Almost There: It’s time to vote! (Halloween edition)

by Cláudio Alves

It’s been a while since you, the readers, have decided what performance should be analyzed in the Almost There series. Since it’s October, let’s do a Halloween-themed poll to spice things up. While AMPAS is notoriously allergic to horror movies, some performances came close to an Oscar nomination, whether their movies were otherwise embraced or not. Here are ten examples, complete with the precursors they won, why I think they were close, and where you can find each flick. The contenders are…

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Reason #10,473 to love Jamie Lee Curtis

She went to the premiere of Halloween Kills (2021) dressed as Marion Crane from Psycho (1960)...

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Almost There: Ann Dowd in "Compliance"

by Cláudio Alves

Here, at The Film Experience, there's a lot of love for Ann Dowd. The actress has been celebrated numerous times, interviewed, and she even took over the blog for a day in 2015. With Fran Kranz's Mass in theaters, Dowd may finally be poised to receive her first Oscar nomination after decades doing superb work on stage and on screens of all sizes. For years, despite the consistent quality of her performances, Dowd went unrecognized. In 2012, however, it all changed when Craig Zobel's Compliance generated widespread critical acclaim for the thespian, inspiring her to start a self-funded awards campaign. Making formidable use of this career momentum, Dowd quickly became a recognizable character actress powerhouse and an Emmy winner. Even so, all these years later, Compliance remains one of her greatest achievements…

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Streaming Roulette, Oct: The Manor, Black Widow, 'Just a Girl' and more...

New month and a... oops, we're approaching the halfway mark. How did that happen? It's past time for another round of Streaming Roulette where we point out a handful or two of random titles that are streaming and just for fun, freeze frame them at totally random places in the scroll bar...

I brought a little something to get the party started...

THE MANOR on Prime
Barbara Hershey stars in this new horror film about a woman convinced that residents of a nursing home are being killed. Bruce Davison co-stars so you get two 1990s Oscar nominees in this new film from a director named Axelle Carolyn...

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NYFF: "Întregalde" Slashes Old Habits For Something Fresh

by Jason Adams

Tell me if you've heard this one before -- a group of young people get lost in the woods. They pick up a stranger, and he's acting really weird. They lose their phone signals because of how remote they are in the wilderness. Their car breaks down. The group starts separating, one by one. Even more strange-behaving men show up. There are tales of an abandoned building in the mist-shrouded woods, and everybody starts wandering around trying to find it. One of them falls and hurts their leg. Night falls and their flashlight beams scatter in the darkness, no safe haven in sight. Snow begins to fall on a mysterious little shack. 

If you think I've just described the latest schlock horror flick to hit movie theater screens I wouldn't blame you, but this is actually the latest serious-minded art-house film from Romanian director Radu Muntean (Tuesday, After Christmas), who proves that there's nothing more enlivening than watching somebody serious-minded renegotiate the same old same old elements into something new, strange, and hypnotic. Întregalde is a low-key astonishment.

You can see the warning signs accumulating early on...

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