Nicole Kidman Tribute: The Portrait of a Lady (1996)

by Nathaniel R

Madame Merle: I'd give a good deal to be your age again; to have my life before me.
Isabel Archer: Your life is before you yet.

This article was originally intended to grace our "How Had I Never Seen?" series. Jane Campion's The Portrait  of a Lady (1996) has stubbornly remained on my "to see" list for nearly twenty years. I let it sit there, as a shamefully passive intent, not unlike the way Isabel Archer approached her own 'to experience' lists past the age of 24. That's when she marries Mr Osmond in Henry James "The Portrait of a Lady" and her idealism and ambition are utterly flatted by the limits of her imagination, courage, and self-possession. The novel first appeared in serialized form in 1880 and for the following century and a half, Isabel Archer has confounded and/or fascinated readers; Fellow artists, too, like auteur Jane Campion and actress Nicole Kidman...

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How Had I Never Seen... "Céline and Julie Go Boating" (1974)?

by Eric Blume

This week marks 50 years since the release of the Jacques Rivette classic Céline and Julie Go Boating.  I’m a devoted a Francophile, but this film was a hole in my viewing, so coming to this extraordinarily strange time capsule of a movie was a bit of a challenge.  C&JGB defies a lot of basic principles one expects from a movie, and by that I mean, there is no basic logic (the way these two characters initially meet, and how they behave together in their first scenes, is stylized beyond human recognition).  Rivette plunges you into a purposeful state of disbelief here, wanting you to abandon your impulses for traditional narrative, character development, and behavior...

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How Had I Never Seen..."Blue Sky"?

by Nick Taylor

If you had approached me on the street and asked if I was a Jessica Lange fan, I would have answered with an emphatic “duh!” But since you clicked on this link, I'm coming to you through your screen to tell you this informatioin. Having originally met Lange in high school via the actress-heavy ordeal that is American Horror Story, watching her communicate an actual character amidst so much lurid, proudly threadbare plotting was revelatory to witness. Lange served Ryan Murphy’s baroque and sentimental grotesqueries with leonine force. Even as subsequent seasons leaned too heavily on her characters as pillars to be toppled, and it became all too easy to project Lange’s distaste towards her surroundings into her vainglorious Supreme and dissatisfied ringleader, she gives a hell of a good show, finding ways to keep herself amused and visibly gratified (or maybe relieved) to play off her talented co-stars. I haven’t touched the show in years, and still I can remember her broken line reading of “in the gloaming” as she stumbles through a crowd of patients in Asylum, her bitchy, hilarious  refusal to act like she’s invading anyone’s space when she saunters through the Murder House despite no longer owning it.

On the strength of this output I quickly searched for her star-making performances in Frances and Tootsie, which further cemented my impression of her as a supernova capable of great versatility. I’ve seen plenty of other films she’s starred in, yet as her 75th birthday approached, I realized there was a major blind spot I needed to correct. How on Earth have I not seen any of Jessica Lange’s post-1982 Oscar nominations? I’ve spent the past week pouring over those features, and though Country and Sweet Dreams are perhaps in greater need of reappraisal, I’ve found pouring over Blue Sky to be the most rewarding, and the most fun to try pinning down. So, without further ado - Happy 75th Birthday, Jessica Lange...

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How Had I Never Seen..."The Wild One" (1953)?

by Cláudio Alves

Today marks the Marlon Brando centennial, and what better way to celebrate than to explore the actor's filmography? In my case, I decided to plunge into one of those iconic pictures that, for some reason, had never crossed my path till today. It's 1953's The Wild One, the prototypical biker film from which many more sprung forth, a crystallization of midcentury rebellion as understood by Hollywood's paramount moralist, Stanley Kramer. He produced it as one of his social issue flicks, taking inspiration from a Harper's Magazine story that was, in itself, based on a series of events that took place in Hollister, California, 1947. Brando plays Johnny Strabler, leader of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club…

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How Had I Never Seen... "The Wind Rises"?

by Cláudio Alves

Hayao Miyazaki has been announcing his retirement for over a quarter century, each new project since Princess Mononoke received like a potential swan song. Such is the case of his latest flick, the enigmatic How Do You Live?, retitled The Boy and the Heron for the Anglophone market. After a lead-up to release that saw no promo beyond the poster, the film was finally seen by the Japanese public, enjoying its big opening last week. And yet, few folks are keen on sharing details about the animated project, including the narrative's basic premise. While the rest of the world waits for an opportunity to glimpse Miyazaki's latest "last" picture, it's an excellent time to watch the not-so-final career-capper that came before, which, to my great shame, I had never seen. 

This July, The Wind Rises celebrates its 10th anniversary, something worth celebrating as we prepare to see another auteur's exploration of an inventor whose efforts resulted in mass death during WWII. Not that Miyazaki's biopic of engineer Jiro Horikoshi, whose fighter designs defined Japanese air force in the 30s and 40s, is attempting the same IMAX-sized scale as Nolan's Oppenheimer…

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