Who will be nominated for Costume Design?

by Nathaniel R

Shirley Kurata's costumes for "Jobu Tupaki" in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE are great chaotic fun

Let's tackle each Oscar category while there's still wiggle room for all contenders! Last season Best Costume Design was sewn up (sorry!) unusually early in the year when Jenny Beavan's garbage dress unfurled midway through Cruella (2021) in the summer movie season. From then on it was everyone versus Cruella and Beavan came out on top for the third time in her delicious career. The costumes of 2022 haven't really had one showstopping gown to end everyone else's Oscar dreams so it's anyone's guess at this point.

Let's discuss 8 films we think are major threats for those 5 nomination slots and why. It seems natural to start with two films where fashion is a co-lead of sorts...

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Interview: 'Mars One' director on Brazilian politics, representation, and hope

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Gabriel Martins' Oscar submission Mars One tells the story of a working class Brazilian family on the brink of the election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. The family is composed of a father working at a high-rise, a mother dealing with trauma, a daughter on the verge of coming out to her family, and a young boy who dreams of going to Mars. The film is a beautifully restrained examination of contemporary Brazil through the lens of class, race, and gender.

Mars One is Brazil's contender for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards. In our interview, writer/director Gabriel Martins discusses the development of his film coinciding with the rise of Bolsonaro's divisive politics, how the long-gestating journey of the film helped him shape the final output, and how recent developments in Brazilian cinema have given him hope...

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EFA Nominations: Comedy, Short, Animated Feature

by Nathaniel R

LITTLE NICHOLAS - HAPPY AS CAN BE (France/Luxembourg)

The European Film Awards announce in lots of small increments for reasons that have never been entirely clear to us. But here we are. So it is today that we learned that Italian Director Marco Bellochio has won Innovation in Storytelling for his miniseries Exterior Night (a follow up to his 2003 feature Goodmorning Night) and full nominations for three categories have been announced including Animated Feature (now updated with winners as of 12/12)...

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Streaming Roulette (Oct 21st-27th): A school for Good and Evil in the woods

A weekly series in which we survey new-to-streaming titles (on various services) freezing the scroll bar at random and sharing what comes up. 

So you're saying -- I can't believe I'm actually saying this -- if Sophie were to kiss her true love...

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL (2022) on Netflix
Came to this one with high hopes given that Paul Feig often makes blissfully funny and stylish movies (Spy, Bridesmaids, A Simple Favor) and the source material (yes, I've read it) is great fun...

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Review: "The Good Nurse"

By Christopher James

Talented actors can only take a project so far. Netflix’s latest feature, The Good Nurse, lives up to its title, but not by much. Based on a true story of a nurse who poisoned a large number of patients across ten hospitals, the source material is perfect for a true crime obsessive. However, what usually makes those stories interesting are the odd details that lodge into a viewer’s brain, making the story unable to shake off. The Good Nurse is an aggressive play straight down the middle, as it opts to be more of a character piece. Oscar winners Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne do plenty of heavy lifting in the lead roles, but can’t turn an okay movie into a great one.

Our titular “Good Nurse,” Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain) is what we call a trope magnet...

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