Nathaniel Gives Thanks

Team Experience members were invited to give thanks this week so you'll be hearing from a few of us. Here's your host Nathaniel R... 

2018 was an unusually hard year for your host, given that he was starting over in his offline life after a painful breakup so first things first. I'm so goddamn grateful for The Film Experience. Thank YOU all for reading (especially those who donate to keep us on life support- see sidebar) and for being such a faithful community. This labor of love site is a continual source of pleasure and stability for me personally and I always aim to make it so for you, too. Before I get to the individual entertainment gratitude I also want to thank the Team Experience regulars: Murtada, Chris, Jason, Glenn, Jorge, Lynn, Eric, Dancin' Dan, Spencer, John & Matthew, and those we don't hear from much at the moment (life is so rude like that) but who we're always happy to work with like Nick, Ilich, Salim, Tim, Deborah, Séan, Daniel, Ben, Katey, and Joe. And both warm hugs to those who've moved on and nervous waving at those yet to come; they're out there somewhere and must make themselves known soon!

I will now attempt to give entertainment thanks without completely repeating my esteemed colleagues in their fun posts even though I love several of the movies they already spoke of. Okay in 2018 I was ever so grateful for:

• The continual shapeshifting of A Simple Favor from comedy to noir to mystery to camp spectacle to romcom to satire. It was such a great film to take friends to since it was so funny and surprising and memorable with it genre juggling. And Blake Lively's ultra modern wardrobe paired with Old Hollywood star charisma was something else... 

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Golden Globe Nominating Begins!

My oh my but awards season is speeding up. Today ballots go out to the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation. Better known as those crazies that give out the Golden Globes. We adore the Globes here at TFE because if you look back at their history many great films and performances and TV series have won that were never honored at the Oscars or Emmys, particularly those of the comic or musical persuasion.

10 dream nominations we're rooting for, however likely or unlikely after the jump...

1. Crazy Rich Asians and A Simple Favor for Best Picture, Comedy or Musical

2. Toni Collette (Hereditary) and Nicole Kidman (Destroyer) both in Best Actress, Drama because we need some Aussie Actress power celebrated especially since Oscar might stiff them...

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The Very Best of Toni Collette

by Nathaniel R

A very happy birthday to Toni Collette today. We discussed this once on the blog a year or two ago but let's update our list of favorite Collette performances on her birthday since she was absolutely slaying the multiplex this past summer in the demonic horror flick Hereditary. She's currently up for a Gotham award for Best Actress for that role.

She's also starring in the new Netflix series Wanderlust about a married couple trying an open marriage though I haven't yet watched it (it's on the queue). My list of Toni's best work goes like so. Yours?

12 LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (BAFTA nomination, SAG ensemble nomination)
Warm, worried, winning.

11 IN HER SHOES 
Not everything about this works but she's wonderful in it...

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Months of Meryl: Evening (2007)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.  

#36 —Lila Ross, an old friend of a dying woman.

JOHN: While Meryl Streep is fiercely protective of her and her family’s privacy, she made no secret about what she got her daughter Mamie Gummer for her 24th birthday: Lajos Koltai’s Evening. Adapted from Susan Minot’s 1998 novel by the author herself, along with writer Michael Cunningham (The Hours), Evening follows Vanessa Redgrave’s Ann, an elderly woman drifting in and out of consciousnesses on her deathbed as she recalls a distant memory from her long-ago youth. That memory stars Claire Danes as a twentysomething Ann on the day of her best friend Lila’s (Mamie Gummer) wedding to a man she does not love. Ann, Lila, and the latter’s brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) are instead infatuated with Harris (Patrick Wilson), a strapping doctor that each will either screw or regret not screwing...

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C O N S I D E R - Actresses of 2018, First Half of Year

With the year half over, it's time to look back on the first six months and what treasures they brought us. Here are the 18 performances by actresses we treasured most at the movies thus far this year. We've previously shared the biggest hits in multiple categories at the box office and 18 fav performances by male actors. We hope you'll sound off on these and share a few of your own in the comments... and we hope this list serves as a reminder to Oscar and Globe and SAG voters that amazing performances can happy at any time of the year. Why wait til December to start considering your "Best of" ballot? 

Disclaimer: before we begin I should note that there were a few key bits of actressing I have not yet seen that might have factored in like performances from Game Night, The Seagull, or Hearts Beat Loud.

Okay here we go...

7 LEADING ACTRESSES
(Jan 1st - June 30th releases) 

Toni Collette as "Annie" in Hereditary
What can we add to the already robust conversation around her brilliance? The nuanced construction is a marvel: she's giving you a portrait of an artist's idiosyncractic point of view and convictions, an adult child's contemptuous grief and anger about her parents, and, best of all, her own not always pleasant relationship to mothering. She does all of that while peppering in alarming details that prepare you for the climax. And the crescendo of this star turn! Movies are shot out of sequence which makes this performance even more of a wow.

Rachel McAdams as "Esti Kuperman"
and Rachel Weisz as "Ronit Krushka" in Disobedience
McAdams is in fine form as a woman who's repressed her sexuality for years and surprises with sharp glimpses into the woman that could have been or once was in younger form. But Weisz is holding the whole picture together with a complex take on a more self-actualized woman who nevertheless struggles with intimacy and with reconciling the first half of her life (religious) with the second (secular). It's right up there with her work in Constant Gardener and Deep Blue Sea as the holy trinity of her career.

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