Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day! I was planning to use this post to make my list official, but alas, we are still waiting for the nominations to come out. It is completely understandable given the tragedy happening in California right now, but it is still disappointing.

However, I did revamp my grid to make it ready for the official nominations, I have added the other main categories and have restricted each to the top 5 according to Variety Magazine – except of course the main category which will be 10 anyway.

Also, I stepped up movie watching a little. Since I last added scores, I watched a few more – Flow (excellent!), Sing Sing (excellent), Saturday Night (pretty good), Nosferatu (ok), and The Substance (Yikes!). Also, I realized I forgot to rate Wild Robot – very good!

I am very much struggling with the Brutalist. I know it will be on the list many times over, but I need to decide if it will do me more harm than good to watch it. I am sure that sounds odd to most people. I watch movies and read books to escape life for a bit. Not that my life is bad – far from it. I am a relatively happy person and I feel like I have made a good life for myself. But it is nice to escape anyway. Maybe I am a dreamer, I don’t know. So, sometimes I get a little bruised by a movie – not quite scarred, but a bit bruised. As I mentioned on an earlier post, I don’t really like violence. However, I can handle silly violence/suspense or “Hollywood” violence/action because it is noticeably pretend. But I can’t handle cruel violence or suspense and sometimes psychological violence or suspense. That gets into my mind and interrupts my sleep. Even if it is not a true story and I know it is not real, I know that someone had to think it up and that is what scares me. The idea that people are capable of imagining these things scares me a bit.

Anyway, enough of a downer. On to the new list. A few movies have been removed and a few have been added. At the end of the list, I also added some that have received a Golden Globe award or are on the nomination list for SAG or BAFTA, but were not on the Variety Magazine predicated nominations list. Next week I will update to the official nominations.