Monty @ 100: Friendship, Tragedy and "Raintree County"

by Cláudio Alves

Montgomery Clift's legacy is as defined by tragedy as it is by acting glory. Robert Lewis, his teacher at the famed Actors Studio, would famously describe Monty's downfall as "the longest suicide in Hollywood history". Until now, this centennial celebration has mostly avoided gossip and the dark shadow of doom clouding over the actor's biography. However, as we arrive at his ninth feature, the context of what was happening off-screen is too important to be dismissed…

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1972: Oversharing with "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"

TFE will be periodically looking back at the 1972 film year before we hit the Supporting Actress Smackdown next Sunday. Here's Paolo. 

This is going to sound like I’m overestimating my writing power but here goes. The symbolism within Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Oscar's Best Foreign Film winner of 1972, is easy to write about. Up to interpretation, as they say. What isn’t easy is writing about the feelings the movie evokes. In short, I might be explaining jokes, which slightly offends me as a fan of comedy. But I’m going to do it anyway, since the humor is the first thing that comes to mind in writing about what is arguably Buñuel’s most personal movie. 

The film is about six white bourgeois people who just want to eat but someone or something keeps interrupting them. (I have the same dream... but it's not about food.)

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Showbiz History: Dead Poets, The Crown, and Annie Potts' Debut

Happy birthday June 2nd-ers! Here's what was happening in showbiz or showbiz-related history on the day you were born...

1740 The Marquis de Sade is born. Lives on in immortal infamy and morphs into Geoffrey Rush in 2000 for the SAG & Golden Globe nominated Quills. I always forget that that movie WON Best Picture at the NBR and then wasn't even Oscar nominated for Best Picture (a thing that doesn't happen super often.)

1865 The American Civil War reaches a major turning point signalling the end (basically) when the final Confederate army ceases to exist with a surrender in Missississippi. There's a million movies on the matter (well, not that event in particular). The wounds have obviously become reinfected of late, so expect even more.

1904 Athlete and movie star Johnny Weismuller born in Austria-Hungary (in what is now Romania)...

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Yes No Maybe So: "The Beguiled"

#vengefulbitches forever

The teaser for Sofia Coppola's remake of The Beguiled (2017) is upon us and it is glorious if surprisingly faithful. In fact, if you watched the original 1971 movie with us during the last season of Hit Me With Your Best Shot you'll be hard pressed to spot many immediate differences beyond of course the new cast. Nicole Kidman takes the Geraldine Page role (we worship Kidman but good luck topping one of Page's juiciest star turns), Colin Farrell gets the Clint Eastwood wounded womanizing soldier part, Kiki steps in for Elizabeth Hartman, and Oona Laurence (who was so good opposite Gyllenhaal in Southpaw) plays the Pamela Ferdin role. 

If you haven't yet seen the trailer or would like to watch it again (I'm on round 5) it's after the jump along with a short "Yes No Maybe So"...

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Halfway Mark: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (So Far)

Mainstream cinema is having a rough summer, qualitatively... but let's honor what mainstream cinema often does best, for this episode of the Halfway Mark Review. Which is to say the broad strokes of Good vs Evil.

Not that mainstream movies always ace this low bar, mind you: Marvel remains mostly terrible at crafting villains, Batman v Superman was so inept that it didn't even understand that you need heroes in superhero movies. X-Men Apocalypse was a crowded repetitive mess on either side of the good/bad divide. But enough about stinkers - happy thoughts:  BESTS! 

Heroes of the Year

• The Avengers (Chris Evans, Cast & FX Team) in Captain America: Civil War
Can't they all just get along? While it'd be silly to say that Civil War doesn't tell you which team to be on (Hint: it's in the title) it does offer up enough sympathetic furrowed brow angst when looking at Team Iron Man that it's easy to understand both sides of this argument. That's half the battle in the selling the film. The other half is staging the battles so that everyone survives but looks deeply affected by the blows, which it also does well. Black Panther and Spider-Man are wonderful new additions, and Black Widow again demonstrates that she's the swiftest, most asskicking, and consistently double sided tape that arguably holds these movies together. If only Captain America, Marvel's most successful comic-to-film translation, weren't having to fight for so much attention in his own damn franchise; Iron Man never had to that. 

• Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in Gods of Egypt
What's that you say? 'Gods of Egypt is a terrible movie!' Why yes, Yes it is. But that doesn't mean I can't honor Nikolaj's well shaped silly/serious turn as a blinded God. He's one of only two actors who knows what kind of movie he's in (the other is Geoffrey Rush, even better with the heightened camp) and he's fun to watch, helping to make this a sort of enjoyable terrible movie insteaad of just a terrible movie.  

Zootopia, Warcraft, The Conjuring 2 and more after the jump...

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