I don't think you ever asked this question before, but if you have followed the Oscars lately, you should know that its viewership has reached an all-time low in recent years. With the new "Best Popular Film" category recently announced, it got me back to wondering, what if instead of forcing crowd pleasers into a corner, they actually gave them the same amount of love and attention as the other Oscar bait features? Basically, here is what I had in mind: for each category, half the films nominated are films that made at least $100,000,000 at the Box Office, the other half is whatever else deserves to make it in. That way, deserving films that people have actually seen and heard of get in and they also notice those smaller art house films. Everybody wins! I'll show you what I have in mind with the last two Oscar ceremonies. For your reference:

The real 2017 Academy Award winners.
The real 2016 Academy Award winners.

Although, I won't cover these categories for obvious reasons:

• Best Foreign Language Film
• Best Documentary Feature
• Best Documentary Short
• Best Animated Short
• Best Live Action Short

Just full disclosure, nothing official here, just what ideally would like to see if the nominees were more filled with movies that the general public have actually seen. Others have said it before and now I'll say it: there shouldn't be such a disconnect between the old folks at Hollywood and the general public, the Oscars should not be a big ego-stroking session, but raised awareness about the art of filmmaking, and helping people to see these works that talk about issues that are truly important. Most importantly, I think that with what I have laid out here, it's evidence that there's no real excuse for popular movies to be overlooked by the academy, they can be almost as good as some of the finer films recognized by the academy, sometimes even much better. 

Black Panther
Best Picture
Best Popular Film

What do these three have in common? The latest changes the Academy has made, with the inclusion of a 25th category: Best Popular Film. What does that mean? Well, to be honest, nobody knows, not even the Academy themselves! They're still working out the details...

Another significant change they made includes condensing the ceremony to a much stricter 3 hour run time, which means the winners of the smaller categories will only be able to have their speeches condensed into a shorter montage run during commercial break, kind of like how the Tony Awards works.

If you've been on social media a lot since yesterday, I'm sure you saw that the response has been overwhelmingly negative. As in, I have not seen even one person who's happy about these changes. At first, I didn't really care much about the Best Popular Film category, but after thinking about it more, and hearing other people's reactions, I do have some things to say.

It is a celebration of what makes animals different, thus, a celebration of what makes us people different. We all know good and clear that Zootopia is a very child-friendly allegory to racism and prejudice in America, but how is this feature from a Christian perspective?
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The main thing I can tell you is that it does get some things wrong about the Bible’s teachings. The key thing to address is how this movie depicts a future where mammals have grown into the world’s dominant species, suggesting evolution and the death of man, which goes against God’s promise. Now, obviously, that’s a no brainer considering this is coming from such a secular company, but it’s using theories of evolution as our means of existentialism, and thus, our standard on how to love each other. While this isn’t an inherently bad message, the mindset of the message is wrong.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Click here to read my review of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

​It’s no secret that kids are easily rattled. At age two, kids are afraid of being left alone. At age five, kids are afraid of what’s under the bed. At age eight, kids are afraid of their first day of school. At age twelve, kids are afraid of getting zits on their face. So there’s nothing more unsettling in the media when a film marketed towards kids features intentionally frightening images. It’s a complex study of psychology: children’s minds are developed in a certain way by how old they are, and it means they are more easily frightened by those who are older. This movie in particular probably necessitated the more unsettling images, but in the way that it was marketed, the two clash disastrously with one another.
 
I myself remember getting scared of popping balloons, ventriloquist dummies and marionette puppets, but for some reason it took a lot to get me rattled by something I saw on TV (not even the pink elephants in Dumbo scared me- and that’s coming from me as a four-year-old). But in the case of other kids with autism, there are plenty of things that could scare them easily, and these fears are far more sensitive than kids without autism.

Click here to read my review of The Angry Birds Movie.
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The original iPhone game was harmless and straightforward, but this movie, with the added power of narrative storytelling, teaches a dangerous message that says anger is proper motivation to accomplish goals. While it may be true in some respects, the way this movie explains it suggests that disrespecting others is okay in the process, as long as you follow your impulse.

It’s true especially today in our millennial culture of mobile devices and streaming options on-the-go, but I know of several parents who are not good at surveying what their kids watch, and how little they know about the media they are taking in. I even knew of a couple who let their six-year-old daughter watch the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie alone, a PG-13 movie which opens with hundreds of people getting hanged—not appropriate stuff for little girls to be watching.

While all parents must be cautious as to what they let their kids watch, there is an even greater threat to wrong morals getting picked up by kids with autism.

Over these last few years, horror movies have suddenly stepped into a renaissance, where not only such films have gotten more technical with their scares, but they also won several awards. Get Out may first come to mind for you, but it goes on to include It Comes at Night, The Witch, Hereditary, and A Quiet Place. These films have achieved social commentary about much deeper issues than just serial killers in hockey masks, including racial tension and the death of a traditional patriarchal family. Although A Quiet Place certainly has the usual monsters that create jump scares, they serve purpose that represents the rebirth of the new matriarchal family, our future reality.
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Obviously this fear about our future lands very personal to many people, not just Americans. Thus, I’d like to discuss this big hit from a Christian perspective, in how it depicts a family’s fear of the end times, which includes God’s judgment that scares us into silence.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

It's now the midway point of 2018, which for me is so hard to believe!

So now, I would like to take this time to share with you what I've formulated as the movies that right now have the most likely chance of getting nominated at the next Oscars ceremony. This is something I've been working at since January 1st, and I have a very complex system of estimating which films are most likely to be nominated for which categories. Essentially, it starts with breaking down the year into thirds:

January-April (The more forgetful period of film)
May-August (All the summer blockbusters)
September-December (The real Oscar contenders)

From there, I look at the present five-year chunk of nominees that the Academy has recognized each year. In this case, the five-year chunk would be 2014-2018. So for each category, I look at how many movies from each period were nominated for each year, and round up the average. For example, in 2014, the number of Best Picture nominees from the first third of the year is 1. In 2015 and 2016, it's 0, and for 2017, it's 1. I total them up and divide by four, it equals 0.5, which rounds up to 1. From there, I can estimate that 0-2 movies in 2018 from January to April will be nominated for Best Picture. 1 being the most likely number, 0 being second, and 2 being the least likely of the possible number of nominees from early in the year. I do the same also for how many movies total are nominated in that period of the year, as well as how many nominees total.​

Click here to read my review of The Incredibles.

There are two different messages communicated in The Incredibles: remain in what’s happening now, and everyone should use their unique abilities. Together, they generate the essence of what makes a family great. One thing that I love about this movie is how the two leads, Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, each value one of the two things while giving no care to the other. In the end, they each get what they want, but not without learning from the other, just as a marriage in real life works.

Mr. Incredible, or Bob Parr, is like any other man facing a mid-life crisis; he wishes to go back to the old days, and eventually finds a way to escape and live like the old days. It may be paradise to him, but it costs him a tremendous deal: his high-paying job, the trust of his wife, and the safety of everybody he loves. Elastigirl, or Helen Parr, likewise resembles any woman in that same stage of life; she is so worked up by the rules that she won’t even let her kids feel special in their abilities.

Many people can relate to Mr. Incredible in the struggle to remain in the present moment, or Elastigirl in the struggle to encourage kids to be special. It truly requires a mastery of knowing how to relate to the other family members by meeting their needs. If somebody has autism, even finding the desire to meet the needs of the family can almost feel impossible.