Film Bitch Awards finale: Best scenes & big results from small parts

by Nathaniel R

Christian Magby and Lance Reddick in "One Night in Miami"

You know where I am if you need me.

We're finally closing out our 2020 coverage. Five months into the calendar year. We'd say 'Oops' but in this one case we'll happily blame the Oscars pretending that the calendar wasn't the calendar rather than our own sometimes-lacking time management skills. Though we are excited to move on to 2021, in point of fact lists and awards are our happy place. That is not because they have inherent definitive value as arbiters of quality (as the naysayers like to remind). No, that's not it at all. Only time is the definitive tastemaker but even that is fallible since it never stops and collective opinion can shift dramatically from generation to generation just as it does from person to person. No we value and love lists and awards because they are superb documents of feelings about quality at a specific moment in time. What moved people en masse? The answer is all over awards season. What struck certain individuals in a seismic way? That can be found in personal top ten lists and personal awards for those who bother to make such things. 

So let's start with one of our favourite things to honor: smashing work in very limited screentime...

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"Virtual" Moviegoing - What's New?

by Nathaniel R

Tired of aimlessly scanning choices on Netflix? Treat yourself to a newish movie tonight that you might have been seeing in a theater in a better world! Increasingly the small indie distributors like Kino Lorber and Music Box Films are releasing their movies to pay per view streaming systems which share the ticket purchase price with the movie theater of your choice! So this weekend make some popcorn and pretend you're going to your local arthouse with one of these gems...

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NYFF: The color-filled noir of "The Wild Goose Lake"

by Jason Adams

Police officers close in on and surround a perp, their light-up dance sneakers blinking blue with every step. Hotel rooms half orange half pink, a sleepless phantasmagoria. A panicked streak through a zoo in the middle of night, flashes of light illuminating a tiger, an elephant, a succession of wild animal eyes in extreme close-up, blinking back madness. The Wild Goose Lake, the latest film from Black Coal Thin Ice director Yi'nan Diao, turns the crowded alleys and markets of Wuhan, Central China, into some sort of neon fever dream -- a riot of crime and color and scooter rides straight to hell, bang bang.

Starting off like a variation on The Warriors we first meet our characters gathered for an underground syndicate meeting -- everybody's come together to divide up the city, block by block, street by street...

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