"No Way Home" and Oscar Dreams. Or, When advocacy goes wrong...

by Nathaniel R

There are some that argue that Oscar pundits shouldn't be critics or vice versa. Prognostication and film criticism both require analytical skills but they're different jobs. The lines get murkier when it comes to advocacy. Each media outlet produces more Oscar coverage than we have ever had in the past. It's subversively hilarious that as Oscar ratings have steadily dwindled in the era of splintering audiences, discussion and analysis of the awards race is noisier and more populated each year! Yet, if the proliferation of film critics organizations has taught us anything it's that if you get enough film types in a room to talk "Best"... they will immediately, whether consciously or not, begin to equate Best with Oscars. That's how successful the Oscars have been as a name brand and institution. You can see it in the prizes given each year in the precursor awards and how eagerly space is handed over to presumed Oscar hopefuls that don't really need the boost. Even while the same journalists and outlets, who vote on the preliminary prizes, regularly bemoan that 'Oscars never get it right'. Advocacy doesn't equal prognostication but it looks too much like it at times.

Into this mess of adjacent but not always compatible agendas, comes the superhero blockbuster. In this case, Spider-Man: No Way Home which is suddenly getting the "nominate it for Best Picture!" discussion...

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FYC: Penélope Cruz for Best Actress

by Cláudio Alves

Since they started working together, Penélope Cruz has always been a mother figure in Pedro Almodóvar's cinema. He calls her the epitome of Spanish motherhood, resilient and sensual. It's an archetype she has represented, in some way, in all their collaborations – from 1997's Live Flesh to this year's Parallel Mothers. Indeed, their latest partnership feels like a culmination, the maximum manifestation of the auteur's ideas on motherhood. It's also the most complicated role he's ever given his current muse, an extreme of melodrama paralleled by political reflections. The actress is asked to go to extremes of emotion while also holding back. She must be outwardly demonstrative, crystalline clear, naked in sentiment and expression. However, the part also demands internalization, reticence, secrets that burn. All in all, it's a monumental challenge…

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50th Anniversary: "Harold and Maude" is as necessary as ever.

by Brent Calderwood

It might be time to stop calling Harold and Maude a cult film. Yes, it’s true that when it came out fifty years ago (December 20, 1971), many critics and audiences greeted it with a mix of bewilderment, indifference, and even hostility—Variety, for example, claimed it had “all the fun and gaiety of a burning orphanage.” And yes, it's also true that Harold and Maude has been a staple of midnight art-house screenings almost since its release and has topped “best cult films” lists for as long as “cult film” has been a recognizable term.  

But 50 years on, Harold and Maude is so widely beloved by critics and new generations of film lovers that what was faintly hailed as an exquisite but slightly rarefied document of post-’60s counterculture is now firmly a part of our culture...

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Review: Swoony "Cyrano" is a must-see

by Catherine Springer

There is a whole lot of love behind the new musical film Cyrano, directed by Joe Wright and starring Peter Dinklage. That's quite appropriate for one of literature’s all-time classic love stories. Screenwriter Erica Schmidt, who adapted the screenplay from her own 2019 stage adaptation of the classic Edmond Rostand play, is married in real life to the film's star Dinklage, who also played the title character in the off-Broadway production, while director Joe Wright is married in real life to Haley Bennett, who plays Roxanne, the object of Cyrano’s affection. While all four artists are consummate professionals, there is no doubt that a certain amount of personal affection seeped in during this project, as the end result is a sumptuous, warm and truly heartfelt ode to love, a beautiful work of art made by artisans unafraid to explore their passions.

The setting is seventeenth-century Paris and Roxanne, a beautiful but poor noblewoman, has fallen in love with a man she sees across a crowded theatre. When she finds out that the man is Christian de Neuvillette (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), a new cadet in the French army battalion stationed in the city, she calls upon her lifelong friend, Cyrano de Bergerac...

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Doc Corner: Fun facts about the Best Documentary finalists

By Glenn Dunks

Elizabeth Chai Vasarheyi & Jimmy Chin won just 4 years ago with "Free Solo". They're back again with "The Rescue"

Cutting a list down from 138 to 15 is always going to be a daunting and even cruel task, but the shortlist is here for Best Documentary Feature so it is the end of the line for 123 of this year’s non-fiction works. I have been churning through a very long list of titles before even contemplating doing my Top 25 Documentaries list, but I can say that my personal list is looking very different.

AMPAS has selected the following titles to battle it out for a nomination and then the Oscar statue...

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