Back to the Movie Theaters: Lynn Sees "Gunda"

By Lynn Lee

a sad strip mall interior for happy experiences

Until yesterday, the last movie I saw in a theater was Emma – on March 7, 2020, just before the reality of COVID-19 descended on me and most people I knew.  If you’d told me that the next time I’d be in a movie theater would be nearly 14 months later, in a tiny, crappy arthouse joint in a suburban Virginia strip mall, and that the movie would be an idiosyncratic black-and-white documentary about a brood sow, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.  And yet that is exactly where I found myself Sunday afternoon.  

It wasn’t the return to moviegoing I’d envisioned since my husband and I got our second Pfizer dose in early April...

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Team Experience SAG/Globe Reactions Pt 2: Happy Thoughts & Virtual Anticipation

In part one, we polled Team Experience about the darker side of the SAG and Globe nominations this week. For part two we'll lighten up with happy questions.

• Which acting nomination most thrilled you?
• What was your happiest non-acting moment during the nods?
• Despite a rough week for them, which film or performer are you still hopeful about?
• Whose home are you most eager to see in the virtual ceremonies to follow? 

You know what to do! Read their answers and provide your own in the comments... 

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Team Experience SAG/Globe Reactions Pt 1: Dark Thoughts & Unsurprising Surprises

Hey hey. So we polled Team Experience about this week's barrage of honors to see where their heads and hearts were at (though you know some of their loves if you checked out the Team Experience Awards). So let's start with less thrilling questions like ...

• Which SAG or GLOBE nomination left you cringeing or shaking your head?
• Which "surprises" were not actually surprises?
• Any theories about the ___ snub?

Read their answers and supply yours in the comments, please...

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The 9th Annual Team Experience Awards!

by Christopher James

Many things may have changed in the past year, but one thing remains the same. The show must go on and the Team Experience Awards must continue! If there's one perk of staying quarantined in one's home for a full year, it's that there is ample time to watch movies. Before Nathaniel reveals all of his Film Bitch winners for the year, the rest of the writers at The Film Experience gathered together to vote on our favorites of 2020 (and the first two months of 2021). Nathaniel will be staying with the calendar year eligibility (plus US festivals) but the Team is using Oscar eligibility rules with one exception: we also decided to consider Small Axe in our awards as five separate films.

In the end, nothing was a match for Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman, which earned the most wins (4) and nominations (11) from the bunch. While that may have taken the top prize, the team nominated fifty movies across 21 categories. Check out the nominees and winners after the jump...

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Year in Review: Best Onscreen Chemistry of 2020

by Team Experience

Chemistry may be something you can predict in a lab but in showbiz it's always been volatile, elevating some projects to unpredictable heights and dooming others with its absence or withholding or misdirections. Strong onscreen chemistry may be far less rare than capturing lightning in a bottle but it can feel just as miraculous. In the studio system they'd seize on any great example and repurpose it by ordering additional pairings of the stars involved. Modern Hollywood executive (and the stars themselves to some degree) have been notoriously dumb about capitalizing on incredible partnerships. This has made great onscreen chemistry basically a one & done phenomenon for the most part for decades... and thus all the more ephemeral and precious. So let's celebrate it.

We polled Team Experience on "best screen chemistry of 2020" and pooled the results. Sound off with your own in the comments... 

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