Beauty vs Beast: Lesbian Love Song

Jason Adams from MNPP here -- at the Tribeca Film Fest last year I weirdly reviewed two movies involving Alessandro Nivola and Orthodox Judaism. The first one is called To Dust and Nivola (along with his wife actress Emily Mortimer) produced it -- it stars Son of Saul's Géza Röhrig and Matthew Broderick as an extremely odd couple grappling with the afterlife. Here is my review, and you can watch the trailer over here. To Dust is finally hitting some theaters this weekend, and I highly recommend seeking it out. I really dig it.

The other movie I reviewed at Tribeca 2018 was Sebastian Lelio's Disobedience, which came out last year and which in a just world we'd be celebrating its several Oscar nominations just about now. Hey I did my part -- Disobedience got mentions in both end-of-year polls I have a say in, The Team Experience Awards here on this site as well as the Dorian Awards for the GALECA guild of LGBT critics. But being a great film is its own reward, and Disobedience will be remembered for a very long time as such. Now let's face off its Rachels -- McAdams is Esti, the one who stayed, and Weisz is Ronit, the one who went away...

survey tools

PREVIOUSLY Last week's Can You Ever Forgive Me poll was as close as two friends sweeping up cat turds could be, but Melissa McCarthy got the best of Richard E Grant in the end with 53% of the vote. Said /3rtful:

"Unprepared for how emotionally affected I would be by this movie. I think the casting of McCarthy and those initial cut trailers gave no clue of the emotional wallop this movie carries."

The Gay Heart of "The Family Stone"

Members of Team Experience have been asked to share their favorite holiday film. Here's Spencer Coile with his...

I vividly remember the trailer for The Family Stone when it first came out in 2005. I was thirteen, a recent film and Oscar snob, and still incredibly naïve. I was swept into the two-and-a-half-minute long saga of uptight Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) visiting her boyfriend Everett’s (Dermot Mulroney) family for their first Christmas together and the family’s cliquey antics. Add on a stellar cast and the Maxine Nightingale classic, “Right Back Where We Started From,” and I was hooked. I couldn’t possibly wait until December to see it. 

And I didn’t. I waited even longer, months after it was released...

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A Prayer For Alessandro

by Jason Adams

There's a scene set at the three-quarter mark of Sebastián Lelio's film Disobedience (which I reviewed right here) that shatters me into a million jagged little pieces every single time I watch it. Alessandro Nivola's Orthodox character Dovid has just had a heated argument with his wife Esti (a fabulously good Rachel McAdams) in which she's admitted she loves Ronit (the also fabulously good Rachel Weisz), the daughter of the just deceased Rabbi who's returned home after running away to New York. Dovid is a spiritual leader himself, on track to replace the Rabbi, and he has endless duties to attend to this week of Shiva, or mourning. 

And so Dovid goes to meet with some mourners who've just come in to town for the eulogy service (the Hesped) who it turns out are the choir who will perform at the ceremony. And they sing. The film cuts to a wide-shot - Dovid standing with his back turned to us in the center of the room, surrounded by mourners in black, all facing him. As Nivola turns towards the camera, slowly it moves forward in on him and trains in on his face as the singers crescendo - Nivola keeps everything in this moment internalized; his face hardly moves. 

And its devastating. It's the sort of acting moment that doesn't tear it up in Oscar clips, but it's all the more powerful for its restraint - typical of Nivola's gorgeously low-key approach whenever he goes to bat; think back on his singing scene in Junebug as well. And it's why I'm going to spend this whole awards season shouting his name in the middle of any Best Supporting Actor conversations I come across. 

I keep reading that the Supporting Actor contest seems thin at the moment, before the Awards Contenders all roll down upon us from Toronto and the like - so who are you rooting for Supporting-Actor-wise out of the films we've already seen in 2018?

Ladies Love Cool De Palma

by Jason Adams

It's the 78th birthday of the director slash living legend Brian De Palma today. Did everybody watch Noah Baumbach & Jake Paltrow's 2015 documentary aka an excuse to listen to Brian De Palma tell movie stories for two hours? I've watched it four times now and I'm still nowhere near sick of it - I wish they'd just release the hundreds of hours of raw footage they took so I can just wade in there and never come back again.

Anyway I decided that the best way to celebrate one of my favorite movie-makers today (as he prepares to maybe make a Harvey Weinstein movie next, a real tighrope of a proposition there) is to celebrate a few of the great roles he's given actresses over the years. Here are five favorites (well technically six but you can't make me choose between the first two) -- feel free to add your own in the comments!

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Podcast: Disobedience and Tully

An intimate convo this week as Nathaniel R and Nick Davis discuss recent flicks. This was recorded right before Nathaniel's birthday but we are late uploading it. Here it is now for your enjoyment. Lots of Tully and Disobedience talk (among other films) all without spoilers if you haven't yet caught those early release gems!

Index (40 minutes)
00:01 Silliness about Nathaniel's Birthday
03:30 Favorites of 2018 thus far including Diablo Cody & Charlize Theron's brilliance in Tully
10:25 A long anedcote-filled conversation about Sebastian Lelio's Disobedience starring Rachel Weisz. It's quite discussable from a number of angles
25:00 On Chesil Beach, Deadpool 2 and Ready Player One
30:15 Let the Sunshine In, and Grace Jones, Bloodlight and Bami
34:45 More randomness including Book Club and the exquisite beauty of Michelle Pfeiffer in Wolf

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? 

Disobedience, Tully, Ready Player One