| The Guardian - Culture: Film | | | | Golden Globes 2023 key moments: Kevin Costner shelters in place and Tom Cruise gets a kicking | | by Guardian film Jan 11, 2023 | | There were heroes aplenty – Jennifer Coolidge, Colin Farrell and Michelle Yeoh among them – but only one villain at this year’s star-studded Globes award ceremony “I‘m here because I’m Black,” said incoming MC Jerrod Carmichael, who addressed the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s tarnished reputation head-on in his opening monologue. “They didn’t have a single Black member until George Floyd was killed,” he said, shrugging off much of their apparent rehabilitation efforts and saying he only took the gig for the $500,000 paycheck. Continue reading... | | | | | 'I wanted people to inhabit my body': an innovative film about disability | | by Adrian Horton Jan 11, 2023 | | In I Didn’t See You There, film-maker Reid Davenport shows us what the world looks like from a wheelchair The first few shots of I Didn’t See You There, an experiential documentary by Reid Davenport, herald a perspective shift: familiar urban scenes filmed at an angle rare to cinema. The camera is at average waist height, often at a tilt, and moving at the speed of Davenport’s wheelchair. Manned entirely by the film-maker, either mounted to his wheelchair or handheld, the camera shows us slivers of the cityscape often missed or unavailable to an able-bodied pedestrian – the mosaic of sidewalk cracks unspooling under wheels, the brief window of time when the acceleration of a train aligns with Davenport’s chair, the glossy white subway tiles that undulate into an optical illusion when viewed at his pace. Besides Davenport’s occasional reflection in a storefront mirror, the only other figure centered in the frame is another person in a wheelchair. We also see the myriad reactions – condescension, annoyance, over-deference, general awkwardness – Davenport’s presence as a disabled person elicits from other people in and around his neighborhood in Oakland, California. The 76-minute film, which has had a small theatrical run and is now available for streaming on PBS, courses with an uncomfortable question: where is the line between looking and truly seeing? How little will able-bodied people consider another perspective? Continue reading... | | | | | In praise of Joe Pesci, the consummate supporting actor | | by Jesse Hassenger Jan 11, 2023 | | A new season of films celebrates the co-star of Goodfellas and Home Alone and his ability to do a lot with very little It’s easy enough to forget that Joe Pesci once starred in movies – he’s more or less retired from film acting, giving a total of three on-screen performances in the past 24 years. Following his exemplary 1990, when he appeared in one of the most acclaimed movies of the year – Goodfellas, for which he later won an academy award – and in the highest-grossing film of the year – Home Alone – Pesci booked a number of top-billed roles, often capitalizing on his facility with slapstick comedy, his Scorsese-bred gangster attitude, or both. Some worked; many didn’t. Pesci remained in demand, but by the decade’s end, he stepped back from movies, unofficially retiring with his status as a character actor who got an unlikely shot at stardom. Continue reading... | | | | | The Estate review – Toni Collette and A-list cast add class to sweary, crass comedy | | by Peter Bradshaw Jan 11, 2023 | | Kathleen Turner stars in boorish tale about a wealthy old woman whose family descend to get her money when she is dying In 2007 and 2010 British writer-director Dean Craig gave us the farce Death at a Funeral (the latter, a US remake, directed by Neil LaBute), of which I must admit I was never a fan. But there is something in the relentless bad taste in his new all-star black comedy – something in the fanatical emphasis on the importance of the exposed penis in all its unimpressive smallness – that is actually weirdly effective. Kathleen Turner plays Hilda, a cantankerous, disagreeable and extremely wealthy old lady who is dying of cancer, and finds that her greedy and unctuous nieces and nephews all show up, hoping for a slice of the will. These are Macey (Toni Collette), Savannah (Anna Faris), Richard (David Duchovny) and Beatrice (Rosemarie DeWitt), along with Beatrice’s bewildered husband James (Ron Livingston). To get into Aunt Hilda’s good books, Savannah and Macey track down their aunt’s high-school crush to give her a sentimental reunion with him, but disaster beckons when Hilda is so entranced she decides she wants to marry this old man thus making him her sole beneficiary. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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