Box Office: A Quiet Place, Chappaquidick, and Blockers Open...

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (March 23rd-25th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
A Quiet Place	You Were Never Really Here
1.🔺A Quiet Place $50 NEW REVIEW	1. 🔺 Isle of Dogs $4.6 on 554 screens (cum. $12) CAPSULE | HOMAGE OR APPROPRIATION
2. Ready Player One  $25 (cum. $96.9) REVIEW	2. 🔺 The Death of Stalin $1.1 on 554 screens (cum. $5.5) REVIEW
3. 🔺 Blockers $21.4 NEW	3. 🔺 The Leisure Seeker $577k on 353 screens (cum. $1.8)
4. Black Panther $8.4 (cum. $665.3) PODCAST	4.  Baaghi 2 $255k on 124 screens (cum. $1.1)
5. I Can Only Imagine $8.3 (cum. $69)	5. 🔺 You Were Never Really Here  $129k on 3 screens NEW REVIEW

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Review: A Quiet Place

by Chris Feil

Family tragedy strikes early in A Quiet Place, with the sudden violent loss of the youngest of three children dividing each remaining family member by their own griefs and grudges. With this, his third feature, actor John Krasinski has made a rather astute portrait of grief with shades of Spielberg that is both lean and unpretentious. But this emotional family drama is more than just that: it’s also nerve-fraying creature feature.

The family, led by Krasinski and Emily Blunt, is one of the remaining survivors of a world decimated by an unspecified (but probably extraterrestrial) species. These creatures hunt people by sound alone and with shocking speed, turning survival into a tense lifestyle of sanded pathways, technological ingenuity, and softened surfaces. That A Quiet Place functions equally well as drama and horror is its greatest strength. The silence that keeps them alive reflects the emotional blockage that is tearing them apart, and the undiscussed loss catalyzes the film effortlessly.

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Shoot Me

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Cast This: The Next Indiana Jones

We’d have to change the name from Jones to Joan. And there would be nothing wrong with that. - Steven Spielberg.

We already knew the next Indiana Jones would not be Shia Labeouf, Crystal Skull notwithstanding. Now Steven Spielberg has indicated it might be a woman. Harrison Ford will be back, one last time, for the 5th film in the hugely popular series. But after that we might get Joan Jones? Indiana Joan? Spielberg also seems not to know the difference between first and last names.

The 5th Indiana Jones, as yet untitled,  has been announced as Spielberg’s next directorial project. It will be shooting in the UK next year. Which means we have a lot of time to fantasy cast the female Indiana. Who would be your choice?

Review: Joaquin Phoenix in "You Were Never Really Here"

by Seán McGovern

As the credits begin to roll on Lynne Ramsey's visceral and intense film, I felt an odd feeling of relief that Joaquin Phoenix did not win an Oscar for playing Johnny Cash. In the years since, Phoenix has eschewed the mainstream and become a full-blown movie-star weirdo. His raw performance in You Were Never Really Here isn't just told his line-readings but also his back muscles, feet, scars and posture. A role for the classical leading man, this is not.

Ramsey's first film since 2011 is a singular assault. It's quite possible that you hated We Need to Talk About Kevin, which took the parental horrors of Lionel Shriver's novel and intellectualised them at a remove. But Ramsey has a knack for distance, creating a particular style of alienation that works perfectly for the story of a traumatized hired-gun...

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