February 26, 2017

Final 2016 Oscar Predictions

February 26, 2017/ CineMunch

The day has arrived! We've reached the finish line of this long movie awards season, and it's time to hand out the final trophies of the year! We here at CineMunch have ranked our favorite films of 2016 and bestowed our own awards (the 3rd Annual CineMunchies, don'tchaknow), so now we look to the 89th Annual Academy Awards to put a feather in 2016's cap tonight on ABC. Find out who we'd vote for if we had a ballot here.

This year the suspense won't be what's inside the final envelope (congrats, La La Land), but in just how many statues Damien Chazelle's original musical will take home. It's poised to nab at least eight, but could win as many as twelve, which would break the record of eleven wins set by Ben-Hur in 1959 (and then matched by Titanic in 1997 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003).

So settle in, mix yourself a cocktail (we'll be starting with Viola's Triumph martinis from our Oscar Menu), and follow along with our predictions below! For more (snarky) commentary and up-to-the-minute analysis, be sure to follow us on Twitter @CineMunch.

January 23, 2017

Final 2016 Oscar Nominations Predictions

January 23, 2017/ Matt

The day we've all been waiting for has arrived!

November 3, 2020!?

Sadly, no. The Oscar nominations will have to do for now. The 89th Annual Academy Awards nominations will be announced Tuesday morning at 8:18am ET (you can view a live stream of the announcement via the Oscars website). On hand to reveal the nominees in all 24 categories: actors Jennifer Hudson, Brie Larson, and Ken Watanabe, writer/director Jason Reitman, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezski, and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs.

2016 certainly had its ups and plentiful downs, but it was a pretty decent year for film (if you knew where to look). I expect this year's Oscar nominations to mostly reflect that quality (though full disclosure, we here at CineMunch think awards behemoth and Oscar frontrunner La La Land was good, but wildly overrated). Our own personal top ten lists and choices for the best of the year will drop next month. In the meantime, let's guess what the Academy will deem the best of the best.

Read on for my final nominations predictions.

January 07, 2017

2017 Golden Globe Awards Predictions

January 07, 2017/ Matt

Contrary to what the calendar says, the holidays are not over. They've only just begun! Welcome to Awards Season 2016-2017, continuing this weekend with the Golden Globe Awards!

Hollywood's best and brightest (or in some cases just newest) stars of ALL the screens will gather Sunday night dressed in their second finest frocks for the second most important red carpet of the year. The awards will be handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, whose membership numbers fewer than 100, so their choices do make for the occasional head scratch, eyebrow raise, or spit take. Jimmy Fallon hosts and some lady named Meryl Streep will receive this year's Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award.

So grab a pitcher of your second favorite mixed drink, follow along with us on Twitter @CineMunch throughout the telecast (starting at 8pm ET on NBC), and read on for my foolhardy predictions!

October 08, 2016

2016 Fall Movie Preview: Most Anticipated Films

October 08, 2016/ CineMunch

It's October!

Keep your pumpkin spices and knitwear, give us great cinema for adults. Yes, these are exciting times. We're looking to add to our favorites of the first half of 2016, make up for a mediocre summer season, and crown new frontrunners in the all-important Oscar race. Below you'll find the twenty films we're most anticipating between now and the end of the year. Clicking on a film's title will take you to the trailer. To see what we were looking forward to last year or the year before (as a basis for our judgment), click here or here.

Now bring us prestige or bring us death.

May 31, 2015

CineDrunk: Favorite Actress Showdown - Part One

May 31, 2015/ CineMunch

We here at CineMunch love actresses. Probably more than we love movies themselves. Possibly more than we love the Oscars, cheese, or our cats, Tilda & Scout, but let's not get too carried away here. In CineDrunk's latest podcast, we come out as proud actressexuals (a term popularized by the incredible Nathaniel R. from The Film Experience).

We could've spent an eternity rhapsodizing on and obsessing over our favorite cinematic ladies, so we needed to set some boundaries and narrow the field. The criteria for our epic (three-part!) showdown was as follows:
1. The actress must still be alive (sorry, Bette Davis - we love you!).
2. They must still be working in cinema (apologies to you, Angela Lansbury!).
3. They must be Oscar nominated (one day soon, Scarlett Johansson!).

January 10, 2015

2015 Golden Globe Awards Predictions

January 10, 2015/ Matt

Fill your ice cube trays and get out your cheese boards; the 72nd Annual Golden Globe Awards are here! Airing Sunday on NBC at 8pm ET and handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the Globes mix movie stars, TV actors, and a healthy dose of drunkenness in what usually amounts to the year's most enjoyable night of live television. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (hooray!) return as hosts for the third (and likely final) time, and George Clooney will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award from Julianna Margulies (ER reunion!) and Don Cheadle.

For the more studious ones in our readership (you're show-offs, but we love you), there's still time to listen to our latest podcast, featuring a detailed analysis of the film categories. Then shake up a cocktail and enjoy the main event, and follow along with us all evening on Twitter @CineMunch. Matt's final predictions in all fields are after the jump.

September 14, 2014

Fall Movie Preview: Our Most Anticipated Films

September 14, 2014/ CineMunch

Now that we've returned from a little post-Labor Day getaway, it's time to accept that facts are facts. It's fall, y'all, and summer's not coming back.

While we may miss the sunny weather, carefree spirit, and hot garbage smells of the past few months, we're entering an even more exciting time for cinephiles: prestige film season! It's a problem that seems to get worse every year: studios release their awards ponies later and later in the year, until the last trimester is so full of must-sees that no one has time to see or make sense of them all. And when it comes time for awards voters to vote? It's that much harder to remember anything before early September. Final trimester films get the votes, and the cycle continues.

Despite our qualms about studios' release date shenanigans, a bevy of (mostly) quality movies is a bevy of (mostly) quality movies. AND WE SHALL SEE THEM ALL.

After the jump, check out our most-anticipated films for the remainder of 2014, and let us know what films are on your list!