pull of any. Feels like a gimmick. C-

Netflix

The Wheel Award for Excellence in Motion Pictures

Source: DALL-E.

The Academy Awards will be given out Sunday, March 2, 2025. I've seen all the nominees for Best Picture. That means my opinion means something. Right? Regardless, I've ranked the movies in order of my preference for "Best Picture."

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science uses ranked choice voting (RCV) to ensure that the winner has broad support throughout the Academy members. I wish US political elections used something similar (see proportional voting). But that's for another post.

My personal ranked choice of the Oscar nominees is based on the grades I gave the movies immediately after seeing them. In case of ties, I ordered them by my judgment today. Note this is not my prediction of which movie will win (Anora) but how I would vote, if I had a vote.

The envelope please. The winner of "The Wheel Award for Excellence in Motion Pictures" goes to...

Oscar Snubs

The 2025 Oscar nominations snub some worthy movies, as always. This year, the lowest grade The Wheel gave to a "Best Picture" nomination was a "B-". Eight movies received a better grade than that but weren't nominated for "Best Picture." The list of Oscar snubs of 2025 are...

A Real Pain (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

A Real Pain (2024): Dramedy. Cousins take trip to Poland to visit their Jewish grandmother's homeland. A vacation from hell: one cousin (Jesse Eisenberg) exhibits OCD and the other (Kieran Culkin) is irresponsible and lacks self-control. Culkin dominates every scene. Oscar buzz is deserved. B-

Hulu

Thelma (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Thelma (2024): 93-year-old grandma gets scammed out of $10,000. Police are no help, her family are useless, so she undertakes to get the money back herself. Like Mr. Magoo, she keeps running up against obstacles, but somehow keeps going. Light-hearted comedy for the whole family. C+

Hulu

Kinda Pregnant (2025)

Rotten Tomatoes

Kinda Pregnant (2025): Woman's dream of marriage and a baby falls apart, so she hatches a fake pregnancy plan. I don't know where it goes from there because I didn't finish the movie. Full of crude jokes and what's maybe worse, unfunny. Amy Schumer is better than this. F+

Netflix

The Substance (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

The Substance (2024): TV fitness instructor sells her soul for a drug promising restored youth. A satire of Hollywood's treatment of women that starts small but grows increasingly over-the-top, grotesque, even comically absurd. An instant cult classic whose last 30 minutes leave you wondering WTF. It's great but is it any good? B+

Prime

Fly Me to the Moon (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Fly Me to the Moon (2024): An entertaining trifle, a rom-com dramedy about the Apollo 11 mission. More fiction than fact, but presented in a way that audiences will say, "So that's how they faked it." Never saw chemistry between Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. B-

AppleTV+

I'm Still Here (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

I'm Still Here (2024): Portuguese. In 1970, a Brazilian man is "disappeared." Movie focuses on his family's helplessness in seeking answers and his wife fighting to keep the family together. A history lesson that's powerful without sensationalism. Oscar-nominated Fernanda Torres carries the film. A-

In theatre

Nickel Boys (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Nickel Boys (2024): In the 1960s, a wrongfully convicted Florida teen gets sentenced to an abusive boys reform school. With first-person POV, closeups, handheld camera shots, quick cuts, it feels immediate. Fictional but based on a real story, it's a tragedy that ought to madden you. A-

In theatres

Compare with the original novel: Nickel Boys.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (TV 2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

One Hundred Years of Solitude (TV 2024): Spanish. Adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez's classic, multi-generational, 1967 novel (or at least part one). The magical realism makes it surreal. The family stories make it a soap opera. The revolution makes it a war movie. All together, it's an epic. B+

Netflix

Lonely Planet (2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

Lonely Planet (2024): Romance at a writers' retreat between an unlikely couple. The Morocco setting drew me to this movie, but the plot put me off. Laura Dern isn't given enough to work with. And if Liam Hemsworth was cast for anything other than his looks, he never shows it. A trifle. C+

Netflix

No Good Deed (TV 2024)

Rotten Tomatoes

No Good Deed (TV 2024): Couple wants to sell their house. Audience first wonders what's wrong with the house, then what's wrong with the couple? Show morphs into an absurd black comedy murder mystery that eventually finds its way to a more or less satisfactory ending. C+

Netflix