Tag: Steve McQueen

Screening Room: ‘Widows’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Adaptations, Film - Festivals, Film - NewLeave a comment
Viola Davis in ‘Widows’ (20th Century Fox)

In Widows, the new Chicago-set thriller from Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) and Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) adapted from the series by British crime novelist Lynda La Plante, Viola Davis has to pay $2 million back to some gangsters her husband ripped off before being inconveniently shot dead.

Widows already toured the festival circuit and now opens wide this Friday. My review is at Eyes Wide Open:

[Widows] is technically a crime story. But it’s also a smart character study of women thrown to the wolves by their criminal men. Behind all that, it’s the story of a great city being stripped down and sold for parts. This might be the greatest movie about an American city since John Sayles’ City of Hope and the best American heist flick since Spike Lee’s Inside Man. But those differing attentions sometimes work at cross purposes…

Here’s the trailer:

In Movies: National Film Registry

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - RepertoryLeave a comment
'Decasia'; now, and for eternity
‘Decasia’; now, and for eternity

Every year, the Library of Congress selects another 25 films “deemed to be culturally, aesthetically or historically important” for adding to the National Film Registry, in order to preserve them for future generations. The 2013 list is nice and eclectic, ranging from Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) to musicals (Mary Poppins), short documentaries, and experimental one-offs (Decasia, a found-footage compilation showing the decay of film stock over time).

Here’s the new list:

  • “Bless Their Little Hearts” (1984) – Billy Woodberry’s UCLA thesis film about a working-class African American family.
  • “Brandy in the Wilderness” (1969) – Stanton Kaye’s experimental semi-autobiography.
  • “Cicero March” (1966) – Short film recording a civil right march in an all-white Chicago suburb.
  • “Daughter of Dawn” (1920) – Recently rediscovered drama with hundreds of Native American cast members, the first shot in Oklahoma.
  • “Decasia” (2002) – Found-footage compendium using decomposing images from old nitrate film stock.
  • “Ella Cinders” (1926) – Silent comedy about a girl trying to become a star.
  • “Forbidden Planet” (1956) – Classic sci-fi adventure semi-based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
  • “Gilda” (1946) – Brilliant film noir with Rita Hayworth
  • “The Hole” (1962) – John and Faith Hubley’s Oscar-winning animated short about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
  • Judgment-at-Nuremberg-Poster“Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961) – Star-studded Stanley Kramer drama about the Nazi war crime trials.
  • “King of Jazz” (1930) – Early Technicolor music revue with Bing Crosby.
  • “The Lunch Date” (1989) – Award-winning student film about a chance meeting between a woman and a homeless man in a train station.
  • “The Magnificent Seven” (1960) – John Sturges’ western remake of “The Seven Samurai” will never grow old.
  • Martha Graham Early Dance film (1931-44) – Four films documenting the choreography of these influential dancers.
  • “Mary Poppins” (1964) – That movie which Saving Mr. Banks is about.
  • “Men & Dust” (1940) – Documentary about Midwestern miners.
  •  “Midnight” (1939) – Comedy with Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche and John Barrymore.
  • “Notes on the Port of St. Francis” (1951) – Vincent Price-narrated short about San Francisco.
  • “Pulp Fiction” (1994) – Quentin Tarantino’s epic blend of crime and comedy that supposedly changed everything in Hollywood.
  • “The Quiet Man” (1952) – A big wet kiss to Ireland from John Ford, starring John Wayne.
  • “The Right Stuff” (1983) – Philip Kaufman’s rousing adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s account of the early space program.
  • “Roger & Me” (1989) – Michael Moore tries to get answers from the head of GM.
  • “A Virtuous Vamp” (1919) – Silent romantic comedy.
  • “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (1966) – Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton go to war in Mike Nichols’ film of the Edward Albee play about marital discord, and other things.
  • “Wild Boys of the Road” (1933) – Social drama about teens on the road during the Great Depression.

Department of Awards: Online Film Critics Society

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - AwardsLeave a comment
Chiwetel Ejiofor in '12 Years a Slave'
Chiwetel Ejiofor in ’12 Years a Slave’

The Online Film Critics Society, an international group of cinematic scriveners who are kind enough to count me in their number, today announced our awards for the best films of 2013. Not surprisingly, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity took the lead, with five and three wins, respectively, and Cate Blanchett deservedly took another best actress win for her work in Blue Jasmine. Variety reported it here.

Cate Blanchett in 'Blue Jasmine'
Cate Blanchett in ‘Blue Jasmine’

We also gave a special posthumous award to the late, great Roger Ebert, “whose decades of work in criticism helped to popularize serious film appreciation to a wider audience, and whose tireless persistence in the face of cancer was as inspiring as any of the films he championed.”

Here’s the full list:

  • Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave
  • Best Animated Feature: The Wind Rises
  • Best Film Not in the English Language: Blue Is the Warmest Color
  • Best Documentary: The Act of Killing
  • Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron – Gravity
  • Best Actor: Chiwetel Ejiofor – 12 Years a Slave
  • Best Actress: Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine
  • Best Supporting Actor: Michael Fassbender – 12 Years a Slave
  • Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years a Slave
  • Best Original Screenplay: Her
  • Best Adapted Screenplay: 12 Years a Slave
  • Best Editing: Gravity
  • Best Cinematography: Gravity

 

Department of Awards: ’12 Years a Slave’ Best Film of 2013

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Awards1 Comment
Benedict Cumberbatch and Chiwetel Ejiofor in '12 Years a Slave'
Benedict Cumberbatch and Chiwetel Ejiofor in ’12 Years a Slave’

On a snowy afternoon in Manhattan, New York Film Critics Online—a group that very kindly counts yours truly in its membership—met to determine which films that hit theaters in 2013 were great, terrible, meh, or (more commonly) just not great enough.

The headline is that Steve McQueen’s harrowing real-life epic 12 Years a Slave took awards for best picture, actor, and supporting actress, while the incomparable lost-in-space thriller Gravity and French women-in-love romance Blue is the Warmest Color won in two categories. Otherwise, the awards were spread around in a fairly democratic fashion.

The Hollywood Reporter noted the proceedings, as did Variety.

Clinging on for dear life in 'Gravity'
Clinging on for dear life in ‘Gravity’

Here’s the full list of what we liked from 2013:

  • Best Picture — 12 Years a Slave
  • Best Director — Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
  • Best Actor — Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
  • Best Actress — Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
  • Best Supporting Actor — Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
  • Best Screenplay — Spike Jonze, Her
  • Best Cinematography — Emmanuel Lubezki, Gravity
  • Best Breakthrough Performance — Adele Exarchopoulos, Blue Is the Warmest Color
  • Best Use of Music — T Bone Burnett, Inside Llewyn Davis
  • Best Debut Director — Ryan Coogler, Fruitvale Station
  • Best Ensemble Cast — American Hustle
  • Best Foreign Language Film — Blue Is the Warmest Color
  • Best Documentary — The Act of Killing
  • Best Animated Film — The Wind Rises

Best Films of 2013:

  • 12 Years a Slave
  • Before Midnight
  • Blue is the Warmest Color
  • Dallas Buyers Club
  • Gravity
  • Her
  • Inside Llewyn Davis
  • Nebraska
  • Philomena
  • Prisoners
  • The Wolf of Wall Street

New in Theaters: ’12 Years a Slave’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - NewLeave a comment
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender in '12 Years a Slave'
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender in ’12 Years a Slave’

12yearsaslave-poster1In 1853, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, was freed from the Louisiana plantation where he had been sent twelve years earlier after being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Steve McQueen’s forceful adaptation of Northup’s autobiography is as beautifully detailed and riven with pain as the book.

My review is at Film Racket; here’s part:

There are horrors aplenty in Steve McQueen’s blistering, cold-eyed epic of slavery. But amidst the cringe-inducing scenes of torture, McQueen pinpoints acts of cruelty so casual they almost hurt more. The plantation owner’s wife who tells her husband’s newest purchase, a woman just separated from her children, not to worry, “They will soon be forgotten.” Another wife, jealous of her husband’s attraction to a slave woman, raking her fingernails across the woman’s face with no more thought than she’d give to swatting an animal. In a world where people can be treated as property, humanity disappears almost as quickly from the owners as from the owned. The difference is, the owned are trying to hang on to theirs…

Here is the trailer: