PopaHALLics #68 "Oscar, Oscar, Oscar!"
We review Best Picture Nominee "King Richard," with Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress nominees Will Smith and Aunjanue Ellis; "Spencer," with Best Actress Nominee Kristin Stewart; and the new Oscar fan-favorite film category. (Vote now, and vote often.) Also: Why "Armageddon," never nominated for Best Picture, is not really about the rush to stop a giant asteroid from crashing into the Earth.

Streaming/Rental

• "Spencer," Hulu or rental. Stewart ("Twilight") plays a troubled Princess Diana about to decide to leave the royal family in this psychological drama directed by Pablo Larrain.
• "King Richard," Rental. Smith plays the brash, self-promoting father with a 78-page plan to take daughters Venus and Serena Williams to tennis superstardom.
• "Inventing Anna," Netflix. In this miniseries, a journalist investigates a con artist who steals the hearts of New York's elite—and their money, too.
• "Armageddon," Amazon, YouTube, and other sites. NASA sends up deep sea drillers to plant a nuclear bomb inside the asteroid headed for Earth. Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck,  Billy Bob Thornton, and many fires and explosions star.

Books 

• "Notes on An Execution," by Danya Kukafka. This acclaimed thriller explores the complicated women caught in the orbit of a serial killer, on the eve of his execution.
•  "Those Across the River," by Christopher Buehlman.  In this literary horror novel, a disgraced academic and his lover from Chicago discover why dread underlies life in a small Southern town.