The New Oscar Actor Hierarchy - Anthony & Denzel Rising

by Nathaniel R

We last updated the male version of this list (see the actress list here) just after Leonardo DiCaprio was finally crowned for The Revenant (2015) but it's time for some adjustments. What follows is a list of Oscar's 34 All Time Favorite Actors. The only brand new addition to the list is Anthony Hopkins who enters the exclusive club due to two new consecutive nominations (including this year's bid The Father) significantly changing his previous 4/1 record. But there are other big changes. Actors who improved their standing since the last update five seasons ago are Denzel Washington (up several notches and a tier due to Fences and Roman Israel Esq), Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio (up a handful of notches each due to recent nominations), Jeff Bridges and Al Pacino (up a couple of notches each), and Daniel Day Lewis (up a tier with that Phantom Thread nomination but the same numeric placement -- the higher up you go the harder it is to rise much after all). A handful of other men are getting very close to joining this club after recent Oscar favor, too.

This royal club is restricted to men with 5 or more nominations. Only the acting statistics are accounted for so George Clooney, for example, is not (yet) ranked...

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SXSW: Uncanny sibling chemistry in "Our Father"

by Jason Adams

As a person without any close siblings (I have a half-sister who I wasn't raised with) the tricky alchemy of sibling-hood often escapes me. I watch my friends who do have close relations with their brothers or sisters with some fascination. It's not quite a foreign Twin Language every time but it might as well be, to me, the weird ways you people relate and the fiery push-pulls of it; the way you can be meaner to a person you were raised beside than anybody else on earth and then turn and snap fangs at anybody trying to do the same at that person. 

But, like too many things in life, I've learned the most about those relationships from watching them in the movies...

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SXSW: The dystopian visions of Executive Order & Witch Hunt

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

It’s sadly not all that difficult to imagine our society slipping into dystopian territory, and while that might have seemed impossible here in America, recent events have suggested we’re not that far away from authoritarian misery. Cinema has long explored such inevitabilities, and it’s those “very near future” concepts that don’t look so different from what we know today that can be especially terrifying. They can also be insightful, strong pieces of filmmaking, and SXSW has two this year that are indeed frightening and thought-provoking...

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Streaming Review: Boss Level

by Ben Miller

 

Groundhog Day is becoming its own genre of film.  Groundhog Day as a horror film -> Happy Death Day.  Groundhog Day as a sci-fi war film -> Edge of Tomorrow.  Groundhog Day as an existential romantic comedy -> Palm Springs.  Joe Carnahan's Boss Level continues this new tradition as the violent action film edition. It does this while maintaining a fun tone and never crossing over into offensiveness.

Frank Grillo stars as Roy Pulver, a former special forces soldier who wakes up every morning with people trying to kill him...

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Actors Turned Producers @ the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

We've already posted about many records broken with this year's Oscar nominations, but one particular achievement remained unmentioned. With her double nominations for Nomadland – for Best Picture and Best Actress – Frances McDormand became the first woman to earn an acting and a Best Picture nomination for the same project. This comes after a decade when this feat became incredibly common for male performers. Historically, ever since the 1950s, when AMPAs started to list producers with Best Picture nods, instead of merely the studios' name, actors have been producing their movies and earning added honors for those efforts. Still, it was only in the late 60s that someone scored the elusive double citation by the Academy…

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