To Leslie Movie
In his review of the film following Riseborough's Oscar nomination, Peter Travers stated: "Riseborough's portrayal of addiction is unmatched since Nicolas Cage won an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas." "Whether or not Riseborough pulls off a longshot victory at the Oscars, she's created a portrayal that plays like a classic country song you can't get out of your head and heart. In a movie rescued from oblivion, Riseborough is unmissable and unforgettable."[18]
To Leslie Movie
Morris' direction offers other filmmakers a template for how to make a small movie that feels big, just by making definitive choices and sticking to them. In an early scene, Leslie is present for a brawl in a hallway: we see her in-focus in the foreground, reacting in profile as the fight happens out-of-focus in the background. In a later scene, Leslie spends the night in an abandoned ice cream shack across from the motel and watches through a slat in the blinds as Royal, an acid-head and conspiracy theorist, bays at the moon in his undershorts and then races across the parking lot to give Sweeney a hug. There are only two shots in the sequence: Leslie watching, and her point-of-view of people doing things far away (the extreme distance makes their actions funnier).
PFEIFFER: But we rarely find out what happens to them after that. The new movie, "To Leslie," is about a single mom in West Texas years after she buys a lotto ticket worth $190,000. She quickly squanders her winnings and loses family and friends along the way. The film follows her battle with alcoholism, her relationship struggles and her attempts to redeem herself.
PFEIFFER: Speaking of the beautiful, funny, spicy parts of Leslie, as you put it so well, we heard that clip of Leslie whooping and hollering and celebrating that she won all the money. That's how the movie opens. But soon after, she is literally on a curb, thrown out of a motel she'd been living in. So we see her defiant and aggressive and sometimes funny, other times depressed and defeated. You had to play many different versions of Leslie. Did you think of yourself as playing a single character or multiple characters?
PFEIFFER: Andrea, some of the reviews of this movie so far have credited it for a really nuanced look at addiction. Did this affect your own understanding of what it's like to be a person with a substance use disorder or a person who's a substance abuser in any way?
PFEIFFER: Marc Maron has a cute, charming role in this movie. He plays someone who comes into Leslie's life when she basically has nobody left. And at first, he shoos her off like shooing away a vagrant, basically. But let's hear part of a scene of what happens next.
PFEIFFER: Marc is thinking, what have I done? In real life, Marc Maron has been very open about his own struggles with alcohol and drug use, so there's a personal layer to this. What was it like working with him on this movie?
By far the biggest shocker among this week's Oscar nominations is the inclusion of Andrea Riseborough in the uber-competitive category of Best Actress. Few people had even heard of her movie, "To Leslie," which eked out a disastrous $27,000 when first released in theaters last fall.
Working from a sharply observant script by Ryan Binaco, who loosely based the film on his own mother, first-time feature director Michael Morris ("Better Call Saul") deftly avoids the traps of junkie cinema by keeping us off-balance about just where his movie is going.
By far the biggest shocker among this week's Oscar nominations is the inclusion of Andrea Riseborough in the uber-competitive category of Best Actress. Few people had even heard of her movie, \"To Leslie,\" which eked out a disastrous $27,000 when first released in theaters last fall.
Working from a sharply observant script by Ryan Binaco, who loosely based the film on his own mother, first-time feature director Michael Morris (\"Better Call Saul\") deftly avoids the traps of junkie cinema by keeping us off-balance about just where his movie is going.
Families can talk about the way that alcohol use and abuse permeates To Leslie. Did the movie affect the way you perceive addiction? Why, or why not? Does it show realistic consequences for Leslie's substance use?
Talk about the movie's message about the disease of substance abuse and how it impacts not only the addicted person but also those around them. Is all the drinking shown here necessary to the story? Why?
Colleagues took it on themselves to see to it that a wonderful performance in a movie that barely cleared $20,000 at the box office in the U.S. was recognized, taking the decision out of the hands of the frauds at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the nobodies of the National Board of Review, and the ever-growing TV, radio and online American-Canadian Critics Association.
But Leslie isn't looking to drink herself to death. Instead, she's desperate to get close to anyone in order to get her next drink. That includes reconnecting with her son James (Owen Teague of "IT" and "The Stand"), who is already on edge about letting Leslie back into his life, for fear that she'll be drowning in the drink yet again. When that takes a turn south, she ends up being sent back to her dusty, dead hometown to live with family "friends" Nancy (Allison Janney) and Dutch (Stephen Root), a biker couple who took care of James as a kid when Leslie skipped town, and they haven't forgotten what a drunken f**k-up Leslie was before she disappeared. If there's one complaint I have about "To Leslie," it's that there's not nearly enough leather-clad, tough love Janney and Root, and I can't help but wish there was a whole other movie with those excellent character actors in this form.
The only way to watch it right now is to rent or buy it on-demand through Prime Video, Apple TV, and YouTube. It is possible the production company will wait after the Oscars ceremony to release it on one of the streaming services. So fingers crossed the movie comes to streaming sometime after March 12!
It's unclear what, if any, rules have been broken here. The Academy has a long list of guidelines(Opens in a new tab) for the nomination process, but that doesn't provide a smoking gun. Per Vanity Fair(Opens in a new tab), some Academy voters were contacted with the suggestion that they watch the movie and support it online, which could theoretically breach the Academy's lobbying rules.
Some people could also feel that To Leslie is being unfairly punished for the crime of not being mainstream enough. It's receiving a level of scrutiny that bigger films haven't had to worry about, even though there's a long, well-reported history(Opens in a new tab) of movie studios engaging in backroom politicking during awards season.
Aided and abetted in this endeavor by a staggering ensemble cast, including Oscar-winner Allison Janney and Stephen Root, To Leslie is a movie of small moments. As Nancy and Dutch respectively, these two revered character actors bring a brutal truth to the lives of those who live in the shadow of alcoholism. Their capacity for forgiveness has been worn down to nothing by the capricious lies of a family member with scant regard for those around her.
Let's talk about Mandy and its legacy. That's one of the best genre movies of the 21st century, and it came out of left field for audiences and reminded us all why we adore Nicolas Cage. Could you tell you were working on something so incredibly special?
This celebrity-backed campaign caused many in the movie industry to raise questions about whether their campaigning strategies violated Academy rules since it forbids individuals from giving their personal pleas to watch a film. The film's distributor, Momentum Pictures, also didn't fund advertisements for a conventional awards campaign compared to other nominated features. However, after conducting a review, there were no reports of unauthorized campaigning for the film, securing Andrea's best actress nomination.
My name is Christian Eltell. I was born in Colorado, but I've lived all my life in New York. I'm an NYU Tisch graduate with a Master's Degree in Cinema Studies, and a St. Joseph's College graduate with a Bachelor's Degree as an English major and history minor. I've always enjoyed watching movies, especially crime dramas, Westerns, gangster pictures, and superhero films. I hope to entertain everyone with my writing on movies and television.
There are always surprise Oscar nominations, but few in recent memory have been as shocking as the Best Actress nomination for Andrea Riseborough for her movie To Leslie. The indie movie was little seen before it became an Oscar nominee, but now many people are wondering where they can watch To Leslie to catch up on it. 041b061a72