Aussie Super-Team Tackling Gay Conversion Therapy

by Jason Adams

This weekend you can stare into the wonderful sad eyes of Joel Edgerton onscreen via the small-scale emotional assault of It Comes at Night (I just reviewed it over at MNPP if you're interested) but today he's announcing his next adventure in familial distress, this time behind the screen, and it sounds pretty amazing - he's signed on to write and direct Boy Erased, an adaptation of Garrad Conley's memoir about his time spent suffering in "gay conversion therapy."

Have any of you read the book? Conley was the son of a Baptist minister and was accidentily outed at the age of 19 to his parents - they then forced him into a "Pray Away the Gay" program (basically mental abuse via scriptural brainwashing and isolation) as an ultimatum between everything he knew and explusion.

The film's lining up quite the cast - Manchester by the Sea star Lucas Hedges will play Conley, and in supporting roles Edgerton's supposedly calling in some fellow Aussies... ones that go by the glossy names Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe. Maybe you've heard of them? One assumes they're playing the parents, but Deadline doesn't specify.

Anyway with religious whack-job Mike Pence one Twitter breakdown away from the Oval Office "gay conversion therapy" is a real hot topic these days, so this could turn out to be a scarily timely story. But it could certainly also be a moving one either way, especially with such a talented group of folks dedicated to giving this real world horror emotional life on-screen. It's definitely a tale in need of telling.

"It Comes At Night" is Coming to Scare You

Chris here. While yesterday’s trailer for Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled certainly rattled us, here’s another first look to give you the more terrified kind of chills: Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha follow-up, It Comes At Night.

Shults’ first film was a decidedly homegrown effort, but this looks to be a spooky step up in scale and ambition if no less psychologically taxing. The director has also assembled an intriguing cast with Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, Riley Keough, and Christopher Abbott. The trailer keeps the specifics of this post-apocalyptic vision under wraps, but hints at some kind of malevolent force at play while Shults continues to mine tense family dynamics. From the opening shot of the trailer alone, we can probably bet this will be one of the year's most formiddable horror films.

Krisha was one of last year’s many promising directorial debuts (even if it had been kicking around for a while). Considering it played the Critics’ Week sidebar at Cannes, might Night be heading to the Croisette in some form as well? It Comes At Night opens on August 25.

Best Dressed Men at the Globes?

Who was the best dressed man at the Golden Globes? We took a quick poll of Team Experience to answer the infrequently asked question (don't worry the marquee category "best gowns" is coming later). Here are the responses though we must know which tux had you at full attention in the comments. 

Jose: Donald Glover. Every time I saw I remembered the "polyester suit / it's wool" exchange from La La Land

Steven: If you told me someone was going to wear a brown tux to the Globes, I would have assumed Jimmy Fallon was doing some misguided bit. But Donald Glover's ensemble was the real deal. I was very thankful they trotted him up to that stage twice...

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Oscar Dark Horse Watch: Joel Edgerton for Best Actor

by Lynn Lee

As we approach the start of Oscar voting, the race for Best Actor remains comparatively quiet, especially when compared with the super-tight margins in the Best Actress category.  Currently the smart money has the Academy tracking the SAG lineup, with Casey Affleck and Denzel Washington as virtual locks (notwithstanding the continued rumbling about those 2010 sexual harassment suits against Affleck) and Ryan Gosling, Viggo Mortensen, and Andrew Garfield filling the remaining slots...

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On Ruth Negga's emotional power in "Loving"

by Murtada

Ruth Negga gives Loving its heart and soul. From the very first frame, director Jeff Nichols relies on her expressive face to tell the story of Mildred and Richard Loving, the mixed race couple at the center of 1967 Supreme Court ruling that changed anti-miscegenation laws. The Lovings paved the way for generations of mixed race families. Nichols starts with Negga, his camera moving into a close up. A silent moment as we take in her big-eyed, made-for-cinema face. Then the line “I’’m pregnant” and we're swept right into this couple’s story. No need for us to see how they met and fell in love. Negga tells us the whole story with her face and delivery of that line.

Throughout the film, which puts the court cases to the periphery, it’s Negga's face that continues to tell the story...

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