'Worst Person...' and the 10 most successful Norwegian films in the US

by Nathaniel R

Talking about weekend box office isn't as much fun as it was pre-pandemic since it matters less and less with more films opting for streaming only. So let's get super niche instead. With the Oscar nominated The Worst Person in the World doing terrific business in the nation's arthouses -- I even heard strangers talking about it on the subway in NYC, always a great sign that an arthouse film has caught on -- let's talk about how Norwegian films fare at the Oscars and with US moviegoers...

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Cannes at Home: Day 3

by Cláudio Alves

The third day of this year's Cannes Film Festival was a busy one. First, there were two premieres for films in the main competition, Joachim Trier's The Worst Person in the World and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's Lingui. The response to the latter was so effusive, some are already calling it a contender for the Palme d'Or. Then, in the Un Certain Regard section, Kogonada's sophomore feature, After Yang, took its bow. Other premieres from prominent directors included Andrea Arnold's Cow and Tom McCarthy's Stillwater. Our Cannes at Home program is made up of past films from this illustrious quintet, encompassing a meditation on loss, an allegory of civil war, love songs for architecture, and more.

OSLO, AUGUST 31ST (2011)
From dawn to dawn, a young man ponders the end. Joachim Trier gives a premise fit for po-faced European miserabilism a fresh face in Oslo, August 31st. While not treading new ground, the tale of potential death is all about life, approaching the material with a form that rarely overstates the idea with either in-your-face vitality or florid nihilism...

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The New Classics: Oslo, August 31

Michael Cusumano here for the 30th episode of The New Classics.

It was hard. Absolutely.

Scene: The Bucket List 
Halfway through Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31 we get an extended scene of the protagonist, Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie), sitting in a cafe and simply listening to the other patrons talk. He appears perfectly ordinary sitting there. Just a guy in a cafe. What we in the audience know, which everyone who meets him on this fateful day does not, is that Anders started the day by filling his pockets with rocks and wading into a lake, attempting suicide a la Virginia Woolf. He couldn't go through with it and spends the rest of the film teetering quietly on the brink...

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Beau's 2012 Bests

Nathaniel's top ten hits this weekend but he's invited TFE correspondents to share their own, so here are my personal loves of the year. [Disclaimer: I have yet to see Holy Motors, Amour, Rust and Bone, and On the Road.]

honorable mentions...  

13) Arbitrage -Nicholas Jarecki's feature debut is a whopper, a palate cleanser for the John Grisham crowd and a showcase for Richard Gere's most effortless work in this thirty-five year career. Coupled with Zemeckis' Flight, you'd be hard pressed to find two more similar and dissimilar anti heroes who crowded the multiplexes this year. Charisma carries the Devil on its cape. You've never wanted the bad guy to win more.

12) Flight -The messiest of messes, a meditation on faith, humanity and temptation that true to form, sways and stumbles and remains standing, a loud, brash bombardment of the amoral and their blinding pain. Washington is Everyman to Goodman's Satan. And who the fuck is James Badge Dale? He pulls a Beatrice Straight and basically walks away with the film.

11) Ted -There is something deeply unlikeable about Seth McFarlane, an addictive toxicity that repulses you and engages you simultaneously. With 'Ted', his watermark (read: pissmark) on network television transfers over to the big screen with a spring in its step and a grenade in its pocket. Defaming the stunted lifestyle of men all the while celebrating its appeal, Ted made me laugh harder and feel worse about myself than anything else I saw this year. It establishes Macfarlane as the newest, crudest uncle of American comedy - you hate him when he's sober, but goddamn, there's nobody else you'd rather get hammered with.

 
top ten from 'Cloud' to 'Cabin' is after the jump...

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Harlem January 2nd

A Filmic Notion on The Red Shoes "...a film that 'could be' my all time favourite"
Awards Circuit on the breakthrough performers of 2012
Pajiba 15 pop culture moments that made us cry in 2012
Boy Culture continues their countdown of hottest actors of all time (#50-21) ranging from Buster Crabbe, to Tyrone Power through Christian Bale in this edition. But I've just been informed that Takeshi Kaneshiro is not on the list at all so someone will have to explain this word "hotness" to me!

Antagony & Ecstasy Tim shares his ten best of the year: Magic Mike, Oslo August 31st, Tabu and more... I wish I liked Oslo a bit more than I do but I'm thrilled that so many critics I like are suddenly enthused about Joachim Trier because I don't remember having much company when I was all "ohmygodeveryone Reprise !!!" a few years back.
Media Decoder on footing your own Oscar campaign. And no, this article is not about Ann Dowd. People do it every year.
Gawker Rich Juzwiack on the year in film. I've always loved Rich's writing but it's so weird to read a full "year in" piece in which I agree with quite literally nothing. haha 
Coming Soon promotional art for the next few years of Pixar films
Reverse Shot's top ten with The Deep Blue Sea an out of time chart topper