Top Ten: Ezra Miller Lewks

by Nathaniel R

Tilda & Ezra 7 years ago. He learned from a master

We have been greatly remiss in celebrating Ezra Miller's rising fashion-icon insanity. I am pleased in retrospect to have been one of the five people who saw and admired his debut performance in the disturbing art film Afterschool which made $3,911* at the box office in 2009 (*actual figure, not sarcasm). I vividly remember seeing it because when I left the theater, a friend who worked at the Nashville Film Festival ran up to tell me that Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban had attended the screening directly before mine. (A tragedy truly: we saw the same movie at the same festival on the same day but weren't in the same showing. ARGH!)

More than ever in 2018, Miller has proven that his casting as Tilda Swinton's son in his breakout picture, Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) was more than a little prescient because he's following in Tilda's iconoclastic and androgynous footsteps in the department of causing stirs on the red carpet.

So herewith a top ten of Ezra fashion after the jump...  

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Lynn Gives Thanks

Team Experience members were invited to give thanks this week so you'll be hearing from a few of us. Here's Lynn Lee..

In many ways, 2018 – like the two preceding years, only even more so – has felt like a nauseating carnival ride that I, for one, would like to stop and get off.  But the one welcome constant was always having something genuinely engaging to watch and, in the best cases, elevate my feelings on the state of the world and humanity. 

In that spirit, here are some of the many things I’m thankful for:

• The electrifying last 15 minutes of Nanette, wherein Hannah Gadsby turned stand-up comedy into something else altogether – and left our collective jaw on the floor.

• Daveed Diggs – so good in Hamilton, even better in the riveting and underrated Blindspotting.

• The shimmer in Natalie Portman’s and Oscar Isaac’s eyes at the end of Annihilation, one of the most bonkers and most unexpectedly rewarding films of 2018...

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A rough weekend for Oscar hopefuls at the Box Office

by Nathaniel R

What did you see over the weekend? Though a lot of Oscar hopefuls struggled, this weekend was but the preamble to a big holiday weekend so this coming week will tell a much broader story of which films the public is responding too. More commentary after the jump...

Weekend Box Office  (Nov 16-18)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1 🔺   Fantastic Beasts 2 $62.1 on 4163 screens *NEW*	1 🔺 Boy Erased $1.3 on 409 screens (cum. $2.6) Podcast

2 Dr Seuss' The Grinch $38.5 on 4141 screens (cum. $126.9) Posterized	2🔺 Can You Ever Forgive Me $893k on 555 screens (cum. $5) Review, Podcast

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Willem Dafoe is Monumental in "At Eternity's Gate"

by Eric Blume

Willem Dafoe plays Vincent van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate, director Julian Schnabel’s film about the last year in the life of the great Dutch painter.  And Dafoe’s delivers a magnificent performance here: his face is the canvas of the film, in all its agony and ecstasy.

Schnabel, a painter himself who made the stunning films Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, gives us a deeply detailed movie of a painter by a painter.  The mechanics of landscape and portrait painting, the walks to the viewpoints, the tools, and the intimacy with the subject all become the fabric of this movie.  Schnabel’s attention to these subtleties establish his credibility and give the movie real texture...

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Interview: Hirokazu Kore-eda on "Shoplifters," his process and working with child actors

by Murtada Elfadl

Kore-eda with his Palme d'Or for Shoplifters. Is an Oscar nomination next?

In Shoplifters Hirokazu Kore-eda (Like Father Like Son, After the Storm) tells us a story about how families unite with bonds of love and real connection rather than accidents of birth. Perhaps the best way to describe it is “humanist” as it puts connection, kindness and love at the forefront. According to the press notes, the director was inspired to write the story after learning about incidents of pension fraud in Japan - where families illegally received the pensions of parents who had already died years ago - and the severe criticism the perpetrators got.

I am wondering why people get so angry over such minor infractions even though there are many lawbreakers out there committing far more serious crimes without condemnation.

Shoplifters traces the relationships of a makeshift family that survives through petty crime, shoplifting and the grandmother's pension. Kore-eda, who wrote, directed and edited the film, won the Palme D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film was a runaway commercial success in Japan and is considered a frontrunner for a nomination in this year’s Foreign Language Film Category at the Oscars. On a break from shooting his latest film with Juliette Binoche, Catherine Deneuve and Ethan Hawke, we spoke with him on the phone about Shoplifters, his writing process, and why he’s great with child actors. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity...

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