Almost There: Björk in "Dancer in the Dark"

by Cláudio Alves

Premiering at the 53rd Cannes Film Festival, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark became one of the most discussed films of 2000. At the end of the festivities, von Trier would walk away with the Palme D'Or while his leading lady, Icelandic music artist Björk, won the Best Actress prize. It's unusual for any Cannes competition title to win more than one award from the main jury, but sometimes it's impossible to deny a performance's magnificence. Such was the case in 2000. As the musical hit theaters critics worldwide began to chime in and the praise for Björk's achievement became more mountainous. Even some who objected to von Trier's experiment had words of adoration for its star.

It's fair to say that Björk's performance in Dancer in the Dark was one of the most acclaimed acting achievements of 2000. Nonetheless, when Oscar nomination morning arrived, she wasn't among the Best Actress nominees…

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YNMS x 4: Dear Evan Hansen, Stillwater, Venom 2, and The Green Knight

Ben Platt and Kaitlyn Dever in "Dear Evan Hansen"Besieged by movie trailers we are. Movie studios hopes you'll go back to the movie theater ...sort of. They also hope you'll join their streaming service, whatever it is, and stay at home. Have any of these movies -- Dear Evan Hansen, Stillwater, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, or The Green Knight -- already sold you a ticket? 

Let's look at their trailers after the jump...

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Gay Best Friend: Michael in "Billy Elliot" (2000)

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000.

The face of coming out to your crush, who's also a male ballet dancer.By: Christopher James

What do our interests say about our sexuality?  From sports to dancing, so many hobbies carry with them gendered expectations. Set in 1984 rural England amidst the coal miner strike, Billy Elliot follows one boy as he defies his family’s expectations of him and pursues dancing instead of boxing. Claudio recently gave us a beautiful write-up on Jamie Bell’s performance as the title character as part of his Almost There column. Needless to say, I second all the points he made in his article.

For the purposes of this column, we want to look specifically at what the film has to say about sexuality, specifically as it relates to Billy’s best friend, Michael Caffrey (Stuart Wells)...

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"Crouching Tiger" and the Foreign Language Films of 2000

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000. 

Juliette Binoche and Jack Valenti announcing Best Foreign Language Film.

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Coming into the 73rd Academy Awards, the results of the Foreign Language Film category must have felt like the biggest lock of the night (this writer can only assume based on hindsight since he was only a five-year old bébé at the time). Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was the perfect storm when it hit American audiences. The film came from an established filmmaker, Ang Lee, who had made several critical and commercial hits in English and otherwise, the storytelling was tailored to better suit Western sensibilities, it featured international stars known to the English-speaking film market, it received rave reviews and enormous box office returns, and it was both partially funded and widely distributed by a major American studio...

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Review: "Profile"

By Ben Miller

New and innovative films inevitably lead to imitators. 2018's Searching is the obvious predecessor to Profile, the new film from Russian filmmaker (and Searching producer) Timur Bekmambetov. While the film ratchets up the tension to almost unbearable levels, script issues and over-dramatic characterizations turn this film into a bloated mess, albeit a watchable one.

Valene Kane stars as Amy Whittaker, a struggling freelance journalist who has an idea for a story: what if she can get recruited by Syrian jihadists in order to discover their tactics? Amy creates a fake Facebook profile and in no time at all, "Melody" is befriended by Bilel (Shazad Latif), a London-born ISIS member living in Syria...

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