Beware of two highly touted, nicely production-designed, supposedly audience-friendly movies that have been frequently mentioned as Best Picture contenders. You may go to them when they open and like them, etc., and that’ll be fine…but everything I’ve heard so far tells me these two are going to get slammed by a majority of the critics. Both are broadly-based and aimed at the shmoes, and at least one of these will probably do very well with audiences, based on NRG test scores. But every now and then you see some- thing you’ve heard will be quite the thing because a couple of prominent journos like it, and then you see it and it’s like, “What? There’s nothing there…pretty pictures do not make a film.”
