Year in Review: Special Interest Box Office, 7 Categories

Our year in review party continues. Different lists each day. Here's Nathaniel R

We intended to kick off this list of "niche" box office categories with a list of the top grossers that were made for very little money but budget figures are hard to come by (consistently that is) and often difficult to parse. Is publicity and adveristing included? Back when I first started becoming interested in movies I was reading somewhere that a movie needed to make about 2.5 times its budget to break even. Who knows if that general rule is still accurate these days when the finances of the movie industry have shifted so dramatically and films often use their theatrical run as more of a commercial for their other runs (streaming, bluray, tv rights, etcetera). 

But let it suffice to say that some movies made on the cheap made their investors very happy this year. Parasite, so far as we can gather, was made for about $11 million and its worldwide tally is at $161 million and still rising. It's already the 8th highest grossing Palme d'Or winner ever. That's a major success by any metric.

Elsewhere in crazy return on investment horror movies continue to be a safe investment, even the ambitious ones...

Now, on to 7 more concrete box office lists. What follows are top hits in interesting subcategories like "female director, "lgbtq films" and more. We tried our best to collect accurate data but we apologize in advance for any unintentional stumbles in these underrecorded/underdiscussed areas of moviemaking. It's also worth noting that for reasons we aren't quite sure about almost all US box office sites include Canadian figures (without any differentiation). We know for example that Xavier Dolan's latest didn't open in the US but it's included in all box office reports so we're including it here. This is also presumably why Bollywood films always report higher grosses than we expect, given their total lack of media coverage in the States, since Canadian figures are included.

(Figures below are as of March 12th, 2020) 

TOP GROSSING FILMS THAT NEVER WENT INTO WIDE RELEASE IN THE US
We count 800 theaters as "wide" though some sites draw that line at 600 screens. 

Last Black Man in San Francisco

01 No Manches Frida 2 (Pantelion, March 15th) $9.2 March 15th (472 screens)
02 Apollo 11 (Neon, March 1st) $9.0 (588 screens)
03 The Dead Don't Die (Focus) $6.5 (690 screens)
04 The Wandering Earth (CMC. Feb 5th) $5.8 (129 screens)
05 Gully Boy (Viva Pictures, Feb 14th) $5.5  (270 screens)
06 The Mustang (Focus. March 15th) $5.0 (527screens)...

Click to read more ...

Most Memorable 2019 Houses

Previously on 'Year in Review'

by Lynn Lee

Domestic spaces in movies can say a lot about the characters who live in them – class, income level, personal history, not to mention personality, tastes, even relationship dynamics (or lack thereof).  But how often does a home take on so much significance it effectively becomes a character in its own right?  2019 was a banner year for that kind of transmutation, as it turns out. 

Here are five homes (or in the first case, an anti-home) that particularly stood out:

5. Charlie’s L.A. apartment in Marriage Story
The nondescript flat Charlie Barber (Adam Driver) reluctantly rents in Los Angeles starts out as almost literally a blank space and quickly becomes remarkable for what it’s not: a home...

Click to read more ...

Bette Davis: Prognosis Brilliant

by Murtada Elfadl

For no reason at all lets celebrate Bette Davis, one of the shiniest stars ever to grace the silver screen. Our love for her knows no bounds. Who else can make a movie about wearing a red dress instead of a virginal white one as riveting as did Jezebel (1938)? Can you imagine loving movies, actresses and movies about actresses without also loving Bette in All About Eve (1950)...

Click to read more ...

Year in Review: Actors with amazing chemistry

by Nathaniel R

Remember all those years ago when the Mystic River (2003) team was trying to fight Lord of the Rings for the Oscar and trying a variation of “actors are the best special effects” as its campaign angle? That’s always been true even though those Hobbits deserved the win (if you think those movies would have been half as good without Elijah Wood’s purity and awe or Viggo’s resigned gravitas or Sir Ian’s commanding wit think again). In 2019 Avengers Endgame wouldn’t have obsessed the world so much if the core group of actors hadn’t spent the last decade building-up the love and squabbles of this superpowered chosen family. Similarly Captain Marvel benefitted early in the year from a fun chemistry between Brie Larson and Samuel L Jackson, the actress bringing out a new, or at least revived, energy in Jackson’s umpteenth return to Nick Fury. Sometimes animosity is its own kind of chemistry, setting off dangerous sparks. Don’t you wish there were more scenes of Al Pacino and Stephen Graham as mouthy rivals in The Irishman, ice cream sundaes and all?

Chemistry is the magic and impossible-to-fake ingredient that elevates any human interaction to its most evolved form, including the fictional ones. Our “best onscreen chemistry” list begins with fascinatingly lop-sided relationships...

FAVOURITE EXAMPLES OF CO-STAR CHEMISTRY THIS YEAR

Click to read more ...

Julia Fox in 'Uncut Gems'

by Murtada Elfadl

A star is born about an hour into Uncut Gems. The lead character, an obnoxious can’t-quit gambler (Adam Sandler) catches his mistress (Julia Fox) in the bathroom of 1 Oak Club in New York with The Weeknd. (Yes the Canadian popstar has a small role as himself.) What follows is a dragged-out funny intense loud lovers fight that starts in the club and spills into West 17th Street as Sandler and Fox scream barbs at each other and continue to fight to the bemusement of onlookers. She begs him to understand “Nothing happened, we were just doing coke.” He throws the ultimate final insult to end the fight “Go fuck The Weeknd.” Or so he thinks. That’s when Fox throws her whole body against the hood of the cab he’s trying to escape in, determined to continue the fight. That’s when we knew it; here’s an actress who will have a long career...

Click to read more ...