Jake Gittes

Does Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) count? At the very first ceremony, Some still consider it one of the Best Picture winners, so I wanna clear that up. It would definitely be in my top 5 if it was eligible.

Yup, loved it. Show feels like itself again, characters feel like people again. Funny as hell, and when it isn't, it's a delight anyway because it's somehow actually back and doing its thing, against all conceivable odds. Looking forward to a great season.

I sure hope it gets it

Well, I watched the 3-hour cut. Absolutely stunning cinematography and production design, and wonderful performances from pretty much everyone, memorably bringing to life an eclectic group of characters. However, as the film moved closer to the end, I began to suspect I had to watch the 5-hour version right from the start. If I had to guess, I'd say Bergman cut fairly little from the first half of the story (pre-Bishop) and quite a bit from the second half, as the story seemed to me quite rushed there: for example, Emilie tells her children she married the Bishop out of love (even if it wasn't entirely true, it seemed to me that she had some clear feelings for him), but not even 20 minutes pass before she tells her mother that she loathes him. And I also thought he'd be more malicious than he actually was; he does have that one big scene with Alexander where he punishes him, but overall I seriously expected worse from him considering how strongly Emilie comes to despise him and how uncompromisingly he is called a villain in every description of the film I've read. Additionally, I have no idea why the hell Fanny is in the title when she's on screen for about 20 minutes total and doesn't do or say anything important during that time. In short, I thought it was a very good, amazingly beautiful film, but I'll wait to form a final opinion on it until I see the 5-hour version.

LOL. I'll be surprised if it manages $2-3m. Well, it can't do worse than The Nutcracker, can it? http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=nutcracker3d.htm

I can't wait for people to declare it a disappointment when Frozen doesn't beat DM2 but only finishes with $360m domestic or so.

Saw it twice, loved it each time. Uncompromising, hilarious satire on the 1%, and Cronenberg's best since A History of Violence.

Gravity

Hmmm. Probably between Gladiator and KOH DC for me. But I've never seen Apocalypto, and haven't seen Braveheart in years.

I'm with everyone else on this one. Terrific movie, had me engaged all the way through, and Redford rocked it. Although this is noticeably different from Gravity in more than a couple of ways, I thought it was notable that both films are ultimately about rebirth that can only happen after everything the protagonist uses to temporarily survive is destroyed either by him/her or by forces of nature.

Funniest has to be Jim Shorts in the sex life thread http://forums.boxoffice.com/index.php?/topic/6510-your-sex-lifeparental-discretion-is-advised/page-113#entry1177772

I'm not sure Snatch is Pitt's best performance, but I think most people would agree that it is a pretty fucking great performance

Yeah this is easily PTA's second best film IMO (after TWBB). Also the first film where he stopped channeling anyone and really showed a voice all his own. Sandler and Watson are both wonderful in one of the most unlikely pairings I can think of, the soundtrack and editing are not just great by themselves but also serve as clear windows into the main character's psychological state (too often it's just screenplay and performance, but here PTA uses all the tools he can and it shows), and I can't get enough of the scene where Sandler and Hoffman yell at each other over the phone. And of course, gotta love the theory that this movie is actually about Superman.

FYC, the film that frankly seems to have been forgotten by everyone

Agreed. I still think Gravity had the most impressive run of the year, but in that case it was obvious after three weeks - at most - that it would ultimately land somewhere in the 250-300m zone. Frozen, on the other hand, has been out for a month now and still has cards to lay on the table.

Frozen would be basically locked for 325+ with that number, and likely to land at least somewhere in the 335-355 range. Obviously with a chance of going even higher, because beating reasonable expectations again and again is essentially all the movie's been doing ever since its opening. Amazing run.

FYC:

Riczhang reading this thread:

Well, after DM2 I'd say this has a legit shot at succeeding where TS3 failed, i.e. at beating Shrek 2 domestically.

On that front, it's pretty telling that none of this year's 4 major comic book movies managed even a 2.5x multi. The Wolverine and MOS (if you don't count the Walmart $12m) both stopped at 2.496x

The whole girl secretly getting into the guy's apartment thing bothered me a bit, although it could have been handled much worse. Thankfully I loved almost everything else about it - the characters, the beautiful, constant energy, the way the first story gives place to the second ("six hours later, she fell in love with another man" is an amazing moment), and obviously the soundtrack. I've never seen any other filmmaker create absolute poetry out of the most mundane, ordinary everyday things the way Wong does it here - it has to be the most beautiful film ever made about snack bars, cheap coffee and tins of pineapple, and hell, about the contemporary urban life in general.

Yeah but not when something like TWOWS is getting released here more than a month later than in Finland

Jealous. One of these days I'm gonna move to Saint Petersburg, and when I do, I'm gonna get myself a Finland visa and go to Helsinki on weekends to watch movies.

Actually gonna be watching this in a few days. Wanna make it the last movie I see this year.

Vittorio Storaro: Apocalypse Now, The Conformist, The Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Tonino Delli Colli: Once Upon a Time in the West, Once Upon a Time in America, The Good the Bad and the Ugly Christopher Doyle: In the Mood for Love, Chungking Express, Hero, 2046 Janusz Kaminski: Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can And of course Deakins and Lubezki are up there as well