Interview: Jamie Bell on falling in love with Annette Bening and his "Billy Elliot" reunion

by Nathaniel R

Jamie Bell has been famous since he was 14 years old. His debut film Billy Elliott (2000) about a young boy who discovers a passion for dancing that puts him at odds with his blue-collar community, became a global sensation. The charming film earned over $100 million (on a $5 million budget), received 3 Oscar nominations multiple BAFTAs, and eventually spawned a similarly popular stage musical which took yet more prizes.

The film also earned its young star the BAFTA for Best Actor in February of 2001. And, seventeen years later, here we are again. Jamie Bell is BAFTA nominated for Best Actor for his latest movie Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool. The romantic drama, now in limited release, is about the last days of Oscar winner Gloria Grahame's (Annette Bening) life and the young unknown actor Peter Turner (Jamie Bell) she falls in love with, and whose life she essentially takes over moving into his parents home (where they're both mothered by Julie Walter). 

I had the opportunity to speak with Jamie Bell a few times this season at events which was a gift since the actor is so charming and his talent somehow still undervalued 17 years later. Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool should change that as his best performance yet. Our interview is after the jump..

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FYC: "Okja" for Best Visual Effects

by Ilich Mejía

With all due respect to Transformers: The Last Night and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, neither one made me fall in love with a creature forty times my size—mostly because I skipped both, but other reasons, too. Okja's titular superpig, however, had me smitten after her opening scene cavorting across a Korean forest with her best friend, Mija (played by Ahn Seo-hyun, a revelation).

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FYC: Michael Stuhlbarg for "Call Me By Your Name"

by Chris Feil

It’s the final day of Oscar voting before the nominations are announced before the nominations are announced on Tuesday January 23! Who knows if most Oscar voters have their nomination ballots in or not, but that doesn’t stop the rest of us from screaming last moment FYC hosannas for the procrastinators that mights be listening. My last minute plea would be for one performance that I find shocking to have received so little traction over the season: Michael Stuhlbarg in Call Me By Your Name...

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'The Shape of' the Critics Choice Winners List

by Nathaniel R

The Critics Choice Movie and Television Awards voted on by the BFCA members were held last night in California with Olivia Munn hosting. Aside from the color of the dresses and the Best Picture winner (Shape of Water) the night was faithful to the template set by the Golden Globes on Sunday in terms of the winners list and the political slant. Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot,  even got to make a speech with a special award (now that they've axed the acting in action film prizes).

In the night's most predictable turn of events, James Franco was a no-show (despite winning Comedy Actor again) after this past week of sexual misconduct claims. In the night's most upsetting development Lady Bird was entirely shut out of the winner's circle. In the night's "Biggest Waste of a Prize" moment, for some reason the group chose Three Billboards for Best Ensemble despite awarding McDormand and Rockwell trophies. (Aside from Woody Harrelson does anyone else in the cast demand a kind of "well, we gotta give this an ensemble prize, too!" enthusiasm? Especially when they had Mudbound, The Post, Dunkirk and Lady Bird right there as the other options!). Winners and a few more comments are after the jump...

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Months of Meryl: The Deer Hunter (1978)

Hi, we’re John and Matt and, in case you missed it, we are watching every single feature film starring Meryl Streep.

#2 — Linda, a working-class girl waiting for the return of her fiancé (and her fiancé’s pal) from Vietnam.

JOHN: The Deer Hunter is a mammoth film, both an epic tale of a soldier’s journey to hell and back (and back again), and an intimate communal study. Meryl Streep is Linda, engaged to Nick (Christopher Walken) but in love with his best friend Michael (Robert De Niro). Streep is given an underwritten part and asked to stand-in for ideas about femininity — and often simply femininity itself — in a picture dripping with testosterone. The film carefully takes stock of its male relationships, tracing masculine bravado from the Pennsylvania mines to the roulette dens of Vietnam, both critical of masculinity and uncommonly poignant in uncovering the deep bonds that exist between men. Linda often provides the film’s only tender balm to such machismo, but Streep transforms her Girl Back Home into an uncommonly rich creation. This is no flimsy Anne Marie. Linda is a supernatural creation of intense sincerity, relaxed yet energetic, guarded yet vulnerable, the film’s emotional core and its anxious heartbeat.

The Deer Hunter contains your favorite Meryl Moment, Matthew, right?... 

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