Punditry Madness! Team Experience joins in...

So dear readers, I've been having meetings with the team and they all wanted to join in on the Oscar prediction fun. So before the traditional charts on the Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, and Best International Feature Film pages you can see what each participating team member is predicting. It's fascinating to note the variety of opinions despite the fact that we're now late in the season. 

BEST PICTURE / BEST DIRECTOR
Though Power of the Dog is leading with 11/13 #1 placements (and all #1 placements in Best Director), there are still Belfast holdouts. Ben & Chris think Branagh's personal passion project still has some Oscar oomph in it...

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Sundance: Dale Dickey shines in 'A Love Song'

by Matt St Clair

If you don’t know her name, odds are you’ve probably still seen Dale Dickey pop up in shows and films you like including Best Picture nominee Winter’s Bone (2010). Even after earning slight awards traction for her role as the wife of a backwoods crime boss in the acclaimed indie, including an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female, Dickey has remained on the precipice of famed character actordom, not quite tipping over. 

But with A Love Song, which just premiered at Sundance, Dickey finally gets a starring role to showcase her too often unsung gifts...

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Sundance: The pitch black repercussions when you 'Speak No Evil'

by Jason Adams

I don't know why people never heed the wise words of the credits to The Real World opening credits when they find themselves inside a horror movie of manners, but if we all could just stop being so damned polite and start getting real there'd be way fewer corpses dumped into the ditches of the world, and doesn't that sound a lot nicer for everybody? But no, nobody listens to the reality-programming Cassandras called Bunim and Murray, and so we end up watching people like the Danish family at the heart of Christian Tafdrup's pitch-black Sundance horror Speak No Evil, who don't speak up for themselves and pay the darkest of prices for it. Get real, world! It's for your own good...

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Sundance: Bill Nighy finds purpose in 'Living'

by Cláudio Alves

To remake a masterpiece is to invite comparison and risk redundancy. Still, filmmakers regularly throw themselves into the pit, asking for trouble. Oliver Hermanus is the latest maverick to tempt fate, joining the ranks of directors who have remade the work of Akira Kurosawa. This time around, the subject is one of the director's most beloved classics, Ikiru. It's the story of a stalwart bureaucrat who finds meaning in the last months of his life, discovering purpose in the shape of a playground when faced with the inevitability of death. The original flick is a sentimental jewel and a showcase for one of Kurosawa's favorite actors, Takashi Shimura. In 2022, the Japanese thespian shoes are filled by Bill Nighy, taking on a new version of the role that reimagines him as a British civil servant in 1952 London. 

While I can't speak for worldwide critics and cinephiles, I confess myself happily surprised by Living. No matter how distasteful the prospect of a Kurosawa remake feels, these modern artists have devised a worthy reinterpretation…

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Sundance: ‘Emergency’

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

The very legitimate fear that people of color feel when faced with the potential of confronting police has been featured in numerous films recently, both in documentary and narrative formats. In many cases, it’s a harrowing tale featuring brash reactions by law enforcement that assume the worst and end up needlessly harming those who weren’t doing anything wrong in the first place. The characters in the comedic Emergency know these truths and set out to do everything possible to avoid a tragic fate, which leads to wild hijinks…

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