COMING SOON

Early next year, there will be not one but two thrillers involving lesbians on-the-run: one dark and treacherous and the other dark and wacky.

Ethan Coen, one half of the filmmaking team, the Coen Brothers, is about to release his first narrative feature film without his brother, Joel who made his own solo directorial debut with "The Tragedy of Macbeth" in 2021. "Drive-Away Dolls", co-written with his wife, Tricia Cooke, is a comedic road-trip caper. Margaret Qualley plays a young free spirit that has just ended a relationship with a girlfriend and looking for adventure. Geraldine Viswanathan is her more uptight friend who is ready to let loose. They get their wish when they take off on the road to Tallahassee. But their trip is interrupted when they end up getting mixed in with a group of menacing yet inept gangsters. Bill Camp, Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon also star. "Drive-Away Dolls" (which had the more interesting working title, "Drive-Away Dykes") was supposed to have been released last fall but was delayed due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

"Drive-Away Dolls" is due in US theaters on February 23, 2024

For the follow-up to her acclaimed horror-drama, "Saint Maud", the filmmaker Rose Glass returns with "Love Lies Bleeding", a gritty thriller with a touch of sweet romance. Kristen Stewart stars as Lou, a manager at a gym who becomes infatuated with a female bodybuilder (Katy O'Brian). But their love affair leads them into the crosshairs of Lou's criminal family lead by her father, played by Ed Harris.  The film will make its world premiere at the Sundance Film Fest in January before reaching theaters in March.

"Love Lies Bleeding" is due in US theaters on March 8, 2024

MAY DECEMBER (2023)

Written by Samy Burch



Directed by Todd Haynes



Where & When: Los Feliz 3 Theatres, Los Angeles, CA. November 20, 2023 1:30 PM



Available to stream now on Netflix



"May December", the latest fascinating, transgressive work from filmmaker, Todd Haynes, looks at a relationship, deemed by many as highly inappropriate and disturbing due to the extreme age difference between the couple, years after their affair was revealed to the world in a shocking scandal. Yet the film becomes cleverly very meta as an actress arrives to study the participants in order to play the woman involved in this infamous case for an upcoming movie.

Arriving in Savannah, the actress, Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) attends a festive gathering at the home of Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) and her husband, Joe (Charles Melton). The couple's history goes back twenty-three years ago when a thirteen-year-old, Joe was hired to work part-time at a pet shop where Gracie, the thirty-six-year-old married mother of three children, also worked. They were caught having sex in the back of the store, leading to her arrest and Gracie having their first child while in prison.

Gracie and Joe seemed to have weathered the scandal, now living largely out of the public glare although they still occasionally receive packages filled with feces to their home. They are the parents to three children with their eldest, Honor (Piper Curda) attending college while the twins, Charlie (Gabriel Chung) and Mary (Elizabeth Yu) are preparing to graduate from high school.

With seemingly unlimited access and not wanting to waste any time, Elizabeth quickly begins her research, interviewing anybody willing to talk who are in the couple's orbit. And that seems to be everyone from Gracie's ex-husband (D. W. Moffett) to the son of the owner of the pet store and with Georgie (Cory Michael Smith), one of Gracie's older children who clearly is more troubled than his parents will acknowledge. But her real focus is on Joe, trying to connect with him through gentle persuasion and coy seduction.

Since his audacious debut with the queer-themed "Poison" over thirty years ago, Haynes has been a filmmaker who created works of cinema that were provocative and challenging. And while he has continued to make films with unconventional themes, audiences began to embrace his movies on a wider scale and even when he ventured into more commercial fare (the legal thriller, "Dark Waters", the HBO miniseries, "Mildred Pierce"), Haynes found a way to add his own distinctive style to the material. "May December" certainly is a subversive subject filled with his sense of wit and playfulness. And if this story sounds familiar, it should. Inspired by the Mary Kay Letourneau case, which involved this middle school teacher who began an intimate relationship with one of her students, Haynes has crafted his take as a cross between a Douglas Sirk styled melodrama and a modern "ripped-from-the headlines" tabloid exploitation. The film's score, adapted by Marcelo Zarvos from Michel Legrand's music for the 1971 British drama, "The Go-Between", is dramatic and jarring, intended to add even more offbeat tension to the story.

As an actress on a mission to learn all she can in order to perfectly inhabit this role, Portman's Elizabeth may appear laid-back and unassuming on the surface, yet she is alarmingly ruthless, unconcerned with the fallout from her reopening of old wounds or the potential damage that could come from her relentless pursuit. And while Gracie may come across as serene nurturer, offering warm smiles and a welcoming disposition, and defers to her husband to discipline the children, she keeps her family firmly under her control. The always reliable Moore skillfully plays her as unsteady with a complicated mixture of child-like impulsiveness and calculated manipulation. But the real revelation here is Melton who first received attention playing Reggie on the television series, "Riverdale". Struggling against spending most of his young life as a parent (coming across more like his children's brother than father) and unsure how to move forward as he approaches having an empty nest, the actor expertly captures the devastation this man-child goes through as he reflects on what he has missed out on and tries to have an honest discussion with his wife about their relationship. And while Elizabeth might be the most obvious in this triangle, all of them are delivering a performance, saying what they think people want to hear and, most telling, fearful that they might be caught publicly delivering a false line.

I went to see "May December" twice; the first time in a theater and the other on Netflix a few weeks later. The main reason for the repeat screening was largely because of all the recent chatter about the film being viewed as a comedy including the submission of "May December" into the musical/comedy categories for the Golden Globes. It didn't come across to me as a comedy after my first viewing and despite a few quirky moments and odd bits of offhand dialogue ("I don't think we have enough hot dogs") the film still never registered to me as much of an actual comedy, more of a drama with some comedic elements. The second viewing only reinforced my opinion that "May December" is a disquieting examination of a couple that has their long unresolved trauma and emotional conflicts together forced to the surface, after years of successfully keeping them buried, by the welcomed dramatic recreation of the problematic beginning of their relationship. Thoughtfully executed, expertly performed and yes, with moments of dark humor, Haynes has made "May December" into a mesmerizing film that has you riveted to the screen as unsettling secrets and confessions are gradually revealed yet also leaves you feeling extremely uncomfortable afterwards from this knowledge.

2023 NATIONAL FILM REGISTRY

Some of the twenty-five films selected for this year's National Film Registry includes the Disney animated classic, "Lady and the Tramp" about the romance between two dogs; Ang Lee's charming, queer-centered rom-com, "The Wedding Banquet"; "Desperately Seeking Susan", Susan Seidelman's edgy NYC romantic-comedy that introduced Madonna, a rising pop star at the time, in her first major film role; George Cukor's all-star, pre-code comedy, "Dinner at Eight", based on the popular play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Farber, about a wealthy family preparing a society dinner; "Apollo 13" which recounts the disastrous space mission on the fifth US trip to the moon from Ron Howard; the beloved holiday classic, "Home Alone" with Macaulay Culkin as a young boy who is accidently left behind on a family vacation; "Bamboozled", Spike Lee's controversial satire on the creation of a modern television minstrel show; the musical-drama, "Fame" which focuses on the students that attend the high school of performing arts in Manhattan (and one of my all-time favorite movies); "Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision" is a documentary on the artist behind the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC; and the Best Picture Oscar winner, "12 Years a Slave", Steve McQueen's harrowing yet deeply moving drama about a free African-American sold into slavery.

The Library of Congress has added these movies this year to the National Film Registry which recognizes their artistic significance while helping to ensure their preservation for generations to come. These films, which must be at least ten years old, have been named because of their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance and with these selections brings the number of films in the registry to 875.

Here is the complete list of the films selected to the 2023 National Film Registry:

"A Movie Trip Through Filmland" (1921)
"Dinner at Eight" (1933)



"Bohulano Family Film Collection"(1950s-1970s)
"Helen Keller: In Her Story" (1954)
"Lady and the Tramp" (1955)



"Edge of the City" (1957)



"We’re Alive" (1974)
"Cruisin’ J-Town" (1975)
"¡Alambrista!" (1977)
"Passing Through"(1977)
"Fame"(1980)



"Desperately Seeking Susan"(1985)



"The Lighted Field" (1987)
"Matewan" (1987)



"Home Alone" (1990)
"Queen of Diamonds" (1991)
"Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991)
"The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993)
"The Wedding Banquet" (1993)
"Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision" (1994)



"Apollo 13" (1995)
"Bamboozled" (2000)



"Love & Basketball" (2000)
"12 Years a Slave" (2013)
"20 Feet From Stardom" (2013)

2023 AWARD SEASON BEGINS

The 2023 award season has finally begun with several critics groups weighing on what each considers the best of the year. As always, this can vary wildly yet there are a few select films and performances that tends to appear somewhere in each group's list. But they also tend to find room to recognize films  under the radar that will greatly benefit from the attention.

Since 1975, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, comprised of L.A.-based professional film critics, honor screen excellence on both sides of the camera. This year, "The Zone of Interest" took the top prize from the LAFCA. This intense drama about an Auschwitz commandant and his family trying to live a comfortable life in their home next to a concentration camp also marked the return of the British filmmaker, Jonathan Glazer after a ten year absence, who received the Best Director award. This group does reveal the runners-up in each category and the acting categories are genderless but two winners are selected in each of them.

Here are the winners of the 2023 Los Angeles Film Critics Association:

Best Picture: "The Zone of Interest"
Best Director: Jonathan Glazer, "The Zone of Interest"
Best Screenplay: Andrew Haigh, "All of Us Strangers"
Best Lead Performance: Sandra Hüller, "Anatomy of a Fall" and "The Zone of Interest" and Emma Stone, "Poor Things"
Best Supporting Performance: Rachel McAdams, "Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret" and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, "The Holdovers"
Best Documentary/Nonfiction: "Menus-Paisirs – Les Troisgros"
Best Animation: "The Boy and the Heron"
Best Cinematography: Robbie Ryan, "Poor Things"
Best Editing: Laurent Sénéchal, "Anatomy of a Fall"
Best Production Design: Sarah Greenwood, "Barbie"
Best Music/Score: Mica Levi, "The Zone of Interest"
Career Achievement Award: Agnieszka Holland

The New York Film Critics Circle Awards annually make their selections to honor excellence in cinema worldwide. While the group chose "Killers of the Flower Moon", Scorsese's lengthy period drama, as their Best Film, the members of NYFCC spread the other awards around to honor "Oppenheimer", "The Holdovers", "May December" and an inspired Best Actor choice with Franz Rogowski for his amazing work in "Passages"

Here are the winners of the 2023 The New York Film Critics Circle:

Best Film: "Killers of the Flower Moon"
Best Director: Christopher Nolan, "Oppenheimer"
Best Screenplay: Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, "May December"
Best Actress: Lily Gladstone, "Killers of the Flower Moon"
Best Actor: Franz Rogowski, "Passages"
Best Supporting Actress: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, "The Holdovers"
Best Supporting Actor: Charles Melton, "May December"
Best Cinematography: Hoyte Van Hoytema, "Oppenheimer"
Best International Film: "Anatomy of a Fall"
Best Non-Fiction Film: "Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros"
Best Animated Feature Film: "The Boy and the Heron"
Best First Film: "Past Lives"

For over a hundred years the National Board of Review has been dedicated in its efforts to support cinema as both art and entertainment. This private organization of film enthusiasts, largely New York based, has been offering their selections for the best in cinema each Year. Usually the first of the critics groups to announce their picks but recently others have jumped ahead to try and be the first out the gate. This year, the NBR has selected Martin Scorsese's recent "Killers of the Flower Moon" as the big winner with Best Film, Best Director, Lily Gladstone as Best Actress and Rodrigo Prieto for his camerwork for this film and "Barbie". "The Holdovers" follows with three awards for Best Original Screenplay and Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress respectively.

Here are the winners of the 2023 National Board of Review:

Best Film: "Killers of the Flower Moon"
Best Director: Martin Scorsese, "Killers of the Flower Moon"
Best Original Screenplay: David Hemingson, "The Holdovers"
Best Adapted Screenplay: Tony McNamara, "Poor Things"
Best Actress: Lily Gladstone, "Killers of the Flower Moon"
Best Actor: Paul Giamatti, "The Holdovers"
Best Supporting Actress: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, "The Holdovers"
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo, "Poor Things"
Best Ensemble: "The Iron Claw"
Best Documentary: "Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie"
Best International Film: "Anatomy of a Fall" (France)
Best Animated Feature: "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"
Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto, "Barbie" and "Killers of the Flower Moon"
Outstanding Achievement in Stunt Artistry: Chad Stahelski, Director and Stephen Dunlevy & Scott Rogers, Stunt Coordinators, "John Wick: Chapter 4"
Best Directorial Debut: Celine Song, "Past Lives"
Breakthrough Performance: Teyana Taylor, "A Thousand and One"
NBR Icon Award: Bradley Cooper

And the nominations of the Film Independent Spirit Awards were announced with "Past Lives", "May December" and "American Fiction" each receiving five noms apiece. To be eligble for a Spirit Award, films must have a budget below $30 million, making many of the most buzzed about movies of this season unable to be recognized by this non-profit arts organization. The 39th Spirit Awards will be held on February 25, 2024 on the beach in Santa Monica, CA. hosted by Aidy Bryant. The awards will be streamed live on the IMDb and Film Independent YouTube channels.

Here are the nominations of the 2023 Film Independent Spirit Awards (Film):

Best Feature:

"All of Us Strangers"
"American Fiction"
"May December"
"Passages"
"Past Lives"
"We Grown Now"

Best Director:

Andrew Haigh, "All of Us Strangers"
Todd Haynes, "May December"
William Oldroyd, "Eileen"
Ira Sachs, "Passages"
Celine Song, "Past Lives"

Best Screenplay:

David Hemingson, "The Holdovers"
Cord Jefferson, "American Fiction"
Laura Moss and Brendan J. O’Brien, "Birth/Rebirth"
Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott, "Bottoms"
Celine Song, "Past Lives"

Best Lead Performance:

Jessica Chastain, "Memory"
Greta Lee, "Past Lives"
Trace Lysette, "Monica"
Natalie Portman, "May December"
Judy Reyes, "Birth/Rebirth"
Franz Rogowski, "Passages"
Andrew Scott, "All of Us Strangers"
Teyana Taylor, "A Thousand and One"
Jeffrey Wright, "American Fiction"
Teo Yoo, "Past Lives"

Best Supporting Performance:

Erika Alexander, "American Fiction"
Sterling K. Brown, "American Fiction"
Noah Galvin, "Theater Camp"
Anne Hathaway, "Eileen"
Glenn Howerton, "BlackBerry"
Marin Ireland, "Eileen"
Charles Melton, "May December"
Da'Vine Joy Randolph, "The Holdovers"
Catalina Saavedra, "Rotting in the Sun"
Ben Whishaw, "Passages"

Best Cinematography:

Katelin Arizmendi, "Monica"
Eigil Bryld, "The Holdovers"
Jomo Fray, "All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt"
Pablo Lozano, "Chronicles of a Wandering Saint"
Pat Scola, "We Grown Now"

Best Editing:

Santiago Cendejas, Gabriel Díaz and Sofía Subercaseaux, "Rotting in the Sun"
Stephanie Filo, "We Grown Now"
Daniel Garber, "How to Blow Up a Pipeline"
Jon Philpot, "Theater Camp"
Emanuele Tiziani, "Upon Entry"

Best Documentary:

"Bye Bye Tiberias"
"Four Daughters"
"Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project"
"Kokomo City"
"The Mother of All Lies"

Best International Film:

"Anatomy of a Fall" (France)
"Godland" (Denmark/Iceland)
"Mami Wata" (Nigeria)
"Tótem" (Mexico)
"The Zone of Interest" (United Kingdom, Poland)

Best First Feature:

"All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt"
"Chronicles of a Wandering Saint"
"Earth Mama"
"A Thousand and One"
"Upon Entry"

Best First Screenplay:

Samy Burch; Story by Samy Burch, Alex Mechanik, "May December"
Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman and Ben Platt, "Theater Camp"
Tomás Gómez Bustillo, "Chronicles of a Wandering Saint"
Laurel Parmet, "The Starling Girl"

Best Breakthrough Performance:

Marshawn Lynch, "Bottoms"
Atibon Nazaire, "Mountains"
Tia Nomore, "Earth Mama"
Dominic Sessa, "The Holdovers"
Anaita Wali Zada, "Fremont"
Alejandro Rojas and Juan Sebastián Vásquez, "Upon Entry"

John Cassavetes Award (Given to the best feature made for under $1,000,000):

"The Artifice Girl"
"Cadejo Blanco"
"Fremont"
"Rotting in the Sun" "The Unknown Country"

Someone To Watch (Recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition):

Joanna Arnow, "The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed"
Laura Moss, "Birth/Rebirth"
Monica Sorelle, "Mountains"

Truer Than Fiction Award (Presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant recognition):

Set Hernandez, "unseen"
Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli, "Lakota Nation vs. United States"
Sierra Urich, "Joonam"

Robert Altman Award (Given to one film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast):

"Showing Up"

RYAN O'NEAL (1941 - 2023)

Ryan O'Neal, the handsome, charming yet troubled actor, has sadly passed away on December 8th. One of the biggest names in cinema throughout the 1970's, the actor had been suffering from some serious health issues over the last few years which included leukemia and prostate cancer although no exact cause of death has been revealed to date. O'Neal was eighty-two.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, O'Neal was part of a show business family with his mother, Patricia O'Callaghan an actress and his father, Charles O'Neal was a novelist and screenwriter. The oldest of their two sons, O'Neal had first trained to be a Golden Gloves boxer. But the lure of the business proved unavoidable and with some assistance from his mother, he began to get work guest starring in episodes of several popular television series in the 1960's. O'Neal's first major breakout was when he was cast in the nightime soap opera, "Peyton Place" in 1964. The show was a huge hit and made stars out of the young cast which included Mia Farrow, Barbara Perkins and Leigh Taylor-Young, who joined in the third season and later became O'Neal's second wife.

O'Neal's co-stars were making the transition into the movies yet he struggled to find significant roles. But in 1970, O'Neal won a part that would change the course of his career when he was selected to be in the film, "Love Story". Based on a wildly popular novel by Erich Segal, O'Neal, who got the role after several actors turned it down which included Jeff Bridges, Jon Voight and Michael York, was paired with former fashion model, Ali McGraw (who was married to Paramount's studio head, Robert Evans) and this tragic romantic drama went on to become one of the highest-grossing films in U.S. history. Both actors would receive their only Academy Award nominations for their work in "Love Story".

O'Neal's career in the movies took off and he went on to star in Peter Bogdanovich's screwball comedy, "What's Up, Doc?" with Barbra Streisand; "Paper Moon" (which co-starred his daughter, Tatum who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1973); Stanley Kubrick's now-acclaimed period drama, "Barry Lyndon"; the all-star war film, "A Bridge Too Far"; Walter Hill's cult thriller, "The Driver" and the comedy, "The Main Event" which re-teamed him with Streisand.

But by the 1980's, O'Neal's red-hot film career had cooled considerably. Some of the films he appeared in like the underrated 1984 comedy, "Irreconcilable Differences' (with Shelley Long and Drew Barrymore), "Fever Pitch" and "Tough Guys Don't Dance" which was written and directed by novelist, Norman Mailer were intriguing yet they all disapointed at the box-office. O'Neal returned to television with some movies (including one "The Man Upstairs" with Katharine Hepburn in 1992) and a short-lived sitcom, "Good Sports" in 1991 which co-starred his long-time partner, Farrah Fawcett.

O'Neal was the father of four children; Tatum and Griffin with his first wife, actress, Joanna Moore, Patrick with Taylor-Young and Redmond with Fawcett. He had difficult and volatile relationships with all of them, estranged at various times throughout his life. O'Neal was arrested in 2007 for shooting at Griffin, claiming it was in self-defense but the charges were later dropped. But in later years, his relationships with them had improved with efforts of reconciliation.