How Had I Never Seen..."Independence Day"?

by Cláudio Alves

Some of my recent choices for the "How Had I Never Seen" series may have leaned towards the esoteric. Probably most people don't wonder why or how they have never set eyes on Valley of the Dolls or Girlfriends. This time around, however, I've decided to fix a pretty deep lacuna in my movie-watching, one that's firmly in the mainstream rather than an arthouse curio. Today marks the 25th anniversary of Roland Emmerich's 1996 Oscar-winning mega-blockbuster Independence Day. To commemorate the date, I finally watched the flick that turned Will Smith into a star of the silver screen, redefined the effects-driven summer movie, and birthed a new era of Hollywood entertainment… 

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Watch at Home: Knives Out, Midway, System Crasher, and Monty Clift

by Nathaniel R

Do any of you buy Blu-Rays or DVDs anymore? The release dates of such used to be a big deal for film fans but now it's but another random date and everyone is on their own timetable. Nevertheless we should probably check in once in a while, shouldn't we? (New to streaming titles are also listed after the jump)

New to DVD/ Blu-Ray (Feb 3rd-25th)
If we've written about the film it's linked up...

• 21 Bridges - the Russo brothers attempt to step away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (albeit with Black Panther himself in tow)
• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - the misunderstood and underrated Mr Rogers hosted drama
• Color Out of Space - Nicolas Cage again...

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"Midway" tops the weekend while "Honey Boy" opens strong

Weekend Box Office [ESTIMATES] Nov 8th-10th 🔺 = New or Expanding / ★ = Recommended
W I D E	PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES
MIDWAY	HONEY BOY
1 🔺  MIDWAY  $17.5 *new*	1 🔺 PARASITE $2.5 on 603 screens (cum. $11.2) PODCAST ★
2 🔺 DOCTOR SLEEP $14.1 *new*	2 🔺 PAIN & GLORY $397K on 266 screens (cum. $2.6)  REVIEW, PODCAST ★
3 🔺 PLAYING WITH FIRE $12.8 *new*	3 🔺 HONEY BOY  $288k on 4 screens *new* ★
4 🔺 LAST CHRISTMAS  $11.6 *new* REVIEW	4 HOUSEFULL 4 $124k on 85 screens (cum. $2)
5 TERMINATOR DARK FATE $8.4 (cum. $85.2) PODCAST	5 LINDA RONSTADT... $43k on 59 screens (cum. $4) REVIEW

In a not quite as usual as you'd expect occurence all four new wide releases, were lined up 1-2-3-4 with no interruption from holdovers at the top of the box office. None of them really lit the box office on fire but Roland Emmerich's latest action epic did decent business up top. For platform titles, the big story was Honey Boy's surprisingly robust debut, earning $75k per theater despite being a very personal film and niche topic. A strong opening was by no means a sure thing so well done Shia Labeouf and Amazon!

Meanwhile Parasite continues to be all the rage (it's a rare foreign-language film that hits 8 figures in the US marketplace) while Pain & Glory is a steady performer. Jojo Rabbit expanded very well with a nearly $5,000 per screen average as it moved into just-barely wide release at 802 theaters with a $4 million or so weekend; all three of those titles are moving confidently into awards season. What did you see this weekend?

Posterized: Roland Emmerich

With 60 year old German director Roland Emmerich's latest sci-fi world-in-peril disaster flick opening (that'd be Independence Day: Resurgence) let's look back at his career for this week's Posterized! But first here's a really cute photo of the director with actress Joey King tying his shoes. (She's made two of his movies back to back now as she was also in Stonewall)

In poster form, at least, Emmerich's careers looks a lot a pitch perfect example of how capitalism works in Tinsletown, when they poach genre directors from other countries...

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Podcast: Sicario & Stonewall

Katey, Joe, Nathaniel and Nick, all returned from TIFF (where the four of us were actually in the same place at the same time for the very first time ever!), return to "Now Playing" cinema to catch shrapnel coming off of Sicario & throw bricks at Stonewall. 

43 minutes 
00:01 TIFF postscript & Room
03:30 Sicario dark, haunting, superbly crafted, POV politics
21:00 Stonewall (2015) what were they thinking?
33:00 Stonewall (1995), Stonewall Uprising (2010), and other final thoughts 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Related reading: Katey on Room, Nathaniel on Stonewall, Nick on Sicario, Noah Tsika's negative reaction to Sicario, Jeffrey Wells's super-weird war on fans of Room.

And in case you missed it, here's the photo of the podcast team at TIFF.

Sicario and Stonewall