In yet another sign the Television Academy may need to seriously reconsider some of its categories, Claire Foy won her second Emmy Award for playing Queen Elizabeth II in “The Crown.” This win, however, came in the Guest Actress in a Drama Series category and for a less than 5 minute appearance in the fifth season of the series. A season in which another Emmy nominee from the series, Olivia Colman, will likely lose her Lead Actress category for playing the same character (although a few decades older).

Continue reading Claire Foy, RuPaul & Bo Burnham Rule 2021 Creative Arts Emmys Night Two at The Playlist.

283 films were submitted for the Academy Award’s Documentary Feature Oscar and now just 15 remain. AMPAS revealed the shortlist for both the Documentary Feature and Documentary Short with the former category featuring few upsets. Acclaimed titles such as “Boys State,” “Time,” “Dick Johnson is Dead,” “Collective” and “Time” are still in the running for the eventual five Oscar nominations.

READ MORE: “Minari” and “The Crown” rule 2021 SAG Awards nominations

Snubbed contenders in a very competitive field include “The Dissident,” “A Thousand Cuts,” “The Way I See It,” “Totally Under Control” and “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” among others.

Continue reading ‘Time,’ ‘Collective’ Make 2021 Best Documentary Oscars Shortlist at The Playlist.

“If only I had time,” I remember sighing at some point in late 2019, probably in a pub or a restaurant among a cluster of friends separated by <1 ft of space, lipstick doubtless boozily smeared across my maskless face. “If only I somehow had the time to do nothing but stay in and catch up on all the non-fiction releases I’ve missed through the year!” Little did I know that at that exact moment, the Ministry of Be Careful What You Wish For was listening in.

Continue reading The 20 Best Documentaries Of 2020 at The Playlist.

It’s the time of Top 10s. Every December, critics, publications, celebrities, and basically anyone with social media reveal their favorite films and TV series of the year. Some people tend to go more mainstream with their picks, while others love to showcase how deep their love of cinema goes. But every year, it seems that one of the most reasonable people who share their Best of 2020 list is none other than Former POTUS, Barack Obama.

Continue reading Barack Obama’s Best Films Of 2020 List Includes ‘Mank,’ ‘Soul,’ ‘Selah & The Spades’ & More at The Playlist.

Greetings, fellow exhausteds, and welcome to The Best Films of 2020, a year that, despite being less than 365 days old, has aged so rapidly that Gary Oldman is circling the biopic. Some, uh, unusual stuff happened this year – I don’t know if you noticed – and it made compiling this collective list even more interesting than usual. A record-breaking 34 regular Playlist contributors submitted top tens (you can find the complete list of those to blame/praise for this ranking at the end of the feature).

Continue reading The 25 Best Films Of 2020 at The Playlist.

Many might describe “Boys State,” the critically acclaimed and Sundance Film Festival award-winning documentary by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine as timely. Especially as the United States finds itself once again in a divisive presidential election. A more accurate description may be “timeless,” because everything the doc captures has happened before and is destined to happen again.

READ MORE: “Boys State” offers both hope and despair for the uncertain future of American politics [Sundance Review]

Moss and McBaine chronicled the 2018 Texas session of Boys State, a summer conference held in different states across the nation for high school juniors that centers on government and politics (there is a Girls State as well).

Continue reading ‘Boys State’ Filmmakers On Their ‘Dazed & Confused’ Inspiration [Podcast] at The Playlist.

Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on-demand, vintage, and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This biweekly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching. 

Two potentially major productions caught in the wheels of the lockdown hit disc and (reasonable) VOD this week, alongside a Sundance doc on Apple TV+,  a lovely new musical bio-doc, and the usual bushel of marvelous catalog titles from Criterion, Warner Archive, and Kino-Lorber.

Continue reading The 13 Best Movies To Buy Or Stream This Week: ‘The King of Staten Island,’ ‘The Burnt Orange Heresy’ & More at The Playlist.

In early February, A24 and Apple’s joint production of the documentary “Boys State” opened at the Sundance Film Festival. The response was overwhelming. Hailed as one of the best documentaries, and features for that matter, at the festival, “Boys State” found directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine — who previously collaborated on “The Overnighters,” a film we called one of the Best Documentaries of the last decade — winning the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the year’s first big film fest.

Continue reading ‘Boys State’ Trailer: Sundance 2020 Doc Winner Showcases Texas Teens Who Build A Mock Government at The Playlist.

While it may not have the recognition of festivals like Cannes, Venice, or Toronto, New Directors/New Films has, for the past half-century, been one of the premier events that highlights indie works from some of the most exciting filmmakers working today. And for 2020, that’s no different, as the festival has announced its full lineup for this spring.

The lineup includes 27 feature films and 10 short films from a diverse array of talent, with 15 films directed or co-directed by women and 15 works by first-time filmmakers.

Continue reading New Directors/New Films 2020 Lineup Includes ‘Boys State,’ ‘The Mole Agent’ & More at The Playlist.

An eye-opening sneak-peak at the political leadership of the next generation, the documentary, “Boys State,” alternates between several different takeaways during its 105-minute run-time. Indeed, it’s hard to know if one should be optimistic about the future of U.S. politics based on what’s presented here, for at times the young men featured offer up a sense of hope, discouragement, and even a resigned acceptance of the sorry status quo. What is obvious, however, is that these teenagers are unquestionably a reflection of the current state of politics in the United States, tangled up as it is in a cloudy cesspool of half-truths, wedge issues, party talking points, dirty tricks, and an entrenched winner-loser binary.

Continue reading ‘Boys State’ Offers Both Hope & Despair For The Uncertain Future Of American Politics [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.