Best International Film Reviews: Lebanon, Montenegro, and Morocco

by Cláudio Alves

We're just a few days away from the Academy's announcement of the shortlists in various categories, including Best International Film. And yet, our travels through the 93 submissions for the 95th Academy Awards continue unabated. This time, let's look toward the Mediterranean, a great sea whose coastline encompasses three continents. Sadly, only one of those is guaranteed representation in the shortlist, AMPAS' European bias forever hurting whatever diversifying objectives the institution might have. Here, however, such biases will be put aside, with one film from each continent composing this Mediterranean face-off. Consider a Lebanese memory box, a Montenegrin elegy, and a Moroccan caftan…

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Best International Film Reviews: China, India, and Japan

by Cláudio Alves

For many, this year's Best International Film race will forever be remembered with an added asterisk, a reminder that the outcome would have been different had India submitted RRR instead of Last Film Show. This is not a commentary on artistic quality, merely award prognostication. The action blockbuster keeps racking up honors, while the country's official submission remains under-discussed. If neither succeeds, it will continue a sad Oscar trend. As one of the world's leading film industries, it's notable how little India has factored in these awards' history, indicating AMPAS' biases as well as India's own sometimes surprising submission choices.

While considering India's fate, let's also peruse the titles selected by Asia's other major film-producing nations… 

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Team Experience Predix - Round 2: Doc, International & Animation

Every other week, we’re polling The Film Experience Writers on where the Oscar race stands. These predictions were done just a day before the Golden Globes announcement. Most of the Best Picture contenders were cited by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (except for Women Talking) but this set of predictions does not account for The Banshees of Inisherin suddenly leading the pack at the Globes.

BEST PICTURE
Yes, The Fabelmans continues to sit on top of most people’s predictions. Still, the only place to go is down...

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Best International Film Reviews: Armenia, Canada and Paraguay

by Cláudio Alves

Submitting a documentary is a risky strategy in the Best International Film race. Since Waltz with Bashir in 2008, only four other non-fiction features have been able to score nominations in the category – Cambodia's The Missing Picture, North Macedonia's Honeyland, Romania's Collective, and Denmark's Flee. None of them won. Still, hope is everlasting, and one often finds that some of the year's most fascinating submissions happen to be documentaries. The same is true for our current season, with two titles going as far as incorporating animation, like Waltz with Bashir and Flee. Mayhap they can repeat their antecessors' success at getting nominated. It's unlikely but not impossible…

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Review: "Holy Spider" weaves a web of provocations

by Cláudio Alves

"Holy Spider" | © UtopiaThe world's obsession with true crime is as old as crime itself. With every new format and possible presentation, another wave of such media arises, making us think, each time, that the collective obsession is a new phenomenon. Oh, how wrong we are, for as much as things change, they remain the same. One aspect constant with every iteration of the true-crime craze is the glorification of the killer. False equivalencies manifest, equating human monsters to criminal geniuses. Great purposes are projected unto them, ideas of grandeur and abstract magnetism. From popular podcasts to Netflix's Jeffrey Dahmer show, true-crime narratives make celebrities out of murderers and exploit truth into legend.

Ali Abbasi's latest film challenges this state of affairs. Reenacted violence and political commentary are at the center of Holy Spider's controversial reputation, but its demystification of the serial killer figure constitutes the picture's most radical provocation…

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