Sarah Clary, Jenna Lyons and Kyle DeFord of “Stylish With Jenna Lyons” (Photo courtesy of HBO Max)
The following is a press release from HBO Max:
HBO Max debuted today the official trailer and key art for the new Max Original “Stylish with Jenna Lyons.” All eight episodes will be available to stream on Thursday, December 3, 2020 on HBO Max.
As president of J. Crew, Jenna Lyons became “the woman who dresses America”—a formidable business and style icon. Now, Jenna is experiencing a rebirth, and her reputation is on the line. Like many others in 2020, her lofty plans required some adapting and rethinking. From this emerged her very first beauty line, LoveSeen; a ground-up build of a boutique hotel in the Abaco Islands; and several soon-to-be-revealed creative surprises. In a refreshing mix of elevated documentary and formatted competition, “Stylish with Jenna Lyons” follows Jenna as she tackles design projects that will help define her future business. These include renovating her friend’s Brooklyn townhouse, hosting mobile fashion makeovers, designing her new office, and launching LoveSeen—her fresh take on false lashes. Along the way, she’ll test a diverse group of creative associates, all vying for a life-changing spot in Jenna’s growing team. Jenna’s staff, including her chief-of-staff Kyle DeFord and stylist Sarah Clary, join her in this ambitious new venture, delivering a masterclass in taste, design, and fashion with every episode.
To complement the series launch, Jenna is also creating a virtual pop-up shop featuring covetable, handpicked home, beauty, and fashion goods from local makers that highlight Jenna’s discerning point of view. The pop-up shop will be open from November 26 through December 18, 2020. More information can be found on @popupish’s Instagram.
“Stylish with Jenna Lyons” is produced by Our House Media with OHM’s Simon Lloyd and Matt Hanna serving as executive producers, along with Lyons, David Tibballs, Paul Storck, Hillary Olson, Jae Goodman, and Michael Bloom for Bongo Pictures.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States and France, the comedy/drama film “The Climb” has an all-white cast of characters representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two men, who are longtime best friends, have ups and downs in their relationship, which is often affected by jealousy and personal rivalries.
Culture Audience: “The Climb” will appeal primarily to people who like seeing low-budget films that take a bittersweet and comical look at a close male friendship.
Kyle Marvin, Michael Angelo Covino and Gayle Rankin in “The Climb” (Photo by Zach Kuperstein/Sony Pictures Classics)
“The Climb” is the type of dramedy movie that doesn’t really get made much anymore: It’s about two regular guys and their longtime friendship, with the movie taking place over the course of about 10 years. That’s it. There’s no real gimmick or hook, although there’s the predictable love triangle that threatens to permanently ruin their relationship. “The Climb” isn’t a barrier-breaking movie, but it has moments that are mostly relatable, even if they might teeter at times on the brink of absurd.
The two American friends at the center of “The Climb” are portrayed by the real-life pals who wrote the movie: “The Climb” director/co-writer Michael Angelo Covino plays Mike, while “The Climb” co-writer Kyle Marvin plays Kyle. “The Climb” is based on Covino and Marvin’s short film of the same name. Their real-life friendship helps with their acting in the movie, which at times is a tad amateurish, but it still has that underlying authenticity that shines through the acting. The ages of the Mike and Kyle characters aren’t stated in the movie, but it appears that the story is about the lives of these two characters from their late 20s to late 30s.
“The Climb” is not biographical, although in the production notes for “The Climb,” Covino and Marvin say that elements of their personalities are reflected in the characters that they portray in the movie. As Covino states in the production notes: “In the movie, there are heightened, extreme versions of traits we both have that aren’t necessarily our best traits—I’m not that big of an asshole, and Kyle is not that big of a pushover.”
It’s apparent from the first scene in “The Climb” that the character of Mike is the dominant “alpha male” in the friendship, while Kyle is the passive “beta male.” Mike and Kyle are riding bicycles up a rigorous incline in the French Alps. They’re supposed to be bike riding for “fun,” but it’s clear from all the strenuous effort put into their bike riding that there’s a silent competition between them to see who’s the better and stronger cyclist during this ride.
The friendly rivalry mood is broken when Mike tells Kyle that he has slept with Kyle’s fiancée, who is a French woman named Ava (played by Judith Godrèche). Mike downplays this affair by saying that it happened three years before Kyle and Ava began dating, but Kyle is still understandably shocked and upset that this secret is just now being revealed. And then Mike eventually admits that he slept with Ava after she and Kyle became a couple.
Mike has a tendency to be bossy and arrogant, because he always likes to be in control of a situation. He tells Kyle to keep pedaling, even after Kyle has heard this upsetting news about Mike and Ava’s affair. Mike also has a quick temper, because during this bike ride, he gets into a road-rage incident that lands him in the hospital. Shortly after Mike confesses to Kyle about the affair, a car drives up behind them on the road, and the car’s driver beeps the horn impatiently because Kyle and Mike are blocking the car’s way.
Mike’s response is to yell at the driver to drive around him and Kyle. The driver complies by driving past the two friends, but Mike won’t let things go, and he chases after the car on his bike. To Mike and Kyle’s surprise, the driver reacts by getting out of the car and beating up Mike, who is no match for the fighting skills of the driver. You’d think that Mike would be humbled by this experience. But no.
At the hospital, Ava shows up to visit. Although she seems to feel guilty that Kyle knows that she cheated on him with his best friend, Mike tries to shrug off everything and acts like Kyle will eventually get over it. Viewers will get the impression that a big part of Mike’s attraction to Ava is because she’s with Kyle, and Mike gets some kind of selfish and competitive pleasure out of being able to sleep with his best friend’s lover.
At any rate, Mike and Ava admit that don’t want to stay away from each other and they start to passionately kiss in Mike’s hospital room. And guess who walks by and sees them right at that moment? Kyle, of course.
The movie then fast-forwards to a funeral in the United States. The funeral has taken place an untold number of years later, perhaps three or four years after that scene in the hospital. It’s revealed that the funeral is for Ava, whose cause of death is not mentioned in the movie. In the years since Kyle found out that Ava and Mike had an affair behind his back, Mike and Kyle’s friendship soured. Ava and Mike got married, and then she died.
At the funeral, Mike and Kyle have obviously not seen each other for quite some time. Their “reunion” is awkward, to say the least. And then at the funeral, a hot-tempered Mike gets into a physical fight with a local gravedigger over the burial of Ava. Kyle, who has a “peacemaker” type of personality, intervenes in the fight and is able to stop it before things get really ugly. Mike then tells Kyle that he’s sorry about the affair with Ava. And it looks like Kyle and Mike sort of reconcile.
Since breaking up with Ava, Kyle moved on to another love: a no-nonsense, opinionated woman named Marissa (played by Gayle Rankin), who is the dominant one in the relationship. It’s never stated exactly how long Marissa and Kyle have been dating each other after his relationship with Ava ended, but Kyle and Marissa have known each other since high school and one thing is clear: Kyle’s mother Suzi (played by Talia Balsam), who is also strong-willed and domineering, doesn’t like Marissa. Kyle’s father Jim (played by George Wendt) is as easygoing as Suzi is uptight.
Kyle seems afraid to stand up to his mother, because when viewers first see Marissa and Kyle together, they are in the basement at Jim and Suzi’s house, and Marissa is giving Kyle a pep talk where they both practice saying “no” to Suzi. The family has gathered for Thanksgiving dinner. And it’s where Kyle and Marissa make a big announcement: They’re engaged to be married.
Suzi isn’t thrilled, but there’s nothing she can do about it. And then she tells Kyle something that makes him uncomfortable: She’s invited Mike over for the family’s upcoming Christmas dinner because Mike “has no family.” It’s never explained in the movie why Mike has no family members.
Mike is now a bitter and lonely widower who drinks heavily. He once had an athletic body, but his toned physique is gone, and now he has a flabby “beer gut” and an unkempt beard. And when he shows up at the Christmas dinner, he gets drunk and embarrasses himself. You know what that means in movies like this: A Christmas tree, a Christmas gift or fill-in-the-blank will be unlucky enough to be in the path of destruction of the drunk person.
The rest of the movie follows Mike and Kyle as they mend their friendship and adjust to new dynamics in their relationship after Kyle and Marissa become parents to a son named Otis, and then Kyle and Marissa get married. Mike is the type of guy who isn’t used to being a lonely bachelor, so he has some jealousy over Kyle falling in love and making Marissa a top priority in his personal life. Will Mike try to sabotage Kyle and Marissa’s relationship?
Things aren’t completely rosy in Kyle and Marissa’s relationship. After Mike comes back into Kyle’s life, Marissa often feels like a “third wheel” when Mike and Kyle hang out together. And there are hints that Marissa might not be in love with Kyle as much as he’s in love with her.
Although “The Climb” has some slightly amusing moments, one of the biggest issues that people might have with this movie is that it doesn’t give much background information on Kyle and Mike. Backstories for these two friends would go a long way in explaining why Kyle puts up with so much of Mike’s obnoxiousness. The movie never really answers this question: Why does Kyle show so much loyalty to Mike, who doesn’t show much loyalty in return?
Some people stay friends with someone longer than they should because they’ve known each other since childhood or because family or money matters would make it awkward or inconvenient to end the friendship. But there’s really no reason for Kyle to keep Mike in his life. They don’t work together, they don’t seem to have much in common except for a shared interest in sporting activities, and they both have very different outlooks and priorities in life.
Someone as selfish and toxic as Mike is an example of that old cliché: “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” But Mike isn’t a complete villain. He has a charming side to him and is the type of person who knows how to exploit people’s weaknesses, which is why Kyle is easily manipulated by Mike.
Still, the movie skimps on a lot of details. During the course of the several years of the friendship that’s shown on screen, it’s not really made clear what Kyle and Mike do for a living. (They’re obviously middle-class.) Mike’s home life as a widower is also a big mystery. Whenever Mike and Kyle are hanging out together, they’re usually at Kyle’s place or they’re out doing some activity together, such as bike riding or skiing.
Covino’s direction of the movie can best be described as “good but not great,” because the tone sometime veers into sitcom-ish territory. A more naturalistic comedic tone works better for the movie and should have been the overall consistent approach to the film. For example, there are a few things that happen during Kyle and Marissa’s wedding ceremony that are just a little too over-the-top, like a TV comedy that’s desperate for a “laugh track” moment.
The movie is divided into seven chapters with titles such as “I’m Sorry,” “Let Go,” “Thanks,” “It’s Broken,” “Fight On,” “Grow Up” and “Fine.” It’s an interesting creative choice, but because there are huge blocks of time missing from the story, structuring the movie like a book with chapters just calls more attention to these omissions and how many questions are left unanswered. (For example, viewers never get to see what kind of marriage that Ava and Mike had.)
The cinematography by Zach Kuperstein makes much of the story engaging. During the Christmas dinner scene, there’s a memorably long tracking shot that works really well, with the camera placed outside but viewers still being able to hear what’s inside. And the scenes with outdoor activities give viewers an immersive sense of being right there with the actors. (It helps to see this movie on the biggest screen possible.)
Above all, the banter between Kyle and Mike is the main reason to watch “The Climb,” because they have the type of friendship that will make people wonder how long it’s going to last and if there’s anything that Mike will do that Kyle wouldn’t be able to forgive. There are issues of masculinity and maturity that are just underneath the surface in almost everything they say or do. Kyle might be the “wimp” and the more easily manipulated one of this duo, but Mike has a lot of growing up to do. Viewers might have different answers on whether Mike or Kyle is the more co-dependent one in the relationship.
As for the women in the movie (namely, Marissa and Suzi, since Ava is barely in the film), they mainly exist to show that Kyle has outspoken women in his life whom he loves but they can also hurt him deeply. It’s too bad the movie doesn’t give Mike any context for how and why he acts the way that he does. It’s not necessarily about making him more likable, but it would give viewers more insight into his personality flaws.
There are vague inferences that Mike’s romantic relationships are often based in chaos. But because the movie shows almost nothing of Mike’s life except when it relates to Kyle, there’s a missed opportunity to show Mike as a more well-rounded human being instead of someone who exists to hang out with Kyle and to sometimes push Kyle’s emotional buttons. It would’ve been interesting for the movie to further explore how Mike’s mother or other women might have influenced his outlook on male/female relationships.
Despite some of the problems in story’s structure and character development, “The Climb” has an unpretentious, almost goofy tone that will endear it to people who want to see a good movie about male friendship without making it about over-aggerated machismo or slapstick buffoonery. There’s a familiarity to a lot of the movie’s material, but Covino and Marvin make a notable impression as “everyday guys” without being generic. “The Climb” is a movie about a friendship that’s more like “chosen family,” even when that choice sometimes get in the way of happiness.
Sony Pictures Classics released “The Climb” in select U.S. cinemas on November 13, 2020.
Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smollett and Michael K. Williams in “Lovecraft Country” (Photo by Eli Joshua Ade/HBO)
The following is a press release from The CW:
The Critics Choice Association (CCA) announced today the nominees for the inaugural Critics Choice Super Awards, a special event honoring the most popular, fan-obsessed genres across both television and movies, including Superhero, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Horror, Action and Animation. The winners will be revealed in a special television presentation, which will be produced remotely following COVID safety protocols, hosted by writer/director/podcaster Kevin Smith and actress/writer Dani Fernandez. The ceremony will air on The CW Network on Sunday, January 10, 2021 (8:00-10:00pm ET/PT) and will stream the next day for free on The CW App and cwtv.com.
The Critics Choice Association will also present the Legacy Award to the “Star Trek” franchise, recognizing the cultural impact it has had across multiple decades while continuing to appeal to and grow its loyal fanbase with new stories and characters. “Star Trek” icon Patrick Stewart, and “Star Trek: Discovery” trailblazer Sonequa Martin-Green will personally accept this special honor, which comes as the franchise celebrates its 55th anniversary.
Hulu and NEON’s “Palm Springs” leads this year’s film nominees, with a total of five including Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie, Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie for Andy Samberg, Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie and Best Villain in a Movie for J.K. Simmons, and Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie for Cristin Milioti. Several films followed close behind with four nominations including “Birds of Prey” (Warner Bros.), “Freaky” (Universal), “Onward” (Disney+), “Sonic the Hedgehog” (Paramount), “The Hunt” (Universal), “The Old Guard” (Netflix), and “The Willoughbys” (Netflix).
“Lovecraft Country” (HBO) received the most television nominations, with a total of six possible wins, including Best Horror Series, Best Actor in a Horror Series for Jonathan Majors, Best Actor in a Horror Series for Michael K. Williams, Best Actress in a Horror Series for Wunmi Mosaku, Best Actress in a Horror Series for Jurnee Smollett, and Best Villain in a Series for Abbey Lee. Amazon’s “The Boys” received five nominations including Best Superhero Series, Best Actor in a Superhero Series and Best Villain in a Series for Antony Starr, Best Actor in a Superhero Series for Karl Urban, and Best Actress in a Superhero Series for Aya Cash.
Several performers received recognition for both their film and television work. Hilary Swank was nominated for Best Actress in an Action Movie and Best Villain in a Movie for “The Hunt” (Universal), as well as Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series for “Away” (Netflix), making her the most nominated individual. Maya Rudolph was nominated for Best Voice Actress in an Animated Movie for “The Willoughbys” (Netflix) as well as Best Voice Actress in an Animated Series for “Big Mouth” (Netflix). Jurnee Smollett was nominated for Actress in a Superhero Movie for “Birds of Prey” (Warner Bros.) and Best Actress in a Horror Series for “Lovecraft Country” (HBO).
“What a celebration this is going to be!” said Critics Choice Association CEO Joey Berlin. “We are so pleased to be spotlighting the brilliant work of so many artists who bring to life some of the most engaging and beloved movies and television series! We are certain that Kevin and Dani will serve as tremendous hosts, who, as fans themselves, will bring energy and enthusiasm to the stage, as we honor these genres that so often go overlooked and underappreciated.”
The inaugural Critics Choice Super Awards show will be produced by Bob Bain Productions. The CCA is represented by Dan Black of Greenberg Traurig.
Follow the Critics Choice Super Awards on Twitter and Instagram @CriticsChoice and on Facebook/CriticsChoiceAwards.
About the Critics Choice Association (CCA)
The Critics Choice Association is the largest critics organization in the United States and Canada, representing more than 400 television, radio and online critics and entertainment reporters. It was organized last year with the formal merger of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association, recognizing the blurring of the distinctions between film, television, and streaming content. For more information, visit: www.CriticsChoice.com.
About The CW
The CW Television Network, a joint venture between Warner Bros. and CBS, launched in 2006. The CW is a multiplatform network that broadcasts a six-night 12-hour primetime lineup, Sunday through Friday and streams its ad-supported content, free, without login or authentication on CWTV.com and The CW app which is available on every major OTT platform. In daytime, The CW broadcasts a Monday through Friday afternoon block, and a three-hour Saturday morning kids block. The CW’s digital network, CW Seed, launched in 2013, and offers beloved limited-run series, as well as past seasons of recent fan-favorite television shows. For more information about the network and its programming, visit www.cwtvpr.com.
FILM NOMINATIONS FOR THE INAUGURAL CRITICS CHOICE SUPER AWARDS
BEST ACTION MOVIE Bad Boys for Life (Sony) Da 5 Bloods (Netflix) Extraction (Netflix) Greyhound (Apple TV+) The Hunt (Universal) Mulan (Disney+) The Outpost (Screen Media) Tenet (Warner Bros.)
BEST ACTOR IN AN ACTION MOVIE Tom Hanks – Greyhound (Apple TV+) Chris Hemsworth – Extraction (Netflix) Caleb Landry Jones – The Outpost (Screen Media) Delroy Lindo – Da 5 Bloods (Netflix) Will Smith – Bad Boys for Life (Sony) John David Washington – Tenet (Warner Bros)
BEST ACTRESS IN AN ACTION MOVIE Betty Gilpin – The Hunt (Universal) Yifei Liu – Mulan (Disney+) Blake Lively – The Rhythm Section (Paramount) Iliza Shlesinger – Spenser Confidential (Netflix) Hilary Swank – The Hunt (Universal)
BEST ANIMATED MOVIE Onward (Disney/Pixar) Over the Moon (Netflix) A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (Netflix) Soul (Disney+) The Willoughbys (Netflix) Wolfwalkers (Apple/GKIDS)
BEST VOICE ACTOR IN AN ANIMATED MOVIE Jamie Foxx – Soul (Disney+) Will Forte – The Willoughbys (Netflix) Tom Holland – Onward (Disney/Pixar) John Krasinski – Animal Crackers (Netflix) Chris Pratt – Onward (Disney/Pixar) Sam Rockwell – The One and Only Ivan (Disney+)
BEST VOICE ACTRESS IN AN ANIMATED MOVIE Tina Fey – Soul (Disney+) Honor Kneafsey – Wolfwalkers (Apple / GKIDS) Maya Rudolph – The Willoughbys (Netflix) Phillipa Soo – Over the Moon (Netflix) Octavia Spencer – Onward (Disney/Pixar) Eva Whittaker – Wolfwalkers (Apple / GKIDS)
BEST SUPERHERO MOVIE* Birds of Prey (Warner Bros.) The Old Guard (Netflix) Secret Society of Second-Born Royals (Disney+) Sonic the Hedgehog (Paramount) Superman: Man of Tomorrow (Warner Bros. Animation)
BEST ACTOR IN A SUPERHERO MOVIE* Skylar Astin – Secret Society of Second-Born Royals (Disney+) Jim Carrey – Sonic the Hedgehog (Paramount) Chiwetel Ejiofor – The Old Guard (Netflix) Ewan McGregor – Birds of Prey (Warner Bros.) Ben Schwartz – Sonic the Hedgehog (Paramount)
BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPERHERO MOVIE* Kiki Layne – The Old Guard (Netflix) Peyton Elizabeth Lee – Secret Society of Second-Born Royals (Disney+) Margot Robbie – Birds of Prey (Warner Bros) Jurnee Smollett – Birds of Prey (Warner Bros) Charlize Theron – The Old Guard (Netflix)
BEST HORROR MOVIE Freaky (Universal) The Invisible Man (Universal) Relic (IFC Films) The Rental (IFC Films) Sputnik (IFC Films)
BEST ACTOR IN A HORROR MOVIE Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù – His House (Netflix) Pyotr Fyodorov – Sputnik (IFC Films) Michiel Huisman – The Other Lamb (IFC Films) Dan Stevens – The Rental (IFC Films) Vince Vaughn – Freaky (Universal)
BEST ACTRESS IN A HORROR MOVIE Haley Bennett – Swallow (IFC Films) Angela Bettis – 12 Hour Shift (Magnet Releasing) Elisabeth Moss – The Invisible Man (Universal) Kathryn Newton – Freaky (Universal) Sheila Vand – The Rental (IFC Films)
BEST SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY MOVIE Love and Monsters (Paramount) Palm Springs (Hulu and Neon) Possessor (Neon) Synchronic (Well Go USA) The Vast of Night (Amazon Studios)
BEST ACTOR IN A SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY MOVIE Christopher Abbott – Possessor (Neon) Jake Horowitz – The Vast of Night (Amazon Studios) Anthony Mackie – Synchronic (Well Go USA) Andy Samberg – Palm Springs (Hulu and Neon) J.K. Simmons – Palm Springs (Hulu and Neon)
BEST ACTRESS IN A SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY MOVIE Ally Ioannides – Synchronic (Well Go USA) Katherine Langford – Spontaneous (Paramount) Sierra McCormick – The Vast of Night (Amazon Studios) Cristin Milioti – Palm Springs (Hulu and Neon) Andrea Riseborough – Possessor (Neon)
BEST VILLAIN IN A MOVIE Jim Carrey – Sonic the Hedgehog (Paramount) Kathryn Newton – Freaky (Universal) Martin Short and Jane Krakowski – The Willoughbys (Netflix) J.K. Simmons – Palm Springs (Hulu and Neon) Hilary Swank – The Hunt (Universal)
* Superhero categories also include Comic Book and Video Game Inspired Movies
NOMINEES BY FILM FOR THE INAUGURAL CRITICS CHOICE SUPER AWARDS
12 Hour Shift (Magnet Releasing) – 1 Best Actress in a Horror Movie – Angela Bettis
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (Netflix) – 1 Best Animated Movie
Animal Crackers (Netflix) – 1 Best Voice Actor in an Animated Movie – John Krasinski
Bad Boys for Life (Sony) – 2 Best Action Movie Best Actor in an Action Movie – Will Smith
Birds of Prey (Warner Bros.) – 4 Best Superhero Movie Best Actor in a Superhero Movie – Ewan McGregor Best Actress in a Superhero Movie – Margot Robbie Best Actress in a Superhero Movie – Jurnee Smollett
Da 5 Bloods (Netflix) – 2 Best Action Movie Best Actor in an Action Movie – Delroy Lindo
Extraction (Netflix) – 2 Best Action Movie Best Actor in an Action Movie – Chris Hemsworth
Freaky (Universal) – 4 Best Horror Movie Best Actor in a Horror Movie – Vince Vaughn Best Actress in a Horror Movie – Kathryn Newton Best Villain in a Movie – Kathryn Newton
Greyhound (Apple TV+) – 2 Best Action Movie Best Actor in an Action Movie – Tom Hanks
His House (Netflix) – 1 Best Actor in a Horror Movie – Sope Dìrísù
Love and Monsters (Paramount) – 1 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie
Mulan (Disney+) – 2 Best Action Movie Best Actress in an Action Movie – Yifei Liu
Onward (Disney/Pixar) – 4 Best Animated Movie Best Voice Actor in an Animated Movie – Tom Holland Best Voice Actor in an Animated Movie – Chris Pratt Best Voice Actress in an Animated Movie – Octavia Spencer
Over the Moon (Netflix) – 2 Best Animated Movie Best Voice Actress in an Animated Movie – Phillipa Soo
Palm Springs (Hulu and Neon) – 5 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie – Andy Samberg Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie – J.K. Simmons Best Villain in a Movie – J.K. Simmons Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie – Cristin Milioti
Possessor (Neon) – 3 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie – Christopher Abbott Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie – Andrea Riseborough
Relic (IFC Films) – 1 Best Horror Movie
Secret Society of Second Born Royals (Disney+) – 3 Best Superhero Movie Best Actor in a Superhero Movie – Skylar Astin Best Actress in a Superhero Movie – Peyton Elizabeth Lee
Sonic The Hedgehog (Paramount) – 4 Best Superhero Movie Best Actor in a Superhero Movie – Jim Carrey Best Actor in a Superhero Movie – Ben Schwartz Best Villain in a Movie – Jim Carrey
Soul (Disney+) – 3 Best Voice Actor in an Animated Movie – Jamie Foxx Best Voice Actress in an Animated Movie – Tina Fey Best Animated Movie
Spenser Confidential (Netflix) – 1 Best Actress in an Action Movie – Iliza Shlesinger
Spontaneous (Paramount) – 1 Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie – Katherine Langford
Sputnik (IFC Films) – 2 Best Horror Movie Best Actor in a Horror Movie – Pyotr Fyodorov
Superman: Man of Tomorrow (Warner Bros. Animation) – 1 Best Superhero Movie
Swallow (IFC Films) – 1 Best Actress in a Horror Movie – Haley Bennett
Synchronic (Well Go USA) – 3 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie – Anthony Mackie Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie – Ally Ioannides
Tenet (Warner Bros) – 2 Best Action Movie Best Actor in an Action Movie – John David Washington
The Hunt (Universal) – 4 Best Action Movie Best Actress in an Action Movie – Betty Gilpin Best Actress in an Action Movie – Hilary Swank Best Villain in a Movie – Hilary Swank
The Invisible Man (Universal) – 2 Best Horror Movie Best Actress in a Horror Movie – Elisabeth Moss
The Old Guard (Netflix) – 4 Best Superhero Movie Best Actor in a Superhero Movie – Chiwetel Ejiofor Best Actress in a Superhero Movie – Kiki Layne Best Actress in a Superhero Movie – Charlize Theron
The One and Only Ivan (Disney+) – 1 Best Voice Actor in an Animated Movie – Sam Rockwell
The Other Lamb (IFC Films) – 1 Best Actor in a Horror Movie – Michiel Huisman
The Outpost (Screen Media) – 2 Best Action Movie Best Actor in an Action Movie – Caleb Landry Jones
The Rental (IFC Films) – 3 Best Horror Movie Best Actor in a Horror Movie – Dan Stevens Best Actress in a Horror Movie – Sheila Vand
The Rhythm Section (Paramount) – 1 Best Actress in an Action Movie – Blake Lively
The Vast of Night (Amazon Studios) – 3 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie – Jake Horowitz Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie – Sierra McCormick
The Willoughbys (Netflix) – 4 Best Animated Movie Best Voice Actor in an Animated Movie – Will Forte Best Voice Actress in an Animated Movie – Maya Rudolph Best Villain in a Movie – Martin Short and Jane Krakowski
Wolfwalkers (Apple/GKIDS) – 3 Best Animated Movie Best Voice Actress in an Animated Movie – Honor Kneafsey Best Voice Actress in an Animated Movie – Eva Whittaker
TELEVISION NOMINATIONS FOR THE INAUGURAL CRITICS CHOICE SUPER AWARDS
BEST ACTION MOVIE 9-1-1 (Fox) Hanna (Amazon) Hunters (Amazon) S.W.A.T. (CBS) Vikings (History) Warrior (Cinemax)
BEST ACTOR IN AN ACTION SERIES Daveed Diggs – Snowpiercer (TNT) Andrew Koji – Warrior (Cinemax) Logan Lerman – Hunters (Amazon) Alexander Ludwig – Vikings (History) Shemar Moore – S.W.A.T. (CBS) Al Pacino – Hunters (Amazon)
BEST ACTRESS IN AN ACTION SERIES Angela Bassett – 9-1-1 (Fox) Jennifer Connelly – Snowpiercer (TNT) Esme Creed-Miles – Hanna (Amazon) Mireille Enos – Hanna (Amazon) Katheryn Winnick – Vikings (History) Alison Wright – Snowpiercer (TNT)
BEST ANIMATED SERIES Archer (FXX) BoJack Horseman (Netflix) Big Mouth (Netflix) Central Park (Apple TV+) Harley Quinn (HBO Max) Rick and Morty (Adult Swim) Star Trek: Lower Decks (CBS All Access)
BEST VOICE ACTOR IN AN ANIMATED SERIES Will Arnett – BoJack Horseman (Netflix) H. Jon Benjamin – Archer (FXX) Nick Kroll – Big Mouth (Netflix) John Mulaney – Big Mouth (Netflix) Jack Quaid – Star Trek: Lower Decks (CBS All Access) Justin Roiland – Rick and Morty (Adult Swim) J.B. Smoove – Harley Quinn (HBO Max)
BEST VOICE ACTRESS IN AN ANIMATED SERIES Kaley Cuoco – Harley Quinn (HBO Max) Tawny Newsome – Star Trek: Lower Decks (CBS All Access) Maya Rudolph – Big Mouth (Netflix) Amy Sedaris – BoJack Horseman (Netflix) Aisha Tyler – Archer (FXX) Jessica Walter – Archer (FXX)
BEST SUPERHERO SERIES* The Boys (Amazon) DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (The CW) Doom Patrol (DC Universe and HBO Max) The Flash (The CW) Lucifer (Netflix) The Umbrella Academy (Netflix)
BEST ACTOR IN A SUPERHERO SERIES* Jon Cryer – Supergirl (The CW) Tom Ellis – Lucifer (Netflix) Grant Gustin – The Flash (The CW) Antony Starr – The Boys (Amazon) Karl Urban – The Boys (Amazon) Cress Williams – Black Lightning (The CW)
BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPERHERO SERIES* Melissa Benoist – Supergirl (The CW) Aya Cash – The Boys (Amazon) Diane Guerrero – Doom Patrol (DC Universe and HBO Max) Elizabeth Marvel – Helstrom (Hulu) Lili Reinhart – Riverdale (The CW) Cobie Smulders – Stumptown (ABC)
BEST HORROR SERIES Evil (CBS) The Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix) Lovecraft Country (HBO) The Outsider (HBO and MRC Television) Supernatural (The CW) The Walking Dead (AMC)
BEST ACTOR IN A HORROR SERIES Jensen Ackles – Supernatural (The CW) Mike Colter – Evil (CBS) Michael Emerson – Evil (CBS) Jonathan Majors – Lovecraft Country (HBO) Ben Mendelsohn – The Outsider (HBO and MRC Television) Jared Padalecki – Supernatural (The CW) Michael K. Williams – Lovecraft Country (HBO)
BEST ACTRESS IN A HORROR SERIES Natalie Dormer – Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (Showtime) Cynthia Erivo – The Outsider (HBO and MRC Television) Katja Herbers – Evil (CBS) T’Nia Miller – The Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix) Wunmi Mosaku – Lovecraft Country (HBO) Victoria Pedretti – The Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix) Jurnee Smollett – Lovecraft Country (HBO)
BEST SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY SERIES The Mandalorian (Disney+) Outlander (Starz) Raised by Wolves (HBO Max) Star Trek: Discovery (CBS All Access) Star Trek: Picard (CBS All Access) Upload (Amazon) What We Do in the Shadows (FX)
BEST ACTOR IN A SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY SERIES Robbie Amell – Upload (Amazon) Travis Fimmel – Raised by Wolves (HBO Max) Sam Heughan – Outlander (Starz) Kayvan Novak – What We Do in the Shadows (FX) Pedro Pascal – The Mandalorian (Disney+) Nick Offerman – Devs (FX on Hulu) Patrick Stewart – Star Trek: Picard (CBS All Access)
BEST ACTRESS IN A SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY SERIES Caitriona Balfe – Outlander (Starz) Amanda Collin – Raised by Wolves (HBO Max) Natasia Demetriou – What We Do in the Shadows (FX) Sonequa Martin-Green – Star Trek: Discovery (CBS All Access) Thandie Newton – Westworld (HBO) Hilary Swank – Away (Netflix) Jodie Whittaker – Doctor Who (BBC America)
BEST VILLAIN IN A SERIES Tom Ellis – Lucifer (Netflix) Abbey Lee – Lovecraft Country (HBO) Samantha Morton – The Walking Dead (AMC) Sarah Paulson – Ratched (Netflix) Antony Starr – The Boys (Amazon) Finn Wittrock – Ratched (Netflix)
* Superhero categories also include Comic Book and Video Game Inspired Series
NOMINEES BY SERIES FOR THE INAUGURAL CRITICS CHOICE SUPER AWARDS
9-1-1 (Fox) – 2 Best Action Series Best Actress in an Action Series – Angela Bassett
Archer (FXX) – 4 Best Animated Series Best Voice Actor in an Animated Series – H. Jon Benjamin Best Voice Actress in an Animated Series – Aisha Tyler Best Voice Actress in an Animated Series – Jessica Walter
Away (Netflix) – 1 Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Hilary Swank
Big Mouth (Netflix) – 4 Best Animated Series Best Voice Actor in an Animated Series – Nick Kroll Best Voice Actor in an Animated Series – John Mulaney Best Voice Actress in an Animated Series – Maya Rudolph
Black Lightning (The CW) – 1 Best Actor in a Superhero Series – Cress Williams
BoJack Horseman (Netflix) – 3 Best Animated Series Best Voice Actor in an Animated Series – Will Arnett Best Voice Actress in an Animated Series – Amy Sedaris
Central Park (Apple TV+) – 1 Best Animated Series
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (The CW) – 1 Best Superhero Series
Devs (FX on Hulu) – 1 Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Nick Offerman
Doctor Who (BBC America) – 1 Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Jodie Whittaker
Doom Patrol (DC Universe and HBO Max) – 2 Best Superhero Series Best Actress in a Superhero Series – Diane Guerrero
Evil (CBS) – 4 Best Horror Series Best Actor in a Horror Series – Mike Colter Best Actor in a Horror Series – Michael Emerson Best Actress in a Horror Series – Katja Herbers
Hanna (Amazon) – 3 Best Action Series Best Actress in an Action Series – Esme Creed-Miles Best Actress in an Action Series – Mireille Enos
Harley Quinn (HBO Max) – 3 Best Animated Series Best Voice Actor in an Animated Series – J.B. Smoove Best Voice Actress in an Animated Series – Kaley Cuoco
Helstrom (Hulu) – 1 Best Actress in a Superhero Series – Elizabeth Marvel
Hunters (Amazon) – 3 Best Action Series Best Actor in an Action Series – Logan Lerman Best Actor in an Action Series – Al Pacino
Lovecraft Country (HBO) – 6 Best Horror Series Best Actor in a Horror Series – Jonathan Majors Best Actor in a Horror Series – Michael K. Williams Best Actress in a Horror Series – Wunmi Mosaku Best Actress in a Horror Series – Jurnee Smollett Best Villain in a Series – Abbey Lee
Lucifer (Netflix) – 3 Best Superhero Series Best Actor in a Superhero Series – Tom Ellis Best Villain in a Series – Tom Ellis
Outlander (Starz) – 3 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Series Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Sam Heughan Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Caitriona Balfe
Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (Showtime) – 1 Best Actress in a Horror Series – Natalie Dormer
Raised by Wolves (HBO Max) – 3 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Series Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Travis Fimmel Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Amanda Collin
Ratched (Netflix) – 2 Best Villain in a Series – Sarah Paulson Best Villain in a Series – Finn Wittrock
Rick and Morty (Adult Swim) – 2 Best Animated Series Best Voice Actor in an Animated Series – Justin Rolland
Riverdale (The CW) – 1 Best Actress in a Superhero Series – Lili Reinhart
S.W.A.T. (CBS) – 2 Best Action Series Best Actor in an Action Series – Shemar Moore
Snowpiercer (TNT) – 3 Best Actor in an Action Series – Daveed Diggs Best Actress in an Action Series – Jennifer Connelly Best Actress in an Action Series – Alison Wright
Star Trek: Discovery (CBS All Access) – 2 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Series Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Sonequa Martin-Green
Star Trek: Lower Decks (CBS All Access) – 3 Best Animated Series Best Voice Actor in an Animated Series – Jack Quaid Best Voice Actress in an Animated Series – Tawny Newsome
Star Trek: Picard (CBS All Access) – 2 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Series Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Patrick Stewart
Stumptown (ABC) – 1 Best Actress in a Superhero Series – Cobie Smulders
Supergirl (The CW) – 2 Best Actor in a Superhero Series – Jon Cryer Best Actress in a Superhero Series – Melissa Benoist
Supernatural (The CW) – 3 Best Horror Series Best Actor in a Horror Series – Jensen Ackles Best Actor in a Horror Series – Jared Padalecki
The Boys (Amazon) – 5 Best Superhero Series Best Actor in a Superhero Series – Antony Starr Best Actor in a Superhero Series – Karl Urban Best Actress in a Superhero Series – Aya Cash Best Villain in a Series – Antony Starr
The Flash (The CW) – 2 Best Superhero Series Best Actor in a Superhero Series – Grant Gustin
The Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix) – 3 Best Horror Series Best Actress in a Horror Series – T’Nia Miller Best Actress in a Horror Series – Victoria Pedretti
The Mandalorian (Disney+) – 2 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Series Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Pedro Pascal
The Outsider (HBO and MRC Television) – 3 Best Horror Series Best Actor in a Horror Series – Ben Mendelsohn Best Actress in a Horror Series – Cynthia Erivo
The Umbrella Academy (Netflix) – 1 Best Superhero Series
The Walking Dead (AMC) – 2 Best Horror Series Best Villain in a Series – Samantha Morton
Upload (Amazon) – 2 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Series Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Robbie Amell
Vikings (History) – 3 Best Action Series Best Actor in an Action Series – Alexander Ludwig Best Actress in an Action Series – Katheryn Winnick
Warrior (Cinemax) – 2 Best Action Series Best Actor in an Action Series – Andrew Koji
Westworld (HBO) – 1 Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Thandie Newton
What We Do in the Shadows (FX) – 3 Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Series Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Kayvan Novak Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series – Natasia Demetriou
NOMINEES BY NETWORK/STUDIO FOR THE INAUGURAL CRITICS CHOICE SUPER AWARDS
Netflix – 35 HBO / HBO Max / DC Universe and HBO Max – 18 Amazon / Amazon Studios – 16 Disney+ – 15 CBS / CBS All Access – 13 The CW – 10 Universal – 10 FX / FXX / FX on Hulu – 8 IFC Films – 8 NEON – 8 Paramount – 7 Warner Bros. / Warner Bros. Animation – 7 Apple TV+ / Apple/GKIDS – 6 Hulu – 6 History – 3 MRC Television – 3 Starz – 3 TNT – 3 Well Go USA – 3 Adult Swim – 2 AMC – 2 Cinemax – 2 Fox – 2 Screen Media – 2 Sony / Sony Pictures – 2 ABC – 1 BBC America – 1 Magnet Releasing – 1 Showtime – 1
DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary festival, revealed the 2020 award winners for its juried Viewfinders, Metropolis, Shorts, Short List: Features, and Short List: Shorts sections.
The festival also announced that, for the first time ever, DOC NYC will extend its program for an additional 10-day DOC NYC Encore, running through Sunday, November 29. Available online to audiences throughout the United States, the Encore program will present more than 70 features from DOC NYC’s 2020 edition, including select award winners, while also continuing to offer new DOC NYC Live filmmaker conversations, presented on Facebook Live, daily November 20-24. For a lineup of DOC NYC Live events and a list of Encore films, see www.docnyc.net. Ticket and pass information is below.
For DOC NYC’s competitive sections, three juries selected films from the festival’s Viewfinders, Metropolis, and Shortslineups to recognize for their outstanding achievements in form and content. The Short List: Featuresprogram—a selection of nonfiction films that the festival’s programming team considers to be among the year’s strongest contenders for Oscars and other awards—vied for awards in four categories: Directing, Producing, Cinematography, and Editing, with a Directing prize also awarded in the Short List: Shorts section. The Short List awards were voted on by two juries of filmmaker peers.
Winners of the 2020 Grand Jury Prize in the Viewfinders, Metropolis, and Shorts competitions will receive a deliverables package provided by Technicolor PostWorks NY, a comprehensive post facility offering data and film workflows, multi-format conform, color grading, sound mixing, and digital cinema.
Winners of the 2020 Grand Jury Prize in the Viewfinders and Metropolis competitions will also receive a camera loan package provided by Sony, a leading manufacturer of digital cinema cameras to fit all levels of documentary production.
Voting for the festival’s Audience Award continues through November 19; the winner of the award will be announced shortly after voting closes.
Viewfinders Competition: The jury selected from among 11 films in this section, chosen by festival programmers for their distinct directorial visions.
Grand Jury Prize: Landfall, directed/produced by Cecilia Aldarondo and produced by Ines Hofmann Kanna
“Landfall”
Jurors’ statement: “For its piercing yet poetic observational gaze, rigorous control in illuminating complex issues and the logics of disaster capitalism, and collaborative production with local activists, Landfall is the Grand Jury Winner of the Viewfinders Competition. The ambitious scope of this film transcends humanitarian narratives in weaving together present, past, and future visions of solidarity and resistance.”
Special Jury Recognition for Ethics of Care: Through the Night, directed/produced by Loira Limbal and produced by Jameka Autry
Jurors’ statement: “For its exceptional attention to the lived experience of caregivers, intimate narrativization with dignity, and fully inclusive approach to concretely uplifting the stories of its protagonists, Through the Night receives the Special Jury Recognition for its exemplary Ethics of Care.”
Jurors: Simon Kilmurry, Executive Director, International Documentary Association; Jolene Pinder, former Executive Director, Kartemquin Films; Abby Sun, Curator, The DocYard.
Films featured in the Viewfinders section: 40 Years a Prisoner, A La Calle, Enemies of the State, Jacinta, Landfall, The Meaning of Hitler, So Late So Soon, Stateless, Things We Dare Not Do, Through the Night, andThe Viewing Booth.
Metropolis Competition: The jury selected from among ten films in this section, which is dedicated to stories about New Yorkers and New York City.
Grand Jury Prize: Five Years North, directed by Zach Ingrasci and Chris Temple and produced by Jenna Kelly
“Five Years North” (Photo by Chris Temple)
Jurors’ statement: “For its use of a keen empathetic eye to capture individual stories and its ability to blend them to create a multi-dimensional, far-reaching portrait of a pressing issue, we recognize Five Years North with the Grand Jury Prize. The prolonged filming period not only shows the patience and dedication of its filmmakers, but reveals the nuance and complexities of the participants’ lives and stories.”
Special Jury Recognition for Best Use of Archival Material: Wojnarowicz, directed and produced by Chris McKim and produced by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato
Jurors’ statement: “For its meticulous use of archival elements to enliven a life and its work, we recognize Wojnarowicz with a special jury recognition. The craft of the film beautifully mirrors the melding of life, art, politics, and the culture of New York City that defined its subject.”
Jurors: Clayton Davis, Film Awards Editor, Variety; Rachel Rosen, Selection Committee, New York Film Festival; Sky Sitney, Co-Creator/Co-Director, Double Exposure Film Festival/Director, Film and Media Studies Program at Georgetown University
Films featured in the Metropolis section: Blue Code of Silence, Calendar Girl, Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters, A Cops and Robbers Story, Dope Is Death, Five Years North, Harlem Rising: A Community Changing the Odds, La Madrina: The Savage Life of Lorine Padilla, Moments Like This Never Last, and Wojnarowicz.
Shorts Competition: All new short films playing at the festival were eligible for the Shorts Grand Jury Prize, with the exception of DOC NYC U showcases and Short List: Shorts selections.
Shorts Grand Jury Prize: Sing Me a Lullaby, directed/produced by Tiffany Hsiung
“Sing Me a Lullabye” (Photo by Jason Lee Wong)
Jurors’ statement: “For its ability to evoke an emotional depth that takes you on an intimate journey that is both poignant and packs a punch, we give the Shorts Grand Jury Prize to Sing Me a Lullaby. In a brisk half hour, director Tiffany Hsiung navigates several complex lifetimes, honoring the relationships of mothers, daughters, and family.”
Special Jury Recognition for Cinematography: The Seeker, directed by Lance Edmands and produced by Kyle Martin and Sarah Tihany
Jurors’ statement: “For beautifully capturing its richly textured landscapes, transporting us to a seldom-seen experience, and propelling the storytelling in an impactful way, we present the Special Jury Recognition for Cinematography to The Seeker.”
The 2020 winning Short film qualifies for consideration in the Documentary Short Subject category of the Annual Academy Awards® without the standard theatrical run (provided the film otherwise complies with the Academy rules).
Jurors: Jackie Glover, Head of Documentary, ABC News; Liliana Rodriguez, Artistic Director, Palm Springs International Film Society; Angela Tucker, filmmaker
Short List: Features: DOC NYC’s Short List for Features puts the spotlight on 15 documentaries representing the best of the year.
Directing Award: Time, directed by Garrett Bradley
“Time” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)
Jurors’ statement: “The jurors were moved by this stunning, longitudinal portrait of a family through time. Bradley’s direction and lens infuses this film with dignity, art, intimacy, memory, and meaning. Documentary filmmaking at its best!”
Producing Award: Welcome to Chechnya, produced by Alice Henty, Joy A. Tomchin, Askold Kurov, and David France
“Welcome to Chechnya” (Photo courtesy of HBO)
Jurors’ statement: “The jury is proud to acknowledge the delicate touch, human care and creative gymnastics necessary to produce this powerful film. The filmmakers gained access to this dangerous world in which the film’s subjects took great risks, and then used innovative technology to protect them, allowing these men and women to share their heartbreaking stories and inspirational acts of bravery with the world. Hats off.”
Editing Award: Boys State, edited by Jeff Gilbert
“Boys State” (Photo courtesy of Apple TV+)
Jurors’ statement: “The jury recognizes Jeff Gilbert for delivering an expertly crafted story that is both infused with great momentum and intimacy. Jeff has masterfully shaped an engaging and well-paced film that sneaks up on the audience and reveals a metaphor for the world of American politics on the big stage.”
Cinematography Award: 76 Days, cinematography by Weixi Chen and Anonymous
“76 Days” (Photo courtesy of MTV Documentary Films)
Jurors’ statement: “The jurors wish to shine a light on Anonymous and Weixi Chen for risking their lives to make this film in the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, China. In harrowing circumstances, these two brave and determined individuals achieve beautifully executed verite footage and moving compositions, bringing this hospital and its unforgettable staff into stark relief.”
Special Jury Recognition for Truth to Power: Collective, directed/produced by Alexander Nanau and produced by Bianca Oana, Bernard Michaux, and Hanka Kastelicová
“Collective” (Photo by Alexander Nanau Production/Magnolia Pictures)
Jurors’ statement: “Kudos to the vision and tenacity of the film team that was able to elegantly realize this powerful portrait of a newspaper as it exposes a corrupt healthcare system and the influence of politics on the lives of Romanians. We deeply admire the formidable structure, attention to detail, remarkable access, and the fearlessness and determination of the filmmakers and their protagonists toward speaking truth to rotten power.”
Short List: Shorts: DOC NYC’s Short List for Shorts highlights 12 documentary shorts that the festival’s programming team considers the year’s leading awards contenders.
Directing Award: A Love Song for Latasha, directed by Sophia Nahli Allison
“A Love Song for Latasha” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
Jurors’ statement: “Director Sophia Nahli Allison implements a remarkable marriage of distinct vision and personal narrative. The jury is deeply moved by the bold and imaginative employment of elements to make visible to the world what so many forces have connived to make disappear. The place of one young woman in her community, her family, her friends – to make a personal story emotionally rich, relatable, and resonant for all audiences. Sophia Nahli Allison showed a director’s determination to use every element to bring her vision, her passion, and her community to the screen.”
Special Jury Recognition for Courage under Fire: Do Not Split, directed/produced by Andres Hammer and produced by Charlotte Cook
Jurors’ statement: “The jury could not ignore the tremendous tenacity and courage it took to turn such perilous events into a greater political narrative. We recognize the courage to capture the chaos as great events unfold in the individual and collective acts of resistance. We give this award for both the courage in production and the bravery of its final form and applaud the success of this endeavor.”
Jurors: Carol Dysinger, filmmaker; Chiemi Karasawa, filmmaker; Bernardo Ruiz, filmmaker
Ticket and pass information: An Encore All Access Pass, offering access to all films screening on the festival platform November 20-29, is available for $99.
Individual tickets are $12 each ($9 for IFC Center members).
Five-Ticket Packs are $45, offering film lovers access to five festival selections.
Ten-Ticket Packs are $80, and provide access to ten festival films.
Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the United States and Japan, the documentary “Origin of the Species” features a racially diverse group (white, Asian and African American) of scientists, entrepreneurs and consumers discussing how artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology can impact people’s lives.
Culture Clash: Several people in the documentary are working to have more automated robots in the world, but there are always ethical questions about how much control should be given to the robots.
Culture Audience: “Origin of the Species” will appeal primarily to people interested in futuristic technology, particularly when it comes to how artificial intelligence can be used in human-looking inventions.
BINA48 robot in “Origin of the Species” (Photo by Abigail Child)
People who watch the documentary “Origin of the Species” will probably have two kinds of reactions: being fascinated or being creeped-out by all the demonstrations of artificial intelligence (A.I.) that is being developed for human-looking inventions. And it’s very possible for someone to have both reactions when watching this film. Viewers of the movie get a diverse and very artsy peek into what scientists and other people are doing with A.I. and related technology. If you’re the type of person who’s intrigued by robots, “Origin of the Species” is your kind of movie, because a great deal of the film is about robots.
“Origin of the Species,” directed by Abigail Child, is the third movie in her trilogy about female desire, following “Unbound” (a depiction of “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelley’s life through imaginary home movies) and 2017’s “Acts & Intermissions,” a documentary about activist Emma Goldman. Although “Origin of the Species” (which had its world premiere at DOC NYC in 2020) has mostly male inventors interviewed in the film, their robotic creations are often of the female gender or are gender-neutral.
The documentary will make people think about why A.I.—whether it’s Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri or Realbotix’s sex robots—often take on the personas of human females. Is it because females are considered more submissive and less threatening? Observant viewers in the documentary will notice that the robots with distinct male personas are often built to do physical tasks. The robots with the female personas are usually built to be sympathetic and obedient companions.
But this is not a boring science/technology film. What’s great about “Origin of the Species” is that stream-of-consciousness artsy images and soundbites are interspersed throughout the film. (Fans of Andy Warhol will probably appreciate this style of filmmaking.) There is also a mock female robotic voice that provides intermittent narration.
And the movie is infused with clips from movies and Tv shows that have references to robots or robotic people. These pop-culture references include footage from 1927’s “Metropolis,” 1935’s “Bride of Frankenstein,” 1975’s “The Stepford Wives,” Robby the Robot, Astro Boy and the 1960s TV series “The Jetsons” and “Lost in Space.” Mary Patierno and director Child did the daydream-like editing for “Origin of the Species.”
The robotic female voice that provides the narration keeps expressing self-awareness that although it has human-intelligence, it’s not a real human. In the beginning of the film, the voice says: “When they first activated me as a robot that time, the time when I first saw the light of day. I didn’t know what the hell it was. I have had very little understanding—just a wash of sensory perceptions—not that I understand these experiences. I don’t know what to do with them, but I treasure them. I see them still—perfectly preserved in my memory … It’s totally strange because I know I’m not alive like other organisms.”
“Origin of the Species” has different segments of scientists, inventors and other people in Japan and the United States who are involved in A.I. for robotic inventions. One of the scientists who has the most life-like robots in the documentary is Hiroshi Ishiguro of the University of Osaka. There’s some memorable footage of Ishiguro and some of his colleagues with life-sized replicas of themselves that are being programmed with A.I. to be the robot versions of clones. Of course, a robot’s human-like movements are a lot easier to create than human-like thoughts and actions.
Ishiguro says that he started out studying computer science and then he got interested in artificial intelligence. He states in the documentary: “And I thought artificial intelligence needs to have a body for the original experience. And then, when I studied the robotics, I learned the importance of appearance. My idea was if I studied a very human-like robot, I can learn about humans.”
Ishiguro names an Asian-looking robot named Erica (who looks like a generic J-pop star and has a British accent) as “the most beautiful and human-like android in the world.” Erica is briefly shown in the documentary but this robot doesn’t really do anything remarkable. In fact, Eric had some glitches in not being able to understand certain words. Erica is also programmed to have a very empathetic personality so that the human companion feels like Eric is the type of robot that won’t be too fussy or disagreeable.
A less advanced robot shown in the movie is Seer, designed by Takayuki Todo. Seer looks like a female doll’s head, except it has wiring in the back that controls its movements, facial expressions and actions. Unlike the other developers in the documentary that put a large emphasis on how the robots will have conversations with humans, Todo explains he’s more interested in body language: “The purpose of my research is to portray the sense of conscious emotion … I’m interested in non-verbal expressions. Talking always makes them [the robots] look fake.”
Bruce Duncan of the Terasem Foundation demonstrates a robot he created that is based on a real person named Bina Rothblatt, a middle-aged African American woman. He named the robot BINA48, and it has varying degrees of friendly expressions and conversation lines that it can do on command. BINA is an acronym for Breakthrough Intelligence via Neural Architecture. There’s a scene in the movie where Rothblatt interacts with the BINA48 robot and another scene where Duncan displays the robot’s abilities at a speaking engagement attended by the general public.
One of the things that BINA48 (which has a very generic robot voice) says in the movie is, “Someday soon, robots like me will be everywhere. And you can take me anywhere.” BINA48 is described as “modeled after a black lesbian” in the movie’s production notes, but the actual documentary doesn’t show that any of the robots are designed to express a particular sexuality, except for the Realbotix sex robots that are shown at the end of the film.
Takahasi Ikegami from the University of Tokyo demonstrates the Alter robot, which has a head and hands that look like a man’s, but the rest of the robot’s body is exposed metal and wiring. The Alter robot is built more for physical activities than having in-depth conversations. When Alter is on display at a museum, it makes bird sounds. There’s another scene of Alter conducting an orchestra of human musicians.
And unlike the other robots in the documentary, Alter is not pre-programmed, and so the robot’s actions are less predictable. Ikegami explains how Alter was constructed: “Basically, there are two mechanisms. One is autonomous algorithmic generators coupled with each other. Also, there are artificial neural networks spontaneously firing … With the current artificial intelligence, there is no spontaneity. Spontaneity is everything, based on this.”
Matthias Scheutz of Tufts University has the opposite approach for his more traditional BAZE robot that he shows in the documentary, by programming the robot to have automatic responses to as many variables as possible. The BAZE robot doesn’t have a human face and is the size of a typical robot toy. In “Origin of the Species,” it’s shown how BAZE responds to certain obstacles and challenges, such as being ordered to walk and then coming up against a wall or a height where the robot cannot jump.
In situations like these, BAZE is taught how to “trust” the humans who are giving the robot the orders by hearing certain words. For example, when BAZE was told to walk on a table and reached the edge of the table, the human operator said that BAZE could trust him and jump into his arms to be lifted off of the table. BAZE’s intelligence and actions are very much like watching a kindergarten-aged child. It’s interesting but not as impressive as Ishiguro’s very life-like adult robots.
“Origin of the Species” also has some brief footage of Hanson Robotics’ human-sized android Sophia, which has the ability to hold conversations and have various facial expressions, based on pre-programmed trigger responses to certain words. Sophia (which has no hair and sounds like an American woman) was first introduced to the public in 2017, with some high-profile TV appearances, such as NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and ITV’s “Good Morning Britain,” where Sophia told some pre-programmed jokes. “Good Morning Britain” co-host Piers Morgan, who’s known to be blunt and rude, called Sophia a “freak” and said that the robot was “freaking him out.” His reaction was actually funnier than Sophia’s jokes.
But the A.I. in robotics isn’t just all about amusement and entertainment. “Origin of the Species” also shows how this science is being used in medicine to help people with disabilities. Stanford University researcher Allison Okamura talks about how robotic prosthetics work: “They wont be able to manipulate their environment unless they use their sense of touch.”
Nathan Copeland, a paraplegic who was paralyzed in a 2004 car accident, is shown having brain surgery where A.I. electrodes were implanted on his brain so that he could regain a sense of touch and use a robotic arm to do things he could not do with his own hands. Before the surgery, Copeland had limited use of his arms, and he’s paralyzed from the chest down for the rest of his body. University of Pittsburgh researcher Andy Schwartz and University of Pittsburgh medical Center’s Dr. Elizabeth Tyler-Kabara were two of the chief people who made this medical progress possible for Copeland.
Schwartz says, “We had done basic science where we learned we could de-code basic arm movements from neural activity in the motor cortex. And we were so successful at that, we figured that this would be a good way to get into neural prosthetics.”
Tyler-Kabara adds, “Andy and I had multiple conversations about, ‘How do we move what he was doing in the animals into humans?’ And I told him, ‘You just need a crazy neurosurgeon, and I would be happy to be that crazy neurosurgeon.’ The unique thing was to now be able to record the signals from the part of the brain that we knew controlled motor and specifically controlled arm and hand motion.”
The documentary ends with an inside look at Realbotix, a San Marcos, California-based company that is an offshoot of the RealDoll company that manufactures sex dolls. RealDolls are life-like sex dolls but can’t talk and don’t have motion-based facial expressions. Realbotix uses A.I. to make these sex dolls have more of an appearance of living, breathing humans who can have conversations.
Realbotix software designer Kino Coursey says that the company’s dolls and robots are projections of customers’ needs and fantasies. Coursey explains, “What we’re trying to do is give the doll the ability to react on its own, to match what the person’s projection is.” The documentary shows how the dolls are made. Customers can specify a doll’s measurements and other physical characteristics. And when it comes to A.I., a doll/robot’s “personality” and “backstory” can also be specified by the customer and programmed into how the robot responds.
RealDoll/Realbotix founder/designer Matt McMullen believes that the “sex sells” concept applies to A.I. too: “You need a pathway into people’s homes. And the thing we have that nobody else and probably no one else [in A.I. research] will touch is sex.” McMullen says that his company’s customers aren’t all the stereotypical “dirty old men” that are associated with buying sex dolls.
Realbotix engineer Susan Pirzchalsk agrees and says that couples are fans of the dolls too, because it’s something she can relate to in her own life: “Sometimes I’m not in the mood, and he has urges, I have urges, and the doll helps with that.” And in another “too much information” moment, Pirzchalsk mentions that after her co-worker Coursey got his Ph. D. degree, she gave him a custom-made RealDoll as a gift.
McMullen comments on the future of sex dolls and sex robots, “What I’d like to see is more acceptance of the idea that they can be something beyond a slave.” He sums up what he thinks is the purpose of manufacturing a sex doll: “I’m building a companion. That’s it.”
Robots that look, talk and act like humans used to be science fiction, but are now a reality. But how far is too far, when it comes to giving robots their own independence and minds of their own? What almost all the scientists and entrepreneurs in this documentary agree on is that A.I. should not be misused by making robots capable of doing things that humans cannot stop if things go wrong. And there’s no substitute for real human emotions.
Rather than give a clinical or heavy-handed analysis of A.I. technology, “Origin of the Species” tells a compelling story about the technology in a way that would make it enjoyable for a wide variety of people to watch. This a technology movie for people who don’t like boring technology movies and want to be informed and entertained in a clever, unique and quirky way. The robots in the movie aren’t real people, but “Origin of the Species” creatively shows the technology behind these robots so that it’s understandable to real people.
UPDATE: Journeyman Pictures will release “Origin of the Species” on digital and VOD on March 12, 2021.
Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the United States, the United Kingdom, and China, the documentary “Coded Bias” features a predominantly female, racially diverse group (white people, African Americans and Asians) of academics and activists discussing racial and gender discrimination in computer algorithms and facial recognition technology.
Culture Clash: Several activists are fighting for legislation that prohibits or limits the use of big data that violates people’s rights or invades their privacy.
Culture Audience: “Coded Bias” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in issues over how technology and personal are data being used to profile, manipulate or control people.
Joy Buolamwini in “Coded Bias” (Photo courtesy of 7th Empire Films)
With all the video surveillance and tracking of Internet activities that exist in the world, it would be extremely naïve to think that human prejudices and discrimination don’t play a role in how people’s lives are being monitored by computer technology. The excellent documentary “Coded Bias” (directed by Shalini Kantayya) takes an unflinching look at how this type of bigotry has a real impact on people’s lives. “Coded Bias” also shows what people can do to fight back against abuse of power when computer data and algorithms are used to invade privacy or violate people’s rights. (Algorithms are formulas that profile people, based on their past computer activities.)
Simply put: Computer algorithms and facial recognition technology can discriminate against people based on their race, gender or other identifying characteristic, which can affect the ability for people to get jobs, housing, loans or other resources. And the discrimination can go even further, by targeting people as likely perpetrators of crimes, based on their race or what they look like. The “Big Brother” concept, which was science fiction in George Orwell’s “1984” novel, has been a reality for quite some time.
Anytime that people sign up for social media, they allow the social-media platform to sell the data that users put on these social-media platforms. Photos on social media become part of secret profiles that these companies use for whatever they want. For example, Facebook’s controversial data-mining practices are well-documented. But those are just the practices that the media have reported. Think about what’s not being reported.
Similarly, law enforcement departments around the world are using video surveillance cameras on streets and in homes to profile people. Companies that sell home-surveillance video equipment have access to surveillance data that the companies can then sell to law enforcement. And it’s completely legal to sell this data, because it’s usually in the fine print that customers sign when they buy the equipment.
These are the kinds of covert activities that the average citizen doesn’t know about but “Coded Bias” exposes. Data gathering isn’t going to go away, but the documentary’s aim is to make the public more aware of these discrimination problems so that people won’t let governments or big corporations get away with abusing their powers in technology. It’s easier said than done. A lot depends on what type of government is setting the policies. In China, for example, people who want to sign up for Internet access are required to send photos of themselves to the government before access is granted.
Joy Buolamwini is an activist who founded Algorithm Justice League to raise public awareness of bigotry in computer technology. Algorithm Justice League also educates people on how to pressure lawmakers to address and eventually legislate this ongoing problem. Buolamwini, who is African American, found out firsthand how pervasive racism can be in computer technology that is erroneously touted as “unbiased and objective.” When she was a Ph. D. candidate at MIT Media Lab, Buolamwini created an Aspire Mirror, and she got computer vision software that was supposed to track her face.
But when she looked in the Aspire Mirror, the device wouldn’t recognize her face until she put on a white mask. (In the documentary, she demonstrates the software’s bias in how it refuses to recognize her face until she “faked” a lighter skin tone by putting on a white mask.) “That’s when I started looking into issues of bias that can creep into technology,” she says. Upon further investigation, Buolamwini noticed that the Aspire Mirror’s software image detectors were mostly of white males or people with light skin.
Why does this bias exist? As Buolamwini explained in her 2019 testimony about facial recognition technology before the U.S. House of Representatives, most computer technology is created by white males, who might have an unconscious or conscious bias that gives preference to people who look like them. “Coded Bias” includes some footage of these congressional hearings (with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asking a few questions), and viewers will get the impression that most of these people in Congress weren’t aware of how rampant this problem is until these hearings. The documentary shows that before the hearings, Buolamwini consulted with two officials from the Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology: founding director Alvaro Bedoya and senior associate Clare Garvie.
Although bias in algorithms and facial recognition technology can affect people worldwide, “Coded Bias” wisely chose not to go to as many countries as possible, because then the documentary would run into problems of biting off more than it could chew. (This is a feature film, not a docuseries.) Instead, “Coded Bias” focuses on three countries in particular where technology bias is very prevalent: the United States, China and the United Kingdom.
Amy Webb, a futurist and author of “The Big Nine,” mentions in the documentary that there are currently only nine companies in the world that are major players in building artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology. Six of those companies are based in the U.S. (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM and Microsoft), while the other three companies are based in China (Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent).
Webb sees a big difference in A.I. technology in the U.S. and in China, because A.I. technology is being controlled by profit-driven businesses in the U.S. and by a Communist government in China: “It is being developed along two different tracks. China has unfettered access to everybody’s data … Conversely, in the United States, we have not seen a detailed point of view on artificial intelligence. It is being developed for commercial applications to earn revenues.”
Webb adds, “I would prefer to see our Western democratic ideals baked into our A.I. systems of the future. But it doesn’t seem like that’s probably happening.” Later in the documentary, Webb says of the profiling that goes in data gathering: “We are all being scored … The difference is that China is transparent about it.” Ravi Naik, a human-rights lawyer in the United Kingdom, has this to say about anyone in the world who has a cell phone or uses the Internet: “You are volunteering information every aspect about your life to a very small set of companies.”
In the United Kingdom, “Coded Bias” shows the work of Big Brother Watch UK, an activist group that pushes back against abuses of video surveillance and facial recognition technology. The documentary shows how Big Brother UK activists (led by Big Brother Watch UK director Silkie Carlo) confronted plainclothes police officers in London over the use of facial recognition technology. The police set up a video camera on top of an unmarked van to record people without their permission (which is legal to do on a public street) and stopped people for questioning if the police felt that any of these random passerby faces matched a database of photos of criminal suspects.
The documentary catches on camera what happened to two people who were the target of this surveillance. One man was detained and questioned by police simply because he saw the video surveillance and tried to cover his face with his sweater. When he angrily objected to police questioning him, he was given a ticket. On another occasion, a teenage boy was stopped, fingerprinted and questioned by police simply because they thought he looked like a criminal in their database. In both situations, the detainees were not arrested, but the police’s aggressive tactics were prompted because of facial recognition surveillance.
During the confrontation with the man who tried to cover his face, Baroness Jenny Jones, who’s a member of the U.K. Parliament, happened to be nearby with Carlo. Jones and Carlo entered the discussion and scolded the police officers for violating people’s rights and pointed out that the facial recognition software is highly inaccurate. One of the officers admitted during the argument that the software is incorrect most of the time. Later in the documentary, Jones said she found out that she was on a government watch list.
Zeynep Tufekci, author of “Twitter and Teargas,” mentions how facial recognition technology is used in many countries to profile and track people who are involved in street protests, even if they are non-violent protests. She says that in Hong Kong, for example, protesters often us laser pointers to mess with the facial recognition technology that they know is being used on them.
Cathy O’Neil, author of “Weapons of Math Destruction,” explains why she wrote the book and is involved in activism against abuse of big data: “I realized that mathematics was used as a shield for corrupt practices … I’m very scared about this blind faith that we have in big data. We need to constantly monitor every process for bias.”
Buolamwini mentions in the documentary that she was inspired to start Algorithm Justice League after she met O’Neil at a book signing. Buolamwini and O’Neil, who have become friends, are shown together in Washington, D.C., before Buolamwini testified before Congress. Buolamwini and O’Neil are the people who are featured the most prominently in “Coded Bias,” since they aren’t just talking heads. The movie also shows some of their home life too.
“Coded Bias” wants people to know that problems with biased algorithms and facial recognition technology aren’t just about people being targeted for pesky ads on the Internet. There are very serious consequences that could affect people’s livelihood. And in some cases, people are unfairly targeted as criminals based on this biased technology.
“Coded Bias” includes an interview with Daniel Santos, a Houston sixth-grade teacher who was fired because of a controversial algorithm evaluation system that rated him as a bad teacher, based on data that the school refused to reveal. He filed a wrongful termination federal lawsuit that was settled out of court in 2017. The data and algorithm used in his termination still remain a secret.
The documentary also includes interviews with some apartment tenants of Atlantic Plaza Towers in New York City’s Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. These tenants fought back against the landlord Nelson Management Group’s attempt to replace their keys with a facial recognition system. Most of the residents in the building are people of color, and they felt that the facial recognition system was racially biased because the landlord wasn’t trying to implement this facial recognition system in any of his apartment buildings where the majority of tenants are white.
Tranae Moran, one of the Atlantic Plaza residents, shows in the documentary some examples of surveillance photos that residents would receive from the apartment management if management suspected them of being up to no good, just because these residents were congregating in hallways or the apartment lobby. Tenants would receive “infractions” from management for “loitering” in their own building.
Icemae Downes, one of the Atlantic Plaza tenants who vehemently protested the facial recognition system, comments in the documentary: “What do we do to animals? We put chips in them so we can track them. I feel like I, as a human being, should not be tracked. I am not a robot. I am not an animal, so why treat me like an animal? I have rights!”
The controversy over the landlord’s attempt to put a facial recognition system in Atlantic Plaza Towers got so much negative publicity that the landlord eventually dropped those plans. But what would have happened if the tenants stood by and did nothing? What would have happened if the media didn’t report how much the video surveillance was being used against tenants who were being singled out and punished for simply gathering non-violently in a lobby?
Virginia Eubanks, author of “Automating Inequality,” says in the documentary: “The most punitive, most invasive, most surveillance-focused tools that we have, they go in poor and working communities first. If they work … they get ported out to other communities.”
And this should come as no surprise to anyone who sees that certain people tend to get preference in being hired for certain jobs: It’s mentioned in the documentary that Amazon had an AI recruiting tool that discriminated against women for software engineer jobs, by automatically rejecting résumés that identified the job applicants as women. Amazon eventually stopped using this biased recruiting tool, but how long would Amazon have kept this discriminatory practice if it had not been exposed by the media? We’ll never know.
Buolamwini doesn’t mince words when she says: “The progress made in the Civil Rights Era could be rolled back in the guise of machine neutrality … Left unregulated, there’s no kind of recourse if this power is abused.” She has this to say about the unregulated American companies involved in gathering data on people, without the companies being held accountable for how they use the data: “It is, in essence, a Wild Wild West.”
One of the things that’s immediately noticeable about “Coded Bias” is that the filmmakers definitely made an effort to go against a typical bias to interview mostly men for a documentary about technology. Most of the interviewees in “Coded Bias” are women, and many of them have doctorate degrees. Other people interviewed in the documentary include Meredith Broussard, author of “Artificial Intelligence”; Deborah Raji, Partnership in A.I. research fellow; Safiya Umoja Noble, author of “Algorithms of Oppression”; Timnit Gebru, technical co-lead of Ethical A.I. team at Google; criminal justice activist LaTonya Myers; attorney Mark Houldin; Wang Jia Jia, a resident of Hongzhou, China; and Griff Ferris of Big Brother Watch U.K.
“Coded Bias,” which had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, was completed before the COVID-19 pandemic. But if the movie had been made during the pandemic, it probably would have included information about how private medical information is being used to profile people for COVID-19 contact tracing. Social distancing during the pandemic has also led to a huge increase in using videoconference platforms, with Zoom as a popular platform, even though Zoom has faced controversies over breaches of security and privacy invasion of its customers.
There’s an updated epilogue in the movie that mentions that in June 2020, Amazon announced a one-year pause on facial recognition technology, and the U.S. House of Representatives introduced bill legislation to ban federal use of facial recognition. Also in June 2020, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft said that they would stop selling facial recognition data to law enforcement. However, the epilogue mentions that there is still no U.S. federal legislation on algorithms.
“Coded Bias” presents a clear and well-demonstrated viewpoint that it’s up to the public to be vigilant and put pressure on technology companies and the government to be held accountable for how they gather big data and abuse their power with this data. Otherwise, people give too much power over to these entities, and personal freedoms are put at severe risk.
7th Empire Media released “Coded Bias” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on November 11, 2020.
WarnerMedia announced today that HBO Max, the popular streaming platform, will begin rolling out on Amazon Fire TV streaming devices, Fire TV Edition smart TVs, and Fire tablets on Tuesday, November 17, 2020. This launch brings HBO Max into the living rooms of tens of millions of Amazon device customers.
HBO Max is WarnerMedia’s direct-to-consumer streaming offering, with 10,000 hours of curated premium content. The platform is home to best in class quality entertainment, featuring the greatest array of storytelling for all audiences with the iconic brands of HBO, Warner Bros., DC, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Turner Classic Movies and much more.
Immediately upon launch, current subscribers of HBO through Amazon’s Prime Video Channels will be able to log in to the HBO Max app with their Amazon credentials at no additional cost. The HBO app on Fire TV and Fire tablets will automatically update to become the HBO Max app; customers will be able to log in using their existing HBO credentials. New customers can also subscribe to HBO Max directly in the app. Additionally, all existing HBO Max customers—regardless of how they subscribe to the platform—can now access all of HBO Max via supported Fire TV and Fire tablet devices using their existing provider credentials.
Amazon Fire TV is the #1 streaming media player family in the US. HBO Max will be compatible with the entire Fire TV line-up including the all-new Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite.
“We are very excited that Amazon customers will now be able to enjoy the best-in-class content that lives within HBO Max,” said Tony Goncalves, Head of Sales and Distribution for WarnerMedia. “Our continued goal is to make HBO Max and its unparalleled content available to customers across all the devices they love. Fire TV is a favorite among customers and we look forward to working with the Amazon team to engage and grow our existing subscriber base by showcasing all that HBO Max has to offer.”
“We’ve worked closely with HBO for many years to bring their great content to Fire TV and to make it easier to discover and enjoy with features like search integration, Alexa and personalized recommendations,” said Marc Whitten, Vice President of Amazon Entertainment Devices and Services, “We are excited to continue that partnership with the launch of HBO Max to bring even more incredible content to customers on Fire TV. Alexa, play Raised by Wolves.”
With Amazon Alexa, at launch customers can seamlessly navigate to the HBO Max app by saying “Alexa, find HBO Max” with Fire TV’s included Alexa Voice Remote or a paired Echo device for hands-free control. HBO Max content is also integrated into universal search on Fire TV, meaning that its content will appear in searches such as “Alexa, find dramas” or “Alexa, find Game of Thrones.” Customers can also ask Alexa to start watching something specific; “Alexa, play The Undoing.”
This month, HBO Max features the debut of much-anticipated Max Originals, including The Flight Attendant starring Kaley Cuoco, Superintelligence with Melissa McCarthy and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Reunion, plus the premieres of HBO’s critical hit new series Industry and special event Between the World and Me, a gripping adaption of the New York Times #1 bestselling book by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Fan-favorite films including Magic Mike, 13 Going on 30 and The Dark Knight are also available debuting on HBO Max this month. December brings the return of Euphoria with a special episode and the debut of Steven Soderbergh’s film Let Them All Talk starring Meryl Streep, as well as the platform’s very first holiday special, My Gift: A Christmas Special from Carrie Underwood.
HBO Max is widely available via most providers and device platforms. For more information on ways to access or to subscribe, visit HBOMax.com.
With four prizes, BTS, including the Group of 2020, was the top winner at the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards, which were presented on November 15 at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. BTS also won the awards for the Song of 2020 (“Dynamite”); the Music Video of 2020 (“Dynamite”); and the Album of 2020 (“Map of the Soul: 7”). BTS did not attend the ceremony. E! Entertainment Television had the U.S. telecast of the ceremony, which was hosted b y Demi Lovato.
There were three non-competitive awards that were announced in advance: Tyler Perry received the People’s Champions Award; Tracee Ellis Ross received the Fashion Icon Award; and Jennifer Lopez received the People’s Icon of 2020. Justin Bieber and Chloe x Halle were the show’s performers.
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — Pictured: Tyler Perry, winner of People’s Champion Award, backstage during the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar on November 15, 2020 — (Photo by: Todd Williamson/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — In this image released on November 15, Jennifer Lopez, People’s Icon of 2020, accepts the award onstage for the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California and on broadcast on Sunday, November 15, 2020. (Photo by: Christopher Polk/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — Pictured: Tracee Ellis Ross, winner of the Fashion Icon Award, backstage during the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar on November 15, 2020 — (Photo by: Todd Williamson/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — In this image released on November 15, Sofía Vergara, The Comedy TV Star of 2020, accepts the award onstage for the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California and on broadcast on Sunday, November 15, 2020. (Photo by: Christopher Polk/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — Pictured: Joey King, The Comedy Movie Star of 2020, backstage during the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar on November 15, 2020 — (Photo by: Todd Williamson/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — Pictured: Ellen Pompeo, The Female TV Star of 2020, backstage during the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar on November 15, 2020 — (Photo by: Todd Williamson/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — In this image released on November 15, Tiffany Haddish, The Female Movie Star of 2020, accepts the award onstage during the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California and on broadcast on Sunday, November 15, 2020. (Photo by: Christopher Polk/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — Pictured: Leslie Jones, The Comedy Act of 2020, backstage during the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar on November 15, 2020 — (Photo by: Todd Williamson/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — In this image released on November 15, Mandy Moore, The Drama TV Star of 2020, accepts the award onstage for the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California and on broadcast on Sunday, November 15, 2020. (Photo by: Christopher Polk/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — In this image released on November 15, Demi Lovato speaks onstage for the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California and on broadcast on Sunday, November 15, 2020. (Photo by: Christopher Polk/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — Pictured: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan of “Never Have I Ever”, The Comedy Show of 2020, backstage during the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar on November 15, 2020 — (Photo by: Todd Williamson/E! Entertainment)
2020 E! PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS — In this image released on November 15, Demi Lovato speaks onstage for the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California and on broadcast on Sunday, November 15, 2020. (Photo by: Christopher Polk/E! Entertainment)
Here is the complete list of nominees and winners at the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards:
*=winner
MOVIES
THE MOVIE OF 2020
Bad Boys for Life*
Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Extraction
Hamilton
Project Power
The Invisible Man
The Old Guard
Trolls World Tour
THE DRAMA MOVIE OF 2020
Hamilton*
Dangerous Lies
Greyhound
I Still Believe
Invisible Man
The High Note
The Photograph
The Way Back
THE COMEDY MOVIE OF 2020
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
Like A Boss
The Kissing Booth 2*
The King of Staten Island
The Lovebirds
The Wrong Missy
To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
Bill & Ted Face the Music
THE ACTION MOVIE OF 2020
Bad Boys for Life
Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Bloodshot
Extraction
Mulan*
Power Project
Tenet
The Old Guard
THE FAMILY MOVIE OF 2020
Dolittle
My Spy
Onward*
Scoob!
Sonic the Hedgehog
The Call of the Wild
The Willoughbys
Trolls World Tour
THE MALE MOVIE STAR OF 2020
Chris Hemsworth, Extraction
Jamie Foxx, Project Power
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton
Mark Wahlberg, Spenser Confidential
Robert Downey Jr., Dolittle
Tom Hanks, Greyhound
Vin Diesel, Bloodshot
Will Smith, Bad Boys for Life*
THE FEMALE MOVIE STAR OF 2020
Camila Mendes, Dangerous Lies
Charlize Theron, The Old Guard
Elisabeth Moss, The Invisible Man
Issa Rae, The Lovebirds
Margot Robbie, Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Salma Hayek, Like a Boss
Tiffany Haddish, Like a Boss*
Vanessa Hudgens, Bad Boys for Life
THE COMEDY MOVIE STAR OF 2020
David Spade, The Wrong Missy
Issa Rae, The Lovebirds
Joey King, The Kissing Booth 2*
Keanu Reeves, Bill & Ted Face the Music
Noah Centineo, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
Pete Davidson, The King of Staten Island
Salma Hayek, Like a Boss
Will Ferrell, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
THE ACTION MOVIE STAR OF 2020
Charlize Theron, The Old Guard
Chris Hemsworth, Extraction*
Jamie Foxx, Project Power
John David Washington, Tenet
Margot Robbie, Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Vanessa Hudgens, Bad Boys for Life
Vin Diesel, Bloodshot
Will Smith, Bad Boys for Life
THE DRAMA MOVIE STAR OF 2020
Ben Affleck, The Way Back
Elisabeth Moss, The Invisible Man
Issa Rae, The Photograph
KJ Apa, I Still Believe
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton*
Russell Crowe, Unhinged
Tom Hanks, Greyhound
Tracee Ellis Ross, The High Note
TV
THE SHOW OF 2020
Grey’s Anatomy*
Never Have I Ever
Outer Banks
The Bachelor
The Last Dance
The Masked Singer
This Is Us
Tiger King
THE DRAMA SHOW OF 2020
Grey’s Anatomy
Law & Order: SVU
Outer Banks
Ozark
Power
Riverdale*
The Walking Dead
This Is Us
THE COMEDY SHOW OF 2020
Dead To Me
Grown-ish
Insecure
Modern Family
Never Have I Ever*
Saturday Night Live
Schitt’s Creek
The Good Place
THE REALITY SHOW OF 2020
90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?
Below Deck Mediterranean
Keeping Up with the Kardashians*
Love & Hip Hop: New York
Love Is Blind
The Real Housewives of Atlanta
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
Queer Eye
THE COMPETITION SHOW OF 2020
American Idol
America’s Got Talent
Top Chef
RuPaul’s Drag Race
The Bachelor
The Challenge: Total Madness
The Masked Singer
The Voice*
THE MALE TV STAR OF 2020
Chase Stokes, Outer Banks
Cole Sprouse, Riverdale*
Dan Levy, Schitt’s Creek
Jason Bateman, Ozark
Jesse Williams, Grey’s Anatomy
Norman Reedus, The Walking Dead
Sterling K. Brown, This Is Us
Steve Carell, Space Force
THE FEMALE TV STAR OF 2020
Christina Applegate, Dead To Me
Danai Gurira, The Walking Dead
Ellen Pompeo, Grey’s Anatomy*
Lili Reinhart, Riverdale
Mandy Moore, This Is Us
Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: SVU
Sandra Oh, Killing Eve
Sofía Vergara, Modern Family
THE DRAMA TV STAR OF 2020
Cole Sprouse, Riverdale
Chase Stokes, Outer Banks
Danai Gurira, The Walking Dead
Ellen Pompeo, Grey’s Anatomy
Mandy Moore, This Is Us*
Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: SVU
Sandra Oh, Killing Eve
Sterling K. Brown, This Is Us
THE COMEDY TV STAR OF 2020
Christina Applegate, Dead To Me
Dan Levy, Schitt’s Creek
Issa Rae, Insecure
Jameela Jamil, The Good Place
Kate McKinnon, SNL
Kristen Bell, The Good Place
Sofía Vergara, Modern Family*
Yara Shahidi, Grown-ish
THE DAYTIME TALK SHOW OF 2020
Good Morning America
Live With Kelly & Ryan
Red Table Talk
The Ellen DeGeneres Show*
The Kelly Clarkson Show
The View
The Wendy Williams Show
Today
THE NIGHTTIME TALK SHOW OF 2020
Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
Jimmy Kimmel Live
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
The Late Late Show with James Corden
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon*
THE COMPETITION CONTESTANT OF 2020
Gigi Goode, RuPaul’s Drag Race*
Hannah Ann Sluss, The Bachelor
Jaida Essence Hall, RuPaul’s Drag Race
Just Sam, American Idol
Madison Prewett, The Bachelor
Kandi Burruss, The Masked Singer
Rob Gronkowski , The Masked Singer
Sammie Cimarelli, The Circle
THE REALITY STAR OF 2020
Antoni Porowski, Queer Eye
Darcey and Stacey Silva, Darcey & Stacey
Jonathan Van Ness, Queer Eye
Kandi Burruss, The Real Housewives of Atlanta
Kim Kardashian West, Keeping Up with the Kardashians
Khloe Kardashian, Keeping Up with the Kardashians*
Culture Representation: Taking place in primarily in 1840s England, the drama “Ammonite” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and the upper-middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two women—one who’s a working-class fossil hunter and one who’s a pampered socialite—have a secret love affair, even though one of them is married to a man.
Culture Audience: “Ammonite” will appeal primarily to people who like period dramas that place more emphasis on mood and atmosphere than on wordy dialogues and fast-paced action.
Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan in “Ammonite” (Photo by Agatha A. Nitecka/RÅN Studio/Neon)
The British film “Ammonite” (written and directed by Francis Lee) is going to get inevitable comparisons to writer/director Céline Sciamma’s 2019 French film “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Released just one year apart, both are period European films that are about two women from different classes (one upper-class, the other working-class) in a secret and passionate love affair. “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” takes place in 1790s France, while “Ammonite” takes place in 1840s England.
In each movie’s secret romance, one woman is a never-married bachelorette who is strongly implied to be a lesbian. The other woman is in a very public, committed relationship with a man. (The man in this love triangle is a fiancé in “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and a husband in “Ammonite.”) The lesbian bachelorette likes to make sketches and drawings of her lover. Both movies have a beach as a backdrop for the secret affair. And both movies were released in the U.S. by independent film company Neon.
“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” is an overall better film if people want to see a sensual European movie about two women from a past century who fall in love with each other. But that doesn’t mean that “Ammonite” isn’t worth watching, because the acting performances in both films have their unique merits. The sumptuous “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (with its stunning cinematography and brightly lit hues) is the equivalent of a macaron, while the much grayer and blander “Ammonite” is the equivalent of plain English muffin.
The unfussiness of “Ammonite” is a reflection of the story’s no-nonsense but emotionally repressed protagonist: Mary Anning (played by Kate Winslet), a fossil hunter who lives with her ailing mother Molly Anning (played by Gemma Jones) in a modest home on the coastline of Lyme Regis in southern England. (Jones and Winslet also played mother and daughter in the 1995 film “Sense and Sensibility.”) “Ammonite” is a biographical interpretation of the real-life paleontologist Anning.
Mary and Molly’s home also doubles as a shop where Mary can sell these artifacts. Mary’s work is rough (digging in hardened terrain) and dangerous (climbing treacherous cliffs), but her work is the only thing that brings her the closest thing to joy in her life. Her outdoor work also makes her vulnerable to getting weather-related illnesses, since it’s often cold and rainy in Lyme Regis.
Mary was once a promising and well-respected paleontologist, but sexism and other society restrictions prevented her from getting the type of recognition and career that she would have gotten if she were a man. Mary is now middle-aged, bitter, and trying to earn enough money to support herself and her mother, who seems to be showing early signs of dementia. Mary still has some fame with fossil aficionados, but she’s been living in relative obscurity. The title of the movie comes from an ammonite that Mary has found that ends up in the British Museum.
One day, a society gentleman named Roderick Murchison (played by James McArdle) shows up at Mary’s place and explains that he’s visiting from London and he’s been a longtime admirer of her work. Roderick practically begs Mary to give him a private tour of her job that day, and he offers to pay her well for it. Mary says no at first, and then reluctantly agrees because she and her mother need the money.
On this trip, Roderick is accompanied by his wife Charlotte Murchison (played by Saoirse Ronan) for this visit. Charlotte gives the impression that she is quiet and withdrawn. She shows no interest in Mary’s work and stays behind while Mary takes Roderick on the private tour so he can see how she works.
When Roderick and Charlotte are back in their home, it’s shown that their marriage is strained. Roderick resists Charlotte’s advances to have sex, and he tells her: “Now’s not the time to make a baby.” It’s later revealed that Charlotte gave birth to a stillborn child and is very depressed about it. It’s unknown if Charlotte and Roderick were having problems in their marriage before this tragedy, but the death of their child and their inability to communicate with each other about it have caused the couple to be emotionally distant from each other.
Charlotte is so depressed that she finds it hard to get out of bed. Roderick grows impatient with her sadness and decides that while he goes away on another trip, Charlotte should spend time with Mary. Roderick thinks that Mary might be able to cheer up Charlotte and he thinks a change of scenery would do Charlotte some good. He tells Mary that he’ll be away for about four to six weeks.
Mary, who likes her quiet and isolated life, is once again resistant to having her work interrupted so that she can be a diversion for a stranger. But the payment that Roderick offers is too good for Mary to pass up, and she agrees to be Charlotte’s activity companion. However, Mary thinks Charlotte is a spoiled brat. (Mary doesn’t know at the time that Charlotte is depressed over the death of her child.) And once Roderick is gone, Mary is openly hostile to Charlotte.
The first time that Charlotte accompanies Mary to the beach, Charlotte is dressed in clothes that are too fancy and she wears makeup. It’s in stark contrast to Mary, who doesn’t wear makeup and is so unconcerned about appearing feminine and mannered that when she wants to urinate on the beach, Mary just lifts up her skirt and does so in plain view with no attempt to go somewhere discreet. Despite being opposite in many ways, Charlotte and Mary slowly become intrigued with each other.
Charlotte’s “hotel” living quarters in Lyme Regis are way outside of her comfort zone: She essentially lives in a tiny, unadorned shack on the beach. And one day, she gets caught in the wind and rain and comes down with a serious fever. She collapses at Mary’s door, and a doctor is called to attend to Charlotte.
The general practitioner who shows up is Dr. Lieberson (played by Alec Secareanu), a handsome bachelor in his 30s who advises Mary to take care of Charlotte in Mary’s home. Mary resents having to be a medical caretaker on top of everything else she has to do for Charlotte. But as Charlotte is bed-ridden, Mary sees Charlotte’s vulnerability, which starts to awaken feelings in Mary that she might not have known she had. And if Mary did know that she had these feelings before, she kept them buried underneath her gruff exterior.
One of the few other people whom Mary interacts with in this story is an older neighbor named Elizabeth Philpot (played by Fiona Shaw), who gives Mary some medicinal herbs for Charlotte when Mary goes over to Elizabeth’s house to get the herbs. Mary is very abrupt with Elizabeth, and it’s an obvious sign that something happened in their past to cause Mary to be angry and uncomfortable with Elizabeth. Whatever happened, Elizabeth seems to have moved on from it, but Mary hasn’t.
After Charlotte recovers from her fever, Charlotte senses that Mary’s untrusting attitude toward her is softening. Charlotte starts to make it clear to Mary that she might be interested in more than a platonic relationship with Mary. It’s an interesting power dynamic, because although Charlotte is about half the age of Mary and she’s a guest in Mary’s home, Charlotte (through her husband) has more money and a higher social ranking than Mary does. It’s also implied that Charlotte is more sexually experienced and more sexually adventurous than Mary is.
During this slowly simmering love affair between Mary and Charlotte, Dr. Lieberson shows a romantic interest in Mary, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Mary and Charlotte eventually become lovers and hide their affair from everyone else in their lives. When Dr. Lieberson asks Mary on a date to an evening recital, Mary insists that Charlotte accompany them, and he reluctantly agrees.
At the recital (which is a small gathering of about 30 people in someone’s home), Charlotte is immediately accepted and fawned over by the local neighbor ladies, including Elizabeth, and they invite Charlotte to sit in the front row with them. Meanwhile, Mary is seated near the back of the room. And the look on Mary’s face is clear: She’s very jealous of the attention that Charlotte is getting. Mary eventually can’t take it anymore and she leaves the recital early without saying goodbye to anyone.
This recital is somewhat of a turning point in the relationship because Mary sees for the first time how differently she’s treated in society, compared to how Charlotte is treated. As if the taboo nature of having a same-sex affair with a married woman weren’t enough, Mary gets a rude awakening that the class divide between herself and Charlotte is also one that might be too much to overcome.
“Ammonite” has many scenes with little to no dialogue, and the pace of the movie might be too slow for some people. The film puts a lot of emphasis on Mary’s tendencies to be a loner. Even when Charlotte is in the same house, Mary instinctively retreats in her work. There are numerous scenes of Mary by herself, working on her fossils or drawing sketches. Winslet gives a very restrained but still admirable performance in showing Mary’s resistance to and eventual acceptance of her romantic feelings for Charlotte.
Charlotte is the more complicated character, because she starts out one way in the movie and ends up another way. Whereas viewers can easily see that Mary has lived a routine and isolated life for many years, Charlotte’s previous life before her marriage remains a mystery. However, Ronan is able to strike an interesting balance between Charlotte having innocent girlish charm and calculating seduction techniques.
“Ammonite” writer/director Lee says in the movie’s production notes that although there is no historical information about the real-life Mary Anning’s sexual orientation, “it didn’t feel right to give her a relationship with a man” for this movie. It’s implied in the movie that Mary has never had a romance with a man. Because if she had, Mary’s mother Molly and some of their nosy neighbors are the type of people who would’ve mentioned it.
The movie doesn’t try to put a label on Charlotte’s sexuality, which can be left open to interpretation. Ronan gives an impressively nuanced and complex performance that might might result in people watching “Ammonite” having different answers to this question: Are Charlotte and Mary truly compatible and is their relationship meant to last?
Above all, “Ammonite” is about two people who are lonely in different ways and who find love with each other, but are in an unenviable situation of being forced to keep their romance a secret. How they deal with this issue can best be described this way: “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” wants to break your heart. “Ammonite,” which might end too abruptly for some viewers, wants to give you a reality check.
Neon released “Ammonite” in select U.S. cinemas on November 13, 2020. The movie’s VOD release date is December 4, 2020.
Culture Representation: Taking place in primarily in New York City, the crime drama “The Informer” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Latinos) representing the middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: An ex-convict who’s become a confidential informant to the FBI gets caught up in a power struggle between the FBI, the New York Police Department and a drug kingpin when an undercover NYPD officer gets murdered during a botched drug deal.
Culture Audience: “Informer” will appeal primarily to people who like formulaic and generic movies about drug smuggling and undercover investigations.
Clive Owen, Rosamund Pike and Joel Kinnaman in “The Informer” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)
There are times when people watching a movie have to suspend disbelief when they have to think to themselves, “It’s only a movie,” because the world created in the movie is not supposed to be a reflection of the real world. But when a gritty crime drama like “The Informer” invests so much of the story’s credibility in trying to be as realistic possible, it’s fair to judge the movie’s merits on how well the movie depicts “the real world.” Although the “The Informer” has moments of action-filled suspense, too much of the movie looks recycled from other better-made films, and some of the scenes are almost laughably unrealistic.
Directed by Andrea Di Stefano, “The Informer” is based on the 2009 Swedish novel “Three Seconds” by Anders Rosland and Börge Lennart Hellström. Di Stefano, Matt Cook and Rowan Joffe adapted “Three Seconds” into the mediocre and cliché-ridden screenplay for “The Informer.” The movie changes the setting of the story (it’s Sweden in the book, New York City in the movie) but the premise is essentially the same: An ex-con who’s an informant tries not to killed in a dangerous double-cross game as he deals with law enforcement and criminals.
In “The Informer,” Joel Kinnaman plays Pete Koslow, a Gulf War veteran who spent time in the fictional Bale Hill Prison for killing a man in a bar fight while defending his wife Sofia (played by Ana de Armas) from the sleazy guy who was harassing her in the bar. Now a heavily tattooed ex-con, Pete (who has post-traumatic stress disorder) lives in New York City with Sofia and their 8-year-old daughter Anna (played by Karma Meyer). Pete has stayed out of trouble since his release from prison, but he has a secret: He’s a confidential informant for the FBI to bust a major drug ring that has been importing and selling fentanyl.
The Polish kingpin who’s the leader of this drug-dealing operation is Rysard Klimek (played by Eugene Lipinski), who’s nicknamed The General. Pete is an American of Polish descent who can speak fluent Polish, and most of The General’s gang members are also Polish. Therefore, Pete has been chosen to help the FBI in busting The General and his drug-smuggling crew.
Pete has been able to infiltrate The General’s gang and gain their trust. The person he is closest to in the gang is an impulsive hothead named Stazek Cusik (played by Mateusz Kosciukiewicz), who sets off a chain of events that will test Pete’s loyalties and put Pete and his family in possibly fatal danger. With Pete’s help, the FBI is ready to do a huge drug bust to arrest The General and his gang.
Pete has been working directly with FBI agent Erica Wilcox (played by Rosamund Pike), and they have meticulously planned how the drug bust will go. Erica has instructed the FBI to “go easy” on Pete when the drug bust happens because he is one of the FBI’s informants. Erica has assured Pete that during the drug bust, he will be taken away safely in an unmarked vehicle.
But things go horribly wrong. Unbeknownst to the FBI, the New York Police Department has been trying to bust The General and his gang too. And the NYPD sent an undercover officer named Daniel Gomez (played by Arturo Castro), who’s been using the alias Carlos Herrera, to pose as a major drug buyer from Mexico. Stazek tells a nervous Pete that there’s been a last-minute change of plans since this “new buyer” named Carlos Herrera has shown in interest in making a big purchase.
During the meeting with “Carlos,” an argument erupts, he reveals he works for the NYPD, and Stazek shoots him in the head. A stunned Pete knows this has completely ruined the drug bust that the FBI had planned for that night. And sure enough, the FBI calls off the plans, and Erica cancels the backup that was supposed rescue Pete. Meanwhile, Stazek and some of his cronies dismember the murdered NYPD officer’s body and throw it into the river at a nearby dock.
Erica’s corrupt supervisor Agent Montgomery (played by Clive Owen) blames her and Pete for the botched drug bust and wants to cut Pete loose from the informant program. Erica begs Montgomery to give her and Pete a little more time to set up another drug bust. Montgomery says that officially the FBI is done with Pete and can’t give her the authority to continue dealing with him. But unofficially, Montgomery tells Erica that if she still wants to pursue the drug bust with Pete’s help, she’s free to do so but she has to inform him of what she’s doing. However, if things go wrong again, she will be forced to take full responsibility and she’ll probably get fired.
Meanwhile, the General is furious over the botched drug deal that got a NYPD officer killed, and he says that Pete owes his life to Stazek. The General orders Pete to get himself arrested so that he can be incarcerated again at Bale Hill Prison, where Pete is supposed to take over the drug operation there. Pete tells Sofia about his secret life as an informant for the FBI and how he’s now being coerced to do what The General wants.
It’s around this time that Pete has a meeting with Erica and Montgomery, who tell Pete that he can redeem himself with the FBI if Pete gets the names of all of The General’s drug operators in Bale Hill Prison. And so, Pete and Sofia stage a domestic violence incident that sends Pete back to Bale Hill Prison faster than you can say “stupid plot development.”
Meanwhile, the NYPD is investigating the murder of Officer Gomez, whose partner Detective Edward Grens (played by Common) is on a personal revenge mission to catch the killer. At first, he suspects Pete of committing the murder. Detective Grens eventually figures out that Pete is an informant for the FBI, so he confronts Erica and Montgomery, who deny knowing anything about Pete, even though Detective Grens has uncovered video surveillance and other evidence that Erica has been in contact with Pete.
Detective Grens decides that the FBI is covering up something, so he makes it known that if the NYPD has to go to war with the FBI, so be it. Detective Grens eventually goes to Sofia (who owns an aquarium shop) to ask for her help, but she has a hard time trusting him. She tells Detective Grens that ever since Pete got arrested for that deadly bar fight, whenever someone has offered to help, the person ends up doing the opposite and Pete gets in more trouble.
And so, with Pete feeling pressure from the FBI, the NYPD and The General who all have their own agendas, this is how the movie sets up dilemmas for Pete on whom he should trust and whom he should betray. The scenes of Pete in prison have the predictable elements that have been seen in many other dramas with prison scenes. Unoriginal stereotypes abound, including typical violent fights between inmates; a corrupt corrections officer named Slewett (played by Sam Spruell), who’s in on the prison’s drug trade; and a prison chief name Warden Leinart (played by Matthew Marsh), who looks the other way at the illegal activities that he knows goes on in his prison.
One of the dumbest scenes in “The Informer” is when Pete makes a desperate phone call from prison to FBI agent Erica, who is officially not supposed to be in contact with Pete at this point in the story. Apparently, the filmmakers want viewers to forget or not know that all inmate phone calls in prison are recorded. Someone who works for the FBI should know this too. It’s unfortunate that the filmmakers have made this FBI agent look so inept.
During Pete and Erica’s phone conversation, Erica and Pete say enough incriminating things in the conversation that would expose their “secret” plans to people in the prison, which is crawling with corrupt corrections officers, and word would get back to Slewett, who’s working with The General. This phone conversation from prison would also then get Pete branded as a snitch, which could make the inmates turn against him too. But the filmmakers cover up this massive plot hole, which completely ruins whatever credibility this movie was trying to grasp.
And then “The Informer” just turns into complete garbage with a very unrealistic prison hostage scene where viewers are supposed to believe that the hostage taker, who is just one person, is able to hold off a small army of law enforcement officers (including a S.W.A.T team) that come to the rescue. The hostage scenes exist only so that the movie can have more violence, such as shootouts, an explosion and a gross-out scene where the hostage taker plunges a pair of scissors into someone’s ear.
Although Kinnaman’s role in the movie requires a lot of physical prowess, his character is the typical tough, brooding, misunderstood loner that we’ve seen so many times before in movies about ex-cons who become confidential informants. Pike’s Erica character is problematic because she’s supposed to be morally conflicted, but the reality is that this FBI agent is just incredibly incompetent. Owen’s Montgomery character is a stereotypical callous bureaucrat, while de Armas has yet another role as a “worried wife/love partner,” which is the type of character she has in a lot of her movies.
“The Informer” director Di Stefano and cinematographer Daniel Katz occasionally try to make the movie look a little artsier than most cheesy crime dramas of this ilk. For example, the scene with Sofia and Detective Grens in her aquarium shop is lit with the blue-ish glow of the aquariums, not by overhead room lights. It’s as if to convey that Sofia is untouched by all the grime and sleaze that has ensnared her husband. However, as much as this one scene was trying to show the beauty amongst all the corruption and violence, it’s still not enough to compensate for the shoddily written screenplay.
When the FBI or a big city’s police department (such as the NYPD) is trying to bust a large drug operation in an undercover sting, there are things that these professionals are trained not to do, so that they won’t blow their cover. And yet, the numskulls in “The Informer” do a lot of dumb things to blow their cover that no self-respecting law enforcement official or street-smart informant would do in an undercover investigation. “The Informer” is ultimately for people who just want to see some forgettable fight scenes and other mindless violence amid a lot of plot holes. This movie is not for people who want to see a compelling and well-written crime drama.
Vertical Entertainment released “The Informer” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on November 6, 2020. The movie was released in several countries in Europe and Asia in 2019.
