Rich Heldenfels, Pop Culture Wanderer

About three dozen feature films are nominated for Oscars this yea r, just over 10 percent of the 347 movies that were eligible.  The nominations themselves lead to talk about snubs and inconsistencies, some self-inflicted: how can you have 10 best picture nominees and then only five nominations for best director? How are Mahershala Ali of Green Book , and Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, both of The Favourite,  all in supporting-acting categories when clearly they are leads in their films? (Indeed, I'd argue that in most respects Olivia Colman, nominated for best actress for The Favourite could have been put in supporting instead.) Still, beyond what we say about the nominations themselves, every year I find myself with a list of movies that received no Oscar love at all. (I talked last year about some of the reasons for this .) In a year where the academy's best-picture contenders suggest diversity in Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Green Book  and Roma, it's important...

Notes on a few recent screen titles: "Boy Erased," written and directed by Joel Edgerton (who also plays a supporting role), is a wrenching look at the effects of kindly-intentioned intolerance. The result, in this case of gay-conversion "therapy," is not kind; in fact, it is devastating in this adaptation of the memoir by Garrard Conley. But what makes it especially horrifying is that the process is abetted by two loving parents (Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman) who want the best for their son (Lucas Hedges) -- but do not believe that the best includes his being gay. They send him off to a gay-conversion program and, as I said, it not only proves unhelpful, it is a horror for the young people forced to endure it. There is no true psychological knowledge at work in the camp, only a sense that Satan and a half-assed distillation of Freudian theory are at work in "choosing" to be gay. It's a fine, infuriating film, at once personal and issues based in...