The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Having an entirely unproductive day. (It happens). But the trailers are coming fast & furious. Are you a yes no or maybe so on three following pictures. Do tell.
THE SHAPE OF WATER
YES - Sally Hawkins. This could well be magical. NO - Guillermo Del Toro tends to be more of a genius in concept than in execution MAYBE SO - Hate it when trailers show the whole movie. In some ways this feels like a demented fan fiction version of the 10 minutes near the end of Ron Howard's Splash. Is there more to it than this?
THE SNOWMAN
YES - Tomas Alfredson is a very impressive director (Let the Right One In and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) who is pretty great and sustaining tension for a whole running time. He's gathered his usual array of impressive craftsmen in all departments NO - Is any single subgenre more plagued by violence against women as its ignition or more overworked than the serial killer procedural? MAYBE SO - How's the chemistry between Fassbender and Ferguson?
PROUD MARY
YAAAS - Taraji P Henson deserves a star vehicle NO - Like the Kingsman series this looks like a pornographic fetish movie about guns and how cool it is to kill people... which... given the US addiction to guns and explosions in gun massacres each year, is really starting to feel like irresponsible movie behavior. MAYBE SO - Who knows? This teaser is very very light on anything about the movie though we hear she's an assassin. We're guessing with a conscience. the movies are very obsessed with assassins who have that pre-existing condition.
For the next two weeks with Emmy nominating ballots in progress Team Experience will be sharing personal favorites. Here's Eric Blume...
When you talk about Justin Theroux, inevitably you turn to the subject of fairness. On one level, is it fair to the rest of us mortals that Justin Theroux looks like this...
Then again, it’s exactly because Justin Theroux looks like that that he is grossly undervalued. Usually, if someone who looked like that was even just able to spell his own name, he would be fawned over. But in the acting game, male beauty is rebuffed, and awards bodies tend to eschew acknowledgement if the male actor isn’t an everyman.
Part of the glory, ironically, of Theroux’s acting in HBO’s The Leftovers is that he so deeply inhabits the everyman, in the true sense of that term. The trajectory for his character, Kevin, was of loving husband and father, trying to protect and save his family, as men do. He couldn’t understand how to bring his family together, how to truly be vulnerable enough to connect. And Theroux’s physical power was the perfect foil for his paralyzing inner fear...
Tim here. With Alien: Covenantopening to #1 over the weekend, it's fortuitous timing that today marks the 25th anniversary of Alien3. The 1992 sci-fi thriller is probably best-known today for two reasons: introducing music video director David Fincher to the world of theatrical features, and knocking all the shine off of the Alien franchise for the first time (and alas! not the last).
Underperforming at the box office, and outright flopping with critics, Alien³ has never since recovered its reputation; if time has been kind to it, it's only because at least we can now say, "well, at least it's not as bad as Alien: Resurrection"...
This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad
If the famed director Ridley Scott were in art school, his professor would be yanking the paintbrush out of his hand — “it’s perfect, stop adding brush strokes!” His wife probably has to pull spices from his hands as he cooks. If you’ve been playing along with this Hollywood giant’s career you know that he can never leave well enough alone. I’ve lost count of how many “versions” there now are of his early sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner (1982) and, after years of threats, that film will have a sequel this October, Blade Runner 2049, though Scott opted to pass the directorial reigns over to Denis Villeneuve (Arrival).
Having exhausted returning to that particular sci-fi well, Ridley has moved back even earlier in his career to the film that made him famous, Alien (1979). He’s now directed two prequels to it (Prometheus and now Alien: Covenant) and more films are promised. (Perhaps the controversial ending of 1991’s Thelma & Louise is the only thing that’s kept that film, the third member of his holy trinity of masterworks, free of his tinkering!).
Pajiba gird your loins - Dan Stevens is in everything Tracking Board Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, and Candice Bergen to co-star in a comedy about a book club reading 50 Shades of Grey? This could be awesome or terrible...or both. Whichever way it turns out, we're there! Coming Soon Focus has acquired the new Jason Reitman / Charlize Theron collaboration Tully but we'll have to remove it from the Oscar charts. It's not coming until Spring 2018 now
AV Club NBC greenlights its first two series of the new year, one of them that used to be called Drama High (and sounds like it has potential) is now called Rise. Why does Hollywood love to go from specific to generic titles? Are their studies that show that generic titles do better or is it fear of specificity? /Film the first cast photo of Marvel's The Inhumans has been released and boy is it underwhelming. I've always loved Medusa but you really shouldn't be able to tell that it's such an obvious and stiff looking wig since the character is so tied up in her hair! I mean, couldn't they have gotten RuPaul's wig designers to do it if they wanted something both outlandish and real looking?
Tony Season Theater Mania hoping to dominate the original play Tonys next year, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has announced an opening for the tail end of eligibility in 2018 Playbill did you know that Audrey Hepburn won her Tony Award the same WEEK as her Oscar? Isn't that crazy? She won the Oscar for Roman Holiday on March 25th, 1954 and then the Tony for Ondine on March 28th! DeadlineAmélie, a New Musical, based on the Oscar nominated French classic, is the first casualty of the Tony nominations, announcing its Broadway closing date for May 21st after a short run and zero nominations. Broadway World Despite a disappointing Tony showing (2 nominations) Anastasia, based on the 90s animated movie musical,announces a world tour. It helps to have that known "brand" going in. (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was savaged by critics and received zero Tony nominations, is still doing well and the box office and is already working on the tour) THR Tony nominee anecdotes including Laurie Metcalf on the proposed Roseanna revival and Sally Field discussing the release she felt when she found her calling as a young girl:
It isn't something that I just decided one day or backed into it one day. I found a stage when I was 12 when I was lucky enough to be in a school that still had a theater arts department. And something inside of me changed, woke up, I could hear my own voice for the first time when I was onstage, and then when I would get offstage I had to be all the things that little girls in the '50s had to be, and all of that went back in the box. But when I got onstage I could be all the things I wasn't allowed to be anywhere else, so I could hear my own self.
Love ya Sally!
Exit Video Got 18 minutes? That might seem like a lot but this video essay really is compelling. It names a sci-fi fantasy trope that I haven't personally seen named before but which is as familiar as they come. He calls it "Born Sexy Yesterday" and it's all about the way genre fiction infantilizes women so that men are their natural superior.
At the very least it will make you rethink mermaid and sexy android movies, The Fifth Element and Splash a little bit.
Thursday, July 20, 2017 at 2:40PM 
