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© Searchlight Pictures and Film 4 It's probably a bit of a stretch to claim that Academy Awards' Nominations Day is a bit like Christmas Eve for film buffs. But it's not far off. Love them or loathe them, we are all fascinated by the Oscars. Those who take their cinema seriously may poo poo the notion that you can crown a movie as the Best Picture but they're still fixated by the competition - no matter how vigorously they protest. Part of the fun about following the Oscars is you can celebrate the wisdom of the Academy in some categories while dissing their choices in others. © A24 And 2023's crop of nominees is no exception. So what are we to make of this year's shortlists? With 11 nominations including Best Picture, Best Director and four acting nods, Daniels Kwan and Scheinert's ' Everything, Everywhere, All At Once ' has gone from being an unlikely awards contender to the Academy frontrunner. The island of Ireland had 14 good reasons to celebrat...

© Apple TV+ In the past, Lila Neugebauer's drama 'Causeway' might have caused more ripples during awards season. Yet somehow the Apple TV+ film hasn't quite had the impact that it should have. Yes, Brian Tyree Henry has picked up a few Best Supporting Actor commendations from film critics associations and a Critics Choice nomination. But apart from that, there has been no Golden Globe recognition for him or his co-star Jennifer Lawrence, no BAFTA nod, no Screen Actors Guild nomination. © Apple TV+ You would have thought both deliver the sort of performances that awards voters would lap up. However it just hasn't happened which is very odd. Neugebauer's film stars Jennifer Lawrence, who delivers her best performance since ' Joy ,' as a US soldier recovering from a brain trauma injury caused by an IED in Afghanistan. Arriving in a halfway house run by Jayne Houdyshell's carer Sharon as part of her rehabilitation, Lawrence's Lynsey is initially conf...

© Netflix Everyone hates bankers - that observation is repeated like a mantra throughout Chris Foggin's Netflix movie 'Bank of Dave'. And so the film celebrates a bank set up by a non banker. The bank in question is the 'Bank of Dave' - an actual bank in England established by Burnley millionaire Dave Fishwick who made his fortune operating a mini coach business. Fishwick's efforts to set up his bank were famously documented by a Channel 4 film crew. © Netflix Concerned that after the 2008 financial crisis the traditional high street banks were not supporting individuals and small businesses, he set about establishing a community based lender in Lancashire that personally underwrote loans and assessed all risks by thoroughly examining business cases. Fishwick's bank has over the last 12 years lent over £27 million to the thousands of individuals and businesses in Lancashire and his model of a community based bank has drawn support from across the political s...

  © Columbia Pictures & Sony Pictures Releasing Tom Hanks has reached that stage in his career where he can go ahead and play a grumpy old man. Now 66, the two times Oscar winning actor has nothing to prove and so he and director Marc Foster have taken a popular Swedish story about a grouch and relocated it to Pittsburgh. Early box office indications for 'A Man Called Otto' suggest the film is resonating with audiences and performing better than expected after two weeks on release. Well on its way to recouping its $50 million budget, the remake of Hannes Holm's 2012 Swedish comedy ' A Man Called Ove ' has maintained an impressive momentum at the box office, suggesting there may be a market for light hearted fare targeted at older audiences after the pandemic. © Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Releasing Hanks plays Otto Anderson, a widower on the brink of retirement from a Pittsburgh steel company. When we first see him, he is muttering in a hardware store as...

© Netflix Now here's a funny thing at the start of 2023. How do you dethrone a whodunnit featuring an English actor with a ridiculous US accent  from being Netflix's top film? Replace it with another whodunnit featuring more English actors sporting ridiculous US accents , of course! In recent days, Scott Cooper's 'The Pale Blue Eye' has knocked Rian Johnson's 'Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery' from the Number One slot on the streaming service's film charts in several territories. © Netflix And it's not hard to understand why. The film stars Christian Bale who audiences know often turns in compelling lead performances. It features a top notch cast of character actors too that includes Harry Melling, Toby Jones, Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Timothy Spall, Simon McBurney and the great Robert Duvall. Cooper's film also curiously mixes Gothic horror, a Western and a detective mystery. © Netflix It also boasts many twists and turns like a good ...