The Möbius Strip- Confusing Oscar race is set as box office suffers worst Super Bowl weekend in almost 20 years

Posted on February 5, 2019 by reelentropy

Super Bowl weekend is always bad news for the box office, but this was one of the worst weekends in history, with movies only making $73.4 million total, with no individual film making even as much as $10 million. Glass earned its third box office crown by default with $9.5 million, and The Upside hung around for its third second-place finish with $8.7 million. Newcomer Miss Bala failed to really get off the ground, earning just $6.7 million for third place. Christmas week superhero releases Aquaman and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse continued to swim or swing around in fourth and fifth place with $4.9 million and $4.5 million, respectively- Box Office Mojo

The $73.4 million represents the worst Super Bowl weekend in almost 20 years- The Hollywood Reporter

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‘Beale Street’ a major step up for already stellar Barry Jenkins

Posted on February 2, 2019 by reelentropy

Images courtesy Annapurna Pictures.

9/10 In 2017, I was unimpressed with Moonlight’s upset Best Picture win over La La Land. Two years later, now that writer/director/producer Barry Jenkins’ followup If Beale Street Could Talk has been strangely passed over in terms of Academy Award nominations, I’m still unimpressed with the Academy for again failing to recognize one of the year’s best films.

If Beale Street Could Talk is the achingly beautiful love story of Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne) and Fonny Hunt (Stephan James). The night they conceive their child, a woman on the other side of Harlem is raped, and a cop Hunt crossed earlier swears to seeing him leave the scene. The film opens three months later with Rivers telling Hunt they are pregnant through prison glass. The film follows the family’s impossible fight to clear Hunt’s name over the course of a turbulent pregnancy, but most of the runtime is made up of flashbacks to backfill their love story.

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‘The Favourite,’ and with good reason

Posted on February 1, 2019 by reelentropy

The exclusive use of natural lighting and film accounts for what is frequently a very grainy movie. Images courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures.

9/10 The Favourite is at once a fearsome period drama and a no-holds-barred, pitch-black  comedy about power, sex and sass. It queers a fascinating historical power struggle and brings it perfectly into the Trump era.

In 1708 during the War of Spanish Succession, Anne, Queen of Great Britain (Olivia Colman) presides over Parliament. Anne is uneducated, pitiful and self-pitying, and most of her decisions are really made by her lady of bedchamber, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz). These decisions frequently come to Parliament out of nowhere and with no one knowing where the information came from, bewildering opposition leader Robert Harley, First Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer (Nicholas Hoult), whom Churchill has frozen out of Anne’s council – for example most of the plot centers on a proposed doubling of the land tax that is never publicly discussed. This dynamic gets turned on its head when Churchill’s cousin, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), arrives at court and begins to replace Churchill as Anne’s favourite.

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On Netflix, ‘Roma’ and Auteur Theory

Posted on January 30, 2019 by reelentropy

“We’re streaming, mother fuckers!” Images courtesy Netflix.

Ever since Netflix began to produce and procure original content in 2012, it has struggled to legitimize itself in the eyes of mainstream trendsetters. This has been no real trouble for the company whatsoever – Twitter and other social media had made word-of-mouth much more important even then – but the refusal to validate Netflix’ material is a barrier when it comes to awards discussions, which Netflix has been trying to muscle into for the past couple of years.

It’s been easy – and incentivized – to look down on Netflix’ content, but if history is any indicator, some of its more recent releases are going to change that. It has to do with a critical theory that has shaped film history, forcing new platforms, techniques and ideas into legitimacy wherever it goes.

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The Möbius Strip: Bryan Singer accused by four more, SAG awards

Posted on January 29, 2019 by reelentropy

It was a whisper-quiet weekend at the box office, with the top 12 making only $79.8 million overall, the third worst number going back a full calendar year. A big reason why was a lack of exciting new releases – The Kid Who Would be King opened at no. 4 with $7.2 million, and Serenity opened at no. 8 with $4.4 million. Glass repeated at the top with $18.9 million, while The Upside was the only other show in eight figures at no. 2 with $11.9 million- Box Office Mojo

Though he’s been spurned by The Academy over homosexist Tweets from the start of the decade, The Upside proves that Kevin Hart still brings a loud and proud audience, and he’s already signed to two more movies – a live-action Monopoly adaptation and a Sony movie called Fatherhood. Let’s hope there aren’t any gay moments in that- The Hollywood Reporter

Outside box office revenues, the soundtrack for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which is still kicking around at no. 5 with $6.1 million in its seventh weekend, has climed to no. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. It follows in the footsteps of sountracks to movies like The Greatest Show and La La Land which peaked in late January and into February during long runs for the associated films- Billboard

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