Split Decision: "The Banshees of Inisherin"

Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of each of the big awards season movies this year. Here’s Abe Friedtanzer & Eric Blume on one of the Oscar frontrunners...

ERIC:  Abe, here we are again with another split decision.  But unlike our discussion about The Whale, which you loved and I didn't, we're swapping sides for The Banshees of Inisherin.  I absolutely loved this film.  I'd go as far as to say it's close to a masterpiece.  It's a piercing and painful meditation on loneliness, a heartbreaking and lyrical stare in the face at death.  Martin McDonagh is tackling The Big Themes with ferocity and honesty, and I was deeply moved.  But let's start with why you didn't care for the film...

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Podcast: Gratitude, Globes, and some Must-Sees

The podcast has been hibernating for so long that you've surely forgotten it exists. But last week Nathaniel and  Nick jumped on a quick phone call to discuss the Globes so the Podcast is...uh... back for a moment. For those who aren't subscribed, we figured we'd share on the blog in case you missed it and feel like listening in on one last "precursor" conversation before the Oscar nominations are announced! 

56 minutes
00:01 Golden Globe reforms, Jerrod Carmichael, and Awards Show hatred
15:00 Wins & Speeches: Ke Huy Quan, Angela Bassett, and Gratitude
37:00 Nick on movies he loves this year including: Donbass, EO, Happening, Till, and Aftersun

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify or download the attachment below. 

Globes & Gratitude

Sundance: ‘Fremont’ is an endearing immigrant journey

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

There are many stories about the immigrant experience and people struggling to fit into a new life. Fremont, which makes its debut in the NEXT category spotlighting innovative cinema at Sundance, comes as a refreshing spin on that familiar genre. It manages to be both funny and worthwhile as it empowers its protagonist to express herself and attempt to take charge of her situation when she’s not set up to be able to do so. 

Anaita Wali Zada makes her film debut as Donya, a Kabul native who, after working as a translator for the U.S. Army, flees Afghanistan to settle in Fremont, California. In Fremont she works at a fortune cookie company...

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Split Decision: “Avatar: The Way of Water”

No two people feel the exact same way about any film. Thus, Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of each of the awards movies this year. Here’s Glenn Dunks and Cláudio Alves on James Cameron’s latest.

GLENN: Hi Cláudio! Welcome to Pandora... the whales are majestic, the grass gets you stones (mmhmmm) and the eyewear are Ray-Bans. An awful lot of ink has been spilled across the 13 years between Avatar movies. Ink about how nobody remembers Avatar. Ink about how it has no cultural imprint. Ink about how nobody knows the characters' names. Ink about how nobody actually even liked the 2009 original and it was purely a hit because of the 3D. And yet here we are with a James Cameron movie already having become (yet again) the highest grossing movie of the year and also potentially (yet again) the leader of the nomination board on Oscar morning 2023…

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Sundance: 'Talk to Me' is a handshake with Hell itself

by Jason Adams

See one horror movie about grief and you've seen every horror movie, or so it feels sometimes. Dead children, siblings, parents, spouses -- the genre is littered with beloved corpses winking back at us from the other side of oblivion. I'm writing this on day one of virtual Sundance and I've already seen three movies of this sort! But we keep coming back to the Babadook Special because it works. It's what we fear the most. Death for ourselves is one thing, but seeing the people we love the most slip away is something tangible; something that we'll all experience and then be expected to exist on the other side of. When I was little it was losing my parents that I feared the most of all.

For teenager Mia (newcomer Sophie Wilde), the lead in the Philippou brothers' unsettling new horror flick Talk To Me (playing Sundance 2023's Midnight program), it is her Mom that she's grieving...

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