10 Questions about the Oscar race

by Nathaniel R

Every Oscar chart has been updated. Late October is always a strange time in the awards race. It's a time when most of the major players have surfaced (at festivals or screenings) but nobody has yet seen everything and no awards groups (beyond festival juries) have sorted and sifted through the abundance. Which means anything is still possible until the critics groups and awards org begin to narrow the focus of Academy voters in ways that tend to be both interesting and disheartening. They'll boost a couple of unexpected but worthy contenders into the conversation but at the same time their hive mind choices will pour abundant love on too few titles and starve other beauties of sunlight and water.

So as you peruse the charts, answer these ten questions in the comments...

Click to read more ...

Yes No Maybe So: "Gladiator II"

by Nick Taylor

You the readership may have forgotten we here at The Film Experience are aware of current releases, or really anything besides Nicole Kidman. And who can blame you! It’s perfectly understandable, and the only way to shock the system out of this belief is to proposition you with lots and lots and lots of men in a swords and sandals epic. That’s right, the subject of today’s Yes No Maybe So is Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, set for release in November 2024. Trailer and first reactions below the cut . . . .

Click to read more ...

Oscar Actor Hierarchy 2024 Edition

by Nathaniel R

Just one more nomination and the Poor Things men will make the list!

When we last updated the male version of this list Anthony Hopkins had yet to win his second Oscar for The Father (2021). Also moving up the list since then are Denzel Washington (who forced an expansion of the throne room itself with his 9th acting nod via Tragedy of Macbeth) and Robert De Niro with his 8th nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon. Despite a few moves up the latter the only "new" entry is Bradley Cooper, scoring his 5th acting nod for Maestro though that poor things duo Mark Ruffalo (just nominated) and Willem Dafoe (just missed)  both feel likely to enter in the next year or three given how often they work and the plum roles that come there way. They have identical Oscar stats with 4 nominations and 0 wins each.   

What follows is a list of Oscar's 35 All Time Favorite Actors. As with the women this royal club is restricted to men with 5 or more nominations. Only the acting statistics are accounted for so George Clooney, for example, is not (yet) ranked...

Click to read more ...

How was your holiday weekend at the movies?

by Nathaniel R

Labor Day weekend is not traditionally big box office though people almost always turn out for Denzel Washington and his third Equalizer film did very well given how Labor Day usually goes. Instead people head outdoors historically this weekend, desperate to catch the last rays of summer. Accidentally I was the latter this time even though I am decidedly not a summer person and avoid the sun like a vampire much preferring the dark cold of the movie theater. I was miserable on Monday with the heat but my friends wanted a picnic. So my moviegoing was home-bound. How about you? 

Weekend Box Office Sept 1-4 Holiday Weekend 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended
WIDE (Over 600 Screens)	LIMITED / PLATFORM  (spotty reporting this holiday week from the indie set)
EQUALIZER 3	THEATER CAMP
1 🔺 THE EQUALIZER 3 $42.8 *NEW* 3965 screens	1 🔺 THE GOOD MOTHER (US, drama)  $367k *NEW* 423 screens

Click to read more ...

Almost There: Don Cheadle in "Devil in a Blue Dress"

by Cláudio Alves

Noirvember can't end without a noir-themed write-up here at The Film Experience. It falls on the Almost There series to consider a style born in shadows, that cinema which came into its own in the aftermath of war and persists in perpetual reinvention. Though it'd be nice to look back on the origins of noir, most of the classics fell outside the Academy's radar. So it's only logical to wander into the depths of neo-noir, searching for a title that embodies the best of it all, combining classical sensibilities with a modern perspective. Thus, one arrives at Carl Franklin's Devil in a Blue Dress, a 1995 adaptation of Walter Mosley's book where a 1940s-set crime drama is reframed through the centering of a Black protagonist. 

However, it wasn't the film's hardboiled anti-hero who caught the attention of awards voters. Instead, those honors befell on a supporting player – Don Cheadle in his breakout role as a dangerous man called Mouse…

Click to read more ...