2017 has quietly become the post-Twilight year of Pattinson & Stewart. After Kristen Stewart dazzled in Personal Shopper, Robert Pattinson was given a leading role worthy of his talent in the Safdie Bros. film, Good Time. Taking place throughout the span of one night, Pattinson's Connie scrambles to get his brother Nick (Benny Safdie) out of jail after a fumbled bank heist.
As far as plot is concerned, that is all you need to know. The Safdie brothers then let this story unfold in such quick, confident ways that all you are left to do is sit back and grip the sides of your chair...
Cannes wraps this weekend. Only one competition film, Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here, is yet to screen before the jury makes their decisions for the history books (er, what do we say now that the history books aren't how you look up history?).
So let's check in with the four latest premieres including a new erotic thriller from François Ozon, a revenge drama from Fatih Akin, and a buzzy Robert Pattinson performance...
A sprawling, formally immaculate epic like James Gray’s The Lost City of Z is a rare enough to seem like a novelty these days, and Gray’s rendering makes the film feel no less precious. It plays almost like a delicate jewel box on the screen, as if any minute it will crumble to our modern touch. Z looks and breathes of a bygone era.
Charlie Hunnam stars as Colonel Percival Fawcett, an unheralded military man who rises to prominence for exploring the uncharted Amazon in the early 20th century. His first expedition leads to an obsession when he discovers signs of an ancient ruins, suggesting a developed civilization previous undiscovered by western eyes. Fawcett’s three increasingly less successful journeys could be seen as indicative of the virtue or punishment of an obsessive goal, depending on your vantage.
While the film’s trajectory is familiar to epics over the most recent decades, what sets the film apart is its complex emotional terrain...
You know who might be having a big 2017 in film? Barkhad Abdi. He has three interesting projects coming out, starting with Dabka which will play this month at the Tribeca Film Festival. Written and directed by Bryan Buckley (The Bronze) it’s the true story of a reporter’s risk-taking adventure that gave him an unprecedented first-person account of the pirates of Somalia. Evan Peters plays the reporter Jay Bahadur on whose best selling book, The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World, the film is based. Abdi plays a local fixer who helped Bahadur embed himself with the Somali pirates. So he hasn’t gone very far from the world of his Oscar nominated performance in Captain Phillips (2013).
with Evan Peters in Dabka
However Blade Runner 2049 could not be further away from his most famous role...
Murtada here. With her duties as Alice over, Mia Wasikowska is turning to smaller indies. Announced this week is Piercing, a psychological thriller from director Nicolas Pesce (The Eyes of My Mother). Wasikowska plays a prostitute who tassles with a family man client intent on murder. That part is played by Girls and James White star, Christopher Abbott. This film is so indie it flew under the radar while it was in production. The announcement mentions that it is already completed. Also complete is her other indie Damsel in which she reunites with her Maps to the Stars co-star Robert Pattinson. Directed by David Zellner (Kumiko the Treasure Hunter), little is known about the plot except that it’s a period western.
When Wasikowska appeared on the cover of the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue 4 years ago, alongside Rooney Mara, Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain, we thought she’d be the one to nab the most Oscar nominations from the quartet. Yet here we are and she has yet to get her first. It’s funny how these things work. We are glad to see her working with up and coming promising directors and in what sounds on paper to be challenging work.
To these eyes, her best performance remains Jane Eyre (2011). We return time and time again to this clip. Watch Jane’s spirit shine as she asserts her strength and her right to love. Mia mesmerizes.
It's Oscar month, so for which performance do you think Wasikowska should've been nominated?
Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 7:10PM ;)
