Culture Representation: Taking place in Memphis and Paris, the comedy-inflected drama “Uncorked” has a diverse cast of African Americans and white characters representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: An African American man in his 20s is torn between wanting to become a master sommelier and his father’s wishes for him to take over the family’s barbecue restaurant business.
Culture Audience: “Uncorked” will appeal mostly to people who want to see a relatable drama about family relationships, as well as what it’s like to try to break into the competitive and elite world of master sommeliers.
Mamoudou Athie and Courtney B. Vance in “Uncorked” (Photo by Nina Robinson/Netflix)
“Uncorked” takes an authentic and sometimes humorous look at the journey a young man goes through in pursuing his dream to become a master sommelier, even though it conflicts with family obligations. In telling this unique story for the screen, writer/director Prentice Penny just happened to make the protagonist an African American. However, “Uncorked” doesn’t take the cliché route of making the movie about racism or about an underprivileged person of color who gets help from a “white savior.” Instead, the movie touches on universal themes of family tensions and self-doubt through the lens of African American middle-class culture.
The two conflicting worlds of central character Elijah (played by Mamoudou Athie) are made abundantly clear in the opening credits, which alternate between montages of people making barbecue and people making wine. Elijah, who appears to be in his mid-to-late-20s, is holding down two jobs in his hometown of Memphis: He’s a sales clerk at a wine shop and a cook in his father’s casual barbecue restaurant. He’s a lot more passionate about his wine job, and he only works at his father’s place because he feels obligated to do it.
Elijah’s father Louis (played by Courtney B. Vance) inherited the barbecue place from his own father, and Louis expects to Elijah (his only son) to take over the restaurant someday. It’s truly a family business because Elijah’s mother Sylvia (played by Niecy Nash) also works there, as a waitress. Louis also has plans to open a second, more upscale barbecue restaurant in a “gentrified” neighborhood. Elijah’s close-knit family includes Elijah’s cousins, Elijah’s older sister Brenda (played by Kelly Jenrette), Brenda’s husband and their three kids,
However, Elijah’s passion is really for the wine business. It’s evident in how he lights up when talking about wine and recommending selections to customers at the wine shop. One customer in particular sparks more than just an interest in recommending wine. He meets a young woman named Tanya (played by Sasha Compère) when she comes into the store with a friend to get a bottle of wine for a party.
Tanya doesn’t know much about wine, but Elijah puts her at ease by asking her if she likes hip-hop. She says yes. In helping her make her choice, he explains that chardonnay is like the Jay-Z of wine, pino grigio is like the Kanye West of wine and riesling is like the Drake of wine. (She ends up getting riesling wine.)
It’s no surprise that Tanya comes back to the store on another day and takes Elijah’s suggestion to join the store’s wine club, which is how she gives Elijah her contact information. They begin dating each other soon afterward. (Their first date is at a roller-skating rink.)
Tanya encourages Elijah to pursue his dream to become a master sommelier—a title that, as of this writing, only 269 people in the world have ever held, according to the Court of Master Sommeliers. Elijah’s boss at the wine store, Raylan Jackson (played by Matthew Glave), also encourages Elijah and says he will put in a recommendation for Elijah if he ever wants to go to sommelier school. Raylan is a master sommelier, and Elijah looks wistfully at the sommelier diploma that Raylan has.
Meanwhile, there’s increasing tension between Elijah and his father Louis. When Louis tries to get Elijah to do things that will prepare Elijah to take over the barbecue business, Elijah makes excuses by saying he has other plans, usually related to his wine job. Over a large family dinner, Elijah mentions that he’s thinking about going to sommelier school. Louis then makes a snide comment to Elijah by expressing doubt that Elijah will follow through on that goal. He reminds Elijah that he’s had other career goals (including being a DJ) that Elijah eventually abandoned.
Elijah’s mother Sylvia, who’s completely supportive of Elijah, later scolds Louis in private for embarrassing Elijah in front of the family. The back-and-forth banter and conversations between Louis and Sylvia are some of the funniest parts of the movie. Their dialogue rings true for a longtime married couple.
What also rings true is the way that the movie shows that when it comes to pursuing a dream, sometimes people can get in their own way, through self-doubt and making excuses. Tanya essentially tells Elijah that’s what he’ll be doing if he doesn’t take a chance and apply to sommelier school. It’s the extra encouragement he needs to take the entrance exam. And he gets into the school—but not without a major sacrifice. The only way he can pay for the tuition is to use all of his savings.
Even though Elijah tells Louis he can still work at the barbecue restaurant while he attends school, both father and son know that Elijah is now on a path that will change their relationship forever. Elijah is a talented student and a quick learner. But it’s one thing to graduate from sommelier school. It’s quite another thing to pass the extremely difficult test to become a master sommelier. (Based on the small percentage of master sommeliers in the world, most people who take the test don’t pass.)
While attending sommelier school, Elijah meets the three other people who end up in his study group: neurotic and obnoxious Richie (played by Gil Ozeri); cocky and intelligent Eric (played by Matt McGorry), who’s nicknamed Harvard because he went to Harvard University; and sensible and sarcastic Leann (played by Meera Rohit Kumbhani). Another challenge comes when Elijah’s sommelier class goes on a trip to Paris that he can’t really afford.
Will Elijah get to go to Paris? Will he pass the master sommelier test? And how is his relationship with his father affected by these sommelier ambitions? Those questions are answered in the movie, which has a few twists and turns along the way.
“Uncorked” is the first feature film by writer/director Penny, who’s a former writer/director for the HBO comedy series “Insecure,” starring Issa Rae. The movie is an admirable debut that shows Penny has a knack for entertaining writing and making the right choices in editing and casting. (All the actors adeptly handle the movies comedic elements as well as the overall drama.)
To its great credit, “Uncorked” doesn’t get bogged down in stereotypical tropes of an African American trying to break into a predominantly white industry. There are no racist villains in the story, nor does Elijah have a negative attitude about the extremely small percentage of African Americans who end up being sommeliers. However, “Uncorked” doesn’t water down the African American culture that’s shown in the movie. (The soundtrack is hip-hop and there’s plenty of realistic dialogue in the film.)
As the central character Elijah, Athie carries the movie with a significant deal of charm and empathy. He makes great use of facial expressions to convincingly portray the inner conflicts of someone who wants to please his father and yet be his own man. The father-son relationship is complicated, but there’s also enough respect between the two of them that they don’t deal with conflicts by having obscenity-filled shouting matches, which are over-used negative stereotypes in movies about African American families. “Uncorked” is ultimately about more than just pursuing a dream. It’s also about understanding that in order to stay true to yourself, you have to know you really are in the first place.
Culture Representation: This documentary, which interviews mostly white people and a few African Americans, takes a look at how several key members of the U.S. civil-rights movement for disabled people spent their youth having positive experiences at Camp Jened, an upstate New York activities camp for disabled people.
Culture Clash: People in the documentary talk about fighting against discrimination and for their civil rights.
Culture Audience: “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution” will appeal primarily to viewers who want to see a compelling story about an often-ignored civil-rights movement that happened in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s.
Denise Sherer Jacobson and Jim LeBrecht in “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution” (Photo by courtesy of Netflix)
The title of “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution” is somewhat misleading because the movie is more about the “revolution” than it is about the “camp.” The movie itself is an inspiring but unevenly edited documentary. “Crip Camp” tells the story of how an upstate New York camp (Camp Jened) for disabled youth ended up being a life-changing formative center for several people who went on to become activists in the 1970s and 1980s civil-rights movement for disabled people.
It’s understandable if viewers think that most of the movie is about Camp Jened. It’s not. The story of the camp takes up just the first third of the film. The documentary is narrated by Jim LeBrecht, a Camp Jened alum who co-directed “Crip Camp” with Nicole Newnham. Camp Jened (originally located in Hunter, New York, near the Catskill Mountains) had its first incarnation from 1951 to 1977. What “Crip Camp” doesn’t mention is that Camp Jened re-opened in Rock Hill, New York, and remained in operation from 1980 to 2009. The camp went out of business both times because of financial problems.
LeBrecht, who is a paraplegic because he was born with spina bifida, shares fond memories of the first incarnation of Camp Jened. And so do other former Camp Jened alumni who were either attendees or counselors in the early 1970s, when LeBrecht attended the camp. He first went there in 1971, when he was 15 years old. He says Camp Jened is where he got his first girlfriend, and it was also a place where many of the teenage attendees also had their first sexual experiences, since they were away from their frequently over-protective homes for the first time.
There’s an uneven tone to the film because the Camp Jened part of the movie starts off like an autobiography, but then the latter two-thirds of the movie switch gears, and the film becomes a historical account of the civil-rights movement for disabled people. LeBrecht describes that when he was growing up in New York state, “I wanted to be a part of life, but I didn’t see anyone like me.” When he heard there was a youth camp for disabled people, and the camp was run by hippie types who would probably let the teenagers “smoke dope” with them, Lebrecht says that he thought at the time, “Sign me up!”
LeBrecht says in the documentary that his experience at Camp Jened was the first time in his life that he didn’t feel like an outsider. The disabled attendees were a racially diverse group that included people like LeBrecht who went to schools with able-bodied people, while there were others who were home-schooled or who lived most of the year in institutions.
The camp counselors, also racially diverse, sometimes didn’t have experience with disabled people, but they made up for that lack of experience with compassion and enthusiasm for the job. Two of the former counselors interviewed in the film include Lionel Je’Woodyard and Joe O’Connor, who describes being terrified at first by being around so many disabled people, but he was literally pushed forward by another counselor to get right in the crowd and help as much as he could.
LeBrecht describes how when he first arrived at the camp, he had recently had bladder surgery so he wouldn’t have to wear diapers anymore, but he was self-conscious about having to use a urine drainage bag and he didn’t really want anyone at the camp to find out about it. But his fears subsided when he realized that there were many people at the camp who had much more difficult medical conditions than he had.
The camp part of the documentary has a lot of archival footage (mostly black-and-white) of people at Camp Jened in the early 1970s, including the late Larry Allison, who was the director of Camp Jened at the time. LeBrecht was an aspiring filmmaker even back then, because he’s heard operating the camera and asking interview questions. Some of the other archival footage came from People’s Video Theater, an alternative journalism group.
In the interviews, it’s clear that the teenagers and other young people at the camp have the same interests as any young people would of any era: dating, acceptance and having fun. The only differences are the physical and mental challenges they have and the restrictions placed upon them because of these challenges. Several of the young people who were interviewed talk about feeling frustrated by over-protective parents or by people who underestimate their abilities.
Ann Cupolo Freeman, who was one of the disabled members of the camp in the 1970s, remembers that at the time, it was being like a “Woodstock for disabled people.” Denise Sherer Jacobson, who was also a teenager who went to Camp Jened in the early 1970s, remembers the camp this way: “It was so funky, but it was a utopia.” And funky it was. Some of the archival footage shows how the camp had to be temporarily quarantined because of an outbreak of crabs.
Sherer Jacobson, who has cerebral palsy, says that even among the disabled, there are prejudices and a hierarchy: People with polio are considered at “the top” and people with cerebral palsy are considered at “the bottom.” But her experiences at Camp Jened were ultimately positive: It’s where she met her husband, Paul Jacobson (who also has cerebral palsy and is interviewed in the movie), and they are still married to this day. Sherer Jacobson also talks about how one of her first sexual experiences as a young woman led her to get her master’s degree in human sexuality, partly because she wanted to break untrue stereotypes that people with disabilities are lesser human beings when it comes to sex.
Archival footage at the camp also includes a very outspoken Steve Hoffman, a disabled person who ended up becoming a transvestite. One scene of him in the film shows him later in his adult life doing a striptease in drag to the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” classic song “Sweet Transvestite.” Another alum of Camp Jened in the archival footage is Corbett O’Toole, who became a writer/activist.
But perhaps the most high-profile alum of Camp Jened is Judith “Judy” Heumann, who went on to become a pioneering leader in the civil rights-movement for disabled people. In 1970, she founded the civil-rights group Disabled in Action. Even in the archival footage that shows her as a camp counselor, Heumann’s “take charge” demeanor is evident when she plans meals for the attendees. In a current interview for the documentary, she looks back on her time at Camp Jened as being important to her because she wanted to make an effort to “be inclusive” to everyone. She also remembers Camp Jened as “being more free and open than what I was experiencing in my day-to-day life at home.”
Heumann is the thread that ties the final two-thirds of the movie together, as the documentary then follows her tireless efforts to push civil rights for disabled people into federal laws, starting with the Rehabilitation Act of 1972, which would make it against federal law for federally funded groups and individuals to discriminate against disabled people. President Richard Nixon initially vetoed the act because he said it would be too expensive for places to revamp buildings to make them more accommodating to the disabled.
But Heumann organized protests that got media attention, including a group of wheelchair users who blocked Madison Avenue in New York City. She also led outreaches to the Vietnam veterans whose war injuries left them disabled. Because of these protests and political pressure, Nixon eventually signed the Rehabilitation Act into law in 1973.
However, this law only covered federally funded groups and individuals, not those operating on the state/local level or privately funded groups and individuals. The fight continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s for laws that would protect disabled people on all levels. Geraldo Rivera’s award-winning 1972 TV news exposé “Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace,” which was about the horrific conditions of Willowbrook State School (an institution in New York for special-needs children) is mentioned in “Crip Camp” as being an important milestone in raising public awareness about civil rights for disabled people.
By the mid-1970s, Heumann and several other Camp Jened alumni (including O’Toole and the Jacobson spouses) had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, which (along with New York City) became another important hub for the U.S. civil-rights movement for disabled people. While in San Francisco, Heumann and a group activists did a nearly month-long sit-in-protest in 1977 because Joe Califano (who was then the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare) refused to sign off on specific reinforcements of section 504 of the Rehabilitation law. The sit-in protests occurred in San Francisco, as well as Califano’s office in Washington, D.C., and even outside of his home in the Washington area.
Dennis Billups is one of the disabled people who was involved in these protests. In an interview for “Crip Camp,” he and fellow protester O’Toole remember that their allies were a wide range of people who cared about civil-rights causes, including the Black Panthers, gay-rights groups, then-U.S. Representative George Miller and journalists such as HolLyn D’Lil and Evan White. (The latter two are interviewed in the documentary.)
O’Toole says that Black Panther member Brad Lomax told her in explaining why the Black Panthers helped with things such as donating food for the protesters: “You’re here to make the world a better place, and so are we.” The results of the 504 protests laid the groundwork several years later for the Americans with Disabilities Act, which President George H.W. Bush signed into law in 1990.
LaBrecht was in high school and college during much of these protests (he wasn’t part of the 504 sit-ins), so his perspective mostly takes a back seat to the focus on Heumann that’s in the middle of the movie. However, in the last third of the documentary, he talks about how, after he graduated from the University of California at San Diego, he too moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and became part of an activist community involved in civil rights for disabled people. He also reached his goal of becoming a sound designer in the entertainment industry (there’s late 1970s archival footage of him on the job at Berkeley Repertory Theatre), even if he never did end up in his ultimate dream job: doing sound engineering for the Grateful Dead.
At the end of the film, there’s a mini-reunion of Crip Camp alumni from LeBrecht’s era, at the site where Camp Jened originally was.(The camp was bulldozed years ago. At the time the reunion was filmed for the documentary, the former camp site was under construction and there isn’t much to see.
Along with LeBrecht, other people at the reunion included Sherer Jacobson and former Camp Jened counselor Je’Woodyard. The documentary has a great juxtaposition of archival early 1970s footage of a young Je’Woodyard playfully pushing Sherer Jacobson in her wheelchair, shown with footage of what they looked like at the reunion decades later at the former camp site.
Heumann went on to become assistant secretary of education for special education and rehabilitative services during President Bill Clinton’s tenure. She was also a special advisor for international disability rights for President Barack Obama for most of his presidency. It’s probably why Barack and Michelle Obama are among the executive producers of “Crip Camp,” the second movie that the Obamas executive produced under their Netflix deal. (The first movie was the Oscar-winning 2019 documentary “American Factory.”)
Although the camp footage is certainly interesting and sometimes emotionally moving, directors Newnham and LeBrecht should have kept the film focused on the civil-rights part of the story. Because the camp footage takes up one-third of the film, it just makes “Crip Camp” look like it didn’t know if it wanted to be an autobiographical nostalgia piece from Lebrecht’s perspective or a more objective chronicle of the civil-rights movement with Heumann as the star. And this film is very nostalgic, since most of the soundtrack consists of 1960s and 1970s songs from artists such as the Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield and Neil Young.
There’s a “split personality” to “Crip Camp,” but it doesn’t get too much in the way of the film’s important overall message: Even though there’s been progress in civil rights for disabled people, there’s a still a lot more progress that needs to be made in giving disabled people the same opportunities, access and respect that are automatically given to able-bodied people. (Think about how many employers don’t hire disabled people who are qualified for jobs because the employers don’t want disabled people to represent their companies.) Sherer Jacobson said it best in the documentary: “You can pass a law, but until you change society’s attitudes, the law won’t mean much.”
Netflix premiered “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution” on March 25, 2020.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the sci-fi drama “Horse Girl” (which has almost nothing to do with horses) has a predominantly white cast of characters representing the middle class.
Culture Clash: When a seemingly normal woman tells people about why strange things are happening to her, they think she’s crazy.
Culture Audience: “Horse Girl” will appeal primarily who audiences who prefer arthouse sci-fi films, but this movie can’t quite rise above its mediocrity and ultimately disappointing conclusion.
John Reynolds and Alison Brie in “Horse Girl” (Photo by Katrina Marcinowski)
Don’t be fooled by the title of the movie drama “Horse Girl,” because this isn’t a “National Velvet” type of story about a girl and her “best friend” horse who overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to win a race. Nor is this a non-sports horse movie about someone with a special talent to communicate with horses, such as “The Horse Whisperer.” In fact, after seeing “Horse Girl,” you might wonder what the word “horse” was doing in the title in the first place. There’s a horse in this movie, but it’s not central to the plot, and the horse is in this 104-minute film for no more than 15 minutes.
So, what is “Horse Girl” about anyway? It’s about a shy, neurotic woman named Sarah (played by Alison Brie, who co-wrote the “Horse Girl” screenplay with director Jeff Baena) who believes she’s discovered something horrible about her life, but everyone around her thinks she’s crazy. When viewers first see Sarah, she’s living a routine and boring life that consists of her working as a sales associate at a local arts-and-crafts store and then coming home at night to watch TV. Her favorite show is a paranormal drama series called “Purgatory,” which features detectives investigating strange crimes that might or might not have to do with vampires and the occult.
She also spends time at a ranch where the people there don’t look too happy to see her. There’s a horse at the ranch named Willow that Sarah is overly attached to, for reasons that are explained later in the story. From the way that Sarah acts around the horse and the teenage girl who gets to ride Willow, it would be easy to assume Sarah is either the owner of the horse or a horse trainer. But things aren’t always what they seem to be with Sarah.
In the film’s opening scene—which almost looks like a parody of the prissy characters that the Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo in “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar”—Sarah and her co-worker Joan (played by Molly Shannon) commiserate over finding out what their heritage is through DNA test kits. Joan raves about getting her DNA test results, as if it’s the most exciting thing to happen to her all year. She urges Sarah to do a DNA test too, and Sarah says that she’ll think about it. Later in the movie, Joan surprises Sarah by giving her a DNA test kit for Sarah’s birthday, and Sarah does the test.
Meanwhile, Sarah’s home life is fairly lonely, even though she has a roommate. Sarah’s pretty and confident roommate Nikki (played by Debby Ryan) is the kind of woman who gives off the aura of someone who was probably a queen-bee cheerleader in high school. Nikki and her boyfriend Brian (played by Jake Picking) spend a lot of time at each other’s place. When they’re over at Nikki and Sarah’s apartment, they rarely spend time with Sarah.
You can tell that Nikki feels sorry for Sarah when Nikki suggests that Brian’s roommate Darren Colt (played by John Reynolds) come over sometime so they could double date. Sarah is reluctant and doesn’t show further enthusiasm about the “double date” idea, until Darren actually comes over with Nikki and Brian. Sarah and Darren feel an instant attraction to each other. And the fact that Darren is the name of the male lead chatacter in “Purgatory” makes it even better for Sarah, who blurts out this information to Darren.
It’s the first clue that something is really “off” with Sarah, but Darren brushes it off and thinks that Sarah is just nervous and awkward. During this house-party get-together, all four loosen up with alcohol, while the guys smoke some marijuana too. Everyone gets very intoxicated, which leads to Darren and Sarah dancing with no inhibitions with each other. After Darren leaves, Sarah vomits in the toilet.
The next day, Darren shows up at the apartment unexpectedly because he forgot to ask Sarah for her phone number. She gives him her number, and they start dating. Sarah gets an occasional nosebleed, but she doesn’t think much about it.
Meanwhile, Sarah goes to a home of a young female friend around her age to visit with her. The woman has difficulty walking, and her speaking skills also sound physically challenged. Who is this mysterious friend?
In a flashback, we see that she used to be a horse-riding pal of Sarah’s until a horrible accident left her impaired. Sarah was riding Willow at the time of the accident. Although it’s never shown or fully explained in the movie, that traumatic incident had something to do with why Sarah no longer owns Willow, but she keeps showing up at the ranch of Willow’s new owners, who can barely tolerate Sarah, since she acts like she’s still responsible for taking care of Willow.
What does that horse have to do with some of the twists and turns in the rest of the story? It’s enough to say that Sarah’s nosebleeds and her habit of sleepwalking have more to do with the story than the horse. Sarah’s sleepwalking starts to become very unsettling when things start happening, such as her stepfather’s car, which he’s let her borrow, ends up being towed because it was found in the middle of a street with a door open and the keys still in the ignition. (Paul Reiser plays Sarah’s stepfather Gary in what is essentially a cameo role.)
Sarah has no memory of driving the car there, and before she found out where the car was, she reported the car stolen. Viewers find out that Sarah’s mother had a history of depression and committed suicide years earlier. Sarah’s maternal grandmother (who looks just like Sarah in photos that are shown) also had a history of mental illness. Did Sarah inherit any of their mental problems? She seems terrified of that possibility.
One thing’s for sure: Sarah has a recurring dream that she’s lying face up in a completely white, clinical-looking room. She’s in the middle of two other people, who are also lying face up, but they appear to be asleep. One is a middle-aged man and the other is a woman who’s around Sarah’s age. Before anything happens next in the dream, Sarah wakes up.
One day, Sarah is shocked to see the man from her dream show up randomly in real life, when she sees him from a distance while she’s at her job. She follows him outside, and sees from the van that he’s driving that he works for a company called Santiguez Plumbing. She goes to his place of work and finds out that his name is Ron (played by John Ortiz), but he doesn’t know who Sarah is when Sarah asks if they’ve ever met before. He also says he has no memory of having a dream similar to hers.
More strange things keep happening to Sarah. There are long, horizontal scrape marks on her apartment wall that have appeared with no explanation. Sarah also wakes up with mysterious bruises on her body. By this point in the movie, Sarah has gone from a passive, soft-spoken person to almost manic and hysterical when she starts to put together a theory of what’s happening to her. It’s a theory that won’t be revealed in this review (even though it’s revealed in the movie’s trailer), but it takes the story in a direction that’s completely different from how the movie began.
It’s enough to say that Sarah has a very public meltdown, and she ends up getting psychiatric help. She’s assigned to a counselor named Ethan (played by Jay Duplass) who remains sympathetic but highly skeptical, as Sarah explains to him what she thinks is happening to her. (Hint: It involves a conspiracy.) The problem with “Horse Girl” is that even with the sci-fi elements that come into play with this story, where people have to suspend a certain amount of disbelief, there are so many plot holes for Sarah’s conspiracy theory that even if the theory were true, it would be almost impossible for Sarah not to find out about certain actions a lot sooner than she does.
“Horse Girl” director Baena and Brie previously worked together when she co-starred in the 2017 offbeat comedy “The Little Hours,” which was about horny Catholic nuns who act on their lusty desires. That movie gave viewers the anticipation of wondering what’s going to happen next. “Horse Girl” doesn’t have quite the same ability to keep viewers compelled, because of its nonsensical storyline. The first half of “Horse Girl starts off fairly intriguing, but the last half is a lot like a slogging through mud.
Horse fans, you’ve been given fair warning. This movie is definitely not about horses. If you want to watch a conspiracy-theory movie with sci-fi gimmicks that have been done much better in other films, then feel free to waste about 104 minutes of your time to watch “Horse Girl.”
Netflix premiered “Horse Girl” on February 7, 2020.
Culture Representation: Set primarily in modern-day Japan and with some scenes in Thailand, the dramatic film “37 Seconds” has an Asian cast of characters, and the protagonist is a young female illustrator who has cerebral palsy.
Culture Clash: The movie depicts the struggles and prejudices that a person with physical challenges must constantly face, as well as personal conflicts between a mother and a daughter.
Culture Audience: “37 Seconds” will appeal primarily to viewers who are interested in Japanese movies or movies that give the rare opportunity of making someone with cerebral palsy the star of the story.
Mei Kayama and Shunsuke Daitô in “37 Seconds” (Photo courtesy of Knockonwood)
One of the first things that people need to know about the Japanese drama “37 Seconds” is that it’s not a “disease of the week” depressing movie where people are supposed to feel sorry for someone with a physical disorder. Nor is it the type of movie where the person with the physical challenge enters a competition to face seemingly insurmountable odds. The story of “37 Seconds” (written and directed by Hikari) is about a much more subtle self-awakening that happens to an aspiring manga artist in modern-day Tokyo.
When we see the wheelchair-bound Yuma Takada (played by Mei Kayama) in the first few scenes of the movie, she’s shown to be someone who likes to be as independent as possible, as she takes public transportation around town. Yuma lives with her overprotective single mother, Kyoko (Misuzu Kanno), who still insists on bathing Yuma, even though her daughter has full use of her hands.
Yuma, who is 23 but looks like she could be in her late teens, has a part-time job working as an assistant for her pretty cousin Sayaka (played by Minori Hagiwara), a semi-famous manga artist, who has her own YouTube channel and loves to wear Harajuku fashion. Yuma is as shy and insecure as Sayaka is bold and confident.
At one of Sayaka’s book signings, Yuma unexpectedly attends as a show of her support, but Yuma gets a rude awakening when she finds out that Sayaka has been telling people that she doesn’t have an assistant. (And that’s not the only thing that Sayaka lies about when it comes to her work.) Feeling hurt and unappreciated, Yuma decides to pursue plans she started earlier to do some freelance artwork. Yuma makes cold calls to several manga publishing companies to find out if they’re looking for new artists.
She’s automatically rejected by places that don’t take unsolicited material. But one place is willing to give her a chance, and she’s able to get an interview immediately. The only catch? It’s at a magazine called Weekly Boom, which publishes erotic manga. Yuma, who’s a naïve virgin, is just happy to get an opportunity to be hired as an artist, so she goes to the interview, not really knowing what to expect.
The female Weekly Boom editor (played by Yuri Ono) who interviews Yuma takes a look at Yuma’s artwork and explains to her that if she gets hired at the company, she would have to draw sexually explicit art. The interviewer isn’t concerned with Yuma’s cerebral palsy; she’s more concerend about how much Yuma actually knows about sex. When she asks Yuma if she’s ever been sexually intimate with anyone, Yuma tells her the truth and says she’s a virgin. The interviewer tells Yuma to come back when she’s sexually experienced.
Yuma goes home and researches porn on the Internet so she can get an idea of what she can draw. Still curious, she decides to try and find a man online so she can lose her virginity to him. That leads to a series of somewhat comical blind dates whom she meets in a café. One date is a shy social misfit like Yuma, and he basically admits that he’s a recluse who’s too scared to have sex with anyone. Another date is a flamboyant eccentric who seems like he probably isn’t sexually attracted to women. The last date she meets with is a nice guy who says he would have no problem hanging out with her but he doesn’t want to take her virginity.
The next thing you know, Yuma is in a seedy area of Tokyo where the streets are lined with sex shops and massage parlors. She asks a pimp (played by Kiyohiko Shibukawa) on the street how she can hire a male prostitute. He makes a phone call and manages to find a gigolo who’s available to do the deed, so Yuma arranges to meet the guy later in a hotel that she’s rented. (The movie doesn’t really explain where Yuma has gotten the money, but it’s presumed that she gets some kind of disability income from the government.)
All of this looks fairly convincing, since Yuma has the type of unassuming personality where it seems plausible that she could go up to a pimp on the street with this request and he’d be willing to help her. Because Yuma isn’t the type of young woman whom predators would consider “sexy,” because she’s in a wheelchair, it’s entirely believable that she could go to this sleazy area and not be targeted for sex crimes. As far as a pimp is concerned, a woman in a wheelchair is of no use to him, and he actually might feel sorry for her.
Yuma’s encounter with the gigolo is one of the most amusing parts of the movie. Let’s just say that some akward things happen, so he gives her a discount on his regular fee. The encounter with the gigolo is important to mention because after Yuma leaves the hotel room and gets ready to leave, she notices that the elevator doesn’t work, so she calls for help.
It’s during this situation that she meets two people who will change the course of her life in this story. One is a middle-aged female prostitute named Mai (played by Makiko Watanabe) and her “caretaker”/driver Toshi (played by Shunsuke Daitô), who’s in his 20s. When Yuma first meets them in the hotel hallway, Mai is also with a wheelchair-bound customer, a senior citizen named Mr. Kuma (played by Yoshihiko Kumashino), who is clearly infatuated with Mai.
Seeing that Yuma is alone and kind of stranded at the hotel, Mai and Toshi offer to give her a ride home so that she doesn’t have to take public transportation. The four of them pile into a van, and Yuma reveals why she was at the hotel. Because Yuma doesn’t pass judgment on what Mai does for a living, she and Mai form a fast friendship.
On another day, she calls Mai, who takes Yuma out for some fun around town. First, they go to a sex shop where Mai buys Yuma a dildo that Yuma has picked out because she thinks it looks cute. Then, Mai takes Yuma shopping for new clothes and then to a beauty parlor where Yuma gets her hair and makeup done. After that, they end up at a gay bar watching some of the patrons doing karaoke, and Yuma gets drunk on sake.
Meanwhile, Yuma’s mother Kyoko suspects that something is going on with her daughter, so she snoops through Yuma’s belongings while Yuma is out of the house. She’s shocked to find the erotic drawings that Yuma has made as practice. So by the time Yuma gets home, she’s very drunk, and her mother is furious and confronts her over what she has found in Yuma’s room.
They have a big argument where Kyoko says that Yuma can’t survive without here. Yuma retorts by saying that she can, but that her mother is too afraid to be alone. And then Yuma blurts out something that deeply hurts her mother and makes her back out of the room: Yuma says her absent father left because he couldn’t stand to be with Kyoko.
One of the best things about “37 Seconds” is that the story could have gone in a very predictable way for the rest of the movie, but the story takes a turn that most people will not expect at all. It’s enough to say that secrets are revealed, including the full reason why the movie is titled “37 Seconds.”
Kayama, who has cerebral palsy in real life, makes her film debut with “37 Seconds,” and she admirably carries the movie with a performance that shows Yuma’s emotional transformation. But as Yuma’s mother Kyoko, actress Kanno has the most heartbreaking moment in the film. This movie is recommended for anyone who wants to discover a story about unique people who experience an unpredictable and poignant turn of events.
Netflix premiered “37 Seconds” in the U.S. and Canada on January 31, 2020.
Culture Representation: This very filtered documentary about singer Taylor Swift takes an inside look at her life as a multimillionaire celebrity whose inner circle and career team are almost exclusively white, with a few African Americans who have brief appearances as employees or video collaborators.
Culture Clash: The movie gives Swift’s perspective on conflicts she’s had with her critics over her image, her feud with Kanye West, her love life, her 2017 sexual assault trial and her outspoken liberal views on politics.
Culture Audience: “Miss Americana” will obviously appeal mostly to fans of Swift, but the movie should also interest people who like behind-the-scene stories of entertainment celebrity culture.
Taylor Swift in “Miss Americana” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
“Miss Americana,” a completely sympathetic documentary about Grammy-winning superstar Taylor Swift, could have been subtitled “The Emancipation of Taylor Swift.” The main narrative of the film is that she’s all grown up now, and she’s no longer afraid to speak her mind and go public about her liberal political views. While she undoubtedly gets candid in the film about many issues she’s faced in her life, and it’s ultimately a feel-good portrayal of Swift, the documentary (directed by Lana Wilson) has a lot of glaring omissions. The biggest one is that it completely ignores the massive public feud that Swift has with music moguls Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun—a feud in which she’s publicly accused them of using their “toxic male privilege” (Swift’s words) to try to take away power from her and other artists.
What viewers of “Miss Americana” will get are several visual montages (on stage and off stage) of Swift’s career over the years, starting when she was an unknown 12-year-old singer/songwriter from Pennsylvania trying to break into country music, to being a Nashville-based, polished 15-year-old aspiring country star, to becoming one of the best-selling female music artists of all time. There’s the expected footage of her on stage, backstage, on the sets of her music videos, and in the recording studio, including showing some of the songwriting process for her 2019 album “Lover,” with cameos from songwriter/producer Jack Antonoff and Panic! At the Disco’s Brendon Urie.
Swift has transitioned from being a country singer to a pop star. It’s a transformation that could have happened because her musical tastes have evolved, but she also admits in the documentary that any changes she makes to her image are mostly because female artists feel more pressure than male artists to constantly reinvent themselves to remain relevant.
The beginning of the film shows Swift (who’s famously a cat fanatic) playing the piano while one of her Scottish Fold cats walks all over the piano. Swift then shares some of her childhood diaries, and comments: “My moral code, then and now, is to be good. The main thing I tried to be is a good girl. I was so fulfilled by approval, that was it. I became the person everyone wanted me to be.”
It’s a story that people have heard many times from people who were child stars: They’ve been so programmed to get approval from the public that they can lose their true identities and self-esteem in the celebrity machine. There are too many tragic stories of former child stars who’ve been unable to cope with growing up and becoming less popular as they get older. It’s an underlying fear that Swift admits that she has, because she’s constantly seeking approval from fans and she feels pressure to maintain a certain level of popularity. She’s also well-aware that there’s an age double-standard for female entertainers, who are more likely than male entertainers to be cast aside by the industry once they’re over the age of 35.
The documentary clearly shows that Swift (who turned 30 in December 2019) is very good at marketing herself, and it’s a skill that she learned early in her career. There’s a clip of her on stage in 2003, shortly after her country breakthrough single “Tim McGraw” was released, where she mentions the local country radio station and charmingly asks the audience to contact the station to play the song. The movie also makes a point of showing how Swift avoided going public for years about her political views after she became old enough to vote. Her standard response back then was that she was just a singer and people wanted to hear her sing and not tell them how they should feel about politics.
Swift’s songs are very autobiographical; she’s famous for writing songs about her love affairs and breakups. And because she’s dated a lot of famous men (mostly musicians and actors), her love life has already been thoroughly dissected by fans and the media. The documentary includes a montage of media coverage about her love life and how people’s perceptions of her have been affected by the media coverage.
British actor Joe Alwyn, whom she’s been dating since 2016, is briefly shown in the documentary, as he hugs Swift backstage after one of her concerts. Alywn is not shown speaking on camera, but there are some clips of candid off-stage cell-phone footage of Swift where it’s obvious that Alwyn is the one filming it, such as a clip where Swift is singing and then mouths the words “I love you” to the person filming. All that Swift will say about her romance with Alwyn is that she’s in love, and they both decided that they wanted to keep their relationship private. She doesn’t even say his name in the documentary.
What she does reveal in the documentary that hasn’t been made public before is that she’s had an eating disorder for years and is in recovery, but it’s still a struggle for her. She first mentions her eating disorder in the film when she says she no longer looks at photos of herself every day because it can “trigger” the feelings of insecurity that she has about her body. She then goes on to describe that for years, she thought it was normal to starve herself and feel the physical effects of extreme hunger. She now says that she has healthy eating habits and is comfortable if she’s “a size 6 instead of size 00,” but she says the relentless public scrutiny about her physical appearance can still deeply affect her.
Over the years, Swift has openly talked about how the person she is closest to is her mother, Andrea Swift, who is shown several times in the documentary as a constant companion to her daughter. That strong family support is clearly one of the main reasons why Swift has not become a casualty of fame. Andrea Swift’s cancer diagnosis (which Swift has talked about in other interviews, as well as in this documentary) is something that Swift says has had a profound effect on everyone in the family, and it’s why Swift places family and friends as the highest priorities in her life.
Much has already been said and written about the feud between Swift and Kanye West. In the documentary, Swift says that the notorious incident that started it all did long-lasting damage to her self-esteem. That incident was when West got up on stage and interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech after she won the prize for Best Female Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, and he shouted that Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” video (which was nominated in the same category) “was one of the best videos of all time.”
Although West was universally slammed for that stunt, and he later made several public apologies, Swift says that at the time she was on stage during the incident, she thought the audience booing was meant for her, not West. She says in the documentary that it was the first time she felt so much negativity from an audience while she was on stage, and it was a “formative experience” that took her down a “psychological path, not all of it beneficial.”
Swift is a celebrity who became famous right when social media became part of the culture, so she’s experienced the highs and lows of social media on a learning curve. On the one hand, Swift is one of the most popular celebrities on social media, with followers that total in the hundreds of millions. On the other hand, when she does something that’s considered controversial, that huge level of attention can turn quickly against her.
The documentary mentions the enormous backlash that she received when West’s wife Kim Kardashian released a secretly recorded video of Swift talking to West over the phone and giving West the go-ahead to mention her in his 2016 song “Famous,” which had not been released yet at the time the conversation happened. The song lyric that mentioned Swift turned out be very derogatory and called her a misogynistic name. After the song was released, Swift claimed that she didn’t know her name would be used in that way, while West and his camp said she did know in advance. That’s when Kardashian released the video.
The documentary makes a point of showing how Swift was virtually bullied by West’s fans, including viral footage of an audience at one of his concerts chanting a derogatory statement about Swift. But the documentary does not mention how some of Swift’s fans on the Internet can be just as vicious in showing hate for people who dare to criticize Swift. Several celebrities who have clashed with Swift have talked about how her most fanatical fans can be bullies. Her public feuds with other celebrities (such as Katy Perry, Demi Lovato, Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber and ex-boyfriends Calvin Harris, John Mayer and Joe Jonas) are not mentioned in the documentary, probably because Swift is no longer feuding with them.
Whichever side you believe in the controversy over “Famous,” Swift reveals in the documentary that all the hate she received from “cancel culture” was the main reason why she took a year-long hiatus and came back to the spotlight with her 2017 album “Reputation.” There’s some footage of Swift writing songs that ended up on the album, as well as a scene that shows her disappointment when she gets a call from a handler informing her that the album didn’t get any Grammy nominations in the major categories. (Don’t feel too sorry for Swift. She’s already got several Grammys, including two Grammys for Album of the Year.)
The movie also covers the lawsuit that made Swift go public about being sexually groped by a radio DJ, who later sued her because he was fired over that incident. Swift countersued for $1, to prove that he did grope her without her consent, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with blaming her for the crime he committed. Her $1 counterclaim was her way of telling the world that this issue wasn’t about the money for her. Swift famously won the lawsuit and became an advocate of the #MeToo movement.
In the documentary, Swift makes it clear that her #MeToo experience was the biggest catalyst to her political awakening and her decision to no longer remain silent over the progressive political issues that she wants to publicly support. One of the best parts of the documentary is showing what happened behind the scenes when she made the major decision to give her first political endorsement.
Swift says she was constantly told for her entire career “not to be like the Dixie Chicks,” the female country trio that lost a lot of fans in the early 2000s, after the group spoke out against Republican politics and the war in Iraq. But Swift’s #MeToo experience and the subsequent lawsuits opened her eyes to social justice issues, and she decided for herself: “The next time there’s any opportunity to change anything, you’d better know what you stand for and what you want to say.”
Her decision to go public with her political views didn’t sit well with several members of her team, who told her that she would be making a big mistake. In the movie, the objectors are shown to be all middle-aged men (including her father), who tried to scare her by saying that they were concerned that she would get more death threats and would lose half of her audience if she came out as a political liberal. But Swift firmly did not back down, even though there was some expected fear of the unknown.
The movie shows her apprehension and excitement that she and publicist Tree Paine had together in the moments before she posted her endorsement of Phil Bredesen (a Democrat) over Marsha Blackburn (a Republican) in the 2018 race for Tennessee U.S. Senator. Not only did Swift endorse Bredesen, but she also publicly slammed Blackburn for voting against laws that support rights for the LGBTQ community and female victims of violence. Ultimately, Blackburn won the election, but Swift says she’s hopeful that in future elections, the younger generation will vote to sway politics in a more progressive and inclusive direction.
As Swift says in the movie: “I feel really good about not feeling muzzled anymore. And it was my own doing. I needed to learn a lot before I spoke to 200 million people. But I’ve educated myself now, and it’s time to take the masking tape off of my mouth forever.”
While Swift is obviously a positive inspiration in many ways, as this documentary makes very clear, there are still aspects of “Miss Americana” that aren’t entirely candid. One of the biggest criticisms of Swift is that she has a tendency to portray herself as a victim when things don’t go her way. No one is expecting her to be perfect, but there’s a limit to Swift being honest about her life for this documentary.
Although she admitted to having issues about eating and her body image, not once does she admit to doing anything mean-spirited or cutthroat in her life. There’s no mention of any friends or lovers she might have tossed aside, no remorse or regret about not treating a loved one better, no acknowledgement of less-than-wonderful things she’s done to rivals or former business associates. In reality, no one gets to her level of success by being nice to everyone. In the documentary, the only mistake she admits to making is not being politically outspoken in 2016 for the U.S. presidential election.
For a “behind the scenes” documentary about an artist who’s risen to the top of the music industry, it’s very unrealistic for Swift to not acknowledge any experiences that she might have had with illegal drugs, alcohol, diet pills, prescription medication or even nicotine. If you were to believe everything that’s presented this movie, those things just don’t exist in Swift’s world. The worst “vice” that Swift shows on camera is uttering a few curse words. The documentary might look “revealing” to many people who don’t know what really goes on behind the scenes in the entertainment industry, but for those who do know what really goes on, it’s very obvious that “Miss Americana” is very white-washed indeed.
The narrative here is that bad things keep happening to Swift (stalkers, intrusive paparazzi, tabloid media, haters on the Internet), and she always finds a way to triumph and overcome it all. That is, except for the battle that she lost against Borchetta and Braun, which is not mentioned at all in this documentary. It’s obvious that Swift and/or the documentary’s filmmakers didn’t want to put anything in the movie that would weaken Swift’s “female empowerment” image that she wants to have.
In July 2019, Swift went on the Internet to post a lengthy rant accusing Borchetta (the founder of Big Machine Records, her former record company) of unscrupulously taking her pre-2019 song catalogue and selling it to music manager Braun, whom Swift considers an enemy because Braun was West’s manager during the worst of Swift’s feud with West. Swift claims that she and her management/publishing team (which includes her father, Scott Swift) weren’t given a fair opportunity to buy these master recordings of her songs. Borchetta vehemently denies the accusation, and says that Swift had a chance to buy the songs but she didn’t agree to the deal that was presented. The “he said/she said” fight blew up to such an extent that many celebrities jumped into the fray by either taking Swift’s side or the Borchetta/Braun side.
For all of Swift’s preaching about female empowerment in this documentary, it’s odd that she and this movie’s director have cut out this chapter of her life that Swift has tried to present as part of her fight against male sexism. She used the feud as a platform to speak out about not only male sexism but also artists’ rights and what kinds of contracts artists sign that could have long-lasting effects on their careers.
Swift has presented herself as an outspoken advocate for artists’ rights before (her push to get Spotify to pay reasonable artist royalties is one example—something that’s also not mentioned in the movie), so it’s a major setback in her life and her career that one of her enemies now owns the vast majority of her songs. The fact that this life-changing experience wasn’t even acknowledged in the documentary indicates how much of a public-relations showcase “Miss Americana” is instead of a complete behind-the-scenes look at her life.
The documentary seems to want people to forget that Swift’s feud with Borchetta/Braun ever happened, even though she was the one who took the feud public in the first place and ended up getting a lot of backlash from people who think she misrepresented herself as a victim in this situation. Rather than being fully honest and sharing what she learned from this undoubtedly painful experience, Swift probably told the filmmakers directly or indirectly not to put it in the movie. Let’s be real: Even though she’s not listed as a producer of “Miss Americana,” she obviously had a lot of creative control over this documentary, based on what they chose to show and what they chose not to show.
Also absent from the documentary is any mention of Swift’s attempts to become a movie actress, which have resulted in her appearing in flops such as 2014’s “The Giver” and 2019’s “Cats.” Anything that makes Swift look like a failure or someone who made a really bad career decision is essentially shut out of the documentary. Instead, “Miss Americana” ends with Swift winning Video of the Year at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards for “You Need to Calm Down,” her platform to show her as an ally to the LGBTQ community. The award show took place on August 26, 2019—several weeks after she started feuding with Borchetta and Braun, so there was plenty of time to include the feud in the movie.
Another thing the documentary makes clear is that even though Swift talks a lot about female empowerment, her team is led by men, while women are mostly relegated to traditionally female roles, such as publicist, backup dancer, makeup artist and hair stylist. There are several scenes in the movie where Swift is the only woman in the recording studio. Why not hire more female musicians, producers and engineers? Swift has the power to do that, so there’s really no excuse.
Beyoncé has an all-female touring band of musicians (and so did Prince), so there are artists who are actually doing something about breaking barriers for women in the music industry. It remains to be seen if Swift will take a lot of her talk about female empowerment in the music industry and actually be an agent for change. If she ever wins Album of the Year at the Grammys again, we’ll see if she’s surrounded by a diverse group of people on stage who would share the award with her, instead of the same men who constantly get preferential treatment in the music industry.
For now, “Miss Americana” shows that Swift wants to spread a progressive political agenda and she wants to be praised as a symbol for female empowerment. But if she really wants to empower more women in the industry, she can start with the people she hires to make music with her and who she puts in charge of her business interests, instead of blaming other people for being the problem.
Netflix premiered “Miss Americana” and released the movie in select U.S. cinemas on January 31, 2020.
Culture Representation: Set in the fictional American city of Holloway, “A Fall From Grace” has predominantly black middle-class characters who are connected in some way to a murder mystery case.
Culture Clash: The characters have conflicts over the guilt or innocence of a woman accused of murder.
Culture Audience: “A Fall From Grace” will appeal primarily to fans of Tyler Perry and low-budget, melodramatic “women in peril” movies.
Crystal Fox and Mehcad Brooks in “A Fall From Grace” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
If you’re watching a Tyler Perry drama, here are three things you can expect to happen:
(1) A husband or boyfriend will cheat on his wife or girlfriend.
(2) The woman will find out about the infidelity.
(3) She not only gets mad, she also gets even.
The legal mystery “A Fall From Grace” (written and directed by Perry) falls right in line with this formula, with plenty of melodramatic and implausible moments, as well as a few touches of humor. (“A Fall From Grace” is definitely for mature audiences, since there’s partial nudity, adult language and very bloody violence.) Perry’s dramas overall are much more interesting than his comedies, but there’s such a similarity to the narratives of Perry’s dramas that they’re very much like passing by a car wreck: You know what you’re probably going to see is messy and tragic, but sometimes you’re compelled to take a look anyway.
To his credit, Perry gives a lot of work to black actors and actresses, since his movies and TV shows have predominantly black casts. It’s just too bad that he can’t come up with more original scripts that don’t have the same, tired concept that the central character (who’s usually an African American woman) is stressed-out and unhappy because of a man. She’s either dealing with a lying cheater, or she’s having problems finding a good man who won’t cheat on her, because she was treated badly by a cheater in her previous relationship.
In “A Fall From Grace,” the troubled woman is Grace Waters (played by Crystal Fox), a mid-level bank employee in her 50s who’s confessed to bludgeoning to death her much-younger second husband, Shannon DeLong (played by Mehcad Brooks), who was married to Grace for less than a year. The crime is shocking to people who know Grace, because she has a mild-mannered and passive personality. Grace’s 26-year-old attorney is public defender Jasmine Bryant (played by Bresha Webb), who’s reluctant to take the case because she’s eager to have her first experience going to trial. Her demanding boss Roy (played by Perry) thinks a trial isn’t necessary, since Grace has confessed to first-degree murder and wants to plead guilty.
As Roy explains to Jasmine, he put her on the case because Jasmine is an excellent negotiator of plea bargains, and he’s training her to do what public defenders usually do: make plea deals for almost all of their clients. But there’s another reason why Jasmine doesn’t want to take the case: As she privately tells her loyal and supportive husband, Jordan (played by Matthew Law), who’s a police officer for the city, she’s become disillusioned by representing so many people she thinks are guilty. Jasmine is seriously thinking about leaving her budding law career to start over in a new profession, but Jordan encourages her not to give up so easily.
Because Grace’s case is very high-profile in the local news, Jasmine is also feeling the pressure of getting the right deal for Grace. The maximum penalty for pleading guilty will be life without parole, but Jasmine is hoping that Grace (who has no previous arrest record) will get a plea bargain of 15 years with the possibility of parole. If Grace goes to trial, she risks getting the death penalty if she’s found guilty. Jasmine meets with a disheveled and dejected Grace in jail, and something about their meeting seems “off” to Jasmine—Grace’s only request for the deal is that she’s sent to a prison that’s near where her grandchildren live. Jasmine begins to wonder if Grace is really not guilty and possibly covering up for someone else.
Jasmine’s doubt about Grace’s guilt grows even more when she looks at the crime-scene photos, and sees that the blood patterns don’t match the patterns of someone who’s supposedly lost blood from a blow to the head. She shows the evidence to Roy, who orders her to make a plea deal and not bring the case to trial. Jasmine decides to investigate further anyway, knowing that she could end up getting fired for insubordination.
Jasmine finds herself meeting with one of Grace’s close friends named Sarah (played by Phylicia Rashad), who runs a boarding house for retired women. (Cicely Tyson has a cameo as one of the residents. She’s literally in the movie for less than 10 minutes.) Sarah tells Jasmine that she’s been friends with Grace for about six years.
In a flashback, viewers see Sarah and Grace talking after attending the wedding of Grace’s ex-husband, who left her for his much-younger secretary, whom he ended up marrying. Grace and her ex-husband (who have a married adult son together) had a divorce where Grace was willing to give up their house to him because she wanted to avoid any nasty legal battles. Grace has convinced herself that she’ll never fall in love again, but Sarah encourages her to get out of the house more and start dating again. Sarah suggests that Grace meet new people by going to an upcoming gallery event that will be the opening of a new photo exhibit.
While Grace is at the gallery exhibit, which features Ethiopian tribe photos taken by Shannon DeLong, she is approached by a hunky man who’s about 20 years younger than Grace. He strikes up a conversation with Grace and asks her what she thinks of the photos. Grace says that she’s very impressed with the photos.
She also tells the man that she thinks Shannon is probably an African woman, because the people in the photos look like they trusted the photographer. While they’re talking and as the man openly flirts with her, the gallery owner makes a speech to introduce Shannon DeLong. And lo and behold, to Grace’s surprise (but not to anyone else watching this who could easily guess who this mystery man is), the charming man whom she was talking to is none other than Shannon DeLong.
The next day, Shannon sends Grace some roses and one of his photos. Grace is curious and a little taken aback at his attempts to romance her because she doesn’t think she’s attractive enough for a man as good-looking and young as Shannon is. At first, she plays hard to get, but she eventually agrees to go out on a date with him.
While on the date, she asks him point-blank: “Why me?” Shannon replies, “Shouldn’t the question be, ‘Why not you?'” They end up having a whirlwind, chaste romance (Grace is religious and won’t sleep with him as long as they’re not married) that leads to Shannon proposing, and then they get married.
But how well does Grace really know her new husband? He starts to show a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality that can flip on a moment’s notice. When Grace overhears him talking on the phone to someone she doesn’t know, and she asks him who he’s talking to, he sneers at her in a menacing tone: “Grace, there are two things I don’t like: (1) being checked up on and (2) being questioned.” Grace finds out the hard way how much of a mistake it was to marry Shannon.
Grace catches him in their bedroom having sex with another woman. Grace also gets fired for embezzlement, and she finds out that Shannon committed the crime by stealing her identity. (This isn’t spoiler information, since it’s in the movie’s trailer.)
When they’re alone together, Shannon openly mocks Grace because he’s sure he can get away with what he did. Things get very ugly and bloody, with Grace whacking him repeatedly with a baseball bat, like someone fighting zombies in “The Walking Dead,” and it’s all resulted in Grace facing prison time for Shannon’s murder.
But wait. This wouldn’t be a Tyler Perry movie without something ludicrous about the plot. It turns out that Shannon’s body was never found. (This detail is also revealed in the movie’s trailer.) Presumably, the district attorney felt there was enough blood evidence to suggest that Shannon is dead, but even that’s a stretch of the imagination.
In real life, prosecution of a murder case, even with a confession, rarely happens without a body (or vital body parts, such as a skull or torso), in order for a medical examiner to determine the cause of death. In the rare instances when someone is charged with murder without a body being found, several years have passed after the allegedly murdered person has been declared missing. Perry is assuming that most people watching this movie won’t know all of that, because the point of having a missing body in this murder mystery is to make viewers wonder if Shannon is really dead.
But that opens up a whole other set of questions: Why did Grace confess in the first place if there was no body found? If Shannon isn’t dead, shouldn’t Grace still be in trouble for attempted murder? And who got rid of the body if he’s dead? Viewers won’t necessarily get the answers to these questions during the course of the movie, as Grace changes her mind about pleading guilty, and the case goes to trial.
The courtroom scenes are predictably over-the-top, but at least they’re more realistic than the bumbling cop scenes with Jasmine’s husband Jordan. In one scene, Jordan is handcuffing someone in an arrest on the street, and then when Jordan suddenly gets important information about Grace’s case, he drives off and leaves the suspect (still handcuffed) out on the street. Would it have been so hard to put the suspect in the back of the squad car instead of leaving him out on the street so he could run away? And in another scene that happens in the beginning of the movie, Jordan unsuccessfully tries to prevent a suicidal elderly woman from jumping off the roof of her house. Apparently, this city must be seriously lacking in police officers, since Jordan doesn’t have any other cop to back him up in this emergency scene.
The suicide scene at the beginning of the movie is explained at the end of the movie, which has a twist that’s kind of crazy. But people should know by now that Perry loves to churn out these soapy, pulpy dramas where people can soak up his brand of cheap thrills. Dive right on in, if that’s your thing.
Netflix premiered “A Fall From Grace” on January 17, 2020.
The following is a press release from the Critics Choice Association:
The Critics Choice Association (CCA) announced today the nominees for the 25th Annual Critics’ Choice Awards. The winners will be revealed at the star-studded Critics’ Choice Awards gala, which will once again be hosted by film, television, and stage star Taye Diggs, and broadcast live on The CW Television Network on Sunday, January 12, 2020 from 7:00 – 10:00 pm ET (delayed PT).
“The Irishman” leads all films this year with 14 nominations including Best Picture, Robert De Niro for Best Actor, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci for Best Supporting Actor, Martin Scorsese for Best Director, Best Acting Ensemble, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Hair and Makeup, Best Visual Effects, and Best Score.
“Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” impressed with 12 nominations, followed by “Little Women” with nine, “1917” and “Marriage Story” with eight, and “Jojo Rabbit,” “Joker,” and “Parasite” with seven each.
Several actors received multiple nominations across both the film and television fields. Laura Dern could take home two trophies for her work in “Big Little Lies” and “Marriage Story,” while Scarlett Johansson received nominations for her roles in both “Jojo Rabbit” and “Marriage Story.” Newcomer Asante Blackk also received two nominations for his roles in “This Is Us” and “When They See Us.”
Many of this year’s director nominees pulled double duty, and are nominated for their screenplays as well, including Noah Baumbach for “Marriage Story,” Greta Gerwig for “Little Women,” Bong Joon Ho for “Parasite,” and Quentin Tarantino for “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.”
Netflix has earned 61 nominations across their series and films. HBO received 33 nominations, followed by Amazon with 14 (Film & TV), and NBC with 12. Topping the list of nominated series is “When They See Us” (Netflix) with six, followed by “This Is Us” (NBC) and “Schitt’s Creek” (Pop) with five each. Several programs received a total of 4 nominations including “Barry” (HBO), “Chernobyl” (HBO), “Fleabag” (Amazon), “Fosse/Verdon” (FX), “Game of Thrones” (HBO), “The Crown” (Netflix), “The Good Fight” (CBS All Access), “Unbelievable” (Netflix), and “Watchmen” (HBO).
“This has been a truly great year for television and movies,” said CCA CEO Joey Berlin. “In every genre, from every viewpoint and distribution platform, brilliant storytellers are challenging and delighting us. We are so excited to have the opportunity to celebrate them, and their work, on January 12 on The CW!”
“Critics’ Choice Awards” are bestowed annually to honor the finest in cinematic and television achievement. Historically, the “Critics’ Choice Awards” are the most accurate predictor of the Academy Award nominations.
The 25th annual Critics’ Choice Awards show will be produced by Bob Bain Productions and Berlin Entertainment. The CCA is represented by Dan Black of Greenberg Traurig.
The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and The CW Network will continue their partnership with the presentation of the fourth annual #SeeHer Award. This award recognizes a woman who embodies the values set forth by the #SeeHer movement — to push boundaries on changing stereotypes and recognize the importance of accurately portraying women across the entertainment landscape. The award will bear significant importance as 2020 marks the 100-year anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Past recipients of the #SeeHer award include Claire Foy, Gal Gadot and Viola Davis. The 2020 honoree will be announced soon.
Follow the 25th annual Critics’ Choice Awards on Twitter and Instagram @CriticsChoice and on Facebook/CriticsChoiceAwards.
About 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. It was organized this 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 launched in 2006 as America’s fifth broadcast network, with programming targeting younger viewers, a demographic highly sought after by advertisers. The CW, a joint venture between Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corporation, broadcasts a six-night, 12-hour primetime lineup, Sunday through Friday. The CW’s primetime programming is also available to stream for free, without authentication, on the ad-supported cwtv.com and The CW app, now 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 original short-form digital content as well as past seasons of fan-favorite television series. For more information about the network and its programming, visit www.cwtvpr.com.
About the Association of National Advertisers (ANA)
The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) makes a difference for individuals, brands, and the industry by driving growth, advancing the interests of marketers, and promoting and protecting the well-being of the marketing community. Founded in 1910, the ANA provides leadership that advances marketing excellence and shapes the future of the industry. The ANA’s membership includes more than 1,700 companies with 25,000 brands that engage almost 150,000 industry professionals and collectively spend or support more than $400 billion in marketing and advertising annually. The membership is comprised of more than 1,000 client-side marketers and more than 700 marketing solutions provider members, which include leading marketing data science and technology suppliers, ad agencies, law firms, consultants, and vendors. Further enriching the ecosystem is the work of the nonprofit ANA Educational Foundation (AEF), which has the mission of enhancing the understanding of advertising and marketing within the academic and marketing communities
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FILM NOMINATIONS FOR THE 25TH ANNUAL CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS
BEST PICTURE
“1917”
“Ford v Ferrari”
“The Irishman”
“Jojo Rabbit”
“Joker”
“Little Women”
“Marriage Story”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
“Parasite”
“Uncut Gems”
BEST ACTOR
Antonio Banderas – “Pain and Glory”
Robert De Niro – “The Irishman”
Leonardo DiCaprio – “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Adam Driver – “Marriage Story”
Eddie Murphy – “Dolemite Is My Name”
Joaquin Phoenix – “Joker”
Adam Sandler – “Uncut Gems”
BEST ACTRESS
Awkwafina – “The Farewell”
Cynthia Erivo – “Harriet”
Scarlett Johansson – “Marriage Story”
Lupita Nyong’o – Us
Saoirse Ronan – “Little Women”
Charlize Theron – “Bombshell”
Renée Zellweger – “Judy”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Willem Dafoe – “The Lighthouse”
Tom Hanks – A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”
Anthony Hopkins – “The Two Popes”
Al Pacino – “The Irishman”
Joe Pesci – “The Irishman”
Brad Pitt – “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Laura Dern – “Marriage Story”
Scarlett Johansson – “Jojo Rabbit”
Jennifer Lopez – “Hustlers”
Florence Pugh – “Little Women”
Margot Robbie – “Bombshell”
Zhao Shuzhen – “The Farewell”
BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS
Julia Butters – “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Roman Griffin Davis – “Jojo Rabbit”
Noah Jupe – “Honey Boy”
Thomasin McKenzie – “Jojo Rabbit”
Shahadi Wright Joseph – “Us”
Archie Yates – “Jojo Rabbit”
BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE
“Bombshell”
“The Irishman”
“Knives Out”
“Little Women”
“Marriage Story”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
“Parasite”
BEST DIRECTOR
Noah Baumbach – “Marriage Story”
Bong Joon Ho – “Parasite”
Greta Gerwig – “Little Women”
Sam Mendes – “1917”
Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie – “Uncut Gems”
Martin Scorsese – “The Irishman”
Quentin Tarantino – “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Noah Baumbach – “Marriage Story”
Rian Johnson – “Knives Out”
Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won – “Parasite”
Quentin Tarantino – “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Lulu Wang – “The Farewell”
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Greta Gerwig – “Little Women”
Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue – A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”
Anthony McCarten – “The Two Popes”
Todd Phillips & Scott Silver – “Joker”
Taika Waititi – “Jojo Rabbit”
Steven Zaillian – “The Irishman”
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Jarin Blaschke – “The Lighthouse”
Roger Deakins – “1917”
Phedon Papamichael – “Ford v Ferrari”
Rodrigo Prieto – “The Irishman”
Robert Richardson – “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Lawrence Sher – “Joker”
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Mark Friedberg, Kris Moran – “Joker”
Dennis Gassner, Lee Sandales – “1917”
Jess Gonchor, Claire Kaufman – “Little Women”
Lee Ha Jun – “Parasite”
Barbara Ling, Nancy Haigh – “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Bob Shaw, Regina Graves – “The Irishman”
Donal Woods, Gina Cromwell – “Downton Abbey”
BEST EDITING
Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie – “Uncut Gems”
Andrew Buckland, Michael McCusker – “Ford v Ferrari”
Yang Jinmo – “Parasite”
Fred Raskin – “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Thelma Schoonmaker – “The Irishman”
Lee Smith – “1917”
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Ruth E. Carter – “Dolemite Is My Name”
Julian Day – “Rocketman”
Jacqueline Durran – “Little Women”
Arianne Phillips – “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Sandy Powell, Christopher Peterson – “The Irishman”
Anna Robbins – “Downton Abbey”
BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP
“Bombshell”
“Dolemite Is My Name”
“The Irishman”
“Joker”
“Judy”
“Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”
“Rocketman”
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
“1917”
“Ad Astra”
“The Aeronauts”
“Avengers: Endgame”
“Ford v Ferrari”
“The Irishman”
“The Lion King”
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
“Abominable”
“Frozen II”
“How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World”
“I Lost My Body”
“Missing Link”
“Toy Story 4”
BEST ACTION MOVIE
“1917”
“Avengers: Endgame”
“Ford v Ferrari”
“John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum”
“Spider-Man: Far From Home”
BEST COMEDY
“Booksmart”
“Dolemite Is My Name”
“The Farewell”
“Jojo Rabbit”
“Knives Out”
BEST SCI-FI OR HORROR MOVIE
“Ad Astra”
“Avengers: Endgame”
“Midsommar”
“Us”
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
“Atlantics”
“Les Misérables”
“Pain and Glory”
“Parasite”
“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”
BEST SONG
“Glasgow (No Place Like Home)” – “Wild Rose”
“(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” – “Rocketman”
“I’m Standing With You” – “Breakthrough”
“Into the Unknown” – “Frozen II”
“Speechless” – “Aladdin”
“Spirit” – “The Lion King”
“Stand Up” – “Harriet”
BEST SCORE
Michael Abels – “Us”
Alexandre Desplat – “Little Women”
Hildur Guðnadóttir – “Joker”
Randy Newman – “Marriage Story”
Thomas Newman – “1917”
Robbie Robertson – “The Irishman
NOMINEES BY FILM FOR THE 25TH ANNUAL CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS
1917 – 8
Best Picture
Best Director – Sam Mendes
Best Cinematography – Roger Deakins
Best Production Design – Dennis Gassner, Lee Sandales
Best Editing – Lee Smith
Best Visual Effects
Best Action Movie
Best Score – Thomas Newman
A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD – 2
Best Supporting Actor – Tom Hanks
Best Adapted Screenplay – Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue
ABOMINABLE – 1
Best Animated Feature
AD ASTRA – 2
Best Visual Effects
Best Sci-Fi or Horror Movie
ALADDIN – 1
Best Song – Speechless
ATLANTICS – 1
Best Foreign Language Film
AVENGERS: ENDGAME – 3
Best Visual Effects
Best Action Movie
Best Sci-Fi or Horror Movie
BOMBSHELL – 4
Best Actress – Charlize Theron
Best Supporting Actress – Margot Robbie
Best Acting Ensemble
Best Hair and Makeup
BOOKSMART – 1
Best Comedy
BREAKTHROUGH – 1
Best Song – I’m Standing With You
DOLEMITE IS MY NAME – 4
Best Actor – Eddie Murphy
Best Costume Design – Ruth E. Carter
Best Comedy
Best Hair and Makeup
DOWNTON ABBEY – 2
Best Production Design – Donal Woods, Gina Cromwell
Best Costume Design – Anna Robbins
FORD V FERRARI – 5
Best Picture
Best Cinematography – Phedon Papamichael
Best Editing – Andrew Buckand, Michael McCusker
Best Visual Effects
Best Action Movie
FROZEN II – 2
Best Animated Feature
Best Song – Into the Unknown
HARRIET – 2
Best Actress – Cynthia Erivo
Best Song – Stand Up
HONEY BOY – 1
Best Young Actor/Actress – Noah Jupe
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD – 1
Best Animated Feature
HUSTLERS – 1
Best Supporting Actress – Jennifer Lopez
I LOST MY BODY – 1
Best Animated Feature
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM – 1
Best Action Movie
JOJO RABBIT – 7
Best Picture
Best Supporting Actress – Scarlett Johansson
Best Young Actor/Actress – Roman Griffin Davis
Best Young Actor/Actress – Thomasin McKenzie
Best Young Actor/Actress – Archie Yates
Best Adapted Screenplay – Taika Waititi
Best Comedy
JOKER – 7
Best Picture
Best Actor – Joaquin Phoenix
Best Adapted Screenplay – Todd Phillips, Scott Silver
Best Cinematography – Lawrence Sher
Best Production Design – Mark Friedberg, Kris Moran
Best Hair and Makeup
Best Score – Hildur Guðnadóttir
JUDY – 2
Best Actress – Renée Zellweger
Best Hair and Makeup
KNIVES OUT – 3
Best Acting Ensemble
Best Original Screenplay – Rian Johnson
Best Comedy
LES MISÉRABLES – 1
Best Foreign Language Film
LITTLE WOMEN – 9
Best Picture
Best Actress – Saoirse Ronan
Best Supporting Actress – Florence Pugh
Best Acting Ensemble
Best Director – Greta Gerwig
Best Adapted Screenplay – Greta Gerwig
Best Production Design – Jess Gonchor, Claire Kaufman
Best Costume Design – Jacqueline Durran
Best Score – Alexandre Desplat
MARRIAGE STORY – 8
Best Picture
Best Actor – Adam Driver
Best Actress – Scarlett Johansson
Best Supporting Actress – Laura Dern
Best Acting Ensemble
Best Director – Noah Baumbach
Best Original Screenplay – Noah Baumbach
Best Score – Randy Newman
MIDSOMMER – 1
Best Sci-Fi or Horror Movie
MISSING LINK – 1
Best Animated Feature
ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD – 12
Best Picture
Best Actor – Leonardo DiCaprio
Best Supporting Actor – Brad Pitt
Best Young Actor/Actress – Julia Butters
Best Acting Ensemble
Best Director – Quentin Tarantino
Best Original Screenplay – Quentin Tarantino
Best Cinematography – Robert Richardson
Best Production Design – Barbara Ling, Nancy Haigh
Best Editing – Fred Raskin
Best Costume Design – Arianne Phillips
Best Hair and Makeup
PAIN AND GLORY – 2
Best Actor – Antonio Banderas
Best Foreign Language Film
PARASITE – 7
Best Picture
Best Acting Ensemble
Best Director – Bong Joon Ho
Best Original Screenplay – Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won
Best Production Design – Lee Ha Jun
Best Editing – Yang Jinmo
Best Foreign Language Film
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE – 1
Best Foreign Language Film
ROCKETMAN – 3
Best Hair and Makeup
Best Song – (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again
Best Costume Design – Julian Day
SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME – 1
Best Action Movie
THE AERONAUTS – 1
Best Visual Effects
THE FAREWELL – 4
Best Actress – Awkwafina
Best Supporting Actress – Zhao Shuzhen
Best Comedy
Best Original Screenplay – Lulu Wang
THE IRISHMAN – 14
Best Picture
Best Actor – Robert De Niro
Best Supporting Actor – Al Pacino
Best Supporting Actor – Joe Pesci
Best Director – Martin Scorsese
Best Acting Ensemble
Best Adapted Screenplay – Steven Zaillian
Best Cinematography – Rodrigo Prieto
Best Production Design – Bob Shaw, Regina Graves
Best Editing – Thelma Schoonmaker
Best Costume Design – Sandy Powell, Christopher Peterson
Best Hair and Makeup
Best Visual Effects
Best Score – Robbie Robertson
THE LIGHTHOUSE – 2
Best Supporting Actor – Willem Dafoe
Best Cinematography – Jarin Blaschke
THE LION KING – 2
Best Visual Effects
Best Song – Spirit
THE TWO POPES – 2
Best Supporting Actor – Anthony Hopkins
Best Adapted Screenplay – Anthony McCarten
TOY STORY 4 – 1
Best Animated Feature
UNCUT GEMS – 4
Best Picture
Best Actor – Adam Sandler
Best Director – Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie
Best Editing – Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie
US – 4
Best Actress – Lupita Nyong’o
Best Young Actor/Actress – Shahadi Wright Joseph
Best Sci-Fi or Horror Movie
Best Score – Michael Abels
WILD ROSE – 1
Best Song – Glasgow (No Place Like Home)
TELEVISION NOMINATIONS FOR THE 25TH ANNUAL CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS
BEST DRAMA SERIES
“The Crown” (Netflix)
“David Makes Man” (OWN)
“Game of Thrones” (HBO)
“The Good Fight” (CBS All Access)
“Pose” (FX)
“Succession” (HBO)
“This Is Us” (NBC)
“Watchmen” (HBO)
BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Sterling K. Brown – “This Is Us” (NBC)
Mike Colter – “Evil” (CBS)
Paul Giamatti – “Billions” (Showtime)
Kit Harington – “Game of Thrones” (HBO)
Freddie Highmore – “The Good Doctor” (ABC)
Tobias Menzies – “The Crown” (Netflix)
Billy Porter – “Pose” (FX)
Jeremy Strong – “Succession” (HBO)
BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Christine Baranski – “The Good Fight” (CBS All Access)
Olivia Colman – “The Crown” (Netflix)
Jodie Comer – “Killing Eve” (BBC America)
Nicole Kidman – “Big Little” Lies (HBO)
Regina King – “Watchmen” (HBO)
Mj Rodriguez – “Pose” (FX)
Sarah Snook – “Succession” (HBO)
Zendaya – “Euphoria” (HBO)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Asante Blackk – “This Is Us” (NBC)
Billy Crudup – “The Morning Show” (Apple)
Asia Kate Dillon – “Billions” (Showtime)
Peter Dinklage – “Game of Thrones” (HBO)
Justin Hartley – “This Is Us” (NBC)
Delroy Lindo – “The Good Fight” (CBS All Access)
Tim Blake Nelson – “Watchmen” (HBO)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Helena Bonham Carter – “The Crown” (Netflix)
Gwendoline Christie – “Game of Thrones” (HBO)
Laura Dern – “Big Little Lies” (HBO)
Audra McDonald – “The Good Fight” (CBS All Access)
Jean Smart – “Watchmen” (HBO)
Meryl Streep – “Big Little Lies” (HBO)
Susan Kelechi Watson – “This Is Us” (NBC)
BEST COMEDY SERIES
“Barry” (HBO)
“Fleabag” (Amazon)
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon)
“Mom” (CBS)
“One Day at a Time” (Netflix)
“Pen15” (Hulu)
“Schitt’s Creek” (Pop)
BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Ted Danson – “The Good Place” (NBC)
Walton Goggins – “The Unicorn” (CBS)
Bill Hader – “Barry” (HBO)
Eugene Levy – Schitt’s Creek (Pop)
Paul Rudd – “Living with Yourself” (Netflix)
Bashir Salahuddin – “Sherman’s Showcase” (IFC)
Ramy Youssef – “Ramy” (Hulu)
BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Christina Applegate – “Dead to Me” (Netflix)
Alison Brie – “GLOW” (Netflix)
Rachel Brosnahan – “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon)
Kirsten Dunst – “On Becoming a God in Central Florida” (Showtime)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus – “Veep” (HBO)
Catherine O’Hara – “Schitt’s Creek” (Pop)
Phoebe Waller-Bridge – “Fleabag” (Amazon)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Andre Braugher – “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (NBC)
Anthony Carrigan – “Barry” (HBO)
William Jackson Harper – “The Good Place” (NBC)
Daniel Levy – “Schitt’s Creek” (Pop)
Nico Santos – “Superstore” (NBC)
Andrew Scott – “Fleabag” (Amazon)
Henry Winkler – “Barry” (HBO)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Alex Borstein – “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon)
D’Arcy Carden – “The Good Place” (NBC)
Sian Clifford – “Fleabag” (Amazon)
Betty Gilpin – “GLOW” (Netflix)
Rita Moreno – “One Day at a Time” (Netflix)
Annie Murphy – “Schitt’s Creek” (Pop)
Molly Shannon – “The Other Two” (Comedy Central)
BEST LIMITED SERIES
“Catch-22” (Hulu)
“Chernobyl” (HBO)
“Fosse/Verdon” (FX)
“The Loudest Voice” (Showtime)
“Unbelievable” (Netflix)
“When They See Us” (Netflix)
“Years and Years” (HBO)
BEST MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION
“Brexit” (HBO)
“Deadwood: The Movie” (HBO)
“El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie” (Netflix)
“Guava Island” (Amazon)
“Native Son” (HBO)
“Patsy & Loretta” (Lifetime)
BEST ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Christopher Abbott – “Catch-22” (Hulu)
Mahershala Ali – “True Detective” (HBO)
Russell Crowe – “The Loudest Voice” (Showtime)
Jared Harris – “Chernobyl” (HBO)
Jharrel Jerome – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
Sam Rockwell – “Fosse/Verdon” (FX)
Noah Wyle – “The Red Line” (CBS)
BEST ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Kaitlyn Dever – “Unbelievable” (Netflix)
Anne Hathaway – “Modern Love” (Amazon)
Megan Hilty – “Patsy & Loretta” (Lifetime)
Joey King – “The Act” (Hulu)
Jessie Mueller – “Patsy & Loretta” (Lifetime)
Merritt Wever – “Unbelievable” (Netflix)
Michelle Williams – “Fosse/Verdon” (FX)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Asante Blackk – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
George Clooney – “Catch-22” (Hulu)
John Leguizamo – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
Dev Patel – “Modern Love” (Amazon)
Jesse Plemons – “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie” (Netflix)
Stellan Skarsgård – “Chernobyl” (HBO)
Russell Tovey – “Years and Years” (HBO)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Patricia Arquette – “The Act” (Hulu)
Marsha Stephanie Blake – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
Toni Collette – “Unbelievable” (Netflix)
Niecy Nash – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
Margaret Qualley – “Fosse/Verdon” (FX)
Emma Thompson – “Years and Years” (HBO)
Emily Watson – “Chernobyl” (HBO)
BEST ANIMATED SERIES
“Big Mouth” (Netflix)
“BoJack Horseman” (Netflix)
“The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” (Netflix)
“She-Ra and the Princesses of Power” (Netflix)
“The Simpsons” (Fox)
“Undone” (Amazon)
BEST TALK SHOW
“Desus & Mero” (Showtime)
“Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” (TBS)
“The Kelly Clarkson Show” (NBC)
“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” (HBO)
“The Late Late Show with James Corden” (CBS)
“Late Night with Seth Meyers” (NBC)
BEST COMEDY SPECIAL
“Amy Schumer: Growing” (Netflix)
“Jenny Slate: Stage Fright” (Netflix)
“Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s ‘All in the Family’ and ‘The Jeffersons’” (ABC)
“Ramy Youssef: Feelings” (HBO)
“Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby” (Netflix)
“Trevor Noah: Son of Patricia” (Netflix)
“Wanda Sykes: Not Normal” (Netflix)
NOMINEES BY PROGRAM FOR THE 25TH ANNUAL CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS
AMY SCHUMER: GROWING (Netflix) – 1
Best Comedy Special
BARRY (HBO) – 4
Best Comedy Series
Best Actor in a Comedy Series – Bill Hader
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series – Anthony Carrigan
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series – Henry Winkler
BIG LITTLE LIES (HBO) – 3
Best Actress in a Drama Series – Nicole Kidman
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series – Laura Dern
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series – Meryl Streep
BIG MOUTH (Netflix) – 1
Best Animated Series
BILLIONS (Showtime) – 2
Best Actor in a Drama Series – Paul Giamatti
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series – Asia Kate Dillon
BOJACK HORSEMAN (Netflix) – 1
Best Animated Series
BREXIT (HBO) – 1
Best Movie Made for Television
BROOKLYN NINE-NINE (NBC) – 1
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series – Andre Braugher
CATCH-22 (Hulu) – 3
Best Limited Series
Best Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Christopher Abbott
Best Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – George Clooney
CHERNOBYL (HBO) – 4
Best Limited Series
Best Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Jared Harris
Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Stellan Skarsgård
Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Emily Watson
DAVID MAKES MAN (OWN) – 1
Best Drama Series
DEAD TO ME (Netflix) – 1
Best Actress in a Comedy Series – Christina Applegate
DEADWOOD: THE MOVIE (HBO) – 1
Best Movie Made for Television
DESUS & MERO (Showtime) – 1
Best Talk Show
EL CAMINO: A BREAKING BAD MOVIE (Netflix) – 2
Best Movie Made for Television
Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Jesse Plemons
EUPHORIA (HBO) – 1
Best Actress in a Drama Series – Zendaya
EVIL (CBS) – 1
Best Actor in a Drama Series – Mike Colter
FLEABAG (Amazon) – 4
Best Comedy Series
Best Actress in a Comedy Series – Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series – Andrew Scott
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series – Sian Clifford
FOSSE/VERDON (FX) – 4
Best Limited Series
Best Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Sam Rockwell
Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Michelle Williams
Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Margaret Qualley
FULL FRONTAL WITH SAMANTHA BEE (TBS) – 1
Best Talk Show
GAME OF THRONES (HBO) – 4
Best Drama Series
Best Actor in a Drama Series – Kit Harington
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series – Peter Dinklage
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series – Gwendoline Christie
GLOW (Netflix) – 2
Best Actress in a Comedy Series – Alison Brie
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series – Betty Gilpin
GUAVA ISLAND (Amazon) – 1
Best Movie Made for Television
JENNY SLATE: STAGE FRIGHT (Netflix) – 1
Best Comedy Special
KILLING EVE (BBC America) – 1
Best Actress in a Drama Series – Jodie Comer
LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER (HBO) – 1
Best Talk Show
LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS (NBC) – 1
Best Talk Show
LIVE IN FRONT OF A STUDIO AUDIENCE: NORMAN LEAR’S ALL IN THE FAMILY AND THE JEFFERSONS (ABC) – 1
Best Comedy Special
LIVING WITH YOURSELF (Netflix) – 1
Best Actor in a Comedy Series – Paul Rudd
MODERN LOVE (Amazon) – 2
Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Anne Hathaway
Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Dev Patel
MOM (CBS) – 1
Best Comedy Series
NATIVE SON (HBO) – 1
Best Movie Made for Television
ON BECOMING A GOD IN CENTRAL FLORIDA (Showtime) – 1
Best Actress in a Comedy Series – Kirsten Dunst
ONE DAY AT A TIME (Netflix) – 2
Best Comedy Series
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series – Rita Moreno
PATSY & LORETTA (Lifetime) – 3
Best Movie Made for Television
Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Megan Hilty
Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Jessie Mueller
PEN15 (Hulu) – 1
Best Comedy Series
POSE (FX) – 3
Best Drama Series
Best Actor in a Drama Series – Billy Porter
Best Actress in a Drama Series – Mj Rodriguez
RAMY (Hulu) – 1
Best Actor in a Comedy Series – Ramy Youssef
RAMY YOUSSEF: FEELINGS (HBO) – 1
Best Comedy Special
SCHITT’S CREEK (Pop) – 5
Best Comedy Series
Best Actor in a Comedy Series – Eugene Levy
Best Actress in a Comedy Series – Catherine O’Hara
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series – Daniel Levy
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series – Annie Murphy
SETH MEYERS: LOBBY BABY (Netflix) – 1
Best Comedy Special
SHE-RA AND THE PRINCESSES OF POWER (Netflix) – 1
Best Animated Series
SHERMAN’S SHOWCASE (IFC) – 1
Best Actor in a Comedy Series – Bashir Salahuddin
SUCCESSION (HBO) – 3
Best Drama Series
Best Actor in a Drama Series – Jeremy Strong
Best Actress in a Drama Series – Sarah Snook
SUPERSTORE (NBC) – 1
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series – Nico Santos
THE ACT (Hulu) – 2
Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Joey King
Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Patricia Arquette
THE CROWN (Netflix) – 4
Best Drama Series
Best Actor in a Drama Series – Tobias Menzies
Best Actress in a Drama Series – Olivia Colman
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series – Helena Bonham Carter
THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE (Netflix) – 1
Best Animated Series
THE GOOD DOCTOR (ABC) – 1
Best Actor in a Drama Series – Freddie Highmore
THE GOOD FIGHT (CBS All Access) – 4
Best Drama Series
Best Actress in a Drama Series – Christine Baranski
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series – Delroy Lindo
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series – Audra McDonald
THE GOOD PLACE (NBC) – 3
Best Actor in a Comedy Series – Ted Danson
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series – William Jackson Harper
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series – D’Arcy Carden
THE KELLY CLARKSON SHOW (NBC) – 1
Best Talk Show
THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH JAMES CORDEN (CBS) – 1
Best Talk Show
THE LOUDEST VOICE (Showtime) – 2
Best Limited Series
Best Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Russell Crowe
THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL (Amazon) – 3
Best Comedy Series
Best Actress in a Comedy Series – Rachel Brosnahan
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series – Alex Borstein
THE MORNING SHOW (Apple) – 1
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series – Billy Crudup
THE OTHER TWO (Comedy Central) – 1
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series – Molly Shannon
THE RED LINE (CBS) – 1
Best Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Noah Wyle
THE SIMPSONS (Fox) – 1
Best Animated Series
THE UNICORN (CBS) – 1
Best Actor in a Comedy Series – Walton Goggins
THIS IS US (NBC) – 5
Best Drama Series
Best Actor in a Drama Series – Sterling K. Brown
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series – Asante Blackk
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series – Justin Hartley
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series – Susan Kelechi Watson
TREVOR NOAH: SON OF PATRICIA (Netflix) – 1
Best Comedy Special
TRUE DETECTIVE (HBO) – 1
Best Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Mahershala Ali
UNBELIEVABLE (Netflix) – 4
Best Limited Series
Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Kaitlyn Dever
Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Merritt Wever
Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Toni Collette
UNDONE (Amazon) – 1
Best Animated Series
VEEP (HBO) – 1
Best Actress in a Comedy Series – Julia Louis-Dreyfus
WANDA SYKES: NOT NORMAL (Netflix) – 1
Best Comedy Special
WATCHMEN (HBO) – 4
Best Drama Series
Best Actress in a Drama Series – Regina King
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series – Tim Blake Nelson
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series – Jean Smart
WHEN THEY SEE US (Netflix) – 6
Best Limited Series
Best Actor in a Limited Series of Movie Made for Television – Jharrel Jerome
Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Asante Blackk
Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – John Leguizamo
Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Marsha Stephanie Blake
Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Niecy Nash
YEARS AND YEARS (HBO) – 3
Best Limited Series
Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Russell Tovey
Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television – Emma Thompson
NOMINEES BY COMPANY FOR THE 25TH ANNUAL CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS
Netflix (Film & TV) – 61
HBO – 33
Amazon (Film & TV) – 14
NBC – 12
FX – 7
Hulu – 7
Showtime – 6
CBS – 5
Pop – 5
CBS All Access – 4
Lifetime – 3
ABC – 2
Apple – 1
BBC America – 1
Comedy Central – 1
Fox – 1
IFC – 1
OWN – 1
TBS – 1
TIMELINE – Movie Awards
Critics Choice Association – Film Voting Branch
The following dates apply for the 25th annual CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS, honoring the finest in cinematic achievement in 2019.
December 2, 2019 – Nominating ballots go out to BFCA members
December 6, 2019 – Deadline for returning nominating ballots
December 8, 2019 – Critics’ Choice Awards nominees announced
January 9, 2020 – Final ballots go out to BFCA/BTJA members
January 10, 2020 – Deadline for returning final ballots
TIMELINE – Television Awards
Critics Choice Association – Television Voting Branch
The following dates apply for the 25th annual CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS, honoring the finest in television achievement in 2019.
November 25, 2019 – NomComs begin consideration
December 6, 2019 – NomComs render recommendations
December 8, 2019 – Critics’ Choice Awards TV nominations announced
January 9, 2020 – Final ballots go out to BTJA members
January 10, 2020 – Deadline for returning final ballots
The 25th annual Critics’ Choice Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, January 12, 2020, at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California and will be broadcast live on The CW television network.
Netflix’s “Marriage Story,” writer/director Noah Baumbach’s drama about the contentious divorce of a director and an actress, was the top winner at the 29th Annual Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) Gotham Awards, which were presented at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on December 2, 2019. “Marriage Story” won in every category for which it was nominated: Best Feature, Best Actor (for Adam Driver), Best Screenplay and Gotham Audience Award. There is no separate category for Best Director. The award for Best Feature goes to the director and producers.
Meanwhile, Awkwafina won Best Actress for A24’s “The Farwell,” a drama about a Chinese family who decides not to tell the family matriarch that she has cancer. Taylor Russell of the African American family drama A24’s “Waves” was named Breakthrough Actor, while Laure De Clermont-Tonnerre of Focus Features’ “The Mustang” won the prize for Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director. Netflix’s “American Factory,” about the culture clash between American factory workers and the factory’s Chinese owners, was named Best Documentary.
For TV series, Netflix’s “When They See Us” about the Central Park Five was named Breakthrough Series–Long Format, while Hulu’s comedy “PEN15” was award Breakthrough Series–Short Format.
In addition to the competitive awards, Gotham Tributes were given to actors Laura Dern and Sam Rockwell, director Ava DuVernay, and the Gotham Industry Tribute to Glen Basner.
The dominance of Netflix at the award show signals that the streaming service has considerably increased its clout for movie awards. Netflix’s 2018 drama “Roma” dominated much of the top prizes for that awards season. For 2019, Netflix has top contenders “Marriage Story” (which qualifies for all movie awards for U.S. films) and “The Irishman,” whose large budget (a reported $140 million) makes it ineligible for independent film awards.
Because Netflix films are not carried by major movie theater chains in the U.S. and many other countries (due to Netflix making its movies available on the streaming services less than 60 days after their theatrical release), it remains to be seen how Netflix’s nonconformist business policies for movies will affect its chances for Best Picture prizes at award shows, such as the Oscars and Golden Globes, where Netflix has to compete against traditional major studios.
Here is the complete list of winners and nominations for the 2019 IFP Gotham Awards:
*=winner
Best Feature The Farewell Lulu Wang, director; Daniele Melia, Marc Turtletaub, Peter Saraf, Andrew Miano, Chris Weitz, Jane Zheng, Lulu Wang, Anita Gou, producers (A24)
Hustlers Lorene Scafaria, director; Jessica Elbaum, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Jennifer Lopez, Benny Medina, Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, producers (STXfilms)
Marriage Story* Noah Baumbach, director; Noah Baumbach, David Heyman, producers (Netflix)
Uncut Gems Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, directors; Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, Sebastian Bear McClard, producers (A24)
Waves Trey Edward Shults, director; James Wilson, Kevin Turen, Trey Edward Shults, producers (A24)
Best Documentary American Factory* Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert, directors; Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert, Jeff Reichert, Julie Parker Benello, producers (Netflix)
Apollo 11 Todd Douglas Miller, director; Todd Douglas Miller, Thomas Baxley Petersen, Evan Krauss, producers (NEON and CNN Films)
The Edge of Democracy Petra Costa, director; Petra Costa, Tiago Pavan, Joanna Natasegara, Shane Boris, producers (Netflix)
Midnight Traveler
Hassan Fazili, director; Emelie Mahdavian, Su Kim, producers (Oscilloscope Laboratories)
One Child Nation Nanfu Wang, Jialing Zhang, directors; Nanfu Wang, Jialing Zhang, Christoph Jörg, Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Carolyn Hepburn, producers (Amazon Studios)
Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award Laure De Clermont-Tonnerre for The Mustang (Focus Features)*
Kent Jones for Diane (IFC Films)
Joe Talbot for The Last Black Man in San Francisco (A24)
Olivia Wilde for Booksmart (United Artists Releasing)
Phillip Youmans for Burning Cane (ARRAY Releasing)
Best Screenplay The Farewell, Lulu Wang (A24)
High Flying Bird, Tarell Alvin McCraney (Netflix)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Jimmie Fails, Joe Talbot, Rob Richert(A24)
Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach (Netflix)*
Midsommar, Ari Aster (A24)
Best Actor Willem Dafoe in The Lighthouse (A24)
Adam Driver in Marriage Story (Netflix)*
Aldis Hodge in Clemency (NEON)
André Holland in High Flying Bird (Netflix)
Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems (A24)
Best Actress Awkwafina in The Farewell (A24)*
Elisabeth Moss in Her Smell (Gunpowder & Sky)
Mary Kay Place in Diane (IFC Films)
Florence Pugh in Midsommar (A24)
Alfre Woodard in Clemency (NEON)
Breakthrough Actor Julia Fox in Uncut Gems (A24)
Aisling Franciosi in The Nightingale (IFC Films)
Chris Galust in Give Me Liberty (Music Box Films)
Noah Jupe in Honey Boy (Amazon Studios)
Jonathan Majors in The Last Black Man in San Francisco (A24)
Taylor Russell in Waves (A24)*
Breakthrough Series – Long Format (over 40 minutes) Chernobyl, Craig Mazin, creator; Craig Mazin, Carolyn Strauss, Jane Featherstone, executive producers (HBO)
David Makes Man, Tarell Alvin McCraney, creator; Mike Kelley, Melissa Loy, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Denitria Harris-Lawrence, Michael B. Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, executive producers (OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network)
My Brilliant Friend, Saverio Costanzo, creator; Domenico Procacci; Lorenzo Mieli, Mario Gianani, Guido De Laurentiis, Elena Recchia, Jennifer Schuur, Paolo Sorrentino, executive producers (HBO)
Unbelievable, Susannah Grant, Sarah Timberman, Carl Beverly, Lisa Cholodenko, Ayelet Waldman & Michael Chabon, Katie Couric, Richard Tofel, Neil Barsky, Robyn Semien, Marie, executive producers (Netflix)
When They See Us, Ava DuVernay, creator; Jeff Skoll, Jonathan King, Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro, Berry Welsh, Oprah Winfrey, Ava DuVernay, executive producers (Netflix)*
Breakthrough Series – Short Format (under 40 minutes) PEN15, Maya Erskine, Anna Konkle, Sam Zvibleman, creators; Anna Konkle, Sam Zvibleman, Debbie Liebling, Gabe Liedman, Marc Provissiero, Brooke Pobjoy, Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer, Becky Sloviter, Shelley Zimmerman, Brin Lukens, Jordan Levin, executive producers (Hulu)*
Ramy, Ramy Youssef, Ari Katcher, Ryan Welch, creators; Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael, Ravi Nandan, Bridget Bedard, Ari Katcher, Ryan Welch, executive producers (Hulu)
Tuca & Bertie,Lisa Hanawalt, creator; Lisa Hanawalt, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Noel Bright, Steven A. Cohen, Tiffany Haddish, Ali Wong, executive producers (Netflix)
Undone, Kate Purdy, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, creators; Kate Purdy, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Noel Bright, Steven A. Cohen, Tommy Pallotta, executive producers (Amazon Prime Video)
Gotham Audience Award Marriage Story*
IFP members determined the Gotham Audience Award with nominees comprised of the 15 nominated films in the Best Feature, Best Documentary, and Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award categories.
Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro in “The Irishman” (Photo by Niko Tavernise/Netflix)
The following is a press release from the Film at Lincoln Center:
Film at Lincoln Center announces Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” as Opening Night of the 57th New York Film Festival (September 27 – October 13), making its World Premiere at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, September 27, 2019. “The Irishman” will be released in select theaters and on Netflix later this year.
“The Irishman” is a richly textured epic of American crime, a dense, complex story told with astonishing fluidity. Based on Charles Brandt’s nonfiction book “I Heard You Paint Houses,” it is a film about friendship and loyalty between men who commit unspeakable acts and turn on a dime against each other, and the possibility of redemption in a world where it seems as distant as the moon. The roster of talent behind and in front of the camera is astonishing, and at the core of “The Irishman” are four great artists collectively hitting a new peak: Joe Pesci as Pennsylvania mob boss Russell Bufalino, Al Pacino as Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, and Robert De Niro as their right-hand man, Frank Sheeran, each working in the closest harmony imaginable with the film’s incomparable creator, Martin Scorsese.
“’The Irishman’ is so many things: rich, funny, troubling, entertaining and, like all great movies, absolutely singular,” said New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones. “It’s the work of masters, made with a command of the art of cinema that I’ve seen very rarely in my lifetime, and it plays out at a level of subtlety and human intimacy that truly stunned me. All I can say is that the minute it was over my immediate reaction was that I wanted to watch it all over again.”
“It’s an incredible honor that ‘The Irishman’ has been selected as the Opening Night of the New York Film Festival. I greatly admire the bold and visionary selections that the festival presents to audiences year after year,” said Martin Scorsese. “The festival is critical to bringing awareness to cinema from around the world. I am grateful to have the opportunity to premiere my new picture in New York alongside my wonderful cast and crew.”
Campari is the exclusive spirits partner for the 57th New York Film Festival and the presenting partner of Opening Night, extending its long-standing commitment to the world of film and art.
Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Jones, also includes Dennis Lim, FLC Director of Programming, and Florence Almozini, FLC Associate Director of Programming.
Tickets for the 57th New York Film Festival will go on sale to the general public on September 8. Festival and VIP passes are on sale now and offer one of the earliest opportunities to purchase tickets and secure seats at some of the festival’s biggest events, including Opening Night. Support for Opening Night of the New York Film Festival benefits Film at Lincoln Center in its non-profit mission to support the art and craft of cinema.
New York Film Festival Opening Night Films
2018 The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/UK/US)
2017 Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, US)
2016 13TH (Ava DuVernay, US)
2015 The Walk (Robert Zemeckis, US)
2014 Gone Girl (David Fincher, US)
2013 Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, US)
2012 Life of Pi (Ang Lee, US)
2011 Carnage (Roman Polanski, France/Poland)
2010 The Social Network (David Fincher, US)
2009 Wild Grass (Alain Resnais, France)
2008 The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)
2007 The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, US)
2006 The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK)
2005 Good Night, and Good Luck. (George Clooney, US)
2004 Look at Me (Agnès Jaoui, France)
2003 Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, US)
2002 About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, US)
2001 Va savoir (Jacques Rivette, France)
2000 Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, Denmark)
1999 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
1998 Celebrity (Woody Allen, US)
1997 The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, US)
1996 Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, UK)
1995 Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou, China)
1994 Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, US)
1993 Short Cuts (Robert Altman, US)
1992 Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland, France)
1991 The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski, Poland/France)
1990 Miller’s Crossing (Joel Coen, US)
1989 Too Beautiful for You (Bertrand Blier, France)
1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
1987 Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov, Soviet Union)
1986 Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, US)
1985 Ran (Akira Kurosawa, Japan)
1984 Country (Richard Pearce, US)
1983 The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, US)
1982 Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany)
1981 Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, UK)
1980 Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, US)
1979 Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy/US)
1978 A Wedding (Robert Altman, US)
1977 One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda, France)
1976 Small Change (François Truffaut, France)
1975 Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, Italy)
1974 Don’t Cry with Your Mouth Full (Pascal Thomas, France)
1973 Day for Night (François Truffaut, France)
1972 Chloe in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer, France)
1971 The Debut (Gleb Panfilov, Soviet Union)
1970 The Wild Child (François Truffaut, France)
1969 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, US)
1968 Capricious Summer (Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia)
1967 The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria)
1966 Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia)
1965 Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, France)
1964 Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, USSR)
1963 The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, Mexico)
FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
Film at Lincoln Center is dedicated to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema and enriching film culture.
Film at Lincoln Center fulfills its mission through the programming of festivals, series, retrospectives, and new releases; the publication of Film Comment; the presentation of podcasts, talks, and special events; the creation and implementation of Artist Initiatives; and our Film in Education curriculum and screenings. Since its founding in 1969, this nonprofit organization has brought the celebration of American and international film to the world-renowned arts complex Lincoln Center, making the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broad audience, and ensuring that it remains an essential art form for years to come.
Support for the New York Film Festival is generously provided by Official Partners HBO, Campari, and The New York Times, Benefactor Partners Netflix, illy caffè, and Dolby, Supporting Partner Warby Parker, and Contributing Partners Hudson New York-an SBE Hotel and IMDbPro. JCDecaux, Variety, Deadline Hollywood, WNET New York Public Media and Shutterstock serve as Media Sponsors. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Film at Lincoln Center.
Film at Lincoln Center receives generous, year-round support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.org and follow @filmlinc on Twitter and Instagram.
Civitas Public Affairs Group partner Katherine Grainger, Supermajority co-founder Ai-jen Poo, Women in the World founder Tina Brown, Supermajority co-founder Cecile Richards, filmmaker Raphaela Neihausen, filmmaker Yoruba Richen and 51Fest program director Anne Hubbell at the Supermajority panel during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 19, 2019. (Photo by Lou Aguilar/51Fest)
The inaugural 51Fest, a New York City film festival aimed at promoting movies about women, was an inspiring experience and a resounding success: All of the offerings (which took place at IFC Center, except for one screening at the SVA Theatre) sold out, and several stars attended the event, which took place from July 18 to July 21, 2019. The festival, which is presented by feminist organization Women in the World and the independent arthouse cineplex IFC Center gets its name from the fact that women make up 51 percent of the U.S. population and at least half of all moviegoers. All of the selected projects for 51Fest have at least one female producer or a female director. Each screening had a post-screening Q&A with someone involved in the film, whether it was a star of the movie, a director, a writer and/or producer.
Most of the movies in the first 51Fest lineup already had their world premieres at the Sundance Film Festival or South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, but there are a few offerings that had their world premieres at 51Fest: The first episode of the Netflix limited series “Unbelieable,” a drama starring Toni Collette, Merritt Wever and Kaitlyn Dever, as well as the Netflix comedy film “Otherhood,” starring Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette and Felicity Huffman.
Tina Brown and Kathy Griffin at the New York premiere of “Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story” during 51Fest at SVA Theatre in New York City on July 18, 2019. (Photo by Carlos Sanfer/51Fest)
The opening-night film was “Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story,” a documentary chronicling controversial comedian Kathy Griffin’s comeback tour after being blackballed from most of the entertainment industry in 2017 because she posed for a photo holding a fake, bloody head of Donald Trump. “Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story” got mostly positive reviews after its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. Griffin did a post-screening Q&A with Women in the World founder Tina Brown.
On July, 19, there was a panel called “Women in the World Spotlight: Supermajority,” also moderated by Brown. The panel featured former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards and Ai-jen Poo, the co-founders (along with Alicia Garza) of Supermajority, an activist organization aimed at empowering women. Also on the panel was Civitas Public Affairs Group partner Katherine Grainger. At the panel discussion, filmmaker Yoruba Richen previewed an exclusive clip of the forthcoming documentary “And She Could Be Next,” about a movement of women of color claiming political power.
According to a 51Fest press release: “The conversation highlighted the new organization and centered on the panelists’ personal stories of activism, their plan to shape a ‘New Deal’ for women and elevate women’s stories to where they belong — the center of the stage, the debate and the forefront of change.”
Women in the World founder Tina Brown, and Julianne Moore at the New York premiere of “After the Wedding” during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 20, 2019. (Photo by Lou Aguilar/51Fest)
Oscar-winning actress Julianne Moore did a Q&A with moderator Brown after the New York premiere of her dramatic film “After the Wedding.” (Click here to read the entire interview.) “After the Wedding” (a remake of the 2006 Danish film directed by Susanne Bier) is an emotionally riveting movie about three people (played by Moore, Michelle Williams and Billy Crudup) and how they are connected to a family’s secrets and lies that get exposed in the story. The movie is set for release in select U.S. theaters on August 9, 2019.
Several of the movies had their New York premieres at 51Fest and are based on true stories. They include the dramedy “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” starring Jillian Bell as a woman who enters the New York Marathon to improve her health; the drama “A Girl From Mogadishu” (starring Aja Naomi King), which tackles the difficult subject of female genital mutilation; and “Official Secrets,” starring Keira Knightley as British whistleblower Katharine Gun, who exposed U.S. political corruption behind the war in Iraq. All three of the real-life women who inspired these respective movies (Brittany O’Neill, Ifrah Ahmed and Gun) did Q&As after each respective screening.
Besides the Griffin documentary, other non-fiction films at 51Fest were the award-winning documentary “For Sama,” set in war-torn Syria; “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins” about the late columnist/outspoken political commentator Molly Ivins; and “Untouchable,” an examination of the rise and fall of disgraced entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein and the female accusers who say that Weinstein sexually harassed or sexually abused them.
As for the two world premieres at 51Fest (“Unbelievable” and “Otherhood”), they’re both from Netflix, but these two projects couldn’t be more different.
The Netflix limited series “Unbelievable” is a taught, well-acted thriller, based on the first episode that screened at 51Fest. In the series, which is inspired by a true story, Kaitlyn Dever plays Marie Adler, a troubled teenager in Lynnwood, Washington. Marie has spent a great deal of her life in foster homes and is now old enough to live on her own. In the beginning of the episode, Marie files a police report, claiming a masked intruder raped her in her home, where she lives alone.
The problem is that Marie keeps changing her story, by saying that she could have imagined the rape, and then changing her mind again. She also changed several details of what happened, leading to further confusion. The investigating police become increasingly frustrated with her, and even Marie’s closest confidants begin to wonder that the truth is.
Sarah Timberman, Susannah Grant, Kaitlyn Dever, Merritt Wever, Danielle Macdonald and Lisa Cholodenko at the world premiere of “Unbelievable” during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 19, 2019. (Photo by Lou Aguilar/51Fest)
A good deal of the series is also about detectives Grace Rasmussen and Karen Duvall (played Toni Collette and Merritt Wever), who are hundreds of miles away, and are investigating a case that is similar to what Marie has reported. The first episode of “Unbelievable” focuses primarily on introducing Marie’s storyline, but a teaser for the season shows that Emmy winners Collette and Wever give compelling performances. Dever does an outstanding job of portraying the complex character of Marie.
Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein and Danielle Macdonald at the world premiere of “Unbelievable” during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 19, 2019. (Photo by Lou Aguilar/51Fest)
After the premiere of the first “Unbelievable” episode, there was a Q&A with showrunner and executive producer Susannah Grant, executive producer Sarah Timberman, executive producer and episode director Lisa Cholodenko, and cast members Dever, Wever and Danielle Macdonald, who plays another rape victim in the story. (In the audience was Beanie Feldstein, Dever’s best friend and co-star in the 2019 comedy “Booksmart.”) During the Q&A, Dever said that she didn’t consult with the real Marie because “I wanted to respect her privacy.” Dever added that in her portrayal of Marie, she didn’t want to do a “carbon copy” of her, but wanted to do an interpretation of what Marie was like.
“Unbelievable” is inspired by the real events in The Marshall Project and ProPublica Pulitzer Prize-winning article, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” written by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, and the “This American Life” radio episode “Anatomy of Doubt.” Netflix will premiere “Unbelievable” on September 13, 2019.
The comedy film “Otherhood” is the feature-film directorial debut of writer/director Cindy Chupak, who’s best known for being part of the “Sex and the City” team. The story is about three longtime friends—Carol Walker (played Angela Bassett), Gillian Lieberman (played by Patricia Arquette) and Helen Halston (played Felicity Huffman)—who spontaneously take a road trip together from their homes in suburban Poughkeepsie to New York City, in order to reconnect with their adult sons, who have a habit of ignoring their mothers. The sons, who are in their 30s, have become so emotionally distant from their mothers that they don’t return calls, email or texts, and they even forget to contact their mothers on Mother’s Day, which is a snub that triggers the road trip.
The catch is that the mothers haven’t told their sons in advance that they’re coming to visit—and the plan is to stay at their bachelor sons’ homes for a few days—so the meddling mothers aren’t quite sure what to expect. All three sons appear to be the only children in their respective families, since the mothers don’t mention any other siblings for their children. The movie gets its title because the mothers’ alienation from their sons doesn’t feel like motherhood to them. It feels like “otherhood.” As Gillian says, a mother being ignored by a child is like “inhumane emotional waterboarding.”
Angela Bassett, Felicity Huffman and Patricia Arquette in “Otherhood” (Photo by Linda Kallerus/Netflix)
All three of the mothers (who met through their sons when their sons were kids) are clingy and neurotic, in different ways. Carol, a widow who lives alone, is the biggest worrywart of the group. Carol’s son Matthew (played by Sinqua Walls), an art director at an upcoming magazine that’s similar to Maxim, has a tendency to date barely legal women, and he lives in a trendy loft in Manhattan.
Gillian is a hippie-ish, earth-mother type who has a loving and supportive husband, and she’s the type of mother who will clean her son’s apartment and make comfort-food meals without him even asking her. Gillian’s son Daniel (played by Jake Hoffman), a struggling writer who lives in a dumpy apartment in the working-class Long Island City neighborhood, has recently gone through a messy breakup with a woman he had hoped to marry.
Helen, who’s been divorced and is on her second marriage, is uptight, critical, and hates the idea of aging and becoming a grandmother. Helen’s openly gay son Paul (played by Jake Lacy) is a window dresser and is in a relationship with a guy that’s somewhere in between “friends with benefits” and “serious romance.” Paul lives in an upscale town home in Manhattan and comes from a privileged background.
Patricia Arquette, Angela Bassett and Felicity Huffman in “Otherhood” (Photo by Linda Kallerus/Netflix)
Carol and Gillian are desperate for their sons to find a nice woman to settle down with and marry. The two mothers try to play matchmaker with their sons, which (not surprisingly) doesn’t go over too well. Gillian, who converted to Judaism when she married Daniel’s father, is the most aggressive about her matchmaking, and makes it clear that she prefers that Daniel choose a wife who is also Jewish. Gillian sets up a reluctant Daniel on a blind date, which is one of the funniest scenes in the movie. Carol invites herself to a work-related party that Matthew’s company is having at a hip nightclub. She gets drunk, and she zeroes in on a potential girlfriend for Matthew who’s close to his age, even though she knows that he might not be interested because he prefers to date much-younger women.
Meanwhile, pill-popping, booze-swilling Helen (who is by far the least likeable character in this story) still has lingering resentment that Paul never officially came out as gay to her (she figured it out on her own), and she hates that Paul told his father (Helen’s ex-husband) instead. It’s easy to see why Paul doesn’t like communicating with Helen, because she likes to pick fights over imagined insults, and she’s constantly accusing Paul of the emotional sabotage that Helen herself is inflicting. Paul spends quite a bit of time having to make apologies to Helen. He’s a lot more patient with her than other people would be.
Michael Berman, Cathy Schulman, Mario Cantone and Cindy Chupack at the world premiere of “Otherhood” during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 21, 2019. (Photo by Carlos Sanfer/51Fest)
If you’ve seen enough comedy films (especially the ones on Netflix), you can easily predict how this story is going to go. At a post-screening Q&A with Chupack and producers Cathy Schulman and Jason Michael Berman (the Q&A was moderated by “Sex and the City” alum Mario Cantone, who has a small role in “Otherhood” as one of Paul’s acquaintances), Chupak said it took about 20 years for “Otherhood” to get made because it’s the kind of movie that most movie studios don’t want to make anymore. She added that Netflix and other streaming services are a boon for creators who want their projects to get made.
Even though “Otherhood” is set in the present day (and has lots of references to social media), there’s still kind of an outdated tone to much of the screenplay, because the mothers in the movie are so old-fashioned in how they’re desperate to get approval from the men in their lives. Showing up unannounced at an adult child’s home and expecting to stay over for a few days—it’s all just so rude and cringeworthy, that it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth because it’s not cute at all. (Although, to be fair, two of the mothers initially can’t go through with ambushing their sons to crash in their homes as uninvited guests, so these two mothers check into a hotel at first.)
The loyal friendship between the three women is admirable, and it’s great to see what seems to be natural chemistry between the three lead actresses, who all do a fine job with the mediocre screenplay that they’ve been given. A better movie would have had the three mothers focusing less on trying to manipulate their sons’ love lives and more on the mothers trying to genuinely reconnect with their sons by trying to understand what makes them happy in their current lives. This is such a “made for Netflix” comedy movie, right down to the sitcom-ish musical score. “Otherhood” isn’t going to be nominated for any awards, but there are worse ways to spend 100 minutes of your time. Netflix will premiere “Otherhood” on August 2, 2019.
Here are some other photos from the inaugural 51Fest:
Kathleen Turner and director Janice Engel at the New York premiere of “Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins” during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 20, 2019. (Photo by Carlos Sanfer/51Fest)Comedian/actress Ophelia Eisenberg (panel moderator) and Brittany O’Neill at the New York premiere of “Brittany Runs a Marathon” during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 20, 2019. (Photo by Carlos Sanfer/51Fest)HuffPost editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen (panel moderator), Katharine Gun and “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman at the New York premiere of “Official Secrets” during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 20, 2019. (Photo by Carlos Sanfer/51Fest)Moderator Anne Barnard, co-director Waad al-Kateab, Dr. Hamza al-Kateab and co-director Edward Watts at the New York premiere of “For Sama” during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 21, 2019. (Photo by Carlos Sanfer/51Fest)Director Mary McGuckian, actor Barkhad Abdi and activist Ifrah Ahmed at the international premiere of “A Girl From Mogadishu” during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 21, 2019. (Photo by Lou Aguilar/51Fest)Harvey Weinstein accusers Hope D’Amore and Erika Rosenbaum with director Ursula Macfarlane at the New York premiere of “Untouchable” during 51Fest at IFC Center in New York City on July 21, 2019. (Photo by Lou Aguilar/51Fest)
