18 Beautiful Examples of Co-Star Chemistry in 2018

Year in review list mania each day. Here's Nathaniel...

This is our fourth year of highlighting that unpredictable spark between actors that can elevate a movie whether the movie is able to catch up or not (see previously installments for '15, '16 and '17, if you're so inclined).  If only we could bottle these formulas but the thing about great chemistry is that it can't ever be fully recreated even if old movies during the studio system teach us that the same pairing can at least generate similar energy again. Why Hollywood doesn't still try to repackage successful combos of actors (rather than just all the brand do-overs) remains an unsolved mystery 

Herewith the most beautifully realized relationship energy of the year...

18 [TIE] Ben Foster & Thomasin McKenzie, Leave No Trace 
AND Josh Hamilton & Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade (Single Father/Teenage Daughter)
There's a lot to recommend in both films, two sleeper arthouse successes this year, but neither film would have the same emotional resonance without that authenticity of feeling in the central duet. Marvel at the way Hamilton looks at or speaks to Fisher, for example, perpetually impatient to be let in on her interior life, but also nervous about intruding on her journey and walling her off yet further. Equally impressive is the difficult balancing act McKenzie plays as both dutiful daughter and emotional caretaker for her troubled father, as she grows ever more restless to escape him without losing him. What a quartet of performances...

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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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100 Most Popular Foreign Films of 2018 + the Oscar Hopefuls!

Our year in review party begins TODAY. A different list each day! Here's Nathaniel R...

Time for an annual look back at subtitled fare in cinemas. As with 2017 and the year before India, China, Mexico, and South Korea dominate with a smattering of Oscar contenders and random other countries faring much less well in the American marketplace. Much of the imbalance is due to dedicated distributors who saw a underserved market and focus specifically on it. Here in Manhattan, it's interesting to watch how this plays out. Generally speaking some big multiplexes reserve one or two screens for super specific distributors (Bollywood and mainstream Asian features for example are often at the Empire in Times Square which has 25 screens). Meanwhile the traditional "arthouse theaters" continue to rely on the decades-long practice of programming festival hits, docs, and arthouse style cinema which leans heavily European with a few buzzy Asian titles thrown in; in other words they're Oscar-aligned in their tastes.

For the purposes of the following list we skipped documentaries and animated films to keep the list more focused (and avoid arguments about dubbed versions or whatnot). The numbers are pulled from Box Office Mojo.

TOP 100 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS FOR 2018
Domestic Box Office Grosses Only - Figures as of March 2nd, 2019

The $1 Million Plus Club
(The Success Stories) 

01 Padmaavat $11.8 (India) Jan 25th
This lux nearly 3 hour medieval epic is about an ambitious Sultan who becomes obsessed with a beautiful Queen. Available to stream on Amazon Prime.

02 Sanju $7.9 (India) June 29th
Biopic of a famous controversial actor. Available to stream on Netflix.

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FYC?

Dearest Readers, Nathaniel and Team Experience are requesting your memory jogs as we prepare our "best of the year" lists. We're particularly looking at the following fields of joy that are sometimes hard to keep a mental list of in the busy last months of the year.

So what are YOUR favorite...

• Line readings of the year?
• Best kisses or sex scenes?
• Favorite credits sequence?
• Action sequence or fight scene?
• Cameos or tiny roles?
• Individual scenes of any kind?

2018 Review: Top Ten Hits in Nine Categories!

Soon we'll start daily 'year in review' parties, but here's an early one...

It's time for a special box office report AND the kick off to our year in review party. Yes, yes, everyone knows that Disney/Marvel owned the domestic and international box office with Black Panther and Infinity War, respectively. Yet there is far more to the story of ticket sales than just one studio and superhero films in general.

It's much more interesting to break it down into types of films and see which films most interested the ticket-buying public. We'll have separate reports on foreign films and documentaries but for now nine other categories!

🔺 = means that the film is still in release so its place in these rankings is not yet settled. All figures are as of March 24th, 2018

TOP ORIGINALS
NOT PRE-EXISTING  / NOT (YET) A FRANCHISE

 

01 🔺Bohemian Rhapsody (Fox) $215.9 (Nov 2nd)
02 A Quiet Place  (Paramount) $188 (April 6th)
03 The Mule (Warner Bros) $103.8 (Dec 14th)...

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