NYFF: The sad, strange, incomplete "French Exit"

by Nathaniel R

Frances Price, the soon to be impoverished widow at the center of French Exit alarms everyone around her and puts them on edge. She will just not cooperate. Neither will Michelle Pfeiffer, the actress playing her, for that matter. Rather than dance around it, let's just state the conundrum up front. When you're watching your favourite actor star in a potential comeback role based on a book you've grown deeply fond of and have already visualized as a movie in your head, the conflicts between expectations and reality and dreams can be impossible to mediate. And disconcerting, too. You've got to watch the movie for the movie but also work through your own external actress-related issues while doing so.

I obsess over Michelle Pfeiffer, okay?! There's no avoiding it and little point not foregrounding it in this review. Complete strangers know this about me...

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Monty @ 100: The martyrdom of "Lonelyhearts"

by Cláudio Alves

For the first half of his career, Montgomery Clift typified an image of restless youth and tragic beauty onscreen. Many of his early films found Clift playing young traumatized soldiers or men embroiled in doomed romance, lively characters whose nervous energy electrified the frame. The second era of Monty films, starting with 1957's Raintree County, saw a transformation of his persona. Nathaniel previously explored some inklings of masochism in the narratives of From Here to Eternity and The Young Lions, but Clift's next few projects solidified him as a paragon of cinematic suffering.

Perhaps no project better encapsulates the idea of Montgomery Clift as a saint-like figure, a martyr, than the Vincent J. Donehue's 1958 film Lonelyhearts…

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"I'm No Longer Here" wins big at the Ariel Awards

Mexico's own Oscar-like film awards have been handed out with I'm No Longer Here prevailing with 10 trophies. That's quite a haul. The drama is about a member of a dancing street gang (played by Juan Daniel Garcia Treviño, pictured left) who is forced to immigrate to the US to escape a local cartel. The cast was non-actors, hired for their dancing ability and authenticity. The film is currently streaming on Netflix if you're curious.

ARIEL AWARD NOMINEES & WINNERS

Picture

• Buy Me a Gun
• Dust
• I'm No Longer Here ★
• Suffocation
• This is Not Berlin

We believe all of these* are eligible to be Mexico's submission this year as none were on their finalist list last year for consideration (though some of the other films nominated in craft categories were). This probably means I'm No Longer Here is the likely submission but you never know. Since it does take place partially in the US it has some English in it (movies run into trouble with this particular category if the English dialogue is dominant or roughly equal to the non-English dialogue). * Clarification: All except This is Not Berlin which would not be eligible as it did have a US theatrical run in 2019.

The nominees and winners are after the jump. If we've previously written about the film there's a link...

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Yes No Maybe So: Jessica Chastain and the "355"

by new contributor Josh Bierman

The 355 is a new action film starring a host of bad ass international superstars set for a January 2021 release. If we’re being honest, when I first saw Sponcon for this on my Instagram, I was 100% certain that this was a short film for Lancôme or Chanel starring their brand ambassadors. Turns out it’s a real life feature length film! Huzzah for female-fronted action movies. Let’s take a deep dive into the trailer...

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Middleburg Festival 2020 - Virtual This Weekend!

by Nathaniel R

Just a heads up that the Middleburg International Film Festival, that we cover each year right here, has gone mostly virtual this year. The festival is later this week (Thurs, Oct 15th - Sunday, Oct 18th). Despite the unfortunate circumstances of movies in this bizarre year, they've somehow gathered their usual crop of buzzy Oscar contenders and possible breakout indies. You can see the full list here -- any films in particular you'd like us to cover?  You may recall that last year we did a "Coffee and Contenders" Oscar panel with Clayton Davis and Jazz Tangcay (who both work for Variety now). We're repeating that again this year since it was a success last time. This year it will be on Zoom due to, well, you know... but we're still excited.

The panel is this coming Friday at 9:00 AM EST. It will be available for free if any of you reading would like to tune in (ignore the "not available in your country" notice. They are in the process of fixing that)