The Panda

Maybe you should see the film before you criticize it. It's not your typical crowd pleaser, but that's one of the reasons it's fantastic.

Except it's Richard Linklater, Linklater makes art and doesn't give a flying shit about oscars. He also never has gotten much awards attention until now. Boyhood is not awards bait, it's actually some kind of a miracle it got nominated, let alone it being the front runner for the win. I find it to instantly be one of the greats. It's Linklater though, and so it takes the right people to really love his style of filmmaking. But he's one of (if not) the best and most original and innovative filmmakers working today. Your awards bait films this year are Imitation Game, Theory of Everything, Foxcatcher, and Selma.

The way aDIM said it he sounded like it was rejected by them, it's doing very well Oscar wise. Boyhood isn't comparable box office wise, that was a summer indie release that was never going to be a big hit.

1.Fifty Shades of Grey 2.The Last 5 Years 3.Star Wars: The Force Awakens 4.Inside Out 5.The Other Side of the Wind 6.The Revenant 7.St James Place 8.Tomorrowland 9.Pitch Perfect 2 10.Kingsman: The Secret Service

But isn't American Sniper getting strong reviews and lots of Oscar attention? Maybe I was dreaming.

What I think is interesting is Eastwood gives a more complex look at Kyle than most people are crediting. There are many subtle details such as the speech at the beginning of wolves vs sheep vs sheep-dogs, and the fact Kyle carries that Bible but never in fact opens it. He primarily saw things as black and white, "Americans are good. Iraqis are bad," and Cooper shows that with the character, and so he personally felt justified. But he leaves the audience open to deciding for themselves if that is the truth, if Kyle was a sheep-dog, a wolf, a sheep, or in fact a mixture of all things. He murdered and enjoyed it, an attribute described of the wolf. He fought with the idealism of protecting the other soldiers, he did save American lives, like it or not. An attribute of the sheep-dog. He had an idealized view of, "Our side is good and anything not American is evil." An attribute of a sheep.

We already have a worst movie and most headache inducing box office run in the Boffies and feel that's enough. These movies don't deserve this much attention.

Yup and that was Wall-E. The Academy made sure to nominate two Pixar films in a row right after the Wall-E snub, and as far as I know TDKR got nominated for nothing.

Despite all of the controversy of the noms this year, there's a lot of quality, and as long as Boyhood does in fact win, we'll have one of (if not the) best BP picks the academy has done.

By the way, there is an evident plastic baby in the movie and it's really jarring and distracting and has about 3-5 minutes of screen time.

Yes but still, Alice in Wonderland is still a remake/quasi-sequel to the original Disney movie by Disney. You could maybe make an excuse of the first Iron Man being non-franchise but I don't know if I would count it. I count reboots/remakes as franchises.

It's a remake/reboot, and it's getting a sequel. Franchise.

American Sniper is the highest non-franchise OW of all time beating out Passion of the Christ.

If you're making a movie about historical events it does need to portray them somewhat correctly. American Sniper isn't getting criticized for it because it's historically biased not historically inaccurate.

I don't think the movie glorified the war or overly glorified Kyle. I think it gave you Kyle's point of view (and it gave you reasons why he might be wrong about some of his opinions) and it showed you flaws, but I can respect seeing a movie from a certain mans perspective even if that makes the events portrayed biased (because seeing something through anyone's eyes has bias).

I didn't think it would increase by 15% on Saturday

WOW! Nearly a 15% increase with previews on Friday (so even a bigger jump from the real 25.5m flat Friday) Sunday could be a lighter drop than expected, around 20%. Fri: 30.5m Sat: 35m Sun: 28m Mon: 22.4m 3 Day: 93.5m 4 Day: 115.9m

I enjoyed it and honestly liked it more than Selma (which I primarily liked for David Oyelowo's performance). I also won't question Cooper's nom after this because he is really unrecognizable in this, and for me to be able to lose the attachment of a big named actor's name and see them as their character says a lot. I did think the pacing could have been a bit cleaner, but I won't complain because it was effective. It reminded me of Unbroken in that everything Unbroken screwed up on on telling the story of Jack O'Connell, American Sniper did right. Thematically they are somewhat similar in structure, but it simply felt like American Sniper was able to pull it off as a full cohesive story. It also does a great job on not being about the war but being about the man and his reasonings and struggles. There is a sense of patriotism in it but it comes from the personality of the man and not the direction of Eastwood. Eastwood does a great job at keeping the unneeded controversy and politics out of the film. The action scenes are very clean and are executed in a great manner, and it's overall really worth a watch, especially for Cooper. B

I really can see how WoM on this is strong, I went to see it at 10:10 in an XD theater (seats 500ish I think) and it was sold out. Everyone sat through the credit montage silently and then there was a loud applause when the mon

There is a difference between a patriot and a nationalist. Many of the self-proclaimed "patriots" aren't patriots, they are white supremacist nationalists. I'm a patriot who wants the U.S. to be the best it can, and that means I want us to fix problems such as racial issues and our carbon footprint for example, not pretend they don't exist because I think Murica is too awesome to have any real problems (unless they're from Obama of course).

Another thing people are really looking over is how much of a bankable star Bradley Cooper is becoming. Movies he's in that we're hits American Sniper Guardians of the Galaxy American Hustle (150m) The Hangover Franchise Silver Linings Playbook Limitless The A-Team Valentine's Day Yes Man He's Just Not That Into You Failure to Launch Wedding Crashers Out of his 21 movies 11 adjust to over 100m. His only flops/misfires are Case 39, The Words, The Rocker, and All About Steve, all of which were early in his career.

I really hope we are starting to see a surge in the demand for more mature related content after Gone Girl, Gravity, American Sniper, etc. Whether or not you like American Sniper, this is great news for studios to take more risks on making more quality blockbuster dramas like in the 80s and 90s.

I got to my theater and it's packed, showings are sold out 2-3 hours in advance for Sniper. Wow.

Best case scenario is probably OW: 90m 2nd: 56.7m (184.7m) 3rd: 33.5m (235.6m) 4th: 24.1m (271.7m) 5th: 19.8m (300.8m) 6th: 17.4m (326.7m) 7th: 10.6m (342.6m) 8th: 6.7m (352.6m) 9th: 3.9m (358.5m) 10th: 2.5m (362.3m) 11th: 1.8m (365m) 12th: 1.2m (366.8m) Total: 370m

If it hits the low range of RTH's estimates like last time then that's a 5% increase and with those sort of legs it shouldn't be as hurt on Sunday by the nfl games. Fri: 30.5m Sat: 32m Sun: 24m Mon: 20.4m 3 Day: 86.5m 4 Day: 106.9m If it hits RTH's higher estimates then something like Fri: 30.5m Sat: 34m Sun: 25.5m Mon: 21.7m 3 Day: 90m 4 Day: 111.7m