In Defense of Denzel Washington in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."

By Spencer Coile

Last year’s Best Actor race was highly contentious. Due to an influx of coverage surrounding sexual harassment charges, many people became uncomfortable with Casey Affleck's frontrunner status. This led some Oscar gurus to prognosticate a spoiler victory for Denzel Washington for his Fences  passion project. How close the voting was we'll never know but Washington and Affleck were considered to be neck-and-neck at the end.

Still, Affleck was victorious, leaving many (most notably, Brie Larson) unhappy or furious. While the narrative is not exactly the same for the new Best Actor race, there is one common denominator: Denzel Washington.

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Link Therapy

• Criterion Close Isabelle Huppert makes her picks! 
• i09 Netflix odd email phishing scam promotion of The Punisher (I received this too and was like hmmmm... clever but gross and no thank you)
• Gr8ter Days Ann Wedgeworth, a favorite of the National Society of Film Critics prizes in the late 70s and early 80s (Handle with Care, Sweet Dreams) and a Tony winner for a Chapter Two (which later became a film albeit without Wedgeworth) and a TV regular has died
• Boy Culture It only took 50+ years but the Star Trek franchise just got its first gay kiss via Star Trek: Discovery thanks and out actors Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz
• Playbill Broadway hit Come From Away, which is about passengers stranded in a small Newfoundland town during 9/11, is going to get a film version with the Broadway director and writers transferring over
• Tracking Board Mahershala Ali and Carmen Ejogo (YAS! She's so undervalued) will headline the third season of True Detective for HBO

Our Ongoing Collective Trauma
• HuffPost a fine piece by Matt Jacobs on loving Hollywood and the pop-culture machine but realizing how rotten its been since its inception when it comes to abuses of power and the treatment of women
• Deadline Marti Nixon on the recent allegations against Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner 
• Variety Matthew Weiner denies the allegations but admits to being angry on set a lot of the time and wishes he had behaved differently
• AV Club Lena Dunham defends a Girls writer accused of assault
• Nylon a personal essay from Evan Rachel Wood about what the psychotic hurricane of these past two years and what she's learned about herself and others during this awful decline in time. 
• Film School Rejects on the way film sites have been reacting (or not) to the growing list of accusations

Two Videos
On Hela's hello cool antler headpiece in Thor Ragnarok and the short teaser for Incredibles 2 (basically Jack Jack giggling and causing havoc with his laser beam eyes) 

Off Screen for Fun
• New Yorker Disney princes reimagined as allies

Prince Eric is extremely committed to female equality in his kingdom. He has so much to tell Ariel about the plight and oppression of women that he fails to notice that she doesn’t have a voice.

Denzel Back in the Oscar Race?

Chris here.

After it was such a surprise late addition to the TIFF lineup, it wasn't much of a shock that Roman J Israel, Esq. got one of the more muted responses of the festival's big premieres. But the film is coming right around the corner and we can expect a much more attentive response for its release now that we have more time to actually get excited for it. And from the looks of the new trailer, it looks like we'll be getting more of peak Denzel Washington after a near miss with Oscar in Fences.

So can this film build on the momentum that Washington had last year? The Best Actor race is on the thin side, aside from incoming behemoth Gary Oldman, so some movie star goodwill can't hurt. Writer/director Dan Gilroy certainly gave us a complex sociopolitical male vehicle with Nightcrawler and this looks like another layered morality tale, even with significantly less scabrousness than that debut. But if there's any actor today who can mine the full depth of a character's compromise and regret, it's Washington.

As for the film itself, it will have to overcome some already tepid reviews to register beyond the megastar. There is certainly some promise here in the trailer, even if I'm bracing myself to be enraged by yet another film sidelining the fabulous Carmen Ejogo and giving us Colin Farrell sans beard. Roman J Israel, Esq. opens on November 3.

Podcast: My Cousin Wonder Woman, The Beguiled

Well, that was quite a hiatus. The podcast is back though we might be a bit slow to rev up to weekly again and please excuse all our airconditioners and fans running in the background. We're melting here in NYC.

In this episode Nathaniel reunites with Joe and Nick to catch up and talk five newish movies.

Index (40 minutes)
00:01 "What's this lady for?" (Part 1)
02:20 The Beguiled
08:25 My Cousin Rachel
13:50 Wonder Woman
29:30 Beatriz at Dinner
33:30 It Comes at Night (*spoilers*)
37:45 "What's this lady for?" (Part 2)

Best Question I've ever been asked by a 3 1/2 year-old: "What's this lady for?" Where to even begin? #nicolekidman #babysitting #guncle

A post shared by Nathaniel R (@nathaniel_tfe) on Jun 24, 2017 at 9:14pm PDT

 

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? 

My Cousin Wonder Woman

Review: "It Comes at Night"

by Chris Feil

After last year’s Krisha, Trey Edward Shults returns to the horror of family dynamics with post-apocalyptic nightmare It Comes At Night. This time he’s equipped with higher production value and more familiar faces than that astute micro-budgeted debut, though Night is just as personal. His resulting sophomore feature is part Greek tragedy, part vague social polemic, and one of the most terrifying films in several years.

Set in a remote, wooded mini-mansion, a family has made their home a fortress from some unspecified apocalypse. The elderly father of Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) has fallen “sick”, leaving her husband Paul (Joel Edgerton) and son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) to dispatch of him for their own safety. The desperate invasion of another family (led by Christopher Abbott and Riley Keough) tests both the reclusive family’s empathy and rigorously protected lifestyle. Meanwhile, Travis is having increasingly vivid visions of the encroaching malignant threat that test his (and our) sense of reality.

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