Jonathan Abrams grew up on the potboiler legal thrillers of the 1990s. I’m talking about films such as A Few Good Men or The Firm or The Client or any of the John Grisham or Grisham-esqe adaptations that ruled multiplexes 30 years ago. These are films that have a storied cinematic legacy based in classic films like The Verdict, 12 Angry Men, or even To Kill a Mockingbird. Since then, the legal thriller has waned somewhat in popularity as Hollywood output became increasingly focused on tentpoles, superheroes, and a sequel-friendly culture.

But those legal thrillers of the 1990s inspired Abrams to become a writer and eventually led to his screenplay for Clint Eastwood’s critically acclaimed Juror #2.

“Those are the films I grew up on that made me want to be a writer, that are some of my most memorable experiences at the movies when I was a young person, A Few Good Men especially,” Abrams recalled. “It’s that combination of movies that I loved growing up, and then a great reverence for, when these movies work well, they work so incredibly well. They’re just so good. I just felt like there was a void, as you note, in the marketplace for those movies, and always for me, it comes down to what’s the movie I want to see.”

Abrams’s collaboration with director Eastwood introduces us to Nicholas Hoult’s Justin Kemp, a married expecting father with a past history of addiction. Justin receives a jury summons and becomes the second juror on a trial of a man accused of killing his girlfriend and dumping her body in a ravine. Problem is, and this is not a spoiler because it’s in the trailer, Justin discovers during the course of the trial that he actually is responsible for the victim’s death, setting up a legal morality play. Does Justin live with the guilt of sending a bad man to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, or does he abandon his wife and newborn child by doing the right thing?

These questions of right and wrong and the choices humans make every day while trying to be good people live at the heart of Juror #2. Eastwood worked with Abrams over several drafts of the screenplay to bring them to the front and center of the narrative. They collaboratively whittled away extraneous material to fashion a simple story that hinges on a morality play.

These questions are what Abrams hopes the audiences wrestles with as they watch the film.

“As a viewer, as an audience, as a person, I go, ‘Well, could I live with myself? I’m a good guy. I don’t know if I could do that’,” Abrams explained, describing the struggles Justin goes through in the second half of the film to justify staying silent and condemning an innocent man to prison. “I feel like that’s what he is trying to do throughout the second act of the movie, which I hope the audience is like, ‘Yeah, this could work. Okay. I’m good with this.’ But then realizing, no, it’s not that easy. So for me, those were the twists. They were all character driven about the moral implications of his choices.”

Here, in an podcast interview with The Contending, Abrams talks about the script’s journey to production, including the inspiration and sources he drew from to ensure the plot was as legally sound as possible while still remaining an entertainment. He talks about the awe-inspiring collaboration with Eastwood and meeting him for the first time in his Malpaso Production office on the Warner Bros. lot — a space Eastwood has held for over 50 years. He also talks about creating compelling characters out of the other jury members and some of the great moments that didn’t make the final draft. Finally, he reveals his next project, a perfect way to end this “wonderful” time of year. (Hint: that’s a film reference, not a sarcastic comment on the holiday season.)

Click below for my full conversation with Juror #2 screenwriter Jonathan Abrams. Juror #2 streams exclusively on MAX beginning Friday, December 20.

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The post ‘Juror #2’ Screenwriter Jonathan Abrams On Creating a Character-First Legal Thriller [PODCAST] appeared first on The Contending.

We’re reacting to the recent drop of the 2025 Oscars official shortlists. What films missed out? What performed well? We look at all 10 categories and break things down for you. Then, we talk about what Christmas-adjacent films populate our viewing times this year. We’re not talking It’s A Wonderful Life but more films that might take place at Christmas but aren’t strictly about “the Spirit of Christmas.”

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

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Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 is one of those films where their crafts don’t draw attention to themselves. The artisans supporting Fehlbaum’s taut direction and the fantastic ensemble cast so convincingly orient the audience within the world of the 1972 Munich Olympics that one almost takes for granted this isn’t a documentary. Everything from the expert production design to the razor-sharp editing to the mood-setting cinematography collaborate to faithfully recreate a critical point in journalism history.

In particular, Markus Förderer’s cinematography helped heighten environmental intensity by subtly leveraging effects stemming from period equipment used for the film.

“I had seen Apollo 11. It came out a couple of years ago. It featured footage that they found shot on 65 millimeter about the moon landing, which looked stunning. There’s so many shots in the control rooms, and you see the monitors are flickering like crazy. I showed this to Tim Fehlbaum, the director,” Förderer explained. “I was like let’s not fight it, but use it as a means of storytelling because it creates tension. When you see that flicker, it creates tension. I did tests and I did deep research in neuroscience, the studies about how light flicker or light pulses affect the mood of the viewer.”

To create this anxiety-inducing effect, Förderer installed a series of lights just above the period television monitors into which the actors would watch recreations of on-screen action. For example, they stare transfixed as the film’s recreation of the iconic shot of the masked Palestinian terrorist emerging from the Israeli suite in the Olympic village. While the shot reveals itself, Förderer increased the flicker effect stemming from the installed lights, subconsciously heightens the audience’s fear induced by the moment. 

Förderer shot most of the film using a hand-held camera. That allowed him to navigate the set and capture the intensity of the actors’ reactions to the unfolding horror. The close-up camerawork even allows some of the action seen on the monitors to reflect on characters’ glasses within the steely grey, monitor-lit environment largely void of natural lighting. 

Here, in an interview with The Contending, Förderer further dives into the process of lighting the space to reflect the many monitors that decorated the ABC studios. He also talks about recreating period footage seen on televisions throughout the film using actual ABC footage as inspiration. He also talks about working with the production design team to recreate period cameras and period-specific shots to further orient the viewer within the intensity of these world-changing moments at the 1972 Olympics. 

Click below for my full conversation with September 5 cinematographer Markus Förderer. September 5 is now playing in New York and Los Angeles. It opens nationwide on January 17, 2025.

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Twisters sound mixer Devendra Cleary spent many hot, humid days on location in Oklahoma capturing all aspects of sound for Lee Isaac Chung’s summer blockbuster. The shoot was a fast-paced one, particularly so for a large film. Daily safety briefs came first, but the shoot required extensive planning on how to capture live sounds as efficiently and effectively as possible.

With an extensive network of wireless mics attached to each actor, Cleary and team almost needed to be in multiple places at once to ensure they were capturing performed moments as authentically as possible.

“I would set up an entirely different sound system inside the picture car in order to record all the wireless signals from our microphones to that in case I ever had any dropout issues, because sometimes the follow van or lead van would be sometimes over a football field away from the picture car,” Cleary explained. “The typical day was that it was very fast paced and kind of like ‘Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Always on, always grabbing my bag drop, as I would call it, which was the picture car recorder system, and setting it up for the next scene.”

That dedication in capturing the actors’ original heightened emotion and frenzy from the on-location performance meant that the finished product felt as authentic as possible. Even though all aspects of sound went through final tweaking at Skywalker Sound under supervising sound editors Bjorn Schroeder and Al Nelson, Cleary and team wanted to get the highest quality original track as possible.

That would reduce the project’s reliance on post-filming ADR.

“Instead of it making me feel like lazier as if they can just fix anything, it made me really want to always every day get the dialogue as best we can, regardless of if you think you’re going to ADR because there’s so much fan noise,” Cleary recalled. “There are pieces of ADR. I’m told that there’s not a lot of ADR in the film overall, especially for how effects heavy it is. But it’s thanks to tools like that, it’s thanks to our cooperation. Me and my team get it as best we can on the day, like never give up kind of kind of vibe, but then at the same time knowing, OK, they are going to be able to fix that, so it’s still worth us pushing for it.”

Here, in a podcast interview with The Contending, Twisters sound mixer Devendra Cleary gives a master class on how he and his team achieved the incredible sound design that leads to such an awe-inspiring level of authenticity. He reveals the details and lengths to which he and his team went to ensure their body mics would properly capture as much of the on-location dialogue as possible. He also talks about blending dialogue-heavy moments with the large number of country songs that populate the soundtrack.

Cleary also talks about one of the most challenging moments to capture — the intense opening scene where Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) hides under an overpass from a Category 5 tornado. Finally, he revels in some of the most open and honest feedback he received about the film, feedback that came from his 18-year-old nephew.

Click below for my full conversation with Twisters sound mixer Devendra Cleary. Twisters streams exclusively on MAX.

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The post ‘Twisters’ Sound Mixer Devendra Cleary On Braving the Oklahoma Elements For Sonic Authenticity [PODCAST] appeared first on The Contending.

Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys tells a fictionalized account of two young men — Elwood and Turner — who bond amidst the horrors of the Nickel Academy. The novel was heavily influenced by the real life Dozier School in Florida that operated for 111 years after which dozens of bodies were uncovered in mass graves on the site. The novel, written as a partial response to the election of Donald Trump in 2016, examined the dark truths of sanctioned, institutionalized racism in southern American.

When director RaMell Ross [Oscar-nominee for Hale County This Morning, This Evening] read Whitehead’s novel, he saw in it the opportunity to explore this tragic footnote in American history through an untraditional approach.

“The part that seemed the most paternally satisfying was thinking about the time period in which it takes place and the way that people of color have been represented in photography and film. So, it was specifically around that time and imagining that there’s so much poetry of vision and poetry of life that has been a bit lost,” Ross explained. “This is an opportunity, because Coulson’s narrative is so clear and we know it so well, to fill out the bones of what’s familiar with what is poetic.”

Choosing Nickel Boys as his first narrative feature was not the giant leap from his documentary filmmaking days. In fact, he leveraged techniques learned through nonfiction filmmaking to shape the narrative and visual style of Nickel Boys.

His approach has many critics, including the Gotham Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle which both awarded Ross Best Director of 2024, comparing his work to that of the great visual poet Terrance Malick. It’s an apt comparison given Ross’s approach to the imagery of the film.

“I took point of view and I took the idea of trying to get to experience a person’s lived imagery through a sort of musical use of images. Hale County taught me that it is possible to get to some emotional core that is a sum of images that doesn’t have to be directly illustrative of sort of plot advancement or narrative that has narrative clarity,” Ross recalled. “I used two or three, actually three or four, shots from Hale County as proof of concept of how the camera would move.”

Here, in an interview with The Contending, Ross dives into detail about the making of the film, working with a cast of newcomers as well as the Oscar-nominated Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and gives his thoughts behind why he chose to leverage first-person POV to tell this amazing story.

Click below for my full conversation with Nickel Boys director RaMell Ross. Nickel Boys opens in NY on Friday, December 13, and in Los Angeles on Friday, December 20.

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Joey, Megan, and Clarence are joined by The Contending contributor Mark Johnson to break down the 2025 Golden Globe nominations. Plus, we look at whether or not critics awards matter in the Oscar race and who benefitted most from week one of the critics phase.

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

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The post Oscars 2025: 2025 Golden Globe Film, Critics Week Reactions With Mark Johnson [PODCAST] appeared first on The Contending.

Megan caught up to Jon M. Chu’s Wicked, and she loved it. After she raves about Cynthia Erivo’s performances, we break down what works (Those performances! Those musical numbers!), what doesn’t (Wome of the camerawork), and what will likely break through at the 2025 Oscars. Will Wicked star Cynthia Erivo knock out a Best Actress contender?

Then, we preview the major critics’ awards that will roll out this week, including the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Board of Review, and the AFI Awards list. What films could pop as we kick off awards season?

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

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The post Podcast: What Is This Feeling? Are ‘Wicked,’ Erivo, & Grande Oscar-Bound? appeared first on The Contending.

When approaching his writing projects, Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning screenwriter Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) looks for a personal connection to the material. It’s that connection that gives his best work that extra spark, and he often finds it when the projects deal with themes of loyalty and betrayal. Those themes existed at the heart of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and at the center of his Hilary Mantel adaptation Wolf Hall.

Themes of betrayal and loyalty also feature prominently in his latest adaptation: director Edward Berger’s acclaimed film Conclave. Based on the Robert Harris novel, the film explores the tumultuous days after the death of a pope during which cardinals must assemble and elect a new pope. Characters within the film seek to adhere to the standards, rituals, and ideals of the Catholic Church while others seek to use the opportunity for their own personal and political gains.

“It’s a really gripping story. All of those lovely political thriller tropes that we know from the 70s films, it’s like Robert found a way of making them new again because it’s a world that we don’t know. It’s a world we’re not normally allowed into, so everything felt fresh,” Straughan explained. “Somebody sent an Emily Dickinson poem line to me the other day [“Tell all the truth but tell it slant”], which I really liked. That’s what Conclave does. It takes you through the world of politics, but from an angle that you haven’t seen.”

When working on the script, Straughan partnered closely with Berger to shape Harris’s novel into a cinematic thriller. They carefully crafted appropriate moments of comedy and critical moments of silence amidst the predominantly discussion-heavy screenplay. Most of those key moments of careful silence and contemplation center around the film’s main character: Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes).

Not only is Lawrence tasked with leading this conclave to its mandated task, but he’s also struggling with his own crisis of faith. So, representing Lawrence as a careful listener through the screenplay became a major goal for Straughan.

“There’s a lot of silence with Lawrence, and there’s a lot of listening. We were able to use that in all sorts of different ways. I think there is this sense of Lawrence is a silent man, straining to hear, to hear instruction, to hear on what’s the right thing to do,” Straughan reflected. “When he finally does believe he’s heard that, in the final vote, he’s then astounded by the results, astounded by the new world that he’s helped to bring about.”

Speaking of “new world,” it’s impossible to watch Conclave – a film about papal elections – and not compare it to contentious secular elections. The release of the film wasn’t specifically timed to the 2024 US Presidential election. Still, audiences nervously chuckle at references within the film to the US electoral system.

Granted, Conclave isn’t intended to reflect any specific secular election. It all depends on the perspective audiences bring to the experience. It reflects not only US-based elections but elections around the world.

“People are people all over from Cardinals to all of us in our ordinary lives. That sort of binary opposition is everywhere,” Straughan remarked. “It just falls naturally into place that this feels like secular politics.”

Click below to hear my full conversation with Conclave screenwriter Peter Straughan.

Conclave is now playing in theaters and is available to stream on VOD. 

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We’ve all seen Gladiator II and have definite opinions on some hot topics, including Denzel Washington, flooding the Colloseum, Paul Mescal, and properly channeling rage. We break down our feelings on Ridley Scott’s latest film and try to figure out where it stands within the Oscar race after good box office but middling critic and audience reviews.

Then, it’s time for some trades in our Fantasy Oscar Pool, and trades we make! Plus, Clarence makes a very unusual request…

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

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Eight time Oscar-winning composer and EGOT recipient Alan Menken created some of the greatest film scores in cinematic history. Any composer would be thrilled to have only created the scores to Disney’s animation renaissance unofficial trilogy of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. But he did not stop there. His scores range from more Disney classics (The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a personal favorite) to Little Shop of Horrors (brilliant) to Broadway versions of his major works.

Glenn Slater is a Grammy and Emmy-winning lyricist who received Tony nominations for his work on Broadway’s The Little Mermaid and Sister Act. He also partnered with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber on Love Never Dies, the divisive, cult favorite sequel to Phantom of the Opera.

Now, the pair again reunite after collaborating for over 25 years on Netflix’s newest animated film Spellbound. An original story produced by John Lasseter, the film features the vocal talents of Rachel Zegler (West Side Story) as Ellian, Princess of the Lumbria kingdom. When her parents are mysteriously turned into unruly monsters, Ellian must figure out a way to break the spell that has enchanted them. Just because Ellian is a princess, though, don’t expect traditional Disney princess stereotypes.

“When we talk about, the ‘Disney Renaissance,’ the Rosetta Stone for the ‘Disney Renaissance’ was actually Little Shop of Horrors for me and Howard [Ashman].The use of genre, the structure, the way we created the score and the world… Really we used to refer to ‘Part of Your World’ as ‘Somewhere That’s Wet’,” Menken laughed. “So, we took from musical theater and infused that into the world of Disney fairy tales or princesses, but the fact is that these are all emotional journeys of aspiration. In this case, we take one of aspiration that what [Ellian] gets at the end is not what she was aspiring for. It is profound and emotionally meaningful.”

When approaching the material, Menken and Slater took a cue from early project artwork that had a Spanish influence. That provided a starting point, but the extremely emotional focus of the material led the team to look more broadly to create the final score. They eventually pulled influences from Indian, Arabic, Brazilian, and Eastern European countries into the mix.

The broad mixture of originating countries avoided establishing the film in any specific location.

“We wanted to make sure there were enough different influences that you could never quite pinpoint exactly where it is because it’s not a place that exists. But we also wanted to have some musical identifying features that would remind audiences of a tricky dance in which one person is trying to convince another person, not unlike a tango or a flamenco,” Slater explained. “We wanted to give that sense of uninhibited street performances and joy that you would get from like a Brazilian carnival without necessarily saying you’re in Brazil.”

One of the highlights of the song creation process for Menken and Slater was in breaking down the song “Remembering.” Traditionally, songs within an animated film fall into one of a few categories: the “I want” song, a broad comedy song, or a big production number (think “Be Our Guest”). Through this number, characters begin to regain past memories in a very quiet and subtle journey.

It’s that journey that helped Menken and Slater understand that the moment really needed a song.

“Alan came up with a set of melodies for each of the characters that kind of interlocked and worked together in this sort of almost Rubik’s Cube of emotion where one thing turned and another thing turns and each time the character makes a turn, it makes the other character turn a bit,” Slater recalled. “By the end of the song, you’ve gone on this great journey with them, but they’ve been standing still, sitting there the entire time.Yet, they’ve taken this great leap together.”

Spellbound drops on Netflix today. 

Listen below for my full interview with Spellbound composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater.

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