Through Her Lens: 2018 (The 91st Oscars)

A series by Juan Carlos Ojano 
Previously: Episode 1 - 2020-21 / Episode 2 - 2019 

Eyes were on the Best Director category at the 91st Academy Awards after Greta Gerwig became only the fifth woman to be nominated in the said category the previous year. Contemporaneous articles expressed disappointment with this fact, but this Oscar year was also plagued with other issues: no ceremony host, plans to give out awards during commercial break, and divisive films like Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Vice being major factors, too.

In a way, these other controversies clouded what could have been a more extensive discussion regarding representation in the Best Director category. Out of the 347 films included in the Reminder List of Eligible Films in 2018 (91st Academy Awards), 62 of them (or 17.9%) were directed/co-directed by women.

OSCAR-NOMINATED FEMALE-DIRECTED FILMS (in alphabetical order): Animal Behaviour*, Bao*, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Capernaum, Free Solo, Late Afternoon*, Marguerite*, Mary Queen of Scots,  Period. End of Sentence.*, and RBG. (*not in the eligibility list for Best Picture)

OUR ALTERNATIVE SET OF FIVE...

Click to read more ...

100 Most Popular Foreign Films of 2018 + the Oscar Hopefuls!

Our year in review party begins TODAY. A different list each day! Here's Nathaniel R...

Time for an annual look back at subtitled fare in cinemas. As with 2017 and the year before India, China, Mexico, and South Korea dominate with a smattering of Oscar contenders and random other countries faring much less well in the American marketplace. Much of the imbalance is due to dedicated distributors who saw a underserved market and focus specifically on it. Here in Manhattan, it's interesting to watch how this plays out. Generally speaking some big multiplexes reserve one or two screens for super specific distributors (Bollywood and mainstream Asian features for example are often at the Empire in Times Square which has 25 screens). Meanwhile the traditional "arthouse theaters" continue to rely on the decades-long practice of programming festival hits, docs, and arthouse style cinema which leans heavily European with a few buzzy Asian titles thrown in; in other words they're Oscar-aligned in their tastes.

For the purposes of the following list we skipped documentaries and animated films to keep the list more focused (and avoid arguments about dubbed versions or whatnot). The numbers are pulled from Box Office Mojo.

TOP 100 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS FOR 2018
Domestic Box Office Grosses Only - Figures as of March 2nd, 2019

The $1 Million Plus Club
(The Success Stories) 

01 Padmaavat $11.8 (India) Jan 25th
This lux nearly 3 hour medieval epic is about an ambitious Sultan who becomes obsessed with a beautiful Queen. Available to stream on Amazon Prime.

02 Sanju $7.9 (India) June 29th
Biopic of a famous controversial actor. Available to stream on Netflix.

Click to read more ...

Soundtracking: "Let The Sunshine In"

by Chris Feil

Etta James’ “At Last” has to be one of the most cliched romantic song choices in the movies, diminished over the decades through overuse and reductiveness, its swooning sexual pull often taken for granted or sanitized in gauzed lensing. But leave it to an original like Claire Denis to capture the oft-revisited song with new ears.

With Let the Sunshine In, Denis delivers us her take on a romantic drama, with all of the structural turns outside of genre convention as she approached vampire films and science fiction alike. Instead of the kind of romcom story developments we expect to see in our stories of women struggling to find love, this film is turns that into a more expansive character study with Juliette Binoche as our protagonist Isabelle. It is essentially examining the desire to be in love as a state of being.

Click to read more ...

Podcast: Disobedience and Tully

An intimate convo this week as Nathaniel R and Nick Davis discuss recent flicks. This was recorded right before Nathaniel's birthday but we are late uploading it. Here it is now for your enjoyment. Lots of Tully and Disobedience talk (among other films) all without spoilers if you haven't yet caught those early release gems!

Index (40 minutes)
00:01 Silliness about Nathaniel's Birthday
03:30 Favorites of 2018 thus far including Diablo Cody & Charlize Theron's brilliance in Tully
10:25 A long anedcote-filled conversation about Sebastian Lelio's Disobedience starring Rachel Weisz. It's quite discussable from a number of angles
25:00 On Chesil Beach, Deadpool 2 and Ready Player One
30:15 Let the Sunshine In, and Grace Jones, Bloodlight and Bami
34:45 More randomness including Book Club and the exquisite beauty of Michelle Pfeiffer in Wolf

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Disobedience, Tully, Ready Player One

Box Office: Solo Flies Low, Binoche Charms, and Book Club Holds.

by Nathaniel R

Holiday Weekend Box Office Estimates (May 25th-27th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
Solo: A Star Wars Story	Disobedience
1.🔺Solo $83 *NEW* REVIEW, BEHIND THE SCENES	1. 🔺 RBG $1.1 on 415 screens (cum. $5.6)  REVIEW
2. Deadpool 2 $42.7 (cum. $207.4)	2. Disobedience $368k on 224 screens (cum. $2.5) REVIEW
3. Avengers Infinity War $16.4 (cum. $621.6) REVIEW	3. 🔺 Pope Francis - A Man of His Word $290k on 385 screens (cum. $1)
4. Book Club  $9.4 (cum. $31.8) REVIEW	4. 🔺 First Reformed $282k on 29 screens (cum. $425k) REVIEW
5. Life of the Party $5.1 (cum. $39.1)	5. 🔺 How Long Will I Love U $210k on  23 screens *NEW*

These numbers will go up given that this weekend is extra long and there's still Memorial Day monday in which families are free to see movies if they'd like. But the numbers won't go high enough for Disney's taste. Now, $83 million in one weekend is nothing to scoff at but for a film within the Star Wars saga it's surprisingly low. Lots more on multiple films after the jump...

Click to read more ...