25th Anniversary: "Face/Off"

by Nick Taylor

Yeah, that’s right motherfuckers, we are talking about ci-ne-MA! We’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of Chinese action auteur John Woo’s third English-language film, the 11th highest grossing film of 1997, a lone Oscar nominee in the now-subsumed Sound Editing category (may her memory be eternal) that was inevitably bulldozed by Titanic. It's one of the most voluptuously insane movies Nicolas fucking Cage has ever appeared in; Face/Off, where they take the face OFF.

Anyone who knows me knows I’ve been proselytizing about this film for years, ever since I first saw it with my sister Melina and some friends of our  about 8 years ago. The 25th anniversary was an ideal opportunity to pop in the Blu-Ray Tommy got me for Christmas and finally share (he might say inflict) its majesty with him. Our roommates even joined us, and I had so much fucking fun watching them experience it for the first time...

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25th Anniversary: "The Crucible"

by Nick Taylor

Happy belated Thanksgiving, TFE readers! In the spirit of American History, here’s a nice slice of cinema on one of the US’s many exemplary passages of telling on itself: the Salem Witch Trials. Arthur Miller’s retelling of these events in The Crucible is so universally well known, but how much the 1996 film adaptation is part of that legacy? I first saw the film in my junior high English class (I’d already chewed through Miller’s play and Death of a Salesman before I was ever assigned them), and aside from a few indelible images of Joan Allen’s silent devastation at court or Daniel Day-Lewis’s artfully grimy self in prison, Nicholas Hytner’s rendition of The Crucible didn’t leave much of an impression. Where Shine presented an opportunity to check off a box I knew I wouldn’t check off without outside incentive, returning to The Crucible was a chance to find out once and for all how it holds up to the faded memories of a semi-interested high schooler.

Hytner’s adaptation opens by dramatizing the play’s unseen inciting incident, where one night a group of Salem’s daughters are caught dancing naked in the woods and are accused of performing witchcraft in the name of Satan...

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2000: "The Contender" and Three Varying Oscar Journeys

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000.

By Ben Miller

Revisiting Rod Lurie’s The Contender, the three primary performances of Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman still pop off the screen.  All three had been critically lauded before the political drama and earned rave reviews for their performances.  Oddly, the film serves as the unintentional catalyst for the Oscar trajectory of all three actors.  In the next 20 years, two would win Oscars, while the other has yet to be nominated again...

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Almost There: Joan Allen in "Pleasantville"

by Cláudio Alves

You guys really love Joan Allen. Once again, this three-time Academy Award nominee has won the readers' vote in the Almost There polls. When choosing from a selection of 10 non-Oscar-nominated performances in new to streaming movies, you picked Allen's turn in Gary Ross' Pleasantville. It's a 1998 fantasy about two modern teenagers who find themselves teleported inside a 1950s black-and-white sitcom. As their influence humanizes the neighborhood, sexual autonomy blossoms as do other desires, wills. Even color starts to appear in the monochrome universe. Odious prejudice is soon to follow.

Between metaphors about sexual liberation, racism, and midcentury conservativism, one cast member shines brighter than all the others, rises above the picture's relative shortcomings. As the kids' televisual mother, Joan Allen is a miracle of stilted cheeriness melting into delicate gradations of humanity…

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Almost There: Joan Allen in "The Upside of Anger"

by Cláudio Alves

Just as we did last week, today's Almost There was chosen by you, the reader. From a group of 2005 Oscar hopefuls, Joan Allen came out victorious for her work in The Upside of Anger. She got 25% of your votes, beating performances like Zhang Ziyi's watery Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha, Maria Bello's steamy turn in A History of Violence, and Scarlett Johansson's arresting Oscar bid in Match Point. All those actresses got closer to the gold than Allen realistically did, but she was still part of the conversation. After all, it's difficult to believe someone could watch The Upside of Anger and not want to shower its leading lady with accolades…

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