Last year’s winner of Best Picture, Green Book, rightfully says that the way 1960s southerners treated Blacks was wrong, but says so through an interracial friendship where the White guy is a total jerk from start to end, while the Black guy is apparently holy from start to end, meaning it gets many facts wrong. The surface level friendship depicted between these real-life people just presents a case of two men attempting to master the other, both eventually thinking he won.
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Throughout their travels, Don Shirley seems intent on forcing his driver Tony Lip to change, yet he does not expect to change his own poor behavior. However highly he thinks of himself on his African-adorned throne, Shirley is not as Christly as he thinks of himself: he lies by basically writing Tony’s letters to his wife for him, and he secretly engages in homosexual acts, even when Tony rightfully orders him not to leave his side. (Matthew 7:12, 1 Timothy 1:8-11, James 2:10) Tony is just as bad; no matter how much Shirley tries to press that violence always fails, Tony’s case has only ever went the opposite: when one manager won’t let Shirley play on a Steinway piano like his contract says, Tony resorts to violence, and it works. Even in his efforts to defend Shirley, Tony does so while basically rewarding the cops who perform the abuse. Although he does righteously defend Shirley after getting beat at a bar, but even then, his resort is to violence, not mercy.

Wow! Last night at the Golden Globes was really something! Between talk of forest fires, Ellen, T.Hanks, and a very nervous Phoenix, there has been some changes that now need to be made in everyone's set of predictions for next week. For one, after Awkwafina's victory in Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical, I was forced to remove Us from my predictions entirely (which hurts me deeply), and replace those nomination slots with The Farewell. Although for the most part, the Globes spell more clear direction as far as Oscar wins go, more so than Oscar nominations. But let me tell you, I was VERY surprised when Missing Link of all movies won for Best Animated Feature!

Anyway, I worked long and hard all year to put this list of nominee predictions together, and now here they are!

Wow! Another year... and decade... over! These last two years have been very unpredictable for film, even if my personal life has been rather uneventful in contrast. There's been some surprises and expected flops from this year in film, and this decade as a whole has provided some major turning points in the way movies are approached and analyzed. It's also be a huge decade for me, as 2013 was when I wrote my first movie review on Gravity, and first started this blog in 2014. My, how it's grown! So looking at this year in film in particular, what stood out to me? Well, to get the negatives out of the way first, here's my 10 most miserable movie-going experiences of 2019:

It's that merry time of year again! Off a request from one of my cousins, here's a ranking of ten popular Christmas movies I selected. Although I originally planned on making this twelve movies, due to the natural busyness this time of year, I couldn't get to a dozen. So, here's ten!

Elf is still a common seasonal favorite sixteen years after its release, obviously many love it for its humor, but deeper reasons exist to why it’s still watched every Christmas. This supposedly happy time of year is in actuality stressful: planning family gatherings, seeing problematic family members, spending hundreds on Christmas decorations, feeling depressed because people aren’t celebrating Jesus’ birth, feeling depressed because people ARE celebrating Jesus’ birth, the list rolls out longer than Santa’s naughty list. That’s why Buddy the Elf is such a memorable character: he reminds us how we should keep feeling that joy on Christmas, and every day of the year.
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It seems to be a part of this movie’s intention to restore the joy in New York that was lost after the 9/11 attacks, which happened only two years before it came out. It does that by first attacking corporate America’s phony vision of Christmas, where the “fake” Santa says, “ho-ho-ho,” until his beard is removed, and his short fuse is exposed to the traumatized children. Whereas, the real Santa in this movie never says “ho-ho-ho.” Once the façade of Christmas commercialism is removed, Buddy’s contagious spirit touches all of New York until they sing together on Christmas Eve.

“Some people are worth melting for.”
“An act of true love will thaw a frozen heart.”
“Everyone’s a bit of a fixer-upper.”

You probably grew sick of the Frozen craze long ago, you probably still refuse to “let it go,” but wherever you land on the Frozen spectrum, the impact this Disney instant-classic’s themes left on multiple kids-at-heart remains irrefutable. Rare for a studio as money-focused as Disney, it successfully testifies a bit of Biblical love, that it’s an action, rather than an emotion.

Romans 12:20 teaches, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in doing so you will heap coals of fire on his head.” Such instances of the feature visualize the idea of a frozen heart thawing, which can be done with the warmth of a hug. The opening song explains the strength of ice, and indeed it is: God uses ice throughout the Bible as a form of judgment. (Exodus 9:13-35, Revelation 16:21) But the beauty of ice remains present, as first seen by the aurora borealis that starts Anna and Elsa’s playtime, right before seeing the trolls, because the “sky’s awake,” then Olaf says it again right before their second encounter with the trolls. This theme of ice being beautiful yet deadly keeps consistent. As Anna and Kristoff search for Elsa, they see the beauty of ice, which is the precise moment Olaf arrives. His “In Summer” song goes right back to the villagers suffering from the dangerous ice, then an icicle “impales” Olaf. Those strong modes of contrast in ice project God’s incredible ability to create beauty from deadly coldness.

If you're still stuck on a good Thanksgiving meal to make for your family/friends, here's an idea for one, one that is inspired by one of the best Pixar movies ever, which also is celebrating its 15th birthday this month!

So now, here's your chance to know what The Incredibles tastes like, using the following food queues throughout the film:

• The steak from the family dinner, which Bob wrecks a plate and the table while cutting.
• The mimosa Mr. Incredible drinks while flying to Syndrome's island the second time.
• The whole "hot and cold" contrast between the two dishes, which is a them in the movie (fire from the island, ice from Frozone).

My last two recipes were way more on the complex side, and neither of them came out quite how I wanted them to, but this time around, I have much greater confidence. The steak turned out to be relatively easy to prepare, as there are many easy-to-understand tutorials online. I also kept it relatively low-key in stretching my creativity for this recipe, which I found to be helpful in the success of the steak.

In thinking of a good Halloween-related movie to do for this months recipe, I eventually thought, "Why not E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial? That movie is set on Halloween! Plus, E.T. is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, I enjoyed it as a kid, and love it even more as an adult as I can now appreciate its deeper themes and symbolic imagery that depict the loneliness of a divorce victim.

So now, here's your chance to know what E.T. tastes like, using the following food queues throughout the film:

• The pizza dough from the pizza that Michael and his friends ordered (and Elliott ruined).
• The pumpkin from the Halloween setting.
• The peanut butter from the Jimmy Carter peanut bank Elliott shows E.T. (it also further complements the Reese's Pieces).
• Then of course, the Reese's Pieces from what Elliott famously used to lure E.T. into his home.

In approaching this recipe, I knew it needed to taste like the month of October with its candy and Fall festivities, but also look like something a kid would make. While the complexity of this recipe far surpasses what a kid could capably do, the idea of pizza with peanut butter and candy on top sounds like something a kid would concoct, wouldn't it? Also, upon making these, I noticed three things that make it even more fitting to the movie. 1) They look like cookies, and 2) They look like little flying saucers, and 3) The Reese's Pieces make it look like the chest pattern of the aliens from War of the Worlds!

Alien is a movie that understands the danger of using space travel as an excuse to reach God’s level, that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12) Humans selfishly aim to master the heavens much like how people did in building the tower of Babel, (Genesis 11:1-9) but don’t realize that the amount of control our Creator has is one not even all the humans of the Earth combined can reach a small percentage of. Likewise, Ridley Scott’s early feature film shows how terrifying it is for those who don’t fear the Lord to try and master the heavens.
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When it comes to the Bible, movies, and aliens, numerous cinematic parallels exist between Jesus and aliens. There’s a cinematic concept called, “the Alien Messiah,” where an unearthly being comes down to perform miracles and save people, all while being hunted down by government forces, there’s usually a death and resurrection three-quarters of the way through the film, and ends with the being returning to the sky (think E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial or Superman). However, the Xenomorph of Alien perfectly defies the Alien Messiah, aligning closer to an “angel of death” concept.