Months of Meryl: Suffragette (2015)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

#50 —Emmeline Pankhurst, key leader of the women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.

JOHN: Vandalizing storefronts, detonating mailboxes, carrying out prison hunger strikes — these are but a few of the risky tactics employed by women in the British suffrage movement in and around London circa 1912. Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette chronicles the movement’s pivot to such dangerous gambles in an effort to draw attention and spark action for the cause. “Deeds, not words” became the new mantra after years of respectable yet unsuccessful solicitation of a woman’s right to vote. These radical activists, led by Emmeline Pankhurst and visionaries like Emily Wilding Davison, Edith New, and scores of others, believed that civil disobedience and militant action were the only ways to disrupt the status quo and achieve women’s suffrage. This crucial moment of history has rarely been represented on screen, save for glimpses of the movement in Mary Poppins or in a handful of documentaries, despite the exciting and provocative elements inherent in this important story.

Unfortunately, “Important Story” could appropriately serve as the tagline and governing principle of Gavron’s misguided though well-intentioned film...

Click to read more ...

Why is "Vice" rising? Why are "First Man" and "Widows" struggling with awards bodies?

Before we get to the final "happy thoughts" Team Experience Globe Reaction finale, I thought I'd ask our contributors and friends of the site questions about the Golden Globe  fates of Vice (nomination leader), First Man (2 nominations, Score and Supporting Actress), and Widows (entirely shut out). It's easy to theorize about what's happening with all three of those movies, and theorizing is fun. So let's begin:

1. Why do you think Vice led the nominations?

DEBORAH LIPP: Hating Dick Cheney is a cathartic substitute for hating Donald Trump. I support this. 

GUY LODGE (VARIETY):  Because it's the newest thing out and, crucially, because it hasn't been reviewed yet -- its on-paper prestige is still undented...

Click to read more ...

10th Anniversary: Milk (2008) is Aging Beautifully

by Eric Blume

This month marked the tenth anniversary of the release of Gus Van Sant’s semi-biopic Milk, chronicling the last eight years of the life of gay politician Harvey Milk.  If you’ve never seen Milk, get ye post haste to it, if for no other reason than to be fully immersed in this crucial window of history.  If you saw Milk when it was released a decade ago and haven’t seen it since (which was true for me), watch it again:  it’s aging beautifully.

Olympic diver Tom Daley’s husband, Dustin Lance Black, won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for this movie, and the trophy was richly deserved.  Black not only manages to avoid almost every biopic cliché, he captures the beginning of the gay rights movement with precision, pain, and most importantly, humor.  Black’s script starts when Harvey Milk turns forty, had been mostly closeted, and was not politically aware. He chronicles his consciousness-raising without a hint of clumsiness or fake nobility.  And while Black keeps his focus squarely on Milk, his real achievement is in casting a wider net: he gives Milk’s real-life contemporaries a vivid presence, and shows us a full community within the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco.  This script manages to be both macro and micro, and throughout you can see Black’s gigantic heart and passion for this story...

Click to read more ...

Can You Ever Retweet Me?

Tweets!

The dog in Widows is named Olivia. The real, credited name of the dog in Game Night is Olivia. Is it... is it the same dog? pic.twitter.com/zU787tQhwG

— kateyrich (@kateyrich) November 16, 2018

 A semi-weekly curated collection of tweets for your seconds-long amusement. After the jump Julianne Moore, Tom Hardy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez memes, Widows, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Gone Girl, Fantastic Beasts 2, Beetlejuice and more...

Click to read more ...

Months of Meryl: The Iron Lady (2011)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

#43 —Margaret Thatcher, the polarizing British prime minister.

MATTHEW: After decades of heavy speculation about when, not if, Meryl Streep would finally win her third Academy Award, the most widely admired actress of all time picked up another trophy for a performance that may best be remembered as a textbook study in How to Win an Oscar. Despite stiff, down-to-the-wire competition from The Help’s eminently deserving Viola Davis, who transcended lackluster material in much the same way that Streep herself did in her most acclaimed tour de force, the actress sailed to victory after a season’s worth of ovations and exposure. The months preceding Streep’s first Oscar win in nearly 30 years found the acting legend accepting her eighth Golden Globe, her fourth New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, her second BAFTA Film Award, her very first Vogue cover story, a Kennedy Center Honors lifetime achievement tribute, and endless publicity concerning one of the most challenging roles of her late career, that of Margaret Thatcher in what should rightfully be called Phyllida Lloyd’s The Iron Lady, but might just as suitably be described as Meryl Streep’s The Iron Lady. And when one truly considers the sheer size and notoriety of the role, who could have possibly topped Streep that year? Conversely, when truly considering the actual performance that returned Streep to Oscar glory, away from all the myth/history-making hubbub that surrounded it, one could be forgiven for wondering, Is that all there is?

Click to read more ...