Year in Review: Nathaniel's 'Multiversal' Top Ten List & Personal Prizes

by Nathaniel R

Multiverses were the hot trend in mainstream cinema this year with the MCU banking its whole future on the appeal of mirror dimensions and alternate timelines. If you take the trend less franchise-literal, it was even more omnipresent. Multiple films asked us to consider alternate realities, ahistorical timelines, and the multiplicity of identity through the power of both storytelling and our own imagination. It's through this broad prism that I present my take on the year's best films.

I hope you enjoy though it always bears repeating that "Best" is necessarily subjective; We each occupy our own universes when it comes to these matters. Before the top ten, a bakers dozen of honorable mentions...

Click to read more ...

"Everything Everywhere..." wins every Spirit Award it's up for

by Nathaniel R

"Everything Everywhere All At Once" was a sweeper

Everything Everywhere All At Once has turned into a steamroller late in awards season, winning guild prizes, recently snatching up all available Dorian Awards, taking all of the SAG awards it was eligible for, and now sweeping again at the Spirits. The Spirits are traditionally the final prize before Oscar (they used to even be held the day before Oscar!) though they don't always align with Hollywood's big night given their more indie-focused love. This time though there will surely be some overlap. The Daniels sci-fi-comedy-action-queer-family drama has won every single one of its seven categories at the annual Film Independent Spirit Awards and that's getting to be a habit, poor BAFTA showing as the exception. Given its dominance at the Spirits, no other film was able to win more than one prize. Despite an impressive showing in the nominations, for example, TÁR only took Best Cinematography since EEAAO wasn't nominated.

After the jump the winners and all the acceptance speeches...

Click to read more ...

Best International Film Reviews: Belgium, Pakistan, and Ukraine

by Cláudio Alves

The most wonderful time of the year is upon us. No, not the holiday season. No, not even the awards season as a whole. It's time to delve deep into the submissions for Best International Film before the Academy's committees whittle down the 92 titles to a measly 15-wide shortlist from which the entire voting body will choose its five nominees. The list will be made public on December 21st, so until then, we shall explore the race's offerings, from its major contenders to more obscure selections. To start things off, let's look into three titles that feel bound to make the shortlist, both for reasons of quality, reputation, and international controversy…

Click to read more ...

Oscar contenders win at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards

by Nathaniel R

Cambodia's Oscar submission won two awards at APSA

Even if you are a deeply committed film obsessive there are films you will never have heard of that will win or be nominated for prizes during awards season. That's one of the reasons we love to check in with awards bodies overeas. If only all movies could be released everywhere for us cinephiles!  We just caught up with the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, now in their 15th year.  Indonesia's Before Now & Then took the top prize but in addition to a few nominees we hadn't yet heard of, five current Oscar hopefuls won prizes: International Feature contenders Joyland, Return to Seoul, Aurora's Sunrise, and Muru, and the documentary All That Breathes... 

Click to read more ...

"Joyland" banned in Pakistan. Can it still compete at the Oscars?

by Nathaniel R

Saim Sadiq (via Instagram, left) and a memorable shot from his feature debut "Joyland" (right)

Censorship has been part of the history of art forever. The ways in which we think of censorship in Hollywood cinema usually involve ratings boards or production codes... self-censorship from the industry to prevent outside censorship from the government. It's less a case of banning art than an attempt to keep storytellers in line with accepted norms, however conservative those norms might be in their time. When the story of censorship visibly collides with the Oscar race, though, it's usually across the border and in the Best International Feature Film category. Now we have another of those stories via Pakistan's Oscar submission Joyland. 

The movie, a brilliant feature debut from 31 year old filmmaker Saim Sadiq, is a drama about a young husband in Lahore who falls for a trans performer after being hired by a local dance theater. It first came to international attention when it premiered at Cannes (the first Pakistani movie to do so) and won both Un Certain Regard and the Queer Palm. Just a week before its premiere in Pakistan its release was denied, endangering its Oscar run.  Questions naturally crop out like "Why would a country submit a film and then ban it?" and "Can it still compete?" so let's answer those...

Click to read more ...