Almost There: Jessica Chastain in "A Most Violent Year"

by Cláudio Alves

Everything's coming up Jessica Chastain, it seems. While The Eyes of Tammy Faye didn't scrounge up much box-office success, the actress' performance as the famed televangelist has earned her career-best reviews. The acclaim catapults her to the front of the pack in the current Best Actress race, one that feels fated for biopic domination. Furthermore, Chastain's doing impressive work on TV alongside Oscar Isaac in an English-speaking remake of Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. Taking all this into account, it's fitting to dedicate this week's Almost There write-up to the fabulous actress, recalling her previous collaboration with Isaac in J.C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year. As Anna and Abel Morales, these beautiful thespians deliver some of their best work ever…

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Interview: Oscar Isaac on "A Most Violent Year" And His Alien Future

Oscar Isaac was not an overnight success. He made sporadic appearances in movies from the mid 90s onward and the roles and films grew, slowly but surely. Moviegoers have discovered him piece by brilliant piece each time. There wasn't even one particular year that made him a star though Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) is to date "the signature role". In contrast, his new character Abel Morales' rise to power isn't half as slow and steady. It's all compressed into one dramatic make-or-break year in J.C. Chandor's moody gripping 1981-set drama A Most Violent Year. 

I spoke to Oscar about burrowing inside this guarded businessman, working with his schoolmate Jessica Chastain, what casting directors think of him, and his obsession with the mutant supervillain he'll be playing in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016). Our conversation is after the jump...

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AFI Opening Night: A Most Violent Year Spawns A Most Excellent Party

Dear readers, though I have crashed a bit mood-wise (blame my Gemini nature) on this Friday the first 24 hours in Los Angeles for "The AFI Fest Presented by Audi - they expect everyone to say that since it rolls right off the tongue! -  were euphoric. It was surely a good omen that all the emails and tweets awaiting me once I was out of airplane mode were about The Fabulous Baker Boys 25th anniversary photo reunion. My favorite new compliment that I plan to use whenever I can think of a way to use it came from devout reader / awesome Canadian Cory who wrote:

Congrats on this existing".

In fact, that's exactly what I should have said to JC Chandor at the after party for A MOST VIOLENT YEAR's gala premiere. [More...]

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"All is Lost" For Oscar Noms?

One of the biggest question marks this season is what became of All is Lost's Oscar heat?

Was it the box office (okay but unnoteworthy)? The relatively laidback Robert Redford campaign when hard sells are the norm? Or was it merely that the movie is a quiet contemplative type fellow in a sea of noisy exuberant life-of-the-party types? Or was it that other quiet contemplative loner with which critics are far more enamored (That other guy goes, oddly enough, by Her)?

There is still a chance that All is Lost could pull a few nominations out of its hat this Thursday morning but with none of the recent guilds going its way, and very little in the way of critics awards, all might be truly lost. Which seems strange given the early heat it had for Best Actor and the nominations it probably deserves like the sound categories. I know it's not an original notion to compare it to Gravity in terms of theme and plot but the similarities don't end there. In both cases, the sound is inarguably crucial to the movie's success. Here's a veritable FYC ad for its Sound Mixing and Sound Editing...

Do you think the film will come up empty-handed on Nomination Morning or surprise with Redford and other stray nod? 

LFF: All is Lost

David reports from the London Film Festival on his first voyage to meet Robert Redford, lost at sea... (This film is also playing at NYFF)

Since Kanye West just brought The Truman Show and its climatic sailing sequence into public parlance again, it’s perfectly appropriate for me to refer to All is Lost as an enlarged version of that scene. The manipulator of the heavens here is not a flatcapped Ed Harris, but writer-director J. C. Chandor, fleeing from the immensely talkative boardroom of Margin Call to the vast sea of a practically wordless one-man-show. ‘Our Man’ (as the credits call him) is Robert Redford, in an Oscar-buzzed performance that is certainly his most remarkable in many years. Not only for the physical commitment - the rough winds of the sea buffet the sailor every which way - but for the restraint with which he crafts a stolid and complex man who barely says a word.

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