2020 Screen Actors Guild Nominations

This one feels like it's going to have a closer resemblance to what the Oscar nominations are than the Globes. Usually the case, but just feels like more so this year. Some of the biggest perceived snubs get corrected here, but I'm still bummed everyone's forgotten about Elizabeth Moss in Shirley. Is it a sign of the times that the majority of 4 of the 5 nominated casts are minorities?

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture 

“Da 5 Bloods” (Netflix)

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (Netflix) 

“Minari” (A24) 

“One Night in Miami” (Amazon Studios) 

“The Trial of the Chicago 7” (Netflix) 

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role 

Amy Adams (“Hillbilly Elegy”) 

Viola Davis (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) 

Vanessa Kirby (“Pieces of a Woman”) 

Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”) 

Carey Mulligan (“Promising Young Woman”)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role 

Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”) 

Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) 

Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) 

Gary Oldman (“Mank”) 

Steven Yeun (“Minari”)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role 

Maria Bakalova (“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”) 

Glenn Close (“Hillbilly Elegy”) 

Olivia Colman (“The Father”) 

Youn Yuh-Jung (“Minari”)

Helena Zengel (“News of the World”)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role 

Chadwick Boseman (“Da 5 Bloods”)

Sacha Baron Cohen (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”)

Daniel Kaluuya (“Judas and the Black Messiah”)

Jared Leto (“The Little Things”)

Leslie Odom, Jr. (“One Night in Miami”)

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series 

“Better Call Saul”

“Bridgerton”

“The Crown”

“Lovecraft Country”

“Ozark”

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series 

“Dead to Me”

“The Flight Attendant”

“The Great”

“Schitt’s Creek”

“Ted Lasso”

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series 

Gillian Anderson (“The Crown”) 

Olivia Colman (“The Crown”) 

Emma Corrin (“The Crown”) 

Julia Garner (“Ozark”) 

Laura Linney (“Ozark”)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series 

Jason Bateman (“Ozark”) 

Sterling K. Brown (“This Is Us”) 

Josh O’Connor (“The Crown”) 

Bob Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul”) 

Rege-Jean Page (“Bridgerton”)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series 

Christina Applegate (“Dead to Me”) 

Linda Cardellini (“Dead to Me”) 

Kaley Cuoco (“The Flight Attendant”) 

Annie Murphy (“Schitt’s Creek”) 

Catherine O’Hara (“Schitt’s Creek”) 

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series 

Nicholas Hoult (“The Great”)

Dan Levy (“Schitt’s Creek”)

Eugene Levy (“Schitt’s Creek”)

Jason Sudeikis (“Ted Lasso”)

Ramy Youssef (“Ramy”)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries 

Cate Blanchett (“Mrs. America”)

Michaela Coel (“I May Destroy You”)

Nicole Kidman (“The Undoing”)

Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Queen’s Gambit”)

Kerry Washington (“Little Fires Everywhere”)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries 

Bill Camp (“The Queen’s Gambit”)

Daveed Diggs (“Hamilton”)

Hugh Grant (“The Undoing”)

Ethan Hawke (“The Good Lord Bird”)

Mark Ruffalo (“I Know This Much Is True”)

Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture 

“Da 5 Bloods”

“Mulan”

“News of the World”

“The Trial of the Chicago 7”

“Wonder Woman 1984”

Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Comedy or Drama Series 

“The Boys”

“Cobra Kai”

“Lovecraft Country”

“The Mandalorian”

“Westworld”

Glass - Movie Review

Starring James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sarah Paulson, Spencer Treat Clark and Charlayne Woodard.
Written & Directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

★★½

I loved Unbreakable. I liked Split. After the hit of Split and the buzz afterwards, the studio would have happily financed Glass, but Shyamalan wanted to do it himself so he could have 100% control. This is a movie that really could have used a producer to reign him in and give script notes. The last time Shyamalan got too full of himself and refused to accept what the studio was telling him was when he ended his Disney deal and took his next film elsewhere under condition he could make it the way he wanted. That movie was Lady in the Water.

This movie isn't as bad as that one, but I really wanted to like this movie and it had too many issues to ignore. I am glad I saw the reviews were bad so I went in with low expectations.

I really liked this movie for a good while. Past the hour-mark, it was still a solid thumbs-up for me. We get reintroduced to the unbreakable David Dunn (Bruce Willis), still fighting bad guys in his poncho. We see what he and his grown son (Spencer Treat Clark) are up to. We also see that split-personalitied Kevin (James McAvoy) is free, and that the more malevolent ones in the Horde (what all the personalities who aren't Kevin are called) are running the show, as he's holding four teenage girls hostage in some abandoned brick factory. (I love abandoned brick factories as a movie setting. Almost as much as catwalk-and-steam factories for Act 3 action showdowns.)

David brushes up against Kevin and sees where the girls are. They have a showdown, but both wind up getting arrested and tranquilized and taken to a mental health facility. Enter Dr. Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychiatrist who specializes in patients with delusions of being superheroes. It's a very narrow field of research. Oh, and also at this facility? Elijah Price, aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson).

Now if you haven't seen Split, like my wife, this movie is very confusing and terrible. I have, so I understood everything about the lights switching personalities in Kevin, or why former kidnap victim Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) has sympathy for a couple of the personalities inside there. But there are other ways the movie goes wrong.

First of all, Shyamalan is very fond of characters looking right in the camera to give their dialogue, giving the audience the POV of the character he/she is talking to. This is done quite a bit with Paulson, and we are unable to look away when her dialogue starts getting really clunky and repetitive. "Stop making Paulson look at us and explain everything!" The more she's forced to give over-expository dialogue, the worse it gets. Which is exactly how I felt when watching Lady in the Water. This makes the middle of the movie lose a lot of its pacing, but I was still okay with that.

Act 3 comes, and Shyamalan builds up to this twist that isn't really that great, or at least if he hadn't hung SUCH a lantern on it. But even as we get there, the climax is start-stop-start-stop, like a car that starts but dies as soon as you hit the gas. We also lose track of what everyone's doing during the final showdown. The last half-hour could have been done in fifteen minutes just as effectively, and it wouldn't have felt so clumsy. It also would have been nice if he'd had a couple more million in the budget to make the special effects look better.

Now I really enjoyed the three main guys in their roles. McAvoy bounces around all of the personalities with precision. One line and I have no doubt which of the dozen or so from the Horde is currently in charge. Willis looks more engaged here that he has in at least a decade, and Jackson really buries himself nicely into the role of Mr. Glass. It's one of my favorite characters of his.

Glass is a movie easy to pick apart. I could really rip on a lot more elements in this movie, but after I've slept on it, I'm still glad I saw it, as it mostly lived up to my low expectations. It's an entertainingly bad movie. But man, the potential it had... It could have been so much better.

Morgan - Movie Review

Starring Kate Mara, Anya Taylor-Joy, Toby Jones, Rose Leslie, Boyd Holbrook, Paul Giamatti, Michelle Yeoh, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Yare, Chris Sullivan, Vinette Robinson and Brian Cox.
Written by Seth Owen.
Directed by Luke Scott.

★★

It is the great misfortune of Morgan that a better version of it came out last year. That would be Ex Machina.

This movie is about an artificial intelligence that has grown in five years to look like a teenage girl. Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) had an incident with one of her doctors - she stabbed her in the eye - and so now Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) from "Corporate" has been brought in to determine if Morgan should be terminated, or if it's safe to keep her going.

Lee is the outsider who comes to the secluded study facility. Everyone has their job, and it's clear the staff is fond of Morgan. I enjoyed settling in with this cast. It's a good bunch of actors. I knew from the trailer where this movie was going to go, but I found it really unfortunate that it took some really dumb decisions by someone allegedly smart people to get us into the violent second half.

The movie's directed by Ridley's son Luke Scott, and while there's beauty to some of his shots, this felt like a conventional debut for him. I thought the atmospheric build was nice, but the emotional tension didn't work for me in the third act. It felt like the movie was going through its "this is how these type of movies need to climax" motions.

I enjoyed Taylor-Joy (The Witch) as Morgan. Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones' Ygritte) was interesting using an American accent. But yeah, hunt down and watch Ex Machina.