Hold on to something! The When We Were Young podcast’s pilot episode glances back at everyone’s favorite cow-tossing summer blockbuster, Twister, to see if the windiest divorce drama of all time holds up 20 years later.
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Forgive me. I know it seems much too early to talk about the Oscars, but we’re getting into that time of year now. So far, 2016 has been all but entirely barren of buzzworthy performances. I have a small handful of favorites, but only one or two that are certain to make the cut on my “Not Oscars” list next year.
The new film Indignation is one of those “wait and see” films, released in spring or summer or early fall, which most people agree has some noteworthy work, but no one’s quite willing to bet on it yet. After all, we know there are bigger, flashier things in the pipeline — Tom Hanks, Viola Davis, Casey Affleck, Denzel Washington, and other familiar faces are attracting plenty of early chatter about their awards chances in forthcoming releases. Nothing in Indignation is quite striking enough to challenge them, but you never quite know how things will pan out. The film has made over $2 million in a smallish release and is playing well with critics and audiences. It’s the kind of film that just might have staying power.
What a relief: we don’t have to worry about Britney Spears anymore.
I’ve seen a lot of movies. A lot of them contain some pretty shocking stuff. I don’t necessarily like gore or explicitly disturbing subject matter, but my cinematic journeys often lead me toward such material anyway. I’m more adventurous than the average moviegoer. Sometimes, I think I’ve seen it all.
After a while, one act of abhorrent violence is just like all the rest. It’s rare to encounter a scene in a movie that feels that new, that novel, truly unprecedented. The final scene of Enemy was, perhaps, the last piece of cinema to truly make me sit up in my seat and say, “What the fuck?”
Until now.
Whoever you are, whatever you’ve watched… there’s something in The Neon Demon I can pretty much guarantee you haven’t seen.
Where you live. Where you learn. Where you pray. Where you drink.
It’s happened again.
Tilda Swinton is a rock star.
The biopic is a well-worn genre, especially when it comes to musicians. Marion Cotillard, Sissy Spacek, Jamie Foxx, and Reese Witherspoon have won Oscars playing notable musical artists, and plenty more have been nominated. The genre itself was mercilessly lampooned in Walk Hard.
These days, musician biopics still get made, but on a smaller scale than they used to, and lately they tend to fly further under the radar than they used to. (Notable exception: last year’s Straight Outta Compton, which was a massive hit.) There are three such films in theaters right now, telling the stories of musicians Chet Baker, Miles Davis, and Hank Williams, but most moviegoing audiences have not heard of these.
Is the musician biopic losing steam as a genre? Have we just seen too many of these?
There are roughly 3,000 automobile deaths in America each year, and it feels like we see at least twice that many in the movies. Car accidents are the go-to tragedy for Hollywood, even moreso than cancer. It used to be that a character’s subtle cough around the midpoint of a film would indicate their burial by movie’s end; that’s still true, but at this point, the car crash supercedes it. The probability of dying in a car crash in California are roughly 1 in 12,000, but if you’re driving a car in a movie, the odds are more like 1 in 2 — especially if you’re cheerfully singing along to the radio. Banal conversation, too, will almost always summon the oncoming headlights. And if a cherished parent or beloved spouse operates a motor vehicle in the first scene of a movie, you can pretty much guarantee they’re about to get side-swiped.
We’re living in a wacky movie world these days. The third highest grossing film of this year so far is also one of the biggest disappointments — Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice plummeted in its second and third weekends, so even though the film will gross over $300 million, it’s a domestic disappointment. (Its production budget is $250 million, and who knows how much Warner Bros. spent on marketing that monstrosity.)
Batman V Superman‘s worldwide receipts will likely brand it as a hit of sorts, but whatever. Alongside that superhero misfire is the year’s biggest hit, Deadpool, and two animated family films, Zootopia and Kung Fu Panda 3. Ride Along 2 rounds out the top five highest grossing films this year. I haven’t seen a single one of these movies.
Yes, it’s only April. But what do the studios have in store for us for the rest of 2016? You guessed it: more superheroes, more talking animals, and more lame-o c0medies, mostly. That’s why it’s extra-refreshing when an itty-bitty hit like Hello, My Name Is Doris shuffles along.
