The Gay Heart of "The Family Stone"

Members of Team Experience have been asked to share their favorite holiday film. Here's Spencer Coile with his...

I vividly remember the trailer for The Family Stone when it first came out in 2005. I was thirteen, a recent film and Oscar snob, and still incredibly naïve. I was swept into the two-and-a-half-minute long saga of uptight Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) visiting her boyfriend Everett’s (Dermot Mulroney) family for their first Christmas together and the family’s cliquey antics. Add on a stellar cast and the Maxine Nightingale classic, “Right Back Where We Started From,” and I was hooked. I couldn’t possibly wait until December to see it. 

And I didn’t. I waited even longer, months after it was released...

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Coal in our stocking. 'Worst' of the Year

Each day a different year in review list. Here's Nathaniel R...

2018 was unpleasant in so many real life ways that grousing about unpleasant things within our favorite escape hatch from reality seems ungrateful. By and large, we love the movies here at TFE and I think I speak for most of the team in saying that we can all pretty much find something to love even in the worst ones. Nevertheless, allow me a quick exorcism of the things I disliked the most this year to get them out of my system. A very important caveat though: As my own boss I can skip whichever films I have no interest in or which receive intense critical drubbings. Therefore my "worsts" are rarely the worsts and sometimes not even terrible just unsatisfying, if you catch the drift. But these films and performances just didn't work for me or actively discouraged benefit of the doubt.

Much kvetching after the jump...

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Podcast: Ben is Back, Beale Street, Vice, and those pesky SAG nods

Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl welcome special guest Alfred Soto to talk new films & SAG fallout

Index (61 minutes)
00:01 SAG nomination leftover feelings
05:00 None of us liked Vice and the reviews are mixed. We still think it's an awards contender so we discuss the question of latebreakers in each awards season. 
11:45 Randomness: Ethan Hawke, Bohemian Rhapsody, and the Florida Film Critics Circle
20:40 Ben is Back starring Lucas Hedges (with sidebars of Boy Erased and Beautiful Boy)
33:40 If Beale Street Could Talk
45:00 Reader Q: A fine element of a buzzy movie that's not being talked up
49:17 Reader Q: Is Best Actress actually set already?
51:00 Reader Q: If there wasn't Category Fraud this year what would be happening in Supporting Actress?
53:30 Reader Q: Reassign an Oscar win - what's the cascading effect?
59:40 Wrap up

Further Reading / References
• Murtada's If Beale Street Review
• Nathaniel's If Beale Street Quick Take
• Alfred's controversial review of Roma
• Alfred's Florida Film Critics ballot
• Best Actress Race 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Beale St, Ben is Back, Vice

Penny Marshall (1943-2018)

by Nathaniel R

We were terribly sad last night to receive word that America's most successful female sitcom-star-turned-director had passed away at the age of 75 of complications from diabetes. We'd long hoped that showbiz legend Penny Marshall, who became a household name in the 1970s as one of half of Laverne & Shirley before getting behind the camera in the 1980s (to immediate success), had another movie or two in her. That was wishful thinking, we realize, since she hadn't directed a feature since 2001. Still, we'll always have her two indisputable comedy classics Big (1988) and A League of Their Own (1992) to remember her by...

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Soundtracking: Oscar's Original Song Shortlist

by Chris Feil

Monday's Oscar shortlists already have us handwringing. So naturally as an Original Song obsessive, I'm taking a look at each of the nominees and their chances to make the final five. I shed a tears for Hearts Beat Loud, "Capital Letters" from Fifty Shades Freed (yeah I said it!), and everything else in A Star is Born that isn't "Shallow". But there can be only five and I am happy for any competitive year that keeps quiet those calling for this category's death!

The fifteen finalists favor big music names like Oscar favorites like Diane Warren and Alan Menken, so there is a lot of competition between heavyweights...

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