93rd Academy Awards: Doc, Doc, who's there? A deep dive into the feature nominees

by Josh Bierman

I’m sure I’m not the only contributor/reader on this site who upon Oscar nomination morning wakes to find they’ve already seen just about every above the line nominee. Or if they haven’t, they come to terms with having to sit through Hillbilly Elegy after managing to avoid it for months. 

This season, like in so many past ones, it’s those below the line nominees that I spent time getting to know after the nomination announcement. I didn't expect to be so far behind on Best Documentary Feature ahead of nomination morning...

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One Score and Five Years Ago: Revisiting "The American President" at 25

by Josh Bierman

As we are only 62 days away from a new, brighter era in the White House, now is the perfect time to revisit the Rob Reiner/Aaron Sorkin classic, The American President which is celebrating its 25th birthday this week. Back when it was released, Joe Biden was still a senator from Delaware and Tronald Dump had declared a loss of $915.7 million on his tax returns. I don’t want to make this piece a reflection on the Dump years through the lens of The American President, but as we’ve found in the years since Dump took that fateful ride down a golden escalator, it’s hard to avoid him when watching something overtly political. Or is that just me?

Let’s take it back a little bit. If you haven’t seen The American President since Hillary was just a First Lady, allow me to give a refresher. President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) is in his first term with high approval ratings, poised to cruise to a reelection victory. Enter Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening), an environmental lobbyist, who catches the widowed president’s eye. But the president’s popularity and reelection chances begin to wane due to their courtship...

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1987: The Untouchable Sean Connery, a look at the late actor's Oscar-winning performance

by Josh Bierman

When I heard about our 1987 retrospective I wanted to choose a film that I had never seen. I’ve been striving to cover blindspots in my film viewing history since the start of quarantine. I looked at the list of movies released in that year and when I saw The Untouchables the choice became obvious. At my home film festival, Cinema Quarantino, I’ve fallen in love with Kevin Costner as if it was 1991. I’ve also been really drawn to the films of Brian De Palma. All of that fell by the wayside when I woke up on Saturday morning to the news of Sean Connery’s passing. 

We’re all friends here, so please don’t judge when I say in keeping with the theme of having serious blind spots, the only other Sean Connery movie I’d seen is Murder on the Orient Express. Connery released his last studio film just as I was becoming obsessed with movies around the age of ten, so he wasn’t someone who was on my radar. I mainly associated Connery with Darrell Hammond’s inimitable SNL impersonation on Celebrity Jeopardy as well as his later career interviews (we’d be remiss to forget his one worded declaration of the Best Supporting Actress winner of 2002, we know Kathy Bates hasn’t). As if I wasn’t eager enough to watch it already, I welcomed the opportunity to not only watch a bit of Connery’s filmography, but the movie that won him his Academy Award...

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Yes No Maybe So: Jessica Chastain and the "355"

by new contributor Josh Bierman

The 355 is a new action film starring a host of bad ass international superstars set for a January 2021 release. If we’re being honest, when I first saw Sponcon for this on my Instagram, I was 100% certain that this was a short film for Lancôme or Chanel starring their brand ambassadors. Turns out it’s a real life feature length film! Huzzah for female-fronted action movies. Let’s take a deep dive into the trailer...

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Yes No Maybe So: Death on the Nile (2020)

Please welcome new contributor Josh Bierman...

The trailer for Death on the Nile, Kenneth Branagh’s latest Agatha Christie remake, arrived recently and we haven't discussed. Do we think this will be better than his previous venture Murder on the Orient Express or is it another vanity project? Let’s take a look...

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