Ipickthiswhiterose

I was expecting the worst for DEH, but that's even worse than the worst I was expecting. Julianne Moore, Amy Adams, Kaitlyn Dever. The waste of premium talent, sheesh.

Worth noting Paw Patrol has gone over $100m worldwide and is now at around x4 its budget. Probably excites not many folks on here, but I know it was 100% on the radar of my parent-of-toddler friends. A reliable brand has been well built up there and the mums, dads and kids showed up very reliably. Here in the UK its going to finish close to both Cruella and Croods. Done great in France and Germany too.

Agree to a degree. I think Scott Pilgrim's biggest issue - as with the recent TSS - was that its creators (and its critics) didn't notice how narrow the film's target demo was because everyone involved, plus both online and print critics, nearly all fell in that group as it's the most visible and vocal demo. The marketing got blamed, but I don't think that was fair. The film just had a ceiling. That wasn't the same for Baby Driver which had universal appeal. Last Night in Soho doesn't have the same roadblock as Scott Pilgrim when it comes to character (ie. If you don't inherently identify with the central character then they just come across as annoying and engaging in toxic behaviour - a scenario ironically similar to Dear Evan Hansen) BUT otherwise I think it has the same main issue of there simply being an inherent ceiling to what the film as marketed can do. Blame modern audiences for being milquetoast, or obsessed with IPs - and that's all true - but it be what it be. Bad Times at the El Royale as discussed above is, I think, a good comparison. Good movie. If anything, a more impressive cast, but a less-known director. Overtly stylised. Comes across as a too-cool-for-school-thinkpiece. I love it but I'm not the general audience. Never really stood a chance. Would be interesting to be proven wrong, though.

I think more likely an example of a film that has a hardwired, dedicated core audience of people who are already committed to loving the material. The people who like this show find it VERY important to them, and they are likely to be a large proportion of the first day audience, but there is also a very limited number of them. Not sure we can read anything into the wider reception yet.

Might as well put on a list as a provocation since it might help discussion and I already had a list from a different environment a couple years ago. Just made a few sketchy changes, might come back to it as there are a few things here I've not seen in a while. Any publishing of this sort of thing is opening oneself to critique, nay ridicule, so feel free to taken open season on this or ask any questions. I may come back and change this. I do study horror, albeit mostly live/theatre rather than film, but there's always the balance between importance, objective quality and then just what outright scares you. So if you're wondering at any moment why I include film-x so high - probs because it scared me a lot, unlike film-y which might be of more importance but doesn't have much going beyond scares that have little effect on me. PS: I was aware in myself before looking over this that I didn't really rate 80s horror. But I didn't quite realise the pattern was as marked as this. PPS: I invite category issue discussions for The Devils, The Skin I Live In, Return to Oz and The Nightingale, all of which I consider horror but would understand their omission. I'm open to including Pan's Labyrinth, Se7en and Predator and they would potentially get onto my list if its mutually decided they count. I'm pretty immovable on not including anything that is overtly action though (ie. Aliens, Monsterverse/Kong) PPPS: I make the distinction between horror-comedies and comedies about horror. If the film sits INSIDE the genre as a horror movie with humourous elements in, its in. If it's a specific commentary ON the horror genre at a meta level then AFAIC it essentially has to situate itself outside the genre to do so (Cabin in the Woods, Shaun of the Dead) so it's out. Anyway after that totally unnecessary commentary: Candyman (1992) Suspiria (1977) Jaws (1975) The Devils (1971) Ravenous (1999) Alien (1979) Psycho (1960) The Thing (1982) The Innocents (1961) Freaks (1932) The Witches (1966) Rosemary’s Baby (1967) The Wicker Man (1973) Les Diaboliques (1955) The Devil Rides Out (1968) Peeping Tom (1960) The Shining (1980) The VVitch (2015) Martyrs (2008) Lemora (1973) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) The Exorcist (1973) Session 9 (2001) Don’t Look Now (1973) Night of the Hunter (1955) The Haunting (1963) Black Christmas (1974) The Skin I Live In (2011) Suspiria (2017) Repulsion (1965) The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) Nosferatu (1922) The Borderlands (2013) (Final Prayer in the US) Night of the Living Dead (1968) Halloween (1978) Midsommar (2019) Black Sabbath (1963) The Blair Witch Project (1999) A L’Intérieur (2007) Deathwatch (2002) Jacob's Ladder (1990) Blood On Satan’s Claw (1971) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Scream (1996) Near Dark (1987) Black Swan (2010) A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Hereditary (2018) Witchfinder General (1968) You’re Next (2011) Pontypool (2008) Gothic (1986) Return to Oz (1985) Evil Dead II (1987) Carrie (1976) The Mothman Prophecies (2002) The House on Haunted Hill (1959) The Fly (1986) What We Do in the Shadows (2014) Hellraiser (1987) Twins of Evil (1971) Tremors (1990) Event Horizon (1997) Neon Demon (2016) I Walked with a Zombie (1943) Tenebrae (1980) Possession (1981) Dog Soldiers (2002) House of the Devil (2009) Shadow of the Vampire (2000) Raw (2016) Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) Frailty (2001) Dust Devil (1992) In the Mouth of Madness (1994) Lets Scare Jessica To Death (1971) Bone Tomahawk (2015) The Fury (1978) The Theatre of Blood (1973) The Hills Have Eyes (1977) The Orphanage (2007) The Purge (2013) Cronos (1993) Dawn of the Dead (1978) Evil Dead (2016) The Devil’s Rejects (2005) Society (1989) Videodrome (1983) Rec (2007) Audition (1999) The Bad Seed (1956) Rabid Dogs (1974) Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) The Nightingale (2018) The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) The Ruins (2008) Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) The Loved Ones (2009) Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Really looking forward to this, the last one was before I joined the forum. Obviously lists of horror will be affected by category-issues and the bigger names, but hopefully we'll get some nice surprises.

The previous two comments are excellent and I wish I'd written them. To slightly address filmlover's point though: I don't think that it's so much film's propensity for naturalism that's the issue, rather how contemporary filmmakers simply don't strategise around the change from that live environment to screen, regardless of how than manifests. And even when they do strategise - such as Rocket Man - the audience only goes with it for as far as they're inherently bought into the material. Indeed two recent-ish transitions from Stage to screen that didn't work are History Boys and God of Carnage both of which are themselves fairly naturalistic scripts. In that case it was the verisimilitude of the script that was the problem - both those films are static beyond belief. Looking to history there are plenty of examples of films leaning into non-naturalism unashamedly that work perfectly from Animal Crackers to West Side Story and Little Shop. But in a individualised, hyper participatory world it's hard to see how that can be done for a mass audience without appropriating material that's already uber popular such as Disney Remakes or the Mamma Mia/Bohemian Rhapsody gig. The only example that broke all that was Les Mis but then that's an ultra rare case where a) You have a genuinely world-known property and b) Hoodwinking the audience into thinking they're watching something naturalistic was already woven into the stage show. I think Cats was actually a great opportunity ironically. It just needed a deliberately self-aware balls to the wall piece of bonkers-ness rather than grabbing the world's most mundane point-a-camera-at-the-literal-thing director. It could have really showcased the versatility and creativity of musical theatre, rather than confirm every stereotype that exists of it.

It's an incredibly strange phenomenon. Especially given how many genuinely good shows there are, versus the ones that become significant and successful. Seems like an arbitrary toss of a coin as to which shows get deemed 'good'. Theatre culture however is very slow moving and operates as an insular bubble because it kind of has to given the size of the demographic matched against how much money the big shows cost. Once the pieces move in on a show the culture kind of feels it has to go all in in order to get the mainstream to then buy in to enough of a degree. As such you get shows that feel/promote something niche/radical/special but are actually incredibly bland and surprisingly generically populist. This dynamic happens with books and other properties too though, it's just the slow pace of the theatre culture enhances the dynamic more. I think even a little aspect of this can be seen recently with The Suicide Squad - what was awesome to one large, but still limited, demographic was just rejected by large segments of the general public who didn't align with it at all. Scott Pilgrim another example.

I'm extremely excited about Dune and really hope it does well. But not getting any buzz over here about it, don't know what basis the idea it would be huge here is based on - doesn't come across to me as being aligned to mainstream British audiences. Maybe I'm wrong. The late opening here really, REALLY won't help. Should have got in before Bond, not waited for after.

Yeah, looking up the numbers for films that just aren't even on the radar today like Golden Child is bonkers. Although I don't think anything can beat Crocodile Dundee for almost-impossible-to-communicate-to-young-people-how-big-this-film-was ness.

The trailer for Copshop baffled me. Genuinely baffling as to how this was commissioned. I'm sure for all the world that it might be a perfectly good film with perfectly good performances but nothing about it communicated an even vaguely commercial prospect in the year 2021. Or indeed any year since around 1995. Just came across as a humdrum episode of a TV series with a few extra famous people in. Huge congratulations to Candyman since 50m is a pretty great return. I disliked the movie despite great visuals and performances since I found the narrative and treatment of themes to be a shambles, but am glad that it will surely have sent some back to rewatch the masterpiece of the original and that the original's status is being moved up prominence tables in horror history to the elite table where it belongs. It is also a big win for Nia DaCosta who shot the film beautifully and whose feet I don't really lay my blame for the issues I had with it (that would be Peele, since the same issues were present in both his previous).

Seems at this point Simu is just getting in some quarters the treatment that Brie Larson got here. Just any chance for a character assassination will be taken no matter how tenuous. Nothing will be good enough, nothing will be acceptable, just an ideologically driven faction. But at the same time, as with Larson, likely only to be a specialist niche noisy bunch of the Very Online not necessarily attached to the general public. It has become wrapped in an agenda not of its own making and not under its control. At this point it will be little skin off noses. I'm just sad for the Chinese MCU fans who have nothing to do with this who now don't get this, and seemingly other, movies. I would say that I hope it provides a lesson to those who've been doing/falling for this sort of attack nonsense in the West to see how flagrant and dishonest it looks when another culture/online group is doing it...but I won't get my hopes up.

It wouldn't surprise me if Feige is already preparing, and indeed possibly has already prepared, for a post-China era in terms of releasing movies. For all the click baiters have accused Shang-Chi of playing to the Chinese government, as many have pointed out it is abundantly obvious through the casting of Liu and the tone of the film that this was an Asian-American film first and foremost, a general East Asian film second and a 'Chinese film' last. Add to that his steadfastness about Chloe Zhao and with the supernatural/horror/Mephisto-laden aspects of Marvel on the horizon which stand lower chance of Chinese release anyway it seems as though if the chips *have* to fall in one direction, it will be on the direction of simply not making films with a Chinese release in mind - or rather always assuming that the decisions on Chinese releases will be arbitrary and based on momentary contextual politics that are beyond the control of a studio. I suspect there's no chance of Simu being recast, or even of current plans changing in any way. Although it's certainly possible a mainland Chinese actor takes on a major protagonist role very soon. But it's hard to tell anything from the Hollywood articles and writers that are so lacking in self-awareness of the bubbles they reside in that they were genuinely surprised and confused when Crazy Rich Asians wasn't successful in Asia.

Conclusion-led hogwash that mostly is just a barrage of fallacy by omission: - Complains about not representing contemporary Asia, ignoring the whole sequence in Macau. Complains about Asia being represented as static, despite the timbre of the end credits sequence specifically manifesting change. - Pretends that it is in some way unique that the Asian character's father is mythical in nature (y'know, like half the other superheroes) or there is an implied family secret (y'know, like 90% of the other superheroes) - Literally pulls out a fully strawmanned quote ("who are you *really*") in order to stretch to a point. - Complains tenuously about 'exotic cliches' when the material is clearly drawn and inspired by Chinese history - just in a non-literal manner suitable for a contemporary audience - which presumably is what Walter wants because otherwise it sure would be hypocritical to complain elsewhere about Asia being represented as static and unchanging. - I mean let's be clear about this: one paragraph Walter is complaining about this piece supposedly misrepresenting Asia as static and unchanging, and then spends a paragraph moaning about how they've changed the mythic creatures from their fourth century origins. - "When you're a White superhero in the MCU, you get to have an origin story that doesn't involve ancient Chinese secrets". No, it involves ancient Scandinavian secrets instead. - Establishing Katy is an underachiever isn't character progression apparently, it's an Asian stereotype. - A character from an immigrant background speaking multiple languages isn't a signifier of intelligence, just of a mixed background. Literally any polyglot or person from a mixed background knows this and it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise. - And finally, as already stated by the poster above the film could not more specifically establish that the character is "at the table". There's good criticism to be had of representing cultures in film, including this one. There's certainly good criticism to be discussed of the impossibility of representing Asian-ness in general and the very concept being somewhat deluded. There's plenty good criticism to be had in discussing how international film will always struggle with the fundamental differentiation of "Asian-American" from "Asian". But this isn't any of those things. It's bad, conclusion-led journalism mostly made up of a Gish gallop.

It is beyond me why lessons were not learned from, especially, Rent when it comes to using original cast members of live hit shows and adaptation of hit shows in general.

To be fair, Captain Marvel had possibly the most optimum positioning for box office of any film in history. I like the film far more than most (my 5th ranked MCU) but it's BO performance was undeniably situational. I think Homecoming would have been a better example of a smaller scale story but as ever with categorising systems, they don't *totally* work to encompass everything....but they're useful to have to help discuss and conceive of films and I think the categories being proposed avove are useful enough to help discussion of future box office. As for Eternals, I - without trying to grief it - do think it stands the biggest chance of misfire unless it *really* picks up some of the non-standard audience such as higher proportions of women and fandom communities. I think it's the film most effected by the changes in schedule. If I remember correctly, it was originally positioned as the second film of Phase 4, with only 2 films to be released that year (2020). That would have made it both the emotional launch of Phase 4 (given the perception of Black Widow as a bridge/coda) and therefore positionable as "This is the vision for Marvel going forward" while taking advantage of a Marvel-barren period post Endgame where the Disney+ series had barely launched (if at all). Changed to a release within the ultra-crowded 2021 schedule for MCU, following Shang-Chi and 4 D+ series where the Phase 4 is very established already, and only shortly before a massive (and very Marvel-normative) Spider-Man movie the rationale for its release seems to have been shrunk significantly and the movie's placement will come across - possibly - as more of an anomaly. And general audiences - and to a lesser extent critics - are unpredictable, trending negative, when it comes to anomalies from what they see as standard templates no matter how good the movie actually is (see cinema scores for A24s horror masterpieces like The VVitch, Hereditary and Midsommar).

Meanwhile I totally agree with this. Venom isn't a horror film but if done well it does have what I would very academically term a warm spooky spook factor. A warm cosy hygge bit of atmosphere. ....And I actually think Halloween is better for spooky spook factor than it is for balls to the wall horror. Certainly I'd pick watching Hocus Pocus and Monster House on Halloween over a Saw marathon any year. And I suspect the box office will reflect that general sentiment in favour of Venom.

Yeah, Crichton wasn't far off a horror writer, really. 13th Warrior and Congo also follow slasher structures to a hefty degree, and Disclosure isn't too far away from a domestic socio-political horror. JP1 and 3 are close to Horror films, and a couple of the kills in the newer ones are directed with slasher sensibilities, but all contain too many other beats to really fit into the horror category IMO, and the films are constructed around the overall narrative (in the case of the first) and all-purpose action (in the case of the others) more prominently than the composition/timing of the death scenes.

Having written academically about horror a lot I have found engaging in epistolary discussion about what is and isn't horror to be a deeply futile task. But for what it's worth I wouldn't come close to defining Venom as horror. It *could be done* as horror. But it wasn't in either of Venom's first two major movie appearances, or any screen interaction I've seen. The inherent "Body horror" in Venom is no different from Fantastic 4, Hulk or Spider-Man. If you go with just "He eats them and is a monster" elements, that would mean, say Yoshi makes Super Mario horror. None of the real affective triggers: disgust, fear, shock etc are triggered consistently as a part of the rationale of the film. The Jurassic films or Kong: Skull Island are closer to Horror films than Venom by pretty much all measurable and you'd still largely be pressed to call them horror. On the other hand Halloween is certainly a Horror. For some reason I think this will underperform a little. I think the first return was a bit more of a novelty than folks think but I'm very willing to be wrong.

I think Venom will do great. As has been mentioned above, it's in the same ballpark as Jurassic World whereby even if the general consensus in *online film conversation* is that it is terrible and most objective measures used to evaluate media say that it's terrible, it was still raucously popular and audiences liked it and will be there for a sequel. It will probably eventually run out of coolness points with its main target demographic but that won't be yet. That differs significantly from, say, Suicide Squad and BVS where there was a clear chorus from Joe Public that the film was as poor as the *online film conversation* types said.

AM&W was $75.8m. Will be close but the revised estimate places it still very slightly below. (Edit: Apologies, had already been answered)

I'd put: Master and Commander Dead Poet's Society Fearless The Truman Show Picnic at Hanging Rock The Last Wave Gallipoli The Year of Living Dangerously The Mosquito Coast Witness Against any Top 10 from any other living director's filmography. Certainly not as high profile as a Spielberg and others but the variety in that list is staggering: to the extent that I think the only reason that Weir is not placed perennially alongside the all timers is that he is selfless enough to not impose a personal stamp on his projects. Admittedly fewer films, but a much better hitrate also than the likes of Scorsese, Nolan, Coppola with arguably not a single poor film to his name. And he directed Jeff Bridges, Harrison Ford, Jim Carrey, Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver all to career best performances.

The closest isn't quite a Superhero movie, just a comic book movie, but I think is quite illuminating.....It's Scott Pilgrim V The World. For all Brie Larson got so much flack for pointing this out, there is once in a while a movie that narrows the parameters of who its aimed at massively without online culture particularly noticing. Scott Pilgrim did that, and I think TSS does it as well: "The angels are splooging on us", "Beach full of penises" and a talking shark saying "hand" in a childlike goofy voice are all in the trailer and I just don't think they play to a general audience the way they play to online culture. They don't even read as 'edgy' in a Deadpool or Venom way, they just read - without context - as an easily dismissible "dumb" or "childish". But more than anything else I just think that like The Wolfman, Solo, Mortal Engines, Dredd, Birds of Prey, John Carter the ultimate reason for the debacle is just a fundamental failure to judge the actual appeal of the premise of the film. The Suicide Squad has, it seems, absolutely no inherent pull as a property. The first film was tethered to the Joker, one of the biggest box office juggernauts in film history. Plus Will Smith. Even though it has been mentioned multiple times in tandem with other reasons, I think the Joker factor has still been hugely underestimated in what's happened here.

The Irony is that the completely wrong lesson that was learned from The Suicide Squad. The Joker dynamic was utterly, utterly underestimated. Doesn't matter that Leto was unpopular. Doesn't matter how little the Joker was in Suicide Squad. The Joker was in the first and not the second, and the Joker is a generationally proven box office goldmine. This was the single biggest, by a mile, non-COVID factor in Suicide Squad v The Suicide Squad AFAIC. If anything the lesson should have been "Jesus, THAT'S how much the difference there is between having one of the two ultra famous fashionable antihero type figures with a cool design in your movie and not having one???? I realised those were popular but not THAT popular.....best rush out our sequel of the only comparable ultra famous antihero with a cool design and get those fashionable antihero $s".

Loved the movie. No problem with the CGI-a-thon - Clear and coherent storytelling was still going on throughout, which is where this stuff often loses me. As long as the emotional beats are clear and the narrative is clear, I'm good. Real crowdpleaser in my theatre, best reactions in a theatre since Endgame. (North-west UK)