BONUS CONTENT: Best movie was never even nominated

CFPB will limit those pesky credit card late fees

The best movie this year did not get nominated for an Academy Award.

It did not appear at Aviation Mall or the Saratoga multiplex.

It is not streaming anywhere.

More often than not these days, we are told which movies are great. That accidental discovery is missing because we don't go to the movies very often.

With the current Hollywood formula, it is not enough to make a blockbuster movie. The research and marketing folks have to deem the subject worthy of their promotional and marketing millions.

Or is it the other way around? Do the marketing and promotional people tell the movie makers what subjects will sell?

It's why the highest grossing movies have more explosions, car chases and fight scenes than impeccably crafted dialogue.

It's why movies are noisy instead of quiet.

And it may be why so many of us are flocking to streaming services instead of the local theater.

It's something to consider if you watch the Oscars Sunday night.

I love the Academy Awards show.

I love the red carpet and seeing the stars in those hard-to-believe-they-paid-for-it gowns.

But most of all I love that once in a lifetime moment when some documentary film maker gets to thanks his parents with the world watching.

I guess it is part of the American dream.

Each time I go to the movies, I'm hoping for that rare moment of unexpected discovery where you are moved by the message of a movie that makes you think.

It seems to happen less and less.

Hollywood nominated 10 movies for Best Picture this year - twice what was traditional years ago - as a way to hype five more movies.

I found four worthy - American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie and The Holdovers - and I urge you to see one from the international category - Society of the Snow. They are good movies, but not classics.

A year ago, I wrote that each of the Oscar-nominated documentaries were better than any of the Best Picture nominees.

Thankfully, that is not the case this year.

But overhyped movies like Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon are just too long while Barbie is a surprising breath of fresh air with a dazzling look and a surprisingly serious message.

But I've kept you waiting long enough.

None of the 10 nominated are as good as the Canadian film Bones of Crows.

While judging movies for the Adirondack Film Festival this year - it was later canceled in support of the Hollywood writer's strike - we were given Bones of Crows as a late submission.

Bones of Crows is sort of a sister film to Killers of the Flower Moon because it also addresses the plight of indigenous peoples.

In Bones, we follow the lives of three Native American children after their parents are forced to enroll them in a government boarding school so they can be indoctrinated into white culture.

It was not only a true story, but another horrific chapter in the abuse of Native Americans.

In August 2023, the New York Times did an in-depth story on federally subsidized schools that were spread out all over the country.

The Times story found there were some 523 institutions spread out across the country, including several in western New York and the Castleton Academy near Rutland, Vt.

Children faced beatings, malnutrition, hard labor and neglect after being taken from their parents.

While in some cases, Native Americans gave up their children in hopes they could find a better way of life off the reservation, most were taken to court and forced to give up their children.

That is the story of Aline Spears of the Cree Nation in Bones of Crows in an epic story that follows Spears through her entire life.

Only recently it was found that hundreds of children died at these schools. Spears recounts her own abuse in the movie and the lifetime search to find her siblings. But there is so much more to the story. It is more than what my wife would call "a misery movie." Spears goes on to serve in the military and become a "code talker" during World war II. Her daughter becomes a lawyer and Spears finally confronts the scars of the past while looking for justice for her childhood abuse.

This movie is epic in scope.

Bones of Crows has won a number of Canadian awards, but it does not show up anywhere on the Oscar ballot. It would have been a contender at this year Adirondack Film Festival.

There is a companion mini-series that aired on Canadian television that goes even further with the story.

The story of this sad chapter in American history deserves more coverage.

It deserves a bigger stage.

Oscar night would have been perfect.

Credit card fees

I've written about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before. It was created in 2010 to help police Wall Street in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown.

It has collected millions of dollars in fines from corporations who have cheated consumers out of money.

What was unique about the CFPB was that Congress gave it independence so its mission could not be compromised by elected officials beholden to lobbyists.

During the Trump administration, Mick Mulvaney was appointed as director of the agency. He froze hiring, stopped investigations and fine collections, suspended most rule making and shifted the mission of the agency away from enforcement to cutting regulations.

The Biden administration has returned the CFPB to its original mission and this week it announced it capped all credit card late fees at $8.

If you've ever been late on a payment, you know those $35 late fees are excessive.

The CFPB estimates that the new measure will save consumers $10 billion a year. This was an agency that Trump and Republicans were trying to kill.