Best Actress in the 80s: An Alternative Oscar History

by Cláudio Alves

With one win and five additional nods, Meryl Streep was the Best Actress queen of the 1980s. Will she be similarly dominant in my ideal Oscars ballots? Come find out.

Nathaniel has shared some of his annual top ten lists from the 1980s in honor of the site's special theme for November. Now, it's time for me to present some lists of my own. Rather than my favorites from each year, let's consider one of the readership's favorite Oscar races, instead – Best Actress. Only, instead of the Academy's choices, you get to appreciate or disparage my picks. From 1980 to 1989, I compiled what my ballots would look like, selecting these dream nominees from the pool of eligible films for each year. This is another glimpse into my personal Academy Awards, that gigantic spreadsheet, with bonus honorable mentions, ineligible performance shout-outs, and some titles still on my watchlist, waiting to be seen…

Click to read more ...

Venice 2024: "The Room Next Door" takes the Golden Lion

by Nathaniel R

Pedro Almodóvar and his actresses Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton working on THE ROOM NEXT DOOR which is now a Golden Lion winner

The 81st annual Venice Film Festival has ended and the two perceived frontrunners The Brutalist and The Room Next Door took home major prizes, as did Babygirl, The Quiet Son, and Brazil's possible Oscar submission I'm Still Here. The "Competition" films are the headlining titles of course but they aren't the only films that get major mileage from applause and kudos as any festival wraps up. Outside of the main competition films like Familiar Touch (US), Familia (Italy), Iddu (Italy),  Mon Inséparable (France), Paul and Paulette Take a Bath (UK) and The New Year That Never Came (Romania) all won fanbases if the awards that flew around this week are indication.

The prizes went like so... 

Click to read more ...

Venice Main Competition Round-Up (plus London and NYFF Openers)

by Nick Taylor

BLITZ (2024) Steve McQueen

So many film festivals the past few days have come to make an announcement! Steve McQueen’s Blitz, about Londoners trying to survive a bombing during WWII starring Saoirse Ronan and Harris Dickinson, has been named the opening film for the London Film Festival. Meanwhile, the New York Film Festival will open with Nickel Boys, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel helmed by Hale County This Morning, This Evening director RaMell Ross.

A lot of films have been announced for TIFF, and will presumably keep being announced until the festival starts in September. We’ve also received word of the full lineup for the 81st Venice Film Festival, and since they’ve got much fewer releases than TIFF, I’ll be doing a quick run-down of which titles are most exciting to me personally. While I won’t be able to attend Venice, you can still see me watching them take off from the sidelines, like a 20th century mother waving to her children as they set sail on a voyage to a new country, hoping for the absolute best but steeling myself to be strong, just in case of disaster...

Click to read more ...

Festival News: Huppert Presides in Venice, Rasoulof Imprisoned, and more…

by Cláudio Alves

In 1988, Isabelle Huppert won the first of two Venice Volpi Cups, for Chabrol's STORY OF WOMEN.

As Cannes approaches, a barrage of festival news has hit film lovers worldwide. From celebratory to tragic, many of these stories aren't even about the Croisette, signaling how 2024 is entering the festival season full throttle. For example, Isabelle Huppert has been announced as the Jury President for this year's Venice, provoking traumatic flashbacks to whoever still remembers her Cannes presidency in 2009. According to rumor, the French thespian was an absolute tyrant, imposing her will over the other jurors to award frequent collaborator Michael Haneke with his first Palme d'Or. Fellow juror James Gray infamously described her as a "fascist bitch."

Following Lupita Nyong'o in Berlin and Gerwig in Cannes, Huppert's announcement makes 2024 the first year when all the big three European Film Festivals chose women as their Main Competition Jury Presidents…

Click to read more ...

Berlinale #5: Four bizarre films

by Elisa Giudici

L'EMPIRE © Tessalit Productions

If I think about the typical film competing at Berlin, I imagine something quite dramatic, decidedly political, and sometimes rather heavy. This edition of the Berlinale has added the adjective "bizarre" to this profile of mine. Here are four films seen in these hours that deserve this adjective.

L’EMPIRE by Bruno Dumont
Let me preface this one: Dumont and I just don't see eye to eye. He might be the only French director whose work I can't seem to appreciate, despite my overall fondness for French cinema. Given this history and a rather late screening on a very heavy day, the recipe for disaster was served. However, one positive thing about L’Empire I can say: in hindsight, it made me reassess his previous film, France, which I saw at Cannes and detested...

Click to read more ...