June. It's a Wrap!

Our birthday month is just about over 😭 but you can still wish us a happy belated by supporting The Film Experience through likes, shares, tweets, follows, newsletter subscriptions, and a donation of a cup of coffee each month to keep us well-fueled. Here's a dozen highlights you might have missed if you're not online as much in the hot months.

7 Highlights
• A Repertory Renaissance New York movie theaters are killing it!
• Little Big Lies Goes Bowling - but who won?
• Rosemary's Baby 50th Anniversary Tag Team MiniSeries
• Nanette - will it be one of the year's definitive films?
• Hereditary - a new horror classic
• Muriel's Wedding - A Soundtracking episode
• Blueprints: Moonlight - Barry Jenkins retweeted! 

5 Most Discussed
• Supporting Actress Smackdown 1994 - Helen Sinclair "don't speak!", Olive Neal "charmed charmed charmed" and Mia Wallace *dancing gesture*. Jennifer Tilly retweeted the Smackdown ♥︎
• Best Actress 1994 - It was unsatisfying but didn't have to be
• Nicole Kidman Questions - for the queen's birthday
• All Time Fav Character Actresses? - an incomplete list
• Triple Crown List-Mania - Glenda Jackson joins!

Yes No Maybe So?
• As trailers go it was an insane month. So if you haven't already sound off on the following juicy forthcoming prospects (alpha order): Beautiful Boy, Christopher Robin, Creed II, Dumbo, First Man, Mowgli, A Star is Born, Suspiria, Welcome to Marwen, and Widows !

COMING IN JULY

Our year of the month will be 1943 so we'll be looking back at some of those films which is handy since it's the 75th anniversary of all of 'em. Also in July: Ant Man and the Wasp, Eighth Grade, and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Anniversaries for The Dark Knight and Hocus Pocus. Centennials for director Ingmar Bergman and screenwriter Arthur Laurents. And more. Any requests?

Blueprints: "A Fantastic Woman"

To celebrate Pride Month, every week of June Jorge has been highlighting the script of a movie that focuses on a different letter of the LGBT acronym. For “T”, the last installment in this miniseries, he looks at the most recent Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film.

The LGBT experience encompasses all types of people, genders, nationalities, economic statuses, and every intersectionality in between. It doesn’t look one single way, and it certainly doesn’t feel like one, either. As the canon of queer cinema being to expand beyond one or two points of view, the ways in which film reflects this experience starts to get as diverse and colorful as the community itself.

So let’s take a look at A Fantastic Woman, the Oscar-winning Chilean film about a trans woman dealing with the loss of her partner, and the overwhelming grief and pressure that come with it. While it is a sobering portrait of a trans experience, it also effectively uses surreal imagery to portray the particular moments that Marina is going through. Let’s dive into two of them. 

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Review: "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"

by Chris Feil

That crowdsourced “fan” remake of The Last Jedi that made the rounds in the past week? The one rooted in thinly veiled misogyny, white supremacy, and general ill-advised sentiment to tool with material that’s perfectly fine on its own? Put yourself in front of Sicario: Day of the Soldado, the new prequel to Denis Villeneuve’s layered 2015 film musing on the pervasive institutional evils of the War on Drugs, and you might be convinced that those fans got their hands on this narrative as well.

The warning signs make themselves known immediately, this time focusing on the more enigmatic men in the thick of the corruption: Josh Brolin’s task force leader Matt Graver and Benicio Del Toro’s patiently vengeful hitman Alejandro. Kicking the film off with a demonstratively labored Islamophobic sequence, the audience is served a video game brand of warfare as Graver and Alejandro initiate a kidnapping plot across the Mexican-American border. The kidnappee is Isabel Reyes (played by Isabela Moner, the film’s brightest spot), the daughter of a major cartel leader that may be linked to Alejandro’s past. As expected, the men's hubris is turned in on itself...

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1994 Q&A: Frankenstein, Weaver, Past Glories, Future Nominations.

Okay, our last dive into 1994! I recently asked readers to send in their '94 related questions (other questions will still be answered but that's for the next Q&A). So here's our final pontifying for that year. You asked, I answer. 

JAMES: 1994 was the year of Frankenstein, the movie that led to Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh splitting up, due to his affair with HBC. Thoughts on Thompson & Branagh’s (professional) partnership? What projects would they have excelled at if they stayed together?

"IT'S ALIVE!" Or, rather. "IT'S DEAD!" Emma and Kenneth. Kenneth and Emma. Sigh. Insert broken heart emoji. Young Nathaniel was so sad when they split. They were the Definitive Early 90s 'It Couple: UK Edition. That was such an awesome cinematic partnership. I adored their over-the-top genre mashup and reincarnation chutzpah in Dead Again and their luminous Shakespearean comedy in Much Ado About Nothing.

If you think about it Frankenstein, with its pulp grotesqueries, and bodice-ripped lustiness is absolutely the work of the same guy who made Dead Again. I miss that Branagh, still...

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1943 is coming...

by Nathaniel R

Thanks to all the wonderful readers who've commented on or shared or expressed enthusiasm for the Supporting Actress Smackdowns this summer. So far we've looked at 1970 and 1994. Our 'year of the month' for July will be 1943.

On Sunday July 29th "The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1943"

• Gladys Cooper, The Song of Bernadette [Amazon | iTunes]
• Paulette Goddard, So Proudly We Hail [Amazon]
• Katina Paxinou, For Whom the Bell Tolls [Amazon | iTunes] 
• Anne Revere, The Song of Bernadette [Amazon |  iTunes] 
• Lucille Watson, Watch on the Rhine [Amazon | iTunes | Filmstruck]

Balloting opens July 1st and closes July 26th. Please do not vote before balloting is open as your ballot will likely be lost in the shuffle. HOW TO VOTE: E-mail with "1943" in the subject line and each performance that you've seen rated on a scale of 1 (bad) to 5 (stupendous) hearts. You don't have to include the reasons behind your votes but if you do we might quote you at the smackdown. (If you wish include a secondary list of your preferred shortlist in this category feel free.)

Cabin in the Sky (1943)

Also because we want to do better about helping ourselves and you contextualize these events after the jump a list of 1943 films that are available without too much expense on various streaming services...

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