Box Office: Wolverine slays while Get Out stays...

I dont know where this photo is from but I love itDespite the R rating, or perhaps because of it, Logan opened much stronger than its 2013 predecessor The Wolverine (which eventually racked up $414 million globally). Logan will easily become the highest grossing Wolverine film by the end of its run thanks to what will surely be strong word of mouth... something this particular solo franchise has never experienced.

In other box office news: Jordan Peele's hot button horror film Get Out held spectacularly well, dropping only 21%; Best Foreign Language Film winner The Salesman expanded to over 100 theaters; and most importantly Best Picture winner Moonlight returned to wide release in theaters even as it was just released on DVD / BluRay adding another $2.5 million to its gross. This weekend it became A24's second biggest hit in the US by passing The Witch (still their biggest hit globally though). Moonlight will end its run as the lowest grosser among the 2016 Best Picture nominees but $25 million isn't too shabby at all for a serious black gay art film with no bankable stars. In fact it's kind of a miracle. It just needs $60,000 more in ticket sales this week to beat Ex Machina and become A24's biggest US hit.

TOP WIDE 
01 Logan $85.3 NEW Reviewed
02 Get Out $26.1 (cum. $75.9) Reviewed
03 The Shack $16.1 NEW 
04 The Lego Batman Movie $11.6 (cum. $148.6) 
05 Before I Fall $4.9 NEW

TOP LIMITED 
01 A United Kingdom $625K (cum. $1.8) 271 theaters
02 The Salesman $266K (cum. $1.8) Review, Interview 115 theaters
03 Kedi $234K (cum. $577K) Reviewed 13 theaters
04 Bitter Harvest $94K (cum. $392K) 75 theaters
05 Everybody Loves Somebody $65K (cum. $1.8) 60 theaters

Logan didn't have a post-credit scene due to the nature of its actual content but moviegoers were treated to this amusing Deadpool 2 teaser above with a cameo from Stan Lee and a full moon from game Ryan Reynolds, still loving his role as the merc with a mouth

Review: Hugh Jackman's Last Stand as Wolverine in "Logan"

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Logan, the latest and last (for now) solo Wolverine movie, was not kidding around when it opted for Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” as its trailer music. It’s not just the severity of the title, but the elegiac lyrics, and the dying man as guiding spirit / inspiration. Some trailers lie but this one spoke world-weary truth. This is exactly the kind of movie James Mangold, who also directed the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, delivers.

Wolverine’s mutation were never those iconic claws, which were a science experiment to weaponize him, but his ability to instantly heal which also slows down his aging process. The movie franchise got very silly about this, placing him in the civil war context in X-Men Origins as if the once feral Canadian hero was an immortal vampire rather than a mutant. 

But Logan is anything but silly about aging...

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Are you a patron saint?

big sad eyes. show us love.I have sad news to report. The Film Experience has lost its chief patron who underwrote some of our expenses due to a shift in their personal economy (plus our ad revenue was down this year). This won't mean anything to you reading (at least immediately) but in order to insure our continued success as we scramble to find other income streams, we do need more funds than usual for dull things like rent and food and exciting things like film festivals and tech improvements on the chart pages and better microphones for the podcast and so on. We're working on solutions to further monetize the site beyond the occasional movie ad and hopefully we'll start selling ebooks or other items. We'll have more time to figure this out after the Oscars. But for now there are two things you can do to help.

One: Shop at Amazon under our affiliate program. Next time you need to buy something -- anything -- just click from here (ads to your left) to purchase it. I'd love to see if this is a feasible option for extra funds

Two: Become a patron of the site by setting up a monthly donation. If you'd like to sponsor a particular series rather than just donating in this general way, please notate that on your donation so we can direct the funds accordingly. So whether you love the Oscar coverage, actress-obsessing, theme weeks, retrospectives, random silliness, or any of our weekly series show your love. There are two ways to donate, subscription (which is wonderful as its steady and something we can count on) or a one time donation. 

Our fundraising goal is 500 patron saints - We'll keep a tally to the right hand so you can see how we're doing at meeting that goal!  Your suscription dimes make an enormous difference to The Film Experience.

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364 Days Until Oscar

No, really! They are. We won't torture you with Oscar trivia daily (well, not every day) but it really is only 364 days until the next Oscars. The 90th Academy Awards will be held on March 4th, 2018. We'll make our first guesses as to the nominee slate in the first week of April. Those April Foolish predictions are not so very far away now. If you've started thinking about this already, know that you are not alone. Many of us suffer the golden ailment.

Today in History: Page's Second Globe, Larry & Viv's Affair, Etc...

Looking for something to celebrate today? On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

1874 Oscar nominee Henry Travers (Mrs Miniver) was born in England
1908 Future Oscar winner, "Henry Higgins" and "Dr Dolittle" himself Sir Rex Harrison is born 
1922 FW Murnau's silent classic Nosferatu premieres in its home country of Germany. On the same day in Italy the future super controversial auteur Pier Paolo Pasolini (120 Days of Sodom, The Gospel According to St Matthew) is born
1936 Dean Stockwell is born in California. He will go on to have an epically lengthy career starting as a child star in the 40s and still working occasionally today. On the same day the '35 Oscars were held with Mutiny on the Bounty taking Best Picture and Bette Davis winning her first Oscar for Dangerous. Oscar was already doing "sorry about last time" awards as that one was obviously for her far superior work in Of Human Bondage.  

Geraldine Page, Larry & Viv, and Harrison Ford after the jump...

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