Robbie To Ruin

by Jason Adams

Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not as great as our host Nathaniel at keeping up with every single festival) but with a little digging it doesn't look like Mary, Queen of Scots is premiering at any of the Fall festivals? Perhaps that is why I've seen some people side-eying its awards chances lately? Personally I'm always down for dramatic wig acting, and with Saoirse & Margot under them wigs I'm hooked already (and that before you even get to James McArdle's Beard).

Margot is why we're here today though - she's just signed up for a new role and it's one that's got my interest right out of the gate. She is going to star opposite my beloved Matthias Schoenaerts in Ruin, the new film from Snowtown and Macbeth (and yes okay Assassin's Creed) director Justin Kurtzel. It's a World War II thriller - it actually sounds kind of similar to Paul Verhoeven's Black Book, which starred Carice Van Houten (sidenote: a happy birthday to the great Carice today!) and, hey look at that...

... Matthias Schoenaerts in a small role. First place I remember seeing him actually! Anyway Ruin is about a Holocaust survivor (Robbie) who teams up with a former SS officer (Schoenaerts) to hunt down the members of his former death squad. Tonally that could go... an awful lot of directions, so we'll have to wait and see how Kurtzel & Co take it. While we're waiting why don't we all head over to MNPP where I just posted a bunch of Matthias pictures inspired by this news? It'll help pass the time.

The Men of Venice '18 Can Get It.

TIFF begins tomorrow (Chris and Nathaniel will both be reporting to give you double the coverage!) but the 75th annual Venice Film Festival is still swinging. It concludes on Saturday September 8th so that's when we'll know who took the coveted Golden Lion (you may recall that a little film called Shape of Water won last year, though their winner is usually far less mainstream).

Alfonso Cuarón, Lee Byung-hun, Nicholas Hoult, Bradley Cooper

But here are the most handsome men in lux menswear we've spotted on the red carpet coverage. Joe Alwyn, Ryan Gosling, Matt Smith, Mads Mikkelsen, Matthias Schoenaerts and many more are after the jump...

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Review: Red Sparrow

by Eric Blume

The Russian Tourism Board won’t likely be sponsoring the film Red Sparrow, the new spy movie from Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence.  Other than featuring some very chic ushankas on a very attractive cast, this film makes Russians look very nasty, just like we’ve always imagined them to be for the movies.  Lawrence’s conception of the country illustrates his wonderfully corny, often thrilling, mysterious, and silly/serious approach into old-fashioned espionage that we don’t see much of nowadays.

Lawrence starts his film where he should:  firmly on the face of his leading lady, Jennifer Lawrence, sporting a bangs-heavy brown wig.  She’s a famous ballet dancer in Moscow, and the director steals a bit of the feverish tone of Black Swan in her early scenes.  The plot unravels in a series of crosses, double-crosses, and reverses that include her involvement with a US spy played by Joel Edgerton...

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Beauty vs Beast: Lady (Bird) You Are Doing Just Fine

Jason from MNPP here, fresh off of standing five feet away from Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach just hanging out at MoMA yesterday (Baumbach had actually just done a Q&A for The Meyerowitz Stories, so "hanging out" might be a stretch I suppose) to take us yonder Sacramento way. I think it's time for Lady Bird to get the "Beauty vs Beast" treatment, you guys.

The film has a perfect score at Rotten Tomatoes and it just crossed 10 million bucks at the box office, which is about what it cost to make. So it's all profit from here on out for Greta & Co, and all signs points towards plenty. It's in around 800 theaters and doing terrific - I can see it playing well all holiday-season. Hooray for good things doing good! Now let's pit the film's complicated mother/daughter core (and eventual Oscar nominees) against one another.

PREVIOUSLY You guys surprised me! When I wrote last week beside our Bigger Splash poll that I figured I knew who you'd vote for I really thought you'd go for Ralph Fiennes. I suppose in retrospect it was silly to underestimate the pull of Matthias Schoenaerts in very small shorts, which drew almost 70% of your vote. Explained Dancin' Dan:

"Yes, Harry is more fun and more interesting than Paul (and Fiennes gives by far the better performance), but he's also INFINITELY more exhausting. I don't think I could stand to be around him more than a few hours. So I'm gonna have to vote for Paul, and the less clothes he wears, the better."

Beauty vs Beast: The Bigger Boys

Jason from MNPP here, ready to pop some peach champagne for the release of Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name, which finally hits theaters in New York and LA on Friday. The thing is, although I personally have already seen the film six times (if you've been to MNPP at any point in the past three months you're more than aware of my obsession but if you missed my first take on the movie out of NYFF it's one of the most meaningful pieces of writing I've ever done, says me), it seems that some of you have not seen the film six times yet. Since it's not in theaters yet, and all. So I probably can't devote this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to it then!

So we'll do the next best and look back at Luca's last movie, A Bigger Splash. When ABS came out we polled you about the film it's based on, La Piscine, but I figure enough of you have seen Luca's version by now. I'm pretty certain where you guys will fall when forced into Tilda Swinton's glamourous shoes to choose between the two men in her life, solid wall of Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts) and bearded blast of noise Harry (Ralph Fiennes), but I'm asking anyway...

PREVIOUSLY Oscar season is here but we devoted one last moment of silliness to Superhero Season by tackling Thor: Ragnarok's two actresses last week - Tessa Thomspon put up a valiant fight but... well, she was going against Cate Blanchett. Cate took 58% of your vote as bigger-than-Asgard-itself Hela; said chasm301:

"Do you really think that Cate Blanchett would lose a competition on this website? Her most gif-able performance outside of Carol (2015)"