'Till' and 'Decision to Leave' open well while 'Halloween' wins again

By Ben Miller

For the third straight week, the October box office was dominated by scares.  The final (?) installment of David Gordon Green's trilogy Halloween Ends managed a healthy $40 million haul despite incredibly mixed reactions (40% Rotten Tomatoes, C+ CinemaScore) and a day-and-date release on Peacock.  Expect a large second-week drop.  Elsewhere, well-received films continue to have legs.  Smile earned another $12+ million weekend, totaling over $70 million.  It might end up being one of the most profitable films of the year given its budget.  The Woman King is also holding steady with a total just under $60 million now.

Weekend Box Office (actuals) October 14th-16th 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended links if we've written about it
WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
HALLOWEEN ENDS	TILL
1 🔺 HALLOWEEN ENDS $40 *NEW*	1 TERRIFIER 2 $1 (cum. $2.4) 700 screens
2 SMILE $12.5 (cum. $71.3)	2 🔺 ★ TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (sweden/uk) $333k (cum. $653k) 31 screens

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Middleburg Day 3 Finale: 'Banshees of Inisherin', 'Glass Onion' and our annual Oscar panel

by Nathaniel R

Brendan Gleeson & Colin Farrell promoting their movie for ET. They also appeared onscreen before the Middleburg showing to introduce the film.

Safely ensconced back in NYC... or Brooklyn, rather (I've moved). Here's a quick take of the last day and a half of the festival. Middleburg is a four day festival but our flight times Sunday prevented us from staying for the Terence Blanchard concert on Sunday night (*weeping*). It was a low key day given the time constraints so my boyfriend and I hit the stables very briefly at the Salamander Resort & Spa to see the horses (I always make time for that though I've only actually ridden one in my first year there) and we squeezed in one final film before heading to the airport. And what a movie it was! The US Ambassador to Ireland was on hand to introduce the film and she explained what banshees were "female spirits who warn of impending death" but followed that quickly with "but I promise it's fun!" eliciting a big laugh from the eager sold out house. Promise kept as The Banshees of Inisherin is a banger...

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Middleburg Day 2: "Living", "The Whale", and special guests Stephanie Hsu and Dolly De Leon

by Nathaniel R

Modering a Stephanie Hsu Q&A at Middleburg Film Festival

Here's the thing with weekend festivals. They are brutal with either/or decision-making. At the longer festivals you can promise that you'll catch up with a film later (or delude yourself into thinking you can... which has the same effect). At weekend festivals there's often only one chance to see a particular film. And the whole thing can feel over in a flash. I'm typing this on day four, closing day, because I haven't been able to get to it before now. On Day two I wasn't able to squeeze in many movies between one moderation gig (a special screening of Everything Everywhere All At Once with Stephanie Hsu, pictured above) and two sit down interviews but at least both of the movies were must-sees in terms of the Best Actor Oscar race...

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Middleburg Day 1: Two Adam Drivers, Three for Cate Blanchett, and a Tenth Anniversary

by Nathaniel R

"Is this starting to looking familiar?," the driver asked as we neared our destination, surrounded by lush greens on every side. Yes, yes, it's all very familiar. Horse and wine country. We've been coming to the Middleburg Film Festival, for so many years now that it now has the kind of nostalgic pull that only comes from the combo of staying power and lovely memories. The festival launched back in 2012. On Thursday October 13th, opening day in 2022, sandwiched between the first screening (TÁR) and the opening night film (White Noise), the festival's founder Sheila Johnson, welcomed corporate sponsors, select press, and Virginia power players like Middleburg's Mayor at a special reception to toast the 10th Anniversary edition of the festival...

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Review: South Korea's Oscar Hopeful "Decision to Leave"

by Cláudio Alves

© MUBI

A woman stands in a room, alone. Wallpapered motifs encircle her in a swirl of blue-green something. Are they waves or mountaintops, those shapes repeated into infinity? Maybe they're both, maybe neither. Maybe they're everything. 

According to a Confucian proverb, the wise man admires water, the kind man admires mountains. Or maybe it's benevolence and virtue, some other translation across languages. Two complementing sides of the same person, perhaps a binary of human natures, these words reveal more than their scholarly meaning – at least, they do in Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave. Ideas of duality percolate throughout the work, as does the attempt to understand the unfathomable reality of another person. We try to find order in chaos, logic in that which has none, pursuing an understanding that will always be out of grasp. Every single one of us is a mystery to others, and to try to transcend the impossibility of knowing someone else is a fool's errand, the most beautiful thing in the world, ecstasy holding hands with despair. It's love…

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