The New Classics - In the Loop

Michael Cusumano here to mark the 10th anniversary of one of the great political satires.

 

Scene: The Meditation Room 
The political operators of Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop live in a world where issues don’t matter and the halls of power are filled with bureaucrats who would gleefully sell out their principles were they not held back by their own incompetence. In this universe, those sad few officials who do manage to take a moral stand are not merely defeated but negated entirely, their feeble protests turned into absurd jokes and swept away in a sea of media noise.

I should add that In the Loop is one of the funniest movies of the 21st Century, but then it would have to be to get away with painting a picture so grim...

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The Farewell: Where personal and universal meet

By Lynn Lee

Coming out of The Farewell, I jokingly asked my husband, “Any of those family dynamics ring a bell?”  It was a double-edged joke, as one of the most challenging differences between us is our night-and-day attitudes towards our respective families, which we attribute to our different backgrounds.  He’s white and can trace his American lineage back to the Mayflower, but feels no particular responsibility to his immediate family and rarely sees his extended family; I’m a second-generation Korean American, born to naturalized U.S. citizens who, despite having now been here far longer than they ever lived in Korea, have maintained strong ties to their birth country and culture.  As such, they regularly remind me of my obligations to my immediate family, my extended family, and even my husband's family - something that both amuses and bemuses my husband.

No surprise, then, that The Farewell was a must-see for me.  True, it’s not “my” story: I’m not Chinese, after all, and as far as I know no one in my family has ever lied to anyone else in the family about their health.  But the film’s broader underlying themes – the feeling of being caught between the values of East and West, and not fully belonging to one or the other – spoke to me at a gut level...

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Would you rather?

Haven't done an Instagram share for a couple of weeks so here are some celeb photos, arranged in our typical Would you rather fashion...  

• compare muscles with Mark Ruffalo & Chris Hemsworth?
• sip aperol with Naomi Watts?
• sail away with Neil Patrick Harris?
• reminisce about your first Oscars with Rossy de Palma?
• stretch it out with Aint to Proud to Beg's James Harkness?
• cosplay Star Wars with Brie Larson?
• attend Moulin Rouge! on Broadway with Baz himself?
• cool down with Morena Baccarin?
• peel bananas with Cazwell?
• appreciate nature with Daryl Hannah? 
• adopt your first puppy with Nicole Kidman? 

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide.

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YNMS: Top Gun Maverick

We're way behind on movie trailers. So here's another Yes No Maybe So courtesy of Tony Ruggio...

The interwebz collectively threw shade a year or two ago when Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer, and director Joseph Kosinski (Tron Legacy, Oblivion) announced the twenty-years-too-late sequel to Top Gun, complete with some premise about sons and legacies and an aging Maverick. Sounded like the same ol’ routine any time a long-dormant brand or franchise suddenly decides to reboot or, in the case of Top Gun, sequelize for the very first time. It’s somethin’ else what a good trailer can do...because all of that is here and more in the first trailer which dropped on Thursday, and yet it’s one of the best teasers this year...

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Great Moments in Horror Actressing

by Jason Adams

Howdy folks and say howdy-do to my brand new series here at TFE, "Great Moments in Horror Actressing". I'll be smashing together my favorite things (horror movies) with your favorite things (actresses). We'll focus in on great women giving the scary movies that little oomph of something extra. I'm just going to be lasering in on little moments, scenes, flourishes that I find especially special -- the pieces that make the big scary whole all the sweeter. Or sourer, as the case will probably more often be, given the genre. 

First up, Vera Farmiga in Orphan (2009). Jaume Collet-Serra's horror film about an orphan (Isabelle Furhman) just looking for a home, no matter the cost, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week. It's a truly astounding box of shocks that's managed to retain its ability to jaw-drop a full decade later. But for all its third act reveals that I still can't believe they got away with, and the titular mind-blowing performance, the film packs such a visceral punch as its bottom drops out because of the sound emotional foundation Vera Farmiga set up in its opening scenes...

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