New Podcast: Us, Dumbo, The Beach Bum, and Gloria Bell

by Murtada Elfadl, Chris Feil, and Nathaniel R

 

Now that 2019 movies are more than underway, a new season of the Podcast is upon us! 

Index (55 minutes)
00:01 Julianne Moore is Gloria Bell
12:30 Jordan Peele's Us starring Lupita Nyong'o  [MAJOR SPOILERS]
33:30 Tim Burton's Dumbo
40:00 Randomness
42:50 Harmony Korine's The Beach Bum and Matthew McConaughey's strange year
52:00 Randomness

Supplemental Reading
• Film Comment Gloria Bell review
• Murtada's Beach Bum review
• Chris's Us review
• Jason's Serenity review
• Paulina García's great performance in the original Gloria

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Gloria Bell, Us, Dumbo

Review: The Wind

by Chris Feil

Capturing the emotional and topographical emptiness of the American West, director Emma Tammi’s The Wind is a horror film that succeeds through its sparseness. The desert landscape that surrounds first settler Lizzy Macklin and her husband Isaac becomes a horrifying abyss of the unknown. As Lizzy stares out at her uninhabited surroundings, waiting patiently for more enterprising souls to arrive, that abyss stares right back into her.

What unfolds in this slim and mighty pickax of horror is a terrifying case of the plains. It sure proves psychologically claustrophobic looking out on the unending expanse of a home on the range, where yesterday and today, real and imagined all blur together in isolate malaise. Don't confuse the film's modesty for a lack of depth, for this creaky well runs deep.

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1st Quarter Box Office Report. Twelve categories!

With the first quarter wrapping up, let's break down the year at the box office (thus far). It's much more interesting to break it down into types of films and see which films most interested the ticket-buying public. Figure are as of March 31st, 2019. Since many of these are still open, these aren't final results but we thought it would be a fun snapshot of this moment, 1/4th of the way through the calendar year. (One final note: We did not include Fathom Events and other non-traditional styles of release because those numbers aren't directly comparable and often make less sense. i.e. if you couldn't see it at regular showtimes in a theater somewhere it's not included.)

TOP GROSSING FILMS WITH A FEMALE LEAD
(Excluding films where a male lead is just as prominent as his female co-star)

What Men Want

01 Captain Marvel (Disney/Marvel) $353.9 starring Brie Larson. March 29th
02 Us (Universal) $127.8 starring Lupita Nyong'o. March 22nd
03 Alita Battle Angel (Fox) $84.9 starring Rosa Salazar. Feb 14th
04 What Men Want (Paramount) $54.4 starring Taraji P Henson. Feb 8th...

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I've been obsessing over this shot in "Us"

by Nathaniel R

Not sure if there's an audience out there for a return of our Hit Me With Your Best Shot series but Jordan Peele's horror smash Us would certainly be a worthy candidate for the treatment. Lately I've been obsessing over this particular image (above) in which Red (Lupita Nyong'o) has handcuffed Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) to her own coffee table. It's not just the slow upsetting crack of the glass, or Lupita's stunning dual performance...

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Links: Captain Chris Evans, Fan Bingbing, and Queer-free Freddy

• THR A yummy Chris Evans cover story on Trump resistance, Captain America as the key figure that allowed the MCU to flourish, and his superhero-free future. He really wants to do a musical!
• Oh So Geeky fetishisizes the good captain with millions of gifs in this piece about his arc within the MCU and Avengers Infinity War in particular. So much Chris Evans this week!
• The Guardian For its Chinese release Bohemian Rhapsody has lost three full minutes (including all queer references, any mention of AIDS, and what sounds like the loss of one entire character - Mercury's boyfriend). The movie has made almost a billion worldwide. Maybe have some respect for Mercury's legacy, Warner Bros, and just not release it in China?

More after the jump including animation lawsuits, what's next for Alex Wolff, the end of Game of Thrones, and a must-read Fan Bingbing article...

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