OFCS Winners

by Nathaniel R

Mission: Impossible - Fallout was one of only 2 films to win multiple prizes from the OFCS that was not on their top ten list (the other was Black Panther)

The Online Film Critics Society (a couple of TFE's contributors are among their 283 members) have announced their winners for their 22nd annual awards.  Alfonso Cuarón's Roma continues its critical dominance by taking 4 prizes including both best foreign film and best film. Other multiple winners include Black Panther, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, If Beale Street Could Talk, First Reformed, and Hereditary. Four films on their top ten list were shut out of winning any prize: The Favourite,  You Were Never Really Here, Eighth Grade, and Suspiria...  five if you count their #2 film BlacKkKlansman  but we figure the lifetime achievement award for Spike Lee covers that one. The complete list of winners follows after the jump...

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Watch at Home: Eighth Grade, Bad Times at the El Royale

What's newly available for home viewing? Herewith a very quick survey of new releases and/or great deals. Links go to reviews.

DVD/Blu-Ray
• Bad Reputation a doc for Joan Jett fans
• Bad Times at the El Royale seven strangers, each with "a secret to bury" meet at a hotel. So like Clue + 1 only noirish?

Also new: AXL, Love Gilda, Night School, and White Boy Rick

iTunes 99¢ Deals of Note This Week
• Eighth Grade -Bo Burnham's inspired you-are-there comedy about everyone's favourite existential horror: middle school
• 12 Angry Men - the legendary courtroom drama was nominated for 3 Oscars including Best Picture of 1957 (pssst. it's also available right now on Prime)
• The Apartment -1960's big Oscar winner starring Jack Lemmon & Shirley Maclaine and an over-extended bachelor pad.
• Fargo -This freezing cold comic noir is still the best Coen brothers movie, right? Best Actress winner 1996 Frances McDormand.
• Platoon - Oliver Stone's bracing 1986 Vietnam war drama and Best Picture winner

Streaming
ICYMI What's new on Netflix & Amazon Prime

Streaming Roulette: Netflix & Prime for January

Curiously Netflix and Prime have no recent movies available to start 2019 with.  In the first half of January Netflix only has Solo: A Star Wars Story (beginning on the 9th). The situation at Prime is a bit better with Leave No Trace (3rd), Beautiful Boy (4th), and Eighth Grade 13th) all available soon. In other words, now is a great time to hit the actual movie theaters and catch up on Oscar hopefuls since the streaming services won't help much. Nevertheless here's a perusal of 'new'  streaming options.

As is our practice we've frozen the films at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up) for this quick preview. Let's go...

What just happened?!

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Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2019.

You get two New Year's Babies photos instead of one, but they're both Baby Herman so I guess we're going to embrace our Gemini spirit in 2019 since he was the first baby that popped into mind. We have high hopes for 2019 after two of the roughest years in memory. Perhaps this is wishful thinking but we're going with it! Rather than making a huge long list of Resolutions that we'll have trouble keeping, we're making just five.

New Year's Resolutions for The Film Experience

• Have as much fun with the remainder of the 2018 film year as we possibly can -- the film year doesn't end until Best Picture is handed out, don'cha know!
• Be more consistent like a well-oiled franchise (i.e. podcasting, weekly columns, etc)
• Find fresh new 'cast members' / Reenergize the 'series regulars'
• Start making use of our neglected Instagram and our neglected Newsletter so please follow
• Celebrate YOU the readers more.

What are your resolutions for the new year? 

Aquaman still tops. Mary Poppins also floats

We haven't done a full weekend box office post in some time since we've been sharing the 'top grossing of the year' lists which are all updated if you missed them and you can see the hits in 11 different categories including docs, foreign films, female directors, gay directors, films with female leads, etcetera...

But as for what people were seeing Christmas week and this past weekend, here are the nation's top dozen+ movies chart for both wide releases and limited/expanding titles. Which titles were you catching up with?

Weekend Box Office (Actuals) (December 28th-30th)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1 Aquaman  $52.1 on 4125 screens (cum. $189.3) Review, Podcast	1 🔺 Simmba $1.7 on 300 screens *NEW*

2 Mary Poppins Returns $28.3 on 4090 screens (cum. $99.2) Podcast ❤️	2 🔺 If Beale Street Could Talk $766k on 65 screens (cum. $1.9) Review, Podcast ❤️

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