Nobody goes to the movies on Labor Day, do they?

In retrospect it was probably a bad idea to make a movie called Labor Day (remember that 2013 Kate Winslet misfire?) since Labor Day weekend is one of those rare holidays where people mostly avoid the movies. Essentially it's the last "outdoor" weekend, and it's no longer hot enough to pine away for air conditioned storytelling. At any rate here is the quickie chart for the weekend. Were you an iconoclast who did go to the movies this weekend or were you thwarted by Hollywood's lack of desire to program anything between franchise blockbusters. Seriously this year feels like they're not even trying -- thank god awards season might rescue us...

Weekend Box Office Estimates August 30th- September 1st Estimates 🔺 = New or Expanding / ★ = Recommended
W I D E	PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES
Good Boys	Brittany Runs a Marathon
1 Angel Has Fallen  $11.5 (cum. $40.6)	1 🔺 Tod@s Caen $1 on 371 screens *new*
2 Good Boys $9.1 (cum. $56.1)  REVIEW  ★	2 🔺 After the Wedding $445k on 428 screens (cum. $862k)  REVIEW
3 The Lion King  $6.7 (cum. $520.9)   REVIEW	3 🔺 Brittany Runs a Marathon $414k on 49 screens (cum. $637k)

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Doc Corner: 'Honeyland'

By Glenn Dunks

You know a movie is going to give you something when within the first two minutes, it makes you bolt upright and exclaim “Oh wow!” to an empty room. The eyes pop and the eyebrows raise as you marvel at the sheer unexpectedness of what is on screen. In Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov’s Honeyland, the image in question is that of an aging beekeeper straddling precariously along a cliff-face to a hive hidden among the rocks. Surrounded by grey and brown, Hatidze Mutatova (who I assume is in her 50s?) reveals a wedge of golden honeycomb. The gold in the rocks.

It’s a startling way to open a film from a purely logistical standpoint. It’s also a visual that really clues the viewer into its subject's tenacity and sheer force of nature abilities as a cultivator and protector of bees – an animal, after all, that is vital to the existence on Earth of everyone from those of us in major metropolises to those, like Hatidze, in isolated, wind-swept, mountainous regions of Macedonia...

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