Awards Season Catchup: "Devotion"

By Abe Friedtanzer

While Top Gun: Maverick has been enjoying a warm reception from audiences and awards bodies alike, another film about daring pilots is flying around in theaters. Based on the 2015 nonfiction book Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice by Adam Makos, Devotion is about a powerful friendship between two Navy pilots during the Korean War. One of them is Jonathan Majors, the only Black member of the unit. In the film's other Top Gun: Maverick connection, the other one is played by Glen Powell, who portrays Hangman in the present-day film. 

Devotion opens on Tom Hudner (Glen Powell) arriving to join Fighter Squadron 32, which already includes Jesse Brown (Majors), who faces routine racism from his fellow Navy officers and the neighbors who believe that his mere existence is stirring up trouble...

Click to read more ...

Oscar Volley: The heat is with the "Original" screenplays

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category in the lead up to the nominations. Here's Nathaniel and Abe to talk Best Original Screenplay...

AFTERSUN

NATHANIEL: I feel like I say "my favourite category!" a lot when talking Oscar. So let me just tell you, Abe, that this is at least 'one of em' for me (with the Actress categories, Costumes, International Feature, and and and and and) Usually, the Oscar buzz centers on the Adapted screenplays since they come bearing automatic prestige. This year it is so pleasing that the heat is with the originals. The Banshees of Inisherin & Everything Everywhere All At Once feel neck-and-neck for the future win. Even if they both didn't have so much heat in Best Picture, they'd be formidable contenders in this category.

I want to start with the longer shots, though. One movie a lot of people are rooting for is Charlotte Wells' Aftersun. I love it too but I wonder if it's ineffable impact doesn't spring more from the fluid mystery of the direction, editing, and performances? I wonder if it can go the distance here. What longer shot are you rooting for?

Click to read more ...

Awards Season Catchup: ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’

By Abe Friedtanzer

Being an Oscar completist means tracking down every title that may or may not get nominated, including the contenders for Best Original Song. In addition to nominations from the Critics Choice Association and the Golden Globes, Taylor Swift’s “Carolina” is officially on the Oscar shortlist. It’s the end credits song in Where the Crawdads Sing, based on the 2018 novel by Della Owens, a period trial drama with plenty of flashbacks and North Carolina drawls…

Click to read more ...

30 Biggest Subtitled Hits (and where to watch them)

Our daily "Year in Review" lists have begun!

Even before the pandemic, box office reporting was becoming more secretive. Netflix was the chief disruptor since their Oscar hopefuls got theatrical releases but numbers were never reported. Other streaming distributors followed and once you added in the increasing regularity of movies simultaneously doing theatrical (generally reported) and VOD (generally not reported) it was chaos. The COVID-19 pandemic was the ultimate disruptor of course, changing global viewing habits, by virtue of Father Time. International cinema in the US has been increasingly demoted to streaming-only since adult audiences have been the toughest to lure back to the theaters. That said there are subtitled pictures that played theatrically this year and we wanted to honor them by noting the success stories...

Curiously the only foreign country that habitually reports big box office numbers in the US is India but those numbers are often reported as "estimates" in the way, say, European titles didn't tend to be. Furthermore Indian pictures, RRR being an obvious exception, don't tend to get much US media coverage even though they sell tickets, at least in specific areas of the country which makes it all kind of confusing in terms of "what is a success?".  But here are the numbers that were reported, some surely more accurately than others. The numbers are primarily drawn from two sites (box office mojo and the numbers). Titles with up arrows are still in theaters 

TOP 33 SUBTITLED HITS OF 2022 AT THE US BOX OFFICE
Rank for the calendar year / Movie Title / $ Estimate Domestic Gross / $ Global Gross
Figures updated as of 01/15/23

Click to read more ...

Awards Season Catchup: "Blonde" on Netflix

By Abe Friedtanzer

It’s hard to wait to watch a film months after its release and not be at least somewhat affected by what the public thinks about it. To say that the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde has not received favorable mentions is an understatement. Still everyone has opinions so it seemed possible that there might be something worthwhile about it, like Ana de Armas’ Golden Globe-nominated performance or the Oscar-shortlisted makeup and hairstyling. Seeing the NC-17 rating and the daunting 2-hour-and-47-minute runtime at the start of the film sets up certain expectations, and, somehow, this film still manages to surprise, and not in a good way.

Blonde opens in black-and-white on a young Norma Jeane Mortensen (Lily Fisher) and her mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), who shows Norma a photo of a celebrity she claims is her father. Gladys quickly descends into a manic state, driving her young daughter straight towards a fire while everyone else is running the other way...

Click to read more ...