Almost There: Rita Moreno in "The Ritz"

by Cláudio Alves

She just turned 90, but Rita Moreno is on the top of her game. The 1961 Best Supporting Actress champion is back on the silver screen thanks to Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. While not playing Anita this time around, Moreno still manages to steal the spotlight and deliver one of the movie's most impactful songs, the emotional high point of the entire production. As pundits argue over the nonagenarian's Oscar chances, it's a good time to look back at her filmography and consider the last time she was in the awards conversation. After the success of West Side Story, Moreno's most acclaimed movie role was probably that of Googie Gomez in the big-screen adaptation of The Ritz…

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How Had I Never Seen..."Planes, Trains and Automobiles"

By Ben Miller

There isn't a long list of well-regarded Thanksgiving films, but John Hughes' 1987 comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles is defintely near the top of it.  It took me 30 years to catch up, but I finally have!. Featuring two pitch-perfect performances from stars Steve Martin and John Candy, the film continues to elicit laughter after all these years.

Neil Page (Martin) is an advertising executive on a business trip to New York City.  Eager to return to his family in Chicago for Thanksgiving, he attempts to hail a cab to the airport.  After losing a cab to Jake Briggs (Kevin Bacon from Hughes' She's Having a Baby) and getting extorted by a lawyer, his cab is inadvertently stolen by Del Griffith (Candy)...

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Winona Ryder @ 50: "Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice"

Team Experience is celebrating Winona Ryder this week as she turns 50.

by Ginny O'Keefe

He’s the ghost with the most, babe. It’s Beetlejuice. The wacky, morbid and over the top 1988 Tim Burton joint  revolves around Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) a couple living in an idyllic Connecticut countryside. They are tragically killed after their car swerves off a bridge and into a river. The thing is the film keeps following them and their perspective. Tracing their steps all the way back home which is when they realize…they’re dead! Once home they discover a book titled "Handbook for the Recently Deceased". Soon enough their house is sold to the Deetz family. Charles, his wife Delia and their daughter Lydia all moving out into the country from New York City. They begin to tear apart the house and make it their own. Barbara and Adam want them gone so it’s time to start haunting. Eventually they turn to someone (or something in the form of Michael Keaton) they never should have for help: Betelgeuse (pronunciation: beetle juice). 

The greatness of this film is its supreme wackiness. Nothing is too out there for this movie. It’s got sandworms, moving sculptures, Harry Belafonte musical numbers, dead caseworkers, Catherine O’Hara wearing gloves as a headband, goofy production design, and a perfect balancing of message and escapism. My favorite character in the film is Lydia played by the great Winona Ryder...

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Nathaniel in Venice: "Official Competition" and "107 Mothers" surprise

Nathaniel reporting from Venice, a smorgasbord of days 3 through ??? ... I've lost track of days. What is time?

107 Mothers (Péter Kerekes)
A ‘tough' movie doesn’t have to be hard to watch. 107 Mothers isn’t ‘easy’ in its characters or themes, but it’s a surprisingly gripping watch, even entertaining. For a few scenes in the beginning of 107 Mothers, a new film from a Slovakian director Peter Kerekes, it feels like you’ve stumbled into an unfeeling doc about a women’s prison for violent offenders. And, indeed, this narrative feature is based on real stories about a specific prison in Odessa, Ukraine and Kerekes usually does documentaries. The establishing scenes interview several of the inmates, all pregnant, about their crimes which usually involve murdering their boyfriend/husband or his lover. It’s a curiously incongruous feeling that settles in: how could such hard-eyed numb women muster enough passion to commit a “crime of passion"?

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Emmy Analysis: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

The Film Experience Team takes a look at the episode submissions for major Emmy categories.

 

By Nathaniel R

Confession as lede: I chose this specific actor race when the Team divvied up the categories because I genuinely had no idea who I'd vote for when I heard the nominees. That's partially because of Emmy's silly voting rules which end up burying their acting fields with one show but partially because even within Ted Lasso, where I assume my vote will go, I love everyone. So come with me on this real-time (while I'm writing it that is) journey to find out where my imaginary vote lands and who Emmy might choose and why. I've reskimmed each episode or watched again in its entirety, to think this over.

(NOTE: If there is an asterisk by the Emmy nomination it means they have additional Emmy nods in non-acting categories. Only the acting nomination statistics are listed below)

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