Doc Corner: Is 'Crip Camp' an early Oscar frontrunner?

By Glenn Dunks

As if on cue to allow isolated audiences one hell of an emotional purge, James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham’s sublime Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution is here. Seemingly built to make audiences burst into tears out of honest to goodness heart-melting positivity and righteous activist anger in equal measure (a delicate balance to say the least), it is perhaps for the first time since this pandemic began that I contemplated my own small place in this big world outside of COVID-19.

It’s big-hearted and impassioned; an unsurprising winner of Sundance’s audience award and an obvious frontrunner for the Academy Award.

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Five Reasons the Oscars Won't Be Cancelled. (Relax)

by Nathaniel R

Regular readers know that we put our Punditry hat on and whip out the foggy crystal ball each year about this time. The reason is an attempt to predict the Oscar nominations nearly a full year in advance each season. We tend to do alright at this admittedly silly endeavour (silly because 90% of the films haven't yet been seen.) But 2020 is different. Perhaps you've noticed that movies haven't been opening for a full month now and all filming stopped in Hollywood. Some pre and post-production business is still happening in Hollywood but in very limited work-from-home capacity. In the twenty years of running The Film Experience we've truly never seen anything like this!

However, we wish to sound a note of optimism that you generally won't get elsewhere on the web due to the click-bait happy tone and echo chamber hysteria so many sites opt for. We don't feel there's any reason to assume that the Oscars will be cancelled. Here's why in five reasons...

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Frances vs Sophie

by Cláudio Alves

With Sophie's Choice new to streaming on HBO NOW and Frances available to rent from Amazon, Youtube and others, we thought it could be fun to rehash one legendary Oscar race. It's when Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange battled out for the Best Actress trophy of 1982. Come explore this clash of acting titans as we investigate two great women's legacies, the pair of competing films and nominated performances in a detailed deep dive. In the end, who'll be the chosen victor? 

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"Rob Roy" at 25

by Eric Blume

It’s been a quarter century since the release of Rob Roy, a film directed by Michael Caton-Jones and featuring the pairing of Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange. The period drama is about the eponymous 18th Century Scotland clan chief Robert Roy MacGregor.

Evidently there was a box-office hunger for this type of film around 1995, since one month later Mel Gibson’s Braveheart opened. The latter tragically went on to win Best Picture some nine months later.  Both films feature tales of broad-stroke heroism, where the main figure is portrayed as a rebel fighting the system, full of masculine bravado and BDE (the un-fun kind)...  

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Horror Actressing: The Women of "American Psycho"

by Jason Adams

I don't think there's any good faith argument to be made that Mary Harron's American Psycho, which turns 20 today, is not Christian Bale's movie. His serial killing investment banker Patrick Bateman, now an icon for the ages for better or for worse, is in very nearly every scene -- Harron cuts away from his perspective only twice (both pointed moments I'll dig into below). We are, terrifyingly, trapped inside this most beautiful madman for every dissection and Whitney Houston diatribe -- it's much like Bret Easton Ellis' book that way.

But Harron, bless her, found ways to make the experience survivable, hell even somehow giddy and a deranged sort of fun, whereas Ellis' book is an undertaking swathed in ugliness and despair I've had no desire to revisit since my one and only traumatic read-through a good 25 years back. Harron navigated a supernaturally exquisite balance between her satire and horror, a vital "looking in from the outside" set of eyes that escaped the burden of Ellis' prose. And I think the key to it, besides Bale's brilliantly sweaty bananas work of course, is the vibrant gallery of women that Harron surrounded Bateman with...

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