Ipickthiswhiterose

Thanks to MovieMan89 for the game. I will also bite, with grades A+: Jurassic Park A: Toy Story 3, Return of the King A- : Zootopia, Titanic B+: Rogue One, The Avengers, Avengers: Infinity War, The Dark Knight B: Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Incredibles 2, Aquaman B-: Civil War, Star Wars: Last Jedi, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Frozen, Avatar C+: Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises, Deathly Hallows p2 C: Age of Ultron, Iron Man 3, Finding Dory C-: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey D+: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Beauty and the Beast, Dead Man's Chest D: Despicable Me 3, Phantom Menace, Jurassic World D-: Minions, On Stranger Tides F: Transformers: All of them, Alice in Wonderland Unseen: Any F&F movie

I mean, I wouldn't consider movies with a budget over 70m to be particularly mid-budget (I'd class it as 35m to 70m), which reduces the list to those above. Also note that E2, like The Mule (and I used that example precisely because it didn't flop, it over performed domestically - that was my point) doesn't have an especially good profit margin and again shows how knife-edge relying on a movie with a star whose pull is US-centric is these days. And note how reduced this list is now in terms of original moviemaking: - Movie based on massive musical band with worldwide appeal - Huge name property - Huge name property - Adaptation of popular children's book series - Sequel, 4th in series - Sequel, 7th in series - Sequel (and was only relatively mildly profitable) No original properties, outside of the one based on the enormously worldwide popular band are left there. Even the expanded list that goes up to 100m doesn't contain any original work in the way your list of small films does. The Mule and The Upside were original films, and despite clear success, their profitability was still on a knife edge. Add Game Night and Instant Family on the list as well: Both perceived as relatively successful, both barely so. So yeah, I'd say that there is an issue with mid-budget films even if some examples of successful ones can be found.

People aren't really saying small movies are unprofitable. It isn't small movies that tend to struggle nowadays, it's mid range movies. For an example of that.....look at the highest budget movie on your list - The Upside. Despite perception of massive over performance in the domestic market, its absence of any real performance abroad means that due to a lower mid-range budget it will only be fairly mildly profitable (2.5 would put break-even at $92m, WW total of $120). And that's for a movie that has broken out. See also The Mule (2.5 puts it at break-even of $125, WW total of $166). Massive overperformance in the domestic market. Only mildy profitable overall due to midrange budget and unreliable overseas. For an even better example of this, look not at the most successful of small budget movies, but one that has been perceived as unsuccessful: Happy Death Day 2U: 2.5 puts break-even at $22.5m with a WW total of $64m. In other words Happy Death Day 2U - a relative flop by perception - has been more successful in relative profitability than two massive breakout hits. Small movies aren't the ones people say are in trouble, but that the market is becoming a split system where films are now either massive or tiny. Which is a pretty accurate point.

I think people are sleeping a little on Hobbs and Shaw. Think it might have a chance at a billion. I also think that Spiderman: Far from Home may suffer a little from the same after-the-lord-mayors-show syndrome as Ant Man & The Wasp and do 850m or so. Even 800m wouldn't shock me. It's one thing to be in the appetiser position, like CM, and another to be the property following on from the big event. Meanwhile, looks like Captain Marvel is going to hit the Brieillion even earlier than I thought. Five Feet Apart is doing really well. Good run.

I think Dumbo will play really young so makes sense it got revised upwards once evening post-school showings came in. I also agree that it's going to be impossible to really see where it's going to fall until today's numbers come in and then how much/if Shazam will hit it (I think it plays too young for Shazam to really be relevant). My suspicions are that it'll do just a bit better than it looks at present domestically, though International numbers aren't doing good. Unplanned doesn't surprise me. I think the DOA arrival of the propaganda docs last year gave a false impression. The docs era was over and people are done with overt proslytising, but that doesn't mean that the persecution complex has gone away and the internal pretence that this film has some even-handedness will shave off some of the stigma that comes with other propaganda work. I think this will grow week on week for a few weeks.

Is there a chance of Us OW > Solo OW? That would be insane. Certainly looks like > Ant Man and The Wasp OW, > Aquaman OW and > Mi: Fallout OW

I think it's Justice League, since it's the one with the least mitigating circumstances. To me anything that's an original property hasn't previously been a film should get a free pass from this convo. (Passengers, Pixels, Mortal Engines) Other films simply looked like a bomb from a distance, can't see how they should be counted (King Arthur, Robin Hood, Joh Carter) Other films have the excuse of the time between instalments being misjudged (Lego 2, Alice, Scream 4) Others have a general negative sentiment towards a franchise or genre coming to a head (Mockinjay 2, Transformers TLK, Pirates 5) And finally some films have at least the excuse of being a property that doesn't have true worldwide coverage. Solo being the most obvious here, but also things like Christopher Robin, Mary Poppins. None of those were true of Justice League. Even compensating for negative responses to BVS that it made do little worldwide is just barely conceivable to me. I mean, Suicide Squad was the worst film I've possibly ever seen be released in a major capacity and THAT made money, so how JL didn't from the same label is just beyond me.

That How To Train Your Dragon number is up on last Wednesday ($1.48m). It also had a low Tuesday to Tuesday drop of 14.9%. Monday to Monday was also lowish but certainly more normal at 21.3%. It dropped 51% last weekend so these weekdays seem incongruous. Anyone with an idea what might cause that dynamic? Is this great mid-legs or a holiday-somewhere related thing? EDIT: I also see Lego Movie 2 is also up this week, so presume it's a holiday somewhere. Never mind.

That's a truly astonishing performance from The Favourite. Going to go over 20m and beat Christopher Robin, Alita (probably), Quiet Place, Bumblebee, Spider-Verse, Kong:Skull Island, and Glass among others. I know historical UK-focused movies tend to do well here (Mary Queen of Scots and Stan and Ollie have had good performances too), but for a notoriously 'weird' director and barely linear film this has taken off wonderfully. Lego Movie 2 seems to be doing well here relative to other places as well, have noticed good WOM and it may be the musical factor also. Might well finish above HTTYD3, which certainly doesn't look like it will be the case in most places. Lots of people at Fighting With My Family at an afternoon showing yesterday, will be really interesting to see how it plays over here. Also has a lot of showings up here in Preston. Don't know if that's the same across the country. Similar pattern happened last week with Instant Family, which had way more for an afternoon showing than would be expected and has posted really strong numbers since. The Kid Who Would Be King has had a shocker. Must have expected more than that from the UK Box Office, surely. And like others have said, it's not like the UK market can't take a lot of kids movies simultaneously, it has just been rejected.

The Lego Movie 2 was brilliant. Saw it yesterday and having not been as enamoured by the first film as some I was pretty shocked by how much I enjoyed it. But it not doing well financially, especially at launch, is just not that much of a surprise at all. They tried to have their cake and eat it with the two non-sequel sequels, simple as that. I thought late on that the timing would help it somewhat but....hmmmm.

I disagree with there being anything like the number of movies that fulfil the OP's description. In fact I think there is one one definite and two possible candidates: The Wizard of Oz (Definite) Jaws (Possible) Star Wars (Possible) The Wizard of Oz is the undoubted winner and all-pervading answer for this question, because it is the only movie from before 1950 that anyone in modern discussion can just assume that anyone they are talking through has watched. The other two movies I think are arguable as films from pre-1980 that almost every adult will have seen and the vast majority will feel positively towards. But even then: they are really close together themselves in terms of release. Outside of that there is simply not a classic movie that is isolated enough and has been viewed by enough people to count. Snow White and Casablanca are enormously famous, but nowhere enough people have actually seen them for them to count. Gone With The Wind may have once been a valid choice, but now it is neither held in high enough esteem nor have enough people seen it. Anything post-1990 is far too clumped and surrounded by other massive movies to be even remotely considerable. It probably isn't even possible anymore.

I mean, I understand a lot of perspectives in this particular issue, but I don't get what angle gets somebody to "national hero" status in all of this. I mean the radar seems to be an oscillation between "Didn't do anything wrong" and "Did lots of things wrong". At no point does "Did loads right and is an example to all" seem like it is on the cards. Am I missing something?

It says a lot that the box office for this movie will probably increase now. The trailer is pretty unconditionally awful and it would almost certainly have bombed. Now it probably has a chance. As for the issue itself relating to Neeson, as the person above me indicated, there are just too many dynamics at play to write anything shorter than an essay about it. It isn't something that can be dealt with by a simple dismissive statement of some kind, in whichever direction that statement goes. All I will say is that I'm surprised and maybe a little disappointed that the only majority focus here is the racial aspect, and not the aspect that relates to why the societal expectation for this kind of incident is vengeance and anger rather than looking after the victim and making sure they are ok.

Us Happy Death Day 2 U Avengers Endgame Captain Marvel Arctic It Chapter Two Pet Cemetery Doctor Sleep Shazam Captive State

I know the chap above talked about tumbleweed coming out of their theatre in the UK, but I watched it mid-afternoon Friday in Lancashire and it was a good half full in the biggest theatre, which doesn't sound great but honestly is pretty rare for that time.

Very enjoyable movie, maybe not the strongest of the franchise but the capping off of the series was excellent. One of the very strongest movie trilogies.

I don't know that another Suicide Squad movie is a necessity when there are so many other properties with similar, or even the same characters, when this one is just going to be a collection of decisions of what bathwater to throw out, what bathwater to keep, and making sure all the babies survive the process. Are Margot Robbie and Will Smith so essential that they have to stay? One presumes that plenty of people think they are so. What about Viola Davis? The thing is that Suicide Squad was so inept, so incompetently made that evaluating the acting and many of the various creative decisions are almost pointless. It's like the 2016 Ghostbusters deciding it was going to apply improv-culture comedy to a high concept comedy. Decisions made so early on and structurally relevant to the movie prevented literally anything else about the film from having any chance of being anything other than the cinematic abomination that it was. And the editing of the released version....I mean you can pick almost no useful information out of something so useless. Maybe in there somewhere was an amazing performance or character arc or at least some fantastic ideas, but who would ever know? I honestly would have just left it, gone to the characters in other properties and quietly let it just slowly get ignored. But that's hard when the movie itself for all its catastrophic elements made a lot of money and showed that there's big bucks in the concept.

This low box office indicates that something may really break out in the next few weeks. They Shall Not Grow Old may do something really special. Lego Movie Part 2 was one I was convinced would fall very flat, but crowds may be hankering for it by the time it comes out. Great release date in hindsight. Alita's renegotiated release is starting to look better by the week as well.

Tier 1 (Absolutely should have been nominated): 1. The Favourite 2. Roma ------------ Tier 2 (Perfectly OK nominations on the bubble): 3. Blackkklansman 4. Green Book -------------- Tier 3 (Had no business being nominated): 5. Black Panther 6. A Star Is Born 7. Vice 8. Bohemian Rhapsody Probably the worse nomination list for over a decade. 6-8 especially are ridiculous nominations for efficiently made movies that simply don't have a level of artistic ambition appropriate for "best movie of the year" consideration. Vice and BR have nothing at all to say, and ASIB has nothing to say that hasn't been said 3 times already by the same film and multiple times by other films. The emotional engagement argument always frustrates me: If the best film was just for the most emotionally affecting one then they might as well give the award to Won't You Be My Neighbour. Or A Dog's Purpose.

McConaughey wasn't included in the list, I left him out for the same reason as Jeff Bridges: there is enough departure/fictionalisation from the original person there and, as you say, that wasn't a well known person with a lot of source material. As for DDL: Ultimately there is a pile of Lincoln iconography, sources, descriptions, images and other people's performances to go from. There is no primary footage but there's still a pattern of behaviour and a detailed character shape in the public consciousness. Is it one of the lesser offenders on the list? Sure. I'd also concede it's also one of the better performances on the list, worthy at least of nomination (alongside Emma Thomson as PL Travers) in a way that I wouldn't grant to any of the others. But I would keep it there because quite simply it's still not operating anywhere near the level of difficulty as Phoenix was in The Master. The list in full by the way: Adrian Brody as Wladislaw Szpillman, Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote, Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin, Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, Colin Firth as George VI, DDL as Lincoln, Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking, Gary Oldman as Churchill, Malik or Bale this year (99% guaranteed at this point), Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich, Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, Charlize Theron as Aileen Wournos, Reese Witherspoon as Julie Carter Cash, Helen Mirren as Elizabeth II, Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf, Sandra Bullock as LeAnne Tuohy and Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. And again, that's just Actor and Actress since 2000, not Supporting, where there are a bunch more. As for the weekend box office: Green Book and The Favourite seem to have done OK with their expansions. For a movie like The Favourite to make over 10m is pretty great, so over 25m is special. Green Book really looks set for a potential momentum win now, it's showing all the right patterns. Spiderverse still has dem legs and it will be interesting to see what an Oscar win might push it to: WW box office still isn't amazing for it so the additions that it can get to the Dom seem pretty important. Escape Room has played a blinder.

I'd concur - The Master may well be top performance of the decade for me. Equally, I'd point out it's facsimile/pure-naturalism performances that are my problem. I'd have no problem with any of the Favourite ladies win this year, or Willem Defoe. Amadeus has some of my all time favourite acting, and I love Meryl Streep's performance at Julia Childs. But it's precisely because, as I think a critic said at the time, she makes no attempt to actually play the historic person - she is aiming to play what Julia Childs represents in the head of Amy Adams' character. That's back to a high level of difficulty and absolutely worthy. Same with Blanchett as Dylan.

Oh boy, ain't that the truth. What a performance. I'd probably have him as the winner this year as well for You Were Never Really Here. I think the thing is that many of these awards have gone to great actors, which is why nobody tends to complain. They've just gone to great actors in roles that aren't even close to their best. Malik winning might make a change because it would be the third - after Jamie Foxx and Eddie Redmayne - where people might realise looking at their previous and subsequent filmography that maybe, possibly, they aren't exactly the performer that their big award made it seem like they were when they were hailed for some miraculous performance. But it will take a few years and people will more likely just forget like they did with Foxx. The most idiotic may well be Philip Seymour Hoffman who in an entire career of absolutely incredible performances got his one and only Oscar for an impression of Truman Capote. Despite Toby Jones also doing a performance as Truman Capote that was literally exactly the same as Hoffman's (i.e.: An accurate rendition of Truman Capote) in another film released in the exact same year.

McAdams is one of my go-tos for this as well. For Mean Girls. Technically speaking, her performance in Mean Girls is perfection. Not only is it perfection, but it's perfection at a remarkably high difficulty level: She essentially has to balance being part of a two-dimensional ensemble group (the plastics), - functioning as if that group's a single entity at times, while also playing the archetypal gestic bitch, deliver one-liner-type quotes in a credible manner AND become a three dimensional rounded character as a slow reveal without losing the other elements. It's a darn masterclass. Everyone else in the movie is good but they either get to play pure naturalism (Lohan, Fey, the friends) or pure archetype (Poehler, Chabert, Seyfried). McAdams has to be the conduit/glue between those worlds and she's incredible. Not only that, but this isn't some artsy performance in a film nobody knew. This was a commercially and critically enormously successful movie. Everyone knew she was brilliant. It's just that the movie is of a type that everyone knows "shouldn't" win awards. What won Best Supporting Actress that year? Cate Blanchett for - you knew it was coming - doing an impression of Katherine Hepburn. In a performance that wouldn't get within touching distance of a list of Top 10 Cate Blanchett roles.

I think the thing that people simply don't realise with the Acting noms is the respective levels of difficulty with performances and it's really starting to get my goat. When Bale or Malek win, that's going to be 18, yes EIGHTEEN, Best Actor or Actress Awards THIS CENTURY for biopic performances as famous people. And that doesn't even include Jeff Bridges doing a fictionalised version of a role clearly based on a real person. That's 50% of the Lead Actor Oscar for a genre of movie that barely gets 2-3% of all releases. Does that make any sense to anyone? Thing is: giving a performance based on the characteristics of a famous person is pretty much the simplest task you can give an actor. I mean "copying" is not the highest order skill when it comes to human behaviour. Yes, really it's more complicated than that, but compared to original performances (or even performances in conceptual biopics rather than facsimile ones) with a driving objective force, giving a rendition of the most well known/notable scenes from a person't life is not a relatively equivalent challenge. The thing that's turned me even more against these performances, and I'll just use Malek as an example here because it's the one in front of us - is so many use the "It's a risk" argument. Or even worse the "They have a rabid fan base and so it could go wrong" argument. 1: That dynamic is no different from people playing roles in famous franchises and popular books, and 2: It isn't a risk performance wise. Compare Meryl Streep doing a Thatcher impersonation with her doing lead performance in broad, kitsch musical Mamma Mia. Which one of those is the real risk? What about Helen Mirren doing an impression of The Queen compared with her trying (and failing) to lead a horror film in Winchester or playing a panto villain Rat in Nutcracker? In the same time as 18 have WON best actor or actress for biopics, 2 performances from horror movies have been NOMINATED in those categories. And the one of those who actually won (Natalie Portman for Black Swan) was sneakily positioned as a 'psychological drama' upon release rather than the horror movie it actually was (same as Silence of the Lambs was back in 1990). And yet I (and I should probably be clear here that I'm a performance tutor and researcher and not just making this up) would strongly argue that horror, comedy and musical performances are FAR more challenging than biopic performances. My argument: well here you go - try to name a list of good actors who have fallen flat on their face making a biopic. Maybe Travolta for Gotti (but you're pushing 'good actor' there, really and that was clearly a vanity project)? After that? Not much. But there is a list as long as your arm of examples of great actors falling flat on their face in comedies and horror films: heck, De Niro alone could probably get you to double figures. Why does it bother me so much? Hmmmmm. I think it's because of the relationship we have to expertise. If someone performs in a drama then there is a false sense that the performance quality might be subjective, whereas when Gary Oldman does a performances as Churchill and 'he really talks and acts like Churchill' then it *feels* more objectively accurate to say it's good. The thing is there ARE objective ways of judging a performance in a drama, you just need a higher order skill set and more experience to do it. Toni Collette gave one of the best performances of the last few years. She didn't get a nomination this year. Mostly because she deigned to give that performance in a horror film. Sam Rockwell did. For a half decent 10 minute impression of George Bush. I think that sums it up. (Sorry for length. I realise I'm a pompous ass)

Anther voice to say that Dan Murrell and Roth Cornet are comfortably the best talking heads who produce scheduled programming of that nature online. While disagreeing sometimes over individual movies, I don't see how anyone could throw allegations of baiting/sensationalism or a lack of perspective in their work, and their analysis is usually presented from the right places. As for this weekend, Spider-Verse looks like it's going to have another great hold. But I think the question of the week is how well Green Book's expansion is going to go.