Colman Domingo could make Oscar history

by Cláudio Alves

Rustin is now in theaters, enjoying a limited qualifying release before it hits Netflix on November 17th. With this biopic on civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, Colman Domingo may earn his first Oscar nomination, in the Best Actor category. His hopes seem amply justified when you look over the production's premise and early reviews. It looks like a project calibrated to appeal to the Academy's taste, finely tuned for the campaign trail. After all, it's telling a real-life story full of inspirational details and a sense of great social importance, directed by George C. Wolfe from a screenplay coauthored by Dustin Lance Black.

That last name is especially interesting for it recalls Milk's triumph in 2008 and contextualizes Domingo's Oscar as a chance to make history…

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An Annette Bening Top Ten

by Cláudio Alves

Remember that week when Taylor Swift's concert film phenomenon and Martin Scorsese's elegiac latest dominated the conversation? It's hard to believe, but more pictures hit theaters along with those big titles. Indeed, some came full of Oscar hopes – look at NYAD. Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chain, the sports biopic enjoyed a qualifying theatrical run before hitting Netflix today, hoping to guarantee its entrance into the awards race. Above all other categories, Best Actress should be the primary objective, with Annette Bening vying for Hollywood's favorite golden trophy once more. Will she secure her fifth Academy Award nomination? Time will tell.

Let's recall some of her best work of yesteryear to celebrate a great actress's return to the race. Here are my top ten favorite Annette Bening performances…

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AFI Roundtable - All of Us Strangers, American Fiction, Freud's Last Session

By: Chris James, Eurocheese and Abe Friedtanzer

Reunions happen in the most unlikely of places. In this case, three The Film Experience writers ran into each other at the World Premiere of Matt Brown’s film Freud’s Last Session at the AFI Film Festival.

The fun of festivals is always to find out what are the similarities in everyone’s schedules and the differences. Since Chris, Abe and Eurocheese were all seeing Freud’s Last Session, All of Us Strangers and American Fiction during the festival, we thought it would be fun to have a round table to compare and contrast their opinions on the films. What did they love and what did they hate?

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A Haunting in October: Halloween Round-Up

by Nick Taylor

Boo! You all thought this half-alive miniseries was dead for good, but you were wrong! I have returned from the grave for one final shriek to celebrate some of my favorite new watches from this October, along with a shout-out to a surprisingly durable favorite. As I wipe off my makeup from a long night of trick or treating, enjoy your candy and feast your eyes on this!

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Happy Halloween with Hercule Poirot

by Cláudio Alves

I don't know about you, but after the double whammy of Belfast and Death on the Nile, I was ready to give up on Kenneth Branagh as a director. Yet, like Michael Corleone famously said: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

Turns out that what Branagh and, more specifically, his Agatha Christie adaptations needed was a healthy shot of nonsense plus the spooky seasonings of horror. A Haunting in Venice, now streaming on Hulu, succeeds by untethering itself from literary fidelity, twisting Christie's Hallowe'en Party out of shape in pursuit of maximum entertainment. Though a sense of melancholy pervades, self-serious prestige is abandoned, or mayhap sacrificed at a witches' altar. And from its deadened carcass, Hercule Poirot emerges as the center of a ghostly storm, the skeptic anchor keeping this Hammer Horror resurgence from floating away on the Lido tide…

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