Best Limited Performances, Breakthrough Actors, and more...

by Nathaniel R

I'm currently in a mad-dash effort to wrap up the 2021 film year before the Oscars. This means our own awards need to be completed. On the Film Bitch Award pages you've already seen the Oscar parallel categories but now the "Extra" Acting categories are complete...

• Best Actress in a Limited Role
• Best Actor in a Limited Role
• Breakthrough Performer
• Best Juvenile Performance (Under 18)
• Best Vocal of MoCap Performance (new category)
• Best Ensemble
• Best Casting 

So click on over for odes to Vanessa Bayer, Ana de Armas, Harriet Samson Harris, Moses Ingram, Britne Oldford, David Clavel, Bradley Cooper, Barry Keoghan, Chris Messina, Channing Tatum, Stephanie Beatriz, Mike Rianda, Woody Norman, David Alvarez, Simu Liu, and many more...

Sundance: 'Call Jane' is worth answering

By Ben Miller

Handsomely filmed and admirably performed, Oscar-nominated Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy makes her feature film directorial debut with Call Jane. Elizabeth Banks stars as Joy, a traditional suburban Chicago housewife in the 1960s. Joy has a loving but busy lawyer husband Will (Chris Messina) and a 14-year-old daughter Charlotte (Grace Edwards). Joy is newly pregnant, and keeps having dizzy spells and passes out in her kitchen. Her doctor diagnoses a congenital heart blockage that threatens her life, unless the pregnancy is terminated - the only treatment...

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Lunchtime Poll: When was the last time a movie or show gave you whiplash?

by Nathaniel R

- Tell me who you are!
- I'm the worst mistake you'll ever mistake.

Watching I Don't Care (reviewed by Christopher) was a whiplash experience. I was absolutely loving it until I suddenly wasn't. Thirty-six minutes into the movie Dean (Chris Messina) arrives into Marla's (Rosamund Pike) office, to start what is essentially act two of a three act. Two sharks begin speaking in human voices, their teeth gleaming imagining fleshy bites and blood in the water. It's a superb scene. A few minutes later another violent verbal duet with Dianne Wiest.  All three actors are on absolute fire with impeccably judged reaction shots, expressive body language, and nastily imaginative line-readings. I Care A Lot felt, in that ten minute stretch, like it was taking off into the stratosphere. This is an "A" grade pitch-black comedy! The movie throws everything at you thereafter -- incidents, twists, more verbal duels, violence, and a score so aggressively present you want to remind it that Rosamund Pike has top billing-- but it's a case of either too much or rapidly dimishing returns.  I was actively annoyed and disappointed for the entire third act. 

When was the last time this happened to you? Love and hate in almost equal measure while watching a movie?

The Fantabulous Style of "Birds of Prey"

by Cláudio Alves

There was a time when super-hero movies were colorful circuses of artifice and joy. Remember the pop iconography of Christopher Reeves' Superman, Tim Burton's Batman or the Punk stylings of Tank Girl? It all changed with the dawn of the 21st century. X-Men brought on an era of heroes dressed in many tedious iterations of leather jumpsuits, while Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy made grittiness cool again. Explosions of poppy color were out and grim pseudo-realism was in.

The DC Comics flicks took the trend to its desaturated limit, but even the MCU is guilty of indulging in this aesthetic stagnation. Fortunately, some films break the convention, be it the Afrofuturistic haute couture of Black Panther or Aquaman's glitzy excess. We can add Birds of Prey to that elite club of stylish super-hero flicks…

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Sharp Objects: Episode 6 "Cherry"

by Nathaniel R

As you may have noticed we've been passing Sharp Objects around baton style amongst the team. I'm offended, offended I say, that Chris didn't spend 1000 words and nearly as many screen caps or gifs on that filthy filthy sex scene between Amy Adams and Chris Messina in the previous episode "Closer". In truth I nearly abandoned the series after my second episode duties were done but then I began to feel guilty that I was abandoning my teammates without commenting on their pieces so I binged the past four episodes back-to-back and finally perked up once, ahem, Messina did...

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