Berlinale #6: Kirsten Stewart in "Love Lies Bleeding"

by Elisa Giudici

LOVE LIES BLEEDING © Anna Kooris

A young woman hitchhikes along the edge of an American road, wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and carrying a backpack with her belongings. Jackie or Nomi? It's just one of the passages in Love Lies Bleeding that brings to mind Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls. The two films have a lot in common, starting with a rare attitude in American cinema: looking at an "unpresentable" American reality from within, while completely abstaining from any kind of judgment, morality, or dramatic commentary. Other similarities include the dream of the Vegas show (Jackie wants to participate in a bodybuilding competition) and a constant male presence as a judge and dangerous force. Director Rose Glass demonstrates the same ability as Verhoeven to make such bold and decisive choices, with a certain taste for the quip, that the film will inevitably be divisive.

With this introduction, I don't mean to say that Love Lies Bleeding is looking to reference Showgirls...

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Revisiting 'A Beautiful Mind'

by Patrick Ball

Young Patrick and his favourite (at the time)

In the winter of 2001-2002, I was a plucky 8th grade “star” of my basketball team, son of a football coach, and an emerging film fan obsessed with all things James Bond, Star Wars, and Tom Cruise. A blissful innocent, bumbling around the world in a haze of All American normalcy. It would be my final year of innocence.

That following winter I would be clutched by the gay agenda, indoctrinated into a world of actresses, wig styling, and the unending delights of the beleaguered 1950s housewife. I would be snatched out of the closet by the twin hands of The Hours and Chicago, never to return. But as much as my love of film would come to be irrevocably shaped by a Zeta jazz square and a stroll into the river Ouse, one film lingered in my memory from the before times. I carry it with me to this day as a fond curio, a faded photo from the old country; That movie was A Beautiful Mind...

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Almost There: Jim Carrey in "The Truman Show"

After a two-week hiatus, the Almost There series is back!

by Cláudio Alves

Blessed with an elastic face that can as easily twist into a clownish visage or a mask of tragedy, Jim Carrey is an actor prone to exaggeration. His maximalist tendencies don't always work, but they're sure to leave a lasting impression, whether playing up his funnyman routine or trying another register. While his legacy is built on comedies, awards bodies have responded better to Carrey when he's stretching himself as a dramatic performer. After his star rose with vertiginous speed in the mid-90s, the actor's first real foray into the Oscar race happened in 1998. It was then that, working with director Peter Weir, Carrey found the point where sitcom disintegrates into existential crisis, using his comedic skills to trace an odyssey of self-discovery. Despite AMPAS' marked disinterest, The Truman Show is one of Jim Carrey's greatest achievements…

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YNMS: Top Gun Maverick

We're way behind on movie trailers. So here's another Yes No Maybe So courtesy of Tony Ruggio...

The interwebz collectively threw shade a year or two ago when Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer, and director Joseph Kosinski (Tron Legacy, Oblivion) announced the twenty-years-too-late sequel to Top Gun, complete with some premise about sons and legacies and an aging Maverick. Sounded like the same ol’ routine any time a long-dormant brand or franchise suddenly decides to reboot or, in the case of Top Gun, sequelize for the very first time. It’s somethin’ else what a good trailer can do...because all of that is here and more in the first trailer which dropped on Thursday, and yet it’s one of the best teasers this year...

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Who will win the Emmy for Leading Actor in a Drama?

By Spencer Coile 

If you were to go back and evaluate the Lead Actor in a Drama Series race from the past decade, you may expect to find a lot of Bryan Cranston for his performance as Walter White on Breaking Bad. Yet, intriguingly, while Cranston won his fair share of Emmy’s, this category is more unpredictable than you might expect. 

With winners including Kyle Chandler for Friday Night Lights, Jeff Daniels for The Newsroom, Rami Malek for Mr. Robot, and of course Cranston and Jon Hamm for Mad Men, Lead Actor is often changing hands. In fact, Cranston is most recent consecutive repeat winner (back in 2010). Will last year’s winner Sterling K. Brown break this new one-off trend, or will a new winner emerge...

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