Just read a disheartening "Whatever happened to good old-fashioned entertaining movies?!" slam of this year's (excellent) Oscar nominees. Reminder: This take has been offered at every cultural pivot point since at least the mid-1960s. It has been wrong every time.

In particular, this is glib nonsense, spouted by someone who has decided that any art outside of his own experience has been conceived expressly in order to alienate him.

Take Minari, a profoundly optimistic drama about a working-class American family banding together against the hardships of nature, the economy, and fate. It's the kind of film that was nominated 40, even 80 years ago. But somehow NOW, it's virtue-signaling. I wonder what changed.

Judas and the Black Messiah is a movie about, among other things, the moral complexity of discovering that the entity you're working for is more corrupt and dangerous than the one you're working against. Welcome to half the great movies of the '70s. But THIS one is different? OK.

(Don't worry, I'm not gonna go through all of the nominees. I've said what I want to say. Thank you, TED talk, etc.)

OK one more thing. The Father and Sound of Metal are both innovatively presented dramas about very common disabilities--they're not told-from-the-outside "Oh, they're people TOO!" stories, but attempts to help you understand a condition from within. >

That is the opposite of virtue-signaling. It's not about self-congratulation for having compassion; it's experiential. So if you categorize those films as being about "virtue," all you're really saying is, don't try to trick me into empathy. Which is certainly a statement.