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.)
Annie Hall turns 40 this year and Diane Keaton will be the recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award next month (June 8th to be exact). Keaton, a perennial A-lister, reminds us every few years about the extent of her talents. She's been enjoying recent success in The Young Pope and her upcoming projects Hampstead and Book Club sound promising at least. Since Annie Hall turns 40 this year so too will Keaton's other '77 triumph, Looking For Mr. Goodbar.
Though Goodbar is remembered for Keaton in a dramatic role (which this author will pay attention to here at a later date), the film is definitely what we'd call in contemporary parlance "problematic". I recently watched Goodbarfor my own podcast, but amongst the reprehensible moments I finally understood why so many women of a certain age (i.e. my mother) swooned over Richard Gere - who we get to see plenty of in this film, as well as co-star Tom Berenger who never looked so gorgeous.[More, slightly NSFW, after the jump...]
In the fifth episode, we've reached what has to be a boiling point as Jane, Madeline, Celeste and Renata all seem to be coming absolutely unhinged simultaneously. Spoiler alert for the rest of this post: this show is just superb and it's giving us more actressing than we even know what to do with. *tosses roses at television*
Top Ten MVPs of Big Little Lies. Episode 5 "Once Bitten"
10. Madeline's Dream Bonus points to the show for having a sense of humor about its hardcore annoying refusal to let us know who was murdered. Also any Avenue Q reference is golden.
09 "Bully Free Zone" That damn bright yellow & red sign.
Don't you feel like it's constantly just taunting everyone in the school? At least half of the adults in this show are bullies themselves and everyone seems so helplessly ill equipped to deal with bullying in school on top of their other issues...
THR amazing casting news: the great Patricia Clarkson will play Amy Adams estranged mother in HBO's Sharp Objects. Both roles are so juicy. Filming starts soon but we're talking next summer's Emmy nomination's not 2017's. Speaking of... Decider Joe Reid's already thinking of the Lead Actress in a Miniseries Emmy race: 10 women, only 6 slots /Film original Ghost in the Shell actors will dub the new film for Japanese relates
Salon looks back at memorable Russian villains in movies and on TV All Things Considered wonders if you can make a King Kong movie without perpetuating racial undertones Variety winners for the Miami Film Festival: Family Life and Maria (and Everybody Else) Awards Daily 77 films about women on the way. That sounds like a lot, so, yay! The Sun a couple of more pictures from the set of Mary Poppins Returns. A polka dot bowtie on Mary! DeciderGirls found the line that HBO wouldnt cross for sex scenes /Film Edgar Wright's Baby Driver starring Ansel Elgort premiered at SXSW so here's the trailer W Mag classic Linda Evangelista photo. Love.
French Waves, Not New The New Yorker has an article / theory on why France hasn't produced a great director in three decades. Interesting ideas but I disagree with the thesis. France may never be the critical hotspot in international cinema -- there's always some exciting country of the moment in international cinema and it changes every handful of years -- but they're consistently strong.
Thirty years ago was 1987. Directors who made their first feature films after 1987 include Claire Denis (1988), Arnaud Desplechin (1991), Jacques Audiard (1994). Does The New Yorker really exclude all of them from a list of great French directors? I admit France isn't turning out the greats as consistently as they once did and Brody is right that the new exciting directors dont seem to stay as exciting for as long as they should now (what happened to Christophe Honore, for example?) but let's be reasonable! I personally have high hopes for Celine Sciamma (Girlhood), Deniz Gamze Ergüven (Mustang) and Alice Winocour (Disorder) so maybe the future is female?
"Complicit" Did you see SNL's perfume ad of Ivanka Trump starring Scarlett Johansson? The Titanic joke is rich.
Top Ten MVPs of Big Little Lies. Episode 2 "Serious Mothering" In episode 2 we learn that Celeste's husband Perry (Alexander Skarsgård) is abusive and even their love life is violent. Meanwhile Renata and Madeline get into a screaming match in a restaurant over an upcoming children's party, and Madeline's two husbands -- the ex Nathan (James Tupper) and the current Ed (Adam Scott) -- rub each other the wrong way.
A list of ten wonderments from this installment after the jump...
This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad
You've seen the moment many times. Two future lovers see each other in a crowd, and something clicks. In West Side Story that moment prompts a blur on the edges of the frame, with only the lovers in focus. In La La Land, it takes the form of a camera push-in with all the lights, but for a spotlight, going out. The moment is so familiar in fantasies (and desired in reality) that there's even an old showtune about it.
Some enchanted evening, you will meet a stranger You will meet a stranger across a crowded room. And somehow you know, you know even then...
The last place you might expect to see it deployed is in a new French film which begins with 18 minutes of explicit activity in a sex club...
Friday, May 26, 2017 at 5:49PM 
