Saturday, September 16, 2017 at 12:18AM TIFF wraps up Sunday and since we'd like the last few pieces to be positive let's get some negativity out of the way. Here are two films which yours truly did not respond well to. One is certain to be trashed by critics and the other, though trashy, is being widely praised. But they're both bad.
Monday, September 11, 2017 at 3:15PM 
Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" -- I usually try to choose older movies for this series because it's more likely y'all have seen them and have an opinion. That is unless we're talking about great big cultural juggernauts - those are usually safe. It Comes at Night isn't an old movie, and it wasn't so much a cultural juggernaut either, but here we are anyway. The film had a stellar ad campaign (thanks to A24, the king of stellar ad campaigns these days) so it did get some chatter at the time of its release, but it ultimately only made just under 20 million bucks. This is no Avatar.
And yet here on the eve of its release on blu-ray tomorrow I still want to highlight the movie, and I have faith that a good portion of the TFE audience, who already knew Trey Edward Shults' amazing Krisha, was the audience that sought the movie out. For good (I loved it) or for ill (I know a lot of people felt cheated by the ad campaign which baited and switched a supernatural horror film for a tense chamber piece). And you'll maybe have an opinion on who was in the right - Joel Edgerton's homeowner Paul or Christopher Abbott's encroacher Will.
PREVIOUSLY For no reason in particular we hit up Halle Berry's Catwoman for last week's contest but it was her nemesis, the skin-care supervillain played by Sharon Stone, who slinked away with the 65% win - said Eder Arcas:
"... the WINNER here gotta be SHARON STONE, the woman delivers camp like no one else , she`s elegant and graceful cool, because, well, she's Sharon Stone. You always get the feeling she's just about ready to snap a full on crazy - but that kinda IS what is interesting about Sharon Stone. Sort of a female Jack Nicholson, but hotter in heels and a skirt."
Monday, September 4, 2017 at 12:46PM 
Jason from MNPP here with today's new "Beauty vs Beast" -- I finally got my boyfriend to watch Wonder Woman this weekend (it's finally out on VOD) and he was as surprised as I was by how much he enjoyed it (I was skeptical given DC's lousy track-record and he was skeptical because he doesn't like superhero movies). But he had one complaint that I very much got - there are a couple of full-body CG shots where Diana's hopping around where the effects look pretty goony, or as my boyfriend put it, "That looked like Catwoman."
Which got me thinking about Catwoman. The Halle Berry one, I mean. Which isn't as dire for me as it is for most - I actually enjoy the 2004 dud, albeit for camp value. But you kind of get the feeling that the film's director Pitof (whose career was, probably rightly, murdered by the film) intended the camp value, which then got me thinking about what a blessing it is that Patty Jenkins was able to give us a female superhero and take her (and her girly love for love) seriously - there's a long history of female superheroes being treated as less than serious by male directors, from Supergirl to Showgirls.
Of course Tim Burton took Catwoman seriously once, and from that we got the Greatest Superhero Performance of All Time. And he also proved that taking something "seriously" doesn't mean you have to drain all the fun, or even the camp, from it - a lesson every DC movie not named Wonder Woman could stand to learn. So I hope we get a proper Catwoman movie some day, but until then, I'll make due with the camp of Halle Berry smashing the beauty magnate villanness Sharon Stone's cement face in. Which leads me to this week's purrfect poll...
PREVIOUSLY When I was out of town last week Nathaniel took y'all back to Disney's film Hercules (which sidenote I have never seen, whoopsie) and faced off its hero and hell-ward villain, and in a squeaker the titular ginger took the crown with just over 51% of your votes. Always bet on ginger. Said Emma:
"I consider Hercules the second dishiest Disney character (second only to Nick from ZOOTOPIA... don't judge me!), so had to vote for the eye candy."
Sunday, August 6, 2017 at 2:00PM | Weekend Box Office (Aug 4th-6th) |
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| W I D E | L I M I T E D |
 |
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| 1. 🔺 DARK TOWER $19.5 REVIEW |
1. 🔺 AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL $900k (cum. $1.0) 180 screens REVIEW |
| 2. DUNKIRK $17.6 (cum. $133.5) PODCAST | TOM HARDY | 2. WOLF WARRIOR 2 $460k (cum. $1.0) 32 screens |
| 3. EMOJI MOVIE $12.3 (cum. $49.4) REVIEW |
3. MAUDIE $262k (cum. $5.1) 187 screens REVIEW |
| 4. GIRLS TRIP $11.4 (cum. $85.4) REVIEW |
4. 🔺 LANDLINE $240k (cum. $503k) 141 screens |
It's tough to know what to compare Dark Tower to, to know if it's had a good opening weekend or not but word-of-mouth is going to be a problem if the reviews are any indication. The reviews were kinder, though not as many ticket buyers turned out, for the other new releases...
