Fresh Fork

  ast sunday, the Oscars took place in a ceremony with no big surprises, no big thrills and no huge iconic moments... but it got some all timers as winners:   Cillian Murphy 's win for   Oppenheimer  still amazes me (such an internal and subtle performance getting the gold),   The Zone of Interest   in Best Sound (chilling and perfectly balanced work),   Poor Things  in Best Costume Design and Best Production Design and   The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar   for Best Live Action Short Film (marking   Wes Anderson 's first Oscar win of his career). On the other hand, I felt sad for   Lily Gladstone   not winning Best Actress for   Killers of the Flower Moon  (such a soulful devastating performance), but   Emma Stone   was also a very worthy winner for playing the charismatic Bella Baxter in   Poor Things . In a night  Oppenheimer  won big (and its Summer "nemesis"  Barbie  only t...

  Javier Bardem, Florence Pugh, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Souheila Yacoub, Christopher Walken, Stellan Skarsgård,  Charlotte Rampling  and  Léa Seydoux Dune  (2021) was a very good movie, which featured fantastic visual and technical aspects - a movie meant to be admired rather than fully lived mostly because of the "half plotline" from the source material - but then you understand it was all about setting the plot foundations for the cinematic spectacle of  Dune: Part Two . It's a movie that will please both fans and non-fans of the first film. In fact, I'm grateful I live in the same time it was made because it allowed me to experience it on a theatre. I was immersed, astonished and utterly marveled with this one! Dune: Part Two  starts at the exact same place and time where it left us in 2021's film and it wastes no time presenting context to the audience. In fact,  Part Two  is way more narrative-driven, but it never feels overwhel...

  Yorgos Lanthimos has made some of the most weird and brilliant (and unconventional) comedies of the last decade ( The Lobster   and  The Favourite ), but he reaches his peak as one of the greatest cinematic geniuses with Poor Things - a social comment on the role of women and their objectification and the search for liberation disguised as a comedic journey of an incredible woman connecting with the world. In fact,   Poor Things   is a lot of things, but it manages to be always entertaining, funny and even tragic sometimes. It's the best 2023 film I've seen! The movie starts by presenting us a woman who we later discover to be named Bella, who was brough back to life by a scientist, Dr. Godwin Baxter, who was a product of his father's experiments himself. Bella starts developing as a child trapped in a full-grown woman body and Dr. Baxter hires Max McCandles to observe and report the many developments and discoveries of Bella. These men develop a protecting ap...

  enice International Film Festival has always been one of the most prestigious cinematic events of the year, but it has become the very first stop for the pre-awards season. Ever since 2017, when Del Toro's  The Shape of Water  won the Golden Lion for Best Film that the festival's top prize winner has been a major Oscar player: 2018's   Roma , 2019's   Joker   and 2020's   Nomadland   ended-up getting a Best Picture nom (with the last one winning); 2021's  The Happening  didn't get major award love in the US (mostly because it didn't get a major distributor able to handle an awards campaign); and 2022's   All the Beauty and the Bloodshed   ended-up nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. So... the Jury for the main competition named  Yorgos Lanthimos '  Poor Things  the Best Film of the festival, while Hamaguchi's  Evil Does Not Exist  (the director of  Drive My Car ) took ho...

  ALK TO ME I followed a tip: don’t watch the trailer and just go watch the movie. I did it. And I liked it a lot. While it doesn’t offer the same level of satire as Jordan Peele’s  Get Out ,  Talk to Me  is a commentary about Gen Z’s TikTok and social media culture and how things derailed because of the need of being cool, the need of being seen and universally accepted. Sophie Wilde delivers an outstanding breakthrough performance here with an unsympathetic character she approaches with sensibility – even for those who never felt any warm towards Mia, there’s no way to deny her ability to carry the whole movie – and the young Joe Bird excels in some of the most terrifying scenes. As an horror piece,  Talk to Me  is never too scary, but it is chilling and it features some very graphic visual horror elements that can make you look away for some bits. It is never surprising, but it can cause nail bites. The makeup team’s work should be highlighted and so doe...