Don't Look Up (2021)

 Nominated for Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Original Screenplay    This is billed as a comedy but it depressed the shit out of me, y'all.

Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) are elated to have discovered a brand-new comet, until they calculate the trajectory and realize it's a planet-killer on a direct line to Earth.  They reach out to the head of the Planetary Defense Office, Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), who gets them in to see the President (Meryl Streep).  President Orlean patently does not care and sits on the information until it can be of use to her in the mid-terms.  Even then, there's enough time to save the world until billionaire tech magnate Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) calculates exactly how much the comet is worth.

Remember how I was frustrated by Idiocracy because it's become a documentary instead of fiction?  This is Idiocracy + Wag the Dog.  Sure, it's funny.  Right up until it's not.  And then you'll just want to scream and scream and scream.  

Honestly, my main problem with this film is the nihilism.  People are presented as having no hope and therefore no incentive to care.  And I get it.  It's exhausting having to care All. The. Time.  But the minute you stop caring, you've lost.  There will never be a solution if you don't care enough to look for one.  I hope to God this doesn't win Best Picture.  Because it's entirely the wrong message.

It's streaming on Netflix.