Three Fittings: High Glamour and Low Spies in "Allied"

[New Series! Three Fittings will celebrate costume design in the movies. The number is necessary self-restraint for we love the art of costuming too much. We kicked off last week with La La Land icymi.]

Allied begins strongly with a weirdly lulling quiet parachute descent into the Moroccan dessert. Moments later the man from the sky is all wrapped up a stone blue headscarf, his face obscured, presumably to protect it from the sun and sand. This obscures the movie star within which is never a good thing so the scarf loses its functionality almost immediately. It's suddenly an accessory rather than a tool, just another texture and a complimentary color to the fetching earth tone ensemble on a ridiculously handsome man walking toward a car far off in the distance.

Who knew that an empty road in the desert could double as a runway?

Costume designer Joanna Johnston clues you in immediately that you're looking at a movie that's aiming for the glamorous illusion of Old Hollywood...

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Isabelle Huppert, French Legends, and Oscar Stats

by Nathaniel R

Are you biting your nails yet? No prediction for this year's Best Actress shortlist can come without some degree of "I could be getting this very wrong!" nerves. We've been Oscar watching for a long time and it's genuinely never looked this open this late in the game (with the possible exception of 2003 but for nearly the opposite reason). If Best Actress is not a five-way lock up by now (and it often is) it's usually at least settled but for a minor battle between two women for the "just happy to be nominated" fifth spot. This year is different. Seven women remain strong and precursor supported and virtually any combination of five names seems possible as long as you include both Emma Stone (with the reliable boost of leading a Best Picture frontrunner) and Natalie Portman (with the reliable boost of Oscar's deep-deep love for mimicry).

We always believed that Isabelle Huppert was a genuine threat for a Best Actress nomination this season for her phenomenal star turn in Elle. It wasn't so much that Elle, in which she plays a video game enterpeneur who becomes obsessed with her rapist, was a a fresh look at an old star (against type) or right in Oscar's wheel house (a dark comedy about rape. LOL, no). The appeal instead is that in Elle is a suffusion of everything that's special about Huppert: her superior intellect, fascinating opacity, tortured psychology, and her daring sexuality. Oscar would be wise to pounce in a year where the media has been this celebratory about her unique place in the cinematic landscape. 'It's time!' feelings don't generally come around all that often for true iconoclasts or women of a certain age. She's both so they must act now.

Binoche, Cotillard, Adjani, Deneuve

Here's another far more superficial but still excellent reason why Isabelle Huppert needs to be nominated...

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Review: Assassin's Creed

by Eric Blume

A movie doesn’t necessarily have to make sense to succeed.  Many of us are still mystified by the red pill and the blue pill and The Matrix but that film has such force and style that subtleties of plot were insignificant.  Assassin’s Creed makes less than zero sense, and mere mortals could not possibly explain the plot  It has something to do with the Spanish Inquisition, a descendant of an elite group of assassins, evil scientists, and the acquisition of the Apple of Eden, since the Holy Grail and Ark of the Covenant have been claimed elsewhere in better movies.

The confusing mechanics of this potboiler wouldn’t matter much if the film delivered on action sequences, compelling characters, or overall tension.  Unfortunately director Justin Kerzel seems overwhelmed by the entire enterprise, and buckles under the seriousness of the effort. This is saying a lot, because last year Kerzel directed MacBeth, and his great lead actors from that film, Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, are back on this picture...

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Review: Allied's Old School Beauty

by Eric Blume

The lovely opening image of Robert Zemeckis’ new film Allied has Brad Pitt falling slowly and soundlessly into the North African desert via parachute.  As he walks across the spine of an endlessly long sand dune, the film evokes the luxurious opening of The English Patient and of course the granddaddy of desert films, Lawrence of Arabia.  And Pitt’s arrival into Casablanca, Morocco tees up memories of the Bogart-Bergman classic.  Zemeckis positions us exactly where he wants us to be:  open to the possibility of the pleasures of those highly-romantic, old-school pictures that we truly don’t see anymore...

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Tweetweek: Describing Yourself, Brangelina Fallout, Paulson Afterglow

people who think the movies are dead:

it turns out that *you’re* dead & the movies are alive

there’s a good Nicole Kidman movie about this

— david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) September 20, 2016

20 years ago today, the world's first superhero ensemble movie hit theaters pic.twitter.com/o34t6vxCen

— Count Falcula (@RussellFalcon) September 20, 2016

More fun tweets from the past week including Emily Blunt, Sarah Paulson, Marion Cotillard, follow after the jump...

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