The first ten minutes of Dune used the words Atreides, Caladan, Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV, and House Harkonnen as fit rulers of Arrakis, and I gave up. I had only about nine hours until the Academy Awards started and there simply wasn’t enough time to learn an entirely new vocabulary. I’d read Frank Herbert’s Dune way back in the 70s and hoped that fond memory would be enough to help me sort out the players, but nope. That information has obviously been replaced by theme songs from TV shows of the 80s. The only thing I could remember about the book was the sandworms, and I might have gotten those confused with the ones from Beetlejuice.

And then “the VOICE” spoke to me. I don’t know where it came from, but it said very clearly: “No one cares if you finished it or not. Why are you putting this pressure on yourself? There are probably only seven people reading this website, and you still have to finish making the Chicken Marbella for the party tonight.”

And so ends the great experiment of watching all ten Best Picture nominees; not with a bang, not even with a whimper. Just relief that I can stop thinking critically about movies and go watch The Lost City, which I understand requires no thinking at all.

The Popcorn Kernels of Truth give this film Two Kernels. I only watched the first half hour, but the kernels are for Timothy Chalamet and Zendaya for being pretty and simply existing.

I’m obviously going to have to create a category called FlicksIWatchedOnHBOMax because the last four entries were from that streaming service. Maybe I’ll call it FlicksWhosePasswordINicked.