Nick's Foreign Film Take, Pt 1: Sheikh Jackson, First They Killed My Father...

by Nick Davis

There’s niche-marketing, and then there’s micro-targeting, and then there’s saying to your friend Nathaniel, “I hope you’ll still keep an eye out for Shahrbanoo Sadat’s Wolf and Sheep, even though Afghanistan didn’t select it as their Oscar submission.” We really do live in a weird bubble, but that is why one is grateful for The Film Experience, where folks are all the same kind of different as you. And as we all know, this site has been a longtime devotee of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in all stages of curation and competition. So, seizing the opportunity of a sympathetic audience, and amidst a season where many of the 84 movies put forward by their home countries as Academy Award contenders are floating around at festivals—big and small, rural and urban, American and elsewhere—I thought I’d weigh in on the titles I’ve caught.

Argentina, Zama
It’s an amazing vote of artistic confidence for Argentina to choose Lucrecia Martel’s deeply demanding, deeply rewarding colonialist-bughouse period drama as their contender. They passed over all three of her previous features as their submission, and as always, they had plenty of viable possibilities this year, including Santiago Mitre’s The Summit, an absorbing drama of North and South American political machinations. That movie’s somewhat televisual style might have made it palatable to some voters. Zama, by contrast, is as cinematic as they come. In fact, “they” don’t really come like this: a movie almost without establishing shots or hand-holding narrative cues, aggressive with its weird ambient sounds and literally eccentric frames. The movie telegraphs the protagonist’s escalating madness but without letting him go Full Aguirre and without entering the kind of outsized, Lynchian vortex that unmistakably makes the point: it’s easy to watch and think that you, not Zama, are failing to keep up. This seems like a Shortlist prospect with Oscar at the very best, but it’s also guaranteed to be among the year’s most extraordinary movies. Talk about a summit!
My grade: A 

Austria's Happy End, Cambodia's First They Killed My Father, and Egypt's Sheikh Jackson are after the jump...

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DOC NYC Announce Their 15 Oscar Potentials

by Glenn Dunks

Every year the mammoth New York based documentary film festival DOC NYC announces a program of films titled the “Short List”. These are films they describe as "[feeling] like worthy contenders for the Oscar short list based on festival accolades, reviews, box office”, culled from a longer list by means of “evaluating what titles appear to have momentum.”

The DOC NYC festival casts a very wide net for their selections with an annual line-up including films that have already screened in theatrical release or on television. Because of this, they’re able to claim to have played the last six winners of the Best Documentary Oscar. And in the four years since they began the Short List, the only Oscar nominee to not feature in the Short List program is Virunga. It’s an impressive statistic if not a somewhat deflating one knowing that this year’s nominees are likely somewhere to be found in this list of 15. But that's the Oscar prognastication game for you and we all love to play along so it's worth mentioning.

THE FINAL YEAR (Greg Barker)

There’s still about two months until the Academy release their own shortlist of 15 from the estimated 130 titles that will be submitted. But for now, let’s take a look at what DOC NYC are hedging their bets on...

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C O N S I D E R - Favorites of 2017, 3rd Qtr

by Nathaniel R

Blade Runner 2049 is our current prediction for "Most Nominations Without Best Picture" though maybe it'll snag that, too.Here at The Film Experience I like to keep track of favorites all year long for two reasons. The first is to not to be unduly influenced by the studio shenanigans of backloading the film year with their intended Oscar hopefuls. The second is to prevent forgetfullness when it comes time to give out the Film Bitch Awards, my own virtual awards fest to close out each film year.  When I don't keep careful track it's much harder to wrap things up at year's end.

Being a bit late this quarter, here are Best ofs per Oscar category from films released from July through October 6th (an extra week added on because we're running late). This list does not include films with known release dates from now until the end of the year. We'll save those films till we get there. Unreleased films without a future date are marked with an asterisk. Got it?

Key movies I missed this quarter  (that I'll try and catch up with on screeners hopefully): It, Valerian, Logan Lucky, Patti Cake$, Tulip Fever, Good Time, Lady MacBeth, and A Ghost Story

PICTURE and/or DIRECTOR and/or SCREENPLAY
(i couldn't decide which to cut so this first grouped selection is 8 wide)

     released
ATOMIC BLONDE (David Leitch) The lack of audience turn out for this uber-stylish, inventive actioner, with Charlize Theron showing all the other movie stars how to do action hero performances  (again!) was one of the bummers of summer '17.
BATTLE OF THE SEXES (Jonathan Drayton & Valerie Faris) Such a surprisingly strong history lesson and funny resonant drama, too
BLADE RUNNER 2049 (Denis Villeneuve) Hypnotic if already overrated (calm down! If you're claiming that it's better than the original if it's not your #1 of 2017 with ease you'll have to explain why you've dissed one of the greatest and most influential movies ever made)
DUNKIRK (Christopher Nolan)
THE FLORIDA PROJECT (Sean Baker) The new criticism that I keep seeing online that this film romanticizes poverty is a head-scratcher as it's an exceedingly dark movie that merely looks like candy (due to all that color). The imagined future of virtually all the characters is outstandingly bleak and politically aware for those who are willing to see it. Sean Baker's recent (also terrific) movies Starlet and Tangerine are similarly focused / staged / and tonally nimble with gallows humor, character specificity, and socioeconomic concerns. If having this much empathy for marginalized people is romanticizing poverty, I say bring it on!
mother! (Darren Aronofsky) Sorry not sorry.

more after the jump including best unreleased pics, highlights in cinematography, costumes, and the like...

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NYFF: Norway's Oscar Submission "Thelma"

by Jason Adams

Sometimes a critic can't help but interject him or herself into a review, and Joaquim Trier's Thelma is one of those times for me. Thelma tells the story of a young woman from a cripplingly religious family who goes off to college and starts having epileptic seizures that coincide with an awakening of same-sex longings. Meanwhile I'm the homosexual son of an epileptic and was raised in a speak-in-tongues Pentecostal church. Needless to say I felt Thelma, you guys.

So much that it's hard to divorce myself critically to see the forest for the dead birds dropping down among the trees. Trier gets so many precise details so right that I know from my own specific, particular life experience - the warm waves of excitement and guilt at discovering drink and swear-words when you first leave home; the way an epileptic seizure can be a sudden horrific tearing open of reality itself's seams -  that I'm more than willing to go along with anything he does, even when it is sometimes a hint too austere for its own good.

It's hard to say something that features a woman deep-throating a python - but you know, in a sexy way - remains austere, but Trier manages. He is Norwegian, after all. Thelma is an ice pond of a film floating over fiery little volcanic eruptions - like its protagonist (an exquisitely conflicted Eili Harboe) Thelma is Fire & Ice, Passion & Repression, a Freudian phantasmagoria strapped into a cool silk blouse.

Middleburg Festival 2017: James Ivory, Dee Rees, Greta Gerwig and More...

by Nathaniel R

Awards season is really heating up now that release dates (or lack thereof) are firming up, and various pre-Oscar honors are being announced. Last year, you may recall, The Film Experience was invited to attend the Middleburg Film Festival and we're invited for a second round next month.

The fest, now in its fifth year and closer to something like Telluride than Toronto or Cannes considering its Oscar focus and brevity, is growing each year and all takes place at one well-heeled resort. Last year they had big events for La La Land and Lion as well as very crowded talks with Cheryl Boone Isaacs on the Academy's diversity efforts as well as a fascinating discussion of US presidents and cinematic depictions with Janet Maslin and David Gergen where the danger of Trump was discussed at length (before the election - sigh). At that event they spent a lot of time on Nixon's disproportionately large place in cinema as presidents go. (Unfortunately since we're in Nixon Round Two only much more vile and, well, stupider... we can safely expect there to be many many films on Trump and Trump's corrosive effect on the nation for decades to come! "Wheeee," he squealed with much sarcasm)

More info about this year's festivities to come but for now we know this...

Special Honorees:
The legendary James Ivory (Call Me By Your Name's screenplay, Howard's End, Maurice, Room With a View etcetera)
Director Dee Rees (Mudbound)
Composer Nicholas Britell (Battle of the Sexes, Moonlight) with an orchestral concert of his work!

Opening Night: DARKEST HOUR (Ben Mendelsohn in attendance)

Saturday Centerpiece  LADY BIRD (Greta Gerwig in attendance)

Sunday Centerpiece  THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI 

Other Screenings:  CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, MUDBOUND, and I, TONYA