Yes No Maybe So: "Phantom Thread"

by Ben Miller

Paul Thomas Anderson's latest joint, Phantom Thread, has him collaborating for a second time Daniel Day-Lewis (who is reportedly retiring following this film). The Christmas release follows the true story of 1950s London fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock.  Tagging along are his muse Alma (Vicky Krieps) and his sister (Lesley Manville).

After a long long wait, the first poster and the trailer have arrived. See them after the jump as we nail down the Yes, No, and Maybe So of it all…

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What did you see this weekend?

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (October 13th-15th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
1. 🔺 HAPPY DEATH DAY  $26.5 new	1.🔺 THE FLORIDA PROJECT $401k on 33 screens (cum. $623k) REVIEW 1, REVIEW 2
2. BLADE RUNNER 2049 $15.1 (cum. $60.5) REVIEW | SHORTS | "BESTS"	2. TIL DEATH DO US PART $319k on 400 screens (cum. $3.2)
3. 🔺 THE FOREIGNER  $12.8 new	3. THE STRAY $300k on 430 screens (cum. $1.2)
4. IT  $6 (cum. $314.9) REVIEW | 5 TAKEAWAYS	4. A QUESTION OF FAITH $155k on 228 screens (cum. $2.1)
5. 🔺  THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US $5.6 (cum. $20.5) REVIEW	5. 🔺 AMERICAN SATAN $132k on 55 screens new
6. AMERICAN MADE  $5.4 (cum. $40.1)	6. 🔺 MARK FELT $123k on 89 screens (cum. $257k)
7. KINGSMAN 2  $5.3 (cum. $89.6)	7. STRONGER $115k on 174 screens (cum. $4) REVIEW
8. LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE  $4.3 (cum. $51.5)	8. JUDWAA 2 $110k on 106 screens (cum. $1.4)
9. MY LITTLE PONEY  $4 (cum. $15.5)	9. 🔺 GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN $55k on 9 screens new
10. 🔺 VICTORIA & ABDUL  $3.1 (cum. $11.3) REVIEW	10. HUMAN FLOW $47k on 3 screens new
🔺 = new or significant expansion numbers (in millions unless otherwise noted) from box office mojo

It was a rough weekend for awards hopefuls that weren't named Victoria & Abdul. Dame Dench's new vehicle moved into the top ten in its fourth weekend when it finally went wide. Other movies seeking adult audiences had a rougher go of it. The biopics Marshall and Professor Marston & The Wonder Women both opened outside of the top ten despite plentiful screens. (I took in Professor Marston and though it's a niche subject, it's surprisingly good with yet another excellent performance from the ever reliable Rebecca Hall.) More biographical awards hopefuls Goodbye Christopher Robin and Breathe also failed to attract much interest in their platform debuts. It's a tough world out there for non-genre titles that would like adults to go to the movies again!

The weekend's best per screen averages went to the documentary Human Flow and A24's The Florida Project which added 29 screens in its second weekend. WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?

Review: Jake Gyllenhaal gets "Stronger"

by Eric Blume

Have patience watching director David Gordon Green’s film Stronger, which captures real-life Boston native Jeff Bauman (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) as he’s caught in the 2013 Marathon bombing.  After a rickety start, Green relaxes into a nice rhythm and delivers an almost extinct creature: a true adult movie drama.

The first few scenes of Stronger come on a little, ahem, strong.  They’re written to show what a great guy Bauman is (he cuts out from work so he and his lucky beer can help the Red Sox win, he stands up for his gay boss), and Green has all the actors pushing too hard.  The initial scene where we meet Bauman’s family (including mom Miranda Richardson and girlfriend Tatiana Maslany) in a bar reeks of Boston cliché.  It’s a very tricky thing, honestly capturing that lower-middle-class Beantown language and attitude, and Green overplays his hand in this and several other early scenes.  The energy is overly commercial, and the movie gets off to an uneasy start.

But once the big sequence begins, where Bauman loses his legs in the terrible terrorist attack, Green begins observing smaller details, and starts scoring...

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Review: Darren Aronofsky's "mother!"

This review contains mild spoilers from the first half of the film since everything is essentially a spoiler given the cryptic promotions. The review was previously published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. 

“Baby?” is the first line spoken in Darren Aronofsky’s new film mother!  but not its first image. The film begins with a defiant girl burning in a house consumed by fire. Javier Bardem collects a gem from the ashes. He places it on a shelf with other less brilliant but similar gems and we watch as the house restores itself from blackened ash. What to make of this rebirth… or is it a timelapse reversal of the destruction? Are we seeing the future or the past?

Cut to Jennifer Lawrence, waking up suddenly in bed. Where is her husband?

Baby?

While Lawrence is the star she’s a cypher-like presence in this particular film (new for her) a mostly passive figure to whom the action happens... We learn very little about her marriage besides the fact that he is a writer and she spends her time restoring their massive home.

Then a knock on the door…

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TIFF: Elle Fanning is "Mary Shelley"

Our ongoing adventures at TIFF

In the summer of 1816 legendary Romantic literary figures Mary Shelley (and stepsister Claire Clairmont), Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori were holed up in a Swiss estate and challenged each other to write scary ghost stories. From that fateful contest two famous works of horror emerged ("Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus" in 1818 and "The Vampyre" in 1819 -- neither of them actual ghost stories!). Ken Russell attacked this collision of authors with his trademark sexual abandon and visual insanity in Gothic (1986) and his wasn't the first or last film to stare with fascination at that morbid contest 201 years ago. We return to that summer for a good chunk of Haifaa al-Mansour's Mary Shelley but with far different intent.

Haifaa al-Mansour, the first Saudi female film director (she previously directed Wadjda) is more interested in the trailblazing of Mary Shelley (née Godwin) as a female author -- and the unique challenges that came with her gender in the literary world of 1818 -- than in the creation of Frankenstein...

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