The Margot Robbie conundrum

by Cláudio Alves

This year's SAG Awards feature an assortment of multiple nominees across categories. Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino, and Scarlett Johansson scored a rare triple nod and they weren't the only ones. Margot Robbie also did it thanks to her participation in two of this season's juiciest awards magnets. In Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, she's Sharon Tate, while, in Bombshell, Robbie gives life to Kayla Pospisil, a fictional character that stands in for many of the women victimized by Fox News' toxic work environment.

Since Cannes, Tarantino's take on Hollywood's most tragic ingenue has been put through heavy scrutiny. Robbie's role has been accused of being a misogynistic and limited take on Sharon Tate, terminally underwritten and underutilized to boot. Even so, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a critics' darling while Bombshell has been promptly lambasted as soon as the review embargo ended. Controversies notwithstanding, I confess myself dismayed at the way Margot Robbie's Oscar hopes seem to have concentrated solely on the Jay Roach flick…

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"Everyone was nominated... except you!" Our annual SAG outrage!

by Nathaniel R

Alanna Ubach does a lot with very little screen time in "Bombshell" but she isn't part of the cast nomination

We'll keep doing these posts each year until the Screen Actors Guild does something about their most unfortunate awards rule. For those who are new to the awards game, please note: If you are a working actor lucky enough to wind up in a film nominated for "Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture," that doesn't mean you are included in the nomination; you have to have your own title card for that! What this means each year is that actors who aren't really famous yet, or don't have an aggressive agent, wind up left out of the official nomination even if they contributed immeasurably to the success of the film or were highly memorable in some small but defining way.

So who got the stealth snub in 2019, who otherwise had every reason to celebrate the nomination? Read on for the specific exclusions this year and the history of most embarrassing omissions from the past due this ruling...

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Review: Uncut Gems

by Chris Feil

In recent years, director duo Josh and Benny Safdie are cornering a market all their own of thriller of toxic neons and fatal consequence, after the deeply grim exploits of Heaven Knows What and Good Time. Nobody makes films quite in the way that the Safdies are making them right now, even if their particular brand of originality swims in back alley, off-putting aggressiveness. This round, their Uncut Gems is a dose of high anxiety filmmaking that’s partly Shakespearean tragedy of hubris and part underbelly crime saga in another unexamined pocket of New York City life.

Their best and most subversively accessible, it’s something enervating, infuriating, and compulsively watchable, all centered on a complex protagonist that also embodies all of the film’s contradictory qualities. That man is diamond dealer Howard Ratner, arrogantly betting off his assets and dwindling goodwill in the hopes of one massive payout, brought to exhilarating life by a possessed Adam Sandler.

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Review: Bombshell

by Murtada Elfadl

Bombshell takes a while to show us the crimes of abuse that Roger Ailes committed. But when that moment comes it’s as gross, as unpleasant and as horrifying as we thought it’d be. Instead at the beginning we follow Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) as she is fired from Fox News and decides to sue the network and Ailes for sexual harassment. As that is happening two other narratives begin to formulate. A young producer named Kayla (a composite character played by Margot Robbie) tries to get invited into Ailes’ inner echelon so that she can speed up her rise to a news anchor role. While in another part of the building Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) becomes embroiled in a nationally televised juvenile on air battle with then Candidate Trump. The film - directed by Jay Roach and written by Charles Randolph - starts building a network of misogyny stories within the three narrative threads showing how powerful men completely disregard and exploit women. 

Naturally Carlson needs witnesses to help win her case and this is when the three narrative threads come together hinged on Kelly's decision to testify against Ailes or not...

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French Cinema and the Oscars: A Love Story

by Cláudio Alves

France is the most-nominated country in the History of the Best International Feature Oscar, having conquered 39 nods over the decades. They'll probably up that number soon with Ladj Ly's Les Misérables. The likeliness of a nomination doesn't mean the selection of the country's Oscar submission was without controversy. Many a cinephile thinks Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire was more deserving. Without the benefit of being in the race for that particular trophy, the much-lauded period lesbian romance is likely to receive no Oscar love, even though it's eligible for most other categories

While it's rare for French films to be recognized outside the Best International Feature race, it's not unheard of. Since the beginning of the Academy Awards, 53 films have done so. That's not including documentaries or short films (or the number would be yet more inflated) . The Oscars may be very local in their tastes, but they've always shown a bit of Francophilia…

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