Robert Hamer
Formerly an associate writer for recently-retired Award Circuit, Robert Hamer is a military veteran who now spends his time obsessing over movies and pop politics. He is returning to film and awards season commentary to return to a sense of normalcy in these plague-ridden times of rising fascism and late-stage capitalist dystopia. Join him, won't you, in these unorthodox attempts at cinematic therapy?
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in Op-ed
On the Radar… (Summer Edition)
Summertime! A season of record-breaking heat waves, a last-minute attempt to avoid a purely self-inflicted economic catastrophe, and big-budget spectacle movies! I’m actually pretty surprised, in a good way, that movie theaters still exist in the post-pandemic era, and I will show my gratitude for their endurance in the face of a truly existential threat […] More
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in Op-ed
Sunday Scaries: ‘May’ Was So Lonely and Now We Are, Too
“If you can’t find a friend, make one.” Sometimes movies bomb not because they’re bad or failed to sell themselves effectively, but solely because of lousy timing. The Thing, celebrated today as one of the all-time greatest science fiction horror movies, was initially a commercial failure because it had the misfortune of competing with more […] More
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On the Radar… (Spring Edition)
Remember when a movie that won the Academy Award for Best Picture included a scene from one of its Oscar-nominated actresses where she bludgeons a man to death with two comically oversized dildos? And then later featured a scene where two henchmen shove phallic-shaped trophies up their asses to obtain martial arts abilities against its […] More
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Sunday Scaries: Which Future Oscar Contenders Should You Be Scared Of?
Note: Topics of self-harm and abuse are discussed in this piece. Two years ago, I reflected on how Parasite continued an interesting trend among movies that win Best Picture during presidential election years: “How it works is this: if the most recent winner of the Best Picture Academy Award is optimistic, hopeful, old-fashioned in its […] More
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Why Michelle Yeoh Should Win the Academy Award for Best Actress
Joey’s right on both counts: there are three up-in-the-air, far-from-settled acting races this season, and that is unambiguously a great development that should be the norm instead of the exception. I will always find it incredibly hard to believe in any near-unanimous consensus from an overwhelming majority of the various guilds and critics groups across the country […] More
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in Op-ed
Sunday Scaries: Reflecting On The ‘Cloverfield’ Hype Fifteen Years Later
If you are of a certain age, you definitely remember seeing this for the first time: Even if you remember literally nothing else about the movie Cloverfield itself, released around this time fifteen years ago, you still remember the firestorm of speculation that followed this teaser trailer for what looked like a found footage disaster […] More
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in Op-ed
Get Woke, Go… Oh, Wait
Ah, man. This is unfortunate. Remember Gina Carano? That poor, victimized millionaire freethinker who was canceled by the Woke Left for pulling a whoopsie-doodle antisemitism and transphobia in a very public way? She had to strike out on her own after the notoriously outspoken lefty activists at The Walt Disney Corporation wouldn’t let her continue […] More
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in Op-ed
Perfecting the Wheel in 2022
For those of you who haven’t checked them out yet, the rest of the Awards Radar staff writers have unveiled their own top ten films of last year. Unlike the more eclectic lists of 2021, several common favorites popped up at or near the very top this time around: RRR, The Fabelmans, and Everything Everywhere […] More
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in Op-ed
On the Radar… (Beginning of the Year Edition)
Well, folks, 2023 is upon us! I know we’re all still focused on the Oscar race ramping up and Kevin McCarthy’s embarrassing attempts to try to become the next Speaker of the House, but between now and The Big Night, we will have quite a few interesting releases to keep an eye on. Will any […] More
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in Op-ed
Sunday Scaries: The Best Performances in Horror For 2022
Happy New Year, horror lovers! Last month, Joey shared his top ten favorite scary movies released last year, with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s legacyquel Scream coming out on top. At the risk of getting a little too end-of-year-list crazy, I’d like to share my own horror-related “rankings,” this time focused on the acting that […] More
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in Op-ed
On the Radar… (December Edition)
It’s December! You know what that means: late-breaking Oscar contenders! And man oh man do we have a lot of them coming down the pipeline in the next few weeks. Literally every single movie I decided to cover this month has a very real shot at a Best Picture nomination, and all but one of […] More
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in Op-ed
An Unfortunate Irony of The ‘She Said’ Awards Campaign from Universal Pictures
I’m mostly with Joey on the potency and immediacy of She Said. A few complaints keep me from being as laudatory as he was. But the movie, taken as a whole, is indeed sobering and poignant and overall successfully communicates the gravity of this story as not just one man who behaved like a pig […] More