Review: "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody" Is a Lovable Mess

By: Christopher James

No one loves their cliches more than the biopic genre. However, no music biopic has blown through every cliche with such quick and reckless abandon as Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. That’s not necessarily an insult.

Few pop culture icons loom as large as Whitney Houston, “The Voice,” who holds the record for seven consecutive number one singles atop the Billboard Top 100. By virtue of also being a modern celebrity, most people have some concept of Houston. Thus, the biopic spends less time educating people on who Whitney Houston is. In fact, it’s a crash course through her Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it misses out on her soul and motivation - what drove Whitney Houston from the biggest star in the world to death at 48?

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Awards Season Catchup: "Blonde" on Netflix

By Abe Friedtanzer

It’s hard to wait to watch a film months after its release and not be at least somewhat affected by what the public thinks about it. To say that the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde has not received favorable mentions is an understatement. Still everyone has opinions so it seemed possible that there might be something worthwhile about it, like Ana de Armas’ Golden Globe-nominated performance or the Oscar-shortlisted makeup and hairstyling. Seeing the NC-17 rating and the daunting 2-hour-and-47-minute runtime at the start of the film sets up certain expectations, and, somehow, this film still manages to surprise, and not in a good way.

Blonde opens in black-and-white on a young Norma Jeane Mortensen (Lily Fisher) and her mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), who shows Norma a photo of a celebrity she claims is her father. Gladys quickly descends into a manic state, driving her young daughter straight towards a fire while everyone else is running the other way...

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Almost There: Claire Foy in "First Man"

by Cláudio Alves

For a film to get two nominations in the Best Supporting Actress category isn't especially rare. Several titles vie for that double spot this year, though Women Talking appears to be most likely to succeed. Jessie Buckley was nominated for The Lost Daughter last season and feels poised to nab a second consecutive honor, while Claire Foy has the other juiciest role. Moreover, this isn't the first time the British actress made famous by The Crown has been a significant player in the Oscar race. Early in the 2018 awards season, she appeared to be a near-lock for her work in Damien Chazelle's First Man, wherein the actress played a variation on AMPAS' favorite stock character – the stalwart wife to "a great man" of history. 

As Women Talking is gracing theaters with a new buzzy Foy performance and Chazelle's First Man follow-up Babylon is almost upon us, let's look at her work in the Neil Armstrong biopic…

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Almost There: Paul Dano in "Love & Mercy"

by Cláudio Alves

Paul Dano's film career has been awards-adjacent since the very beginning. At seventeen, he won the Best Debut Performance Spirit Award for his work in L.I.E. Five years later, he was one of the stars of Little Miss Sunshine, the first of three Best Picture Oscar nominees in the actor's filmography. Still, though the Academy regularly loves Dano's movies, they have never shown any affection for Dano himself. That might change this year with The Fabelmans, where the actor portrays a fictionalized version of Steven Spielberg's dad in what's bound to be one of the season's biggest award magnets.

To celebrate the actor's achievements and potential first Oscar nomination, let's look back to the last time Dano was on the Academy's radar. In 2015, he almost category frauded his way to a Supporting Actor nomination for his work as Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy…

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TIFF: "The Swimmers"

by Matt St Clair

In an early sequence from The Swimmers, we see both sisters Yusra and Sara Mardini jamming to “Titanium” by Sia. As they’re happily move on the dance floor in slow motion, the camera pans over to the escalating warfare happening in the background. That one scene is perfectly emblematic of the movie’s overall point of view. We watch these two real-life sisters persevere and maintained hope no matter the crises surrounding them... 

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