Stilted Humanity: Acting Lanthimos

by Cláudio Alves

Since his third feature opened at the 2009 Cannes Film festival, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has been something of an international sensation. Dogtooth, that masterpiece of perverted domesticity, even conquered a surprising Academy-Award nomination along with its sterling reviews. From relative obscurity, Lanthimos thus became a household name for cinephiles all over the world and his next projects were followed with breathless anticipation. The formalistic precision, violent nature of his scenarios and the unsettling horror of the stories enchanted many and disgusted even more.

All of these choices are transgressive as it's fitting of the cinema of the Greek Weird Wave. However, such elements aren't as uncommon as many suppose. If you look hard enough through the wilderness of festival offerings, it's easy to find many similar aesthetic and narrative propositions. Yorgos Lanthimos does them with rare perfection, but that doesn't mean they are radically rare. Much more off-beat and idiosyncratic is the way this provocative filmmaker works with actors…

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Watch at Home: Killing Sacred Deers in Moonlit Hidden Worlds

The heads up on what's newly available right now to screen at home.

New on DVD/Blu-Ray
• How to Train Your Dragon The Hidden World - do we think this has a shot at the Oscar or was the conversation too muted? The series hasn't yet won the gold.
• Isn't It Romantic  If you can't get enough Rebel Wilson in movie theaters with The Hustle, you can try her romantic comedy from earlier in the year. We haven't actually caught this yet. If you have do let us know what you thought in the comments as we're curious about it.
• The Upside Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart led this unexpected hit based on the French blockbuster The Intouchables.

New to streaming titles and iTunes deals on the ultra cheap are after the jump...

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FYC: "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" for Best Cinematography

by Ilich Mejia

Sometime this fall, Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer began recurring less and less in conversations surrounding films likely to be Oscar nominated this month. The fact that a film featuring a vindictive teen with supernatural powers was even in any awards-friendly conversation despite voters’ general aversion to anything paranormal is a testament to its many assets: a compelling cast well led by Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, and Barry Keoghan (and even child actors Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic, both easily disturbed but unmoved like any Lanthimos vet), an eerie score tuned flawlessly to make you laugh out loud at the most horrific sight, and some of the most concealed but poignant contemporary costume work in film this year. But perhaps the movie’s greatest showcase is Thimios Bakatakis’s cinematography as he paints ordinary Cincinnati into a most chilling Epidaurian stage.

Come read more about Bakatakis's wizardry, wary of miiild spoilers!

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Father Figures, the best and worst of 2017

Each day a new "year in review" piece. Here's Ben Miller...

I’ve been a father since 2012.  It’s one of the great joys in my life.  If you classified me as a person, father would be near the top of how I would want to be described.  I want to be a good father and I strive to be. 

But, generally, I don’t look to film for guidance.

Terrible fathers are a touchtone of cinema.  From Jack Torrance to Daniel Plainview, movie dads rarely get the chance to show how great they can be for their children.  2017 surprisingly provided us with a bevy of complex relationships between parents and their progeny, and the dads actually got a chance to shine.  Check out the top ten great dads in 2017 films.  (I also included five terrible fathers, because 2017 gotta 2017.)

TOP TEN GREAT DADS IN 2017 MOVIES
Spoilers for all of these films are included

01 Larry McPherson, Lady Bird (Played by Tracy Letts)
Lady Bird and her mother, the central figures in the film, aren't the only ones to benefit from Larry's warmth (we previously discussed this characterization here). Even when faced with a fruitless job interview, he smiles in the face of adversity, opting for a big bag of Doritos.  When his son comes in for the next interview, there is no animosity.  Larry straightens his tie, pats him on the shoulder and tells him to go get ‘em.  He does this while losing his job, providing for an extra person in his house, losing his daughter to college and suffering from years of depression.  God bless Larry McPherson. 

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Nicole Kidman Honored by Los Cabos & Glamour Magazine

By Ilich Mejia

As if being Australian wasn't celebratory enough, this past week has forced Nicole Kidman to vacate two more spots on her already-crowded mantel.

First, she was honored at Los Cabos' 6th Annual Film Festival with a Lifetime Achievement Award. There representing Yorgos Lanthimos' The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Kidman accepted her award on behalf of all the filmmakers and film festivals that have supported her career. While in Cabos, Kidman also lamented the industry's dearth of working female directors and joked about how some certain Mexican directors keep turning her down (the nerve!). This is only the second year the Mexican festival gives out a Lifetime Achievement Award. The honor was first given out last year, during the festival's fifth celebration, to Italian actress Monica Bellucci.

Only a day after picking up her silver whale at Cabos, Kidman was off to New York to receive her next shiny thing... 

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