Year in Review Beauty Break: Thirst Traps of 2021

by Team Experience

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... as is thirst. When we polled Team Experience for the hottest actors of 2021, the voting was all over the place and thus fairly close. So we ended up with a dozen people (after the jump) that had at least two ardent fans among our team members in the preferential ballots.  Because the voting was so close they're presented in random rather than ranked order.

Other hotties that earned our lust, admiration, and aesthetic wonder included: Penelope Cruz in Parallel Mothers, Ruth Negga in Passing, Lady Gaga in House of Gucci, Idris Elba in Concrete Cowboy, Benedict Cumberbatch in Power of the Dog, and Rebecca Ferguson in Dune. And because thirst is not always singular, great pairings like Taylour Paige and Riley Keough (Zola), Melissa Barrera and Anthony Ramos (In the Heights), and Daniel Craig and Ana De Armas (No Time To Die) also showed up in the ballots. Speaking of the latter, why wasn't she the main Bond girl of the movie?!? WOW!

Okay, on to the gallery...

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NYFF: Sisters are doing it for themselves in Paul Verhoeven's blaspheme-licious "Benedetta"

by Jason Adams

Never let it be said that writer, director, and everlasting gob-dropping provocateur Paul Verhoeven doesn't know how to entertain. In what other director's hands would a dramatic film about a 17th century Tuscan nun having visions and tackling both the patriarchy and the plague involve a Virgin Mary statue whittled down for her pleasure? (Okay definitely Almodovar too). But Benedetta, Verhoeven's latest outrageous act of delicious cinematic provocation, is nevertheless All Paul, from the hem of its habit to the tip of its nips. And that's just the poster! Just wait until you peel that part down and see what sexy bits are bouncing about underneath...

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Nathaniel in Venice: "Power of the Dog" and "Madeleine Collins"

Nathaniel reporting from Venice, day 1 part 2

Day 1 (continued). I didn’t expect death to linger so completely over Parallel Mothers and curiously my opening night at the fest kept on inviting the grim reaper in. The first day of screenings ended with Jane Campion’s The Power of Dog in which death is far less of a subject but clouds the vast Montana skies.  But first I took in Madeleine Collins, a French addition of our favorite subgenre here at The Film Experience, Women Who Lie To Themselves™  in which everyone in the film avoids talking about a death they probably should have spent lots more time processing.  

Madeleine Colllins (Antoine Barraud)
Elisa already hit the highlight of the film in her brief capsule, but it bears repeating: Virginie Efira! Virginie Efira! Virginie Efira!

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Elisa's Venice Diary #1: Almodovar, Campion. Here are lions.

by Elisa Giudici

What a start! There's a way of saying in Italian: il buon giorno si vede dal mattino. It means you can tell if something is remarkable from the very beginning, as you can judge how a day will be by the way it begins. Well, the first day of my fifth year as a press pass holder in Venice was so amazing I am not going to tell you if I liked what I saw, but how much I enjoyed every single title.

PARALLEL MOTHERS by Pedro Almodóvar
I was unsure about the opening movie of Venezia 78 due to Pain and Glory: how to follow up such an intimate, powerful, memorable movie (the kind of film a director puts his entire life in it, and that he or she can only make once or twice in a career). How can the follow up be anything but a disappointment? Happy to report Pedro Almodóvar is far from having finished the meaningful things he wants to say while endlessly rearranging his favorite themes and actresses...

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Venice 2021: The Jury

by Nathaniel R

With Cannes wrapped we move on to the fall festival buzz. Next up is Venice (September 1st-11th) and we are thrilled to report that Elisa Giudici, our Italian correspondent who did such a fine job covering Cannes, will repeat that trick for Venice. The 78th Venice festival has just announced the complete jury for its competition films. Like Cannes, they've chosen a majority female jury this time around. Unlike Cannes they went big on very recent Oscar nominees and winners...

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