If history is any indication, it's unlikely that Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony will end with the most deserving nominee going home with the "best picture" Oscar. This is common sense for anyone who cares about cinema and has been paying attention in recent years. How did The Artist beat out The Tree of Life in 2011? How did Argo beat out Zero Dark Thirty in 2012? How did Birdman beat out Boyhood in 2014? When will Hollywood stop its self-congratulatory streak of crowning showy movies simply because they are meta commentaries about show business? (A trend that looks like it will continue with La La Land.)

One of the funniest lines in "Love & Friendship," Whit Stillman’s hilarious and endearing new film adaptation of Jane Austen's "Lady Susan," find the conniving Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsdale) lamenting that “facts are horrid things.” It’s a philosophy perfectly at home in 2016, a year in which more than one commentator has declared our world to be “post-truth,” courtesy of the impervious-to-facts success of Donald Trump’s campaign.

Never have I seen a movie so full of beautiful imagery and sound, yet so simultaneously empty, unsatisfying, and downright sleazy, as Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups. But this is precisely its point. The film’s 118-minute parade of bodies, beaches, and landscapes, accompanied by painfully brief snippets of Grieg, Debussy and Vaughan Williams, provides a glut of beauty that is also a deprivation.

There is a lot about Kansas City that makes it a special place, an American gem of a metropolis in the midst of “flyover country.” Here are 99 of the best things about this wonderful city.

Yes, our individual stories matter, but mostly because they are subplots and microcosms of the BIG story God is telling. Each of our lives can be a reflection of the redemptive story God authors on a massive scale. Each is a compelling chapter in the epic of creation.A movie that I think illustrates this well is Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life.

For many moviegoers, watching a so-called “art film” can be an arduous task. But it doesn’t have to be. The following (taken from my new book, Gray Matters) are some tips for how to enjoy films that might at first glance seem difficult, esoteric, or painfully slow.

I'm passionate about good coffee and a good college basketball game. For me, both of these things can, at their best, reveal the beauty of creation and the pleasures of God.

I've always loved this time of year. Late summer. For whatever reason, it is just incredibly poetic. The end of "vacation" season, an acute sense of both loss and hope, the onset of such wonderful things as Football season and apple picking. It's a great moment of transition, and some far more perceptive writers than I have captured it beautifully in verse.

Here in the last days of August, 2008, when hurricanes bear down, oil prices and inflation oppress the struggling among us, politics resign to divisiveness, economies falter, and hope is little more than a catch phrase, the inevitability of change is a small, but significant, consolation.

Autumn is my favorite season. Always has been. Sadly, I now live in a climate (southern California) that has only the faintest glimpse of any seasonal changes. Fall in L.A. means the Emmys, a new television season, and USC football. Weatherwise, it might mean a freak thunderstorm and a few random trees changing color.