Review: "Madeleine Collins" confirms this is Virginie Efira's Year

by Cláudio Alves

Belgian-born French actress Virginie Efira has been on an upward path since around 2016, when she supported Isabelle Huppert in the Oscar-nominated Elle and dazzled as the titular lawyer in Justine Triet's Victoria. The latter part earned the thespian her first César nomination, followed by citations for Sink or Swim, An Impossible Love, Bye Bye Morons, Benedetta, and, finally, a victory thanks to Revoir Paris. And yet, beyond the Francoshpere, Efira is probably best known for Verhoeven's mad nun and little else. That's going to change fast. After 2023, there's no stopping her rise to international stardom. 

This week, American cinemas welcomed Madeleine Collins, Efira's third release of the year, following career-best work in Other People's Children and Revoir Paris. Just the Two of Us and All to Play For are still awaiting distribution making for a titanic body of recent work. In a just world, this next awards season would see Virginie Efira on critics' ballots everywhere.

For all that Madeleine Collins is the Virginie Efira show, the film begins without her...

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First Round Oscar Predix - Picture / Director

by Nathaniel R

Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in "Maestro" (Netflix)

As noted in Best Actor & Best Supporting Actor, we're pretending as if the strike will be resolved and movies will actually arrive later this year (because if we don't predictions will be nightmarishly impossible). So let's look at Best Picture and Best Director. What might the future hold for us in these two categories? 

EARLY BIRD DIRECTORS 
It's possible that we've already seen 60% of the Best Director list (Greta Gerwig, Chris Nolan, Celine Song) but that would be highly unusual. This isn't 1972 where the two biggest contenders (Cabaret & The Godfather) had already been popular for literally over a year when they dominated Oscar night. The Oscar formulas and awards season release patterns have calcified in the half century since then. The earth still orbits the sun at the same speed as it did decades earlier, but time (at least in pop culture) has sped up considerably; you're an "old" movie much quicker now... 

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Emmy Analysis: Comedy Supporting Categories

By Abe Friedtanzer

Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Ayo Edebiri in FX's The Bear

With only fourteen nominees, the comedy supporting categories still have nearly double the shows represented by the drama supporting categories’ sixteen recognized individuals. Both supporting actor and supporting actress contain two sets of double nominees, but it’s hardly the overwhelming domination that exists on the drama side. There are also five past winners and a handful of fresh faces that make these two races well worth watching...

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What did you see this past week?

by Nathaniel R

Barbenheimer is still reigning in theaters and by quite a lot both movies still gathering impressive per screen averages in their fourth weeks and enviable global grosses too ($1.1 billion and $648 million respectively). The weekend's new wide releases, the dracula picture The Last Voyage of The Demeter and a sci-fi comedy Jules didn't make much of an initial impression with moviegoers. Meanwhile the bisexual drama Passages starring Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski (with a sex scene that will make you believe they were actually f***ing on set) expanded to 41 theaters.

Weekend Box Office Aug 11-13 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended
WIDE (Over 600 Screens)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
BARBIE	PASSAGES
1 ★ BARBIE $33.8 (cum. $526.4) 4,178 screens	1 ★ THEATER CAMP (US, comedy) $274k (cum. $3.1) 410 screens
2  ★ OPPENHEIMER  $18.8 (cum. $264.2) 3761 screens	2 🔺★ PASSAGES (France/Germany, drama) $85k (cum. $172k) 41 screens

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Review: "Love Life" Sings a Tragic Song

by Cláudio Alves

Under the right circumstances, a whisper can sound like a shout, soft caresses like barb-wire across the skin. In Kôji Fukada's cinema, a directorial style full of quiet oddities becomes the perfect context for such paradoxes to thrive ferociously. They never resolve themselves completely either, a sense of mystery prevailing until the end credits roll, whether it's the perversions of Harmonium or A Girl Missing's puzzle box plot. For his latest film, now in limited release, the Japanese auteur let go of those previous projects' violent spirits, redirecting his attention to a premise that sounds like easy-digestible melodrama. But, of course, that's not what Fukada has in store for his audience

Love Life was reportedly inspired by a romantic tune, but its final song rings barren, no rose-colored loveliness muffling the agony hiding between the notes. The sound produced is no crooning chant but a shattering, the glass of fragile joy broken before the first act is over…

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