Review: For all its artful presentation, "Spencer" is a misfire

by Nathaniel R

A woman driving alone stops at a diner along the road to ask directions. She’s lost which is as common a problem as it gets. In any usual circumstance this would go unnoticed by other patrons but this is not a usual circumstance and this woman is far from common, and no Commoner at that. The whole room stops to gawk at her. This clever gambit early in Spencer sets Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart) immediately apart from humanity. A elegant but sterile aerial shot from the gifted cinematographer Claire Mathon (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) futher isolates her when she reaches that destination. She’s just a tiny figure about to be swallowed up in an imposing estate (Sandringham House, to be exact).

While the opening scenes of Spencer are promising and mobile, and the craft of the filmmaking as rich as you’d expect from the Chilean master Pablo Larraín, Spencer stops abruptly in its tracks at the estate...

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What are Kristen Stewart's Five Good Films?

by Cláudio Alves

In the past decade, Kristen Stewart has come a long way. While her career started early and with great promise – while she was still a teenager – the actress' participation in Twilight movies soured the world's perception of her talent. It's unfair but, as of the writing of this piece, it seems to be over. With Pablo Larraín's Spencer, even the biggest Stewart skeptics have quieted, and she's on her way to a likely Oscar nomination if prognosticators are to be believed. All that and she also just got engaged to girlfriend Dylan Meyer, making this a time of great personal fulfillment as well as professional and artistic. Still, when looking back at her own filmography, it seems that the actress herself isn't as enamored with it as some fans might be…

In an interview about Spencer for The Sunday Times, Stewart said:

I've probably made five really good films out of 45 or 50 films. Ones that I go, 'Wow, that person made a top-to-bottom beautiful piece of work!

Reading this, I couldn't help but wonder what cinematic quintet she holds dear to her heart...

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Venice Diary #03 - D-Day: Diana, Dune and a huge hole in the ground

by Elisa Giudici

Today Venice lived its climax, with screenings of two of the most awaited movies of the entire year: Pablo Larraín's Spencer and Denis Villeneuve's Dune. The latter in particular is perceived by everyone as an event, even by Venice standards (where a lot of the protagonists of the last Oscar races have been premiered). The fight for tickets to the screenings was merciless. Every show  sold out in a matter of seconds and the artistic director of the Festival, Alberto Barbera, tried to answer the general audience and press's complaints with multiple tweets. Moreover, it is the first movie in the five years I've been attending in which every ticket holder is required to seal his phone in a bag for piracy prevention. Warner Bros faces more than a calculated risk here: Dune's box office can be the dividing line between the cinema experience as we used to know and something new and yet uncertain...

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"Spencer" Teaser. Kristen Stewart for the gold?

by Nathaniel R

It never fails. Every time something exciting happens, like a Power of the Dog teaser, there's something immediately on its heels giving you barely any time to process. Spread the wealth studios, meter out that cinephilia bait, we beg you. Here's the Spencer teaser starring Kristen Stewart...

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Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana

That's the first shot of Kristen Stewart as Diana in Pablo Larraín's next film Spencer, one of our presumed Oscar hopefuls for 2021 though the release plans aren't at all firm yet. Let's hope it goes better for Kristen than it did for Naomi Watts! (Not that it won't by default, but still). So we might be looking at our first Best Actress nominee of the new film ye -- No, we can't get into that yet; we're still in this season.

There's no word yet on who is playing Prince Charles but the film takes place over a single weekend (the best kind of biopic!) and we trust Larraín to make this totally interesting since his films (Jackie, No, Neruda) always are, even the ones that are totally filled with hard-to-watch hatefulness (Tony Manero, Ema, The Club). Larraín's films are always exquisitely put together and this one will be no exception with the cinematographer of Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Claire Mathon), two time Oscar winner Jacqueline Durran (Anna Karenina, Little Women) on costumes, and Oscar nominee Jonny Greenwood (Phantom Thread) on score duties.