Nik Sheehan

@clairlemon @S___Elliott Clockwork Orange.

@S___Elliott The Shining.

Movies are that are better than the book: No Country For Old Men Goodfellas The Godfather Strangers On A Train

@ItsDeanBlundell Modus operandi.

“If you don’t help me I’ll invade Greenland.” Legit the stuff of geriatric fantasy.

@rushicrypto The Trump Slump.

If the last one was named “The Great” Depression, what’s this one going to be called?

Congratulations Sean Penn on the Oscar! A great actor, but even greater friend to beloved Ukraine. Slava Ukraini!

While he was writing ULYSSES, Joyce told his friend Frank Budgen that he’d spent eight hours working on a single sentence. The sentence: “The heaventree of stars hung with humid, nightblue fruit.”

Oscars 2026. The Best Picture Nominees: One Battle After Another is more virtuoso filmmaking from Paul Thomas Anderson. He intercuts extreme close ups with sculpted-in-time action and contrapuntal music in a generation-spanning epic of a violent, cruel America. It’s all dazzling. I didn’t enjoy it much, it was too strident, too pleased with itself, and not nearly as hilarious as it thinks it is. The underlying white supremacy story feels more like virtue-signaling than insight. Can only Tarantino do this stuff? If you can get past the Colonel Lockjaw erection gag in the opening scenes, you’ll be fine. A muscled Sean Penn is memorable; he gives his cartoonish character actual pathos. DiCaprio as usual is superb as a hapless revolutionary, and the indelible image of Tayana Taylor’s pregnant Perfidia Beverly emptying her machine gun into the void sums up the state the Union perfectly. For a more earned take on America’s original sin there is the fiercely entertaining Sinners. Ryan Coogler has developed his own cinematic language, effortlessly taking us through several different film genres in one. The multiple nominations indicate how well-crafted the whole enterprise is. The timeless blues delight and scenes stay with you — the dance of the vampires, the car racing through the cotton fields. The force of the grievance is strong. Both Sinners and One Battle After Another ask you to engage in the culture wars and neither offers much of an off ramp. But Sinners has a generosity that transcends its polemics. It’s about how we find shelter and live forever, demons be damned. I had to rewatch F1 because I’d forgotten it other than as slick entertainment. In a huge risk for Apple’s first big screen movie, they hired superstars Jerry Bruckheimer, Joseph Kosinski, Hans Zimmer, and the ever-affable Brad Pitt and set it in the world of shiny cars that go vroom. It made a fortune and got nominated for best picture. Is the phrase “elite human capital” what we’re looking for here? Likely, but the wafting gasoline fumes are off-putting. But, as there is going to be another season of Pluribus, all is forgiven. In Bugonia, Jesse Plemons pulls off a miracle making a sympathetic character out of a deranged bumpkin autodidact who fell down a rabbit hole. Emma Stone, with those otherworldly eyes, plays her perfectly absurd role with evident relish. Like most of Yorgos Lanthimos’s unmissable films whimsy is always just around the corner, and he doesn’t fail to deliver. Whether you are delighted by the satire of it all or put off by his brutal sense of humour, this is a fine and entertaining entry in the annuls of modern nihilism. Hamnet is a perfectly rendered triumph for Chloé Zhao. Every scrap of information we have about the life of Shakespeare comes together in an assuredly told love story. Zhao has a preternatural gift for imagery — the falcon that brings Will and Anne together, the reveal of the Globe Theatre, the children’s naturalism — all framed around the most famous soliloquy in history, even if we still have no idea how he really wrote that stuff. Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme is like a big sloppy kiss. The chameleon Chalamet manages to make his annoying character likable and therein lies the success of the film. It’s messy and frenetic with a shaggy dog last act. Props to Safdie for hiring Kevin O’Leary based on his being a rich jerk on TV, but he turns out to be a flat, ham actor. Gwyneth Paltrow, like Chalamet, is brilliant. The Holocaust haunts the movie, yet it seems further away in this 1950s setting than it does today, which is probably Safdie’s point. From Norway, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value works on the strength of Stellan Skarsgård as an egocentric film maker (is there any other kind?) here reconnecting with his resentful daughters. An elegant character study, it’s easy to watch, though it’s hard to entirely buy into the film’s conceit of the profundity of cinema. While not nearly as excruciating as Jay Kelly, this year’s standard for navel-gazing irrelevance, filmmakers should not make films about themselves. I think Spielberg said that. Frankenstein is memorable for the image of the ship locked in the ice, emphasizing how real the real thing looks. It’s well cast and beautifully made. There’s a gossamer quality to all of Guillermo del Toro’s work, it drifts by pleasantly and you nod your respect. Train Dreams stands out because it has something profound to say about life. It’s touching and would be truly satisfying but for one key choice director Clint Bentley made that sends you to the source material for an explanation. Leaving the protagonist’s role in the death of the Chinese worker out of the film yet suggesting he is haunted all his life by the event is puzzling. By shifting the idea of lifelong guilt to something more ethereal and uncertain, he loses verisimilitude and robs the film of its power. The pace, decade-spanning storytelling and Joel Edgerton’s character’s face as he gains in life’s wisdom is impressive. Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent has a terrific opening scene that sets the tone for this story set in the Brazil dictatorship of the 1970s. A dead body rots under a cardboard sheet by a gas station the protagonist has stopped at, where he’s extorted by corrupt police, who ignore the body. The film has an epic feel but never leaves the humanist universe of its doomed protagonist, played by an affable Wagner Moura. You share the director’s exhilaration at exposing the crimes of the past. The only real catharsis is the truth. * Like many of you I’m a little freaked out by AI. But it is cool to be here at the beginning of another giant leap for humanity, even though it’s not clear where we’re going. Paul Schrader recently posted that we should consider the possibility movies one day might be made by one creator, eliminating everyone else. It’s now only a question of waiting for the first big success. Another Oscar category? Or will AI movies replace the current industry? Perhaps we’ll have 100 best picture nominees. As for the host, it will be fun to see Johnny Carson again.

Oscars 2026 open.substack.com/pub/nsheehan/p…

We shouldn't underestimate the long term damage to US reputation in things like the blowing up of an unarmed ship on international waters. These actions will be lodged in the world's understanding of US

Bloody hell, that must have been quite a Facebook post

@HeerJeet @jonkay Agree, I did single out English Canadian films. Quebec has a dynamic cinema culture that is also commercially successful. Two solitudes.

@NikSheehan @jonkay Trust me, most Hollywood movies are often even more second rate. In any case, English Canadian films aren't the only Canadian films, and Quebec has a robust cinema.

I love actual art and entertainment. But we're talking about Canadian film. Please don't change the subject.

@HeerJeet @jonkay Alas, most English Canadian cinema is second rate. It's built into the system that funds it. It's not anti-Canadian to critique this. The films are made to represent various groups and grievances and satisfy one constituency or another. So congrats Ms. Tailfeathers, nice pic!

Sigh. "I love actual art and entertainment" reminds me of Steve Carell boasting of his sexual prowess in 40-Year Old Virgin. If your position is all Canadian movies are inherently second rate then I'm afraid you're suffering from a weird anti-nationalist complex -- which is all the more strange since you've worked for Canadian newspapers and magazines. In any case, it that's what you think, why even comment on anything to do with Canadian movie world? You don't have to have an opinion on everything.

@MarkBourrie And we'll never know.

@NikSheehan Morally, true. Legally, legal. I can't remember the last time a warship surrendered. I suppose the USS Pueblo in 1969 though it wasn't much of a warship. A frigate is designed to hunt subs. I don't believe it would have surrendered if warned.

Here's some free law for armchair generals. First, the Americans did have the right to torpedo the Iranian warship Dena in international waters. Precedent at Nuremberg does, unfortunately, also weigh in on the side of the sub captain, who did nothing to help survivors.

@doctorow You will be missed. Come back soon.

If you're reading this on Twitter, this is the long-promised notice that I'm done here. See you on the Fediverse, see you on Bluesky - see you in a world of enshittification-resistant social media. It's been fun, until it wasn't. 55/

Back in 2018, the Singletrack blog published a widely read article explaining the lethal trigonometry of a UK intersection where drivers kept hitting cyclists: singletrackworld.com/2018/01/collis… 1/

Will AI become smarter than humans? If so, is humanity in danger? I went to Silicon Valley to ask some of the leading AI experts that question. Here’s what they had to say:

Liza Minnelli has outlived Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader and a brutal dictator.

@RobynUrback We elected him for his realpolitik and that's what we're getting.

Carney signed a deal with Beijing just a few years after it kidnapped our citizens. He’s in India now, pursing a trade deal based on the supposed conclusion that India is no longer a threat. I don’t see how anyone could be under the illusion his position is “stand up to bullies”

The future is bright. x.com/brahma_4u/stat…

The response to this little post on epistemic humility and AI turned out to be maybe the most positively received thing I’ve ever said about the subject so I turned it into a post. NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING open.substack.com/pub/derekthomp…

@EricIdle You were of the few, of which there are far too many!

It changed my life in 1960. You had to have been alive then…