"Best Shot" Choices from 'Nightmare Alley'

We've revived the long dormant "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" club and kicking us off is Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley  which is up for four Oscars including Cinematography. Each week anyone who would like to join is welcome to post their choice for the chosen film's best shot. We'll add more Nightmare Alley shots if any more come in.

Click on these "Best Shots" to see why these players chose it...

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Nightmare Alley (2021)

Welcome back to the series, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" by Nathaniel R. Each week we'll discuss a single movie via a particular shot. Anyone who'd like to participate can choose their own!

Best Prop

When you're reading your mark, as former circus psychic Pete (David Strathairn) teaches us, you're searching for external clues to internal damage. The fatal flaw of Nightmare Alley, up this year for Best Picture, may well be that Guillermo del Toro, though a gifted filmmaker, isn't much for interiority. But oh his surfaces! Overly lacquered beauty and the ugly rot it's faililng to hide are the greatest assets of his latest film. On that note we must pause to honor the funhouse sequence early in the film which operates like a veritable FYC ad for the Oscar-nominated Production Design. The set amazes and one particular prop in the 'funhouse', a mirror stating "TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF  SINNER" is a perfect offhand joke. We know very little about Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) but he already knows he's "no good". The camera lingers for a second on the mirror, to make sure we do... 

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Yes No Maybe So: Baz Luhrmann's 'ELVIS'

by Nathaniel R

Baz Luhrmann's career began explosively with two of the most endearing, unusual, and entertaining films of the 1990s (Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet). His promise as a Great Showman was realized with his masterpiece Moulin Rouge! (2001) which was only his third feature. Unfortunately in the 21 years since that very modern movie musical revitalized its genre, he mostly vanished from movie screens. He's made only two features since, the disjointed epic Australia (2008) and a box office hit adaptation of The Great Gatsby (2013). Nearly a full decade later we finally have a sixth feature. His latest, which was untitled long enough that its official title Elvis is hysterically anti-climactic, is a biopic of the rock n roll superstar. The movie hits theaters on June 24th, so let's break the trailer down with our Yes No Maybe So™ system...

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What's on your cinematic mind?

I was just randomly thinking about Splendor in the Grass. You? 

Why can't we have Jonathan Bailey in the movies?

by Nathaniel R

2022 is off to a great start for 34 year-old British stage and TV star Jonathan Bailey. We've had to love him on the relative quiet for a long time because he rarely does movies! Promo photos just came out for the new West End play "Cock" in which he'll co-star with Taron Egerton as gay lovers having a fallout when one of them sleeps with a woman (Jade Anouka). In addition to that upcoming run on the boards, the Season 2 trailer for Bridgerton just dropped. This season he takes the leading spotlight as the most eligible bachelor of the titular family... 

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