Watch at Home: Latin History, Ernest & Celestine, Christopher Robin, BlacKkKlansman

Heads up on what's newly available to you this week. Links go to previous coverage / reviews here at TFE.

DVD/Blu-Ray
• Bel Canto -Julianne Moore as an opera singer. It was barely released
• BlacKkKlansman - Spike Lee's best in ages. We think it might be competitive for Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Editing nominations. Do you?
• Christopher Robin - Ewan McGregor stars as the boy all grown up revisited by Pooh, Tigger, and the Hundred Acre Woods gang.
• Incredibles 2 - The year's fourth biggest hit globally with 1.2 billion in the bank
• Loving Pablo - Penelope Cruz & Javier Bardem star in this drama about a journalist and a drug lord.
• Papillon - Rami Malek and Charlie Hunnam remake the Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen prison drama
• Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood - a salacious documentary about a man who allegedly secured same-sex sex for the movie stars of Old Hollywood.

iTunes 99¢ Deals
• Tomb Raider -Alicia Vikander takes over as Lara Croft. We missed this in theaters and no one seemed to care at the time. 'Is it worth 99¢?' he asked any of you that did.
• Critically Acclaimed Animation - 99¢ deals this week on a bunch of underseen nominees for Best Animated Feature: The Secret of Kells, Ernest & Celestine, A Cat in Paris, and Chico & Rita as well as smaller foreign titles that weren't nominated but were well regarded including Wrinkles and The Girl Without Hands

Brand New Streaming This Week
• Into the Forest (Netflix) a forgotten 2015 sci-fi movie with Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood as sisters trying to survive a looming apocalypse
• Latin History for Morons (Netflix) John Leguizamo's fourth solo Broadway outing (after Freak, Sexaholic, and Ghetto Klown) brought him his first Tony Award after two previous nominations. His first two acclaimed Off Broadway solo shows Mambo Mouth and Spic-O-Rama definitely led to boosts in his film/tv career. Writing talent is so handy for the actors that have it. When people aren't giving you great material, write your own vehicle!

I put on my best dad hat and I go to him and I say buddy, honey, I'm sorry but life is gonna fuck you sometimes. It just is.  And you're going to have to... I don't know, just keep changing positions until it feels good somehow. 

ICYMI
• November on Netflix
• November on Prime

Tues Top Ten: Eye Patch Cool

by Nathaniel R

In the new film A Private War Rosamund Pike plays real life war correspondent Marie Colvin (killed in 2012) who ran straight for trouble to cover it for the Sunday Times. Critics have been enthralled with her work in the film, often mentioning 'Oscar worthiness'. Jeff Schneider recently said "if Nicole Kidman gave that same performance we'd all be talking about it as a potential frontrunner". I haven't yet seen the film but there is definitely truth in thae general implications of that statement that some actors carry with them a head start in terms of perception of awards-worthiness.

In honor of Pike's new eye-patched role, and to distract us from election worries, a tuesday top ten featuring one-eyed favs from both feature films and TV series.

10 GREAT EYE PATCHED CHARACTERS

10 The Chevalier du Balibari (Patrick Magee) in Barry Lyndon (1975)
Magee was one of the best characters actors of the 60s and 70s, wasn't he? Strange that he got so little awards love during his career (apart from that Tony win for Marat/Sade).

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Hirokazu Koreeda is directing an all star cast!

by Nathaniel R

Koreeda, Deneuve, and Hawke working on a movie called "Truth"

Somehow this had escaped our attention so apologize to those for whom it is old news. Thanks to Juliette Binoche for getting us caught us up to speed on her instagram, sharing photos from the set of the next film from Japanese master Hirokazu Koreeda. Koreeda was already in our brain because his current brilliant film Shoplifters, which opens in the US around Thanksgiving time. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and we hope it's nominated for the Oscar for Foreign Language Film.

His next picture is called Truth. It's his first non-Japanese language picture with an all star French cast plus Ethan Hawke...

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Review: "The Front Runner"

by Chris Feil

Fresh off of delivering exacting holistic wisdom with frequent collaborator Diablo Cody in this past spring’s Tully, Jason Reitman is already back and pivoting hard into political commentary with The Front Runner. Detailing the combustion of Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign due to the outting in the press of Hart’s not-so-secret affairs, the film stars Hugh Jackman as the prideful candidate fatally underestimating the public’s association between his character and marital fidelity. Reitman and cowriters Matt Bai and Jay Carson cover the unraveling in stringent attention to the timeline, while angling this as a key breakdown in the separation of political media consideration and tabloid press.

The result is something unintentionally passive, a film about a political candidate flailing against public expectations he refuses to assuage. The film itself is equally headstrong about satisfying on its own rather limited terms...

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