Wednesday, December 7, 2016 at 11:18AM Would you rather...
...sort through childhood photos with Baz Luhrmann or Sutton Foster?
... stand naked for Standing Rock with Josh Brolin?
... determine your own story with unapologetic Amy Schumer?
... or take a nap on Kiki's lap like Elle Fanning?
Thursday, January 7, 2016 at 2:30PM 
Chris here. Available this week on DVD/Blu-ray is Denis Villeneuve's Sicario, a controlled descent into the cartel battles being waged between the Mexican and American borders. Like the ongoing war on drugs, Villeneuve's film presents a complex landscape of violence wherein rulebooks have been forsaken - and on both sides. It's a masterful piece of filmmaking (recently nominated by the PGA, ADG, and WGA), and Villeneuve has assembled an intimidating group of craftspeople working harmoniously to create a living hell.
Front and center is Emily Blunt's idealistic and by-the-book agent Kate Macer, straining composure and grasping for opportunity while in over her head. Blunt is ferociously present and flummoxed, giving as much subtlety and nuance as she has in her broader roles like The Devil Wears Prada. She's so believably rattled that you're reaching for fistfuls of cigarettes along with her. It's a performance that deserves to be right in the thick of the Best Actress conversation, even in such a deep field as this. While many have claimed her to be far too passive, her lack of control is just another element of Villeneuve's all-pervasive synthesis.
Friday, October 9, 2015 at 8:45PM Hail the teaser for the new Coen Bros picture, which will launch a thousand internet memes! Since it's mostly a collection of catchy images and title credits we'll leave the full Yes No Maybe So treatment for later but know that we're "Yes" on literally every shot therein. Zany Coen Bros comedies are to be cherished when they arrive. I still remember my first times seeing both Raising Arizona (1987) and Burn After Reading (2008) in theaters and just hurting from laughter.
5 favorite things (and boy was it hard to narrow down) in the trailer after the jump...
Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 11:05PM 
Katey, Joe, Nathaniel and Nick, all returned from TIFF (where the four of us were actually in the same place at the same time for the very first time ever!), return to "Now Playing" cinema to catch shrapnel coming off of Sicario & throw bricks at Stonewall.
43 minutes
00:01 TIFF postscript & Room
03:30 Sicario dark, haunting, superbly crafted, POV politics
21:00 Stonewall (2015) what were they thinking?
33:00 Stonewall (1995), Stonewall Uprising (2010), and other final thoughts
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Related reading: Katey on Room, Nathaniel on Stonewall, Nick on Sicario, Noah Tsika's negative reaction to Sicario, Jeffrey Wells's super-weird war on fans of Room.
And in case you missed it, here's the photo of the podcast team at TIFF.
Sunday, December 21, 2014 at 4:01PM And so we come to the end of our individually chosen FYCs. Amir, our team coordinator, is off for a month long holiday (!) which leaves myself, Nathaniel, your immortal but ever running-late host to wrap things up. To recap: we asked each team member to write up a personal favorite longshot* from one specific category. Here's the final entry in the series, a performance I really love in a film I really don't.
Why highlight a film I don't care for? Because it's important to remember during all-or-nothing awards season that each individual element of a film is different than the big picture and ought to be treated as such for the purposes of awardage.
Which brings us to...
See, it wasn't just the eternal sunshine of California or the vast vistas of desert land and salt water. It wasn't even really the hazy hash-filled air that P.T. Anderson's troupe was breathing. But I was parched and hungry the whole time I was watching Inherent Vice. I needed a fresh water oasis in the salty Pynchonian desert and Josh Brolin came to my rescue as "Bigfoot". Repeatedly. Fortunately he was also hungry, orally fixated you might say, and an eager lunch companion.
Like many characters in the film he's introduced with wonderfully descriptive prose that one assumes is lifted from the novel for voiceover. Brolin's introduction is in glorious widescreen longshot. The V.O.:
Like a bad luck planet in today's horoscope, here's the ol' hippie-hating mad dog himself in the flesh, Lieutenant Detective Christian F. "Big Foot" Bjornsen, SAG member, John Wayne walk, flat top, of Flintstone proportions, and that little evil shit twinkle in his eyes that says 'civil rights violations'"
Brolin just owns this, presenting as a black & white Western rectangle stiffly inserting itself into the movie's otherwise geometrically ragged and fringed array of colorful people. Of course you can't see an evil shit twinkle in someone's eyes in long or medium shot but you can hear it in their voice.
Congratulations hippie scum! Welcome to a world of inconvenience"
Immediately we move to Bigfoot's office where the detective taunts Doc Sportello with carefully chosen words and obscene self-lubricated hand gestures; he's always shoving things into his mouth: frozen bananas, fingers, diner food. Brolin's line readings aren't just well delivered but perfectly balanced and heaped, as if he's collecting the best syllables on a fork, whichever wons have the most condescending flavor. The actor captures how natural all of this comes to Bigfoot now, that its both performative for Doc and completely innate in Bigfoot's character (we instantly register that the performance is now the reality after numerous pre-movie variations of these same conversations between the two detectives) since he's even doing the same things when he's out of view on the phone or half lost in his own strictly business thoughts when he's eating.
BigFoot's buzzkill nature would be suffocating if Brolin didn't find so many ways to play the notes. And though Bigfoot is mean to stand in opposition to the movie's other characters, he'd be totally at odds with the movie's loose hippie daze tone if he also weren't so damn funny. There are a great many people who think Inherent Vice is a good time movie in and of itself. Whether or not that proves to be your experience know this: it's a far greater party every single time Josh Brolin shows up to crash it.
Motto pankēki!"
*I selected Brolin before his BFCA nomination so perhaps he's not quite as improbable as expected in a low key supporting actor competition, so I'm crossing my fingers... or licking them in Bigfoot's honor.
RELATED
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR CHART
Each Longshot FYCs In Case You Missed Any
Actor, Locke | Actress, Belle | Supp. Actress, Gone Girl | Supp. Actor, Inherent Vice
Picture, Obvious Child | Adapted Screenplay, A Most Wanted Man
Sound Mixing, Grand Budapest Hotel | Costume, The Boxtrolls
Cinematography, Homesman | Prod. Design, Enemy | Editing, Citizenfour
Short-Lived Longshot FYCs = Academy Thought Otherwise
Makeup, Only Lovers Left Alive (eliminated) | FX, Under the Skin (eliminated)
Screenplay, The Babadook (ineligible) | Score, The Immigrant (eliminated)
