Review: "Little Woods"

by Tony Ruggio

Little Woods, North Dakota: not far from our border to the north, and a poster child for the death of the American Dream. Tessa Thompson is Ollie, a woman hardened by a life selling oxy and a an allergy to hope. Her adopted mother has passed and she and her younger sister Debbie (Lily James) are left to pick up the pieces, namely a pittance of a house and what’s left of Ollie’s former life. She’s nearing the end of her probation and you know what that means. Life’s about to throw her a curveball, sending her back to the wheelin’ and dealin’ trenches, where seedy characters and searing guilt are part of the job. Debbie needs help and Ollie’s good at doing, so she’s back at it to pay the mortgage and get her sister the medical care she needs. It’s all very predictable, but it hardly matters...

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Tribeca 2019: "Knives and Skin"

Team Experience reporting from Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason Adams

If someone you had a crush on in high school suddenly handed you a crude anatomical drawing of your genitals how might you have reacted? I, uhh, sure can think of a few reactions I might have had. But several of them would have involved a smile, a chuckle - anything but utmost sincerity, which in this instance would have a tinge of the absurd. And that tinge turns trickle turns ten-fold flood in Knives and Skin, writer-director Jennifer Reeder's surreal small-town murder-mystery that feels beamed in from another planet; one where the reactions are all upside down.

It all starts with a missing blonde girl, tipping its Twin Peaks cap right off the bat...

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Tribeca 2019: "Ask Dr. Ruth"

Team Experience reporting from Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason

A personality-based crowd-pleaser similar to what we saw last year with Won't You Be My Neighbor and RBG, only with heaps more clitoral commentary, director Ryan White's Ask Dr. Ruth doesn't break any documentary molds. It's content to merely bring us the life story and work of itty bitty sexologist Dr. Ruth Westheimer. And Dr. Ruth's too warm-hearted (not to mention itty bitty) to go about straight-forwardly smashing molds anyway. The iconic personality is more content to sneak in, make you comfy, offer you a cookie or two, and ease all of your deepest secrets out first...

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A deep dive into the Tony race for "Best Actress in a Play"

by new contributor J.B. 

Tatiana Maslany, Glenda Jackson, and Annette Bening are just a few of the many acclaimed actresses in the running for Best Actress nominations on Broadway this season

In recent years, the Tony category of Best Actress in a Play has featured some of the most impressive line-ups of nominees of any major award show. Don’t believe me? Since 2015, 18 women have been nominated for the award. Of those 18, six are Oscar winners (four of whom are two-time winners), five are Oscar nominees, two are Emmy winners, one is a Golden Globe winner, one is a BAFTA winner, and one is a four-time Tony nominee who has only appeared in one Broadway production for which she was not nominated for a Tony. The five most recent recipients of the “Triple Crown of Acting” distinction have all won a Tony in this category within the past ten years. That trend continues this year, with a well-decorated and very star-studded group of women, including bonafide legends of both stage and screen, vying for spots in the race. But who will be nominated? Who should be nominated? And who will win?

Here’s a closer look at who’s in contention for nominations this coming Tuesday, and which factors will weigh in their favor and against it...

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Tribeca 2019: "Come to Daddy"

Team Experience reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason Adams

Come to Daddy opens like a big-screen reboot of Schitt's Creek, with Elijah Wood working his best elaborate David Rose ensemble of flappy black fabrics without discernible seams. He's yanking a wheelie suitcase through a no place field. Slowly, the cinema happens -- the field gives way to the trees, a forest, a gorgeous coastline, all while Elijah's Moe-hairdo and black nail polish paint him as a rank outsider in this place of nature and wonder.

Soon enough we see that he's doing what all us fancy city boys must do at one point or another -- he's going home. Except not entirely...

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