Friday, January 13, 2017 at 2:30PM 
This is the mantra I will hold close if Bening misses the Best Actress list and Mike Mills misses the Original Screenplay list for the grand wise funny altogether fantastic 20th Century Women. Consider that the final FYC as Oscar ballots close.
(Also it's how I'm going to survive 2017; I'm going to know so much about the world soon!)
Thursday, January 12, 2017 at 8:10PM by Daniel Crooke
While you will find ancient cities, hairy beasts, and moments of jaw-dropping audacity steering the rudder of its staggering runtime, you won’t hear a film score in Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann – an epic of the heart and soul that depends on its screenplay to direct emotional payoffs the way many films depend on their orchestra. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly globalizing yet regionally fractured Europe, the central couple in Toni Erdmann is not a pair of battle-scarred lovers or unlikely allies in combat but an estranged father and daughter, torn apart by generational attitudes in the culture war.
This central reconciliation resonates thematically now more than ever, at a time when capitalist societies across the Western world forgo compassion and human consequence in pursuit of a more profitable bottom line. In her hysterical, observant comedy, Ade crafts a squirrely, screwy rebuke to anesthetized corporate cold-heartedness but – more importantly – champions a disappearing social fabric by weaving together the frayed ends of a family unit...
FYC, Screenplays, Toni Erdmann Thursday, January 12, 2017 at 2:30PM By Tim
Over the course of 21 years and four features, Whit Stillman's dominant themes as a storyteller have remained steady: an affectionate contempt for the economically and intellectually well-off and their aspirations to become even better; and a love of using language as a dueling weapon, with characters using dialogue as a means of asserting superiority and dominance. In both of these respects, we might say that he's always been making Jane Austen movies. For what are Austen's books, if not loving but merciless dissections of the social codes of the upper-middle-class of her own world?
The marriage of Stillman and Austen was thus as inevitable as it proves to be welcome with Love & Friendship, which nobody could recklessly call "the best" Austen adaptation ever. But it might be the most Austen-esque...
Thursday, January 12, 2017 at 8:30AM By Glenn Dunks.
Cinderella. Mirror Mirror. Bright Star. I Am Love. Australia. Marie Antoinette. The list goes on.
The costume design branch so commonly gives films their single solitary Oscar nomination that it’s become a prognosticator mission of sorts to figure out which couture creations the branch will extend this particular honor to. They are also the branch most likely to ignore critical and commercial receptions and nominate based purely on the craft and that’s why we love them. Perhaps it is because costume designers have spent decades being the frills-and-sequin-loving daughter of Oscar when all he wanted was sons, but they use their unique privilege more wisely than others (we’re looking at you, composers!)
It was obvious, then, to me which film I should be championing here and it is Marion Boyce and Margot Wilson for The Dressmaker...
Wednesday, January 11, 2017 at 12:30PM 
by Sean Donovan
You sit down in a movie theater to see the latest biopic that has earned a superstar Oscar heat, and after the series of trailers for undoubtedly happier movies you could be seeing, you stare at a black screen. Gradually you hear something, a strong string note that quickly careens down the scale into dissonant whine. It’s immediately upsetting, destabilizing: flat and lacking grace when you were promised a classy portrait of one of America’s most iconic first ladies. So disjunctive it possesses a strange, ethereal beauty. It reminds me of the sound of an airplane flying overhead, fitting for a film where some of the most dramatic scenes occur onboard Air Force One.
Music is the standard-bearer for everything that makes Jackie an unusual Oscar contender...
