Knight of Cups Top 5

Manuel here with a short list about Terrence Malick’s most recent outing. Knight of Cups will sit alongside Tree of Life and To the Wonder in what we might call the director’s spiritual trilogy and however you felt about those last two outings will color how you see his latest. Since the film is a roving set of overlapping and interlocking duets—we follow Christian Bale’s Rick, a successful Hollywood writer through Los Angeles and Las Vegas as he has dalliances with beautiful women and deals with the demons that afflict all troubled artists—I figured I’d pick out 5 pairs of Malick collaborators that truly shine in this dreamy poem of a film.

Consider it our version of praising the parts while remaining underwhelmed (or just ill-equipped) to praise the sum...

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Q&A Pt 2: Comic Winners? Revisiting Characters? Oscar Darlings of 2026?

Yesterday we got all the Leonardo DiCaprio questions out of the way so now on to other Reader Questions. Let's jump right in. Here's eleven questions from readers. You asked. I'm answering.

EUROCHEESE: What's your favorite comedy to win Best Picture?

NATHANIEL: Toss up between It Happened One Night (1934) and Tootsie (198---Damnit. Tootsie is >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Gandhi)

CHRIS JAMES: Sylvester Stallone now holds the record for the longest time between Oscar nominations for the same character (39 years between 1976 nomination and 2015 nomination). Which nominated roles would you love to see a sequel of 39 years after their original film with the same actor reprising the role? Is there some from the past year or are there any characters this year you would love to check in with 39 years down the road?

NATHANIEL: What a cool question! Unfortunately a lot of these characters might not be alive in 40 years... so we'll have to stick with (mostly) the younger players and wonder who still has story left in them? Brooklyn ends so winningly in the golden sunshine, so let's leave Eilis there. I'd say Ma & Jack from Room but I don't wish them anything but completely normal non-eventful lives after Room. 

Some of the "true life" characters died or died much sooner than 39 years after the events of the film.Which leaves us with Therese Belivet from Carol which is the correct answer. Rooney Mara will be 69 years old in 39 years so that puts her at the same age as Charlotte Rampling now...

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Steven Spielberg's Les Misérables?

Do you think he ever fantasized about directing it? With lil' Christian Bale as Gavroche perhaps? 

Contrarian Corner: The Big Short

For this edition of Contrarian Corner, we'll have to redub it "Conflicted Corner". Lynn Lee discusses her mixed feelings about the Oscar's primary dark horse.

In this year’s Best Picture race, The Big Short is the one title that virtually no one saw coming very far in advance.  Which is appropriate for a movie about an event that only a handful of people predicted. And while it’s fallen back a little in the shadow of The Revenant’s nomination-leading surge and Globe wins, it’s still very much in play for Oscar’s big prizes. With five nominations (fpicture, director, supporting actor, adapted screenplay, and editing) under its belt, as well as a strong performance both at the box office and the Critics Choice Movie Awards, who knows?

The Big Short's ascendance hasn’t gotten it much love here at TFE, where the prevailing reaction has been a mixture of incredulity and disdain.  I get it, especially if you’re mourning the omission of better films from Oscar’s best picture lineup.  And yet, dare I say I’m neither surprised nor dismayed at its inclusion, and on the whole am pleased at its success?  Yet also oddly conflicted.

Frankly, I enjoy The Big Short, while recognizing its limitations...  

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Women's Pictures - Mary Harron's American Psycho

Anne Marie continues a special horror month on "Women's Pictures"

Fun fact: American Psycho was the single most voted for film for the horror edition of Women's Pictures. Despite that, I almost didn't include it. This isn't because of some sudden onset of squeamishness on my part, or dislike of the film. American Psycho simply isn't a horror movie, at least not by conventional standards. American Psycho is director Mary Harron's dark Juvenalian satire of American consumerism, materialism, and the crisis of masculinity in the turn of the 21st century.

Though set in the 1980s, American Psycho is one of a handful of films from the late 1990s and early 2000s that violently pokes at the concept of modern masculinity. Like American Beauty and especially Fight Club, American Psycho confronts the idea of modern man chained to a desk, unfulfilled and overburdened by contemporary consumerist definitions of success. The titular Psycho is Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a music-obsessed Wall Street broker in the decade where everything, from hair to shoulder pads to paychecks, was bigger. Bateman has all of the plastic markers of success: trendy apartment, good haircut, designer cloths, WASP fiance, the right friends, and a killer business card. But under his flashy, fake veneer, Patrick is all id. He wants to kill. He wants to fuck. He wants to possess. [More...]

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