The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Upon the US release of Paddington 2 in 2018, film critic David Ehrlich wrote about a new age of optimistic movies. He called this phenomenon, nice core. They were films that emerged in the era of Trump and Brexit, little rays of celluloid sunshine that celebrated the power of kindness and the wonder of humanity from filmmakers living in an increasingly cruel world. If you're looking for formalistic vanguard or challenging experiences, you won't find it in this type of cinema, though that doesn't have to be necessarily bad. Art of modest ambition whose main purpose is comfort shouldn't be undervalued.
One could almost say that, when ironic detachment becomes standard, the exaltation of sincere cinema can be a radical gesture…
The stars of BPM (Arnaud Valois, Adele Haenel, and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) were all nominated for Césars
The César Awards, now in their 43rd year, and essentially France's Oscars have announced their nominations. It wasn't a great year for France in terms of their US arthouse performances. The most successful French release this past year in the States was François Ozon's Frantz (César eligible in 2016) which finished its theatrical run just shy of a million dollars. But of the French films that did make some sort of transatlantic mark this year (whether through festival hype or theatrical release) you'll see BPM (Beats Per Minute), the horror film Raw, and Agnes Varda's Oscar nominated Faces Places among their nominees...
Chris here, on behalf of my fellow Team Experience writers! Before Nathaniel shares his Top Ten and Film Bitch honors (not to mention the Oscar nominations on Tuesday - eek!), we've polled all of the other writers here at The Film Experience for their favorites of the past year without our kind and benevolent leader. It's our 6th Annual Team Experience Awards!
You'll remember last year we awarded eventual Oscar Best Picture winner Moonlight with seven prizes, and this year the wealth is slightly more shared. We had a lot of readers asking to see what our full ballot of nominations would be, so this year we have opened it up to reveal our winner and four runner-ups in each of our categories. Our nomination leader is Call Me By Your Name with 9 mentions, and craft-heavy Phantom Thread and The Shape of Water are right behind with 8.
Our most awarded however was granted to one of our most discussed, Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird. Because as Lois Smith's nun ponders: aren't love and attention the same thing? Check out our winners...
Nathaniel has already looked at the foreign language hits of the year and a the top-grossers for films by or about women, people of colour, LGBTQ and more. Now it's my turn to chime in with a look at what non-fiction movies were doing at the box office. It ain't exactly pretty - but, then, the figures below don't always paint an accurate picture for the world of documentary.
Much like the rest of the independent and arthouse scenes, festivals and VOD/streaming are becoming the primary way for audiences to see documentaries. Some of the most buzzed and most discussed of the year, for instance, are Strong Island, Icarus, Voyeur and Chasing Coral, which never received a theatrical release beyond minimal Oscar-qualifying runs. Meanwhile, other significant 2017 titles like LA 92, Oklahoma City,Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds aired on TV.
TOP 40 DOCUMENTARIES FOR 2017 Listed by US Box Office Gross only. Linked titles leads to reviews. Oscar finalists are in bold 🔺 = still in theaters (Note: Figures are as of 01/21/2018)
1. BORN IN CHINA $13.8 (April 21st) As is often the case these days, a Disneynature title tops the chart. However, the figures for these Earth Day releases are diminishing. This one about pandas is the lowest-grossing of the seven Disneynature docs to be theatrically released since Earth in 2009 (so, not including The Crimson Wing: Mysteries of the Flamingo which went curiously unreleased in America). Still, this is a great figure for a nature documentary and as long as they keep churning them out hopefully people keep going in at least these modest numbers.
2. I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO $7.1 (February 3rd) One of the lone bright spots among the first half of the year for arthouses was this Oscar-nominated James Baldwin doc. We may grimace when distributors keep films from the general public, but Magnolia were smart to see they not only had a very likely Oscar contender on their hands (it should have won, but that's not what we're here to discuss), but that there's no way for these films to thrive among the end-of-year prestige glut...
7.THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER $114k on 4 screens newREVIEW
Another weekend that few studios will be celebrating, partially because there was so much competition with five new wide releases and five new platform releases...
Friday, March 20, 2020 at 11:01PM ;)
Upon the US release of Paddington 2 in 2018, film critic David Ehrlich wrote about a new age of optimistic movies. He called this phenomenon, nice core. They were films that emerged in the era of Trump and Brexit, little rays of celluloid sunshine that celebrated the power of kindness and the wonder of humanity from filmmakers living in an increasingly cruel world. If you're looking for formalistic vanguard or challenging experiences, you won't find it in this type of cinema, though that doesn't have to be necessarily bad. Art of modest ambition whose main purpose is comfort shouldn't be undervalued.
