What did you see over the holiday week?

Given the craziness of holiday weekends at the box office, we opted to wait until "actuals" were released rather than run with an "estimates" column yesterday. So herewith a complete picture of the Fourth of July weekend with all 12 pictures still in wide release and the corresponding top of the charts in platform or limited titles. What did you see this first week of July? 

Weekend Box Office July 5th-7th (Actuals) 🔺 = new or expanded theater counts / ★ = recommended
W I D E	PLATFORM / LIMITED
1 🔺 Spider-Man Far From Home $92.5 (cum. $185) *NEW*  TOM HOLLAND	1 Pavarotti [DOC] $458k on 250 screens (cum. $2.9)

2 Toy Story 4 $33.8 on 4540 screens (cum. $306.1) PODCAST	2 🔺  Last Black Man... $431k on 188 screens (cum. $2.7) ★ REVIEW, PODCAST, BEST OF

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Halfway Mark Box Office (Pt 1: The Mainstream)

As part of our midway through the year report (we've already seen fun halfway top fives from the team and favourite male performances) here's a look at the box office year thus far. Tomorrow we'll get a bit more niche, okay? Figures here are estimates as of Sunday June 30th for films released in the first six months of the year.

BOX OFFICE TOP TENS IN SIX CATEGORIES
🔺= the movie is still in over 100 theaters.

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

Captain Marvel

01 Captain Marvel (Disney/Marvel) $426.7 starring Brie Larson. March 8th
02 Us (Universal) $175 starring Lupita Nyong'o. March 22nd
03 Alita Battle Angel (Fox) $85.7 starring Rosa Salazar. Feb 14th...

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Showbiz History: Chéri, Elvis, and Top Gun: Maverick?

7+ random things that happened on this day (June 26th) in history...

1925 Charlie Chaplin's classic The Gold Rush premieres at the Egyptian theatre in Hollywood. Tickets were $5.50 (which would be around $70 today)

1971 The 21st annual Berlinale begins (it used to be held in the summer rather than February). The winner will be Vittoria de Sica's Italian classic The Garden of the Finzi Continis which will win the Oscar the following April for Best Foreign Language Film...

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Review: Men in Black International

by Tony Ruggio

Jettisoning all subtext of the original and heart of the third and formerly final movie, Men in Black International is definitely a step-down from the highs of this intermittent, long-running franchise. Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson don’t enjoy nearly the same chemistry that sparked in Thor Ragnarok, their personalities clashing in a way that can best be described as awkward, and not the good kind with bumbling and sexual tension in tow. It’s all so rushed and Thompson’s arc leaves something to be desired.

And yet, I couldn’t help smiling through half of it...

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Review: Dark and Tired Phoenix

This review was previously published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad...

Don't they have any healing and creative rejuvenation among the super-powered mutations at Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Children? If so they needed them to lay their hands on this franchise for a few years before making another bungled attempt at the beloved Dark Phoenix storyline (from the 1980 comic books) within this movie franchise's 19 movie years. But that's a rhetorical question. If Dark Phoenix (2019) is indication, mutations cannot save this franchise.

When we return to our characters, much has changed since our last visit. Which is fine since who wants to be reminded of X-Men Apocalypse? The X-Men are now no longer shunned by society but held up as heroes. Professor Xavier (James McAvoy, phoning this one in... but then who isn't?) has a direct phone to the White House, like a Batman / Commissioner Gordon sitch on steroids. Their first mission, which serves as kind of a second prologue to the over and underwritten film, is making Raven (Jessica Lawrence) nervous for some underwritten/performed reason...

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