Dunkirk (2017)

Wow, Christopher Nolan writes, directs, and co-produces the depiction of a real event for a change. Well, to a point. The individual characters involved are fictitious. But given his usual penchant for sci-fi and mindscrew mystery, it was bound to be unusually realistic for him. Perhaps he wants more of a shot at the next Academy Awards than he had with Inception.

Unlike any other war film I've seen, this one divides itself into three perspectives corresponding roughly to land (designated "The Mole," an architectural term I didn't know), sea, and air. On land, in the course of a week, Allied soldiers at Dunkirk are in the process of retreating, but German forces don't make it easy with all the ship bombing. At sea, in the course of a day, Captain Dawson (Mark Rylance) takes his yacht to join the rescue effort with his young adult son, along with an unexpected rash teenage assistant. They soon pick up a lone survivor of a bombed ship (Nolan mainstay Cillian Murphy), who exhibits PTSD and reeeeally doesn't want to return to Dunkirk. In the air, in the course of an hour, three members of the Royal Air Force (one of them played by Tom Hardy) face off with German fighters in the vicinity.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Never before had I been half so surprised at an Academy Best Picture nomination. I hadn't seen this one yet, but I had seen Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, which didn't seem to belong anywhere near elite cinematic discussion. It wasn't badly done per se, just...out there. Possibly the ugliest (not grossest, most violent, or most depraved, but big on all three) movie I ever watched from start to finish, without any obvious connection with reality to make up for that. I figured that when you've seen one Mad Max entry, you've seen them all. Nothing short of the Oscars could bring me back for more.

OK, I suppose I should give the series some credit for realism by sci-fi standards. None of the premises are impossible under modern science. It's just a near-future dystopia in which punks and a few innocents race across the desert in search of scarce resources -- originally gasoline above all, now water. There are the sorts of deviations from physics you expect from action flicks, of course, but the part I find hardest to believe is that the bulk of survivors would gravitate toward a severe lack of taste in fashion, vehicles, and basic mores.

Having lost his family, Max (Tom Hardy, suitably replacing Mel Gibson) has become a slightly unhinged antihero, evidently trying not to care about anyone but himself. This does not stop him from getting roped into conflicts and taking the less blatantly evil side time and again. In this case, the enemy is a water tycoon called Immortan Joe, and the people in need of a champion are his involuntary harem.

The Revenant (2015)

When I realized that I had seen only two of the Academy Best Picture nominees for the year, I got a little antsy. It's been ages since I saw fewer than half the nominees before the ceremony, and those that I had seen are not expected to win. Between heavy snow and my imminent international vacation, I wouldn't have much more of a window for the favored pics, so my dad and I gave this priority on the weekend.

The story is inspired by a key 1823 event in the life of fur trader Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), namely a battle with a mama bear that he just, eheh, barely won. Since his party just lost many men to an Arikara tribal raid, they are reluctant to stick around, but Glass is in no shape to be moved along the terrain. The captain (Domnhall Gleeson) pays two men to stay with him, along with his adolescent half-Pawnee son, Hawk. Alas, in the temporary absence of junior Jim Bridger, John S. Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) tries to suffocate Glass and kills Hawk for interfering. He then talks Bridger into leaving Glass for dead lest they all die. But Fitzgerald underestimates how much a father's vengeance facilitates recovery....

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

I know what you're thinking: "What a follow-up." I may be the only person in the world to have chased The Force Awakens with one of the least popular Star Trek films. Why did I? Mainly because I was donating platelets and had only so many options for viewing on the portable screen.

This is not to say that I'd never have seen it otherwise. Sure, it was the Die Another Die of its franchise, breaking the pattern of esteemed even-numbered entries and precipitating a longer hiatus than usual followed by a reboot. But I didn't feel like I wasted my time watching DAD, and my taste in Trek fare differs from most who watch a lot of it; The Wrath of Khan, for instance, appealed to me less than Insurrection did. (How many brains just popped?) I couldn't help feeling a tad curious.

Continuing with the "Next Generation" crew under Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Nemesis sees them on an unexpected mission to head to previously verboten Romulan Empire space for an announced peace treaty. Given the misadventure in Star Trek VI with the Klingon pact, I don't blame several key crew members for having their doubts. But neither Klingons nor Romulans form the main threat this time; in fact, a young villain named Shinzon (Tom Hardy) hates the Romulans above all, for personal reasons. So why should the Enterprise crew intervene, apart from, y'know, heroism? Because Shinzon has a keen interest in Picard for other personal reasons, which I spoil below.