Marriage Story: A Personal Reflection

by Cláudio Alves

This awards season has been a curious one. Thanks to Netflix, a handful of heavy contenders were made widely available when, in other years, you'd expect them to be stuck in limited release until late January. Oscar obsessives and film enthusiasts around the world were able to enter a conversation that's usually exclusive to critics and cinephiles from New York and LA. This democratization of film discussion is wonderful, but along with it came some of the internet's worst impulses. I'm talking about memes.

Specifically, I'm talking about the meme-ification of Marriage Story's climactic fight, a moment that made me relieve some of the worst parts of my life…

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Most Memorable 2019 Houses

Previously on 'Year in Review'

by Lynn Lee

Domestic spaces in movies can say a lot about the characters who live in them – class, income level, personal history, not to mention personality, tastes, even relationship dynamics (or lack thereof).  But how often does a home take on so much significance it effectively becomes a character in its own right?  2019 was a banner year for that kind of transmutation, as it turns out. 

Here are five homes (or in the first case, an anti-home) that particularly stood out:

5. Charlie’s L.A. apartment in Marriage Story
The nondescript flat Charlie Barber (Adam Driver) reluctantly rents in Los Angeles starts out as almost literally a blank space and quickly becomes remarkable for what it’s not: a home...

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Every weekend means... yet more prizes.

by Nathaniel R

Some of these were announced during the week but the weekend is when we catch up. In today's lineup: The Satellies (who went Ford V Ferrari crazy), The Black Film Critics Circle, plus Dublin and  Nevada critics. There's also a second organization from Phoenix listed. At first we were stunned because the only cities with two critics orgs that we can think of off the top of our heads so far are New York, Los Angeles (major media hubs both), and Boston... all, notably, places with very elite and long-lived film critics orgs that are difficult to be accepted into. Thus a second upstart group forms usually with "online" in the title (back in the early Aughts when print vs web was still sort of a thing). That 'online' designation makes less and less sense these days so some critics organizations who originally had it have been rebranding (all critics are now online critics with every former major print publication having long since moved to the web). Is Phoenix a sign that all major metropoles* will have two or three critics organizations by, say, 2025? Will critics organizations eventually outnumber the actual industry guilds that make the movies (if they don't already).

But I digress. In this weekend's roundup, Marriage Story comes out on top but we also want to talk about Texas in general because it's, shall we say, curious when it comes to film critics awards...

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Lunchtime Poll: "Marriage Story" custody battles

Bear with us through today's lunchtime poll which is NOT about whose side Marriage Story takes (the hot takes are abundant online and it's exhausting) but about which side you'd take --not Nicole's or Charlies -- this Q takes a second to get your head around but it's fun and totally worth asking for those of us who live for the movies: 

If you had to divorce Marriage Story, what part of the movie would you want custody of ?

We couldn't help but ask Team Experience this question too so there answers are after the jump to get your started...

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"Everyone was nominated... except you!" Our annual SAG outrage!

by Nathaniel R

Alanna Ubach does a lot with very little screen time in "Bombshell" but she isn't part of the cast nomination

We'll keep doing these posts each year until the Screen Actors Guild does something about their most unfortunate awards rule. For those who are new to the awards game, please note: If you are a working actor lucky enough to wind up in a film nominated for "Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture," that doesn't mean you are included in the nomination; you have to have your own title card for that! What this means each year is that actors who aren't really famous yet, or don't have an aggressive agent, wind up left out of the official nomination even if they contributed immeasurably to the success of the film or were highly memorable in some small but defining way.

So who got the stealth snub in 2019, who otherwise had every reason to celebrate the nomination? Read on for the specific exclusions this year and the history of most embarrassing omissions from the past due this ruling...

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