Tuesday, March 17, 2015 at 10:07AM Is there any hope that summer action/comedy hopeful, Hot Pursuit, can be good? Reese & Sofia shared each others posters on social media the other day and it was endearing, albeit in a corporate mandated way. More...
Sunday, March 8, 2015 at 2:07PM Hi everyone! Anne Marie here with the weekend box office. We're about a week away from the first big releases of the year, so the news is mostly underwhelming. We had a handful of new releases this weekend with mixed results. Chappie, South African director Neill Blomkamp's third scifi film with a social message, underperformed in its opening weekend, making it Blomkamp's poorest opening yet. This probably won't affect his involvement in the Alien reboot, but I'm sure there are some sweating execs out there at Sony right now. The world gave a collective shrug to Unfinished Business, the Vince Vaughan vehicle that I kept forgetting about, even though it's been aggressively marketed. Other than that, things mostly faded, with Focus and Kingsman maintaining their unsteady hold, while post-Valentine's Day 50 Shades of Grey went soft and Jupiter Ascending finally crashed.
TOP OF THE BOX OFFICE
Click on the highlighted titles for past articles on that film
01 CHAPPIE $13.3 NEW
02 FOCUS $10.2 (cum $34.6)
03 SECOND BEST MARIGOLD HOTEL $8.6 NEW
04 KINGSMAN $8.3 (cum $98)
05 SPONGEBOB MOVIE $7 (cum $149)
06 50 SHADES OF GREY $5.6 (cum $156.4)
07 MCFARLAND USA $5.3 (cum $29.4)
08 THE LAZARUS EFFECT $5.1 (cum $17.4)
09 THE DUFF $4.8 (cum $26.1)
10 UNFINISHED BUSINESS $4.8 NEW
In bolder news: American Sniper became the #1 movie of 2014 outgrossing the second Hunger Games sequel and Guardians of the Galaxy's franchise launcher.
In happier news: Second Best Marigold Hotel opened in only 1,573 screens this weekend, but managed to make it to the #3 spot on the Box Office charts with the highest per screen average: $5,467. This is wonderful news for the Judi Dench and Maggie Smith fans of the world, though considering its low $8.6 opening, we can safely conclude this was an off weekend for movie watching.
What did you watch this weekend?
Monday, March 2, 2015 at 11:01AM There are few movie characters as iconic as Lt. Ellen Ripley, the accidental but determined warrior so superbly played by Sigourney Weaver four times over in the five film Aliens franchise (1979-2012). Soon to be six or seven if Ridley pursues his Prometheus sequel and Neill Blomkamp and Sigourney actually make good on their plans to bring Ripley back in 2017 on the heels of their first collaboration Chappie (opening Friday).
While James Cameron's Aliens (1986) hogs most of the attention when it comes to Weaver's franchise headlining work (including a well deserved but very out-of-comfort-zone Oscar nomination for Best Actress) she's actually pretty stellar in all four of the movies. [More...]
Tuesday, February 24, 2015 at 10:00AM What does a fresh list of winners bring? Why... New TRIVIA of course!
Do you think Patty Arquette has seen SAVAGE GRACE?
picture birdman director alejandro gonzález iñárritu, birdman actress julianne moore, still alice actor eddie redmayne, theory of everything supporting actress patricia arquette, boyhood supporting actor j.k. simmons, whiplash original screenplay birdman adapted screenplay imitation game foreign film ida animated feature big hero 6 documentary feature citizenfour cinematography birdman editing whiplash production design grand budapest hotel costume design grand budapest hotel makeup and hair grand budapest hotel visual effects interstellar score grand budapest hotel song "glory" selma sound mixing whiplash sound editing american sniper live action short the phone call documentary short crisis hotline animated short feast ...I forgot to ask all of you how you did on your predictions? I did decent but not spectacular 18/24 (but i heard from a few readers who said I helped them win their office pool so there's that) but the short film categories messing me up as usual grrrr
After the jump, there's lots of trivia brought on by the 87th batch. If you have a really good one I forgot, I can always update the post so please to enjoy and comment...
Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 11:00AM 
Michael C here with a question: When did it stop mattering if the hero saves the day?
Recently, it seems as long as the protagonist gives it the old college try that’s good enough to get rounded up to a victory. If a few thousand innocents die before he gets the job done, eh, nobody’s perfect. I started noticing this trend right around the time Man of Steel had to be careful to keep the piles of dead Metropolitans out of frame while Superman kissed Lois Lane on a pile of rubble.
Now we have Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service which ups the ante by not only having the hero fail to stop the villain from causing an outbreak of mass violence, but by lingering lovingly on the mayhem, including a mother who is brainwashed into attempting to murder her own baby. With previous examples of this trend, one could chalk it up to blockbuster inflation, with each movie trying to top its predecessors until the implications of all that destruction became unavoidable. With Kingsman, however, it feels like the showing of true colors, dropping the pretense that the film is about anything more than unashamedly reveling in a mass bloodletting. Vile stuff.
I realize I risk coming off as a prude and a scold by taking to task a film which wants only to be giddy escapist entertainment. [More...]
