A Weak Weekend at the Box Office

by Nathaniel R

A deflating weekend for Hollywood, proving once again that if you don't put enough new glitzy stuff in theaters (and don't promote them well) people don't show up! But for what it's worth, here's what the weekend was like...

Weekend Box Office  August 26th-28th 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended links if we've written about it
WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
THE INVITATION	ORPHAN: FIRST KILL

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Streaming: "The Harder They Fall"

Please welcome guest contributor Jasmine Graham

Westerns are not a genre I’m a massive fan of so I had no idea what to expect from The Harder They Fall, a directorial debut from Jeymes Samuels, a singer-songwriter from England. The film, now streaming on Netflix, follows Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) spending the course of the film avenging his parents death as a child to Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) and his gang. Joining them in the ensemble cast are Edi Gathegi, Regina King, and Zazie Beetz to name a few. The cast is exceptional, with wonderful chemistry and such good performances that it’s hard to name one standout. The film is a western, through and through, with bloody and violent shootouts that do not disappoint...

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Almost There: Idris Elba in "Beasts of No Nation"

by Cláudio Alves

Spike Lee's latest joint, Da 5 Bloods, was released on Netflix last week and people are already talking about the possibility of Oscar glory. Delroy Lindo, in particular, is getting plenty of attention for what many call the best performance of his career. He's an early contender for the Academy Award. To observe such a reaction is to see how far Netflix has come in the past few years, effectively carving a place for itself in the Oscar race. It wasn't always like this and we need only look back at 2015 to find proof of it. Then, rewarding the cinematic excellence of films produced by streaming companies was still a relative taboo, a bridge too far for many awards bodies. 

If it weren't for the early resistance of AMPAS towards Netflix, Idris Elba would probably already be an Oscar-nominated actor…

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Links

The Guardian wonders if dog actors are a thing no more after Call of the Wild. This makes us sad. Though wild animals as CGI makes sense, dogs actually love training/performing/playing with humans.
/Film Bong Joon Ho has floated the idea that he'd like to make a musical. Unlike /film, we don't approve given his comments. We've been saying this since the days of the early Aughts 'filmmakers who are non-fans or embarrassed by the musical form SHOULD NOT make them.' Periodt.

after the jump more on the coronavirus and Hollywood, Lyle Waggoner RIP, and more...

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Tweetweek: 1917, Movie Real Estate, and 'The Bad Place'

by Nathaniel R

So we were at the first screening of 1917 yesterday at the DGA theater in NYC and as you may have noticed if you were online, the Oscar pundits and online film press collectively went berzerk for it, immediately declaring it was going to win everything, it was best this and that... even of the decade! 'Nobody's ever done this before' (uhhhhh. people have been doing continuous take movies since at least Hitchcock's Rope in the 1940s and probably before that and one of 'em just won Best Picture five years ago!)  For the record we enjoyed it and it is quite technically impressive... but deep breaths people. "Consider" your opinions before tweeting them out before the credits of the thing you just watched have even stopped rolling!

Much is made in 1917 about the futility of medals and yet my dumb ass still wants one for noticing each and every invisible cut in this “one-take” movie

— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) November 24, 2019

I'm not going to share the generically breathless super-hypey tweets (they all sound pretty much the same) but more 1917 reactions are after the jump, plus The Bad Place, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Dick Tracy, Cats, and Best Real Estate Envy movies. So read on for more curated tweets...

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