Jake Gittes

This wasn't bad. As far as an Alien/The Thing/Gravity knock-off goes. Doesn't come up with anything classic on its own, but it knows what it is and it does the job. However, I thought the ending was a MAJOR misstep. But I'll take that to RTM.

1 1 Beauty and the Beast (2017) BV $17,878,785 +32% - 4,210 $4,247 $206,161,124 5 2 2 Kong: Skull Island WB $3,737,125 +67% -42% 3,846 $972 $115,088,563 12 3 3 Logan Fox $2,406,084 +50% -40% 3,687 $653 $188,356,854 19 4 4 Get Out Uni. $1,832,785 +41% -28% 2,979 $615 $136,435,990 26 5 5 The Shack LG/S $938,715 +61% -28% 2,825 $332 $44,011,718 19 6 6 The Belko Experiment BH Tilt $603,930 +58% - 1,341 $450 $5,123,060 5 7 7 The LEGO Batman Movie WB $520,549 +56% -56% 2,735 $190 $168,180,992 40 8 9 John Wick: Chapter Two LG/S $228,608 +60% -35% 1,065 $215 $90,146,011 40 9 8 Hidden Figures Fox $217,712 +46% -36% 1,162 $187 $165,901,171 87 10 10 Before I Fall ORF $163,785 +60% -63% 1,551 $106 $11,512,459 19 11 11 Lion Wein. $111,279 +64% -42% 621 $179 $50,180,058 117 12 12 La La Land LG/S $86,610 +48% -63% 585 $148 $149,910,906 103 - - Badrinath Ki Dulhania FIP $86,572 +234% -22% 156 $555 $1,697,223 12 - - Fist Fight WB (NL) $77,680 +48% -58% 533 $146 $31,668,081 33 - - Split Uni. $70,800 +50% -51% 604 $117 $136,982,915 61 - - Fifty Shades Darker Uni. $66,535 +31% -63% 607 $110 $114,147,405 40

So were Amelia, Nine, Billy Lynn, Suffragette, Hyde Park on Hudson, Hitchcock... I really wish distributors learned some lessons from 2014. Save the end of the year for the prestige projects that simply won't be finished until then and for stuff that makes a last-minute surprise splash at Venice or Toronto (like Jackie). This movie started shooting a year ago, so it's probably been in the can for a while. If it's good enough, a summer release won't hurt its Oscar chances.

Based on the Apichatpong Weerasethakul comparisons and everything else I've read this should probably feel lucky if it grosses 3-4m like Under the Skin or Swiss Army Man. Looking forward to seeing it, anyway.

I put two. And I believe you meant to write "top 100" and "25 million bonus points"?

Alright

There's just a certain honesty about something like Valerian. It may well end up being a creative failure but no one will be able to accuse Besson of not throwing everything he had behind it. It comes from a place of real enthusiasm. And hell I for one have absolutely nothing against the notion that a movie can just be a bunch of fun scenes that entertain people for an hour. A lot of movies try but can't even manage that. But can people at least come up with those scenes on their own? Is that too much to ask now?

Can't blame you for missing it though. I mean the entire gay element in BATB is of the blink and you'll miss it variety. There's like 7 seconds of it in total but now Disney can pat themselves on the back for being progressive without risking to lose any serious money. Call me when they make the lead character(s) in one of their movies openly gay and just tell the audience to deal with it, and don't smuggle it into a movie frame by frame.

I liked the Cocteau but my favorite is this 1978 one. Raw, muddy, fogbound, everything has a real feel and texture to it, it's like Beauty and the Beast in the world of Polanski's Macbeth or, I dunno, Monty Python and the Holy Grail minus the jokes. Amazing atmosphere. Also the only adaptation I've seen that has the guts to make the Beast truly hideous.

There's one good moment early on when he's human and in some shots he has that psychotic look in his eyes like he's still playing the guy from The Guest. The movie peaked right there.

But would you love to see one that simply recreates all of the original's iconic scenes, more or less shot-for-shot, using the same music and even lines? Or one that at least tries to be creative and come up with something cool on its own? As someone else who fucking loves Jaws, I wouldn't be inherently opposed to the latter type of remake. But I'd have zero patience with the former.

I'm not an idiot. All of this is obvious. Doesn't mean I have any obligation to like it.

Not to this extent. I mean I despised that movie but at least it had the common courtesy to try to be its own thing (and legitimately fail at it). Haven't seen Maleficent and Jungle Book but from what I understand they weren't so ridiculously slavish to their sources either. And besides, a 70-100m opening is different from a 170m one. If BATB "only" made TJB or Alice money I wouldn't have had nearly as strong a reaction.

I'm obviously in the minority but I find this shit soul-deadening. Never in my life would have thought that a movie making 170 fucking million dollars on opening weekend (and looking to make 500+ total) would just make me want to go bang my head against a wall but Disney managed it. I have seen some truly awful, wretched movies post enormous numbers over the years, and box office was still as exciting as ever, but I've never seen a movie make this much money by being so blatantly lazy, and the fact that it's just gonna continue depresses me.

Better I'd say, and I love Elle. Same dizzying mix of tones and emotions, but with less overt black comedy, a tighter, more straightforward plot, and a more stylized, pulpy WW2 setting as opposed to a modern urban one. It's pretty glorious.

I'll send mine in sometime tomorrow if this is the final deadline.

Is it too much to ask that Zodiac is in top 3 and Black Book is in the list at all?

1/3 of that money probably came thanks to Avatar/3D goodwill. I wish How to Train Your Dragon had been released on that date instead.

The original had a $33k PTA from 8 theaters. This might not even do half of T1's 16m gross.

Real at the last couple of pages

Pretty much. There's that moment when Belle proclaims that her favorite book is Romeo & Juliet and that tells you all you need to know about her, Watson's portrayal of her, and the movie as a whole. It's not that she's wrong, exactly, but could her pick possibly be any more banal than that? The movie risks nothing, and accomplishes nothing. It just takes up space.

And this one is the vaguest of them all since I missed the context.