The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
The month began with final thoughts on last year's Oscars (yes, those were the 2015 Oscars no matter what search engines, IMDb, and the web say!) and the final podcast of the season. And then we bravely tried to forge ahead unmoored to any one topic, though we immediately lost our more fairweather readers. Damn you random people who aren't reading this! Ah, well. They'll be back next season.
MARCH HIGHLIGHTS get caught up if you missed anything!
APRIL FOOLISH OSCAR PREDICTIONS as we do ACTOR MONTH A special detour to celebrate men (who get short shrift here, we know) BEST SHOT SCHEDULE the more the merrier - join us! APRIL SHOWERS shower scenes TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL coverage from Nathaniel, Manuel and Jason NEW FILMS The Boss, Jungle Book, Demolition, Huntsman: Winter's War, Sing Street REVISITS Crimes and Misdemeanors, Roman Holiday, Witness, Throne of Blood AND MORE... to be announced
We did it y'all. We made it through another film year. And with this we close the book on 2015 and join the now of 2016 already in progress. Here's the complete Oscar coverage in case you missed anything...
We neglected to write about the Girl Scout Cookies, so here is a bundle for you to enjoy. To redeem your bundle visit The Film Experience daily in 2016, share it frequently on all social media platforms, become a monthly subscriber, comment on every post. Etcetera Do these bundles come in all Thin Mints sets because that's the best cookie. No arguments to the contrary will be heard.
We're nearly finished* with 2015 Film Bitch Awards, our own annual year in review yearbook/party and of imaginary Oscar ballot (well, half of it is that). Today the remainder of our Best Scene categories with six final scene categories. This group hands more nominations to films from the top ten list of course but for highlights to point out here on the blog before you click over, we're using films outside the top ten list.
Obviously this page (and post) of awards contains mild spoilers so if you haven't seen the films and wish to stay pure, these are not the awards categories you're looking for. Here is one nominee I felt the need to gab about (maybe you will too?) from each category...
BEST KISS While Creed was mostly ignored by the Academy, chances are its big box office (which significantly outgrossed Stallone's last two attempts are reigniting the franchise) will insure a big career for Michael B Jordan. Can Tessa Thompson hope for the same (it's always trickier for actresses of color)? They're wonderful together. Especially endearing is the scene in her apartment where Adonis makes up a godawful wrap and they end up collapsed on the floor, caught up in the moment. It's an upside down shot from above and they're something beautifully innocent and pure but also sexy about this kiss. (Later they'll bring the heat in a proper sex scene at Rocky's house. "but what about your Uncle?" / "He old!" Ha!)
SEX SCENE Angelina Jolie's third directorial effort By the Sea was mercilessly trashed upon arrival but this was always going to be its fate. The Jolie-Pitts are extremely mainstream-famous. And household name blockbuster stars that the public has longed to see paired again onscreen aren't supposed to reunite for an indulgent overly serious tribute to Euro art cinema of the 1970s. That's for the other kind of movie star, like the Julianne Moores and the Ryan Goslings of the world, whose filmographies are built on eclectic sensibilities and crisscrossing between the ittybitty and the giant. But By the Sea isn't without its moments. The best scene, repeated in different forms like a musical riff, is when the couple sits on the floor in their hotel room and shyly watches another younger couple (Melanie Laurent & Melvil Poupaud) make love in the next room through a peephole. It's beautifully sympathetic and tragicomic, an estranged couple tiptoeing back to intimacy through surrogates.
OPENING SCENE David O. Russell's Joy is an easy movie to quibble with. It often feels like five different movies that haven't reconciled themselves. This problem (?) is embedded right in its prologue which jumps from inside a stylized soap opera, to Diane Ladd's wonderfully expressive fable-like narration, and back to the soap opera but this time "outside" of it through a TV set, and into little Joy's bedroom where she makes a castle and theorizes about her possible superpower (maybe she doesn't need a Prince?). Ladd's Grandma guides us through this collision of styles and ideas with an expertly dropped line about Joy's creativity that doubles as a guide to how to watch and make ambitious movies.
The patience to figure it out."
Will Joy grow on us with time? Perhaps it might. Perhaps we quibbled too much. Perhaps Russell didn't have the patience to truly figure this one out but there's a lot to figure therein.
ENDING Spotlight may have the most mellow finale we've ever nominated in this category but there's something about its sober work ethic and the core ensemble wide shot, with Walter "Robby" Robinson centered, that really lands emotionally and elevates the film. His phone rings and they all just return to work. Where they've always been.
Spotlight..."
CREDIT SEQUENCE I've been disappointed these last few years that it's more and more common for films to have virtually no credits at the beginning and double up at the ending. So shout out to Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation which has great opening and closing credits. The opening credits would be spoiler-alert central if they didn't come at you so aggressively with machine-gun montage speed. The ending credits are even more stylish --both an homage to the TV show and film appropriate -- with action frames from the film outlined by the wicks of time bombs; this movie is a blast.
MISCELLANIA - A DOZEN FAVORITE SCENES When writing about the Film Bitch Awards I often revisit a whole bunch of movies in clip forms, particularly the earlier releases that are blurry int he memory. Here we are at the end of the prize-giving and here comes Diary of a Teenage Girl and it suddenly looks just as good as everyone claimed it to be (I was previously in the admired but only admired camp). It was easy to turn certain movies off after checking the scene in question but I kept getting sucked into this film, as if it were the first time. One of the best moments is an animated interlude "The Making of Harlot" where a 'Beautiful Junior,' getting it on with Minnie, remarks upon her aggressive sexuality with something like judgment in his voice (though he's benefitting). Giant Minnie, holding him in her King Kong paw, turns away, with a single teardrop and casts him aside. True movie magic.
* Only three categories left to announce (Limited Roles x2 & Line Readings). Can you believe we're actually going to finish this year before the Oscars**?! Wheeee. We'll announce those three categories plus all the Gold Silver and Bronze medals at some point in the next 24, ya dig?
** Okay technically I won't have finished, damnit. I never named the Animated Feature nominees (we only go 3-wide here) because I was trying to see Boy and The World before voting. So we'll be finished with everything but that category.
AND JUST LIKE THAT... Academy Award voting has wrapped. So there's nothing left but the big show, the gowns, the accceptance speeches, and the post-mortem frenzy. Which also means February is basically a wrap since the next week is like Brigadoon... only its magic is annual instead of once every 100 years.
15 highlights from Jan/Feb ICYMI
• Original Song Ranking all 80 winners of Best Original Song • Brooklyn TV Bound Why do I keep seeing a Period Facts of Life here with Julie Walters as Mrs Garrett? • Best Actor It's the Year of the Ham. But how do you like your meat? • Q&A the popular series returned with a Leonaro DiCaprio episode • You Can Count on Me the most popular entry in our Sundance retrospective • Silence of the Lambs a five part baton-pass revisit. Did you enjoy? • Costume Design Beauty Break the Oscar nominees + 2 Nathaniel favorites • Podcast Nathaniel & Nick on the best work from this year's Best Directors and Best Actresses before this current nomination • Pansexual my Ass on Deadpool's bark / no bite • Nathaniel's Top Ten List for 2015 • The Witch is the first must-see of 2016 • Best Screenplay which nominee is the most quotable? • Production Design analysis of the nominees • Forgotten Valentine How good is The Painted Veil (2006)? Very good • Agent Carter the sure-to-be-cancelled show went Hollywood and got even better
And between Nathaniel and Jose we conducted over 50 interviews this past film year! Hope you enjoyed. Please do like us on Facebook and sign up for a forthcoming weekly newsletter (we really are going to do one this year -- starting very soon) so you don't miss anything.
COMING THURSDAY: Final Oscar Predictions COMING FRIDAY: Film Bitch Awards Finale COMING SATURDAY: Indie Spirit Awards COMING SUNDAY: You know what. Duh
COMING IN MARCH: Oscar Post-Mortem, the return of Hit Me With Your Best Shot each Tuesday (kicking off with Ghostbusters on March 8th) Zootopia, Sally Field, Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman, and a look back at Oscar winner Mercedes McCambridge for her Centennial
In the war of scene-stealing antagonists this year, Oscar Isaac's Nathan (Ex Machina) > Tom Hardy's Fitzgerald (The Revenant). We love both actors here at TFE and loved them before the rest of the web did (brag brag) but when it comes down to awards season you have to make tough choices.
That's just a handy way of saying Oscar and I go our separate ways more often than not in the acting categories but now both lists are available for your (hopeful) entertainment...
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR On the subject of category placement antagonists are often tricky. They definitely move the plot -- neither The Revenant or Ex Machina can function without these devious men, but often you can see either argument for lead or supporting. While Ex Machina arguably has three leads being such a chamber drama I occasionally relax the soapbox for performances that straddle the divide. A recent rewatch of Ex Machina confirmed that Oscar Isaac would make whichever shortlist we put him in (and I'd switched him back and forth during the year in drafts). It's such an inventive approach to a thoroughly imagined character so I tossed the dice and supporting he went. Now watch him tear up this fucking dance floor...
Only one of Oscar's men makes my own personal ballot (just posted) with apologies to Mark Rylance who I thought would place but he fell in the dread sixth spot! It happens. I've completed the Oscar chart as well and included trivia for this golden sausage party. Speaking of sausage parties... I think this is the first male Oscar lineup ever in which ALL the men have gone full frontal in other movies. Weird, right? It's an exhibitionist group this year. This only occurred to me to check because I was a big fan of Intimacy (2001) back in the day which starred Mark Rylance and everyone knows that Sly starred in a porno before Rocky (1976)
The charts also include our "How'd they get nominated" fun. So here's a sample -- the Tom Hardy in The Revenant edition:
25% Leo's bro power pulls his main men in w/ him 21% Spicy Bait: Villains prioritized in this category 20% Timing. 'The Revenant' was theshiniest new toy 15% Everyone wishes theycould have punched Iñárritu in the face 10% Performance - they like 'em BIG to shake up slow epics (see also: The Zeéeeee in 'Cold Mountain') 9% 'Mad Max Fury Rd'
P.S. I should not that though Hardy didn't make my top 12 in supporting I appreciate his go for broke attempts to save The Revenant from its own grandiose self-importance with a little cured ham.
Matt Damon a nominee at both the Oscars & the Film Bitch AwardsBEST LEADING ACTOR Given the weirdly unanimous "meh" factor that Oscar's shortlist has produced in audiences, at least on the web, it's hard to imagine it coming to be at all. But then you remember the media complicity in producing these sorts of safe groupings of all-stars whether or not people were actually hugely impressed with their work. Oscar produced a list of five major players who unfortunately could have been nominated based on the roles themselves before anyone saw the work (always a problem!). You've got your reigning Best Actor (Eddie Redmayne), your mega stars (Leonardo DiCaprio & Matt Damon), and your highly-revered thespians (Bryan Cranston & Michael Fassbender) with all but one of them (Damon) playing real life people. That's the baitiest of bait to awards types -- not just Oscar! -- though after 15 years of covering movies and awards seasons I still can't fathom why playing someone who really exists/existed is so much more likely to be lauded than creating a character from scratch with only the screenplay, director and your imagination to guide you.
But anyway that's Oscar's list. Only two of them survive to make my personal ballot and I had to correct some category campaign problems too to put Jacob Tremblay (Room) and Paul Dano (Love & Mercy) where they belonged. Since DiCaprio's fans can be quite touchy I should note that he's solid, as ever, in The Revenant. He's locked up to win the Oscar finally but sadly the film just isn't asking very much of him, emotionally, beyond grief and anguish which he's been playing with minor variations for at a dozen years now. Sorry Oscar campaign narrative but tough physical working conditions and weird diets ≠ acting triumph.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016 at 10:30AM 
