Review: “That Awkward Moment”

Bromances are anything but a new concept in film.  For decades, the likes of Bill & Ted, Point Break, and Wayne’s World provided bromantic entertainment in a variety of different genres.  However, thanks to the success of I Love You Man in 2009, the bromance genre has taken on a new life, reaching new creative and financial heights.  The newest in the long line of recent bromance films is this weekend’s That Awkward Moment, which unfortunately never finds its footing, resulting in a mess of clichés, poor characterization, and a waste of a talented class. Where films like Superbad and I Love You Man found success in subversion and parody of romantic comedy tropes, That Awkward Moment is too comfortable playing it safe.

Review: “Gloria”

The only thing foreign about Gloria, a wonderful Chilean import that was snubbed from this year’s nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, is its setting and Spanish dialogue. The main crux of the movie, that of a divorced 58-year-old woman coming into her own later in life, harkens way back to the American cinema of the 1970s, when Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and others dug into the state of womanhood post-wifehood. These films all feature complex female leads who are independent from man’s indentity yet still yearn for interdependency nonetheless, and Gloria is no exception as it deftly balances the perks and pains of self-reliance.

Review: “Labor Day”

“They were two people who couldn’t go out into the world, so they made a world with each other.”

I’m always enticed by directors who venture out of their comfort zone. It’s easy to become fond of a filmmaker because of his/her genre mastery, but before long our dependency on his/her ‘one trick pony’ abilities are undercut by a desire for versatility. We want to see the filmmaker do more than only what they are good at, to swing for the fences or put a tunneled effort into a project that is totally unfamiliar. Sometimes, we want them to try and fail because the combination of valiant effort and failure is a stain that defines a filmmaker as opposed to tarnishing them. We as avid viewers respect a cinematic changeup, regardless if it turns out to be more of a sinker or a curveball. Trying something new is a challenge, but the results, whether positive or negative, are always worth the labor.

Elizabeth Banks Directing “Pitch Perfect 2”

After many years of consistent work as a recognizable Hollywood actress in the likes of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Hunger Games, Elizabeth Banks is poised to make her directorial debut with the sequel to the surprise smash hit, Pitch Perfect.  Instrumental to the original’s success, Banks was the key producer of the film, developing the concept before handing it over to screenwriter Kay Cannon to flesh out the film. This time around, Banks is taking more creative control, replacing Jason Moore as the director of the sequel.

Foreign Language Oscar Preview

The countdown to the 86^th Annual Academy Awards has begun. Whether you are planning a huge viewing party with tiny chocolate statuettes to distribute amongst your friends or you’ll be watching the ceremony alone to experience the thrill at its maximum, I’m quite sure you might still be wondering: what are those foreign language films nominated this year? Every year, the Foreign Language Film category remains a mystery to a majority of American moviegoers. I mean, can you roll off the last several years of Foreign Language winners like you can those for Best Picture? The category was officially created in 1956 and features only non-English speaking movies. Amazing titles have been nominated in the past and this year as well, but it is often hard for the public to really get a clear idea of what these movies are about, let alone see them in cinemas. As an international student, I’ve always taken great interest in the nominees, so I’m going to take this chance to go through the 2014 Best Foreign Language Film Award nominations:

Movie Rewind: “The Trip” (Steve Coogan, “The Trip To Italy”, “Philomena”)

Trans-cultural influence between Britain and America has left Americans with much to rejoice over. From one of the most popular bands in history, The Beatles, to J.K. Rowling’s wildly popular book series turned multi-million dollar franchise, Harry Potter, not to mention the Pilgrims, the British have blessed our American shores with many a great import. One such import is Michael Winterbottom’s 2010 comedy The Trip. After taking an assignment for the food issue of the newspaper The Observer to impress his girlfriend, Steve (an impressively glum Steve Coogan) is forced to find a new companion when she calls for a “break” in their relationship. Rather than traverse the finest restaurants Northern England has to offer by himself, Steve reluctantly invites his friend and colleague Rob (the infectiously sunny Rob Brydon) to come along. On January 20^th, a sequel to The Trip called The Trip to Italy premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to highly positive reviews. In addition, star Steve Coogan co-wrote and co-stars in the wonderful Philomena, now a Best Picture nominee at this year’s Academy Awards. In other words, now’s the perfect time for movie rewind of The Trip.

“I, Frankenstein”: When Will Fantasy Re-Imanginers End?

Everyone criticizes Hollywood for being unoriginal, relying on sequels to their big blockbusters that are just variations on the same formula they used to start their last franchise. However, in the past few years there’s been a trend of studios digging back even further to find material for their latest action movie. Classic literature characters, fairy tale heroes, Greek gods, and even historical figures have found themselves fighting bad guys against green screens. This weekend saw the release of one of the most ridiculous of these ideas yet, taking the monster of Mary Shelley’s famous horror novel and turning him into the shirtless, axe wielding lead of I, Frankenstein. So I find myself asking the question, what’s the allure of these films? And are audiences even responding to them?

“Batman Vs. Superman”: Rumors Fly Over 2016 Delay

If you were anywhere near a computer during 2013’s San Diego Comic-Con, chances are you heard about how DC “won” the entire weekend when Zack Synder came up on stage and confirmed the sequel to 2013’s blockbuster Man of Steel would be a crossover with Batman and released in 2015. Comic book and movie nerds collectively broke the Internet that day, with the news popping up all over Twitter, Reddit, and other various social media sites. As a fan of both of these entertainment mediums, I was extremely overjoyed to see this news. After many failed attempts, two of the world’s most famous and greatest comic book heroes would finally be sharing screen time as well as opening up the potential for expansion in a DC Cinematic Universe (much like Marvel’s).

PGA/SAG Awards Create Best Picture Showdown

As January nears its end, we find ourselves knee deep in awards season. The Golden Globes have come to pass, as have the Critics Choice Awards, each offering up their widespread wealth and giving slight indication into how the more important cinematic awards – the four guild awards and the Oscars – will eventually play out. It’s been a wild season with the field narrowing only an inch at a time day by day. What began as a funnel of big screen riches has been molded into a spreadsheet of many possibilities and only a few definite locks. In the last few days, three of the biggest events thus far in the 2013 awards season have transpired, beginning with the Oscar nominations last Thursday morning, followed by the Screen Actors Guild awards (SAG’s) on Saturday night, and culminating with the Producers Guild Awards (PGA’s) Sunday night.

Screen Actors Guild Awards: “12 Years A Slave” or “American Hustle”?

What’s more appropriate than fellow actors choosing the best performances and ensembles of the year? For that reason, the Screen Actors Guild Awards is one of my favorite ceremonies of the entire awards season. Even more so, the Screen Actors Guild isn’t afraid to upend the trends of the awards season and pass over the frontrunner for the win. After all, this is the Guild who awarded Johnny Depp Best Actor for the boozy Captain Jack Sparrow over eventual Oscar-winner Sean Penn (Mystic River) and gave its Best Ensemble Prize, its equivalent to Best Picture, to Little Miss Sunshine over The Departed, Inglourious Basterds over The Hurt Locker, and The Help over The Artist. The SAG Awards can bring a new player into the conversation or cement a frontrunner as an Oscar lock, like last year’s Argo upset over deserved Ensemble winner Silver Linings Playbook. So how are the SAG Awards shaping up this year? Click here for a complete list of nominees and below for a quick look at tonight’s big show:

In terms of the acting categories, if Best Actress Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine), Best Actor Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club), and Best Supporting Actor Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) all walk away with awards tonight, than it’s safe to assume all three are Oscar locks since they’ve already picked up numerous trophies, most importantly Golden Globes last Sunday and Critics Choice Awards on Thursday. I suspect no trouble for Blanchett and Leto, but the SAG Awards is the last chance for the Best Actor race to shake up if the Guild decides to award 12 Years A Slave’s Chiwetel Ejiofor. Ejiofor is a long time supporting actor, and a beloved one at that, who has worked with numerous Guild members and finally gets a tour-de-force all his own in Steve McQueen’s historical epic. A win for Ejiofor is more than deserved, he brings you to the pit of despair while restoring your faith in the human spirit, and this is his best chance to snag some gold, but if McConaughey takes the win you can pretty much call the Best Actor race over.

The Best Supporting Actress race is an entirely different category this year and perhaps the most open-ended award of the night. The battle is between Jennifer Lawrence, whose sassy American Hustle housewife won the Golden Globe, and Lupita Nyong’o, whose tormented slave from 12 Years A Slave took the Critics Choice Award. Whichever actress wins tonight will get the slight edge for the Oscar, so who does it go to? Hollywood golden girl Lawrence or Hollywood breakthrough Nyong’o? I’m giving the win to Nyong’o, an actress whose debut performance leaves you speechless and remembering her name for years to come. Lawrence’s flashy work in Hustle was always going to catch the attention of the Hollywood Foreign Press and there’s no doubt many SAG members fell hard for her all over again, but this is a chance for the Guild to welcome with open arms a new member into their prestigious club and I suspect they’ll do that tonight for the striking Lupita Nyong’o.

As for Best Ensemble, the race is unquestionably a brawl between Oscar darlings 12 Years A Slave and American Hustle. The other nominees – Dallas Buyers Club, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, and August: Osage County – don’t really stand a chance here since Meryl Streep chews the film away from her ensemble, only Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey leave impressions in The Butler, and Dallas Buyers Club isn’t really an ensemble piece at all, it’s nomination was quite the surprise over Nebraska, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Prisoners. That leaves American Hustle and 12 Years A Slave and it’s a fierce competition between them. It’s Hollywood’s most fun ensemble vs. Hollywood’s most fearless. So who wins?

It’s hard to ignore what I’ve been calling the “ensemble-charged wonders” of American Hustle. A lot of what makes David O. Russell’s film so exhilarating to watch is seeing each actor – the transformative Christian Bale, the sly Amy Adams, the neurotic Bradley Cooper, the sassy Jennifer Lawrence, the empathetic Jeremy Renner, and more – steal the movie away from his/her co-stars. Just when Adams is seducing you with her British accent, Cooper comes in to steal her thunder with his high-strung freak-outs, only for Lawrence to come in swinging with “Live And Let Die”, and then Bale blows you away by turning his criminal into a loveable con man that you can’t help but root for. It’s mesmerizing seeing all this talent, many of which is the new A-list of my generation, top each other and it turns the film into an actor’s game that rivals the twisty con game at the heart of its screenplay. The ensemble here is infectious and vivacious, they make a statement so loud it’s impossible not to be won over by their charm.

But if it were up to me, and I suspect the Screen Actors Guild will follow suit, it’s hard to pass up giving the Best Ensemble award to the cast of 12 Years A Slave. Every actor here, from the bigger roles of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, and Lupita Nyong’o, to the smaller supporting turns by Sarah Paulson, Paul Dano, Alfre Woodard, Paul Giamatti, and Brad Pitt, to the even tinier roles by Scoot McNairy, Adepero Oduye, Garret Dillahunt, and Michael K. Williams, is instrumental in making the historical epic the most vital work of art this year. With unflinching bravery, this cast digs into the despair and atrocities of American slavery with extreme bravery and undisputable honor. I can only imagine what it was like for Fassbender, Giamatti, and Dano to get into the shoes of such vile, despicable people, and the scenes where they commit unthinkable acts against Ejiofor, Oduye, Nyong’o and more could have only achieved their level of artistic beauty and importance with talent as fearless as this one. This cast demonstrates not only acting skills of the highest order, but their work in 12 Years A Slave also shows their remarkable trust in each other as performers and their trust in director Steve McQueen to bring this controversial material to life in the most emotionally accurate way. It’s an ensemble of award-worthy proportions.

American Hustle is a chess game, with each piece check-mating the next, while 12 Years A Slave is a puzzle, each piece, no matter the size, working together for a higher purpose, and I suspect the Screen Actors Guild will rightfully award such bravery by giving 12 Years its coveted Best Ensemble prize tonight.

Who do you think takes the SAG Award tonight?

Article by Zack Sharf

The SAG Awards air tonight on TNT and TBS at 8pm.