Coal in our stocking. 'Worst' of the Year

Each day a different year in review list. Here's Nathaniel R...

2018 was unpleasant in so many real life ways that grousing about unpleasant things within our favorite escape hatch from reality seems ungrateful. By and large, we love the movies here at TFE and I think I speak for most of the team in saying that we can all pretty much find something to love even in the worst ones. Nevertheless, allow me a quick exorcism of the things I disliked the most this year to get them out of my system. A very important caveat though: As my own boss I can skip whichever films I have no interest in or which receive intense critical drubbings. Therefore my "worsts" are rarely the worsts and sometimes not even terrible just unsatisfying, if you catch the drift. But these films and performances just didn't work for me or actively discouraged benefit of the doubt.

Much kvetching after the jump...

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What did you see this weekend?

by Nathaniel R

This weekend looked much the same as last weekend with Mission Impossible - Fallout still dominant and the same limited release hits going strong (Three Identical Strangers and Blindspotting and Eighth Grade... though the latter has now gone wide - yay!). Disney's Christopher Robin opened slightly below expectations but family friendly films sometimes have staying power and audiences reportedly like it... 

Weekend Box Office Estimates (August 3rd-5th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
Mission: Impossible - Fallout	Three Identical Strangers
1. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT  $35 (cum. $124.4) REVIEW	1. THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS $1 on 405 screens (cum. $8.4) REVIEW
2.🔺 CHRISTOPHER ROBIN $25 *NEW* REVIEW	2. BLINDSPOTTING $660k on 523 screens (cum. $3.1)
3.🔺 THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME $12.3 *NEW*	3. 🔺 ALONG WITH THE GODS 2 $329k on 48 screens *NEW*
4. MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN $9 (cum. $91.3) REVIEW	4.  LEAVE NO TRACE $266k on 169 screens (cum. $5.1) TRAILER DISCUSSION
5. EQUALIZER 2 $8.8 (cum. $79.8)	5. 🔺 MCQUEEN $181k on 34 screens (cum. $491) REVIEW

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Amandla Stenberg Comes Out

by Nathaniel R

Here's some sweet news for Pride Month, y'all, since it's not every day that a young rising star comes out of the closet. 19 year-old Amandla Stenberg, who first came to fame playing little Rue in The Hunger Games (2012), has just declared that she's gay in Wonderland magazine and on her own Instagram.

While she's not quite a household name, she is inarguably on the rise so this is a wonderful progressive move. Stenberg is headlining this summer's sci-fi young-people-with-powers flick Darkest Minds (co-starring Beach Rats hottie Harris Dickinson). What's more she'd already delivered her first film-carrying hit with Everything Everything (reviewed). (Everything Everything was the fourth biggest success last year among films directed by women, just after the Oscar nominated Lady Bird)...

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