Well, we’ve finally got our wishes. For the first time in 5 years or so, the Oscars race seems fairly unpredictable. It’s been interesting to watch the so-called “front-runners” change throughout the year, starting with Carol earning strong buzz from Cannes and melting all the critics hearts. But when Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight hit Telluride and Toronto festivals, the tidal shifted to a new standout. It wasn’t until very end of the year that another serious contender emerged, last year’s Oscar winner Alejandro G. Inarritu for The Revenant. And while the hands on favorite to win Best Picture this year is The Revenant (after wins from the Golden Globes, BAFTA, and DGA), it’s by no means a lock. There’s even been a slight surge from Adam McKay‘s housing market collapse film The Big Short, which shakes up the competition even more. Aside from a few categories, this year’s Oscar winners are difficult to predict and because of it should be entertaining to see who walks away with a golden statue.

Watch the 88th Academy Awards on Feb. 28th live at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PST on ABC.

2016 Oscar Predictions

Best Picture:

The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight

Best Director

Adam McKay, The Big Short
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Revenant
Lenny Abrahamson, Room
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

Actress in a Supporting Role

Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Actor in a Supporting Role

Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed

Best Originial Screenplay

Bridge of Spies
Ex Machina
Inside Out
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Big Short
Brooklyn
Carol
The Martian
Room

Best Animated Feature

Anomalisa
Boy and the World
Inside Out
Shaun The Sheep
When Marnie Was There

Best Foreign Language Film

Embrace of the Serpent
Mustang
Son of Saul
Theeb
A War

Best Documentary

Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

Best Cinematography

Carol
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Hateful Eight
The Revenant
Sicario

Visual Effects

Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Film Editing

The Big Short
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Production Design

Bridge of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant

Best Costume Design

Carol
Cinderella
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant

Best Original Score

Bridge of Spies
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Original Song

“Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey
“Manta Ray” from Racing Extinction
“Simple Song No. 3” from Youth
“Til It Happens To You” from The Hunting Ground
“Writing’s on the Wall” from Spectre

Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling

Mad Max Fury Road
The 100-Year Old Men Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared
The Revenant

Achievement in Sound Mixing

Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Achievement in Sound Editing

Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Live Action Short Film

Ave Maria
Day One
Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)
Shok
Stutterer

Best Documentary Short Subject

Body Team 12
Chau, Beyond the Lines
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Last Day of Freedom

Best Animated Short Film

Bear Story
Prologue
Sanjay’s Super Team
We Can’t Live Without Cosmos
World of Tomorrow

In 1976, when Rocky Balboa was introduced to the world (by writer/star Sylvester Stallone and director John Alvidsen), he represented every man and woman who strived for greatness in a world that expected nothing of them. He was the ultimate underdog back then and, to most of us, still is today. Now, nearly 40 years later, the Italian Stallion is training a new underdog boxing hero ready to prove that it’s time to pass the torch.

His name’s Adonis Johnson, he’s played by Michael B. Jordan, and he’s the hero at the center of the seventh film in the Rocky series, Creed, directed by Ryan Coogler. Adonis is the son of Rocky’s dead former nemesis turned best bud, Apollo Creed, but hides his paternal lineage so that he can find his own path to glory. He grew up loving to box just like his dad (though he resents Apollo for reasons he keeps close to his chest) and moves to Philly so that the one and only Rocky Balboa can train him to be the best boxer in the world. The aging former champ reluctantly agrees, though he soon discovers that a fight of his own awaits, this time outside the ring.

It’s a simple hero’s tale Coogler, co-writer Aaron Covington and spiritual guide Stallone are working with, though it’s the finer details—the psychological nuts and bolts of the characters, the searing performances, the showstopping camerawork—that make Creed the best Rocky movie since the character’s debut.

Adonis first meets Rocky at his restaurant, Adrian’s, named after his late wife whose absence has left a hole in the former world champ’s heart. Given Rocky’s tight relationship with his father, Adonis decides to address him as “unc” as he picks his brain for boxing knowledge. For two actors who come from completely different eras of Hollywood and schools of acting, Stallone and Jordan match up incredibly well as mentor and pupil, perhaps even surpassing the chemistry Stallone had with Burgess Meredith. There’s always been a fiery energy to Jordan’s performances, from his early days in The Wire and Friday Night Lights to Coogler’s own Fruitvale Station, so he’s a perfect fit for a story about a young man learning to fight smart, not angry.

The issue with Adonis is, well, it isn’t a simple one. He seems to become most emotionally distressed at the thought or mention of his father, but it’s not clear exactly why his resentment runs so deep. The only way Rocky has any hope of unlocking Adonis’ potential is by getting to the root of his uncontrollable aggression, which manifests itself as carelessness in the ring. It’s that same carelessness that got Apollo killed in the squared circle, and Rocky wants no part in helping his best friend’s son meet the same fate. When he receives the news that he’s facing life-threatening health crisis, his will to guide Adonis runs dry. “It was all in our heads,” he says to the heartbroken kid. “We aren’t family.” Stallone’s been playing Rocky for decades, and he hasn’t felt this in-tune with the big lug since the first movie.

This is where the relationship balances out. Adonis refuses to let his mentor call it quits on life by refusing treatment. He strikes a deal: “If I fight, you fight.” The franchise’s classic montages return, with Adonis sprinting all over town and honing his footwork with his coaches and Rocky coping with the side effects of chemotherapy. Adonis isn’t as jacked up and bulky as his dad and Rocky were, but he makes up for it in speed and ferocity, a dangerous gift he works hard to harness. The training’s all in preparation of Adonis’ unlikely title fight in Liverpool with unstoppable Brit “Pretty” Ricky Conlan (ABA heavyweight champ Anthony Bellew).

Providing a welcome, steamy distraction from the rigors of fight camp is his musician downstairs neighbor, Bianca (Dear White People‘s Tessa Thompson, channeling Lisa Bonet in High Fidelity). Something that makes Rocky Balboa such an interesting character is his narrow-minded devotion to his wife. Adrian is his everything and has been from the moment they met. Thompson is terrific as Bianca, but the character doesn’t feel as vital to Adonis’ journey at this point. In future installments, her role will likely be expanded and tread new ground, but for now, she takes a back seat to the real object of Adonis’ obsession: Apollo.

That’s the key here, Adonis’ internal fight with his father’s legacy. Legacy, not memory. They never met: Adonis was born of an affair, his father dying in the middle of the ring before he was born. How haunting it must be, to live under the long shadow of a man you never knew. How consuming the appetite for violent release must be. Creed‘s story comes from a very personal place for Coogler, and you can feel it. The young Bay Area director took a long-running franchise and infused it with his own life experience, and that’s a wonderful thing. It’s a triumph in that it sets a precedent for other filmmakers who work in the franchise bubble to liberate themselves artistically from the clutches of legacy, lineage and fan expectation. Like Adonis, Coogler’s finding his own way.

The character work isn’t what people will see Creed for; it’s the fights, of course, and what Coogler and his team deliver are some of the most dynamic, vicious, tactile boxing scenes ever filmed. Honestly. It sounds like hyperbole, but these fights knock everything else we’ve seen in the Rocky series so far clear out of the ring. An early exhibition fight is done in one continuous shot, the camera as fleet-footed as Adonis, staying close so that we can see the sweat dripping down the back of his neck. The big finale is all about virtuosic editing, staying in the pocket when Adonis is dipping and dodging against the ropes and glimpsing key characters in the crowd at the perfect moments. To say the fight scenes are thrilling is an understatement; by the end of the movie, I was in tears. Talk about exceeding expectations.

The Holidays will be quite happening this year as the new Rocky spinoff, Creed, starring Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone, where we see an aged Rocky Balboa training the grandson of his former opponent, Apollo, is set to open this Thanksgiving.

Also, the remake of 1991 cult classic Point Break has been moved to Christmas Day taking the abandoned place left by Mission Impossible:5 after being scared off by Star Wars: Episode 7 taking the weekend before. Oh, that’s right, The Force Awakens is set to open December 18th.

It’s loads of news to look forward to this year for those of us that file ourselves in the nerd category. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Sylvester Stallone and his band of aging muscle-buddies probably had a blast making The Expendables 3, the latest by-product of Sly trying to help his pals out with a nice little payday in the twilight of their careers. Audiences get the wrong end of the deal, however, as the film is a messy action schlock that symbolizes the death knell for a franchise that’s worn out its welcome. The shameless appeal of the first Expendables–old action stars from the ’80s and ’90s teaming up to form a middle-aged super team–has long-since lost its sizzle, and Sly knows it: Here, he’s brought in a group of hot young actors into the fold to give the franchise a much-needed shot of vigor, but to no avail. Cursed by its PG-13 rating, The Expendables has lost too much blood (literally) and liveliness.

The film opens with Stallone’s Barney Ross leading his team of globe-trotting, government employed mercenaries (including series vets Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, and Jason Statham) on a rescue mission. Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes), a long lost teammate and friend of Barney’s, is being transported on a maximum security locomotive and, using a helicopter, big guns, and bigger balls, the Expendables manage to free the knife-savvy, old-school killer. The sequence pales in comparison to the train action scenes in Skyfall and Fast Five. Hell, even Toy Story 3 puts it to shame. But sadly, despite its mediocrity, the explosive train sequence winds up being the most entertaining set piece in the film. In other words, it’s all downhill from here.

Doctor Death, who’s been imprisoned for 8 years, has a little trouble integrating himself into the group, as all his old teammates (save for Barney) have been replaced. He trades barbs with Statham’s Lee Christmas, boastfully referring to himself as “the knife before Christmas” (hardy-har-har). Snipes’ snappy braggadocio wears thin quickly. No matter, though, because his storyline gets booted to the background for the remainder of the film. Let’s be honest; the writers just needed to get Snipes into the fray somehow so that he could kick and punch and jump off of high things.

Following Doctor Death’s recruitment, the Expendables carry out a routine mission that goes South when Barney spots Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson), an old nemesis he thought dead. Deeming his team too old and beat-up to continue doing the government’s dirty work, Barney disbands them and subs in a younger team of tech-savvy killers played by UFC champ Ronda Rousey, boxing champ Victor Ortiz, and handsome newbies Glen Powell and Kellan Lutz. Call them “Team Viagra”. When the new team flubs their mission and are apprehended by Stonebanks, Barney and the old-fart-ables band together to rescue the young blood.

The film upholds the franchise tradition of delivering a ridiculously beefy cast: series mainstays Terry Crews and Jet Li return; Antonio Banderas pops up in an unintentionally grating role as a chatty, wannabe Expendable; Kelsey Grammar plays a gruff old-timer who helps Barney recruit the kids; Harrison Ford plays Barney’s government boss; and, of course, good ol’ Arnold makes an inexplicable appearance. Grammar brings the film down to earth (in a good way) in his brief appearance, and Gibson exhibits the same entertaining mega-villain gusto he brought to the table in Machete Kills, but no one else impresses.

The series is desperate to create snappy new one-liners like Sly and Ah-nold’s greatest hits (“Get to de choppa!” gets a shout-out), but they’re all duds. What’s worse, each new, lame catchphrase gets repeated for no reason at all. For instance, in an early scene, real-life badass Rousey beats up some D-bags in a club. Upon disposing of the jerks, she looks down and growls “Men” in a faux-feminist scoff. Later in the film, she beats up another jerk, looks down at him, and growls, “MEN”. It’s the same exact joke, repeated in the same context, for no reason. These demonstrations of the law of diminishing returns are actually a good metaphor for the Expendables franchise as a whole.

The charm of the first Expendables was its transparency; the first film was a blatant invitation to indulge in famous tough guys kicking ass and making things go boom. It was uninhibited fun, and the fact that the script was poorly written meant little in the grand scheme of things. It was fetishistic, kill-’em-all ecstasy. Expendables 3 is no fun, with its muted colors and piles of grey rubble adding to the numbing effect of the nonsensical action. Director Patrick Hughes shot most of the film in Bulgaria, and you can tell; the film is meant to take place in several locations across the globe, but none of them look authentic. The locales all sort of mush together, much like how the myriad stars mush together and the endless, forgettable kills mush together. 126 minutes of action movie mush is hard to keep down. More like, “The Indedibles”.

The Expedables 3 trailer

The recent revival of bombastic ’80s action flicks spearheaded by Sylvester Stallone hasn’t been as unwelcome as I thought it would be pre-Expendables. That movie, though unremarkable, is a lot of fun because it’s so honest about what it is–a big, loud, unabashed testosterone parade for people who like watching things go boom. Escape Plan, the newest Stallone vehicle (the fact that the man can still sell tickets on name recognition alone is amazing), directed by Mikael Hafstrom, isn’t fun at all, and exchanges fun, blood-pumping, excessive action for a lame prison-breakout puzzle that we have to watch two oafs (masquerading as geniuses) attempt to solve. Dumb fun is fun, at least. Dumb is just dumb.

Stallone plays Ray Breslin, a man who can break out of any prison on earth (he literally wrote the book on prison security). He’s a voluntary jailbird, though; for his (bizarre) job, he’s placed in prisons to break out of them, illuminating for the wardens where the holes in their security systems are. He’s basically a bad-ass security consultant. When an especially high-paying prison-break gig comes along, Breslin embraces the challenge, even though he and his team (Curtis Jackson and Amy Ryan, both virtually inconsequential) are given dangerously little information. Predictably, the mission isn’t what it seems to be–Breslin finds himself in a prison built of technology so advanced it looks alien and, to his surprise, he’s legitimately locked-up.

His escape hinges on a partnership he forms with a fellow prisoner, Emil Rottmayer, played by–wait for it–the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger (he told you he’d be back). From here, we watch the two lugs try every trick in the prison-movie handbook (staged, diversionary fistfights, sharp object hand-offs) to bust out of the maximum-security hellhole, and their faux-intellectual scheming is torturous to sit through. Are we really meant to believe that these inarticulate muscle-heads are calculating masterminds? Don’t get me wrong–I’m almost certain that, in real life, Sly and Arnie are smarter than the average man. But seriously, veiny-armed Sly builds a sextant (an instrument of celestial navigation) out of a pen, a piece of paper, and a pair of glasses. It’s not just the absurdity that’s painful; it’s the fact that I’d much rather watch these guys hit, shoot, and maim things! About two thirds of the film seems to be spent with the dynamic duo plotting out their boring little strategies. We’ve waited decades–DECADES–for these knuckleheads to do a team-up movie, and you give us an hour of hallway walk-and-talks? For shame!

The film isn’t without its high points, though. Whenever Stallone and Schwarzenegger do get to crack some skulls, it’s a thrill that’s half driven by decent filmmaking (Hafstrom’s a solid action director), half by Rambo-nator mash-up nostalgia. Though the sloppy script is working against him, Schwarzenegger puts on an unexpectedly entertaining performance. In one of the only good dialog-driven scenes in the film, he’s allowed to speak German, which astonishingly reveals that when you take away the language barrier, Arnie loosens up and is actually a great performer (gasp!). Jim Caviezel has a lot of fun playing the intellectually dominating, soft-spoken warden. Watching him interact with Schwarzenegger is particularly enjoyable. The shoot-em-up finale is a lot of fun to watch, but it deserves more movie real-estate than it gets. The final set piece is pretty epic, but it ends up feeling anticlimactic after the trudge that is the film’s chubby middle section.

Stallone and Schwarzenegger are occasionally funny together–Arnie’s “You hit like a vegetarian!” line is wonderfully low-brow and hilarious–but they’re best as a pair of ass-kickers, and Hafstrom overestimates the entertainment value of watching them yap. Easily, the film’s biggest thrill comes near its conclusion, in a slow-mo closeup of Schwarzenegger’s eyes as his head turns toward the camera, ready to unleash hell on the bad guys with the giant machine gun he’s just ripped off of a helicopter turret (like only a former body-builder could). If only we’d gotten more of this dude-tacular ridiculousness, this action star team-up-for-the-ages could have been all we ever dreamt it could be. Instead, we get Stallone explaining to Schwarzenegger that toilet water swirls counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere. Wake me up when the guns go bang.