Saving Private Ryan @ 25: Robbed or Not?

by Cláudio Alves

As Oppenheimer enjoys tremendous success worldwide, another World War II movie turned summer blockbuster celebrates a quarter century. Though, of course, while Christopher Nolan's movie ponders history away from the battlefield, Steven Spielberg drops the viewer in the middle of carnage, violence smeared on your face until you can't take it anymore. Yes, it's been 25 years since Saving Private Ryan opened in cinemas, receiving immediate critical acclaim and frontrunner status by the awards pundits at most major publications. Come Oscar night, though, the war story took 'only' five awards. It lost the Best Picture trophy to Shakespeare in Love in an upset that angers many people to this day. 

To mark the anniversary, let's celebrate the film's undeniable qualities, investigate some of its drawbacks, consider its competition at the 71st Academy Awards, and relitigate the controversy. Was Saving Private Ryan robbed? Well…

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"The Assistant" is complicit and so are we

Here's Ren Jender on a Sundance movie that moved straight into theaters this weekend...

Writer-director Kitty Green's The Assistant (now open in NYC and LA) is a Jeanne Dielman-like examination of a woman who is the newest assistant in Harvey Weinstein's office (though he's never named) in the time before the revelations of his rape and harassment of women came to light. The film delves into how serial sexual harassment makes the entire office (and of course the industry) complicit, even when individuals try to do the right thing. 

The title character Jane (Julia Garner) is not clueless and she doesn't lack a conscience...

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Doc Corner: 'At the Heart of Gold' prizes the voice of survivors above all else

By Glenn Dunks

It has become somewhat unkind to describe a documentary as old fashioned or traditional. It seems to be that talking heads intercutting a single, linear story is somehow considered by some to be stodgy and boring. If you watch enough of them, you see recreations and animations and all sorts of gimmicky tricks to, I suppose, dazzle the viewer into thinking they are watching something that is more ‘cinematic’ than it is (whatever such a term may mean to you). They don’t always work, and in those time that they do in fact not work it can often harm a film, distracting from what could have been a, yes, simple, but usually better film. You could call it old fashioned or traditional.

Thanks heavens then that director Erin Lee Carr didn’t try any of that nonsense in the HBO documentary At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastic Scandal.

Even its title is so meat and potatoes that those who expect works of non-fiction to have evolved beyond the classical form will probably zone out just hearing the name. But Carr’s movie is one of such harrowing despair that anything other than clear, direct, unfussy filmmaking would have been all wrong.

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Review: The Current War (Director's Cut)

by Tony Ruggio

After more than a year of pre-release hell at the scissorhands of Harvey Weinstein and his terrible deeds, The Current War has finally seen the light of day. Tackling the industrial war over electricity between famed inventor Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and business magnate George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), it’s a good story well told. Well, after a rough first half, anyway. The epic narrative is rushed and contracted in the early going, before evening out and focusing more on character in the final stretch.

The breakneck pacing actually does the film a disservice, as we barely get to spend time with Edison, Westinghouse, or their creations before director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon barrels forward to the next moment in history. Classical themes of greed, power, and loss are threaded like any other biopic of powerful men, but the greatest subtext lays therein, where the two men differed so greatly...

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Links: Binoche in Berlin, Pfeiffer in Planning, and Endgame in Post-Production

• Gurus of Gold the latest charts on our Oscar predictions
• Coming Soon The Oscars are going hostless this year for the first time in decades but as it turns out they were originally going to go with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson who still hopes to do it someday
• Vanity Fair film insiders are speaking out about the Oscars intended changes. Thankfully many in the insider are as angry as we are about shunting some awards off air.

more after the jump including Avengers Endgame, Juliette Binoche in Berlin, Michelle Pfeiffer's smell, a new Pixar short, and the Gypsy remake...

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