What did you see this weekend?
Sunday, February 3, 2019 at 11:30PM Superbowl weekend was rough for the movies with lower than usual grosses all around. Was it the polar vortex? Who dared venture out of their homes?!
| Weekend Box Office Estimates February 1st-3rd (ESTIMATES) 🔺 = New or Expanded Theater Count / ★= Recommended |
|
| W I D E 800+ screens |
PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide |
 Miss Bala |
 Free Solo |
| 1 Glass $9.5 (cum. $88.6) Review |
1🔺 They Shall Not Grow Old $2.4 (cum. $10.7) Review ★ |
| 2 The Upside $8.8 (cum. $75.5) |
2🔺 Free Solo $1.3 (cum. $14.9) Review, Biggest Doc Hits ★ |
| 3 🔺 Miss Bala $6.7 *NEW* |
3🔺 Ek Ladki Ko Dekha... $600k *NEW* |
| 4 Aquaman $4.7 (cum. $323.5) Review, Podcast |
4🔺 Cold War $564k (cum. $2.1) Review, Biggest Foreign Hits ★ |
| 5 Into the Spider-Verse $4.4 (cum. $175.2) Review, Annie Award Winner ★ |
5🔺 Destroyer $234k (cum. $1.2) Review ★ |
Miss Bala had a rough opening weekend, unable to unseat three week old Glass and four week old The Upside to claim the top spot. Two notes on Oscar boosts: Green Book is now finally on its way to becoming the hit everyone originally assumed it would be when they saw it at festivals, having roared back to life last week and holding super well this week (it's at #6 for the past two weeks -- the highest its ever climbed on the charts after almost three months in theaters indicating that word of mouth has finally caught up with it. In specialty theaters Free Solo and Cold War have also done a superb job capitalizing on their Oscar nods. Free Solo was all but finished with its run a few weeks ago but is suddenly reenergized, this weekend becoming the second highest doc grosser of 2018 by topping RBG. Meanwhile Cold War has been cruising up the foreign film charts and is now the 8th biggest subtitled hit of 2018, just now defeating last year's Oscar champ A Fantastic Woman.
Free Solo, Miss Bala, box office
Reader Comments (20)
Watched FREE SOLO again at the IMAX in Lincoln Square. The way it's meant to be seen (through the fingers of my hand of course)!
Re-watches of The Perfect Score and The Naked Gun! plus a first-timer in a 30 for 30 special in Deion's Double Play. Earlier today, I saw The Favourite....OLIVIA COLMAN FOR BEST ACTRESS!!!!!
The Favourite: What a great movie! Best original screenplay for sure! Its gotta be a battle between this one and Black Panther when it comes to costume design and production design. The three ladies were AWESOME!
Shoplifters: Such a Japanese gem of a movie!
Vice. As underwhelming as I expected. Bale was good but showed very little range (not sure Darth Cheney has range in real life either). Adams put in a good performance as usual, but it just couldn't stick out in such a quagmire. Annoying "humor," like in McKay's previous film. Carrell was unconvincing and Rockwell looked and sounded like Dana Carvey doing Bush Sr. Mess.
I saw Green Book. It was ok. Ali and Cardelini are the best parts. But they should have just gotten Ray Liotta if Viggo's direction was to act like Liotta acting like Tony Soprano. Also the camerawork/editing was sloppy. In one scene a character asks for a cigarette and an extra walks by completely blocking the audience seeing the transaction.
Overall the story behind the two main characters is interesting but in the hands of stronger filmmakers it would have been so much better.
Bruno: what I really objected to was the overall smugness of the film. Those 8 nominations will not age well..at all.
I watched Burning on iTunes. Beautiful work.
Velvet Buzzsaw was a toothless satire and a half-baked horror story. At least we get some Jake Gyllenhaal skin but he and the rest of the talented cast were left stranded. It looked like a fun film for the actors but the viewer will find fhemselves asking in the middle of it if there is anything else to this story. There isn’t.
Saw Vice. I give McKay credit for making his profane, educational entertainment movies. Do they hold up as art? Maybe not. But his track record proves that each has a few good performances, more than a few laughs, and a sense of urgency that other current events movies can't match. The theater loved it FWIW.
If millions more people know about unitary executive theory than they did before Vice (as they better understood shorting/the housing bubble last time) then I think he's doing a good service. He has some style. I feel like the hatred/annoyance is misplaced.
He's like the narrative filmmaking equivalent of Michael Moore. Definitely not for everyone but I give him credit, you know? Would we rather see Talladega Nights II?
I didn't movie at all this weekend, but spent all of Saturday in the theater in NYC seeing Elevator Repair Service's GATZ. I've waited almost ten years to see it and BY GOD it didn't disappoint ONE BIT. Brilliant staging of The Great Gatsby - every single word of the novel is read out loud by an office worker - that provided a lot of fodder for conversation during the dinner break and long after about the nature of theater, reading, and the story itself. It was worth the wait, and the money.
"Velvet Buzzsaw" was truly kind of nothing. Imagine thinking the art world is too self-serious but also you made "Nightcrawler"?
Loved, loved "Russian Doll". I want to rewatch the whole thing again soon, which I rarely do.
It's a shame the remake of Miss Bala, flop that it is, is the version most people will see. The original was a thrilling, beautifully crafted film with a winning lead performance. In a perfect world, it would have seen wide release instead of this watered-down dreck.
I caught up with Velvet Buzzsaw over the weekend. Not Dan Gilroy's best but I dig what Gyllenhaal was doing and any film that gives Rene Russo a lead role is okay with me. Russo had a great run of crowd-pleasing hits in the '90s and she's still a charismatic performer. She deserved an Oscar nod for Nightcrawler. (For that matter, so did Gyllenhaal.)
By the by, I've posted my end of year honors.
I finally saw If Beale Street Could Talk and thought it was brilliant. How was James Laxton passed over? That was the best cinematography of the year.
I saw Velvet Buzzsaw. Fun, good and game cast, love the colors and LA scenery, but...should've been better. The concept is great but all the threads didn't come together for me. And it really depends on characters making stupid choices just for the sake of plot. Plus did the movie really need to turn Collette into a cold-hearted power bitch when it already had Russo in that role? They couldn't think of another direction for her?
I didn't see any films this past week, but I am sad to hear that Miss Bala was so poorly received. Gina Rodriguez is a wonderful talent and I hope she finds some good roles. She's marvelous on Jane the Virgin.
I saw COLD WAR. Mixed feelings - the artist-under-Stalinist-oppression backdrop was powerful, but the love story felt like it had no substance. The characters were broadly drawn, and I never understood their love for each other (plus, the template of older male teacher obsessed with younger female student...ugh). But...
Give me more Joanna Kulig! She was like Gena Rowlands, Jeanne Moreau, Jennifer Lawrence, and Ellen Burstyn wrapped up in one endlessly charismatic package. I could watch her for hours and hours. Nathaniel, I nominate Joanna's "Rock Around The Clock" number for best scene of the year.
Saw Lean on Pete - wow, what a sleeper. Starts slow, then blows up into violence and desperation. Such a heartbreaker. I wish this film had gotten more attention.
The Wife, which pretty much hits all of the beats I assumed it would, but Glenn Close is indeed fabulous.
Caught up on True Detective S3. Ali is great, but Mamie Gummer, in her small role, is MVP.
Also, Brexit: The Uncivil War. James Graham's writing is stellar (sure wish I could have seen Ink and Labour of Love when they were in the West End, tho I heard Ink may be coming to an NYC theater this spring.). This film made me mad about the 2016 election all over again. I'm very frightened for ANY election going forward given the nefarious data analytics and social media manipulation that goes on.
Binged the Agatha Christie remakes of Ordeal by Innocence, Witness for the Prosecution, and ABC Murders, and as much as I disklike remakes, these new BBC productions were pretty entertaining, and certainly better than Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express.
Saw Cold War and Shoplifters. I spent the first half of Cold War convinced it would be one of my favorites of 2018 and the 2nd half baffled by how shallow and messy it became. I get that it not being a 3 hour epic is kinda the point, but it should have been a 3 hour epic to flesh it out and make me care about them.
Shoplifters was kinda aimless and slow, but then suddenly it snapped into place and wrecked me. Really good.
And yeah, it's a crime that Joanna Kulig and Sakura Ando were not in the awards conversation at all. Great performances.