"Anora" leads the Gotham Nominations

by Cláudio Alves

ANORA seems poised to dominate the awards season.

Another year, another awards season. And, like it happens every fall, the Gotham Awards have the privilege of kicking the race into high gear. Unsurprisingly, Anora leads with four nominations, followed by Nickel Boys and I Saw the TV Glow with three nods a piece, though the latter failed to get a spot in the Best Feature category. Then again, it's worth remembering that the Gothams' nine categories are divided into five distinct committees with no overlap between them. The same people (critics, curators, editors, and programmers) who decide the Director and Screenplay nominees have no say in who makes it into the acting races, for example.

So, expect idiosyncrasies and don't put much stock in how some films appear in a couple of major categories but not others. More than a precursor for Oscar gold, these prizes often feel like an opportunity to highlight the richness of the cinematic year before the viable contenders get reduced to a limited lot. So, let's take a look at their selection…

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AFI Fest: “Hard Truths” Tackles Modern Social Anxiety in One of the Year’s Best Films

by Eurocheese

Mike Leigh is a filmmaker who has always evoked strong opinions, with your typical cinephile having their own takes on which films are strongest among his catalog. Certainly one of the highlights of his career has been Secrets & Lies, with the memorable pairing of Brenda Blethyn and his leading lady from this film, Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Her subtle work in that film, clashing against her brash co-stars, is often cited as one of the best performances from any Leigh film, earning her only Oscar nomination to date. Seeing her back in one of his leading roles, fans of the director and actress will be pleased to hear that their reunion brings us one of the best performances and films of the year.

Jean-Baptiste’s Pansy introduces herself to the audience by waking up screaming, and her intensity doesn’t dial down from there...

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TIFF '24: “Hard Truths” hits hard

by Cláudio Alves

It's been six years since cinemas have been left waiting for a new Mike Leigh film. Moreover, the British portraitist of working-class life and struggle, joy and pain, secrets and lies, had for a while abandoned the contemporary stories upon which his early career was built. Though the director's forays into historical pasts have produced naught but great cinema, it's fair to say it's been over six years since the world has encountered what most associate with the words "a Mike Leigh film." Well, the wait is over, and I'm pleased to say Hard Truths is well worth the wait.

Not so much a return to form as a return to familiarity, the film also finds the auteur reuniting with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, the Oscar-nominated star of his Palme d'Or victor who also scored the director's Career Girls. And if what Leigh delivers behind the camera could be called a triumph, what his leading lady accomplishes demands a stronger word. She's the stuff of legend and what actressing dreams are made of…

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Mike Leigh on Criterion

by Cláudio Alves

One of the Criterion Channel's newest and most enticing additions is a Mike Leigh collection that includes 11 of the director's films. His is a cinema of compassionate observation that finds beauty in the bleakest settings, the wildest characters, and most complicated psyches. From Thatcher-era social realism to lavish period pieces, passing through farcical character studies, we can find much variety in this director's oeuvre, though some things remain constant. For one, we have Leigh's social preoccupations, a humanistic mindset that bleeds into every aspect of his productions. For another, there's his methodology when working with actors…

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Horror Actressing: Fatma Mohamed in "In Fabric"

by Jason Adams

Dunno who's noticed but Twenty-Nineteen is making its last lap before it leaps, and so the time for taking stock of What Was is nigh now -- that is to say for the next several weeks of our "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series I'm going to be looking back at my favorite female performances from horror films that I saw this past year. And what better way to start this project than with a film I saw at the start of the year when I reviewed it for Tribeca, one that's only now just being released, hitting screens on December 6th.

I speak of Peter Strickland's In Fabric, a bifurcated anthology-of-sorts that's strung together via one possessed red dress that ruins the lives of all those who come into contact with it...

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