Almost There: Marion Cotillard in "Rust and Bone"

by Cláudio Alves

Throughout the years, the Oscars' most polyglot acting category has been Best Actress, amassing twenty nominations and two victories for performances in non-English languages. Those winners, Sophia Loren (1961, Two Women) and Marion Cotillard (2007, La Vie en Rose), are also the only women to nab more than one nod for acting in their native non-English tongue. That's not the only factor that makes Cotillard's awards history a strange affair. She's also one the very few actors to get attention from the four major precursors (BFCA, HFPA, BAFTA, SAG) for her work in "foreign language" films, a feat she accomplished twice. Strangely enough, it wasn't for the same two productions that got her the Academy's attention!

Marion Cotillard's take on Edith Piaf got nominated for everything and, in the end, conquered her a little golden man. Still, five years later she was royally snubbed, becoming only the second person to get those four precursor nominations and fail to enter the Oscar line-up. The film was Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone and the performance remains one of Cotillard's greatest achievements…

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Horror Actressing: Una O'Connor in "The Invisible Man" (1933)

by Jason Adams

What better time than now, what with the latest iteration of The Invisible Man hitting movie theaters this week, to celebrate one of the cinema's greatest character actresses -- I speak of ye Irish spitfire Una O'Connor, who was once described as having "the body of a scarecrow, the contemptuous stare of a house detective, and the voice of an air-raid siren." Said with affection, no doubt.

She certainly brought all of those awesome qualities to bear on James Whale's 1933 adaptation of The Invisible Man, which had her playing the mistress of the pub that the villain-scientist Claude Rains rents an upstairs room from...

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What did you see this weekend?

Performing significantly above expectations this weekend were the wide release Call of the Wild, and two female-driven platform titles, France's awesome Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and the latest adaptation of Emma. Box office estimates after the jump... 

Weekend Box Office February 21st-23rd (ESTIMATES ONLY) 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = recommended
WIDE RELEASE (800+ screens)	PLATFORM TITLES
Call of the Wild	Emma
1 🔺 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG  $26.3 (cum. $106.6)	1 🔺 IMPRACTICAL JOKERS $2.6 on 357 screens *new*
2  🔺  CALL OF THE WILD  $24.8 *new* HARRISON FORD	2 🔺  MY BOYFRIEND'S MEDS $1.4 on 350 screens *new*
3 BIRDS OF PREY $7.0 (cum. $72.5) REVIEW	3 🔺 PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE $715k on 130 screens (cum. $1.4) TOP TEN LIST ★

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Review: Don't miss "And Then We Danced"

by Cláudio Alves

A man is a monument of strength, hard and unbending. A woman is a vision of purity, soft and willowy. For those who teach Georgian traditional dance, this binary is tantamount to a universal truth whose cosmic certainty must be supported by the choreographed bodies. But binaries are conventions fated to be broken by the messiness of being human. Merab, the protagonist of Levan Akin's And Then We Danced, is the element of humanity that breaks the convention and exposes its brittle frailty.

Merab's too soft to be a monument. He's too willowy to be the man of folkloric tradition. He's still a man, though, and a dancer too, one that trains to be part of the National Georgian Ensemble...

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2019 Film Coverage is a Wrap.

And the 2019 film year has officially entered the vaults (which is good since 2020 is well underway). It only took us 13 days post-Oscar to wrap up this time. For us that's speedy. Here's a big index of the year (that was) in case you missed any of the festive wrap-ups...

nathaniel's top 10	20th film bitch awards	the 92nd oscars

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