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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Wednesday, August 19, 2026 at 10:00AM By Ben Miller
It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised. Julia Hart's Don't Say Good Luck might have all the makings of a nothingburger direct-to-streaming film, but instead delivers a character-focused film filled with emotion and devoid of cliches. It's also one of the unexpectedly great films of the year...
Sunday, June 21, 2026 at 10:53AM by Nathaniel R
Can John Turturro hold on to his Sundance buzz for "The Only Living Pickpocket in New York" © Sony Pictures Classics
Whoops. Lost some momentum there to finish the first round of Oscar predictions. Let's take on Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor...
Thursday, June 23, 2022 at 5:16PM 
Parents don't always expect their children to thrive, and it's normal and actually somewhat common for young adults to return to where they grew up to live for a short time before they find their footing. But some children may be predisposed to not living up to expectations, and that may be through no fault of their own. The Year Between humorously explores the misadventures of Clemence (Alex Heller) recently diagnosed as bipolar. Clemence is presented as a walking nightmare, wreaking havoc wherever she goes...
Wednesday, July 22, 2020 at 1:34PM Daniel Walber's series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.
What is the wallpaper of the Common Man? It’s a strange question, but Barton Fink is a strange movie. The titular writer (John Turturro) is a man consumed by passion for the clichéd unsung hero, though he would never go so far as to actually ask a Common Man what he thinks. His obsession is really with the idea of the Common Man, abstract and waiting to be tossed onstage or slapped onto the blank canvas of a movie screen.
In his defense, the Common Man was not yet a cliche when Fink arrived in Hollywood, sometime in 1941. Henry Wallace’s famous “Century of the Common Man” speech wouldn’t be delivered until May of 1942, inspiring Aaron Copland to write his “Fanfare for the Common Man” soon after. Maybe someday the Coen Brothers will make a sequel, and Barton will take the opportunity to claim credit for both of those cultural landmarks.
But back to wallpaper. Barton Fink opens with a close-up of it, a pleasant sort of floral-Deco pattern in mild colors...
Saturday, June 13, 2020 at 9:30PM by Tony Ruggio
The King of Staten Island is both typical Judd Apatow and a pretty subtle departure from the world he knows and has often depicted on screen. Make no mistake, it’s an overlong, meandering coming-of-story about a slacker who can’t get his head on straight until he does (very familiar), but it also features a deeper psychological profile than we’re used to seeing in Apatow's films.
Much like many of Apatow’s big-screen efforts, his latest uses the particular talents of a gifted comedian and crafts around them a semi-autobiographical tale of love and loss. Pete Davidson’s father was a fireman who tragically perished in the ashes of 9/11, and so it goes that Davidson is portraying a wayward 24 year-old named Scott who lives with an exhausted mother (Marisa Tomei) and his college-bound sister (Maude Apatow), and is still dealing with the loss of a fireman dad he knew only as a saint...
