Ipickthiswhiterose

PS: I'm not one to correct people's spelling online, but if you're going to try to look like an intellectual and use a word like bourgeois - especially if you put it in inverted commas the first time as though you're introducing it to us and you think we're a bunch of illiterates who've never come across the term, maybe don't spell it two different ways. What is 'fucked up' to you? Because surely showing death and violence with dismissiveness and low stakes is more 'fucked up' than a film that treats death and violence as a very serious, high stakes enterprise. Which makes James Bond, superhero movies and The Incredibles much more 'fucked up' than a movie like Midsommar. Surely treating characters as avatars to be offed with impunity is more 'fucked up' than a film that treats characters as real responding humans who are capable of worry, suffering and human frailty. Which makes any rote horror movie, slasher film or fantasy more 'fucked up' than a movie like Midsommar. The thing is in the seeds of what you are saying has some truth - people in violent societies don't seek out horror or violent films and visceral films are associated with driving affect in viewers and is the primary reason for watching horror, comedy or erotica. But you just mush it into some irrelevant broad package to bung against this specific excellent film when it could just as easily, in fact more easily be applied to Child's Play or even something like Venom or Mission Impossible.

That's what makes me so curious about Aster's movies. The people who hate them really, truly, viscerally hate them for reasons that seem utterly beyond comprehension. They are superb movies that are thematically rich, complex, disturbing, and fairly watertight. Pretty much everything horror should be. If you don't appreciate them, or dislike them, or find them a bit slow, fine. But don't pretend they don't hang together, or don't make sense or are poorly made because....well they just so self-evidently aren't.

Boy I loved this movie so much. Best of the year for me. I think that everyone who liked Hereditary will like it, and the vast majority of people who hated Hereditary will dislike it. I do think there will be a small subsection of converts due to more obvious tonal consistency and the fact that the marketing was a clearer promise of the film. I know that by mainstream sensibilities this might be 'weird', but frankly this was waaaay less 'weird' than I was anticipating. Not sure what people are really riffing off here. As for disturbing. Deeply, deeply disturbing. And also absolutely joyful and uplifting. Closer to The Witch than Hereditary, actually.

Precisely. If Disney wanted, no holds barred, to do a rerelease/reexpaansion that would have guaranteed the record, they could have. Multi-interviews, deleted scenes and teasers - nothing that was stopping them. Between that record and the insanity of possibly getting EIGHT $1b movies in one year, I don't think they'd hesitate to go for the latter.

Good hold from Toy Story 4. Hopefully everyone can now acknowledge that Incredibles 2 massive over performance in a fairly barren Summer for kids last year shouldn't be held against TS4 being considered a very large success. Good start for Yesterday, hopefully can get some great word of mouth going. Annabelle seems to be paying for the sins of The Nun. That was unfortunate coinciding of a very lazy effort with the apex of the franchise's viability.

Wait, what? Some of you don't think that this trailer is great? Boy, some strange taste going on here. That said, all the sleeping on a great family trailer that happened with the first one is already happening again with the Dora the Explorer trailer so goes to show some people never learn.

Jeez, what a great start. Probably more legitimate laughs in this trailer than Adam Sandler's entire cinematic oeuvre.

Opening of the trailer just made me think of Hereditary.

I think this is much less of an underperformance as a highlight of how little competition I2 had last summer: Basically because Disney opted to go Solo and Christopher Robin where it would otherwise have had two more conventional family movies, Incredibles 2 was doing the family work of at least 3 movies. Where last year's Summer the pure kids market was, what, I2 and Hotel Transylvania 3? (I think Peter Rabbit and Paddington 2 were earlier in the year).....This year has Dumbo, Aladdin, Toy Story 4, Lion King and Frozen 2 in short order. And those are just Disney alone without even considering interference from the likes of SLOP2.

The Lion King has a fanbase and not to forget a lot of extreme animal rights activists, PETA types and vegans will come out to it. The director is also a noted player of satanic role playing games that encourage witchcraft. Hobbs and Shaw has a fanbase and not to forget a lot of MRA's, Samoans and BLM types (Due to a black superhero character!) will come out to it. The director is also a male. Dora the Explorer has a fanbase and not to forget a lot of Globalists, multiculturalists and believers in ancient conspiracy theories will come out to it. The director is also from Portsmouth. This might be my new favourite game!

A week an a half ago, the execs for G:KOTM were probably telling each other "well, it could have been worse" while secretly not really believing it. Now they can look at these last two weekends and be happy in the knowledge that yes, it definitely COULD have been worse. Seriously, imagine having the kind of runs that Dumbo and KOTM had/are having and not even being close to the two biggest financial disappointments of the year. Also: I continue to get low-key Jumanji 2 vibes from Dora. Looks adorable and just a cute as a button family adventure.

I think the former of those comments is more important than the latter. I just think that the four-quadrant credentials of Endgame - and indeed any genre movie - has a limit that, okay, far outweighs the generic average move but that at the largest and most cosmic movie-titan level is considerably below that of a Titanic, a Sound of Music, an ET, or to go back even further a Gone with the Wind or Ten Commandments. You can put it to a simple grandma test: how many grandmas saw Endgame compared to those 5? I would proffer it isn't in the same stratosphere. I really think Endgame was received as well as it was ever possibly going to be received. But it's a genre movie, and comparing it to non-genre behemoths it has so, so much to make up in the youth and genre-orientated markets it is always going to struggle to compare. Only Star Wars and Exorcist ever have and that's by multi-multi-multi repeat viewing over years in times long ago before home video.

Ok, I think this is a really important debate. And by the way I'm taking this out separately and not criticising your critique of Captain Marvel (though I would agree with the person you're debating here on the whole, it isn't my point). I think it's a really important thing to acknowledge that male viewers are on the whole trained not to identify with female protagonists except under very specific circumstances. Women are expected and conditioned to read male characters with empathy, but on the whole men are less so. If you consider the characters wheeled out when guys say "but I love female characters........" and then give examples, there are actually usually two very clear types of female main character that they then list: Pedestel Characters: i.e.- Wonder Woman, Leia, Alita, Black Widow (earlier movies until around Civil War) and the like. Characters not designed to be identified with by anyone really, because they are archetypes by design and as such identification with them isn't the point. Sufferers: Laurie Strode, Ripley, Sarah Connor, pretty much all female characters in GOT. Characters who go through extreme levels of suffering and existential threat: something that everyone who has a body can understand, because ultimately physical suffering is non-gendered and the desire to survive and persevere is equally identifiable by everyone. That's a real limit. And I don't think that from a storyline perspective we should need female characters to go through the wringer just so guys can identify with them. I don't throw this at you specifically at all. I just honestly think it's an issue that - as someone who has worked in a bookshop and knows the general reaction when you suggest to a parent of a boy a book that has a girl protagonist (an issue that doesn't happen the other way round at all) - we should acknowledge and work around. And I don't think I am some special illuminated person on the issue - I just work in drama training and performance with mostly female students so have spent years focusing mostly on female characterisation so I've ended up generally seeing through female characters just as much as male ones. I think Captain Marvel did that excellently by framing her personality entirely in terms of the dynamics she had with others (the movie is made almost entirely of duologues) and the different roles those others found for Carol in her life. But I'm happy to disagree on that. But yeah, I really do think that sex has an impact on how one sees characters of other genders after a lifetime of reading stories certain ways and reversing that dynamics is something that on the whole would be fairly beneficial.

Last year's Oscar best picture nominees: Black Panther - Not an indie movie, no political alignment. Bohemian Rhapsody - Movie with right wing sensibilities A Star is born - No political alignment. Green Book - Movie with right wing sensibilities Vice - Movie specifically about American politics, perhaps left wing sensibilities but only by default due to unflattering portrayal of some specific right wing politicians. BlackKklansman - Movie with left wing sensibilities, but exclusively about specifically Americanised politics Roma - Movie with left wing sensibilities but not really relating to social justice The Favourite - Movie with right wing sensibilities when applied to contemporary politics. Additional movies nominated for Golden Globes: Crazy Rich Asians - Movie with right wing sensibilities Mary Poppins Returns - Disney anyway, not indie, no political alignment. If Beale Street Could Talk - Movie with left wing sensibilities. Must try harder if want to come up with better hot takes, maybe just resort to trolling.

Josh Trank was a 30 year old director outsider with a reputation for being hammered on set and a whole potential career to ruin. Lauren Shuler Donner is a 70 year old veteran insider producer who is already in the middle of producing other projects and who probably can barely conjure up the care to give a crap.

Booksmart's PTA up on last week and seemingly taking in some sweet WOM, but has been yanked from too many theatres for that to really count. Gargh, no justice. SLOP2 Theatre count is bizarre. Have no idea what justifies it. Aladdin is so bonkers expensive that even though it has really broken out it's still in 'hit' territory rather than 'megahit' in terms of profitability unless it manages to get up well beyond $800m. As someone said earlier (can't remember who, apologies) this year's treatment of non-Disney franchises has really made HTTYD3s run look really nice in retrospect despite being the lowest domestic performance of its franchise.

This really shows I think the nature of CinemaScore as something that measures expectation rather than quality. What all three of those have in common is not that they're poor but that marketing that one way or another janked with the reality of the movie. Obviously Unbreakable especially was not what it promised to be, so audiences on the first night who expected something specifically different didn't know what to make of it. So, yeah, think this always needs to be born in mind with Cinemascore. Especially when Midsommar rolls up with its inevitable glorious F! Bring it on!

Glad to see a decentish hold for Booksmart - best movie I've seen in theatres this year. Don't know if anyone's mentioned so far, but Captain Marvel just went over Shrek adjusted. I can barely get my head around that. Amazing run. Aladdin looks set for a cracking run, what are we looking at WW finish with this hold?

I have a feeling Secret Life of Pets 2 is going to do incredibly, frustratingly, well. Like, $45-55m well. I guess it will easily outdo HTTYD3 and Lego 2 and probably cruise past Dumbo as well. Throw cute animals at British families and they will nearly always respond positively. Might be an interesting mini-contest with Aladdin though. Though the UK market tends not to have too many problems sustaining multiple family orientated movies.

To be fair to Katherine Heigl, she didn't say anything about Knocked Up that wasn't entirely accurate. It's not that it was sexist so much as it was a late example of a RomCom in which the female lead didn't actually do or say anything funny and was just the straight woman to complain about the male shenanigans. See also Teri Polo doing the thankless in the Meet the Parents franchise. I suppose you shouldn't bit the hand that feeds you though. And what happened to her was fairer than the punishment meted out to Isla Fisher for having the gumption to expose the mediocrity of Vince Vaughan and Owen Wilson in what was meant to be their movie by outacting Vaughan into humiliation. Naomi Scott is a young actresss finding herself among her heroes and she is a little eccentric. Nothing wrong with a bit of distinct personality. Looks like it'll be a close thing between Pikachu and Endgame. Going to see DP tomorrow in the UK but would be really interesting if Endgame could hold this.

I think that's the case to a certain extent. But I also think that Seth Rogen is at the same point of Michael Cera around the time of Scott Pilgrim: not sure it matters how good the film is, how good his performance is, how good the reviews are or even how much he deserves it - audiences have just decided they're kind of done with him. (Of course far more can be said about Scott Pilgrim but this isn't the place)

Presumably The Incredibles isn't on the list because it isn't live action as stated. As for Batman, to be fair the OP was taking it from a list of 'best second weekend drops' which may itself had had qualifiers. Certainly going back all the way to 1989 is a very different era in terms of the concept of 'opening weekend' and how box office numbers built up.

Has Pet Sematary been misreported today, or is there some reason why it has had such an enormous apparent boost?

Life gets in the way sometimes, but right now I don't believe for one second that Feige right now intends to spend less than 20 years total doing this. He'd still not even be 55.

Yeah, in the UK they got cute and thought they were clever adjusting it to the World Cup but paid no attention to the fact that Mamma Mia in the UK plays like a blockbuster. It didn't get totally walloped, but it threw at least $10m on the floor.