"Sugarcane" leads the Critics Choice Documentary Awards nominations

by Cláudio Alves

National Geographic's SUGARCANE is the nomination leader, with citations in eight categories.

Since 2016, the Critics Choice Awards has expanded its repertoire to include various documentary categories. These CCDAs are now separate from the precursor we know so well and stand apart as their own thing. Still, most look at these honors as Oscar predictors. Which is understandable if not wholly supported by a complete correlation between AMPAS and the CCDA. Not even when the latter have double the nominees for their main prize. On their ninth edition, they have opted for a curiously tame selection, at odds with the current political climate. There's a big emphasis on glossy biographical works and celebrity profiles, formalistic conventionality, studio fare, and all that jazz. That being said, Sugarcane leads with eight nods.

Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat's film goes into a case of abuse and missing children at a Sugarcane Reserve's Christian school. Focusing on the Native American community, Sugarcane is certainly not without an urgent message and a perspective on its subject. The same can't be said about all its competitors…

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NYFF '24: "Suburban Fury" tells the tall tale of a wannabee Presidential Assassin

by Cláudio Alves

On September 22nd, 1975, just seventeen days after Squeaky Fromme had attempted the same, Sara Jane Moore fired at President Gerald Ford. Neither of the 45-year-old woman's shots hit their target, though she came dangerously close. Had Moore noticed the sight on her revolver was 6 inches misplaced, she might have done it. Such violent actions came less than two years after this housewife from the San Francisco suburbs had been recruited by the FBI as an informant, going into militant groups and becoming radicalized in the process. Her thwarted presidential assassination led to much media hullabaloo, pithy dismissals of Moore as being "off her mind," and a life sentence, of which she served 32 years.

Nearly half a century after the shooting, director Robinson Devor puts her at the center of Suburban Fury, a new documentary where the would-be assassin is given ample opportunity to tell her own story…

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NYFF '24: “The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire” sings an unusual song

by Nick Taylor

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire presents the most concrete details about Suzanne Césaire's life - perhaps the only concrete details about her life - in its opening title cards. Born in 1915 in Martinique, Césaire was a poet and essayist who began publishing her essays in 1941. Her work was heavily influenced by feminism, communism, and anti-colonial theory, and she achieved a degree of sociocultural prominence before 1946 when she vanished from the literary circles she'd held so dear. One character, an actress playing Césaire in a film about her life, wisely notes, "We're making a movie about a woman who didn't want to be known." And this sentiment informs this thesis in a nutshell. To compensate, director Madeline Hunt-Ehrlich has nestled her work in a metafictional story around a largely fictionalized treatise on Césaire. It's a strange proposition, but is it an effective one? Let's talk about it...

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Poll: What's Gaga's Best Leading Lady Turn?

by Cláudio Alves

Have you ventured into the movie theater to watch the bomb of the season? Joker: Folie à Deux has confounded film critics and fans alike, leading many to point fingers at its creators in hopes of finding someone to blame. Some hate its moroseness, others can't stand the showtune numbers or the entire song and dance idea. Still, in the middle of this ruckus, one name should be left out of the discussion. Lady Gaga is the best thing about the DC Comics musical, even if she's terribly underutilized by Todd Phillips. Indeed, many Little Monsters have taken to social media to catalog every shot seen in the trailer or behind-the-scenes footage that centered on Mother Monster but somehow didn't make it to the finished flick. One can only imagine that more Gaga would have done Folie à Deux a world of good.

Regardless, the singer turned movie star's latest production seems to consolidate her screen siren status. A Star Is Born was no fluke, and though House of Gucci didn't nab her a second Best Actress Oscar nomination, it didn't blemish her filmography too much. Which leads one to ask – what's Gaga's best leading lady turn? You can vote, after the jump…

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NYFF '24: "Rumours" serves political satire à la Maddin

by Cláudio Alves

Rumours is probably Guy Maddin's most accessible film, flirting with the mainstream in ways most of his work never did. That's relative, however, and one shouldn't presume the Winnipeg-based auteur has defanged himself in some desperate attempt to score the public's approval. This G7 pitch-black comedy is still weirder than your favorite Hollywood directors' wildest swing, keeping true to Maddin's cinema of transgression. It involves, among other things, bog body zombies that jack off until they explode, a giant brain with a horny aura, the pedophile-tracker-like ChatGPT taking over the world, and Cate Blanchett playing the Hetalia version of Germany by way of a SNL Angela Merkel…

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