Venice 2024: Luca Guadagnino's "Queer"

by Elisa Giudici

Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in QUEER (photo: Yannis Drakoulidis)

Luca Guadagnino's 2024 double feature, early release Challengers and the new premiere Queer, explore the intricate and slow process of calibrating love. In both,love is a delicate balancing act where one person loves intensely, perhaps even desperately, while the other remains more passive, content to be loved without being deeply invested in the relationship. The fundamental difference between the two lies in how they resolve this imbalance...

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First & Last 038

Can you guess the movie from its first and last shot?

The answer is after the jump...

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Review: "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" Ups the Ante to Glorious Results

by Christopher James

Sometimes, bigger is actually better.

Over Thanksgiving weekend in 2019, Knives Out became a sleeper hit, delivering a perfectly fun and witty whodunnit perfect for all generations. The Netflix sequel, Glass Onion, ups the ante in every way possible. The set is bigger, the cast is starrier, the cameos are plentiful. Despite the excess on screen, none of the magic of the original is lost. In fact, Glass Onion improves on the original, taking a character we know and love and thrusting him into a funnier and more zany mystery. The heart is still there so sign me up for plenty more chapters of Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) solving elaborate mysteries.

For those concerned, never fear. No major spoilers are ahead. The latest Benoit Blanc tale, which just opened in cinemas, deserves to be seen with as fresh of eyes as possible...

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Podcast: Being Macbeth's Lost Daughter (Who Has No Time To Die)

Nick and Nathaniel reunion part two (of three!). This past weekend we had a mammoth talk trying to cover everything we've been catching up with or watching again. So we've split this podcast into two. Apologies that it ends on an ellipses but we live in franchise culture so you're used to it by now!

62 minutes
00:01 Indie critical darling Test Pattern
07:40 The ensemble work in Mass with a shout-out to Martha Plimpton's revelatory work
15:50 Admiring The Tragedy of Macbeth ...especially Kathryn Hunter
24:20 Nick is obsessed with The Lost Daughter and tells us why. We particularly dig into Maggie Gyllenhaal's direction and how hot smart people are
42:00 An unexpected defense (albeit with several reservations) of Being the Ricardos. We both love Nicole Kidman in it (sorry haters) but we wish Aaron Sorkin would stop directing his own stuff
49:23 No Time To Die... franchise culture, changing times, and the Daniel Craig era.
1:01:30 To be continued...

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify or download the attachment below. If you missed our previous recent discussion covering a full dozen 2021 movies, that's here. 

Being Macbeth's Lost Daughter

Review: Daniel Craig's last stand in "No Time To Die"

by Deborah Lipp

No Time To Die explicitly advertises itself as “the conclusion” of a series that began with Casino Royale (2006), so there’s no spoiler in talking about No Time to Die (2021) as the conclusion of Daniel Craig’s James Bond series. I will keep major spoilers out, but I will certainly talk about this film in a way that understands it in the context of the Bond franchise, and as a “conclusion” of sorts. Fair warning and all that.

As we have come to expect from the Bond films of the last twenty or so years, No Time to Die is lavishly produced, has an A-list cast, and is beautiful to look at. As a standalone film, it’s good, perhaps very good, but the whole point of No Time to Die is that it isn't a standalone film. As a “conclusion,” it makes you ask questions: About James Bond and his future, about Daniel Craig and his legacy, about what a Bond film ultimately is...

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