Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Nightmare Alley (2021)

Welcome back to the series, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" by Nathaniel R. Each week we'll discuss a single movie via a particular shot. Anyone who'd like to participate can choose their own!

Best Prop

When you're reading your mark, as former circus psychic Pete (David Strathairn) teaches us, you're searching for external clues to internal damage. The fatal flaw of Nightmare Alley, up this year for Best Picture, may well be that Guillermo del Toro, though a gifted filmmaker, isn't much for interiority. But oh his surfaces! Overly lacquered beauty and the ugly rot it's faililng to hide are the greatest assets of his latest film. On that note we must pause to honor the funhouse sequence early in the film which operates like a veritable FYC ad for the Oscar-nominated Production Design. The set amazes and one particular prop in the 'funhouse', a mirror stating "TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF  SINNER" is a perfect offhand joke. We know very little about Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) but he already knows he's "no good". The camera lingers for a second on the mirror, to make sure we do... 

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Yes No Maybe So: "The Northman"

The 2021 film year will stretch well into 2022 -- that happens with late Oscar ceremonies -- but we finally have a title we're really excited about to look forward to the month after the Oscars. Robert Eggers' viking drama The Northman starring Alexander Skarsgård hits theaters on April 22nd. Let's discuss the trailer with our Yes No Maybe So™ system...

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Consider Oscar Isaac in "The Card Counter"

by Lynn Lee

Is it too early to start an “Oscar for Oscar” FYC campaign?  Because there needs to be one for Oscar Isaac in The Card Counter, stat.

Sadly, it’s not at all a given that he’ll get much traction.  Initial reception of The Card Counter among critics has been positive but rather muted, and the film hasn’t made much of a mark with general audiences.  It probably doesn’t help that the trailer gives the misleading impression of a snappy, heisty movie about a poker player with a shady past when in reality it’s a slow-burn Paul Schrader Dark Odyssey into the Mind of a Morally Tormented Man.  Schrader fans, at least, will get what they’re expecting; Isaac fans will get that and so much more...

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Yes No Maybe So: Spider-Man No Way Home

Hello, Peter! The internet has gone stark raving mad dissecting the first trailer for Spider-Man No Way Home, for easter eggs. We're less interested in trying to figure it out (we like to be surprised!) and more in what it's promising us. The familiar Tom Holland/Zendaya chemistry, mystical mayhem courtesy of Doctor Strange, and an attempt to relive the glory days of Sam Raimi's original Spidey trilogy (2002-2007).

We're in but let's do the Yes No Maybe So™ as we watch the trailer together after the jump...

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Year in Review: Horror Actoring of 2019

by Jason Adams

Since it's the second to last day of 2019 and we already named our "10 Favorite Horror Actresses of 2019" last week I figured I'd give us a last second bonus and shed some affection on the best fellas of the year. I know, I know, we're all all more inclined towards favoring the actresses... well, so's the genre to be frank. Horror really does favor female stories and experiences, and it was I will admit much easier to come up with last week's list. Besides the magnificent duo that anchors my favorite movie of the year I had to dig a little deeper for this one. But once I began rifling around I managed to uncover some gems...

Willem Dafoe & Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse 

When forced to choose between the two (and no thanks to Awards Season I have had to here and there) I tend to choose Dafoe, but only because his magnificent to-the-moon work is more straightforward... as straightforward as anything is in this topsy-turvy madhouse of a movie, at least. Pattinson's work is trickier -- his accent and behavior is all supposed to be wobbly, as his character's unformed; a liar trying to pour himself into a new shape. But make no mistake these are the two best male performances of 2019 slapping against each other in slippery tandem.

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