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By Ben Miller 13 feature films into his career, director Christopher Nolan has developed a string of touchstones for his films. You can expect an all-star cast, massive practical set pieces, underdeveloped women, stunning visuals, and clunky dialogue. With his new film The Odyssey, Nolan again delivers on everything you come to expect from a Nolan movie. This time, Nolan (a well-documented child of cinema history), decides to take his chances with a sword and sandals epic in the vein of Ben-Hur…
by Joanna Sodeman-Taylor If you’re anything like me, you walk away from the Oscars each year under an absolute fugue state against all new films. If it was made in the last decade, then no thank you! When it comes to 2026 features, I’ll be spending the summer doing what I do best: catching up on new releases I missed in theaters as soon as they hit VOD. So let’s start with a relatively deep cut, recommended by my good friend and one-time TFE contributor Patrick Gratton and available for rental…
by Nathaniel R Will Julianne Moore finally be back in the mix via THE DEBUT While it took me uncomfortably long to complete the first round of Oscar predictions of the year, I've finally done so ending with Best Actress, Best Picture, Best International Feature Film, Best Director and Best Casting as the final charts to go up. But what I want to talk about is, naturally Best Actress. Quelle surprise! There are film years where one or two titans feel all but certain this early. There are years…
by Eurocheese THE INVITE Taking a break from the summer heat in an air-conditioned theater or relaxing at home while catching the year’s cinematic highlights sounds divine, doesn’t it? While the first half of the year’s output in theaters wasn’t overly awards-friendly, here are a few treats you’ll be happy you sampled. Let’s avoid the obvious callouts for box office smashes and focus on the hidden gems. Let's start with two in theaters...
As the summer stands between us and the awards season to come, Cláudio Alves and Juan Carlos Ojano discuss some of this year’s new Oscar rules, focusing on their beloved Best International Film race. Visar Morina's SHAME AND MONEY became the first film eligible for the Best International Feature Oscar this season, when it won the World Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. CLÁUDIO: Much was said about the Oscar rule changes when they were first announced at the beginning of May,…
by Joanna Sodeman-Taylor As some of y’all might have noticed, Joanna Sodeman-Taylor is a fairly new name to be showing up on TFE and acting so familiar. So, happy Pride to me! The diva formerly known as Nick is now going by Joanna, and she's has the hormones to back it up. June may be over, but with my other major cinematic obligation with the Columbus Film Festival currently completed, I figured I should polish off my writings on two exemplary documentary shorts that deserve an audience all…
by Nathaniel R Can Daisy & Esmé pull an Emma & Kate in the new version of SENSE & SENSIBILITY? With such a banner Best Supporting Actress season in the rearview mirror, how can the next race even dream of topping it? Who will be our next Madigan... our Wunmi or Teyana? Will we get another Inga & Elle twofer? Sight unseen the films of 2026 don't appear to be offering us a wealth of contenders. And yet, who can really know in the spring or summertime? Promos and buzz and rumors of greatness for…
by Cláudio Alves This year, I was lucky enough to attend the 50th edition of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Market. The festivities ended this past weekend, with Ervin Han and Raúl García’s The Violinist taking the prestigious Cristal prize for Best Film from the feature competition. Past winners include such titles as Arco, Memoir of a Snail, Flee, I Lost My Body, Coraline, and many other unforgettable pictures. But it wasn’t all fun and games and glory. While the…
by Nathaniel R First still from WERWULF. Can it follow in Nosferatu's footsteps and receive craft nominations? We started with Costume Design (we're partial to those threads, don'cha know) but now the rest of the first round predictions for the 99th Oscars are available in all visual categories...
By Ben Miller You can blame Superman for plenty of the failures with Craig Gillespie's Supergirl. The critical and audience success of that entry reignited the DC Universe. Now, the expectations are too great and the middle-of-the-road film that follows is sure to be considered a disappointment. It's not like the film does anything wrong, it's just slight. I love not having a plot hinge on universe-changing implications, but this film just establishes the Supergirl character enough to lead to…
by Elisa Giudici A quick, aperiodical column dedicated to the small discoveries from the smaller film festivals scattered across Europe. Pesaro is a small coastal town in central Italy, interionationally known as the birthplace of composer Gioachino Rossini and as a city of bicycles. The economy largely revolves around seaside tourism. For 62 years it has also hosted the Pesaro International Festival of New Cinema, an event dedicated to discovery of new, innovative forms of cinema. The…
by Nathaniel R As is annual tradition, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has published the list of the people they're inviting to join their 19 branches this year. Being on this list doesn’t mean you’ve become an Academy member; it just means you’ve been sponsored and invited (you cannot apply for membership – they have to invite you.) The only other way to become a member, outside of sponsorship from a current member, is to be Oscar-nominated. You’re automatically considered, with…
For pride month, straight critic Ben Miller takes a look back at a gay film he otherwise would have never seen Watching Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle during pride month, I caught myself being drawn into the idea of what pride means. The outward appearance of the gay community has constantly been perceived as unabashed confidence with "we're here and we're queer!" Living out and proud might be the goal, but it certainly wasn't something that happened for most gay people overnight. Before…
by Nathaniel R Can John Turturro hold on to his Sundance buzz for "The Only Living Pickpocket in New York" © Sony Pictures Classics Whoops. Lost some momentum there to finish the first round of Oscar predictions. Let's take on Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor...
by Cláudio Alves Women on screen are more interesting than men. This is a truth universally acknowledged by actressexuals everywhere, and, by the looks of it, John Early is an actressexual like no other. For his feature directorial debut, the openly queer comedian-turned-actor-turned-maverick-filmmaker has decided to take these passions to the next level. Rather than watch from afar, he has become one of the great actresses he’d like to see on screen. And yet, for all it plays with gender,…
by Nathaniel R THE KING'S WARDEN won three prizes and is a huge hit in South Korea. You might remember last year that we discussed that South Korea has a robust film awards calendar, with the first awards show of each year in May! I'm sharing it despite being well over a month llate because my number one film of 2025 No Other Choice took the big prize. The Baeksang Arts Awards do more than film -- they're an all around arts awards so they also honor theater and television. Eligibilty runs from…
For pride month, straight critic Ben Miller takes a look back at a gay film he otherwise would have never seen What is the ideal world we would like to be living in when it comes to understanding and accepting sexuality? How about one of gentle understanding, filled with mutually beneficial grace? Stephen Cone's Princess Cyd might not be outwardly presenting an ideal world of magical realism, but it's one we can at least look to as a beacon of light. For too long, the world of heteronormativity…
by Cláudio Alves Glenn Close and Deborah Kerr at the 66th Academy Awards. | © AMPAS By this point, everyone and their mother has heard about the Honorary Oscar recipients for 2026. It’s been decided by the Academy to bestow these honors on Ridley Scott, Glenn Close, and pioneering Black American animator Floyd Norman. Producers Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon will also receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, with nobody getting a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for the first time…
by Joanna Sodeman-Taylor Hello everybody! It’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything, and I’m excited to present a bunch of queer cinema this month. I love Ben’s pieces on queer cinema, and it kicked me in the pants to start plotting my own series. The thought of only having a straight person celebrating Pride at The Film Experience of all places - we can’t have it! Ahead of whatever I’ll be reviewing this month, let’s just define “queer” along some fairly broad lines. We got films…
By Ben Miller Let's make an assumption, shall we? Let's assume Steven Spielberg, one of the most consistently successful and acclaimed filmmakers of the last 50 years, knows what he is doing. You might go into his new sci-fi thriller Disclosure Day expecting a certain kind of film, but that's on you, not him. "That wasn't what I was expecting" is the death knell for films. This has very little to do with the quality of the film itself, but more to do with the marketing and filmmaker…
by Nathaniel R JIM QUEEN is a French gay adult animated comedy about a virus that turns gay men into heterosexuals. It premiered at Cannes. Every year I hope to become more of a voracious viewer of animated films. There's so much happening around the world in animation but international animation (beyond some films from Japan) rarely hits US movie theaters or stays for a long enough time to build a fanbase. The animation year started out unexpectedly strong with more animated films premiering…
For pride month, straight critic Ben Miller takes a look back at a gay film he otherwise would have never seen. Much of the experience of taking in film is seeing yourself in the characters and situations. Part of why I wanted to write this series is for something exactly like this. Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education is completely foreign to me (no pun intended for the Spanish language). Every male character is either gay, transgender, or sexually fluid. If you are none of those things, how do you…
by Nathaniel R Four inspirations for 2026 movies: Mrs Dalloway becomes CLARRISA, The Unfaithful Wife becomes MINOTAUR, Rocky (1976) gets a making of bio with I PLAY ROCKY, and of course the bestseller turned blockbuster PROJECT HAIL MARY As someone who never used to have writers block but who has it frequently now, I have a newly reinvigorated respect for fellow writers who perservere. That said, the screenwriters life can't be easy given the amount of script doctoring, star and director and…
by Nathaniel R The year's surest bet: A 55th Oscar nomination for John Williams scoring DISCLOSURE DAY © Universal Encourage me to keep going with these charts via comments. Let's talk sound and music. These categories generally stay mysterious until late in the year since post-production is such a heavy part of eligibility and credits for music and sound categories. Sometimes they'll switch out composers after filming has ended! And of course Original Song is notoriously hard to predict. One…
by Nathaniel R Jacqueline Durran's work on WUTHERING HEIGHTS was the first gauntlet thrown for the 99th Oscars Best Costume Design race. © Warner Bros Pictures Dearest (im)patient readers. The time has come. Let's dive into our April Foolish first round Oscar predictions of the year. We'll put up one category (or more) per day until it's complete. To kick us off, the sartorial wonders of Best Costume Design. Last season my medals went to the juke joint 30s fashions of Sinners, the colliding…
For pride month, straight critic Ben Miller takes a look back at a gay film he otherwise would have never seen When I decided to begin this series, I committed myself to not just dip my toe in. I needed to dive headfirst into the gayest possible film I could think of. It would be disingenuous to talk about something as tame or commercially viable as Brokeback Mountain, Carol, or Moonlight. This was going to be a celebration and discussion of something the straight world does not and will not…
by Nathaniel R FJORD wins the coveted Palme d'Or. Will Oscars nominations follow for Cristian Mungiu, Renate Reinsve, and Sebastian Stan? ? Will the 2026 Cannes Festival have lasting impact on this cinematic year? With the oft-reported absence of major Hollywood outings at the 79th festival, the best we might hope for (for those of us on the other side of the ocean) is a similar or muted echo to last year when the four non-English features that dominated the Cannes conversation (It Was Just An…
by Elisa Giudici The cast of LA BOLA NEGRA By now, the Los Javis hardly need introduction at Cannes. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, who just tied Pawel Pawlikowski to win Best Director at the Cannes closing ceremony, have spent the last decade becoming not just successful filmmakers and showrunners, but cultural architects for a new generation of Spanish storytelling: proudly queer, emotionally maximalist, deeply rooted in national history while fully conversant in pop melodrama and…
by Elisa Giudici LA BOLA NEGRA There’s a strange atmosphere lingering over Cannes this year: not scandal, not outrage, not even division exactly. More like collective hesitation. A sense that everyone liked several films, respected many more, but truly loved very few. The consensus around the Croisette is unusually blunt: Competition was quite weak, only occasionally excellent, and rarely exhilarating. In a year where Hollywood increasingly seems willing to bypass festivals altogether for its…
by Elisa Giudici Leonardo Sbaraglia stars in 'BITTER CHRISTMAS' Pedro Almodóvar has spent the last few years stripping away the protective layers between himself and his cinema. Ever since Pain and Glory, his films have stopped merely borrowing from autobiography and started openly feeding on it. The characters no longer resemble fragments of the director; they practically announce themselves as extensions of him. Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad) pushes that process to an almost uncomfortable…
