NBR Goes Cuckoo for "The Post"

by Nathaniel R

The National Board of Review, which regularly has a recency bias in their awardage has gone full tilt boogie into stanning for The Post, with a couple of honors for Phantom Thread, too, which were both most definitely among the very last things to screen. Neither opens until the tail end of the year. They gave The Post their top prize and both lead acting awards for the film's iconic stars Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. That's unusual for NBR. The complete list of winners and commentary after the jump...

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Doc Corner: 'Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story'

More often than not, biographic documentaries can feel staid in the way they so relentlessly follow a basic Point A to Point B narrative. It is understandable, really. After all, one must suppose that if somebody is interesting enough to have a documentary made about them, then they must be interesting enough to sustain 90 minutes without the need for their story to be gussied up with stylistic bells and tricky whistles.

Still, watching as many of these sort of films as I do, it can grow tiresome and can take me out of whatever spell the filmmaker hopes to cast.

And then there is a movie like Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. This is a film that it would be easy to pigeonhole before the opening scene has even begun - and it’s true that Alexandra Dean’s film adheres to a very traditional birth-to-death narrative. But what makes the film so interesting beyond its subject is the way it turns what could be perceived as just standard bio-doc delivery into a unique advantage.

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"Get Out" and "Call Me By Your Name" Divvy Up the Gotham Awards

by Nathaniel R

the oldest and youngest nominee flanking the big winner: Lois Smith, Jordan Peele, and Brooklynn Prince

Get Out (with 3 wins) and Call Me By Your Name (with 2 including Best Feature) dominated the Gotham Awards last night taking the bulk of the prizes. That didn't leave much for other contenders though A24 movies The Disaster Artist and Lady Bird scored both leading acting awards. Entirely shut out despite multiple nominations: The Florida Project, Good Time, and I Tonya. More after the jump...

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56 Days 'til Oscar Nominations. Let's talk 1956

by Nathaniel R

1956 is not, from our vantage point, a particularly lauded year in cinema but it's an Oscar field we tend to think of regularly for various reasons including but not limited to:

-Camp value (Ten Commandments, Bad Seed)
-Musicals (The King and I, High Society)
-Strange snubs (The Searchers received zero nominations despite Oscar's obsession with John Ford)
-Delayed foreign grandeur (La Strada and Seven Samurai, 1954 films both, were up for Oscars)
-not one but two kaiju movies (Godzilla and Rhodan)...and more.

What's your favorite movie of 1956? I don't think I've seen enough to feel comfortable with a full top ten but here are the five I like best currently (with much more to see) after the jump...

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"Gloria" and "Magdalene" First Looks!

Chris here, with first looks for two of our most beloved actresses. The first is far less dramatic than those fabulous smoking set photos, but comes with some dramatic backstory: Mary Magdalene. Here we see Rooney Mara's biblical woman gorgeous and windblown between smoke breaks...

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