Girl Picture (2022)
I learned early in my life, thanks to [...]
Author Archive: Jerry Roberts
Jerry Roberts is a film critic and operator of two websites, Armchair Cinema and Armchair Oscars.
The Entire Halloween series (1978-2022) – Blecchh! I’ve see ’em all!
I have a theory that if you stare at enough bad movies, you can see infinity. I mean that’s kind of obvious. Staring at enough bad movies, you’ll find yourself wishing for eternity. This has generally been my experience when I am trapped in a theater between a movie that dares me to be entertained […]
All That Breathes (2022)
Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes is a deeply moving and deeply introspective documentary that uses the poetry of observation to convey the information that the natural world is being strangled by the reckless impulses of mankind. This, of course, is nothing new, but the movie doesn’t shame us. It doesn’t rub our noses in the […]
Armchair Oscars – 2021
Best Picture THE WINNER:CODA (Directed by Sian Heder)The Nominees: Belfast, Don’t Look Up, Drive My Car, Dune, King Richard, Licorice PIzza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, West Side Story MY CHOICE:Spencer (Directed by Pablo Larrain)My Nominees: Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar) Years from now, whenever […]
The Best Picture Winners: Wings (1927-28)
Five years ago, on Oscar’s 90th birthday, I did an overview of Every Single Movie that was ever bestowed the Oscar for Best Picture. So, here we are again, approaching Oscar’s 95th. Every other day, from now until Oscar night, I will take a look at each film through fresh eyes (I have seen them […]
Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul (2022)
In recent days, I’ve been reading Peter Biskind’s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” a gossipy chronicle of the 70s auteur era that brought about a decade of personal filmmaking to a Hollywood couched in reliable formulas. The era would bring about a tapestry of great films like Easy Rider, MASH, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown and The Last Picture […]
Breaking (2022)
Watching Abi Darmas Corbin’s bank heist thriller Breaking, it is hard for your brain not to travel back nearly half a century to Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon. Both films are about otherwise descent men pushed to brink, who recklessly hold up a bank in the middle of the afternoon busy hours and find themselves […]
Free Chol Soo Lee (2022)
Ten years ago, when news hit that Rodney King had died of an accidental drowning in Rialto California, I remember one of the local talk show hosts in my home of Birmingham, Alabama questioning why King never became more of a community leader. Why did he not take his fame and bolster it into something […]
Summering (2022)
The opening scenes of Summering got on my nerves. If there’s anything that irritates me it is yet another movie about a group of friends on the cusp of growing up who are experiencing that tipping point before a measure of maturity becomes their beast of burden. After this “nothing will ever be the same again.” […]
