AFI Diary #4: "Jockey," Audience Award Winners and More

Christopher James wrapping up his 2021 AFI Fest coverage. 

JOCKEY wins the Audience Award

Phew! The AFI Film Festival is done. The weekend was full of lots of great movies from around the world and some high profile premieres, such as Swan Song, Tick, Tick... Boom, and Bruised ! Still, there are a few more reviews to wrap up the festival with including Jockey, starring Clifton Collins Jr, which took the Audience Award for Narrative Feature...

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Red Notice: just enough to press play

by Elisa Giudici

As early as the prologue, Red Notice sets the bar so low that you instantly know to shut up and meekly accept every absurd thing it gives you. When an adventure movie starts with Marcus Antonius gifting his future bride Queen Cleopatra with 3 Fabergé jeweled eggs around 1000 years before Gustav Fabergé himself came to the world, you know realism is not high on the list of the movie's priorities. Not a priority at all, whether in the past or the present. Five minutes later we are introduced to Dwayne Johnson's FBI criminal profiler John Hartley. Sporting a black turtleneck (and later a silk patterned scarf), the notion of The Rock being a criminal profiler is so improbable that the screenplay mounts a preemptive defense. "You don't look like one".

"I get that a lot" replies The Rock, introducing us to a parallel world in which a lot of characters are nonsensical in service of an action-comedy about art thieves and double plays.  This is the kind of movie in which the audience will likely forgive anything, provided they are offered some spectacle, a few good liners, and chemistry between glamorous supertstars. Unfortunately, Red Notice lacks almost any of these elements...

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Almost There: Robert Mitchum in "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" and "The Sundowners"

by Cláudio Alves

This month, the Criterion Channel has programmed a collection called "Robert Mitchum: Playing It Cool," dedicated to the star of classics like Out of the Past and The Night of the Hunter. This movie star wasn't always the easiest person to work with – he was even declared the Least Cooperative Actor by the Golden Apple Awards – but his talent was undeniable, as was his screen presence. That quality would make him an iconic face of postwar film noir and, consequently, a perfect fit for 'Noirvember'. However, we're not here to discuss that part of his filmography. Unfortunately, those flicks seldom got awards traction, and the Almost There series is about performances with Oscar buzz but no nomination. 

Instead, the focus shall be on a couple of Deborah Kerr vehicles that costarred Mitchum and resulted in multiple Oscar nods. They were John Huston's Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, and Fred Zinnemann's The Sundowners…

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“King Richard” Serves Up A Real Crowdpleaser

by Christopher James

Everyone has to start somewhere - even Venus and Serena Williams.Early on in King Richard, Will Smith’s Richard Williams drills his daughters - Venus and Serena - on serving. Their goal, to hit a precise spot on the court where a stack of balls lie. Even as pre-teens, they are able to achieve remarkable precision with their shots. This drill is an apt metaphor for Reinaldo Marcus Green’s latest film, King Richard. It always hits the spot on the court, just as you expected it to.

King Richard never subverts the tropes of the inspirational sports movie, it just tries to do them better. This doesn’t make it a daring or interesting film, but the formula does work incredibly well...

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Who's got the lead in Best Supporting Actress?

by Nathaniel R

Kiki in Los Angeles and Aunjanue in Savannah recently

“The internet,” by which I mean that diffuse vibe one gets by scrolling through twitter, and clicking on award and film sites, always likes to jump the gun. People have figuratively been handing out Oscars for months, well before the campaigns revved up. But the long season of direct FYCs has now truly begun with Q&As and screenings suddenly abundant on both coasts. So where are we at with Best Supporting Actress? Don’t believe anyone who thinks this race is already settled. The supporting categories are often the last to clear up as they’re quite dependent on the film that houses them, the strength of the campaign, and once nominations are announced, the narratives for the win. But we do have some nomination probabilities.

ALMOST SURE THINGS?
I’ve moved Kristen Dunst and Aunjanue Ellis to the top of the charts in this category partially because they have no internal competition from their own films for that golden ticket to the Dolby. More importantly their films, Power of the Dog and King Richard respectively, have major Best Picture buzz and that always helps...

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