74th Cannes. Spike Lee's Jury

by Nathaniel R

We've known for well over a year that Spike Lee would be presiding over the competition jury. And last week he became the first Jury President (that we know of) to ever be the poster star of the festival in the year he was jurying. How about that? People will also be excited to hear that the competition jury is majority women but that's not a first. It's actually the third time. Isabelle Huppert led a majority female jury in 2009 (White Ribbon won the Palme that year) and Jane Campion led a majority female jury in 2014 (Winter Sleep won).

LET'S MEET THE JURY...

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Oscar's complicated history with the "complicated woman"

by Matt St Clair

Remember when Maggie Gyllenhaal won a Golden Globe for her starring role in the miniseries The Honorable Woman? During her acceptance speech she spoke about not just the wealth of strong roles for women on television, but roles as complicated women, saying, “when I look around the room at the women who are in here and I think about the performances that I’ve watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy, sometimes not. Sometimes honorable, sometimes not.” Complicated female characters on TV still receive more proper acknowledgement than those in the movies. 

While Carey Mulligan earned a recent Best Actress nomination for her role as the duplicitous avenging angel Cassie Thomas in Promising Young Woman, the Oscars have a historically spotty track record when it comes to acknowledging actresses for playing complicated, and sometimes calculating, women....

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Not Without My Lost Daughter

by Jason Adams

Variety has just announced that Maggie Gyllenhaal will be making her directorial debut with an adaptation of Elena Ferrante's bestselling book The Lost Daughter, and it will star Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Mr. Maggie Gyllenhaal aka Peter Sarsgaard, and the Wild Rose herself Jessie Buckley...

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Emmy FYC: Best Actress in a Drama Series

Team Experience is sharing FYCs as the Television Academy votes on Emmy nominations (voting closes on June 24th). Here's J.B...

Last year's winner Claire Foy can't repeat (as Emmy likes to do) because she didn't have a TV show this year.I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Emmy category of Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.  As someone who worships at the altar of dramatic actresses, it’s my favorite category, and therefore necessarily the one that causes me the greatest anguish. Sometimes, this category shocks and delights (as it did in 2014, when Lizzy Caplan was nominated for her wonderful work on Masters of Sex, or 2016, when Tatianna Maslany took home the trophy for her dynamic performance in Orphan Black). But more often, as of late, anyway, I’ve been left wounded by egregious snubs and unwelcome surprises on nomination morning and Emmy night.

For example, I like Claire Danes, but did she really need a SECOND Emmy for her performance on Homeland, at the expense of Elisabeth Moss, who somehow never won for her iconic role on Mad Men? If Moss had won for Mad Men perhaps voters could have skipped her in turn for Claire Foy in The Crown, thus clearing the way for Keri Russell in 2018, whose turn as Elizabeth Jennings in The Americans is maybe the greatest dramatic performance of the decade. Keri’s loss, in particular, I still haven’t fully recovered from.

So, to any Emmy voters out there who have realized the error of their ways and are looking to make amend: You CAN’T! You’ve made bad choices, the consequences of which we all will have to live with! Know that. BUT, if you are looking to get on the right side of history this year, start by considering the following four names on your ballot for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series...

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Women on the Verge at TIFF: abandoned wives, kindergarten teachers, and activists

by Nathaniel R

Why does anyone make movies about men? No, really. Female characters are inherently more fascinating. That's not only because they're allowed a wider range of feeling onscreen due to repressive gender norms which discourage men from embracing a full range of emotion, but because women's stories are more infrequently told and, thus, fresher. Herewith four recommended movies about women on the verge of either nervous breakdowns, or major crimes. 

WILDLIFE and WIDOWS
Chris has already reviewed these intense dramas about abandoned wives here and here. We'll have plentiful opportunities to discuss them during Oscar season but I just want to second his surprise rave of Wildlife  because it's spot-on. I'll admit, though, that I'm ever so slightly cooler on Widows than I initially thought. I attended the very starry premiere (seriously that cast!) and the screening and movie were both so electric that I was like 'favorite of the fest. wow' But it doesn't linger in quite the way you'd expect given how exciting it is in the moment (it's going to be a big hit). Still, it's the film from TIFF that I'm most eager to see a second time. 

WOMAN AT WAR
Woman at War is the story of a childless choir director Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir in a no-nonsense charismatic turn) who moonlights as a fearless environmental activist in her spare time. Halla has caused enormous problems for a local corporation by knocking out their power again and again. She evades capture with impressive physical skill, careful planning, and paranoid routines; there's a funny recurring shot in which she places her cel phone in a refridgerator before speaking to friends in person about secretive matters. Just as her corporate sabotage is beginning to make real world waves, she learns that she's going to be a mother via adoption proceedings she began years prior. How can she do both?

The Icelandic writer/director Benedikt Erlingsson arrived with Of Horses and Men, an indelible Oscar submission in 2013. This tense, twisty, and provocative sophomore feature is even better and confirms that that was no mere fluke. He's a singular talent, able to imbue sly visual and narrative humor with idiosyncratic depth of feeling. His boldest move in Woman at War, one that risks being a distracting comic gimmick but somehow elevates the picture into the sublime, is an on-camera orchestra. They give the picture a score that doubles as both interior monologue and greek chorus, commenting on but also entangled in Halla's complex possibly disastrous passions. Highly recommended!

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER
Maggie Gyllenhaal is terrific and troubling (no surprise. That's kind of her thing) as a teacher who becomes obsessed with a student. Her favorite little student composes beautiful poems on the spot with little warning that the muse has struck. Fearing that his prodigious talent will wither and die if it's not nurtured she begins to step outside her proper place in the classroom and walks right into his life outside. For all of Mrs Spinelli's madness, the complicating factor is how right she often is when her behavior is all wrong. Despite the fascinating central character there's something that feels incomplete or slight about this intriguing drama that's remained difficult to put a finger on. Regardless, the final scene haunts and a great ending can go a long way.