And the winner is... not much fun but ‘important’

If reports are to be believed, we’re all champing at the bit to get back to the cinema once audiences are allowed into the big screen again next month.

Given the sort of films being made in our over-earnest times, this may not exactly be the feel-good experience of 2021 many are predicting.

It seems that movies have long abandoned the idea of being entertaining in favour of being ‘important’. In Oscars week, one look at the ‘best picture’ shortlist doesn’t exactly throw up the cheery, escapist fare that many are surely craving after a year of lockdown.

So, if the picturehouses were back open tomorrow, you have a choice between the following (with their descriptions from Wikipedia, along with my own summaries based on having seen none of them): The Father: An ageing man must deal with his progressing memory loss (plenty of ‘Acting’, with a capital A, by the sound of it). Judas and the Black Messiah: The betrayal of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers (presumably a more violent version of that viral meeting of Handforth Parish Council). Mank: Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his development of the Citizen Kane screenplay (film industry types seem to think we find their ‘process’ inherently fascinating). Minari: A family of South Korean immigrants try to make it in the rural US during the 1980s (which presumably doesn’t end well).

Nomadland: A woman leaves her hometown after her husband dies and the sole industry closes down, to be ‘houseless’ and travel around the US (misery on three fronts made it a shoe-in).

Promising Young Woman: A woman seeks to avenge the death of her best friend (billed as ‘a comedy thriller’, so may contain danger moments of light-heartedness).

Dumb and Dumber on ITV2, anyone?

‘One look at the Oscars ‘best picture’ shortlist doesn’t exactly throw up the cheery, escapist fare that many are surely craving after a year of lockdown’