A big weekend for Parasite and The Lighthouse
Sunday, October 20, 2019 at 6:56PM by Nathaniel R
| Weekend Box Office [ESTIMATES] Oct 18th-20th 🔺 = New or Expanding / ★ = Recommended |
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| W I D E |
PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES |
 |
 |
| 1 🔺 MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL $36 *new* |
1 🔺 PARASITE $1.2 on 33 screens (cum. $1.8) PODCAST ★ |
| 2 JOKER $29.2 (cum. $247.2) REVIEW |
2 🔺 PAIN AND GLORY $463k on 67 screens (cum. $1.1) REVIEW, PODCAST ★ |
| 3 🔺 ZOMBIELAND DOUBLE TAP $26.7 *new* REVIEW |
3 THE LIGHTHOUSE $419k on 8 screens *new* REVIEW ★ |
| 4 THE ADDAMS FAMILY $16 ($56.8) |
4 🔺 JOJO RABBIT $350k on 5 screens *new* TIFF WINNER ★ |
| 5 GEMINI MAN $8.5 (cum. $36.5) REVIEW |
5 🔺 LINDA RONSTADT... $188k on 147 screens (cum. $3.5) REVIEW |
numbers on that chart are pulled from boxofficemojo
Parasite is dominating in the arthouse theaters. The Lighthouse and JoJo Rabbit followed it, all shiny new, to packed houses. This bodes well for their continued expansion and Oscar dreams. The Lighthouse at least isn't going to wait. It adds 500 or so screens next weekend. Adults were clearly starved in the late summer for some serious or ambitious movies. Meanwhile in wide release sequels to Maleficent and Zombieland arrived. The Maleficent sequel did half the business or the original in its first weekend which isn't quite as bad as it sounds since the original opened in the heat of summer movie season (when ticket sales are much brisker) and the sequel arrived in October. But Zombieland 2 was roughly off to the same size of a start.
In other box office news this week, Hustlers passed the key $100 million mark (an enormous success as original adult dramas and female-directed films go). Downton Abbey also passed Brokeback Mountain to become the biggest hit in the history of Focus Features. The big question now is whether the TV-to-big-screen sequel can last a few more weeks and pass Rocketman to become the biggest hit with gay subject matter this year.
WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?
Reader Comments (19)
Did some disposable stuff (IT CHAPTER 2, UGLYDOLLS), awards contenders (SLAM (which hopefully will feature heavily in the AACTA nominations later this month, as it is one of the best Australian films of the year), MAIDEN) and some in-between (KRASUE: INHUMAN KISS which is Thailand's official Oscar entry but, being a horror film has virtually no chance (despite it being of high quality), WORKING WOMAN (which was a finalist for Israel's official entry but didn't make it).
I watched Crawl which is 1 of the best creature features in a while.
Gloria Bell which was ok but way off peak Moore,I did like Turturro in it.
Sliver peak Billy Peak Stone beauty.The film just doesn't work.Stone plays frigid very badly.
I couldn't go to the movies because Spain is a Fascist State and my city was in flames. It was better than Joker anyway.
I saw The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which I liked. I saw a play as well--The Sound Inside with Mary Louise Parker, which I LOVED.
A couple of first-timers in Finding Dory (excellent) and Kuroneko (fucking incredible).
Oh congrats to "Hustlers"! I'm still waiting on "Parasite" and "Pain & Glory" to make it here, I'm sure I'll have an amazing weekend once the 25th rolls around.
I saw Maleficent 2.
I cried, and I wasn’t the only one. The love between mother and child is such a cinema classic that it is truly irritating that Disney has so many “dead mom” stories.
The first Maleficent got an Oscar nomination for Best Costumes, and this one is also sumptuous, helped by 3 terrific actresses who really know how to make a costume work. (Pfeiffer’s pearls were dazzling).
Pfeiffer’s character is Queen Ingrith, but I kept hearing Ingrid, which is the name of the character Pfeiffer played so wonderfully in “White Oleander” and should have won an Oscar for.
Jolie and Fanning are, again, one of the sweetest pairings ever.
I'm impressed with JOJO RABBIT's numbers with only 3 (I mean THREE!!). Also glad THE LIGHTHOUSE is doing great
I have NEVER fallen asleep in a movie theater but I did at Ad Astra. All four of us hated it.
Also saw Judy... movie left me cold. I grew up with Garland, but this movie was not done well.
Renee was very good... will be nominated, but I hope someone else comes along and takes the prize/
It was a fantastic movie weekend for me. I saw PARASITE and JOJO RABBIT and they were both magnificent! Starting to feel good about awards season! I mean until they nominate [insert awful film here] for everything and give it all the awards.
@Ryan T. I'm very jealous, living in Seattle, a medium-sized city that acts like it's a big city. We get things so many weeks late!
Kim f......liar . Shake on you . Viva España
Shame on you liar Spain is much more than Barcelona liar Kim
@Javier Fascist! Go say goodbye to Franco!
Jojo Rabbit - I generally liked it, even though it's not particularly interesting as satire/political commentary - toothless and far too safe and polished. Excels as a charming coming-of-age film. Really liked the whole ensemble.
A Hidden Life - Very long/hard to watch, but that's more a feature than a bug. I found this extremely powerful - cried myself to sleep afterwards and woke up wanting to be a farmer in the Austrian mountains. Nice sister piece to Silence.
I saw Ira Sachs' Frankie and liked it. I heard it was inert and not captivating as Sachs' other films. It is easy to see similarities with Éric Rohmer's films, especially since Pascal Greggory (wonderful in Rohmer's Pauline à la Plage) makes an appearance as the central character's ex-husband. I thought the roles were played quite well by an international cast even if some mini-stories work better than others. The little intimacies created by the picturesque landscape where the film was shot, the soft focus on the colors, the overall performances, and the spare non-diegetic musical score are framed in an unhurried, non-fussy, and naturalistic way. Bringing all the family together to bond because the matriarch is dying is not exactly the most novel of cinematic ideas but like a slowly unfolding flower, the film does not really have a grand scene; it is a snapshot of life and what it means to the people who people this story. Huppert, Tomei and Gleeson were vivid, and it is great to see new talents like Vinette Robinson and Carlotto Cota who played parts in stories that I wish Sachs will develop into a full-length film someday.
Synonymes wasn't what I expected, storytelling-wise. The pro-filmic moments initially jarred me and took me out of my comfortable level of film spectating, but once I got used to the rhythm, flow, and zigzag editing, I appreciated it much much more. The late Jonas Mekas has done experimental and 'linear' films like these in the past particularly the elliptical Lost Lost Lost, and Synonymes communicates that here. It does not explain what's going onscreen until later. Haven't we all experienced being foreigners in strange cities and landscapes? I relate to the peripatetic life of a foreigner for an extended period of time and how to find connection in the littlest of things, incidents, situations. Tom Mercier's Yoav is all about that but he is also escaping his native country to reconstitute his life in another. But will he ever 'become' one that he wants? Mercier is an intense actor, at times scary because of his unpredictability. He gave one of the best lead actor performances for me this year (next to Félix Maritaud in Sauvage) but there is absolutely no chance he'll be in conversation for lead actor in the Oscars. The ending was very poignant and conveys a lot in that singular act what his life is going to be like in his adopted country. It is like the title of a Sartre play where hell is other people.
Then I also saw François Ozon's latest - Grâce à Dieu a.k.a. "By the Grace of God" which was truly heart-pounding but not like in action movies. It is about the sexual abuses done to the innocent by Catholic priests. The three leads are all good, each embodying certain traits yet never shrink into caricatures -- Swann Arlaud in particular. His messy, tangled-up life contrasts with the other two. If the performances can be reduced to music, Arlaud's Emmanuel is like late-night blues to the power balladry of Denis Ménochet's François and the clean West Coast jazz of Melvil Poupaud's Alexandre. Each vignette's narratives carefully and emphatetically told but with surprising restraint. The stories are paced well, the child abuses recreated tactfully, the supporting performances more lived-in than acted out. There were brief scenes that I thought were breathtaking and spectacular for what they evoked in me: Alexandre's expression when his son asked him a weighty question at the film's conclusion, and the heartbreaking mise en scène of Emmanuel and his mother (Josiane Balasko) captured wordlessly in two separate rooms and both in one frame.
Parasite is so good. I want it more than anything to get an ensemble prize by some awards body. Such great acting all around.
I saw "Matthias & Maxime" this weekend and am so glad I did. I've seen seven of the eight feature films Xavier Dolan's directed and have enjoyed and admired all of them. "Mommy" and "Laurence Anyways" are flat-out masterpieces for me - and I'm tempted to say the same about "Matthias & Maxime". Complex, riveting and genuinely moving. Dolan has such a gift for directing actors. In a perfect world Micheline Bernard would be among the supporting nominees this year. The actress who plays Dolan's aunt (imdb doesn't identify her) just gets a scene or two but, boy, is she sensational ! And -of course - it's always a pleasure to rediscover what a wonderful actor Dolan himself is. He's heartbreakingly good here. I never miss a Terrence Malick film and I'm really looking forward to "A Hidden Life", which I expect to love. But I think Xavier Dolan and Asghar Farhadi are the two most exciting film directors working today. Long may they thrive.
But Generalisimo Franco is still dead ( Oh I couldn't resist) Movie wise nothing in the theater but I did re-watch Edward G Ulmer's noir masterpiece "Detour" (1945) on TCM.