AFI Fest: Notturno

By Abe Friedtanzer

Italian documentarian Gianfranco Rosi’s last film, Fire at Sea, was released right around the time of the 2016 election. The Oscar-nominated film was a poignant and timely look at the implications of severely restricted immigration worldwide. Unlike popular recent documentaries like American Factory and Free Solo, Rosi’s work didn’t feature much dialogue or even a formed argument of any kind. Instead, plainly documenting what was happening was powerful enough to speak on its own. Rosi’s follow-up, Notturno, has a different focus but is much the same… 

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A Different Take on "The Trial of the Chicago 7"

by Eric Blume

We embrace respectful differences of opinion here at TFE, so with all due respect to my fellow staff writer Tony, who just gave Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 a rave review, I offer a dissenting opinion.  Fortunately thanks to Tony’s great synopsis, I can cut right to the chase.  I love Aaron Sorkin as much as the next guy, thinking his scripts for both The Social Network and Steve Jobs are essentially masterpieces, and even thinking more favorably upon Molly’s Game than most:  it had its own mini-sweep of energy and he tapped into all the things that make Jessica Chastain special. 

But there’s not a frame of Sorkin’s new movie that felt authentic or assured to me...

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New on Netflix: Trial of the Chicago 7

by Tony Ruggio

We weren't arrested. We were chosen.

The older you get, the more you realize how true the adage “history repeats itself” is. You realize it’s no longer just a pithy catchphrase but a reality of life as we know it. Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 was clearly intended, to some extent, to echo the trials and tribulations of the present. Little did Sorkin and co. know just how relevant their 1960’s period drama would turn out to be. Chicago 7 is both a classical Sorkin courtroom drama, focused on the thrilling broad strokes of such a monumental case, and a protest film designed to show us the moving chess pieces of an ongoing, decades-long culture war between the conservative right and two factions of the left: the progressive revolutionaries like Abbey Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), focused on change through disruption, and the pragmatic Democrats like Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), focused on change through winning elections. 

Revolving around a clash between protestors and police that took place outside the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the trial was the result of blatant entrapment by local authorities and represented a circumvention of free speech laws by the newly appointed Nixon administration...

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Yes No Maybe So: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

by Nathaniel R

Chadwick heading for a posthumous Oscar nod?

How about them songs I give you?

Netflix is trying the shotgun approach this year by releasing one buzzy potential Oscar contender after another. Perhaps they felt emboldened by landing two (The Irishman, Marriage Story) of the nine Best Picture nods last year and coming close to a third with The Two Popes.  Of course no studio ever has only hits but they've already released Da 5 Bloods, i'm Thinking of Ending Things, The Boys in the Band, and Da 5 Bloods and still to come are The Prom, The Life Ahead, Pieces of a Woman, The Midnight Sky, Hillbilly Elegy, and tonight's topic: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom so they'll probably do well this year with an overall nomination tally. How many actual Best Picture contenders is a more difficult question.

About Ma Rainey...

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AFI Fest: New Order

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

It’s not often that I truly regret watching a movie. The rare occasions on which it does happen make me question my policy of reading as little as possible about a film before I see it. I might have, for instance, read these important disclaimers from Elisa’s brief rave review of Venice Film Festival Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize winner New Order: “it feels like your hope for the future of humanity is being beaten to death” and “‘Chilling’ does not even begin to describe the act of witnessing this story play out. Do not get attached to any of the characters.” I agree fully with those warnings and would add a few of my own when it comes to breaking down this brutal film…

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