What did you see this weekend? 'Uncharted' and 'Dog' were popular

by Nathaniel R

Tom Holland and Channing Tatum both proved continued drawing power this weekend as the video game adaptation Uncharted opened strong with  $51 million over the long weekend and the original comedy Dog opened to $17 million. Meanwhile international feature Oscar nominees Worst Person in the World and Drive My Car continued their arthouse dominance. Full "estimates" chart after the jump...

Weekend Box Office February 18-21 HOLIDAY WEEKEND 🔺 = new or expanding
OVER 800 SCREENS	UNDER 800 SCREENS
UNCHARTED	WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

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Review: "Uncharted" Stays Straight, Too Straight, On Course

by Jason Adams

When is a cannonball not just a cannonball? When it's a sight-gag aimed straight at Tom Holland's crotch, that's when. Rolling up out of nowhere in the explosive and overblown finale to Ruben Fleischer's fitfully entertaining but mostly lifeless video-game adaptation Uncharted -- which involves two full-sized pirate ships being swung below dueling helicopters careening through tropical passageways; don't ask --  the cannonball strikes me as more than just a cannonball and more than just a kick-in-the-nuts punchline. The cannonball becomes a Mousetrap-type puzzle-piece that Uncharted doesn't have the madcap skill to deploy in any interesting fashion. It's a what-could-have-been in the movie that never was.

Because a better filmmaker would've introduced that cannonball, or, even better, dozens of them, earlier...

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The Oscars will finally have a host again... but who?

by Nathaniel R

This just in: The Oscars will have a host again after two years of going without, two very tumultuous years! We assume that the Academy will select someone safe, like Jimmy Kimmel again, but we really hope they take a risk and think "entertainer" rather than "talk show host". Given the Academy's talk show host preferences we live in absolute fear of James Corden being asked to host. But the Oscars are not meant to be a conversation but a spectacle/party. The best hosts have nearly always been Oscar-ceremony loving actors who are naturally fun (funny is less important) and at ease with live performance like Hugh Jackman, Whoopi Goldberg, or Billy Crystal. We know Hugh Jackman is off the table as a returning host since he's in the middle of a Broadway run with the revival of The Music Man. We're not sure who started the "Tom Holland should host" thing on the internet (during the Spider-Man No Way Home Oscar-campaign frenzy) but he'd mostly fit that bill minus maybe the Oscar-loving part. We enjoy him onscreen but in interviews he doesn't sound remotely aware of THE MOVIES beyond his own tiny corner of them. Nevertheless he'd probably be a good risk.  He's charismatic, a great dancer, and very popular at the moment. 

In our actressexual world here at TFE we always dream of naturally hilarious actresses hosting...

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"No Way Home" and Oscar Dreams. Or, When advocacy goes wrong...

by Nathaniel R

There are some that argue that Oscar pundits shouldn't be critics or vice versa. Prognostication and film criticism both require analytical skills but they're different jobs. The lines get murkier when it comes to advocacy. Each media outlet produces more Oscar coverage than we have ever had in the past. It's subversively hilarious that as Oscar ratings have steadily dwindled in the era of splintering audiences, discussion and analysis of the awards race is noisier and more populated each year! Yet, if the proliferation of film critics organizations has taught us anything it's that if you get enough film types in a room to talk "Best"... they will immediately, whether consciously or not, begin to equate Best with Oscars. That's how successful the Oscars have been as a name brand and institution. You can see it in the prizes given each year in the precursor awards and how eagerly space is handed over to presumed Oscar hopefuls that don't really need the boost. Even while the same journalists and outlets, who vote on the preliminary prizes, regularly bemoan that 'Oscars never get it right'. Advocacy doesn't equal prognostication but it looks too much like it at times.

Into this mess of adjacent but not always compatible agendas, comes the superhero blockbuster. In this case, Spider-Man: No Way Home which is suddenly getting the "nominate it for Best Picture!" discussion...

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Link, Link... BOOM!

• Advocate MJ Rodriguez gets the "Person on the Year" profile
• Deadline Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, Chris Cooper, and Keira Knightley to star in a new movie about the Boston Strangler case in the 1960s. Amazing cast
• GQ Tom Holland covers the "men of the year" issue. Lil Nas X (music) and an athlete we dont know (we know nothing of sports, sorry!) get the other covers.

More after the jump including Alexandra Shipp, Adele, Will Smith and King Richard, Mean Girls men, Sex and the City's sequel and Shang-Chi...

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