Podcast: Loving "Little Women"

In this hour long conversation Nathaniel and Murtada welcome special guest Kim Rogers (no relation to Nathaniel) from Head Over Feels to discuss Greta Gerwig's reworking of the classic oft-adapted Little Women starring Saorsie Ronan. Compare and contrast conversations to the 1994 version can't be helped but our opinions differ here and there on the 2019 film's sucess in various areas. We discuss the ambiguous ending, Eliza Scanlan versus Claire Danes, Florence Pugh playing Amy the whole way through and more. Spoilers, obviously, for this 151 year-old story. 

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? 

Little Women

Oscar Mythbusting: 'Weak' Best Actress Years (feat. "Tom & Viv")

by Cláudio Alves

There's been much talk of this year being a weak one for the Best Actress category. That's nonsense. While it's easy to understand where such dreary thoughts come from, it's a foul myth. Every year has the potential to be great, you just need to look at films outside the Academy's usual favorites and our preconceptions about what constitutes awardable acting. 

Take 1994, a year traditionally considered among the weakest for the Best Actress Oscar. While it's true the nominated five aren't a particularly stellar collection, they each bring something to the table. There's Winona Ryder and her anachronistic charm, Jessica Lange's primordial rage and lust, Susan Sarandon's solid reactions, and Jodie Foster's fearlessness. Finally, there's the lead actress of Tom & Viv, a film now celebrating its 25th anniversary…

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"Three Colors: Red" at 25

by Lynn Lee

Transfixed.  Transported.  Exhilarated.  These are words I don’t use lightly when I’m talking about movies, but they all apply to my reaction the first time I saw the final installment of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy.  And in large measure they still do.  Even if the initial wonder has given way to a comforting familiarity, few films capture the universal human yearning for connection and kinship (or fraternité, the unifying theme of Red) as vibrantly yet delicately as this one.

I first saw Red some years after its initial release, at a special screening at the university I was attending.  I went in knowing very little about the film except that the friend I went with had seen it before and spoke of it in glowing terms.  He noted that in an ideal world I’d have seen the preceding chapters, Blue and White, but thought I’d enjoy Red even without having done so.

He was right. 

In fact, I occasionally wonder if Blue and White – both of which I admire rather than love – suffered by comparison when I saw them later.  Perhaps I’d have a different take if I’d watched the trilogy in the intended order.  But I don’t think it would have altered my strong personal affinity for Red, which quickly became one of my all-time favorite films...

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How had I never seen... "Farewell My Concubine" (1993)

In this new series, members of Team Film Experience watch and share their reactions to classic films they’ve never seen. 

by Tim Brayton

I wish there was a good reason why it took me 26 years to catch up with Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, co-winner of the 1993 Palme d'Or, two-time Oscar nominee for Best Cinematography and Best Foreign-Language Film, and the film that did more than probably any other single title to present Chinese art cinema to international audiences in the 1990s. Instead, I only have a very terrible reason: it's 171 minutes long, and I never quite managed to make it my top priority in those moments when I had three uninterrupted hours.

To the surprise of nobody, including myself, that turns out to have been a terrible mistake. As long as the film is – and I'd be fibbing if I said that I never once felt that running time – it's unquestionably filling every last one of those minutes with a whole lot of immensely appealing stuff. That Best Cinematography nomination wasn't for show: this is an unbelievably lavish epic of 20th Century history, surely one of the most gorgeous motion pictures of its decade...

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Over & Overs: Twister (1996)

In Over & Overs we ask Team Experience to share movies that they've seen countless times and tell us why.

by Tony Ruggio

As a kid growing up in Texas, with family in Oklahoma and Nebraska, I had a morbid fascination with tornadoes and the would-be thrill of storm chasing. My fascination was outweighed only by the sheer fear of death. The possibility of finding yourself at the mercy of mother nature was all too real in Tornado Alley, at least for a nine year-old. In the summer of 1996 in air-conditioned theaters an entire country (and myself) learned about the Fujita scale, from itty-bitty F1 tornadoes to mile-wide F5 monsters. Twister was a multiplex phenomenon and the first disaster film in decades to strike hot at the box office. With mixed reviews and Independence Day casting a big shadow, it was then somewhat forgotten...until cable came to the rescue. 

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