straggler

The Jlaw hot takes. Her powah! Anyway all she said was that she attempts to establish boundaries when she is out in public. Seems reasonable. Part of what makes her fascinating is that she will say the things that most celebrities actually think but are media trained not to say, Her detractors will take issue and her fans will find her honesty endearing.

I think she earned her salary completely. There are things today that cannot be controlled, including the combination of snowflake film critics and the way RTs affects box office. Passengers made money despite being torpedoed by critics trying to kill the film. Maybe the studio was naive regarding Red Sparrow given the content and how the genre has performed. But RS will still make twice its budget and has outperformed every other film in the genre with the exception of GWTDT which had massive advantages. And Jlaw's performance was extraordinary.

One of my favorite movies in a while. Once you figure out what its going for, it works really well and Lawrence gave a hell of a performance. Too bad it lost so many screens but it will probably follow the Passengers pattern and do very well in secondary markets.

Regarding RRU, I've read that the Chinese audience does not like being pandered too. PRU will not even double its massive $150 million dollar budget.

I don't mind the concept of a site that collects all the reviews, but there should not be a score. But that is how RT stays relevant so it won't change it. But that means anything polarizing or divisive will likely end up as rotten because the choice between fresh or rotten is too simplistic. Worse it means that the aggregate score gets shaped by the lowest common denominator as fringe and low rent film critics and writers get listed on the site.

Agreed. Clearly the movie could have done a better job with its themes. But critics do not credit the audience enough. Shockingly we can think for ourselves. To me you had this character, Aurora, who was a slightly less misanthropic version of Heston's character in Planet of the Apes, someone so unable to connect with life and other human beings that she abandons her friends and family to the past to write a book. And then all of the sudden, by some freak accident, she finally connects with someone and embraces this strange life that they are going to share on this ship which is a metaphor for our own lives, and in a way rediscovers her humanity. All the pieces were there and the audience can connect the dots even of the movie does not quite develop them enough. It was a much more complex tale than the hysterical headlines suggested.

It very clearly depicted what was going on as a bad thing and in no way condoned it. It was a classic lifeboat situation. Good scifi makes us think about the human condition, and that involves placing characters in unusual situations. There is a big difference between depicting and condoning. What contemporary film critics can no longer handle is a film that depicts something deplorable but that then does not turn it into a heavyhanded lecture, that leaves the moral unpacking to the audience which is more than capable of handling it. If Paths of Glory were made today, the court martial scene would have to be like A Few Good Men with Kirk Douglas's character shouting "I want the truth!." LOL. Was Passengers underwritten? Yes. Could it have been better? Sure. But the idea that it did not know what it was depicting is wrong. It just did not become a morality play.

For original films everything pales before the almighty RTs score, at least in the US. Pedigree does not matter. It broke the cardinal sin of depicting something unpleasant on screen, and we cannot have that. LOL. 3x's budget is a disappointment compared to potential, but against those toxic reviews it was actually resilient.

Saw this again. Really terrific movie. You just have to know the tempo of the film and what it is trying to accomplish. And you pick up details that you missed. It is a rich film, and hard to take in on one sitting.

You don't have to. The truth is out there. Hollywood is a neurotic place. What happened to Passengers was a hit job. And RS is not a 48 RT score film, whether it is masterpiece or not.

To be honest, I think the critics are having issues with her stardom.They act like they own her and own her creative choices, and they bash every film she does lately for some offense or another. Even Sasha Stone, no Jlaw fan, noted this. They bashed Joy because she worked with a director three times (apparently there is a little known codicil in the Hollywood rule book and Dicaprio and Deniro are exempt), called Passengers a pro-rape film, and smeared RS as exploitative. It has been extra, and her stardom/status is the heart of it.

So Red Sparrow came in 450K above estimates and had a sub-50 percent drop. Imagine what could have been if the critics would let Jlaw's films breathe.

I would not describe Red Sparrow as an action movie.

Well it isn't Silver Linings Playbook but a good run.

Saw it. It is long and a bit slow at times and the plot can be a bit convoluted but Lawrence's performance was exceptional. I mean really exceptional. Her accent was very good and she became completely immersed in the character. And just total screen charisma. The film had a nice payoff.

This is a classic and the cinematography is so good that they will study it in film school.

To begin with there would have been no headlines about a F cinemascore and no headlines about a box office flop. And if it made $10 million as opposed to $17 million while avoiding the flop/failure narrative, it would be well worth the trade off. In fact it is precisely how box office works. This is exactly why studios every Oscar season do limited releases. Because the films need a chance to find an audience. And by trying to stear a film to an appropriate audience it avoids all that toxicity. Just look at the imdb audience score. It has plenty of 7-10 ratings but 10 percent gave it a one rating. Face it but studios today have to manage the flood of instant reactions, especially for films like Mother! Scorsese wrote his article because as he stated if Taxi Driver was released today it would have been faced with the same "toxic WOM", and gotten the same F score while people labeled it a flop.

In the short term that film was never going to make money. It made $17 million US and $44 million WW as it is. I cannot imagine a platformed release doing any harm, and it would have avoided all the negativity that eliminated any awards consideration. This is the RS thread so I'll leave it here, but some films are just not box office films, and any slim chance that Mother! had to break through evaporated OW when the narrative was set. That is the whole idea of limiting a release.

The film got some very nice reviews and has a solid metacritic score. Some critics (Rex Reed) hated it, but others loved it. But it was not a film that should ever have been given a conventiional wide release. It is a crazy Aronofsky film like The Fountain and but was marketed as a conventional home invasion movie and then sprung on unsuspecting audiences at the multiplex expecting a standard thriller. And it is meant to be disturbing and uncomfortable. I thought the movie was brilliant although not for everyone, but it helps to know what type of film to expect going in. And the real issue today is that we have so much instant analysis. Martin Scorsese wrote an article about it. Paramount imo made a big mistake with the wide release because that exposed the film to cinemascore and box office expectations and that set up how the film was perceived as a failure. Statistically valid or not, that F became the headline, which immediately caused a negative pilling on by critics. The pendulum seems to have swung back, but the film should have never been subjected to that. That is what limited and platformed releases are for.

I think an actresses' shelf life in Hollywood is based on their being taken seriously as actors. The dilemma that Jlaw ran into is that as she got to be a bigger and bigger star critics (at least a vocal minority) like clockwork tried to box her in as an actress and dismiss her. They forgot why she became a star in the first place. She started out doing very tough material and enjoys the challenge. I think her goal is not to be a rom-com actress and not even a box office darling. It is short term vs. long term thinking. A film like Mother! pays tremendous dividends down the road. As to RS, still way too early. It will have 300 reviews in the end, and so far all we know is that it is divisive.

Hopefully this lands in the 70s on RTs. In the age of instant analysis and aggregate scores it is very tough to do edgier material. Someone is always offended. There is always some sort of censorial reaction nowadays. This sounds like it is right up my alley. I like Jlaw's choices. Doing Mother! then Red Sparrow. Living dangerously.

Still seems very popular. When a young woman becomes very successful, they attract haters in comment sections, but that's nothing. She is too talented and charismatic to go anywhere. As long as RS has decent reviews it will do fine.

The Hunger Games has become a mainstay political reference point in the US, so I'd say it had a lasting cultural impact. Plus it inaugurated the female heroine led blockbuster. But yes when the movies are playing is typically the peak of their popularity. We will see how many Pennywise references there are next year.

Like The Shining and Scarface. . The Razzies consists of 2-3 people, and they always go for the easy headline grab with anything controversial. So something like Mother! would be right up their alley. But future classic status already confirmed.

The trailer looked really good.