The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Pitch Perfect could not have arrived at a better time. Its release in 2012 was met with solid reviews and box office figures, but that was just the beginning for the fandom that would ensue. It told the story of the Barden Bellas, an all-female university a cappella group led by Anna Kendrick vying for the top spot at Nationals. Blending Top 40 hits and an underdog narrative was effective. Soon, you could not escape the presence of singing groups and acapella wordplay ("aca-scuse me?").
The arrival of Pitch Perfect 2 in 2015 proved that the Bellas were no fluke. The second film dipped in quality, but was a worthy successor. Now, in 2017, Pitch Perfect 3 is the (supposedly) final installment...
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Chris rings in 2018 by looking back at the 80s via the 90s with 200 Cigarettes!
Remember theme parties? Well, 200 Cigarettes is a film version of an 80s theme party, set over New Year’s Eve as several lovelorn folks slowly make their way to Martha Plimpton’s house. Sounds like a party we would all want to go to, so you would think that the film would have had a longer shelf life than it did. The film is as forgotten as the old acquaintances "Auld Lang Syne" talked about, and shouldn’t be considering its easy charms, famous cast, and relentless gifability. But while parties are meant to be replaced by other parties, the music stays the same.
This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here in slightly altered form...
If you take film critics, Rotten Tomatoes, or any review aggregate site seriously you might think that future Oscar contender The Post (86%) is a pricey gift from Santa Spielberg that’s come exquisitely wrapped for Christmas. You might also believe that the new Hugh Jackman musical The Greatest Showman (51%) is an oversized lump of coal fouling up your otherwise pretty stocking. Don’t fall for that anti-fun / theme=worth messaging; See both for a well-rounded holiday week at the movies...
It's the time of year where we're all playing catch-up with everything we missed in theaters. This prepares us for that most sacred of cinephile traditions: End-of-year list-making!
I had heard a lot of good things about Eliza Hittman's Beach Rats when it was released in theaters late this summer, but I wasn't able to catch it. But nothing I had heard about it prepared me for what I found. Beach Rats is nothing if not the inverse of the acclaimed (and currently playing) Call Me By Your Name; nearly everything in one is the opposite of the other.
It starts with our protagonists, Harris Dickinson's Frankie and Timothée Chalamet's Elio. Both are possessed of a certain amount of self-confidence but even more self-doubt...
Nathaniel has already looked at the foreign language hits of the year and a the top-grossers for films by or about women, people of colour, LGBTQ and more. Now it's my turn to chime in with a look at what non-fiction movies were doing at the box office. It ain't exactly pretty - but, then, the figures below don't always paint an accurate picture for the world of documentary.
Much like the rest of the independent and arthouse scenes, festivals and VOD/streaming are becoming the primary way for audiences to see documentaries. Some of the most buzzed and most discussed of the year, for instance, are Strong Island, Icarus, Voyeur and Chasing Coral, which never received a theatrical release beyond minimal Oscar-qualifying runs. Meanwhile, other significant 2017 titles like LA 92, Oklahoma City,Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds aired on TV.
TOP 40 DOCUMENTARIES FOR 2017 Listed by US Box Office Gross only. Linked titles leads to reviews. Oscar finalists are in bold 🔺 = still in theaters (Note: Figures are as of 01/21/2018)
1. BORN IN CHINA $13.8 (April 21st) As is often the case these days, a Disneynature title tops the chart. However, the figures for these Earth Day releases are diminishing. This one about pandas is the lowest-grossing of the seven Disneynature docs to be theatrically released since Earth in 2009 (so, not including The Crimson Wing: Mysteries of the Flamingo which went curiously unreleased in America). Still, this is a great figure for a nature documentary and as long as they keep churning them out hopefully people keep going in at least these modest numbers.
2. I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO $7.1 (February 3rd) One of the lone bright spots among the first half of the year for arthouses was this Oscar-nominated James Baldwin doc. We may grimace when distributors keep films from the general public, but Magnolia were smart to see they not only had a very likely Oscar contender on their hands (it should have won, but that's not what we're here to discuss), but that there's no way for these films to thrive among the end-of-year prestige glut...
Thursday, December 28, 2017 at 12:00AM ;)
