Emmy FYC: Marielle Heller in "The Queen's Gambit"

by Cláudio Alves

As we all found out this past October Marielle Heller is a woman of many, perchance infinite, talents. Since 2015, Heller has been dazzling cinephiles everywhere with her work as a writer/director. The Diary of a Teenage Girl was one of the best American debuts of the decade. If possible, Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood were even better, analyzing complicated real-life personalities with as much humanistic gentility as razor-sharp precision. All that, and we now know that Heller is also an amazing actress. Returning to her first vocation in splendorous fashion, Marielle Heller delivers the best performance in the popular Netflix awards juggernaut The Queen's Gambit…

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Ned Beatty (1937-2021)

by Nathaniel R

Oscar, Emmy, and Globe nominee Ned Beatty (Network) passed away on Sunday, just a few weeks shy of his 84th birthday.  It's a mark of his sturdy career and reliability as as character actor that all three of those showbiz institutions honored him for different performances. Since he was always more of an actor than a celebrity, we thought it best to look to his characters to commemorate. After the jump, eleven key roles from his impressive career...

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Tribeca 2021: "The Justice of Bunny King" review

by Jason Adams

I know from untold years of movie-watching experience that it's nowhere near as simple as "just turn the camera on and point it at an incredibly gifted actor (or two)" to end up with a great film worth watching. There have been too many painful yet well-cast examples to the contrary to count. But it's hard to feel that argument in all of my heart in the wake of watching Essie Davis and Thomasin McKenzie in The Justice of Bunny King, first-time filmmaker Gaysorn Thavat's powerhouse drama that's just premiered at Tribeca. These two actors, especially Davis, really seem at this point unstoppable. They just have faces you want to stare at, surroundings be damned.

That's not to say that Bunny King lets them down... Thavat's proves to be an instinctively gifted storyteller, foremost knowing the value in those faces and performances...

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Almost There: Joanne Woodward in "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds"

by Cláudio Alves

In anticipation of the upcoming 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the next few weeks of the Almost There series will be dedicated to performances that won big at the Croisette and went on to some Oscar buzz. That being said, the first entry in this quasi-miniseries didn't convert Cannes plaudits into industry awards attention. The opposite happened. After opening commercially in the USA at the end of 1972, Paul Newman's third directorial effort, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, got slotted into the main competition of the following year's Cannes Film Festival. By the time Joanne Woodward won the festivities' Best Actress prize, her new Oscar dreams were already busted…

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Gay Best Friend: Patrick (Ezra Miller) in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (2012)

a series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope

Ezra Miller had one of their biggest critical successes playing Patrick in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower."With the recent release of Love Victor season two on Hulu, it has been remarkable to see how the depiction of gay teenagers has grown over decades. The sweet natured, loving depictions of coming out in Love Simon and (to a certain extent) Love Victor stand out compared to the harder times that queer kids like Rickie Vasquez (Wilson Cruz) from My So Called Life had to go through over twenty-five years earlier. This is a great sign of progress in our world’s treatment of LGBTQ+ people, but we know queer kids still face plenty of bullying, violence and, in the case of trans kids, legislative battle.

One of my favorite depictions of a gay teenager has been Ezra Miller’s performance as Patrick in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. This gay best friend got the chance to be a fully rounded character. He experienced joy and love, rather than being defined by the trauma heaped upon him by others. In his friendships, he could be the center of attention, and have both power and support. Patrick doesn’t go through a journey of figuring out his sexuality. Instead, he goes on a journey of loving all parts of himself - his sexuality, his strength, his weaknesses - everything...

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