Cláudio's 2023 Top Ten

by Cláudio Alves

Commercial releases aside, Patiño's SAMSARA is 2023 best film.Better late than never, am I right? As we all know, here at The Film Experience, a cinematic year only ends after the Oscars, so maybe I'm not so late after all. Whatever the case, it's time to say goodbye to 2023, with the Miyazaki ranking as my prelude to this farewell. At long last, let's consider newer releases and, most importantly, turn away from the now to ruminate on the before – film history, here we come. Indeed, I've missed writing about older pictures like you wouldn't believe. But let's hold our horses. Before such revelry into the distant past, one has to look back at the year that's gone and all its big screen wonders. Personally, I thought they were a vibrant twelve months of cinema…

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FYC: A Best Costume Design Celebration

by Cláudio Alves

PASSAGES should earn Khadija Zeggaï an Oscar nomination.

As the voting for the 96th Academy Award nominations continues, there's a possibility that we'll get a repeat of 2019 in Best Costume Design. Though not disastrous, that season saw the lineup comprised exclusively of Best Picture nominees – a sad sight for a race where, once upon a time, brilliant work could be rewarded regardless of a film's general buzz. Maybe Wonka, The Color Purple, or Napoleon will stop that from happening, but it'll still result in a fairly expected ballot. Why not look elsewhere to some of the year's underrated gems? Please, Costume Branch, remember you represent the category of I Am Love, Bright Star, Marie Antoinette, and many others. 

I've already made the case for La Chimera, Passages, and Pain Hustlers, so I won't repeat it. Still, even with those out of the way, there's plenty to celebrate from 2023 cinema. Here are ten Oscar-eligible achievements in costume design…

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Everything's coming up Jacob

by Cláudio Alves

With Priscilla in theaters and Saltburn on the horizon, it's a good time to be Jacob Elordi. Or, alternatively, one of his fans. After terrorizing the characters of Euphoria and skating by the Kissing Booth movies without much effort, the Australian actor is proving to be a force to be reckoned with and an auteur magnet to boot. For Sofia Coppola, he's Elvis perceived through a prism of domestic nightmare, proposing a take on the legend that should be antithetical to last year's Luhrmann-directed biopic. In Emerald Fennell's sophomore feature, his statuesque figure is framed as an object of perilous desire cum obsession, like a British twist on Highsmith's Dickie Greenleaf. It's fair to say that the erstwhile HBO hunk is on his way to becoming a movie star…

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Middleburg 2023: Cannes holdovers and Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla"

by Lynn Lee

Hello TFE readers!  I’m back after some time away, having completed an intense one-year work assignment that left me barely enough time to keep up with the movies, let alone write about them.  To celebrate my return to normalcy, my husband and I spent a long weekend in Middleburg, VA, partly for relaxation (Middleburg’s a pretty little town in horse and wine country, ideal for a fall getaway) but mostly so I could get my fill of movies at the annual Middleburg Film Festival.  As Nathaniel’s reported in the past, for a relatively young, non-centrally located festival, Middleburg punches far above its weight.  It regularly manages to land many of the hot tickets out of Toronto, Telluride, Venice, and Cannes and has been a fairly reliable harbinger of what the Academy will like.  Like the other festivals, it was a bit less star-studded than usual this year due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, yet still generated plenty of excitement due to the sheer quality of the films.

Day One
The festival opened on a high note with this year’s Palme d’Or winner, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall... 

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Venice 2023: Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla"

by Elisa Giudici

Cailee Spaeny stars in Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla"

Years after her own Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola returns with Priscilla weaving another narrative about a teenage queen trapped within a gilded palace. Few storytellers are as adept as Coppola in capturing the essence of female adolescence and the fleeting emotions of someone discovering their true self. (Unfortunately, there is a scarcity of writers and directors interested in exploring such characters.)

From the outset of Priscilla, Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) is depicted as the quintessential American adolescent girl: there's even a scene of her idly tapping her foot beneath her school desk, lost in boredom and daydreams. This seems like a nod to Britney Spears' "Oops... I Did It Again" music video, albeit without the hypersexualization...

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