The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
There is an architectural quality to Jill Magid’s debut feature. Appropriate since it is about architect Luis Barragán. Not that that has stopped bio-docs about artists before lacking an ounce of artistry, but Magid has transferred her talents over well to the cinematic artform; among all of the wonderful things that The Proposal has going for it, it’s one of the most beautiful documentaries of the year.
This is hardly surprising given cinematographer Jarred Alterman is one of the most exciting names in the field and whose work on Bisbee ’17 and Contemporary Color were among those films’ most valuable assets.
Barragán, who died in 1988, remains Mexico’s most celebrated and acclaimed architect and with this film it is not hard to see why. “The artist among architects”, he was called.
• NYT Which Cannes films and performances will factor into the Oscar race. Kyle Buchanan thinks Parasite and Pain & Glory are the biggest foreign threats but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the big one. • Hugh Jackman singing Happy Birthday to Sir Ian McKellen with a whole staidum backing him. Awesome • Variety Owen Gleiberman surveys his Cannes experience and how well the movies filled the big screen • Variety Chris Hemsworth is the coverboy at the moment so here's the big profile • The Sheila Variations on Joseph Cotten's active listening in Gaslight (1944)
• Variety so far Netflix is the only studio to speak out on Georgia's attack on abortion rights which could threaten the massive amount of filmmaking that goes on in that state. • Out for a blu-ray release of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, John Leguizamo is talking about his character Chi Chi Rodriguez • Town & Country we missed this news during Cannes but congrats to Jennifer Lawrence who is now engaged • IndieWire surveys critics on the best movies that played at Cannes. Parasite comes out on top just as it did with the jury, but Portrait of a Lady on Fire (which only took Screenplay at Cannes) was the runner up. • Variety more Cannes prizes. FIPRESCI chooses The Lighthouse (from the director of The VVitch) • /Film a piece on Quentin Tarantino's female characters in light of a tense moment at Cannes when he was asked about Margot Robbie's lack of dialogue in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Tony Season • NYT fun piece on "mysteries" of this Broadway season including how tall is the tall man in Hadestown, how does Santino Fontana sing like a woman in Tootsie, and how does one do partner dances while in a wheelchair? As for that 'tall man' in Hadestown. We first noticed him in Frozen and we ran into him on the subway over the weekend and he was as sweet and gorgeous as can be while towering over us. • ... Timothy Hughes is his name and you can follow him on Instagram • Stagecraft Rosemary Harris will get a lifetime achievement at this year's Tony Awards. But her previous Tony has a typo on it! • Playbill Wesley Taylor (Smash) who recently won the Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Male Dancer is engaged to marry Isaac Powell (last seen in Spongebob Squarepants) • Playbill Fresh out of high school, Renée Rapp, who won this year's Jimmy Award (that's the highest honor for High School students in musical theater) is stepping into the role of Regina George in Mean Girls for her Broadway debut this summer.
And look here's a video about Dianne Wiest's latest play Off Broadway. It's a monologue play from Samuel Beckett
Pixar's Up was released 10 years ago on this very day (the counterprogramming at movie theaters was Drag Me to Hell so you had a vertical choice that day). It seems hard to imagine it now, given that animated films rarely have the Oscar impact these days that they did in a very brief window in the Aughts, but it was nominated for 5 Oscars: Picture, Screenplay, Sound Editing, Score, and Animated Feature, winning the latter two.
Q1: Would you have voted for it in any of its Oscar categories?
Q2: If you could be dragged away by balloons today to your dream destination, where would it be?
What did you see over the long weekend? Yours truly had a visitor in town so we were doing the touristy things and Aladdin was the movie of choice (not ours!)
Four Day Holiday Weekend Box Office May 24th-27th 🔺 = new or expanded theater counts / ★ = highly recommended
W I D E
PLATFORM / LIMITED
1 🔺Aladdin $116.8 on 4476 screens *new* 1992 RETRO
1 🔺 Biggest Little Farm$679k on 181 screens (cum. $1.2)
Scene: Epilogue The Narrator in coming-of-age stories most often represents a grown-up version of the protagonist. Think The Sandlot or A Christmas Story, or the quintessential example, The Wonder Years, voices looking back, awash in nostalgia. In Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También not only is the narrator not a character, but the voice is indifferent, even coldly clinical in its omniscience, as likely to note the fate of a passing group of wild pigs as to reveal the deepest secrets of the protagonists.
We get used to the voice as a welcome companion throughout the film. Its flat, objective viewpoint is a welcome respite from the main trio’s frequent emotional upheavals. Little do we realize we are being set up for the emotional gut punch of the film’s epilogue...