Streaming: Netflix is still a mini-haven for foreign films

The Wailling was the 3rd most popular South Korean movie in the US last year after Train to Busan and The Handmaidenby Brian Zitzelman

The accepted mindset is that Netflix Instant is no longer a paradise for cinephiles. There are countless things to binge, sure, but large swaths of those are the service's original series and TV series from other networks. For moviegoers interested in material beyond the recent blockbusters or Hollywood fare, the pickings are much much slimmer than they once were. For example, those spurred to view the work of Meryl Streep after her powerful speech at Sunday's Golden Globes have only five streaming options, two of them being documentaries. A Hepburn fanatic, be it for Katharine or Audrey, has but two pictures to choose from.  

Yet there remains one avenue where Netflix secretly and continually excels; foreign cinema...

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Podcast: "Silence" and "20th Century Women"

Nick and Nathaniel and special guest Chris Feil (who you read hear at TFE at least twice a week) talk new flicks in our post Golden Globe/DGA nominations world.

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Globe & DGA intro...
04:00 Martin Scorsese's Silence 
18:31 Extremely wandering conversation alert: Silence, 20th Century Women, Paterson, Rogue One, new movie trailers...
27:00 The brilliant 20th Century Women
39:50 Aquarius, Demon, Pervert Park

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? Are you planning to watch Aquarius on Netflix?

Silence & 20th Century Women

Most Coveted Things from 2016 Films

Year in Review. Every afternoon, a new wrap-up. Today Murtada with a wish list...

What did you covet the most on the big or small screen this year? Was it a costume, a prop, or even a place or living thing? Here is my personal list in case you haven't yet completed your Christmas shopping.

Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard’s white linen costumes in Allied
Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard play a Canadian and a French spy respectively, who meet in Casablanca. They take an excursion to the desert outside the city right before completing their very dangerous assignment. They practise shooting with firearms, they bond, they fall in lust. All the while wearing gorgeous white linen on khakis. It must be the gorgeous desert. Or maybe the longing. Or could be just how breezy and stylish these linen costumes are.

Lunchboxes, records, and living things after the jump...

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Here's to the Ladies Who Lush

Year in Review. Each afternoon, a new wrap up list. Today Steven with our first wine soaked entry...

A lot of us were taken by surprise by the results of the election, and now we find ourselves living in a post “11/8” world. Since that day, how many of you have spent a quiet evening at home pondering the winding road ahead with a giant glass of red wine for company? I know I have. If you answered yes, you're not alone in this and you have fine actressy counterparts. Some of 2016’s best narrative moments have played out just this way. Our screens, large and small, have been filled with fierce femmes sipping some wine, reflecting on life, death, pain, joy…you know, existence.

Join us in tipping a glass to some of the best of those scenes (possible spoilers ahead)...

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NYFF: Sonia Braga in "Aquarius"

Manuel here reporting from the New York Film Festival and reminding you that Sonia Braga is a goddess of cinema 

Aquarius is the name of a building in Recife where Doña Clara (a resplendent Sonia Braga) has made her life. The apartment she lives in, which is littered with books and old LPs (she was once a famed music journalist), once belonged to her aunt. Indeed, Kleber Mendonça Filho first introduces us to the Aquarius and to the apartment back when Clara was a young woman who’d recently battled breast cancer, a key detail her aunt brings up in the midst of a birthday celebration. In this lively opening sequence, the camera pauses on an old furniture piece before giving us a glimpse of even livelier days of the older woman celebrating her birthday surrounded by family. We see a memory flash before us of a heated sexual encounter, her lingering gaze having triggered an old but cherished memory...

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