Almost There: Charles Melton in "May December"

by Cláudio Alves

Apologies for the delay in what was supposed to be the Almost There series' glorious return. Since the Oscars are less than one week away, let's see if I can get things back on schedule, starting with a look at one of the season's most disappointing "snubs." When May December premiered in Cannes, many singled out Charles Melton's performance, starting a narrative with great potential. Here was a Riverdale heartthrob making his way into the big leagues, proving he could go toe to toe with such awards-winning stars as Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore. Sadly, not long after a Gotham victory, Melton's campaign lost steam, victim of his film's failure to secure industry support, and he ended outside of AMPAS' Best Supporting Actor ballot…

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Split Decision: "Past Lives"

No two people feel the exact same way about any film. Thus, Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of this year’s Oscar movies. Here's Mark Brinkerhoff and Lynn Lee on Past Lives...

MARK: Past Lives, fresh off its big wins at the Independent Spirit Awards, is, I think it’s safe to say, the indie darling of this Oscar season. American Fiction aside, no 2023 indie film seems to endure with as much feeling in cinephile's imagination than Past Lives, more than a year after its premiere at Sundance. But maybe I’m projecting here, because I love, LOVE, love! Past Lives, the beautiful, heartfelt film debut of real-deal filmmaker Celine Song. What say you?

LYNN: Past Lives is absolutely this year’s indie movie that could – the one that premiered with relatively little fanfare at Sundance only to build a tidal wave of support over the course of 2023. Not just support: love like yours, and not just love from critics, but from regular moviegoers. I can’t tell you how many friends or even casual acquaintances have told me, unprompted, that Past Lives was the best film they’ve seen in a long time...

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Did She Do It?

by Cláudio Alves

Between Messi charming his way through the Nominees Luncheon and last Sunday's BAFTA victory in Best Original Screenplay, Anatomy of a Fall is entering the Oscar voting period with an upswing of exposure and widespread love. Justine Triet's Palme d'Or champion has proven a beguiling mystery, sustained by a performance that leaves the viewer drowning in ambiguity. According to Sandra Hüller, she was directed to play a writer accused of murdering her husband as if she were innocent, but the film never discloses whether Sandra did it or not.

Indeed, when perusing reviews, online reactions, or just conversations between cinephiles, nobody seems to agree. Some find it evident that she's guilty, while others believe there's no way her husband's death was murder…

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Queering the Oscars: "Heavenly Creatures" for Best Original Screenplay

For Pride Month, Team Experience is looking at LGBTQ+ related Oscar nominations...

by Nick Taylor

Hello! Are you an enterprising young queer and/or MILF lover fresh off the newest season of Yellowjackets looking for another story of dangerous, imaginative, mentally unwell young women starring THE Melanie Lynskey? Would you like it to focus on an obsessive life-bond so intense it has almost no choice but to be queer? What if this one was based on a true story? Then have I got a film for you! Try your hand at Heavenly Creatures, the restaging of the infamous Parker-Hulme murder case in 1954 New Zealand about two pubescent girls so wrapped up in the fantasy world they’ve created over two years of isolating friendship that the only way the can imagine protecting each other from life’s unsustainable realities is to kill Mom.

Heavenly Creatures was directed by Peter Jackson, an inspired, imaginative artist whose soul would soon be held hostage by The Shire for decades. The film brought Jackson to international attention for the first time in his career, and netted an Original Screenplay nomination at the 1994 Oscars for himself and his writing/life partner Fran Walsh to boot. This is the sort of Screenplay nomination I deeply admire the Academy for making, even if I wish this pocket of support could have somehow translated to love for the direction, the actresses, the cinematography, and every technical element necessary to bringing Borovnia to life...

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Queering the Oscars: Visconti's "The Damned"

by Cláudio Alves

At the 42nd Academy Awards, the Best Original Screenplay category was a rarity of historical importance. You wouldn't know it in 1969, but all nominees would be studied for years to come. Whether seen as seminal works in their author's careers or cultural milestones with much to reveal about the society that produced them, the films form an illustrious bunch, going from Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice's pop psychology to the revisionist brutality of The Wild Bunch. The winner was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a western which has inspired queer readings for over half a century though it was far from the queerest picture in the race. 

That would be Luchino Visconti's The Damned, marking the start of his German trilogy, the international metamorphosis of his cinema, and the most open expression of gay sensibilities in his oeuvre to that point…

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