Doc Corner: Mariska Hargitay and the Heroes of 'I Am Evidence'

**Before getting into this week's review, I wanted to mention that this column recently won an Australian Film Critics Association Award! My review of Laura Poitras' Risk was awarded the Award for Best Review of an Individual Non-Australian Film from a panel of judges and I couldn't be more chuffed. This column is a labor of love because I love watching and writing about documentaries so I was so happy to see some love of its own thrown back. Thank you to Nathaniel for having it here and to all the readers who follow along.**

By Glenn Dunks

The cult of Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit is a peculiar one. For nineteen (19!!) seasons, we tune in to new instalments, binge old episodes while sick and in need of comfort television or catch the climax of an episode we've somehow seen several times before. "Oh, I love this one. It's about the talk show host who was attacked by her co-host who turns out to be a serial sex pest!" Gosh. How a show about the police investigating sex crimes became “comfort television” is something I, a fan of the series, don’t quite know the full answer to, although I suspect it involves something similar to how audiences often turn to horror movies as a dramatic vent.

Audiences get the rollercoaster of emotions that a show with such a premise offers and the rapists and the abusers always get caught and brought to swift justice in span of just 60 minutes before we move on to washing the dishes or walking the dog or going to bed.

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A "Solo" trailer at last!

Chris here. We've got only a month or so before we finally feast our eyes on the much reported troubled production of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Was Ron Howard able to steer the film to safety after original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller notoriously clashed with Lucasfilm brass? Depending on which reports you believe, Howard either completely reshot the entire script or just the major set pieces. Whether the final product succeeds, expect the "who shot what" discussion to continue into Star Wars lore like "Han shot first".

Adding to the concern has been a lack of footage to pore over, but await no longer for a full trailer is finally here! While the delayed glimpse at what is in store hasn't done much in the way of damage control, the actual trailer doesn't quite help either. We're served a mishmash of murky imagery and what looks to be an overadherence to formula, particularly in its character lineup. If you can already sense there are too many cooks in the kitchen from this short assemblage, it might be time to believe the worst. Doesn't it feel like the titular hero (and our beloved Alden Ehrenreich who plays him) is being backgrounded? Shouldn't our heart race immediately at the sight of the Millennium Falcon?

But the trailer isn't without its highlights: Donald Glover being sexy in space, ample capes, Woody Harrelson being weird again, and whatever it is that Thandie Newton is doing (but speechlessly so? Why?!). And thanks to Fleabag, we still couldn't be any more excited for whatever Phoebe Waller-Bridge's android brings. For now, we wait nervously on the rest...

The Furniture: Demolition and Preservation in The Molly Maguires

Daniel Walber's series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Every now and then, while poring over lists of Oscar nominees from years past, you stumble across a movie you’ve never heard of. Not even once. In 1970, the Best Art Direction category included two big war movies (Patton and Tora! Tora! Tora!), another hit Best Picture nominee (Airport) and Scrooge, the musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney. Then there’s The Molly Maguires, the only one not nominated in any other category.

So what’s The Molly Maguires? Well, for one thing, it wasn’t a hit. But that may have been more a result of the film’s dour subject matter than its quality. It stars Richard Harris as a real life undercover Pinkerton Detective, tasked with infiltrating a group of Irish industrial terrorists in 1870s Pennsylvania coal country. Though just a few men, the Molly Maguires have been creating tremendous chaos, blowing up mines and eliminating abusive company supervisors.

These are the early days of organized labor in America, when robber barons hired armies of ersatz police to brutally repress strikes and intimidate low wage workers. Sean Connery’s “Black Jack” Kehoe and his co-conspirators are immigrant miners who have been pushed too far...

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Drag Race: "Tap that App" and swiping left on Vixen/Aquaria

From the desk of sick bed of Nathaniel R

I'm totally sick and two days late so I'm racing through typing up this Race. Please excuse possible incoherency ahead. The mini-challenge was a sleazy commercial in front of wood panelling (very 1990s Calvin Klein) where the queens had to make RuPaul laugh while talking to or um... embodying or seducing a chocolate bar. The winners were the exploitable primness of Blair St Clair, Monique Heart's lusty-busty thirst, and Monet X Change's "Irish" jig. Eureka, totally back on her game, mimed an invisible wall while lustily self-narrating. Weird but also "WERK!".

Winners and losers and drama-creators are after the jump...  

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Beauty vs Beast: To Boston With Love

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" - the director David Gordon Green is turning 43 today, so while we wait to see what he does with his Halloween sequel-o-sorts later this year let's cast an eye  a millimeter backwards towards his last movie, the very fine but somewhat overlooked Stronger. I personally was pretty sad the movie never gained any footing during the awards season for its stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Tatiana Maslany or for Miranda Richardson in Supporting - they were all worthy in my book (and Jake made the Bronze in Nathaniel's Film Bitch Awards). But time will be kind to all of them, I think. The film isn't easy on any of its characters - it refuses to sanctify the terror victim or the "supporting girlfriend" at its heart at every turn. These are complicated people in an extremely complicated situation.

panel management

PREVIOUSLY Toss a bone up and see where it lands - last week we wished Stanely Kubrick's 2001 a happy 50 and y'all surprised me with your love for humanity of all things (this is Kubrick, people!), giving Keir Dullea's space-babe a 4% victory over the dead red eye of HAL-9000. Said MARIAH, perhaps summing many of our votes up (Keir was a piece, it's true):

"I am voting for Dave because I am a homosexual male."