What did you see this weekend?

As expected those talking yellow dildos (thanks Tim) won the weekend in a big way, though they didn't quite beat the top opening of all time for a toon -- which, I hate to remind you, is held by Shrek The Third. The others held fairly well, particularly Magic Mike XXL which keeps inspiring interesting conversation and dropped only 25% in its second weekend instead of the usual 40 or 50%. The least advertised hit was Baahuball, the Beginning, a spectacle from India on only 236 screens.

BOX OFFICE
July 10th-12th Weekend
01 Minions $115.2 NEW Tim on the Minions phenom
02 Jurassic World $18.1 (cum. $590.6) Jurassic Articles 
03 Inside Out $17.1 (cum. $283.6) Inside Out Articles 
04 Terminator Genisys $13.7 (cum. $68.7) Review 
05 The Gallows $10 NEW 
06 Magic Mike XXL NEW $9.6 (cum. $48.3) Review
07 Ted 2 $5.6 (cum. $71.6)
08 Self/Less $5.3 NEW How many Ryan Reynolds movies have you seen?
09 Baahuball: The Beginning $3.5 NEW
10 Max $3.4 (cum. $33.7)

Among notable films in limited release, the documentary Amy (reviewed) had a great second weekend taking in nearly $2 million, the energetic must-see trans comedy Tangerine (raved right here) made $64,000 on 4 screens (with hopefully more to come when word gets out on how raucously fun it is), and the doc Do I Sound Gay? earned $11,000 on 1 screen. Robin Williams bummed out final film Boulevard (reviewed here), didn't fare that well with only $7,000.

What did you see this weekend? 
I ended up hiding from the heat and binge-watching UnReal against my will -- but The Boyfriend does whatever Emily Nussbaum at the New Yorker tells him and she had raved about it. I had absolute zero interest in it based on the subject matter (behind the scenes drama at a show not unlike the women-as-chattle reality series The Bachelor) but it's a stunner -- so cynical, provocative, and superbly acted. Constance Zimmer and Shiri Appleby - wow! 

Tim's Toons: The minions, then and now.

Tim here. This weekend, all of you with small children will be busy going to see Minions, and oh, how all of us without children will laugh at you, and mock you. The minions, of course, being the yellow lozenges with legs and arms from the Despicable Me movies as what speak using some kind of pan-European pidgin, concocted and delivered by co-director Pierre Coffin. I don't know why I'm bothering to explain this. If you know enough pop culture to read a movie site, you encounter the minions, probably multiple times per day. They have turned into an online meme, pitchmen for unrelated products, and if you have a sufficient imagination and enthusiasm for manufactured outrage, they're also teaching five-year-olds the F-word.

Frankly, the fact that there's a minions movie seems almost irrelevant, as pointless as making a movie out of Hello Kitty. Which they are doing, because the universe is cruel.

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