321 Features vie for Oscars, but only 266 for Best Picture

by Cláudio Alves

Though a likely Best Visual Effects nominee, THE CREATOR is ineligible in the Best Picture race.

While we're still recovering from last night's Golden Globes (yay, Lily Gladstone!), the Academy has released its final eligibility lists pertaining to most categories outside the music, shorts, and specialized feature ones. Overall, 321 films will vie for Hollywood's little golden men. However, only 266 can compete for the Best Picture honor, a first in Oscar history. Such productions as Godland, Mami Wata, The Creator, The Marvels, and the new Ant-Man movie are out of the running. This year marks the start of RAISE - Academy Representation and Inclusion Standards – to whom films must submit a confidential form to guarantee Best Picture eligibility…

Click to read more ...

Year in Review: Horror Actoring of 2019

by Jason Adams

Since it's the second to last day of 2019 and we already named our "10 Favorite Horror Actresses of 2019" last week I figured I'd give us a last second bonus and shed some affection on the best fellas of the year. I know, I know, we're all all more inclined towards favoring the actresses... well, so's the genre to be frank. Horror really does favor female stories and experiences, and it was I will admit much easier to come up with last week's list. Besides the magnificent duo that anchors my favorite movie of the year I had to dig a little deeper for this one. But once I began rifling around I managed to uncover some gems...

Willem Dafoe & Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse 

When forced to choose between the two (and no thanks to Awards Season I have had to here and there) I tend to choose Dafoe, but only because his magnificent to-the-moon work is more straightforward... as straightforward as anything is in this topsy-turvy madhouse of a movie, at least. Pattinson's work is trickier -- his accent and behavior is all supposed to be wobbly, as his character's unformed; a liar trying to pour himself into a new shape. But make no mistake these are the two best male performances of 2019 slapping against each other in slippery tandem.

Click to read more ...

Three Spooky Shorts

By Salim Garami

What's good?

I'm going to keep it short (pun unintended) this week. The choice to recommend short films that I am extremely fond off for more mood-setting Halloween season watching might seem uneventful to most. But the occasion is of celebration of an event that might resonate with some South Florida filmgoing readers. The Key West-based lesbian apocalypse horror short Buzzcut by Jon Rhoads and Mike Marrero has just won Best Film at FilmGate Miami's monthly 'I'm Not Gonna Move to L.A.' festival in the middle of its festival tour and if you follow me on Motorbreath, you might have seen me singing the praises of that short wishing better things for it.

So, in anticipation of the day that short might be more easily accessible to everyone, here are 3 horror shorts that I usually find myself indulging in to get into the Halloween spirit.

Click to read more ...

Top 5 Films Without Repeating a Language or Country

by Sebastian Nebel

Name your Top 5 films without repeating a language or country of origin.

That was the challenge I posed on Twitter last month. It's tricky enough to limit your favorites to a specific number, and I was interested in seeing what kind of responses this added degree of difficulty would garner.

Turns out Twitter loves making lists! I got a ton of replies – way too many to collect all of them here, unfortunately. But I've rounded up a handful of them after the jump including lists by The Film Experience contributors, film critics and film makers...

edgarwright @edgarwright

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo)
2001: A Space Odyssey
Police Story (警察故事)
Delicatessen
Santa Sangre (Holy Blood)

— August 28, 2017

Click to read more ...

Frank Ocean Prefers Wong Kar-wai's Early Stuff

For anyone still wondering what took Frank Ocean so long to release his follow-up to Channel Orange, a new theory lies within the pages of the R&B angel’s recently released "Boys Don't Cry" zine to accompany his new album Blonde: perhaps he was blowing through his conscientious Blu-ray collection. Demonstrating an eye for the visionary and the visually dazzling – and inadvertently challenging the hot buzz on that BBC critics’ poll and last week’s #7favfilms on Twitter – Ocean scribbled down a list of his 100 favorite films of all time, and his choices make it clear that he’s as much a student of the cinema as he is a singer of stirring emotionality.

A few standout selections. He’s clearly got love for the go-for-broke auteurism of Herzog and Jodorowsky, reflected in his own sonic adventurism, but he flexes his sensitive side and interest in rehashing the past with a Bergman classic like Wild Strawberries. As a David Lynch devotee, his inclusion of the polarizing and patriotically perverse (and, for my money, perfect) Wild at Heart makes me want to paint the town as red as Diane Ladd’s face. A small smattering of silent films make the list but the absences are just as compelling. PTA makes three appearances on the list but Ocean opts for Hard Eight over the far more beloved Boogie Nights. And despite its undeniable genius, it’s a relief to see a Best Of list with a Hitchcock mention that isn’t Vertigo. Mostly, though, I'll take the obvious crossover omission of Boys Don't Cry in favor of including American Beauty as a sly hint that he, too, is a fervent member of Team Bening.