Ronit Elkabetz (1964-2016)

Terrible news to report today. The great Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz has passed away at only 51 years of age. 

Her last film proved to be her biggest hit (Gett: The Trial of Viviane Absalem) -- we interviewed her right here -- but that courtroom drama was far from her only gem. We first fell (and fell hard) for the intense raven haired beauty in the astounding Late Marriage (2001) where she played the older woman in a sexually intense love affair with a slightly younger man (Lior Ashkenazi) whose parents were eager to marry him off to a "proper" bride and end his long-standing bachelordom. She won the Ophir (Israel's Academy Award) for that film, one of three wins for her as Best Actress.

If you've never seen "Late Marriage," you really must.She also starred in Or (My Treasure) (2004), the international hit The Band's Visit (2007), and other films in both France and Israel. In the past ten years she'd branched out from acting and with Gett she was directing and writing (along with her brother Shlomi), while continuing to dazzle in front of the camera. Awards groups took notice. She won prizes at the Hamptons, Chicago, Palm Springs, San Sebastian and Jerusalem film festivals for Gett and that last feature also resulted in multiple Ophir nods and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Film. 

Elkabetz was battling cancer and is survived by her husband and three year old twins. She will most definitely be missed, her rich expanding career cut suddenly short.

Doc Corner: Nostalgia for the (Cinema) Light

Glenn here. Each Tuesday we bring you reviews and features on documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. This week we're highlighting Nostalgia for the Light.

Nostalgia seeps through Peter Flynn’s sophomore film, The Dying of the Light. For good reason one might say. Like many of a certain generation who were too young to appreciate the glory of the mechanics of film projection when it was as common as day and night, I sometimes sound like a fetishist when it comes to talking about the flicker of celluloid as it whirs through its paces on its way to being projected onto the big screen.

Flynn, it would appear, is the same. His first film, Blazing the Trail: The O’Kalems in Ireland, was about people behind the camera in the 1910s, but his newest film is about the people behind the projector – the men and (infrequently) women who were in charge of spinning and threading the celluloid from reel to reel of film through projectors and onto cinema screens. (more after the jump)

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Newish Home Viewing: The Lady in the Van, The Oscar in the Franchises.

Here's what's new recently for your eyeballs.

Newish to DVD/BluRay
• Fifty Shades of Black. Marlon Wayans sends up the Grey S&M movie.
• The Force Awakens. Not available for rental yet but when it is we shall rewatch
• The Forest. In which Natalie Dormer enters Japan's Suicide Forest to confront true terror: the reviews of Gus Van Sant's 'Sea of Trees' which is also set there.
• Ip Man 3. For your completists. I haven't seen any of these since I figured The Grandmaster covered it for me. You?
• The Lady in the Van. In which Maggie Smith gets grittier and descends the economic ladder for once. Maintain high society snobbier via her delusions of
• Norm of the North. Animated. Though probably nothing we need worry about over here.
• The Revenant. That which did rob George Miller of his rightful Best Director Oscar in February.

new to streaming
• AJIN (S1) on Netflix. An anime sci-fi series about a teenager who realizes he is not human. Cue: suspenseful music, giant expressive eyes.
• Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (S2) on Netflix. I haven't started yet due to travels. Can't wait to see my Jane Krakowski again. Tell me NOTHING. 
• Mad Max on Amazon Prime. The original. Roughly 20 years before everyone realized Mel Gibson was also Mad.
• Kong, King of the Apes (S1) on Netflix. This is a kids sci-fi series about Kong battling robot dinosaurs or some such. Has Netflix been doing kids series for awhile and we're just now noticing?
• Tangerines on Amazon Prime. Not the awesome LA trans hooker comedy but the Estonian Oscar nominated drama.

A BURNING QUESTION: WHAT'S WITH OSCAR'S FRANCHISE FICKLENESS?
All the Bourne films (2002-2012 - 4 films thus far) and all the X-Men films (2000-2014 - five films thus far) have been reissued on DVD & BluRay for the obvious reason: new theatrical outing about to happen. This prompted head spinning when randomly thinking about their Oscar histories. Weirdly both series have been popular from the start with audiences but have just one film within them that Oscar responded to: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007, 3 Oscar noms/wins) and X-Men Days of Future Past (2012, 1 Oscar nomination).

Rehearsing a fight scene for Bourne Ultimatum. Photograph by Greg Williams

Isn't it fascinating how non-patterned Oscar is with franchises as a general rule? Sometimes they're not into them at all and then all of a sudden they are (those franchises and James Bond of course). Other times it's steady if halfhearted interest (superhero films in particular categories). Often it seems vaguely disconnected to the particulars of individual films. Consider this: Batman Forever is easily the Academy's second most all time favorite Batman film? WTF.  They've also been weirdly sporadic in Harry Potter love ignoring one of the best entries (Order of the Phoenix) that actually worked hard for an Art Direction nomination while rewarding the film that took place mostly in a tent (Deathly Hallows Part 1).

On the broad surface of things you'd think that Oscar voters, many of whom are ordinary working people who just happen to be in showbiz (like Emmy voters) would treat franchises the way that Emmy treats TV... which is all franchises. Not that we recommend this! With Emmy if they don't notice you at beginning they almost never do -- and they're loyal to the point of stupidity if they like you at all! Oscar doesn't really equate with that at all in ongoing narratives. What do you make of that? I ask because I'm not sure. I don't have all the answers!!! Is it just happenstance involving the every shifting competition in each calendar year at the movies?

April Showers: Gone Girl

In April Showers, Team TFE looks at our favorite waterlogged moments in the movies. Here's Chris on Gone Girl (2014).

Gone Girl is a variation on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, its Nick and Amy being the new George and Martha.  But instead of a pair of unwitting guests, this George and Martha use the media to attack one another - and the verbal barbs are traded in for actual bloodshed. David Fincher loads the film with the darkest rapid fire comedy, much like Edward Albee's acidic play, and the final beats of both can spark immediate audience conversation.

The final act of Gone Girl is where the film reveals its darkest side. If you haven't yet seen the film or read the source novel, then you don't know that the first two acts are pretty twisted themselves. The film's structure and narrative conceits keep us from seeing the true version of this George and Martha together until Amy's third act return...

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Katie Holmes Directs All We Had

Team Experience is at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Manuel on All We Had.

To say Rita Carmichael is Katie Holmes’s best role and best performance to date seems almost like a backhanded compliment. After all, Joey Potter aside, what else comes close to that description? Nevertheless, there’s no denying that Holmes has thrown herself into the role of this drunk single mother whose solution to her problems is putting “all we had” into their car and driving away, hoping the signs (on the road and, you know, of the universe) lead her to where she needs to be.

Holmes is a prickly presence on screen as Rita, finding ways of making her sunken eyes and oft-mimicked mouth quirks work to her advantage to sketch out this clearly broken woman who’s trying her darndest to offer her teenage daughter (a solid Stefania Owen in white trash Rory Gilmore-mode) a better life but obviously failing miserably. The film opens with the type of scene the screenplay surely believes functions as a perfect metaphor for the narrative as a whole: “You have to push me,” Rita urges her daughter as she stands on a chair in a bathroom, a string wrapped around an infected tooth. The scene is later replayed, as if we need reminding that in this mother-daughter duo the young one is the more responsible one, the one who's left to make the necessary hard choices for them to live another day on the road even as the film squarely puts them in the middle of the financial crisis making their journey that much harder.

Overall, All We Had functions as a great acting showcase but it never quite settles into its own rhythms. Given its episodic nature (owing perhaps to the film’s source material, the Annie Weatherwax novel of the same name), and its odd blend of neatly packaged YA clichés in a rather well-intentioned attempt at socio-economic commentary (the script was written by Faults in Our Stars writer/director Josh Boone), it’s no surprise the film flounders under its own weight.

Its most interesting subplot (there are several, including Mark Consuelos as a real estate agent, Richard Kind as a well-meaning diner owner, Kimmy Schmidtt’s Katherine Reis as a high school mean girl, Siobhan Fallon as a school principal) is the one centered on Peter Pam, a trans waitress at the diner who one worries will become a mere plot device but who instead becomes a surprisingly well-rounded character that almost made me wish the film knew what it had in its hands. Prop to Eve Lindley who I hope we see in more things in the future.

At the end of the day, this is a solid debut for Holmes (her work with actors is very promising and while the lens-flares-filled sky shots are a bit much, she finds unfussy compositions for her shots that suggest an attuned eye for drama in the frame). Here’s hoping she finds stronger material in the future.

Grade: C+/Katie Holmes B+