Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 11:00PM Seán here, full of the joys of spring and delighted to be helming the reboot of a franchise we all love here at the Film Experience... April Showers! Kicking off the month is a healthy dose of heavy-handed homoerotic horror, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge - what else!
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 7:26PM by Nathaniel R
Glenn Close is "The Wife"
Happy news to share or remind you of if you've already known (this is not a 'breaking news' specific post, just newsy). Sony Pictures Classic is NOT waiting until the dread last weekend of the year to release the new Glenn Close vehicle The Wife. (Post Christmas releases in Los Angeles and New York rarely work for Oscar hopefuls but studios have been loathe to give them up, hoping that Oscar fever will rescue their commercial prospects despite not putting the effort in of releasing them before Christmas). The post Christmas pray-for-a-midnight-miracle attempt is what doomed Annette Bening's chances two years in a row for Best Actress nominations (20th Century Women and Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool were released on December 28th and December 29th respectively in 2016 and 2017).
No, The Wife is trying the summer player / Best Actress momentum game (which works out more often than New Years Eve hopefuls). The film hits theaters in limited release on August 3rd and will platform from there. I think it's the best work she's done in a couple of decades so I'm hoping y'all like it too. Whether or not her perpetual "overdue" status paired with what we're assuming will be strong reviews (at least for her if not necessarily the film) will lead to a nomination or win will depend a lot on her as yet unknown competition; it's not the undeniable kind of ferocious big meaty star turn but more of a finely calibrated character study. But who will that competition be...
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 2:00PM By Glenn Dunks
Documentaries about musicians can feel like a dime a dozen. It’s no wonder, too, since they’re such easy sells for festivals and home entertainment in a market that is over-saturated with exhibitors and distributors in need to properties that don’t require elaborate marketing campaigns -- just a hope and a prayer that they will ‘catch on’.
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami is not exactly one of those films. It is unconventional as rock docs go in a whole host of ways, but it’s also a film that even its subject’s fans may struggle with. It eschews a typical birth-to-death narrative and instead focuses on Grace’s experiences in Jamaica and Paris recording her 2008 album Hurricane, recorded in garish lo-fi digital video, juxtaposed against richly filmed concert footage that echoes her 1982 One Man Show. It’s a documentary that leaves questions – like what exactly are “Bloodlight" and "Bami” (I had to look them up)? Why did it take so long to complete?
It drifts by for 115 minutes on its own sort of trippy wavelength which is, if you think about it, entirely appropriate for a documentary about Miss Grace Jones, one of the most enigmatic and exciting pop stars of the 20th century...
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 12:30PM by Chris Feil
It's been so long since the first much salivated over set photos of Nicole Kidman as a spiky haired punch in How to Talk to Girls at Parties, that she's had an entire awards run and career resurgence in the meantime! The John Cameron Mitchell adaptation of Neil Gaiman's short story got a quiet esponse when it debuted in last year's Cannes (outside the competition) and there hasn't been much news since. But now there's a trailer...
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 10:15AM Can you believe it's April already! If only the weather here in NYC would commit to springtime (Sigh). A new month means new availabilty of streaming titles which means it's time for our streaming roulette. We spin (figuratively... it's really scrolling) and wherever the cursor lands we share that moment of the film. Do any of these screengrabs make you want to see the picture (or see it again)?
Drugstore Cowboy (1989) on Amazon Prime
Holy shit!
Holy shit is right. This is the first moment of a quadruple dissolve with a really strange comic tone. Gus Van Sant just can't help his inner cinema geek sometimes (See also Psycho, 1998). I don't remember this well (only saw it once) but was absolutely convinced at the time that Matt Dillon should have landed his first Oscar-nomination with ease. He had to make do with that year's Best Actor prize at the Independent Spirit Awards and wait another 17 years for the Oscar nomination (via Crash). Kelly Lynch is also excellent as his girlfriend (she had a brief heyday in the late 80s and early 90s but was never properly appreciated despite more than one strong performance).
Six more films after the jump starting with Little Women (1994) on Netflix...
