2000: A Semi-Defense of “Chocolat”

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000.

By Ben Miller

The 2000 Best Picture lineup features a blockbuster swords-and-sandals crowd-pleaser, a star vehicle about corporate evil, an ensemble on the war on drugs, and an epic martial arts foreign language film.  Those four films are unassailable in this lineup, but then there’s the fifth film: Lasse Hallstrom’s romantic dramedy Chocolat. The film’s legacy is more entrenched in controversy; as its nominations are attributed to shameless Oscar campaigning by Miramax and Harvey Weinstein.  But is it the terrible, no-good, very bad film its reputation has made it out to be?  The short answer is no, but the long answer is a bit more nuanced...

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Cate is camp and crazy-good in "The Man Who Cried"

by Nathaniel R

I'm pleased to share that I have returned for a second appearance on Murtada's fun podcast "Sundays with Cate" in which he's surveying Cate Blanchett's whole career (not chronologically) with various guests. This week's topic is the strange Sally Potter misfire The Man Who Cried (2001), a pre World War II drama about dancing Russians, singing Jews, and operatic Italians in Paris. I requested this one because I remembered being absolutely bewitched by one closeup in particular when the film was in theaters. But the film had become so entirely forgotten (even by me) that I could barely remember anything of the context. The film stars Johnny Depp and Cristina Ricci (both having just co-starred in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow) placing it forever in a very specific place in Hollywood time. Give us a listen! 

Cast This: Johnny Depp out of "Fantastic Beasts" franchise

by Patrick Gratton

Understandably lost during the fog created of election week, on Friday afternoon Johnny Depp took to his Instagram page, announcing that he was stepping down from the role of Grindlewald. The Warner Bros’ Harry Potter spin-off franchise, the Fantastic Beast series is no without a villain. Depp claims that the move comes at Warner Bros request following his failed libel suit against News Group Newspapers, the publisher of the tabloid magazine The Sun, over allegations that Depp abused ex-wife Amber Heard.  

The news comes after a tumultuous year for the Potterverse. Not just for Depp, whose years of litigation with ex-wife Amber Heard and whose substance abuse has made him tabloid fodder...

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Streaming Roulette, Nov: Paranorman, Thunderball, Time and "Psychiatry On-Screen"

After the jump you'll find a listing of everything that's new to streaming this month (November 2020). But first we pick two handfuls of titles and randomly freeze them with the scroll bar. Whatever comes up is what we share. Do these images make you want to see (or rewatch) the movie? 

[on the radio]  It's christmas time in the city. Ring a ling. Hear them ring ♫ ♬

Carol (2015) on Netflix
Always forget this is a Christmas movie! But, really, 'tis always the season for the best movie of the decade. 

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Horror Actressing: Eva Green in "Dark Shadows"

by Jason Adams

I don't think before today that I've written of a terrific performance trapped inside a truly terrible movie for our "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series. (No Frankenhooker is actually a terrific movie, don't you dare.) But we do what we have to in order to bow down to a stellar queen like Eva Green here on the occasion of her 40th birthday, and unfortunately for me that meant suffering through for a second time Tim Burton's 2012 big-screen flop of a reboot of the Dark Shadows television soap opera. Oh the exquisite agony, but she really is that good...

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