NYFF: The sad, strange, incomplete "French Exit"

by Nathaniel R

Frances Price, the soon to be impoverished widow at the center of French Exit alarms everyone around her and puts them on edge. She will just not cooperate. Neither will Michelle Pfeiffer, the actress playing her, for that matter. Rather than dance around it, let's just state the conundrum up front. When you're watching your favourite actor star in a potential comeback role based on a book you've grown deeply fond of and have already visualized as a movie in your head, the conflicts between expectations and reality and dreams can be impossible to mediate. And disconcerting, too. You've got to watch the movie for the movie but also work through your own external actress-related issues while doing so.

I obsess over Michelle Pfeiffer, okay?! There's no avoiding it and little point not foregrounding it in this review. Complete strangers know this about me...

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Behold the Pfirst image from "French Exit"

by Nathaniel R

Given the disarray of the 2020 movie calendar we definitely weren't expecting Sony Pictures Classics to begin promoting French Exit today. But they posted the photo above along with this cursive promise...

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Podcast: Ford v Ferrari, Honey Boy, and Marriage Story

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R 

Index (59 minutes)

• 00:01 Ford v Ferrari, Christian Bale, impressive crafts, and Oscar talk
• 19:06 Marriage Story, the opening scene, comparisons to Kramer vs Kramer, and more. Plus a lot of love for the actors including Alan Alda.
• 36:05 Honey Boy a Shia Labeouf's confessional with a great Noah Jupe directed by Alma Har'el. But, we confess we have Lucas Hedges fatigue.
• 47:10 Best Costume Design. We're rooting for extreme longshot Hustlers but we survey the whole field.

 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? 

Ford v Ferrari

TIFF: "Waves" Crashes

by Chris Feil

Writer/Director Trey Edward Shults’ approaches his subjects with raw emotionality, with his first two features Krisha and It Comes At Night using visual acrobatics to reveal the tenser truths festering inside extreme family dynamics. His third feature Waves attempts this dynamic again while pushing the sensory experience extreme territories. Shults somersaults and twirls with florid visual vibrancy here, as aggressive a display of a director demanding we consider them with greater reverence as we have seen since Xavier Dolan. But despite its fevered sensory world and punishing human stakes, Waves struggles to align the two for the truly immersive experience of its ambitions.

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18 Beautiful Examples of Co-Star Chemistry in 2018

Year in review list mania each day. Here's Nathaniel...

This is our fourth year of highlighting that unpredictable spark between actors that can elevate a movie whether the movie is able to catch up or not (see previously installments for '15, '16 and '17, if you're so inclined).  If only we could bottle these formulas but the thing about great chemistry is that it can't ever be fully recreated even if old movies during the studio system teach us that the same pairing can at least generate similar energy again. Why Hollywood doesn't still try to repackage successful combos of actors (rather than just all the brand do-overs) remains an unsolved mystery 

Herewith the most beautifully realized relationship energy of the year...

18 [TIE] Ben Foster & Thomasin McKenzie, Leave No Trace 
AND Josh Hamilton & Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade (Single Father/Teenage Daughter)
There's a lot to recommend in both films, two sleeper arthouse successes this year, but neither film would have the same emotional resonance without that authenticity of feeling in the central duet. Marvel at the way Hamilton looks at or speaks to Fisher, for example, perpetually impatient to be let in on her interior life, but also nervous about intruding on her journey and walling her off yet further. Equally impressive is the difficult balancing act McKenzie plays as both dutiful daughter and emotional caretaker for her troubled father, as she grows ever more restless to escape him without losing him. What a quartet of performances...

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