Oscar's Foreign Race Pt 5 - Beauty Break, International Male

Chino Darín, son of Argentina's most prominent movie star Richardo Darín, stars in two of the Foreign Film Contenders this yearby Nathaniel R

We've been digging into the 87 films that are up for the Academy Award in Foreign Language Film. So far we've watched the trailers, talked abotu the female directors, and introduced the first time filmmakers. 

Today something more fun but of vital importance: hot men. Please enjoy this beauty break featuring snacks from all over the world. We scoured the entries for the eye candy (it was painstaking research!) and here's what we found. If we missed someone from your country, we apologize because we haven't seen all the film so someone just gorgeous could have easily slipped through the cracks.

SO. Which of these dozen men do you already love and which do you want to love just by looking at them? They're presented in random order after the jump...

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Review: "Bad Times at the El Royale"

by Chris Feil

Drew Goddard has become a Hollywood go-to screenwriters for charging genres with new life, molding The Martian with equal parts brainy science and dopiness and both upholding and subverting the monster movie with Cloverfield. Bad Times at the El Royale is his first return to the director’s chair since the horror spoof-but-also-not-a-spoof The Cabin in The Woods, and again he has perhaps bitten off more than he can narratively chew.

This time Goddard is taking on pulpy pop noir, setting for a showdown at a highway hotel bisected by the California-Nevada border. Checking in are Cynthia Erivo’s quiet lounge singer Darlene, Jon Hamm’s chatterbox vacuum salesman Laramie Sullivan, Dakota Johnson as a mysterious woman named Emily, and Jeff Bridges giving the most Bridges as a suspicious priest named Father Flynn. The writer/director has Tarantino on the brain as Agatha Christie, chaptering the film by the various rooms hosting each guest and slowing revealing the night’s dirty deeds from each of their perspectives. Think of it like a heterosexual Clue mixed with a bisexual Reservoir Dogs, but not as fun.

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Blueprints: "Crazy Rich Asians"

I’m back. Thanks everyone for bearing with the small hiatus that the column took for the past few weeks. Who knew being overworked and sick wasn’t a good time? For our return, let’s take a look at the biggest movie of the summer, and how a pivotal scene operates in many emotional levels. -Jorge

Warning! Crazy Rich Spoilers ahead!

There are many things to admire in Crazy Rich Asians. Consider theway it reinvents a rom-com formula that seemed to have gotten stale. Or its historic all-Asian cast, something that hadn’t happened in an American movie in over two decades. Big themes of family, legacy, tradition and culture running through its veins. And Michele Yeoh’s stare. One scene in the movie encompasses all of these traits.

The mahjong game, the final confrontation between Rachel (Constance Wu) and Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh) was not in the original novel; it was written specifically for the film. It's one of the most emotionally powerful moments of the movie, where Rachel finally gives up the fight and backs away from her fiancée and his family that clearly doesn’t want her there. But in the scene, Rachel reclaims power and control in many levels at the same time. Let’s take a look at the script to see how the most tense movie moment of the summer was crafted. Sorry, Mission Impossible...

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Happy Birthday, Jane Krakowski!

By Spencer Coile 

You’d be hard-pressed to deny the impact Jane Krakowski has made on stage and television. In recent years, no actress has been as deceptively successful as Krakowksi. Many still lament the fact that she never won her rightful Emmy for 30 Rock – and let’s face it, she was robbed. The countless memes and gifs her performance as Jenna Maroney has inspired in the past five years has been nothing short of astonishing.

That said, she has been working steadily for the past 30 years, and what a triple threat she has become. Garnering two Daytime Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe nomination, five Emmy nominations, two Tony nominations, one Tony win, and an Olivier Award in the span of her massive career, it’s safe to say that Krakowski’s talents know no limit. 

Today she turns 50, so let’s celebrate all the fabulous work she has done since she began performing professionally in 1981. What are some of your favorite Jane Krakowski performances, moments, musical numbers? My go-to is always her rendition of “Call From the Vatican” from her Tony winning role in Nine. 

NYFF: Five Favorite Performances at the Festival

As the New York Film Festival winds down, here's Murtada Elfadl with some of his favorite performances from the movies he's screened.

Sakura Ando in Shoplifters
Shoplifters, Japan's Oscar submission, is about familial bonds that unite with love and real connection rather than blood. Ando plays Nobuyo, the matriarchal figure in this family of outsiders. Her character is the wisest, always knows more than the other characters in any situation. She’s in charge emotionally and that needs an actor who's restrained yet immediate and easy with feelings. She always has the emotional truth in the scene whether her character is having a tender moment with a lover, or facing up to ignorant authority.

Ando shines everytime she’s on screen, yet there’s one moment that is forever marked in my memory...

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