Noirvember / Contrarian Corner: Motherless Brooklyn

By Lynn Lee

Is Motherless Brooklyn just another high-profile Oscar hopeful turned dud-on-arrival?  The early signs for Ed Norton’s long-gestating passion project have not been encouraging, to put it mildly.  Reviews on both the festival circuit and the film’s general release and here at TFE have been tepid, the box office even more so. Its awards prospects are pretty much nil.  It’s also not the kind of movie that’s likely to find success through word of mouth or build a long-term cult following, and its chances of future critical reevaluation are uncertain at best.

All of which makes me a little sad, because I quite enjoyed the film, and think Norton deserves more credit than he’s getting for what he’s accomplished...

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Over & Overs: "Sister Act"

Please welcome new contributor Kyndall Cunningham...

As a churchgoing kid with a fairly good singing voice, choir took up a big chunk of my adolescence. I attended weekly rehearsals, went to my choir mates’ houses to practice and woke up at the crack of dawn on Sunday mornings to perform for the congregation (and God). I had a strong affection for gospel music, but my intense involvement in ministry at such a young age felt deeply uncool at times, if not isolating from the rest of the world. It wasn’t until I picked out Sister Act from my family’s VHS closet one day that I saw that part of my life tied to pop culture in an exciting way. Needless to say, I began screening the film religiously. 

Sorry. 

Like a lot of stories about women turning a new leaf, Sister Act begins with a breakup and ends with a love story...

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Yes No Maybe So: Pixar's 2020 Films "Soul" and "Onward"

by Tony Ruggio

Pixar gonna Pixar. That is, use cute anthropomorphic beings to explore the many profundities of life and make us cry in the process. Soul appears to be another excellent example of their personal stamp. Better yet, it's one of two Pixar originals this year (their firsts since Coco in 2017 since the last two years have been sequels). Let's do the Yes No Maybe So after the jump... 

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Centennial: Gillo Pontecorvo

100 year ago today in Pisa, Italy, the director Gillo Pontecorvo was born.

He only made five narrative features in his career, which is surely one of the reasons that he's overshadowed in cultural memory by the far more prolific mid 20th century Italian giants Vittorio de Sica and Federico Fellini. Still Pontecorvo's two best known films were both nominated for the Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, the concentration camp drama Kapò (1960) and the resistance/war drama The Battle of Algiers (1966). The latter, which won the Golden Lion at Venice in its year, is still revered as a masterpiece. Have you seen either of these classics?

"The Crown" S3: An Acting Showcase

by Cláudio Alves

Why do we, as an audience, love to see celebrities playing other celebrities? Just look at the acting categories of the Oscars to see this love in full bloom. Every year, they are invaded by biopics with famous actors imitating the look and feel, the ticks, the sound and the accents of other figures in the public consciousness. Perhaps it's got something to do with the juxtaposition of two famous personas, none of them fully erasing the other. It’s a palimpsest of acting.

We know the Queen of England, how she sounds and how she looks.  When an actress plays her, their transformation becomes obvious because it calls attention to the art of pretending, but also to what is specific about the pretender in the first place. By watching Olivia Colman play the Queen in The Crown, it becomes obvious what makes Olivia Colman so special.

Of course, in this instance, the comparison isn't just to the Queen herself, but also Claire Foy's version of the role…

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