Can a Good Speech Save An Oscar Campaign?

by Cláudio Alves

Remember when Meryl Streep received the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2017 Golden Globes? Her speech was one for the ages, full of good humor, pathos and a riveting call to arms. So titanic was this acceptance speech that, to this day, I believe that it's what secured a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Florence Foster Jenkins. The performance did get a lot of precursor love, but growing Streep fatigue and a stacked race seemed like indicators of an incoming snub. Then, the Golden Globes happened, right at the end of Oscar voting, and it all changed.

Her speech saved her campaign, even though that wasn't the intention of the gesture, and turned her into a lock many didn't see coming until nomination morning arrived. This year, Tom Hanks might follow in Streep's steps…

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Review: Little Women

By Lynn Lee

Did we need another one?

That question hangs over any movie based on a novel that’s already been adapted multiple times – even moreso if there’s a previous adaptation that’s particularly beloved.  It may not, however, be the right question.  As potential movie material, perhaps great books should be treated more like great plays are for the stage, in the sense that if the work has enduring appeal, every new era deserves its own adaptation.  So perhaps the better question is whether this adaptation speaks to us, the viewers of today?

As applied to Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, the answer is yes…with a few caveats.  Full disclosure: I came to the movie as someone who read Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age classic so many times that my copy literally fell apart at the seams, and my devotion to Gillian Armstrong’s near-perfect 1994 adaptation starring Winona Ryder (which you should absolutely see if you haven’t) is a matter of TFE record .

While Armstrong’s version remains my favorite, I found a lot to like and admire about Gerwig’s...

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Review: The Laundromat is an entertaining swing and miss.

by Tony Ruggio

Steven Soderbergh's fingerprints are unmistakable and unknowable simultaneously. He bounds from genre to genre, and studio to indie and back again with such regularity that he’s difficult to pin down. The only thing you can count on is that he’ll try new things and, unless he’s indulging in Ocean’s Eleven fun, and attempt to push the boundaries of what we know as cinema. That all sounds like embellishment and it is, because Soderbergh is nothing if not a bit pretentious. His newest film, The Laundromat, is a big swing aimed at uncovering the morbid, funny, and messed-up nature of the scheming that went on behind the Panama Papers scandal. He misses the mark by half an hour. It’s The Big Short if The Big Short was in a hurry to fill you in on the minutiae, or didn’t bother to impart to you the gravity of its subject matter.

The film is only ninety or so minutes long and for a topic as heady as financial con-artists around the world, and the all-seeing, all-ignoring facilitators who allowed for them, well, the world is not enough...

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Wheeeee. It's festival season!

Meryl Streep days ago across the Atlantic in Venice joyfully demonstrating exactly how we feel whenever we arrive at film festivals. Chris Feil and Nathaniel R (that's me) are both officially on the ground in Toronto, ready for The Film Experience's favourite fest each year, TIFF!  Screenings start in just an hour or so. And we're off...

Yes No Maybe So: Greta Gerwig's "Little Women"

by Eurocheese

Greta Gerwig's follow up to the brilliant Lady Bird looks like a potential Christmas smash hit waiting to happen. Can it stick the landing with such high expectations? Well, if the trailer is any indicator, we may be in for a treat. The Yes No Maybe So™ breakdown follows after the jump...

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