The Oscars are dumb. I was thinking of writing a longer blurb about how dumb they are but I don't want to beat a dead horse. This year's selection is interesting as I either really love or really dislike the nominees, there aren't many that I am just indifferent about. So here, enjoy this thorough roast of various Best Picture nominees and endless gushing about others. Belfast Bad. Manipulative. Uninspired. Trite. Kenneth Branagh is not a filmmaker I am fond of at all and he is not swaying me here either. Belfast feels like a new age of Oscar bait where instead of adapting heartbreaking real-life stories we are now fictionalizing the filmmaker's childhood so that he can say "this is my most personal film yet" in interviews. Every artistic choice made in Belfast feels obvious and false; from the black and white cinematography to the jazzy score that does not fit at all, everything feels like it was plucked out of a hat labeled "artistic