Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 2:20PM by Nathaniel R
This awards season keeps throwing us unpleasant curveballs. First Bohemian Rhapsody took the top prize at the Globes and now, the Director's Guild of America has decided to up and agree with the Globes exactly on the Best Director list.
Their nominations and statistical hand-wringing after the jump...
Tuesday, December 18, 2018 at 7:34PM What's newly available for home viewing this week? Herewith a very quick survey of new releases and/or great deals
DVD/Blu-Ray
• All About Nina -Festival critics loved it (and Mary Elizabeth Winstead's performance) but it was lost in theaters. Can it find a second life now?
• Fahrenheit 11/9 -Michael Moore didn't make the doc finalist list this year but his new doc is now on DVD
• A Simple Favor -Paul Feig and two terrific actresses, perfectly cast, delivered one of the year's best comic surprises
• Venom - The Spider-Man spinoff that was so successful we're sure to get loads of other villain spinoffs of superhero movies. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to threaten you.
New iTunes 99¢ Deals
I do not know what possessed them but they have a TON of great films for 99¢ this week (there's usually just a couple of must-sees). That's a price point we can get behind for streaming especially since otherwise you're at the whim of Netflix and Prime's extremely limited movie menus. You might want to check out 1985, Austin based filmmaker Yen Tan's latest LGBT drama. This one is in black and white and about a young man (Cory Michael Smith) who returns home to his parents in Texas (Michael Chiklis and an excellent Virginia Madsen) to say goodbye during the AIDS epidemic.
SO MANY FAMOUS FILMS FOR 99¢ THIS WEEK: Airplane, Annie Hall, Beetlejuice, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Birdcage, Black Hawk Down, The Black Stallion, Blue Velvet, Boyhood, Capote, A Clockwork Orange, Eat Drink Man Woman, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Gravity, Gremlins, Hairspray, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Heat, Kung Fu Hustle, Inherent Vice, Leave No Trace, Leaving Las Vegas, Lenny, The Madness of King George, The Magnificent Seven, Manhattan, Marty, Memento, Midnight Cowboy, Moonstruck, Moulin Rouge!, My Cousin Vinny, Mystic Pizza, Point Break, Raging Bull, Rainman, Spy, Sweeney Todd, Terminator 2, and Under the Skin.
This feels like my village. It's drier there but it feels like it.
Brand New Streaming
• Roma - Netflix's Best Picture hopeful is now streaming. Turn off your phone and all the lights. Then turn the sound way up. In other words treat it like a true cinematic experience if you're watching it at home. After Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Gravity (among others) we think it's safe to say that Alfonso Cuarón has earned the world's full attention.
1985, A Simple Favor, Alfonso Cuarón, All About Nina, Roma, Venom, Yen Tan, iTunes, streaming Friday, December 14, 2018 at 11:01AM by Nathaniel R
On Monday the 87 movie wide official list of Academy Award Foreign Film submissions will be whittled down to 9 titles. It's a merciless cull -- why aren't their 15 finalists as in Documentary? -- and even more ignominious is the knowledge that less that 50% of those that are deemed finalists will be discarded at the last second before they can taste victory. At least with a 10 wide list, just one more title, it would be kinder, giving you a 50/50 chance. That would feel like a toss of the die and thus more whimsical than unkind in the long run.
But nevertheless, until that fateful cull on Monday, all the competitors in the huge foreign film category can feel excited about their prospects. Here's a last look behind the scenes at the field. We've previously watched the trailers, broke the list down by genre, and discussed the female directors, first time filmmakers, and international hunks.
Today we conclude the general field coverage with the 11 directors who ought to be the most familiar with the game at this point...
Friday, December 7, 2018 at 7:30AM As is our habit we polled Team Film Experience and web friends on the Golden Globe nominations. This will come in two parts but we'll start with a cleanse by shaking off the bad feelings. We must bid a fond fist-shaking farewell to our favorites that the Globes shunned and reveal the nominations that confuse us.
We think you'll also enjoy the part where we choose which Best Director would best dramatize our moods while watching the nominations. Ready? Here goes...
1. Which omission most galls you?
MURTADA: Widows. Viola Davis for Widows. Elizabeth Debicki for Widows. Steve McQueen for Widows. It had many opportunities to get mentioned and zilch.
JASON ADAMS: Toni Collette and Carey Mulligan, the drinks are on me. [MORE AFTER THE JUMP...]
Tuesday, October 30, 2018 at 12:32PM by Jason Adams
It's tempting to immediately call this "great news" and it is a positive... but it's also a bit like spinning sunshine out of an abusive relationship too -- Netflix is apparently set to announce they're going to be screening Alfonso Cuarón's Roma in "select cities" for two full weeks before the movie drops onto their streaming platform on December 14th. That means November 30th or so.
Deadline says it should be around 12 U.S. cities total, and that Cuarón insists all the theaters it plays are Dolby Atmos eqipped, which is a thing you'll understand once you see the film and take in its astonishingly rich soundtrack. (Although given the fact that most people are going to be watching this on their iPads while they're cooking, maybe he should just encourage as many theaters as possible?)
You can read Nathaniel's review of the film from TIFF right here - I didn't get the chance to review it out of NYFF myself but if you'd like my opinion it's the best movie I've seen this year, and if you can at all make it to one of these theaters, do. It's a total sense experience - the images, the sound, they really do envelope you and transport you to another world like only cinema at its finest can. Netflix owes us all a theatrical run, and I'm glad they seem to be figuring that out. Baby steps...
Alfonso Cuarón, Netflix, Roma 