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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.)

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Sunday
Jun052016

Podcast: Love & Friendship, Neighbors & Apocalypse  

Katey is back! Our very pregnant team member returns to discuss a few new movies with NathanielNick, and Joe and catch up.

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Katey is back!!!
02:36 Money Monster
11:30 X-Men Apocalypse
23:36 Love & Friendship
31:28 Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
42:05 Goodbyes

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes tomorrow. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?  

Neighbors 2, Apocalypse, Love & Friendship

Sunday
Jun052016

New Laura Linney Movie Tops The Box Office

Don't you love headlines that are technically true but twisted to serve an agenda? If The Film Experience ran the world movies led by great actresses would always be event movies. Unfortunately for now we're stuck with The Lovely Laura Linney as a police chief within the context of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. [sigh] But what can you do? Summer is cruel that way.

 arrows indicate gaining or losing screens

TOP TEN WIDE
🔺01 TMNT: Out of the Shadows $35.2 NEW
🔺02 X-Men Apocalypse $22.3 (cum. $116.4) Review, Podcast
🔺03 Me Before You $18.2 NEW Review
▫️04 Alice Through the Looking Glass $10.6 (cum. $50.7) 
🔻05 Angry Birds $9.7 (cum. $86.6) 
🔻06 Captain America $7.5 (cum. $388.9)  Review
🔻07 Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising $4.7 (cum. $48.5) Podcast
🔺08 Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping $4.6 NEW 
🔻09 The Jungle Book $4.2 (cum. $347.4)
🔻10 The Nice Guys $3.5 (cum. $29.1)  Shane BlackReview

TOP TEN LIMITED
Under 1000 screens. Excluding previously wide. 
🔺01 Love & Friendship $2.1 (cum. $7) ReviewPodcast
🔺02 The Lobster $1.5 (cum. $3.6)  ReviewishPodcast
🔻03
 The Man Who Knew Infinity $283K (cum. $2.9)

🔻04 The Meddler $257K (cum. $3.6) Review
▫️05
The Wailing $224K (cum. $302K) 
🔺06 Weiner $215K (cum. $607K) Review  
🔻07
A Bigger Splash $160K (cum. $1.7) ReviewishPodcast

🔺08 Maggie's Plan $153K (cum. $406K) Review

🔻09 Sing Street $46K (cum. $2.8)  ReviewWho's the MVP?Podcast 

🔺10
Dark Horse $45K (cum. $199K)  Review 

 

WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND? 

Saturday
Jun042016

Swing, Tarzan, Swing! Ch.4: Gordon Scott's 'Great Adventure'

As we approach the release of The Legend of Tarzan (2016) we're ogling past screen incarnations of the Lord of the Apes...

Though old franchises like Tarzan are sometimes less visually sophisticated within their eras than our current franchises (probably because the new ones are no longer cheaply produced "B" pictures but Hollywood's main attraction) in one significant way they're vastly superior: they assume the audience doesn't need a perpetual origin story and will remember who the character is from film to film.

Consider this: With Gordon Scott, we are three actors into the Lord of the Apes (within the "official" series) and with his fourth feature film go at the character Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (1959), we're twenty-one films into the franchise and they have not once felt the need to retell (or even really tell at all) Tarzan's origin story. After twenty-one films! Imagine it. Origin stories are a waste of time. You don't need to perpetually relive them, *COUGH Batman and Spider-Man*, because your audience already knows them by heart.  [more...]

Click to read more ...

Saturday
Jun042016

Review: The Fits

The Fits has been on the festival circuit since last year, including a trip to the Nashville Film Festival that has Nathaniel singing its praises. Well, add me to the fan club, because I found myself even more taken by this ferocious and emotionally intelligent debut.

Set in and around a recreation center for Cincinnati youths, the film follows Toni (captivating newcomer Royalty Hightower) as she transitions from her brother's boxing studio into the militaristic, successful all-girl dance crew down the hall, without any dance ability to her credit. As Toni begins to improve her skill, her sense of otherness is further enervated by the growing outbreak of unexplained seizures on the team. Blending themes of gender performance, isolation, and feminity, The Fits packs a huge punch in a brisk 72 minutes unlike anything you've experienced this year.

Click to read more ...

Saturday
Jun042016

When Tony Met Janet. And Other Stories...

Today in movie related history...

1907 Cracking Rosalind Russell is born. Stars in many classics including: His Girl Friday, Gypsy, and Auntie Mame and is nominated for 4 Best Actress Oscars. The only actresses that share her fate of 4 Best Actress nominations w/out a win: Greta Garbo, Marsha Mason, and Barbara Stanwyck. Of the four only Marsha Mason didn't receive an Honorary later on.
1913 Suffragette Emily Davison runs onto the track at the Epson Derby and is trampled by King George V's horse. It's a huge turning point in the court of public opinion and the suffragette movement. It was reenacted in last year's Suffragette.
1936 Bruce Dern is born and never stops acting thereafter. Also donates Laura Dern to the world for which he has our undying gratitude
1940 The last allied soldiers leave Dunkirk. Britain's PM vows that his forces will "never surrender". Christopher Nolan is currently filming a movie about Dunkirk called, you guessed it, Dunkirk
1942 The Battle of Midway begins in World War II. John Ford directed an Oscar winning documentary about it that you can watch for free online. If you're interested in the topic you should definitely read Mark Harris's book "Five Came Back" about famous Hollywood directors during the war. 

1951 Rising actors Janet Leigh (23) and Tony Curtis (26) are married. Much bigger stardom is thrown at them like so much rice via iconic films like Psycho, A Touch of Evil, and The Manchurian Candidate (Hers) and Some Like It Hot, Spartacus and The Defiant Ones (His) shortly thereafter. They break up in '62 but not before gifting us with Jamie Lee Curtis.
1952 70s TV star Parker Stevenson is born. Later becomes half of The Hardy Boys and marries Kirstie Alley who famously refers to his junk "giving me the big one" in her 1991 Emmy speech. This was long before the days when the internet made bulge-watching a national pasttime. (Music cue: "Class" from Chicago here, please. Whatever happened to it? It's all Kirstie Alley's fault!)
1964 Kōji Yamamura is born. Later nominated for an Oscar for the Animated Short Mount Head. It's worth your ten minutes, it's so trippy.
1975 Angelina Jolie emerges. The world is never the same.
1978 Deniz Gamze Ergüven is born in Turkey. She was Oscar nominated last season for her debut film Mustang, which made our top ten list.

They're here.

1982 Poltergeist and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan both open in theaters
1984 Bruce Springsteen releases his classic "Born in the USA" album the title track of which is used in many movies since. The first video "Dancin' in the Dark" introduces the world to soon to be household name actress Courtney Cox. 
1989 The Tiananmen Square protests come to a violent end in Beijing with hundreds of young protesters killed. Hollywood has ignored it despite their love of historical event movies and Chinese films usually ignore it too due to the topic being taboo with the government. But two sexually controversial movies released in the Aughts used it as part of the narrative: the gay drama Lan Yu (2001) which won four Golden Horse awards and, more prominently, the college student drama Summer Palace (2006) which was banned at home, and withdrawn from competition at Cannes. Both films are worth seeing.