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.)
It should come as no surprise that writer-director Taylor Sheridan, currently hot in Hollywood after his Oscar screenplay nomination for Hell or High Water, is an actual, bona fide cowboy. Perhaps that’s why his work feels like such a throwback—to an era in which quietly capable men, silently toting unspoken burdens, took on the joyless task of meting out frontier justice. At the same time, he’s shown a canny gift for placing such old-school archetypes in a distinctly modern, of-this-moment social and political context, making their struggles feel unexpectedly timely or, rather, timeless. That gift is on ample display in his new film, Wind River, which is now in wide release after nabbing the best directing prize in the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes earlier this year.
Set on a remote, wintry Indian reservation in Montana, the film marks the third installment in a loose trilogy of Westerns penned by Sheridan (the first two being Sicario and Hell or High Water), though Wind River is the first one he directed...
We're back to weekly podcasts! This week Nick, Joe, and Nathaniel discuss two new Best Picture hopefuls and one bold remake
Index (43 minutes) 00:01 Arrival - thinky empathetic sci-fi just when we're starved for understanding in the real world + Amy Adams! 19:35 Slight spoilery territory on Arrival and comparing it to other movies 27:05 Cape Fear's 25th anniversary. One of our favorite Scorsese's. 33:30 Loving a quiet civil rights drama 41:11 Almost Christmas and goodbyes
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?
The Light Between Oceans opened this past weekend to OK reviews (including a positive one from Nathaniel). But as I sat watching Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander fall in love, I was waiting for Rachel Weisz. And I kept waiting. She appears very late in the film and even then her character is still secondary to the main narrative. So I tried to imagine why would Weisz take this part. Why would she play second fiddle to an up-and-comer (Vikander wasn’t well known when this was shot almost 2 years ago).
And actually there a few good reasons:
• Shooting in gorgeous New Zealand. Besides the knitwear, the locations are the most breathtakingly beautiful thing in Light. Weisz never actually makes it to the lighthouse, but the quaint town where her character is ensconced has beauty to spare.
• Deepening her relationship with Derek Cianfrance. Apparently an early iteration of Blue Valentine (2010) was supposed to star Weisz and Jeremy Renner. It fell through because of financing woes.
• Sharing scenes with Michael Fassbender. What an actor, what a man. Maybe Weisz was shown pictures of him in period undershirts - his best look in the movie - and that's why she signed on.
Three very good reasons (besides liking the story and the part). Have you seen Light yet? And could you imagine Blue Valentine without Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling?
Chris here with a first look at one of the fall's big Oscar question marks. Last year, Denis Villeneuve's Sicario did quite well by Oscar standards if you consider its punishing bleakness and divisiveness even if it missed the major races. This year he's returning with the sci-fi Arrival, and we've been patiently waiting to see if this will raise his Oscar cache.
To go with the building buzz, here are our first looks...
Because we're having fun with this little feature we'll continue. On this day in history as it relates to the movies...
1881 Ahead of her time Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross. She doesn't get a biopic because Hollywood is only interested in "Great Man" biopics 1916 Happy Centennial to author Harold Robbins who penned 25 best-sellers some of which became famous movies like The Carpetbaggers (1964), the Elvis flick King Creole (1958), and the notorious Pia Zadora Razzie winner The Lonely Lady (1983)
Rope (1949) and Swoon (1992) - two great movies inspired by the Leopold & Loeb case
1924 Chicago college students Leopold & Loeb murder a teenage boy in a "thrill killing." Their crime inspires the story of the gay deviants in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1949), the Cannes Best Actor winning Compulsion (1958) and is recreated in the New Queer Cinema classic Swoon (1992) 1926 Kay Kendall of Les Girls (1957) fame is born 1952 Two time Oscar nominee John Garfield (best known for The Postman Always Rings Twice and Gentlemen's Agreement though those were not his nominated films) dies unexpectedly at the age of 39. The stress from the blacklist and Communist witch hunts (he'd refused to name names) were said to cause his heart attack. 1959Gypsy opens on Broadway starring Ethel Merman. Mama Rose becomes the defining female role of musical theater, as Hamlet is to male drama thespians. Dozens of divas play her thereafter on stage, tv, and film. The best of them is Imelda Staunton, no joke.
1960 Jeffrey Dahmer is born in Wisconsin. Becomes an infamous gay serial killer in the early 90s just in time for America's obsession with serial killers to go truly perverse and mainstream. Within a decade or two they're the heroes on television shows for f***'s sake (This has always bothered me about showbiz - assassins and serial killers are professions as popular as being a doctor or a waitress.) Jeremy Renner plays Dahmer in the eponymous movie which yours truly has never seen. Have you? the general critical consensus is that Renner was very very good in it. But nobody was annoyed by his total franchise sellout-ness back then because it hadn't happened yet.
1970 FINALLY some role-model gayness for May 22nd, redeeming the day from infamy. Harvey Milk picks up Scott Smith in a subway station as a 40th birthday present to himself, as lovingly reenacted by Sean Penn & James Franco in Milk (2008) 1974 Fairuza Balk is born. As soon as she can speak she calls the four corners to insure that no other actresses gets her signature role in The Craft years 22 years later. 1979 "White Night Riots" in San Francisco because the gays are rightfully furious about the "manslaughter" conviction in the assassination of Harvey Milk 1980Star War: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) released in theaters. It's still the best one.
1992 Johnny Carson welcomes his last guest on "The Tonight Show," Bette Midler, after 30 seasons on air. She wins the Outstanding Individual Performance Emmy for this performance. Two years later she is nominated for Gypsy and loses. 1999 Susan Lucci spoils her fame-boosting status as the ultimate awards show loser by winning on her 19th consecutive Daytime Emmy nomination
Wednesday, August 16, 2017 at 10:30AM 
It should come as no surprise that writer-director Taylor Sheridan, currently hot in Hollywood after his Oscar screenplay nomination for Hell or High Water, is an actual, bona fide cowboy. Perhaps that’s why his work feels like such a throwback—to an era in which quietly capable men, silently toting unspoken burdens, took on the joyless task of meting out frontier justice. At the same time, he’s shown a canny gift for placing such old-school archetypes in a distinctly modern, of-this-moment social and political context, making their struggles feel unexpectedly timely or, rather, timeless. That gift is on ample display in his new film, Wind River, which is now in wide release after nabbing the best directing prize in the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes earlier this year.
