If I don't share this list now, "Mad Max Fury Road" won't be on it!

A final "halfway mark" note. These are...

THE 10 BIGGEST 2015 MOVIES AT THE US BOX OFFICE (jan thru july 4th weekend)

chart via box office mojo

Imperator Furiosa by Cameron Stewart

I share this list only because I love Mad Max Fury Road so much and this is both the first moment (it just crawled over San Andreas) and the last in which it will be a 'top ten movie' for 2015... well, until critics top ten lists emerge but that's a different kind of List Olympics.

Minions, opening today, will surely kick it out of this box office giants chart in the next three days alone. Minions advertising is so oppressive that I imagine every child in the nation wants to see it and every parent has a migraine from hearing about it. (It wouldn't surprise me to hear that they spent as much on P&A as they stand to earn on opening weekend. The first film Despicable Me opened with $53 million and ended with $251 milliion. The second film Despicable Me 2 opened with $83 million and ended with $368 million. So who knows how high this one could go). Maybe it'll end up as the 3rd biggest grosser of 2015 when all is said and done since only Star Wars can will challenge Jurassic World's supremacy from the first half.

Are you like "shut up about 'they year is half over'?"
If your answer to that question is 'yes,' too bad. It is! It's been a decent year thus far in cinema but also a curiously shallow one in terms of mainstream films worth getting excited about. So many weekends have been bereft of interesting or exciting looking choice that it's kind of no wonder that Jurassic World was breaking box office records. It had no competition for like a whole month, aside from the surprise excellence of Inside Out.

Halfway There ~ Year in Review. Nine Parts
pt. 1 Oscar Acting Chart
pt. 2 10 Best Leading Performances
pt. 3 Animation from Strange Magic to Inside Out 
pt. 4 Ubiquitous Alicia Vikander 
pt. 5 Oscar Chart Updates - All Categories
pt. 6 Best Supporting Performances 
pt. 7 Top Ten List
pt. 8 Best Screen Animals  
pt. 9 Eye Candy 

4 Things You Missed at SDCC Day 1

Hi, everyone! Anne Marie here. And by "here," I mean "in LA," because the stars did not align to get me to San Diego Comic Con this year. So, like any geek, I've been glued to social media all day. Here's a quick summary of Comic Con Day 1:

Photo from AP

1) Bill Murray Rocked the Kasbah. No idea why Rock the Kasbah is at SDCC, but nobody rocks a costumed guest appearance quite like Bill Murray.

2) Vanity Fair released a terribly-titled profile on Kelly Sue De Connick aka the woman behind Marvel's Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers. About the now-delayed Captain Marvel movie, DeConnick says, 

 “I’ll believe these films are definitely happening when they are on the screen.”

3) Doctor Who released an official trailer to the internet but Mockingjay Part 2 did not because apparently the producers of Mockingjay don't understand how the internet works. It's out there. Just google it.

Click to embiggen

4) Tomorrow's Star Wars panel *already* has a gigantic line. It's been forming since Wednesday. Don't you feel a little better about not going now?

Bonus) Nathaniel already shared The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 teaser cut from SDCC exclusive footage.

Rhythm Hunger Nation

4...3...

2...1...

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Halfway Finale: Eye Candy Highlights

½way mark - part 9 or 9
We conclude our celebration of the Best of 2015 (thus far) with a truly random list of visual highlights. Please to enjoy and do share which of these goodies you were sweetest on. Or propose alternate candy for us to suck on. Ready? Let's unwrap those candies before the next movie begins.

BEST LOOKING SPY
Jude Law in Spy. Prettier than James Bond. And Bond Girls. 

PRETTIEST NIGHTMARE
Mad Max Fury Road's scorched orange earth, colored smoke fares, white faced war boys, smokey eyes foreheads, and more. A visual feast. Just don't expect water with your meal.

AWESOMEST PROPS

Can we give a special Oscar to the props department on Mad Max Fury Road? Chastity belts w/ bolt cutters, detachable custom steering wheels, blood bags and iron masks, flame throwing guitars? Overachievement, thy name is Fury Road. 

BEST BLUE
Cinderella

BEST RED
Magic Mike XXL 

14 more honors after the jump...

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Women's Pictures - Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break

I have a confession to make: people have been telling me for years to watch Point Break, and I always blew them off. "Sure it's a great genre film," I thought, "but the genre is action and the film is about bank robbing surfers." Oh, Anne Marie. You did not give bank robbing surfers (who also skydive, by the way) enough credit. After having watched it (twice in a row), I confess that Point Break is quite possibly the perfect early 90s action flick: that brief bridge between the buffed up ridiculousness of 80s action movies, and the self-serious grittiness of later 90s action films.

It's a space and genre that Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron (who were married in 1989 and divorced in 1991, the same year Point Break came out) occupied gleefully. Point Break was a collaboration between the two writer/directors (though because of Writer's Guild rules, neither's name appears in the writing credits). Together, they created a spectacle-driven, tightly-plotted action movie that manages to both poke fun at, and take advantage of, the hyper-macho tropes of the genre. Action was, after all, the genre of Stallone and Schwarzenegger's muscles, as well as Willis and Gibson's swagger. A lot has been written about movie masculinity and homoeroticism in action films, but I believe that what makes Point Break so good, beyond the adrenaline-high sports scenes and the tense action, is the way director Kathryn Bigelow examines (with a thankfully very thorough lens) the men in her film.

Point Break is a film that improbably can have its beef-cake and eat it too.

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