Almost There: Joanne Woodward in "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds"

by Cláudio Alves

In anticipation of the upcoming 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the next few weeks of the Almost There series will be dedicated to performances that won big at the Croisette and went on to some Oscar buzz. That being said, the first entry in this quasi-miniseries didn't convert Cannes plaudits into industry awards attention. The opposite happened. After opening commercially in the USA at the end of 1972, Paul Newman's third directorial effort, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, got slotted into the main competition of the following year's Cannes Film Festival. By the time Joanne Woodward won the festivities' Best Actress prize, her new Oscar dreams were already busted…

Click to read more ...

The heartbreaking beauty of "Brief Encounter"

by Cláudio Alves

Ever since I listened to Robert Altman's commentary track on the Gosford Park DVD, I've bristled at the idea that someone needs to be a certain age to enjoy a film. In that bonus feature, Altman mentions that Gosford Park has nothing to offer to fourteen-year-old boys, and they shouldn't get to watch it. As a fourteen-year-old boy for whom Gosford Park was a favorite, I felt personally attacked. A bit more than a decade later, I've grown less annoyed at such blanket statements about age and movie appreciation. As it turns out, there are films that can gain something when the audience seeing them is more mature. You may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with Brief Encounter or our 1946 celebration? Apologies for my long-windedness.

I'm trying to introduce a personal realization I had. While I might have loved Brief Encounter when I was a teen, I knew not of its power. Now, I think it's one of the best and most devastating films ever made…

Click to read more ...

Almost There: Myrna Loy in "The Best Years of Our Lives"

by Cláudio Alves

The 19th Academy Awards were, in some regard, a celebration of the war's end, a reckoning with its immediate consequences. We can see it in the embrace of European cinema, an industry rising from the ashes, with nods for films like the Italian Neorealist Rome, Open City, and the French poetry of Children of Paradise. American cinema, America itself, was also still reeling from its hard-won victory. The scars were fresh and bloody when William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives won the Best Picture Oscar. The production portrays the lives of three military men returning home after the war's end, traumatized and still recovering, adapting back to civilian life. It was the perfect champion for these postwar Oscars.

Nevertheless, not even the picture's awards success could spell away some of its performers' chronic bad luck when it came to movie awards. After decades as one of Hollywood's greatest stars, Myrna Loy still couldn't get herself an Oscar nomination…

Click to read more ...

Yes No Maybe So: The Eyes of Tammy Faye

by Nathaniel R

The Eyes of Tammy Faye was once the title of a popular 2000 documentary and now it's the title of a biopic about the rise and fall of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, with the emphasis being on the more sympathetic Tammy (who is no longer with us, having died of cancer in the Aughts). For you youngsters out there they were VERY famous in the 1980s with their scandal and downfall happening in 1989. The movie is directed by Michael Showalter (The Big Sick, Hello My Name is Doris) and gives plum roles to Oscar nominees Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain as the famous fallen couple. Will it be great, terrible, a mix of both simultaneously or (most dangerously) blandly mediocre? Will it be up for all the Oscars or none of them? Let's give this the full Yes No Maybe So™ treatment after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Almost There: Gena Rowlands in "Opening Night"

by Cláudio Alves

It's fair to say that Gena Rowlands is one of the most important screen actors of the 20th century. Her films made with husband, director, and costar John Cassavetes helped usher in a new kind of immersive realism that would thrive in the American indie scene for decades after the pair's heyday. To honor this acting genius, the Criterion Channel curated a collection of 10 films that feature some of Rowlands' most acclaimed work. For the Almost There series, I'm interested in those achievements that got some awards glory while not scoring any recognition from the Academy. After her Oscar nomination for 1974's A Woman Under the Influence, Gena Rowlands returned to the awards discussion with 1977's Opening Night…

Click to read more ...