Interview: Aly Muritiba on Brazil's queer Oscar submission "Private Desert"

by Nathaniel R

Sometimes the long lead up to a movie's release can alter a story. In the case of Aly Muritiba's Private Desert, most people who come to it will already be aware of its central premise though the movie treats that as a "reveal". Happily the film works either way. Crossing the border can also change how a movie feels. The initial protagonist, Daniel (Antonio Saboia) is viewed sympathetically but his offscreen history (police brutality) is likely to spark different reactions from country to country, depending on societal views on policing and masculinity.  In the minimalist but never simple story, a lonely cop spontaneously drives several hours to finally meet the woman he's been romancing online. She abruptly ghosts him after an implicit request for reciprocal nudes and we glean, quite a long time before he does, that he's fallen for a queer person. 

We had the pleasure of talking to the director Aly Muritiba about the film, the careful casting of his second lead, and Brazil's contentious history of Oscar selections...

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NYFF: Aquarius team wows again with "Bacurau"

by Jason Adams

You think you know somebody. You think you've got it all figured out. You think you sit down to a movie at the New York Film Festival you're gonna see something respectable -- something serious and challenging. But hyper-violent revenge westerns? Those are for Toronto. 

Well Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles' film Bacurau already played Toronto, and now it is playing NYFF, and it somehow splits the difference -- it's somehow an ass-blistering revenge fable with exploding heads, while also being a deadly serious story of an indigenous community terrorized by big business interests. It is, quite simply, the sort of movie we'll look back on from the future -- assuming there is a future -- and say, "Yup, that got it just right..."

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Annette and Sonia: Considering Two Snubs

Robert here. With this weekend's Oscars closing up the film year, can we take one final minute and dive into two performances that have been given the prestigious honor of being declared snubbed by the academy? That'd be, namely, Annette Bening in 20th Century Women and Sonia Braga in Aquarius (who are both nominated in Nathaniel's own awards; Braga was runner up for Best Actress in the 2016 Team Experience Awards).

Some minor spoilers and possibly very unpopular opinions after the jump...

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The 5th Annual Team Experience Awards!

As teased in this week's podcast installment, it's time for The Team Experience Awards, our fifth yearly celebration! While Nathaniel begins his own Film Bitch Awards, here is our growing team's turn to bestow their year-end accolades without our host.

Last year we went all-in on Todd Haynes's Carol, and this year we have another favorite that receives quite a few prizes: Barry Jenkins's Moonlight. And this wasn't even close: the film was the only one to appear on every ballot in at least one category and was a landslide victory to the big prize. Consider Moonlight the consensus favorite here at The Film Experience. On to our awards:

BEST PICTURE
Moonlight
Runner-Up: The Lobster

BEST UNRELEASED FILM
Personal Shopper
Runner-Up: The Ornithologist

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Streaming: Netflix is still a mini-haven for foreign films

The Wailling was the 3rd most popular South Korean movie in the US last year after Train to Busan and The Handmaidenby Brian Zitzelman

The accepted mindset is that Netflix Instant is no longer a paradise for cinephiles. There are countless things to binge, sure, but large swaths of those are the service's original series and TV series from other networks. For moviegoers interested in material beyond the recent blockbusters or Hollywood fare, the pickings are much much slimmer than they once were. For example, those spurred to view the work of Meryl Streep after her powerful speech at Sunday's Golden Globes have only five streaming options, two of them being documentaries. A Hepburn fanatic, be it for Katharine or Audrey, has but two pictures to choose from.  

Yet there remains one avenue where Netflix secretly and continually excels; foreign cinema...

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