AFI Fest: I’m Your Woman

 By Abe Friedtanzer

Career-defining roles are a blessing but one with a downside. Audiences can have trouble separating actors from those parts in subsequent projects. Rachel Brosnahan is a great example of this, taking off as the title character in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel when it premiered in 2017. Even her CIA agent character in a Sundance selection from this past year, Ironbark, now titled The Courier, felt like she could easily have been a comedienne who decided to go into espionage later in life. Fortunately, the opening night film of this year’s AFI Fest, I’m Your Woman, indicates that Brosnahan may be indeed be branching out and trying something different…

Click to read more ...

Truth-Telling

Monty @ 100: Unexpected ending with "The Defector"

by Nathaniel R

Sadly, we now reach the finale of the Montgomery Clift filmography. The shroud of sadness and tragedy that hung over Clift's second act in motion pictures (Raintree County through Freud) have often obscured the quality of some of the films. Despite the broken souls and grim reaper feeling exuded by The Misfits and Judgment at Nuremberg in particular -- it's part of their subject matter, after all -- Clift's acting prowess was actually on the rise again.

His declining health and addictions interfered. After Freud there was another four year intermission from the silver screen as there'd been just after From Here to Eternity. With 1966's The Defector the curtain raised again and filming went smoothly for a change. But no third act came. Both Clift (then 45) and his director Raoul Lévy (then just 44) died that year, Clift of a heart attack shortly before the movie's release and Levy, shortly after, by his own hand...

Click to read more ...

AFI: Riz Ahmed in "Sound of Metal"

by Eurocheese

When putting together my list of films to catch at the festival, I threw this film in because I’d heard that it had an incredible sound design. Nobody told me that Riz Ahmed gives one of the best leading male performances that we’ve seen in years. Nobody told me that this passion project would have me emotionally on edge from start to finish, or that I’d leave feeling that it was unlike any film I’d seen before. The fact that the sound design buzz on the sound design proved true was the delicious cherry on top.

Ahmed plays Ruben, a drummer in a rock band, and the movie kicks off immersing us in one of his performances...

Click to read more ...

NewFest: Irish comedy "Dating Amber"

Coverage from NewFest the 32nd Annual LGBTQ Film Festival

By Abe Friedtanzer

I imagine that I’ll be thinking about Normal People for a while every time I watch an Irish romance (or maybe just any Irish production!). If I can’t see Connell and Marianne on screen again, the next-best thing is probably Dating Amber, a wonderfully entertaining comedy showing at NewFest. One of its stars is Fionn O’Shea, who portrayed the despicable and manipulative Jamie in Normal People. He's one of the romantic leads this time...

Click to read more ...