Miriam Hopkins in BECKY SHARP (1935), Janet Gaynor in A STAR IS BORN (1937), and Vivien Leigh in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) were the first 3 Best Actress nominees from full-color movies.

The woes of the Great Depression demanded escapism from Hollywood. Such spectacle came in a myriad of forms, including some technical advancements.

By 1935, the three-strip Technicolor process was ready for features, blessing the silver screen with hues that called themselves natural while shining bright like something out of a dream. New genres came into being, too, sometimes as an echo of the dark times – think gangster pictures and their basis in social realism turned pulp or the rise of horror at Universal – and sometimes as an antidote. The screwball comedy was a child of the Great Depression, alright, with some of its greatest hits holding a blissfully distorted mirror to off-screen miseries, distracting from them and offering some magical impossibility as succor for the soul. In other areas, movies kept getting bigger, upping the ante in ways that recalled the great epics of silent cinema, those endeavors that moved armies and mountains for the camera’s gaze and the audience’s pleasure.

Obviously, this all reverberated through the Oscars, including and especially the Best Actress race. But will my personal ballots reflect it in the same fashion? Well…

Helen Hayes' Oscar-winning turn in THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET is the quintessential Pre-Code Best Actress vehicle, detailing the story of a "fallen woman" with a kind of candor that would be forbidden by July, 1934.

Last time in this alternative Oscar history, we looked at the first three seasons of the Academy Awards through my dream Best Actress quintets. They coincided with the last few years when American silent cinema was still produced stateside by the big studios in town.

The rise of the talkies meant a lot of things for the industry, drastic, often destructive changes that have been fictionalized in such Hollywood self-reflections as Singin’ in the Rain and Babylon. In terms of pure cinematic form, this transition imposed limitations aplenty, generally making movies more static, more awkward and less visually expressive. Not all of them, but a concerning number. In terms of acting technique, the advent of synchronized sound recording ignited a change of the guard that left many a former star in the past and brought thespians of the New York stage to the Hollywood soundstage and Silver Screen immortality – the ones starring in movies that haven’t been lost, of course.

It was also the start of a short period we retroactively call Pre-Code Hollywood. Let’s consider my Best Actress ballot in those years…

Janet Gaynor won the first ever Best Actress Oscar with her performances in Borzage's 7TH HEAVEN and STREET ANGEL, as well as Murnau's SUNRISE. Does she also win here?

To misquote Mark Twain, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Or maybe I should go with Dr. Frankenstein by way of James Whale and scream to the high heavens: It’s ALIVE! Now, dear readers, as I try to return to writing regularly for The Film Experience, I feel like I owe you an explanation for my prolonged absence, not to mention an apology.

I’ve suffered from migraines since I was four, but around the middle of July, a crisis like none other began. Unparalleled in intensity and duration – still going, though not as strong as before - it took me to the ER, a CT scan, a cardiologist’s office, a bunch of new medication, and, soon, a wisdom tooth extraction and an appointment with a neurologist. In other words, it’s been hell, endless pain for over a month that mostly left me useless as far as writing articles or anything longform is concerned. Still, movies have been a refuge, as they’ve always been, and social media has allowed me to keep writing in short spurts whenever the pain medication kicked in, mostly about what I’ve been watching. Specifically, I’ve been emboldened by Twitter user HungryBear’s Oscar retrospectives to revisit my Best Actress picks from the very beginning of the Academy Awards, way back in 1928.

What better way to mark my comeback than to share these with you, too? TFE readers seemed to like reading – or enjoyed arguing over and against – my picks from the 80s, when I shared them two years ago, after all. That’s most of what I’ll be doing as I prepare myself for another TIFF coverage in September, with maybe a couple of other things thrown in if my ever-evolving torment nexus of pain permits it. Anyway, to start things off, we have the first three Oscar editions, when the twenties were honored and, with them, the twilight of the silent era…

It's nearly September which means we're about to be flooded with the official submissions for Best International Feature Film for the upcoming Academy Awards. Within the new system, which allows prize winners at a handful of major film festivals automatic entry into the competition, we know that the Turkish language film Yellow Letters from German director Ilker Catak, Norway's Fjord from Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu, and the Albanian film Shame and Money from Visar Morina can compete without being selected by their country/countries of origin. It'll be interesting to see if those countries select different films to double up their chances or double-down on the acclaim that's already there.

But here are the 11 films to date that have  been named as their home country's official submission...

I’m not sure when I first heard of Julia Sweeney’s breakout SNL sketch “It’s Pat!”. Joe Reid’s comprehensive article on SNL’s queer catalogue was what made me aware of it years ago. Then a young adult of less inquisitive sensitivities, I almost certainly brushed off the whole project as a reflex, the controversial legacy of Pat’s discomforted, gender-nonconformist schtick stinking as too problematic and outdated to bother engaging with. Watching it as a slightly older adult, I can’t say brushing this off was a bad move, even if my reasoning was flawed. There’s certainly a lot of material to seriously analyze - if I felt it was worth the effort. What exactly is the ultimate joke of this character? Are they worth rehabilitating under the progressive gaze of the gays, let alone any other group who feels represented by Pat, for better or worse?

Lucky for us, director Ro Haber saw plenty to discuss, and their 2025 documentary We Are Pat gives this character the intelligent, playful, communal autopsy they deserve . . . .

It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised. Julia Hart's Don't Say Good Luck might have all the makings of a nothingburger direct-to-streaming film, but instead delivers a character-focused film filled with emotion and devoid of cliches. It's also one of the unexpectedly great films of the year...

David Lynch has consolidated his status as one of cinema's greatest auteurs and geniuses to such an extent that it is easy to forget just how much fighting against compromise every step of his career required, even after winning the Palme d’Or for Wild at Heart or revolutionizing TV history with Twin Peaks.

While watching Matt Johnson's Tony, there were long stretches I forgot I was watching a biopic. Instead of focusing on the well-documented mythology of famed chef Anthony Bourdain, this film decides to tell a worthwhile story, which just happens to include a future famous person.

Biopics follow a well-worn pattern of showing a person in their pre-fame life, struggling to emerge through the crowd, which will lead them to a great successes and worldwide acclaim. Tony begins and ends with the main character completely anonymous to the world. Rather than hold your hand and lead you to the point where the character finds success, it plants the seeds to send them in that direction without ever getting close to the actual finish line...

13 feature films into his career, director Christopher Nolan has developed a string of touchstones for his films. You can expect an all-star cast, massive practical set pieces, underdeveloped women, stunning visuals, and clunky dialogue. With his new film The Odyssey, Nolan again delivers on everything you come to expect from a Nolan movie.

This time, Nolan (a well-documented child of cinema history), decides to take his chances with a sword and sandals epic in the vein of Ben-Hur or Quo Vadis. While the filmmaker might not have the reverence for the genre, he dives headfirst into the craft and scope necessary to make a film of this magnitude. When this film is big, bold, and a little silly, that’s where everything excels. It’s when things get more intimate that the film loses its way...

If you’re anything like me, you walk away from the Oscars each year under an absolute fugue state against all new films. If it was made in the last decade, then no thank you! When it comes to 2026 features, I’ll be spending the summer doing what I do best: catching up on new releases I missed in theaters as soon as they hit VOD. So let’s start with a relatively deep cut, recommended by my good friend and one-time TFE contributor Patrick Gratton and available for rental in the US as of this past weekend.

CAMP is the second narrative feature from Avalon Fast, a Canadian writer/director/producer/editor/actress with a prolific repertoire of short films and a well-received debut in the form of 2022’s Honeycomb. Fast’s acting credits include roles in Alice Mao Mackay’s The Serpent’s Skin, Louise Weard’s Castration Movie Pt. i, and Jane Schoenbrun’s upcoming Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and her ambitions fit comfortably within this cadre of palpably queer, genre-bending directors. I’m automatically fascinated by any artist who describes their oeuvre as GIRL HORROR like Fast does, and CAMP’s uncanny, blossoming synthesis of aching grief and encroaching danger fits that description as easily as it defies it...

Will Julianne Moore finally be back in the mix via THE DEBUT

While it took me uncomfortably long to complete the first round of Oscar predictions of the year, I've finally done so ending with Best Actress, Best Picture, Best International Feature Film, Best Director and Best Casting as the final charts to go up. But what I want to talk about is, naturally Best Actress. Quelle surprise!  There are film years where one or two titans feel all but certain this early. There are years where it looks like an abundance of riches coming. And then there are years like 2026 that feel totally mysterious. In short I'm not at all confident about a single one of the women in this first wave of Oscar punditry. I tried many combinations and finally realized it's hardly a preordained year and anything might happen...

THE INVITE

Taking a break from the summer heat in an air-conditioned theater or relaxing at home while catching the year’s cinematic highlights sounds divine, doesn’t it? While the first half of the year’s output in theaters wasn’t overly awards-friendly, here are a few treats you’ll be happy you sampled. Let’s avoid the obvious callouts for box office smashes and focus on the hidden gems. Let's start with two in theaters...

Visar Morina's SHAME AND MONEY became the first film eligible for the Best International Feature Oscar this season, when it won the World Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

CLÁUDIO: Much was said about the Oscar rule changes when they were first announced at the beginning of May, with various opinions going around. While the possibility of actors double-dipping in the same category for the first time since the 1930s is enticing, the transformations to the Best International Film race are perhaps more important and worthy of discussion. And who better to discuss it with than Juan Carlos Ojano, the only person I know who has seen every single nominee in the category's history and discussed them through The One-Inch Barrier podcast? But first, let's assess the rules themselves…

As some of y’all might have noticed, Joanna Sodeman-Taylor is a fairly new name to be showing up on TFE and acting so familiar. So, happy Pride to me! The diva formerly known as Nick is now going by Joanna, and she's has the hormones to back it up. June may be over, but with my other major cinematic obligation with the Columbus Film Festival currently completed, I figured I should polish off my writings on two exemplary documentary shorts that deserve an audience all year round. Better late than never, right? Right! Also, please sound off your favorite queer-as-fuck films you watched in June, whether they're first tiime watches or perennial faves. We gotta share the love around here, goddammit!

Can Daisy & Esmé pull an Emma & Kate in the new version of SENSE & SENSIBILITY?

With such a banner Best Supporting Actress season in the rearview mirror, how can the next race even dream of topping it? Who will be our next Madigan... our Wunmi or Teyana? Will we get another Inga & Elle twofer? Sight unseen the films of 2026 don't appear to be offering us a wealth of contenders. And yet, who can really know in the spring or summertime?  Promos and buzz and rumors of greatness for forthcoming films almost always center around movie star leads and auteurs. Supporting characters, and the actors who play them, only (usually) turn heads / gather momentum during actual screenings and the reviews / media discourse that follows. Which is a long way of saying I don't feel even remotely confident in this first round of Oscar predictions for the 99th Oscars.

Consider the following possibilities...

This year, I was lucky enough to attend the 50th edition of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Market. The festivities ended this past weekend, with Ervin Han and Raúl García’s The Violinist taking the prestigious Cristal prize for Best Film from the feature competition. Past winners include such titles as Arco, Memoir of a Snail, Flee, I Lost My Body, Coraline, and many other unforgettable pictures. But it wasn’t all fun and games and glory. While the festival was underway in the Alps, France was suffering through its worst heatwave in recorded history, and before it all ended, the tragic death of animator Luis de La Rosa shrouded the event in a sense of collective grief. Between good and bad, triumph and unexpected sorrow, there is much to discuss. 

No better place to start than at the beginning, with the slapstick extravaganza that had the honor of opening the festivities – Minions & Monsters, which comes to theaters this week, worldwide…

First still from WERWULF. Can it follow in Nosferatu's footsteps and receive craft nominations?

We started with Costume Design (we're partial to those threads, don'cha know) but now the rest of the first round predictions for the 99th Oscars are available in all visual categories...

You can blame Superman for plenty of the failures with Craig Gillespie's Supergirl. The critical and audience success of that entry reignited the DC Universe. Now, the expectations are too great and the middle-of-the-road film that follows is sure to be considered a disappointment.

It's not like the film does anything wrong, it's just slight. I love not having a plot hinge on universe-changing implications, but this film just establishes the Supergirl character enough to lead to other stories. Table-setting is always a part of the deal with these connected universe stories, but it's surrounded by such low stakes and forgettable characters, it's hard to care...

A quick, aperiodical column dedicated to the small discoveries from the smaller film festivals scattered across Europe.

Pesaro is a small coastal town in central Italy, interionationally known as the birthplace of composer Gioachino Rossini and as a city of bicycles. The economy largely revolves around seaside tourism. For 62 years it has also hosted the Pesaro International Festival of New Cinema, an event dedicated to discovery of new, innovative forms of cinema. The programme does not shy away from hybrid forms, medium-length works and pure experimentation. As a result, its main competition regularly brings together video art, short films, essay films, and boundary-pushing cinema, in all its forms.

This year, for the first time, I was able to spend three days at the festival and explore its offere. Here are five discoveries that surprised me and deserve a mention...

As is annual tradition, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has published the list of the people they're inviting to join their 19 branches this year. Being on this list doesn’t mean you’ve become an Academy member; it just means you’ve been sponsored and  invited (you cannot apply for membership – they have to invite you.) The only other way to become a member, outside of sponsorship from a current member, is to be Oscar-nominated. You’re automatically considered, with or without a sponsor if that happens.

More on invitees I’m thrilled about and other particulars after the jump…