What did you see over the weekend?

By Ben Miller

Unsurprisingly, horror films released in October rule the box office.  Smile was able to snag the top spot behind a viral marketing campaign and a better-than-average critical recepiton (77% on Rotten Tomatoes).  Unfortunately, the big story of the box office week was the failure of Bros.  The Billy Eichner-starring film earned less than $5 million despite an A CinemaScore and critical praise (91% on RT).  Plenty of people on Twitter have their opinions on the failure, but maybe we should let the film continue it's run before deeming it a failure.  Regardless of the opening weekend, this doesn't bode well for the viability of LGBTQ+ studio content going forward.

Weekend Box Office  September 30th-October 2nd 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended links if we've written about it
WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
SMILE	PONNIYIN SELVAN

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Almost There: Margot Robbie in "Mary, Queen of Scots"

by Cláudio Alves

Since her 2013 breakthrough in The Wolf of Wall Street, Margot Robbie's Hollywood career has risen so consistently and quickly that its verging on meteoric. Early stabs at blockbuster stardom paid off with her über-popular Harley Quinn, soon giving way to more prestigious pursuits. I, Tonya earned the Australian actress her first Oscar nomination, and a second soon followed for Bombshell. This year, beyond dominating social media while location shooting for Greta Gerwig's upcoming Barbie, Robbie returns with two big movies. First up is David O. Russell's Amsterdam which opens Friday under a wave of controversy and critical scorn. Then, on Christmas Day, Damien Chazelle's Babylon finds her playing a Clara Bow-type in one of the year's buzziest titles.

As we wait to see if Robbie ends the season as a three-time Oscar nominee, let's turn our minds back to when the thespian tried her hand at playing one of the most dramatized figures in film history – Elizabeth I in Mary, Queen of Scots…

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Streaming Roulette (Oct 3rd-9th): Call Me By Your Queerest Fear

by Nathaniel R

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) © MGM

Each of us has heaven and hell in him.

As many of you have gleaned your host here has been struggling this past month. So as ever we take solace in the movies and we've been gorging of late so time for another streaming catch-up. We've realized of late that in attempting to do too many things here at TFE -- we are after all not Variety or The New York Times --  we do too little. So we have to streamline / simplify. Our first victim is Streaming Roulette. Rather than a monthly series in which we try to highlight EVERYTHING that's new to streaming on all the services, we're going to recommend a handful of titles weekly just for an excuse to talk about them. We'll keep the "roulette" part which is to say we'll freeze frame randomly on the scroll bar and that's the image we'll share as visual (What? We like our gimmicks). 

4 Things to Watch This Week...

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Deadline is up for Oscar's Best International Film submissions

by Nathaniel R

KINGS OF THE WORLD, Colombia's Oscar submission

Today, October 3rd, is the deadline for participating countries to get their Oscar submissions in for the Best International Feature Film category. We've mentioned before that the Academy (wrongly) chucked their longstanding tradition of publicly announcing the entire longlist for Best International Feature Film last season... if they don't release it again this year we might not know for certain for a few days or even a few weeks what is exactly on the list they're considering in the first round of voting. They'll narrow the list down to 15 films on December 21st, 2022 and then announce the actual nominations on January 24th, 2023.  As of now we know of 81 countries that announced plans to submit a particular film and you can read about all of them on the charts. 

If you've been playing along here with each article a shorter list of the last six films to be announced is after the jump...

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Podcast Guesting: On 'Bros' and Fantasy Oscar Drafts

by Nathaniel R

I recently had the pleasure of guesting on two podcasts. The first was the annual fantasy draft episode of Oscar Wild wherein various pundits/Oscar fans chose our horses for the Oscar season. You'll recognize a lot of the lovely voices. It was fun which was expected but also extremely tense which was a surprise -- I drew the shortest straw so I was the last to choose a contender but the draft was in a snake order so thankfully it all sort of evened out. The episode was recorded BEFORE the festival premieres so some of the choices are already ouchies given the mixed/negative reception of a few of the films. I'm pretty happy about betting on Top Gun Maverick, Triangle of Sadness, and Elvis among others. The rest, we shall see. 

Then this weekend in a change of pace I was the guest for a bonus episode of Hallmarkies, a podcast about romantic comedies with a focus on Hallmark movies. Since frequent Hallmark leading man Luke Macfarlane is the romantic co-lead of Billy Eichner's Bros, it was a natural topic for them to hit.

I really really loved Bros (even more than Baby Clyde did) and, though I wish I'd been a bit more eloquent in singing its praises, I hope you enjoy both the movie and this podcast. If you haven't seen the movie yet, I would suggest waiting until you do to listen to this since we talk about the plot in full and you'll want to save the surprises and great laugh lines for the moviegoing experience!