Split Decision: “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

No two people feel the same exact way about any film. Thus, Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of each of the big awards season movies this year. Here’s Abe Friedtanzer and Baby Clyde talking about Everything Everywhere All at Once.

ABE: Baby Clyde, I hope all is well! I'm eager to start talking about a film that I absolutely loved, Everything Everywhere All at Once. I actually am very late to the party on this one. I wasn't seeing films in theaters yet back when it was originally released. I finally caught it about two months ago in early November and was impressed that it more than lived up to the hype. The performances are all phenomenal, and it's just drowning in creativity in a way that so few films are these days. But, if I'm to understand correctly, you don't agree. Before I get in to what else I loved about it, can you tell me what you didn't?

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Almost There: Hong Chau in "Downsizing"

by Cláudio Alves

With The Whale in theaters and The Menu currently streaming on HBO Max, it's a good time to be a Hong Chau fan. For many of us, she's the best part of both productions, finding the humanity within the former's misery, acing the stylized line readings and deliberate oddness of the gastronomic-inclined latter. Thanks to those achievements, the Asian-American actress is back in the Oscar discussion, working through her second bid for a Best Supporting Actress nomination. The first time this happened was in 2017, when  Chau also proved herself the standout element of a movie with mixed reviews. Even those who hated Alexander Payne's Downsizing generally concede that her performance rises above the movie, shining brightly from within its failings.

Indeed, as Ngoc Lan Tran, Hong Chau is the best reason to watch the sci-fi satirical misadventure cum environmentalist existentialist crisis…

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Oscar Volley: the still bonkers-crowded Supporting Actress race

Here are Baby Clyde and Mark Brinkerhoff to discuss TFE's favorite category, Best Supporting Actress:

Jessie Buckley in WOMEN TALKING

MARK:  Happiest season, to all who celebrate! I love a supporting actress smackdown, in real time, don’t you?This is a blood bath, to be sure, although one thing I’m fairly certain of: There will be someone from  Women Talking and  Everything Everywhere All at Once. At this point, I’d say Claire Foy and/or Jessie Buckley and Jamie Lee Curtis and/or Stephanie Hsu could even form the bulk of the lineup.  Curtis definitely is gunning for it—will she be the third veteran, overdue actress in as many years (after Amanda Seyfried and Kirsten Dunst) to find herself finally nominated in supporting?. If Everything Everywhere All At Once overperforms, that could augur well for Hsu. (Wouldn’t it be something if we got four actors in a single film nominated again this year after The Power of the Dog did it just last year?)

My hunch is we’re likely to see a majority of first-timers in this category, which is always exciting...

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Interview: Sadie Sink on Her Powerhouse Performance in ‘The Whale’

By Abe Friedtanzer

Despite early buzz from fall festivals, The Whale has not turned out to be a slam-dunk awards season player. After being shut out by the Independent Spirit Awards, star Brendan Fraser has earned nominations from most other awards bodies, with supporting actress Hong Chau and playwright/screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter also picking up bids along the way. There are those who say that the film and Fraser’s performance are manipulative and highly overrated, but I’m firmly in the opposite camp;  I think The Whale is the best film of 2022.

Fraser and Chau aren’t the only ones who turn in tremendous performances. As Ellie, the daughter of Fraser’s Charlie, Sadie Sink bursts in with anger to confront a father who has never been there for her but, at this moment, seems deeply interested in her happiness. Sink was already the best thing about season four of Stranger Things, and it’s wonderful to see her deliver so well in a role like this...

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Almost There: Claire Foy in "First Man"

by Cláudio Alves

For a film to get two nominations in the Best Supporting Actress category isn't especially rare. Several titles vie for that double spot this year, though Women Talking appears to be most likely to succeed. Jessie Buckley was nominated for The Lost Daughter last season and feels poised to nab a second consecutive honor, while Claire Foy has the other juiciest role. Moreover, this isn't the first time the British actress made famous by The Crown has been a significant player in the Oscar race. Early in the 2018 awards season, she appeared to be a near-lock for her work in Damien Chazelle's First Man, wherein the actress played a variation on AMPAS' favorite stock character – the stalwart wife to "a great man" of history. 

As Women Talking is gracing theaters with a new buzzy Foy performance and Chazelle's First Man follow-up Babylon is almost upon us, let's look at her work in the Neil Armstrong biopic…

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