What did you see this weekend?

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.

It's their 21st movie!

by Nathaniel R

(yes we'll get to the DGA awards in a minute. until then...)

Both Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk) and Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman) are nominated this year for their 21st feature film roles. So let's play a game.

With 21 days until the Oscars, we selected 21 screencaps  of 21 very randomly selected favourite actors of TFE from their 21st films. Guess what the movie is in the comments (please only 1 movie guess per comment to give multiple readers a chance to guess.). They won't all be as easy as #1 after the jump...

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Annie Awards swing giddily into the "Spider-Verse" and might predict Oscar's Animated Short winner

by Nathaniel R

The directors of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse had a great great night at the Annie Awards

Though Disney dominated the Annie nominations with huge tallies for both Incredibles 2 and Ralph Breaks the Internet  it was Sony Animation's all time biggest hit that proved the ultimate champ with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse hogging the big prizes at the event. Other big winners were Disney's Mickey Mouse, and two series from Netflix: Hilda  and Bojack Horseman. The winners list and commentary including a few full winning short films and notes on Oscar's animated short race after the jump...

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Streaming Roulette, February: Ant-Man and the Edge of Velvet Buzzsaws

As is our practice we've selected two handfuls of titles of note and frozen the films at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up) for this quick preview.  Do any of these screencaps make you wanna watch the movie? At the bottom of the page full listings for Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and HBO this month. Okay, let's go...

Guess what? You're my favorite student.

The Edge of Seventeen (2016) on Netflix
Remember how good this Hailee Steinfeld high school comedy was?  She was nominated for a Golden Globe even! But why has Hayden Szeto, her love interest, not busted out yet as a star? He was great, too. Turns out (just looked it up) that he's got three movies coming out this year and will also be a guest star on the TV series adaptation of Taika Waititi's What We Do in the Shadows so there's still hope that people (or in this case Hollywood) will realize how fab he is. Yay!

A whole lotta lovin' is what we'll be bringin'
We'll make you happy 🎵

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Sundance Closing Night: "Troop Zero"

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

It’s almost always appealing to see two recent Oscar winners work together shortly after they take home their trophies. The notion of the last two Supporting Actress victors, Viola Davis and Allison Janney, teaming up is certainly enticing. Their Oscars were for playing very different types of mothers, and in Sundance’s closing night selection, they face off as competing scout leaders in a hilarious 1970s-set comedy about being who you are...

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