Ipickthiswhiterose
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Posts posted by Ipickthiswhiterose
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Oh, and Spotlight was the best Best Picture winner for a while until Paraside. No idea what the problem with it is and I say that as someone who generally dislikes biopics.
All the films nominated that year were good, and Spotlight is as good as any. Very pickem-type year. Almost all would have been decent choices, sometimes it just works that way.
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For what it's worth In the last 30 years, with my ranking
1. Unforgiven ***
2. Parasite
3. LOTR: ROTK*****
4. Schindler's List***
5. No Country for Old Men
6. Titanic*****
7. Argo
8. 12 Years a Slave
9. The Departed***
10. Gladiator*****
11. Spotlight
12. Hurt Locker
13. Shakespeare in Love***
14. Slumdog Millionaire
15. Green Book
16. Million Dollar Baby
17. A Beautiful Mind***
18. Birdman
19. The English Patient
20. Nomadland
21. The Shape of Water
22. The Artist
23. American Beauty***
24. CODA
25. Braveheart*****
26. Chicago ***
27. Crash
28. The King's Speech***
29. Forrest Gump*****
***** = Was a blockbuster
*** = Wasn't a blockbuster but a very mainstream wide major release all the same
Whoops, left Moonlight out sorry - would be 7 or 8.
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5 minutes ago, cooldude97 said:
when was the last time Spielberg actually made a crowd pleasing movie?
In actuality or in intention?
In intention both West Side Story and Ready Player One were intended to be crowd pleasing movies. Both succeeded to a degree. I mean, I cannot stand RPO but it did pretty well. And in general most people who have SEEN WSS loved it, it just turned out the actual core demand for a new version of WSS at this particular moment was drastically misjudged.
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Fablemans feels like The Irishman 2.0 at this point.
Nobody wants to fess up to themselves because of who the filmmaker is but the reality is that the enthusiasm is simply not there. The only way it's the 'frontrunner' is out of a weird form of politeness.
Ok I'll give people that maybe a few more people genuinely actually love Fablemans more than people genuinely loved Irishman (which was a minuscule number) but the numbers are surely very obviously not there given the name. A film like Banshees can do the box office it's doing an win, but not something directed by Spielberg. A name that big with those numbers is essentially (mild) audience rejection, not just lack of exposure.
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4 hours ago, TalismanRing said:
CBeebies Panto: Dick Whittington and His Cat Modern Films 2 £60,075 £66,678,141,037 ?????????????????????????
Sadly, word on the street is it won't be profitable due to the back end deals for the cat
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Hes so talented, but good grief every James Gunn film is good for one piece of idiotic misjudged Gunn "humour"...and for some reason they let him put it 30 seconds into the trailer of this.
The rest looks great but why indulge your director and cost yourselves 20m off the box office of parents taking kids. It's so, so dumb.
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13 minutes ago, Nikostar said:
Can somebody explain to me why A Wrinkle in Time is looked at as some massive flop. Didn’t open to 33 million and have a 3x multiple to 100 million total. I know the budget was only a hundred million but for such a weird film based on a book hard to understand it’s box office run didn’t seem that bad.
Because of the 100-130m budget. It made pretty much exactly that back.
Would have needed to make double - around £250m to get in the black. Therefore it lost around 120m, which is right up there in terms of box office losses.
The multiple was fine. The box office for a non-well-known franchise was fine. The box office for a book unknown outside the US was good. None of that's relevant, because of the budget.
Where the Crawdads Sing did similar (actually almost identical) BO numbers, similar book popularity, similar US-centric supply, similar profile....BUT sensible budget of 24m = made very good money.
A secondary element is unlike Strange World which is the very, very significant marketing efforts Disney put into the film.
This is particularly embarrassing when contrasted with The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, a similar budgeted flop from the same year, but which was completely buried by Disney who didn't market it and which actually made quite a bit more money than WIT because it did reasonably well in Central Europe.
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3 minutes ago, Cmasterclay said:
Strange World is like an animate version of Wrinkle In Time where everyone wants to blame it on "wokeness" when all indications are that the movie is kinda bad, even from people naturally rooting for it.
I agree with the parallel, except just like Wrinkle In Time (maybe not quite as much) I'm not sure quality was even ever going to be a factor.
WIT was a bizarre green light. The book is basically unknown outside North America, even in English speaking countries so the film needed from the off to make $250m plus in US and CAN alone and it just wasn't that property no matter how well it was done.
Maybe that circles round to it being a film being greenly as some kind of loss leader because they wanted to commit to the story or the director but...I don't know that with the budget it had there was any route available to a profit even if an unassailable masterpiece.
But then yes, add modest to poor WOM on them both and they're going to tank hard. Not one stitch to do with 'wokeness' or 'anti wokeness'.
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1. Empires Strikes Back (A+)
2. A New Hope (A-)
3. Rogue One (A-)
4. Return of the Jedi (B+)
5. The Mandalorian (B-)
6. The Last Jedi (B-)
7. Solo (C-)
8. The Book of Boba Fett (C-)
9. Revenge of the Sith (D+)
10. The Force Awakens (D)
11. Phantom Menace (D-)
12. Attack of the Clones (F)
13. Rise of Skywalker (F)
Will see if I can get in Obi Wan and Andor viewings and edit.
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1 hour ago, SchumacherFTW said:
Brits love a musical yes, but it just looks cringe conceptually and visually no better than a CBBC production
You are simply incorrect.
One musical routine has been released and it contains some of the best choreography for years, done with an absolute command of the transition of dance from stage to screen, which is rare.
The story isn't "cringe conceptually"...it's literally a beloved children's novel.
It sounds like you just don't like musicals and/or this is a type of story that just isn't for you.
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9 hours ago, John Marston said:
Fablemans doesn’t look to be doing that well. Likely to flop with a 40m budget
It comes across as a pure "eat your greens" film. US critics will label it an insurmountable masterpiece and it will be nominated for all the Oscars they can get away with it being. But it likely had little chance with the general audience, and it will do absolutely nothing internationally where critics won't have kid gloves either.
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2 minutes ago, Legion By Night said:
Cards 2 was your first guess and indeed… it’s not a verified audience score, so it doesn’t count! Maybe they were struggling after all, eh?
If you're limiting yourself to a couple of years' worth of movies then the point being made isn't a particularly strong one, surely.
My premise is quite simply that the quality of Strange World (which I haven't seen) is rather irrelevant. The marketing is what has killed it.
Cars 2 by contrast went through a fire of publicity, launch and manufactured goodwill and still despite every clamour going its way managed to rightly be perceived as total horse manure.
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On 11/24/2022 at 12:58 AM, AJG said:
I am telling you: I'm really struggling to find a worse Verified Score for an Animated movie. People do not like this film at all.
Cars 2 was my first guess and indeed it's 49% so I'd suggest you weren't 'struggling' very hard.
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It's clear Disney has no confidence in the film whatsoever.
Thing is it becomes such a confirmation bias issue: a movie flopping when you haven't invested any marketing at all validates that you spent no marketing on it. Conversely it is an original story and it 'shows' that original stories don't make money and so we have to go back to the franchise bucket.
That said it's not a first, in fact it's an odd trend for Disney. Home on the Range, Meet the Robinsons and perhaps even more strikingly given the established franchise, the last Winnie the Pooh movie, are post-2000 Disney animated films that got absolutely no marketing whatsoever.
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3 hours ago, ringedmortality said:
Yeah, I think the biggest problem with The Menu is it’s large budget. Which I assume a healthy portion went to COVID protocols. If it was 15-20 million, then this would be pretty great.
Still don't believe The Menu's supposed budget. As in - literally don't believe it, not that I find it surprising.
Not sure how robust the sources are on it.
COVID protocols or not, I cannot possibly gather how the movie cost more than 12-15m without Solo level complete reshoots and rebuilding of set. These are good and fairly well known actors, but they are not megastars.
The overwhelming majority of the film is set in one damn room, for goodness sake.
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30 minutes ago, TwoMisfits said:
No, you read that wrong...here's the Deadline quote - production budget was $30M(ish)...
"What of The Menu? At an estimated $30M production cost, and $8.87M opening, possibly $9M, it’s not a bomb, bomb, bomb, but nothing spectacular."
I do see that 30m figure in a couple of places but having watched the film I find it VERY difficult to believe it cost that much.
It's a great film, but I struggle to see there being more than 12-15m of budget on camera.
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6 minutes ago, Verrows said:
There just isn't enough product right now because studios are still gunshy about greenlighting anything that doesn't belong to a franchise.
Yup.
Mortal Engines, Nutcracker and a few others were a collective that came out at a really bad time (and also were perhaps the wrong ones). They really taught a lesson that it is a bad idea to invest hard in original or lesser know franchise creating content.
Even more of a shame is the Northman. It's everything cinema *should* be trying to do, except - maybe - in that case it was too niche. But it's that kind of thinking, and only thinking of this kind, that is going to shift us into a more productive era that's less reliant on established properties.
I think of Jurassic World, Force Awakens, The Hobbit Trilogy and Beauty and the Beast as the four originating pillars of this era: all actively horrible - and more importantly INSANELY UNCREATIVE films that were, unfortunately, gargantuan successes that taught production studios that that is what to green light. We haven't got out of this pattern yet. The MCU isn't the one that's the problem actually IMO, they're just the ones playing the current game best.
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1 minute ago, Verrows said:
Well...it's certainly not good. It's not good when ANY demo is lacking. We want all demos going to theatres and keeping that experience alive.
Experience is where it's at though and neither cinema buildings not filmmakers still understand this.
Cameron understands it.
Rowling understands it, though can't always execute it.
Affect is king. That's why in the absence of genuine affective offers audiences are doing the best they can with horror (affect) and generating their own affect via Memberberries (Nostalgia and hearkening to a past era).
Cinema's have only pushed experience a little and in niche territories, but only a bit because it's genuinely very hard to spread bets: the more affect involved the more different types of audience responses there becomes - but it's amazing that we still have only Cameron trying to create affective worlds and thinking of cinema experience-first.
The other greats, despite still being great filmmakers, still don't seem to get how experience is curated anymore. Which is why Spielberg thought West Side Story was film people wanted in 2021 and Scorsese thought people wanted a slow burn contemplative mob movie in 2019. And Tarantino and much of his brethren keep making self-referential movies about movies about movies about movies.
People want tactile and their own agency, and if you don't give them tactile and agency they'll create their own fun.
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Lyle, Lyle Crocodile's run is....bizarre.
I mean I know all kids' films have late legs, even the ones that are technically flops, but has there been such example of a film being simultaneously such a big well-called-before-the-event flop, a kind-of sleeper hit, a complete meh and late legs so good it's down less than 25% between weekend 3 and weekend 6.
Totally a product of the timing and the covid production backlog, I understand. But given we've had already had two family films this year where one's gone from borderline flop to genuine hit (Bad Guys) and another from definitive flop to perfectly respectable (Superpets) on the back of late legs, it's been an interesting narrative of the year.
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Just now, LonePirate said:
The under-reported box office story continues to be the struggles of adult appeal movies. BPWF PTA beat out The Fabelmans PTA by about $1K despite playing in over 4000 more theaters. We’re still a couple of weeks from critics groups lists and awards but I doubt those are going to make much of a difference. COVID and streaming continues to punish films aimed at adult audiences.
I am right bang smack in the middle of being a child of the Spielberg generation.
No electron microscope created by the hands of man could be made that would be able to locate my level of interest in The Fablemans.
Frivolous comment aside, yes, this 4-screen opening was clearly designed to produce an absolutely astronomic PTA. Instead it's $5,000 down on opening day from EEAAO, which opened in 10. And $1000 down on Banshees which also opened also in 4.
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56 minutes ago, Borobudur said:
Isn't this making the movie more vulnerable against BPWF? A direct competition from likely similar target audience.
The first movie had church groups, community centres and care facilities making coach trips to see the film.
If they've looked ahead at doing such a thing this time because the second BP is coming out, then it's very reasonable to suggest they'd have their heads turned by a Civil rights film about Emmett Till and his mom and consider that as an alternative, or an addition. Obviously the second BP is less of a culturally-specific event than the first, especially when the trailer has blue sea people and such.
Is that going to happen everywhere? No. Does it make an alternative or augmentation film and therefore attractive if you're a producer looking for a good time to release your arthouse awards-contending civil rights biopic? Yes.
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Some folks around here seem to need to be reminded of the perspective that, pound for pound, not as single movie that we are talking about here: Not Avatar, Not WF, not Top Gun Maverick, not Infinity War, is even vaguely in the same ionosphere of actual relative domestic box office success as Gone With the Wind.
Nor will they.
Nor is it physically possible in the year 2022.
Nor will they come within anything that might feasibly be described as 'close'.
And.......that doesn't for one instance make them any less successful. Everything is relative and that's ok.
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1 minute ago, Borobudur said:
What is Till? The movie goes up 1% when BPWF is here.
Nov 11, 2022 - $1,875,580 +1% 2,136 $878 $9,295,752 5 It's a biopic about 50s civil rights activist Mamie Till-Bradley
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17 minutes ago, grey ghost said:
So 1.2 or 1.3 billion with China/Russia was what MOM should've made?
How many sequels increase 100% at the box office, especially when the plot relies on a tv show?
John Wick 2 (86m v 172m)
Dark Knight (374m v 1b)
Iron Man 3 (624m v 1.24b)
Shrek 2 (488 v 929)
Toy Story 3** (511m v 1.07b) **with Massive Inflation **
Despicable Me 2 (543m v 971m)
Obviously not involving a TV show and many of these involved more inflation than DS1-2.
Not sassing at all, just thought it would be worth noting the literal answer (and near misses) to the question and looking at the franchises and reasons involved.
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A2 WEEKEND THREAD | 134.1M DOM OW | Thurs 17m / Fri 36m / Sat 45m / Sun 36m
in Numbers and Data
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Departed definitely an oversight given star power and impact at the time, yes.
Argo was during my not-watching-movies period so you're probably right there too.
I think the 90s really hit the apex of Oscar = Blockbuster and after that there were so much fewer films that could be classified as such that weren't popcorn films.
I mean technically Amadeus and Out of Africa WERE Blockbusters, but they wouldn't even be close now.
I do think that the one-two punch of Forrest Gump and Braveheart was responsible for some buyers remorse and some reflection afterwards - hence the knee-jerk choice of English Patient immediately after. It was perhaps the furthest that it's possible to stretch artistic credibility in the service of claiming a film is a "Great" film when two films in a row combing audience grandstanding (which is no bad thing) with depth and complexity (both of which Forrest Gump and Braveheart both eschew to an almost violent degree). Since then it's seemed a film has REALLY had to look like its going to stand the test of time (Titanic, ROTK, Gladiator and almost nothing since) both on an artistic level AND popularity level in order to justify the Oscar trigger for a megahit. TGM MAY join that list - after all it probably IS a better film the FG or BH but it feels slightly less robust than any of those post-English Patient three.