Hello, Gorgeous: Best Actress of 2013

A series by Juan Carlos Ojano

Deception, isolation, and desperation are just some of the common threads that connect the characters of this year's Best Actress nominees and the narratives in which they are situated. The curious element of the lineup is that, aside from one (Gravity), all of the nominees are featured in films from the comedic genre, whether it be a crime comedy (American Hustle), a cynically humorous character study (Blue Jasmine), a heartwarming dramedy (Philomena), or an acerbic, tragicomic family portrait (August: Osage County). That must be a rarity in any acting category, right?

Are you ready? The year is 2013...

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Mother-Daughter Duos at the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

Fernanda Montenegro in Walter Salles' I'M STILL HERE.

This past week, Fernanda Montenegro celebrated her 95th birthday. A living legend of Brazilian culture in various mediums, she is our oldest living Best Actress nominee. Montenegro is back on the awards trail with Walter Salles' I'm Still Here. While her late-film cameo won't excite many voters, Brazil's Best International Film submission is raking in Audience Awards at festivals worldwide and sterling reviews to match. Perhaps Sony Pictures Classics can even look away from Saoirse Ronan and Almodóvar's leading ladies for a moment, and mount a Best Actress campaign for Fernanda Torres. Her performance as Eunice Paiva is nothing short of magnificent. 

Though a longshot, Torres' nomination would be amply deserved, making her and Montenegro one of the few mother-daughter duos to score acting Oscar nominations. It's a very exclusive club that includes…

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Ten Times 2024 Movies Should Have Leaned Harder into "Movie Musical" Genre

by Nathaniel R

I’m back! Well, not quite but working towards it. We're going to do an 80s theme in early November, okay? But let’s start with a question and a list to prove that I have actually been watching movies (and am alive) though I’ve rarely been writing and miss it terribly.

Has it been a good, bad, or ugly year for the always threatened Movie Musical genre? 

 The greatest of all movie genres is always threatened with extinction but it's also resilient and still with us almost a century after its debut.  The year isn't over so the initial bolded question is premature. Mean Girls was a dud early in the year and the highly anticipated Joker Folie A Deux is currently flopping which serves it right for sidelining Lady Gaga (of all people) and being so uncomfortable about calling itself a musical. But we've still got one famous stage adaptation (Wicked), two experiments (The End, Emilia Perez),  one animated adventure (Moana ), and three musician biopics (A Complete Unknown, Maria, and A Better Man) arriving before year's end so there's still hope.

Here are ten movies from 2024 that could have been musicals with a few tweaks or even more insanity from their auteurs. Consider...

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"Sugarcane" leads the Critics Choice Documentary Awards nominations

by Cláudio Alves

National Geographic's SUGARCANE is the nomination leader, with citations in eight categories.

Since 2016, the Critics Choice Awards has expanded its repertoire to include various documentary categories. These CCDAs are now separate from the precursor we know so well and stand apart as their own thing. Still, most look at these honors as Oscar predictors. Which is understandable if not wholly supported by a complete correlation between AMPAS and the CCDA. Not even when the latter have double the nominees for their main prize. On their ninth edition, they have opted for a curiously tame selection, at odds with the current political climate. There's a big emphasis on glossy biographical works and celebrity profiles, formalistic conventionality, studio fare, and all that jazz. That being said, Sugarcane leads with eight nods.

Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat's film goes into a case of abuse and missing children at a Sugarcane Reserve's Christian school. Focusing on the Native American community, Sugarcane is certainly not without an urgent message and a perspective on its subject. The same can't be said about all its competitors…

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NYFF '24: "Suburban Fury" tells the tall tale of a wannabee Presidential Assassin

by Cláudio Alves

On September 22nd, 1975, just seventeen days after Squeaky Fromme had attempted the same, Sara Jane Moore fired at President Gerald Ford. Neither of the 45-year-old woman's shots hit their target, though she came dangerously close. Had Moore noticed the sight on her revolver was 6 inches misplaced, she might have done it. Such violent actions came less than two years after this housewife from the San Francisco suburbs had been recruited by the FBI as an informant, going into militant groups and becoming radicalized in the process. Her thwarted presidential assassination led to much media hullabaloo, pithy dismissals of Moore as being "off her mind," and a life sentence, of which she served 32 years.

Nearly half a century after the shooting, director Robinson Devor puts her at the center of Suburban Fury, a new documentary where the would-be assassin is given ample opportunity to tell her own story…

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