Notes on films we haven't talked much about to catch-up...

by Nathaniel R

The year sure got away from us. People are diving into "Best of Decade" lists right and left and we're still waist deep in 2019's offerings. Here are some thoughts on films we didn't properly review for some reason. "Some reason" nearly always means not enough hours in the day and the less flattering but no less true (sigh) lack of self-discipline.

A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (Marielle Heller)
Non movie-based spoiler alert: This film will be on my top ten list. That's the excuse I kept making when delaying writing a real review. "You'll have to talk about that later anyway, Nathaniel" Still, the silence does this movie a disservice. Everyone should go see it at the first possible opportunity. Heller is one of our greatest working directors...

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Twitter's Dark Fate: To forever speak of Marty vs Marvel

a curated batch of amusing or interesting tweets about the movies...

Seeing people complain that Dark Fate brought wokeness to the Terminator is pretty hilarious when you realize that the most beloved installment featured a robot, a buff woman, a kid played by a Latino actor & a black scientist vs. a villain with the appearance of an LAPD officer. pic.twitter.com/3PPFFOEXWU

— Zack Stentz (@MuseZack) November 5, 2019

The indignities we’ve put our ascending queens through... pic.twitter.com/rQ8CSeO9fW

— Patrick Sullivan (@PatchNavillus) November 4, 2019

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Podcast: The Irishman, Terminator Dark Fate, and Oscar Buzz

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R 

Index (60 minutes)
00:01 Murtada's New Fest jury duty
03:00 Martin Scorsese's The Irishman and why it should have been called I Heard You Paint Houses.  Thoughts on the running time, Thelma Schoonmaker's editing, the de-aging visuals, and the performances of Anna Paquin, Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino. And a trend in 2019: directors revisiting their favourite themes reflectively this year: Scorsese, Almodóvar, and Tarantino
23:30 The Best Supporting Actor Oscar race: Pacino versus Brad Pitt? Plus tangents about Marriage Story, Ford V Ferrari, Dolemite is My Name, Just Mercy and Honey Boy
43:00 Best Actor and Best Director races and what The Irishman's true competition is
50:00 Terminator Dark Fate  and Harriet
57:45 The Best Actress race - is Cynthia in?

READ: A thoughtful positive review of Harriet from K Austin Collins
SHARE: Two tweets we mention...

Harriet is not my favorite film of the year but if you gave hours of your life to see Darkest Hour and The Theory of Everything, you have time for a Harriet Tubman movie.

— Murtada Elfadl (@ME_Says) October 29, 2019

TERMINATOR DARK FATE not giving us an ass shot of Gabriel Luna (the first time traveller not to get one in the franchise) is homophobia. pic.twitter.com/5bR2hgcxGl

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) October 23, 2019

 You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

I Heard Scorsese Paints Houses

What did you see this weekend?

Weekend Box Office [ESTIMATES] Nov 1st-3rd 🔺 = New or Expanding / ★ = Recommended
W I D E	PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES
1 🔺  TERMINATOR DARK FATE  $29 *new*	1 🔺 PARASITE $2.6 on 461 screens (cum. $7.5) PODCAST ★
2 JOKER $13.9 (cum. $299.6) REVIEW	2 🔺 JOJO RABBIT $2.4 on 256 screens (cum. $4.2) TIFF WINNER ★
3 MALEFICENT 2 $12.1 (cum. $84.3)	3  HOUSEFULL 4 $463k on 315 screens (cum. $1.7)
4 🔺 HARRIET  $12 *new*	4 PAIN AND GLORY $348k on 111 screens (cum. $2.1) REVIEW, PODCAST ★
5 ADDAMS FAMILY $8.4 (cum. $85.2)	5 LINDA RONSTADT... $90k on 94 screens (cum. $3.9) REVIEW

The latest in a long line of attempts to keep the Terminator franchise going opened below expectations and will have trouble breaking even given its enormous budget. They shouldn't have messed with the mandatory ass shot! In other news Harriet performed above expectations which bodes well for Cynthia Erivo's Oscar campaign which had been losing some lustre after decent but hardly inspiring reviews for the film. Parasite continues to be a smash hit in limited release and is in a ton of markets now on 461 screens.  It'll be the second highest-grossing subtitled picture this year within a week (with only The Farewell left to conquer)

Yes No Maybe So: Terminator Dark Fate

by Jason Adams

The longest time to pass between Terminator movies was twelve years, from James Cameron's action masterpiece T2 in 1991 to Jonathan Mostow's shoddy Rise of the Machines in 2003. Since then, even though they continually struggle to find and resituate their stories and main characters, it's been five to six years from film to film, taking us from Salvation to Genisys and to now, as of this fall, we'll have Dark Fate. Which, it must be said, finally brings the great Linda Hamilton and her iconic Sarah Connor character back for the first time since 1991.

Today they've just released the first fairly loaded teaser trailer for the film -- so let's take a look...

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