18 Beautiful Examples of Co-Star Chemistry in 2018

Year in review list mania each day. Here's Nathaniel...

This is our fourth year of highlighting that unpredictable spark between actors that can elevate a movie whether the movie is able to catch up or not (see previously installments for '15, '16 and '17, if you're so inclined).  If only we could bottle these formulas but the thing about great chemistry is that it can't ever be fully recreated even if old movies during the studio system teach us that the same pairing can at least generate similar energy again. Why Hollywood doesn't still try to repackage successful combos of actors (rather than just all the brand do-overs) remains an unsolved mystery 

Herewith the most beautifully realized relationship energy of the year...

18 [TIE] Ben Foster & Thomasin McKenzie, Leave No Trace 
AND Josh Hamilton & Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade (Single Father/Teenage Daughter)
There's a lot to recommend in both films, two sleeper arthouse successes this year, but neither film would have the same emotional resonance without that authenticity of feeling in the central duet. Marvel at the way Hamilton looks at or speaks to Fisher, for example, perpetually impatient to be let in on her interior life, but also nervous about intruding on her journey and walling her off yet further. Equally impressive is the difficult balancing act McKenzie plays as both dutiful daughter and emotional caretaker for her troubled father, as she grows ever more restless to escape him without losing him. What a quartet of performances...

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Podcast: Mission Impossible - Eighth Grade!

An intimate convo this week as Nathaniel R welcomes Murtada Elfadl to the podcast. (Apologies for the oddly imbalanced sound - still fiddling with the equipment, wondering why we're so cursed!)

Index (42 minutes)
00:01 Desiree Akhavan's The Miseducation of Cameron Post
10:10 Mission: Impossible - Fallout and Tom Cruise's ego
21:05 Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham, and authenticity
33:00 Sorry to Bother You and LaKeith Stanfield
39:00 August is a really good month for movies for once!

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? 

M:I - Eighth Grade

Interview: Desiree Akhavan on Queer Desire, Americana and One Scary Mustache

by Murtada Elfadl

The Miseducation of Cameron Post takes place in the 90s and is about a young queer woman who is sent to a gay conversion center after getting caught having sex with the prom queen at her high school. Once there she bonds with her fellow “inmates” (played by American Honey’s Sasha Lane and The Revenant’s Forrest Goodluck among others). She is forced to contend with the strict brother and sister team (Jennifer Ehle and John Gallagher Jr) who run the center and pretend they can "cure" her. The film is based on a novel by Emily M. Danforth and was adapted for the screen and directed by Desiree Akhavan (Appropriate Behavior). It won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance and has been making the festival rounds since January. We recently spoke with Akhavan in New York as she geared up for the film's release. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Murtada Elfadl: The book is longer and has much more detail, how did you arrive at the story for your film?

Desiree Akhavan: I always knew that I only wanted to focus on the last 200 pages; Cameron's time at God’s Promise. I think that when adapting a book it’s about whittling down for yourself what the kernel of inspiration is. What you loved about it and wanted to translate to the screen. And what you think you tangibly can translate into a different medium. To me that was the tone. My co-writer and I were always working in service to maintaining that tone... 

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