The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
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Saturday, June 10, 2023 at 9:00AM We're bringing back one of our greatest hits like an aging band on tour.
CAN YOU GUESS THE MOVIE FROM ITS FIRST SHOT?
If you need another hint the last shot (and the answer) are after the jump...
first and last Friday, June 9, 2023 at 12:37PM by Nathaniel
Nat and Cat
Dear readers, I know I've been largely absent from this site I created over 20 years ago. I have reasons... some of them quite boring involving finances / career so I won't bore you with those! In an effort to start writing again I'm opting for a diary like approach for the time being so you know I'm still alive and there's something to read, too. Today I am thinking about cats... which in truth I think about as often as cinema. My own fuzzy son Nero (who I co-parent with his original owner, my beau of the last 3 years) is in the emergency room getting oxygen and fluid treatment. He took a sudden turn for the worse just before the NYC air turned post-apocalyptic movie looking due to wildfires in Canada apparently. Given the timing it's probably unrelated but it feels emotionally true...
French cinema, Romain Duris, When the Cat's Away, cats Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 2:41PM By Ben MIller
To absolutely no one's surprise, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse won the box office weekend. The sheer amount of money the film made might have been a bit surprising. With $120+ million, Spider-Verse had the second biggest opening weekend of 2023, only behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie. What's even more impressive is the improvement over its predecessor. Into the Spider-Verse only made $190 million its entire domestic run. This sequel should easily surpass that number.
| Weekend Box Office (actuals) June 2nd-4th 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = Recommended |
|
| WIDE (Over 800 Screens) | LIMITED / PLATFORM |
 SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE |
 PAST LIVES |
|
1 🔺★ SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE $120.6 *NEW* 4,313 screens |
1 🔺 ★ PAST LIVES $232k *NEW* 4 screens |
Monday, June 5, 2023 at 8:34PM ;)
THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS (1990) Paul Schrader
The last time we checked on the Criterion Channel's Erotic Thrillers collection, it was to consider the voyeuristic properties of late-80s cinema. Moving on to the next decade, let's get over the nineties in one go. During this era, the erotic thriller reached its apotheosis of influence and trashiness, gradually fading into obsolescence as the millennium approached. It was an epoch of Fatal Attraction copycats and prestige-infused sensuality, a final resurgence of neo-noir aspirations, the rise and fall of Joe Eszterhas, Sharon Stone's stardom, and direct-to-video sleaze. Criterion traces these arcs through eleven titles, spotlighting great cinema and irredeemable garbage with the same gusto…
Sunday, June 4, 2023 at 11:02AM 
You’re a little bit damned if you do and a little bit damned if you don’t when it comes to musician bio-docs these days. They remain prolific, a cottage industry that is popular with audiences and easy choices for distributors and sales agents with a built-in audience. It makes sense that we get so many of them each year. And if you’re not inclined to watch so many of them, you may not be as burnt out on them as I appear to be. But—and I swear I’m not just being grumpy—are they actually getting worse, too? They certainly don’t seem to be getting any better, with most choosing to abandon any real directorial vision in favour of standard story beats.
Three recent examples all have strong elements, telling their subject’s life story in ways that I have no doubt will appeal to many fans, devoted or casual alike. But Love to Love You, Donna Summer; John Farnham: Finding the Voice and Fanny: The Right to Rock have all left me relatively cold despite the icons at their centre, plagued by frustrating tech choices and failing to reach the heights of the music that made their subjects famous in the first place.
