The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
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Thursday, February 6, 2020 at 1:08PM by Eric Blume
This too-short Oscar season has all of us firing on all cylinders here at The Film Experience, so sadly we can't engage in a full Supporting Actress Smackdown this week. (The series will return soon though) In its absence, and to encourage hearing from all of you, Nathaniel has asked me to submit my personal Smackdown ballot and let the chips fall where they may...
Thursday, February 6, 2020 at 10:30AM Please welcome guest contributor Rita Maricone-Dorsch...
Last night, I sat down to revisit Jojo Rabbit, this time with my son, who is equal parts World War II aficionado, Marvel fanboy, and already-pretty-woke tween. Taika Watiti's self-labeled 'anti-hate satire' seemed custom made for his sensibilities. But why do you like this movie so much, he asked me.
I've been wrestling with this question since the film's release, and since my own impression of it differed so drastically from most reviews, including the positive takes. I didn't see a too-tame provocation that poked easy fun at Nazis. I didn't see a project intended to humanize bigoted white men. I'm not sure it's even best described as an anti-hate satire. To me, Jojo Rabbit was a sweet little allegory about a dangerously underrepresented and urgent subject: the emotional education of boys...
Tuesday, February 4, 2020 at 9:30AM 
To get an Oscar nomination is a wonderful stroke of luck, to get two is even luckier. To get two in the same year is the equivalent of finding a four-leaf clover in a sprawling field. If you're an actor this is particularly true since the Academy's rules make it impossible for the same performer to get two nominations in the same category simultaneously. That's why, for instance, Margot Robbie could only score a single nomination this season. Both her contending performances were supporting roles so, even if she won enough votes for a double nomination -- which she might have if BAFTA is indication -- the performance with fewer votes would have been locked out.
For Scarlett Johansson that wasn't a problem. Lead or Marriage Story and Supporting for Jojo Rabbit. She thus became the 12th actor to achieve this rare honor, the 9th woman, and if she wins either award, she'll be the 8th performer to do so. Statistically speaking, there's around 64% probability of victory for a double nominated actor. Let's celebrate the 12 double-nominated actors in the history of the Academy Awards after the jump…
Saturday, February 1, 2020 at 12:00PM Time to play 20:19. We had intended to rank every Best Picture nominees by how intriguing their 20th minute and 19th second was until our DVD player (remember those?) decided to malfunction. Oops. So streaming it is with just two of 'em. Pretend you haven't seen either of these Best Picture nominees. What do you suppose these two movies are about based on these fleeting images?
Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 10:36PM 
This year’s nominees for best actress do not offer much variety. Not in scope and type of role, not in diversity, not in film genre, and certainly not in quality of film. Only two of the five nominated films - Little Women and Marriage Story - have been recognized by the Academy for best picture, and the same two were the only ones to receive a metacritic average above 70. So how did we end up here when there other options that would’ve made the category stronger? Let’s take a look at what the film year offered...