Last week I mentioned Michael Fassbender was back on the Oscar’s radar for his performance as Steve Jobs in the film, creatively titled, Steve Jobs. This week, an Oscar nod became even more of a possibility with the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations. Nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama, Fassbender’s Steve Jobs’ Oscar campaign will now be in full swing. This weekhowever, you can catch the critically acclaimed actor in my first pick of the week, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method.
Last week I mentioned Michael Fassbender was back on the Oscar’s radar for his performance as Steve Jobs in the film, creatively titled, Steve Jobs. This week, an Oscar nod became even more of a possibility with the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations. Nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama, Fassbender’s Steve Jobs’ Oscar campaign will now be in full swing. This week however, you can catch the critically acclaimed actor in my first pick of the week, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method.
Friday 18th December, from 8.30pm… Shame vs. Only God Forgives
Well, don’t say Rialto Channel didn’t give you anything for Christmas. This week’s Film Star Face Off presents you with Michael Fassbender in Shame. It’s a somber addiction drama from Steve McQueen in which Fassbender plays Brandon, a sex addict, and can be seen in the nude from pretty much every angle. McQueen co-wrote Shame with screenwriter Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady, Suffragette), and the film went on to be nominated for pretty much every award there is, except an Oscar. Carey Mulligan, one of the lucky few actresses to have worked with both Fassbender and Gosling (Drive) stars as Brandon’s unhappy screw-up of a sister, Sissy and her arrival back into his life derails his carefully cultivated private life.
Only God Forgives, another collaboration between director Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling follows Shame. A revenge thriller set in Bangkok, Only God Forgives is as atmospheric and stylised as Drive, but the violence is amplified and the pace slowed. As is becoming characteristic in the Danish-born auteur’s films, Only God Forgives juxtaposes startling, gruesome and excessive violence with gorgeously shot images. Unafraid of polarising his audience, this is a film that audiences will either love or hate – it’s pretty much impossible to sit on the fence with work such as this.
Saturday 19th December, 8.30pm … Little Accidents
The debut feature film from Sarah Colangelo, Little Accidents is a somber film about a small West Virginia community dealing with the aftermath of a mining accident that killed ten men. The film focuses on the accident’s lone survivor Amos Jenkins (Boyd Holbrook) who is being pressured by fellow miners to keep quiet about safety at the mine so their livelihoods are not at risk, as well as the victims families who want him to participate in a class-action lawsuit against the company. At the same time Owen (Jacob Lofland), a teenage boy, is trying to deal with the loss of his father, and on the other side of town the wife of one of the mines executives, Diane Doyle (Elizabeth Banks), struggles with the sudden, mysterious disappearance of her son. The acting is superb in this film that scored Colangelo an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay. Like many talented up and coming directors, Colangelo refined her script at the Sundance Screenwriting Lab in 2011, which was where she also met Holbrook who would go on to star in Gone Girl and The Skeleton Twins. The actual son of a coal miner who grew up in the Kentucky coalfields, Holbrook immediately jumped at the chance to play Amos, and when Elizabeth Banks and Chloë Sevigny came on board, the job of funding Little Accidents become easier. As impressive as these three actors are, Jacob Lofland deserves a special mention for his performance in this observationally shot melodrama. The star or Jeff Nichols’s Mud, Lofland is one of those special actors who expresses plenty without having to say anything at all – it’s a spell bounding performance indeed.