Did you see 'The Dial of Destiny' or pass?

By Nathaniel R

The box office prelude to a mid-week Fourth of July (today) rested on Indiana Jones's 5th outing but he didn't truly deliver in The Dial of Destiny, a sequel that few people outside of Hollywood's money-obsessed board rooms  were asking for. Hollywood is discovering that it can't live on franchises alone. Problem is that's become Hollywood's ONLY strategy and all they've been investing in for some time now. Unfortunately for those of us who love the cinematic experience audience  increasingly lukewarm or chilly response to the big franchises isn't really morphinng into interest pointed at other moviegoing options. Hollywood has been training people to only care about franchises for years and now that they've "won", we're all losing!

Weekend Box Office (estimates? actuals? it's always a little fuzzy around holidays) June 30th - July 2nd  🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended
WIDE (Over 800 Screens)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY	EVERY BODY
1 🔺 INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY $60.3 *NEW* 4600 screens	1 🔺 EVERY BODY [doc] $150k *NEW* 255 screens

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Quick Takes on Threequels: Ant-Man & Magic Mike

by Nathaniel R

Paul Rudd vs Jonathan Majors in "Quantumania"

Forever behind, always catching up. Herewith two spontaneous reviews of threequels that came out during Oscar madness that we never got around to talking about (as they weren't related to that all-consuming golden season): Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Steven Soderbergh's trilogy-closing Magic Mike's Last Dance...

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MCU Catch-Up: ‘Ant-Man’ and ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’

By Abe Friedtanzer

I see a lot of movies. Still, I sometimes miss big releases if a) I don’t see the film either at a press screening or right when comes out and b) it’s not an awards contender. With the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s so much to keep up with. At a certain point, there are some entries that I just never get around to seeing. Among the few I was missing up until recently were Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, the lead-ups to the forthcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Thanks to a long flight last week and two Disney+ downloads ahead of time, I’m now caught up with everyone’s favorite shrinking hero…

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Review: "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"

by Nathaniel R

Presenting a task as impossible as hiding a futuristic country for centuries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Imagine having to follow up the phenomenon of Marvel's Black Panther (2018) which, like most explosive zeitgeist events, had ultra precise perfectly timed ingredients and arrived at the exact moment in culture when all of them would be most appreciated. Now imagine having to follow that up without its charismatic leading man, lost to cancer at the young peak of an already impressive career. Director Ryan Coogler was in an unenviable position. It's no surprise, then, that the sequel to Marvel's most popular solo adventure is a bit wobbly on arrival. Never mind that the sequel must bear the weight of all the absurd expectations and make sense of T'Challa's absence while trying to find new legs on both land AND at sea. Thank god for the latter. Whatever the movie's faults, it's not from attempting a simplistic retread...

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"Aliens" Revisited.

by Nathaniel R

How long was I out. HOW LONG? Please."

This week I had the pleasure of guesting on InSession's podcast to discuss James Cameron's sci-fi/horror classic Aliens (1986). When they asked me to guest on the show I secretly thought "What more can I say about it? I've been talking about this movie forever!" but then of course I couldn't shut up and the episode was too short for me to squeeze in everything that was inside of me. So herewith some notes and, of course, the podcast itself...

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