Almost There: Maggie Smith in "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"

by Cláudio Alves

It's time to wish a happy anniversary to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. John Madden's unlikely box-office juggernaut was first screened ten years ago on the Sorrento Incontro Internazionale del Cinema. Truth be told, it's not a fantastic flick, adapting a Deborah Moggach novel into a toothless feel-good comedy that reeks of good intentions corroded by colonialist condescension. Where it triumphs, however, is in casting. Madden managed to gather a remarkable ensemble, made up of charismatic British thespians who could deliver great performances with their eyes closed and a hand tied behind their back: Judi Dench! Maggie Smith! Bill Nighy! Penelope Wilton! Tom Wilkinson! And more. 

Indeed, their collective work singlehandedly makes the movie into a middlebrow delight. From that collection of beloved British entertainers, Maggie Smith probably came closest to an Oscar nomination…

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25th Anniversary: "The Crucible"

by Nick Taylor

Happy belated Thanksgiving, TFE readers! In the spirit of American History, here’s a nice slice of cinema on one of the US’s many exemplary passages of telling on itself: the Salem Witch Trials. Arthur Miller’s retelling of these events in The Crucible is so universally well known, but how much the 1996 film adaptation is part of that legacy? I first saw the film in my junior high English class (I’d already chewed through Miller’s play and Death of a Salesman before I was ever assigned them), and aside from a few indelible images of Joan Allen’s silent devastation at court or Daniel Day-Lewis’s artfully grimy self in prison, Nicholas Hytner’s rendition of The Crucible didn’t leave much of an impression. Where Shine presented an opportunity to check off a box I knew I wouldn’t check off without outside incentive, returning to The Crucible was a chance to find out once and for all how it holds up to the faded memories of a semi-interested high schooler.

Hytner’s adaptation opens by dramatizing the play’s unseen inciting incident, where one night a group of Salem’s daughters are caught dancing naked in the woods and are accused of performing witchcraft in the name of Satan...

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25th Anniversary: "Shine"

by Nick Taylor

One of my favorite bits of This Had Oscar Buzz’s year in review episodes is the segments where they discuss a film that overcame its middling quality to cash in on their buzz and score with the Academy. This is the energy I bring to you for my 25th anniversary retrospective of Shine, an Australian film that copped seven Oscar nominations and a Best Actor prize for Geoffrey Rush in his starmaking role. I do not remember hearing or reading a single solitary comment about this film in the years since I became a cinephile. The closest I’ve ever gotten comes courtesy of folks sticking up for their personal pet among 1996’s Best Actor lineup, or scattered comments that Geoffrey Rush was better in his other nominated performances. It’s slim pickings, and having finally seen Shine for myself, I find very little of worth to really excavate here. Who’s to say how much the Artist Biopic has fundamentally changed from one decade to the next?

Our protagonist is David Helfgott (played by Alex Rafalowicz as a child, Noah Taylor as a teenager, and Geoffrey Rush as an adult), an Australian pianist who became famous in his youth and was institutionalized for years in his adulthood following a breakdown at a college recital...

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Happy 25th, Tye Sheridan!

by Nathaniel R

Happy 25th birthday to Tye Sheridan today. He first won critics, audience, and Hollywood's attention as a child star in The Tree of Life (2011) and Mud (2012). Ten years on now he's shown staying power but has Hollywood noticed that he's grown up? Though the media had a brief flirtation with presenting him as a 'sexy' leading man a few years back when Ready Player One (2018) hit the screens, Hollywood is mercilessly competitive; the late 20something through 30something years are often when movie stars are made and Sheridan's particular vintage (1996) is unusually robust with actors like Paul Mescal, Tom Holland, Lucas Hedges, Harris Dickinson, Mason Gooding, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tony Revolori, Jacob Latimore (and more) already in play. And that's not even counting the actors just a year or two younger or older OR those actors who have yet to emerge since a lot of the biggest stars in history aren't famous at the young age of 25: Brad Pitt broke out at 28. George Clooney didn't start headlining movies until he was 35. Viggo Mortensen was low profile until 39.

Still 2021 has been busy for Sheridan even if his profile is lower than some of his already-established peers...

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Winona Ryder @ 50: Little Women

We're celebrating Winona Ryder for her birthday this week

by Lynn Lee

Was Winona Ryder miscast in Little Women? Boy, was she ever. Or so I thought back in 1994 when I first heard she was playing Jo, second of the four March sisters, in the then-new film adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic.  As a teenager who’d read Little Women so many times it had become personal canon, I found the casting ludicrous on its face.  After all, in the book Jo is lanky, tomboyish, awkward, and plain.  Ryder, by contrast, was tiny, graceful, and so exquisitely pretty I had a bit of a crush on her, a fact that sharpened rather than softened my disapproval.  Still, in the end curiosity and my family’s tradition of going to see a movie on Christmas meant I got to judge for myself just how wrong she was for the role.

Readers, what can I say?  She completely won me over....

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