Not an outstanding year for many great movies, though a few are worthy of awards. Last year, for the top six prestigious awards, I hit five correctly, missing the boat on Melissa Leo for her award in “The Fighter.” Otherwise, got it right with Colin Firth (Actor), Tom Hooper (Director), Christian Bale (supporting actor), Natalie Portman (actress) and “The Kings Speech” (Best Picture).

Here are my predictions for the same six categories this year:

Best Supporting Actor:

Who should win: Max Von Sydow (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)

Who will win: Max Von Sydow

His main competition is another octogenarian, Christopher Plummer, for Beginners. Both are highly regarded in Hollywood circles and long overdue. Von Sydow’s role called for acting without words, playing a mute helping a young boy in his search for the truth following 9/11.

Best Supporting Actress:

Who should win: Berenice Bejo (The Artist)

Who will win: Octavia Spencer (The Help)

I base my opinion on the difficulty factor in winning the hearts and minds of the audience without uttering a word in Bejo’s The Artist. The young actress was flawless. Spencer is a Hollywood favorite, …

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close   Rating  = 9 

This movie is very good, so of course, it bombed at the box office.

Let’s see: No crashing cars, no herky-jerky hand-held cameras, no speed shots and flash photography, no sex, no “F” bombs, no spray of five thousand bullets. It’s doomed.

But, if you like a deep story, well acted, wrought with emotion and struggle, do take the time to see this picture.

The main narrator of the story is a nine-year-old child, Oskar Schell, an intellectually curious and sensitive child, with an active, and sometimes crippling, imagination. His father, with whom he was very close, had died two years earlier on 9/11. He, and his mother, have yet to put the trauma behind them. He’s a weird kid, slightly savant, academically inclined and emotionally distraught. After finding a strange key in his father’s vase, Oskar obsessively wanders NYC in search of the lock it fits. Some of that time, he is accompanied by an older man — dumb, unable to speak — who is renting from his grandmother.

The boy actor, Thomas Horn, is a major talent playing a boy with PTSD, who captures the essence of young man obsessed with learning …

     THE ARTIST   -  Rating:   9 ½ 

      Shhhh. No talking.

     If you like creativity, see this movie.

     If you like directors who think outside the box, see this movie.

     If you believe that dialogue is always needed in a picture, see this movie.

     “The Artist” personifies “Art” in movie making.

     I attended this picture thinking it would be novel and interesting, based on the reviews. But it was far more. The more this picture “moves” along, the more engrossed you get.

     While not a line is spoken, you never lack interest in the characters, the story line, the emotion, the drama, the sorrow, the glee, the depression, the magnificence, glamour, love, hate, ambition, fame and insignificance. It’s all there, and more.

     My own father was a victim of emerging talkie movies. A successful vaudeville hoofer with his name above all others on the Palace Theater marquis… including Milton Berle and Rudy Vallee, he could not accept the progress of technology, that talking movies would one day outdraw theater audiences and live shows. It drove him to the insane asylum.

     Thus, the scenario was all too personal in this incredible motion picture, …

“HAYWIRE”  Rating: 2  (out of ten)

I think it’s time to start rating the raters of movies. Whoever wrote glowing reviews of “Haywire” should either be fired or evaluated for  competency.

This movie was probably made to upstart a new action hero in the form of actress, Gina Carano, from which the studios undoubtedly hope to create a Haywire I, II and III. Let’s hope not.

The movie would be better titled, “Whoop-ass Woman,” a testament to the scene upon scene where tough-as-nails Carano is beating the crap out of men, sometimes three at a time, with the usual menu of karate kicks, power punches and crotch kicks. Somewhere in the mix of this inane picture, is a plot…but you need a handy remote to reverse one scene after another to catch the drift of who is who, and what their objectives are.

It’s something about good agents and bad agents, but we don’t have the luxury of knowing why they’re killing each other, unless it’s just for the thrill of computer-game nerds who don’t need anything to think about.

The movie would be a total Zero if it were not for the appearances of Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas, …

I come from a family of Vaudevillians. My father, a comic dancer, was a headliner at the Palace Theater in NYC, as well as a hoofer on the Orpheum circuit. He was billed with and above greats like Rudy Vallee, Milton Berle, Burns and Allen, Ray Bolger, the Dorsey Brothers and many more. Thus, I have a great appreciation for comedy — real comedy by naturally talented entertainers who are truly funny in style, delivery and physicality.

When reminiscing great comedians, we old timers think of names like Berle, Red Skelton and Jerry Lewis, and in today’s world, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams and Jim Carrey. But we often forget about the funny ladies, some of whom were (and are) equally as gifted, or more so, than their comedic male counter parts. So, just for fun, I’ve created my own list of the funniest natural comediennes who have ever performed in movies, television and/or stand-up.

It’s tough to pick numbers one two and three, because they are as great as each other, but here goes. The ten greatest all-time female comics: (List of links below, to see samplings)

1. Carol Burnett

2. Gilda Radner

3. Madeline Kahn

4. Lucille Ball

5. …

“THE IRON LADY”   -  Rating:  8 ½   

If this movie was rated solely on acting, it would be a solid 10.  Meryl Streep, not surprisingly, sets the bar for the finest of actors that would ever grace the silver screen. Her performance is flawless. She becomes Margaret Thatcher, personified, in her political years, and again, in her weak and feeble retirement, replete with forgetfulness, delusions and frustrations.

     The movie is very good, but it could have been improved upon with better direction. In my humble opinion, too much time is spent in the script showing Thatcher’s old-age confusion rather than highlighting her years as a stone-hearted leader during the cold war era.

     Yes, the picture portrays her staunch response to the Falkland Island invasion byArgentina, standing up to the male establishment, her rise to prominence (in which a younger actress portrays her early years) and her unwavering conservative values as a politician.

     In parts, Thatcher’s speeches ironically sound more like today’s Republican candidates talking about holding down spending, supporting a free market, fighting labor unions and the incessant demand by the public to tax the rich. Yet, during her reign as Prime Minister, she managed …

“TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY”  Rating:  3 (out of 10)

In a word: Boring.

How in the world the movie critics give this multi-star ratings is baffling. If you like movies with hundreds of close-up shots of actors with pensive expressions on their faces, or giving each other curious looks, and an endless body of confusion with scenes that seem to have no bearing on the story, then see this movie.

     Often, dramas will begin at a snail’s pace, and eventually come together with a semblance of interesting suspense and then closure. In this movie, we waited and waited but the snail never gained any speed.

     The premise of the story wasn’t bad. During the cold war era, networks of spy agents trying to weed out a mole in the organization, mostly based in Hungary, France and England, add a couple of gratuitous murders, and decent acting and you think you’d have a great picture. (Yawn)

     The problem, it would seem, was in the directing. The talent was surely there, Gary Oldman plays the protagonist, forever thinking, pensive and troubled. Then, Colin Firth who was one of the blurry characters until late in the movie. Toby Jones and …