"Parasite" explodes --what did you see over the weekend?
Monday, October 14, 2019 at 9:08PM What did you see over the weekend? I went to Pain & Glory for a second time and as with all Pedro Almodóvar movies, the second viewing is richer than the first. But the big story of the weekend was Bong Joon-ho's Parasite. EVERY SCREENING in NYC was sold out by Friday morning. It must have also been crowded in Los Angeles because it achieved the highest per screen average of the entire year, and the best since La La Land (2016) and we all know what happened to La La Land. Not that Parasite is going to earn $151 million in US release alone and win 6 Oscars but, still, what a feat for its opening weekend.
| Weekend Box Office October 11-13 (ACTUALS) 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = recommended |
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| WIDE RELEASE (800+ screens) |
PLATFORM TITLES |
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| 1 JOKER $55.8 (CUM $193.5) REVIEW |
1 🔺 PARASITE $384k *new* PODCAST, BEST OF TIFF ★ |
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| 2 🔺 THE ADDAMS FAMILY $30.3 *new* |
2 🔺 MY PEOPLE MY COUNTRY $303K (cum. $2.1) |
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| 3 🔺 GEMINI MAN $20.5 *new* REVIEW |
3 🔺 PAIN & GLORY $271k (cum. $557k) REVIEW, PODCAST, TV SPOT ★ |
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| 4 ABOMINABLE $6 (cum. $47.8) |
4 LINDA RONSTADT... $205k (cum. $3.1) REVIEW |
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| 5 DOWNTON ABBEY $4.8 (cum $82.6) COSTUMES, MAGGIE SMITH ★ |
5 🔺 WHERE'S MY ROY COHN? $91k (cum. $351k) |
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| 6 HUSTLERS $3.8 (cum. $98) REVIEW, SOUNDTRACK, COSTUMES ★ | 6 🔺 LUCY IN THE SKY $78k (cum. $160k) REVIEW |
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| 7 JUDY $3.2 (cum. $14.9) PODCAST, QUICK TAKE, BEST ACTRESS |
7 BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON $66k (cum. $7) REVIEW ★ |
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| 8 IT: CHAPTER TWO $3.1 (cum. $207) |
8 🔺 FANTASTIC FUNGI $64k (cum. $144k) |
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| 9 🔺 JEXI $3.1 *new* |
9 🔺 HIGH STRUNG FREE DANCE $54k *new* |
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| 10 AD ASTRA $1.8 (cum. $46.9) REVIEW ★ |
10 THE CLIMBERS $45K (cum. $452k) |
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| 11 RAMBO LAST BLOOD $1.4 (cum. $42.8) |
11 PROMARE $42k (cum. $1.3) |
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| 12 THE LION KING $684K (cum. $542.2) REVIEW |
12🔺 RAISE HELL: THE LIFE & TIMES OF MOLLY IVINS $34k (cum. $526k) REVIEW |
numbers on this chart are pulled from boxofficemojo.
That's all twelve movies still in wide release and their counterparts in the platforming world (though Brittany Runs a Marathon had a brief fling with being a wide release, but didn't quite crossover).
Joker had a very strong second weekend (the best second weekend of a wide release ever in October) but Lucy in the Sky had a disastrous one, expanding to 198 theaters but with a perfect screen average that was less than $400. The astronaut drama will go down as one of the year's big disasters.
Parasite, box office
Reader Comments (29)
Us (second viewing) and First Reformed (second viewing).
I hate it when SPC gets a foreign film (or really any film) because that means it probably won't open in my city, but I'm hopeful that Pain and Glory comes here. Neon is impressing me like A24 does.
First-timers in Night School (it's OK), Happy Death Day 2U (I liked it!), Bad Times at the El Royale (fucking awesome), and Joker (intense and eerie) along with re-watches of In the Mood for Love and 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Saw Downton Abby and absolutely loved it. If you had not seen the TV series for the 7 or 8 seasons, you would have been totally lost as to the relationships, etc.
The many threads to the story were so beautifully answered. A great ending to a great series!
Arkaan -- where do you live?
I saw Downton Abby. I forgot it within 5 minutes of leaving the theater.
Edmonton, Canada. So they don't even distribute in Canada (Mongrel Media has it). But if you compare films that other distributors have vs SPC, they mess up so much more often.
I saw JOKER and PARASITE, which made for a good thematic pairing. The former was simplistic and unrelentingly bleak, whereas the latter is the best film of the year. PARASITE is incentive, hilarious, heartbreaking and terrifying. Bong Joon-ho, unlike Todd Phillips, deeply engages with the issue of class struggle which makes for a satisfying and stimulating experience. JOKER only succeeded in beating me up. What a horrid viewing experience.
Finally saw UOATIH. One of QT's very best. So glad it wasn't spoiled for me in the months it's been out. I thought the ending was genuinely moving. The phrase "love letter to Hollywood" is overused...this is a TRUE love letter to Hollywood, a cinematic act of love.
I'm thrilled Robbie's still getting buzz, and I hope the Academy is imaginative enough to nominate her. The "underused" critique is so shallow to me. It implies that the measure of a performance is literally word count. (No wonder we end up with supporting categories full of leading performances every year.) If you think Sharon Tate is a minor or inconsequential presence in the movie then...god help you.
I saw "Pain and Glory." Almodóvar is not always my thing (I find his visual style kind of flat - still a problem here), but this one was very affecting. Great performances all around, even though the casting of Julieta Serrano as an older Penélope Cruz remains baffling. It's just a warm, bittersweet, reflective experience, for the spectator as it obviously is for its director.
I saw an early screening of Clemency. Woodard is strong but they’re not doing the film any favors with a late December release. Hodge, in another and better world, would be in the Supp Actor conversation if the category fraudsters cleared out.
Three catch-up films:
Saw UOATIH, I had not wanted to see it -- I don't like Tarantino in general, I don't like violent movies in general, I don't like white male heterosexual angst movies (i.e. most of what Hollywood produces). I was primed to hate it, but someone talked me into it...I loved it. So many scenes were just perfect cinematic vignettes. The acting was splendid, there was tremendous heart...I closed my eyes for the five minutes of horrific violence, and the rest was enchanting. I can't imagine that a beautifully made love letter to Hollywood by a much admired and long overdue director won't win Best Director and/or Best Picture, no matter what else comes along.
Judy: What. A. PERFORMANCE. Again here, I was deeply skeptical going in, and she had me at hello. And the film around the performance I felt was better than the reviews have indicated. I cannot imagine alone challenging RZ for the Oscar..
Ad Astra: This one I WAS looking forward to - I like a thoughtful SciFi film, the reviews were great, and I loved Lost City of Z., This was an incompetent snooze. Poorly made -- I keep thinking of the incomprehensible moon battle scene, which had no place in the narrative, and was so poorly shot you couldn't tell who was who or what was going on. What I really wanted was a different movie, "Ruth Negga and Natasha Lyonne on Mars" -- let's have that spinoff.
Judy - entertaining but kind of at the routine level of a TV movie of the week. I always felt like I was watching Renee, not Judy. It really bothers me that no one taught her how to hold a microphone like a real singer.
Pain & Glory - great for Almodovar fans. I would be totally fine if Antonio Banderas won best actor over Joaquin Phoenix.
Took my mother to see "Downton Abbey". She's a diehard fan of the series. I'd never seen or been interested in seeing a single episode. No surprise that my mom loved the movie. What did startle me was that I enjoyed it too. Even without knowing all the backstories I found it entertaining from beginning to end. Certainly full of fine actors. And what a pleasant surprise to see Robert James-Collier prominently featured as Barrow, the butler. The actor's an old favorite of mine from several seasons of Coronation Street (his character was killed off some years back and he's still missed). Had no idea he'd made the move from Street to Abbey. Anyway, I watched the first two Downton episodes tonight and I suspect I won't be able to resist eventually making my way through the whole series.
Two days later I caught " Dolemite is My Name" on the big screen. A terrific little film - engaging, endearing, hilarious - and Eddie Murphy's wonderful in it. I know the competition's incredibly thick this year but I'm hoping he manages to grab one of the five Best Actor slots.
Finally saw Portrait of the girl on fire. Sciamma is getting more and more confident behind the camera (some of her shots reminded me of films by Greenaway or Campion), the two leads were fantastic (as was Valeria Golina in her supporting turn) but I felt the movie somehow lacked passion... and fire.
Then Joker, which I can only describe as a very decent entertainment. I'm not sure about the legitimacy of that Golden Lion though.
Finally Christophe Honoré's Chambre 212. Funny, witty, with a great cast and an even greater, stellar turn by Chiara Matroianni, who's outdoing herself here.
Also, so happy Parasite is such a hit overseas. It's been playing at my local arthouse theater for the past four months.
Saw a trio of films this past week -- all with subtitles. All in darkened moviehouses.
Chambre 212 a.k.a. "On A Magical Night" is a retread of stories of what-could-have-beens à la It's a Wonderful Life, Non-Fiction and even A Christmas Carol. This time the older adults became shadows of who they were when they were young. There is a lot of homage to movies here, very talk-y and chatty air like early- to mid-career Woody Allen and Nora Ephron, and good deployment of songs as musical score. While a bit light in premise, the substance of the script intelligently goes beyond the usual stories of reflective recollections. The principal cast and their old/young selves were uniformly very good, animating the curves and crevices of the well developed screenplay. Certain line readings (especially how it is said in French) are funny without being precious.
La Gomera a.k.a. "The Whistlers" is a fun Romanian neo-noir borrowing suspense tropes from James Cain, Robert Siodmak and Jules Dassin. The premise is a cop (no unreliable voice overs here) who had to learn the idiom of the whistling language for communicating with people living in interstitial spaces inside and outside of the law. Offbeat, at times hilarious in a deadpan way and rife with truly beautiful mise en scène, the film is a deconstructed tribute to this specific and particular film genre but operates outside of it. All the characters are vividly drawn, the supporting ones carry out the one-dimensionality of their roles with a certain lived-in freshness. The use of music was also very tasteful and deliberately operatic as counterpoint to the life-and-death situations, quirkily told. Corneliu Porumboiu seems to be having fun directing this story -- it shows and I for one was swept by the story and storytelling.
Dylda a.k.a. "Beanpole" is heavy, intense, bleak and yet a surprisingly hopeful film from Kantemir Balagov. It chronicles the life of Iya a.k.a. Dylda because of her uncommon height and gangly posture and how she navigates the tricky terrain of surviving in post-war Leningrad. The aftereffects of war seem more devastating than when war was ongoing. A semblance of normalcy actually was the most painful realization of empty lives and meaningless selves. The story at times reminded me of films such as Beyond the Hills, Disobedience and An Elephant Sitting Still. The will to survive in an unforgiving environment had to be ferociously performed, yet there are societal dimensions that keep people from their own version of happiness. The two first-time actresses truly fleshed out their characters' hunger for connection. Is there a way out of this affective blockage post-war Leningrad imposed on common women? The one thing I noticed too is that characters are neither drawn as evil or good, just people whose morality and human nature tip where circumstances point towards.
Not sure if I want to see Joker yet.
I was disappointed by "Pain and Glory" - I wonder if this movie would work at all for someone who has never seen an Almodovar movie? The vague narrative doesn't really hang together, the flashbacks didn't especially resonate with the main timeline, and Banderas gets to do very little. It's just not a dynamic role, and I think this carried over the bad habit from "Julieta" of placing ellipses in all the wrong places, cutting away from the more interesting parts of a story or life.
Judy - Renee is really good in an otherwise meh film. The film was basically fine until that last scene, which I thought was the height of schmaltz. But then I talked to a friend who actually saw one of Judy's shows in London. She said that, in the performance she saw, Judy could barely get through any songs and spent most of the time just talking to the audience. She said it was still a lovely evening. So, maybe the ending wasn't that bad?
Pain and Glory - I thought the first half was a little slow. But then it just gets better and better. It's the Antonio Banderas show. He's really lovely in the movie. And big props to Leonardo and Julieta too.
Joker - I broke down and saw it. What an uncomfortable experience.
RE SPC: I'll never be over SPC taking two months to expand Call Me By Your Name to my fairly large city, so I feel that pain. Also, hoping to remain unspoiled for Parasite, but it's looking like it will expand very slowly, so wish me luck over the next month!
Anyway, I caught up with:
The Lion King - horrible.
The Goldfinch - not as bad as the reviews have made out. Very messy to be sure, but I wasn't bored and it was a pleasure to watch Roger Deakins and all those cozy knitwear sweaters for 2 and a half hours. Oakes Fegley is quite good.
Saw ADDAMS FAMILY and GEMINI MAN. Both very mediocre and yet...
Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron's voice-over work in ADDAMS FAMILY were enough for me to not have regretted seeing the movie. Same goes for GEMINI MAN and seeing Mary Elizabeth Winstead in action-movie mode. I'd love to see her do more stuff like it (I know she's in BIRDS OF PREY so no need to wait too long I guess).
Ken if you like Robert James-Collier you should deifnitely see the series. He has lots of screentime and scene-stealing
Finally saw HUSTLERS, and, yes, Jennifer Lopez, is worthy of that nomination. (Not the award itself, but a nomination, sure.) Stylish, empathetic to single mothers. I was surprised.
Nathaniel, thanks for the tip about Robert James-Collier. I've watched the first two episodes now and he's already delivering.
Caught up with Wild Rose on demand - didn't realize the lead actress (Jessie Buckley) is also in JUDY with Renee Z - if there is any justice -- Buckley will get a GGlobe nomination - her singing voice is Tremendous!!! Can't wait to get the soundtrack!
I did a bit of Oscar watching this weekend: HUSTLERS was released this week in Oz (and it was bloody fantastic! was not prepared for the high level of quality), and finally got around to ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD.
On the other end of the spectrum, I finally saw THE LION KING. The script was still good, and the voice actors were fine, but the animation left me cold(II did not feel sad when i was supposed to feel sad, nor nervous or anything else a set of more animated faces achieved in the 90s film) and so I rate it as a pretty spectacular failure.
Also saw a Jacques Becker double at my local film society (CASQUE D'OR and TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI), the Taiwan entry for the Oscars DEAR EX and a local documentary THE EULOGY.
I saw "Burnt Offerings'" (1976) old school psychological horror- with a great cast Oliver Reed, Bette Davis, Lee Montgomery and the great horror diva Karen Black. The film is a bit slow but it has great atmosphere.
Experienced cinematic water boarding by watching Joker. Unpleasant, mean and pointless. I really hope Joaquin does not get Oscared for this,
ceebee0714 - Jessie Buckley is SO GOOD in WILD ROSE. Why no one is talking about her is crazy. She was also very good in CHERNOBYL. She's having a grand year.
Ryan T. - Agreed on Jessie Buckley. One of my breakout stars of the year, with the one-two-three punch of Wild Rose, Chernobyl, and Judy.
Jaragon--Burnt Offerings is one my favorite films, saw it twice at the theater when I was a kid.