Monday
Dec282020
What did you see over Christmas weekend?
Monday, December 28, 2020 at 8:56AM Here's the Christmas weekend box office in the U.S. The domestic box office was, of course, still scant due to the pandemic...
- Wonder Woman $16.7 new
- News of the World $2.4 new
- The Croods: New Age $1.7 (cum. $30.3)
- Monster Hunter $1.1 (cum. 4.2)
- Promising Young Woman $680k new
- Fatale $660k (cum. $1.9)
- Pinnochio $274k new
That's a frustratingly small number for Promising Young Woman which barely eked out more than the new Hilary Swank film (Fatale) which has received much less press and was in its second weekend. We're going to assume it's because Promising is more of a coastal appeal title and theaters are still closed in those markets. What did you see over the weekend? At TFE HQ we watched Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max, Soul on Disney+ and finally caught up with Never Rarely Sometimes Always in the rush to complete all 2020 viewing for year-end review activities.
Reader Comments (26)
Aren't we underestimating the Greengrass movie? I haven't seen it but it looks like a decent category filler.
Yea I don’t think we can read too much into box office numbers these days. One quirk as it relates to Oscar: how will we deduce what is popular among audiences? The Blind Side / Black Panther / Inception / Get Out nominations happened largely because of huge box office returns. Without that barometer, we’ll never know.
Made Little Women 1994 our Christmas movie this year, so the bf could understand how Winona is the one true Jo (even Gerwig's version is better in every other conceivable metric).
Also watched Mank, which is a giant shrug from me right now, but maybe will grow the longer I sit with it.
Just watched Summer of 85. i am both sad and smiling.
Caught up on some older titles:
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me -- It deserves the reappraisal. I haven't seen the TV series, but this is Pure Lynch.
Homicide -- A great, underappreciated David Mamet detective film that turns into a devastating exploration of Jewish identity
My Brilliant Career -- A beautifully photographed, refreshing period piece. I don't know why I never bothered to watch this, but it deserves to be considered a classic!
The Secret of the Grain -- Another one I can't believe I missed. One of the best French films of the 21st century so far, and very much a defining film for contemporary French Cinema
Man Bites Dog -- Gave this one a second try after turning it off years ago. It's brilliant, bold, sickening but also more funny than I remember.
Let's just say, this weekend I did a lot of watching. More than usual.
Wonder Woman 1984- better than the hyperbolic hate its getting on twitter. Thought Wiig especially was great.
Soul- Loved! Made me cry. Would like if this snuck into the Best Pic lineup.
Promising Young Woman- overall, enjoyed! But expected more bite and to be honest, Cassie never felt like a real character and Mulligan never comes across as American to me.
Saw Let Them All Talk where I thought Wiest and Chan were the best of the ensemble,it was great too see DIanne..
I watched Soul and Ma Rainey - both of which I really liked.
Also started watching Bridgerton which I"m enjoying as well. - Julie Andrews as Gossip Girl! XOXO
I saw "Searching for Bobby Fisher" (1993) whose cast is filled with great actors when they were young-Joe Mategna, Laurence Fishburn, Joan Allen, Willam H Macy, Laura Linney and many more- the casting director did an Oscar worth job.
SOUL, which was both good and underwhelming. The main problems as I see it are with the plotting: it's overly hectic, especially in the body-swap portion, with too many moving narrative parts that groan and clash instead of fitting elegantly together. I wish it had spent more time with Joe on Earth, as himself, instead of having this rare Black protagonist literally co-opted by another (white-voiced) character. The stuff in NYC, focused on the music, is where the film achieves its sublimity.
2020 films and one from 2011.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
The tale is, at its basest, a visit. But it is also a series of long monologues about film criticism, of bleak poems, of bleaker landscape paintings, of a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, of the secret lives of sick pigs, of tragic artists who self-inflict wounds, of being unloved, and what lessons we can find in an ice cream parlor that stays open for business even on a snowy night. And of course, a lot more meditations on 'unsuccessful' aging and atavistic loneliness. There is a scene in the last quarter of the story that flipped everything and you suddenly realised that a narrative can have a different meaning, a different reading, a different outcome even, if the perspective suddenly changes and unfloors you and then you start to see things differently, even the characters you thought you knew and identified well with. You have this feeling of sudden enlightenment or falling even deeper in a snowy rabbit hole of incomprehension. So when the tale's ending unfolded that sees an elderly fellow sing a song of brokenness from a character who was demonized in a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, I can't help but applaud that song and that performance even if it won't end well in the diegesis-within-diegesis where that song belongs. And his final words still haunt me: "It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found".
The Eye of the Storm (2011)
Although I have seen and read way too many stories about visiting one's parents (like the Charlie Kaufman film above), I like how the pompous children navigate the tense terrain of saying hello to mother even if their agenda is not motivated purely by love for mother. Almost like a chamber piece, the performances were uniformly excellent, well-paced cinematic narrative, and beautiful photography (although at times a bit made-for-TV). I haven't read Nobel Prize-winning writer Patrick White's novel the film was based on but if that book created the exciting and vicious characters brought to life by Charlotte Rampling, Judy Davis and Geoffrey Rush, I'll give it a go. There was a scene where the grown up children reminisce their childhood and the romantic nostalgia that came with it only to be yanked back and be forcefully reminded at the icy hearts of these grown-ups. I guess human hearts can be landscaped by the emotional circumstances of early childhood.
Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
The film painted the drama of a dysfunctional family that keeps entangling and disentangling itself whenever a yelled verbal abuse is hurled, or when someone marries or dies. The past-present back and forth effectively prevented a tendency for mawkishness so that deaths and tearful reunions are footnotes rather than exercises in emotional manipulation. The cast, especially the three actresses who were formative in J.D.'s early life were uniformly good; cinematography is vivid if a bit over-lit; score is used judiciously unlike the overkill used in the trailer. I know how this story will end and that it will be a 'success' story which offers an interesting commentary on the undesirability of being an economic refugee, that being poor had to be transcended to be a success, that the lives and habitus of these poor 'salt of the earth' are in unending cesspools, in a quagmire, that one is lucky to leave behind.
I'm not visiting a movie theater until well after vaccines have been given to most Americans, and herd immunity is declared. I know I'm not the only one.
I enjoyed Ma Rainey's Black Bottom a lot. Viola was wonderful, and I have just read that she was very open sexually (gay or bi, and into orgies?). Like most, I don't know what the Oscars are going to do this year.
Babyteeth - refreshing and original dark comedy that is also a lovely coming of age film.
Soul - nice but it felt liked it lacked a couple of revisions, like the logics of it weren't fully designed
Circus of Books - a little unfocused and light, but worthy tale of an important gay landmark
Midnight Sky... bored to tears with a pastiche of so many other way better scifi films... from Silent Running to Gravity... through The Day after Tomorrow (yes, that Emmerich film is better, as at least is more entertaining!)
Just finished now Sally Potter's "The Roads Not Taken", which is also slow but way more interesting and ambitious and features two outstanding performances by Javier Bardem and Elle Fanning. A pity the movie (reasonably, for how slow it is, though) bombed critically, because apart from the leads, cinematography, and score, could be in conversation for awards.
Also, Soul. I thought it was a complete masterpiece and probably Pete Docter's best. It should be really in conversation for Picture and Director.
Krampus, my Christmas tradition, with some friends who have never seen it. Tony Collette really is something in horror movies.
Just checked on some Oscar hopefuls: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (YES for Bakalova), Sound of Metal (yes for Ahmed and the sound design - and Cooke’s singing voice), Chicago 7 (Langella and Yahya being the best of the ensemble) and Da 5 Bloods (Delroy Lindo, superb!). Also the very good indie The Vast of Night, some episodes of the Korean monster extravaganza Sweet Home, Rudd’s road Fundamentals of Caring and the funny but very US/UK-centric Netflix retrospective special Death of 2020.
Having won Best Actress and Best Screenplay from the NYFCC, I watched Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always. I was very underwhelmed (Always). It was basically like watching one of those Made for TV after-school specials about a ‘serious’ subject. Pregnant teen travels to NY to get an abortion. That’s basically the entire movie. Being named Best Actress-the girl had one great scene (answering questions with the NRSA answers). Other than that, it was basically staring out the bus or subway windows, placing her hair behind her ear or looking at the sights of NY. Did I miss something compelling?
THE ENDLESS TRENCH - Spain's Oscar entry. Good movie, plays right into the Academy's wheelhouse as Nathaniel says.
KOKO: A RED DOG STORY - felt I had to watch given it got an AACTA nomination for Best Indie film. it turned out to be my favourite in the franchise (which is not hard, to be honest).
WOLFWALKERS - this is my first dance with cartoon Saloon. Liked it, particularly the use of circle motifs in the animation
NOMADLAND - as good as I expected it to be. I may now have my retirement plan!
Saw Promising Young Woman. Thought it took a bit to find its groove but when it did - whoa. Absolutely loved it. Thought Mulligan was spectacular. She can absolutely win Best Actress. Also loved Bo Burnam - he would be on my Supporting Actor Oscar ballot.
Re-watches of Real Genius, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and Tootsie and a first-timer in Wonder Woman 1984.
@Jonathan: 100% agree with you on SOUL. It's good but honestly I could have spent the whole movie with the protagonist and his dilemma, which was compelling and skipped all the fantasy afterlife stuff, which I feel is just more of the tropes we saw in Inside/Out and Coco. The voice work, esp from Angela Bassett & Jamie Foxx, was great,and the character design was wonderful.
Watched The Flight Attendant, Bridgerton, Chewing Gum, Born in Flames (1983), all worth the time.
Has any of this site’s actressexual correspondents written about this past decade’s substance-abusing female antiheroes? See The Flight Attendant, The Queen’s Gambit, How to Get Away With Murder etc.
Also: would be interested in a TFE take on the current speculative fiction trend, which seems to be split into at least two categories: 1) dystopian (The Man in the High Castle, The Plot Against America, The Handmaid’s Tale; 2) selectively utopian (Bridgerton, Hollywood);
I saw Wonder Woman. Not amazing and a real fall after the first one, but more enjoyable than most of what we get in the genre. At the very least, it’s more entertaining than Spider-Man 3, half the X-Men films and Thor 2.
Where are all of these theaters open and who is going. Seeing these numbers - they look massive.
I had planned to go to the cinema but it is closed due to the pandemic, I only watch movies on TV
L'incredibile storia dell'Isola delle Rose (Rose Island) - The rhytm and tone reminds me to The Wolf of Wall Street and like the Martin Scorsese movie I find it quite entertaining but just that.
Cidade Passaro - (Shine Your Eyes) - A soft thriller with an inspired script beautifully directed.
Nadie Sabe Que Estoy Aqui (Nobody Knows I'm Here) - I love this one. I like how the story slowly is developed until the climax scene right before the end. The cameo of Gastón Pauls is amazing, he develops such a complex character in a brief time, and the principal song couldn't be better.
Cuidado con lo que deseas - Very very bad. I don't recommend to watch it.
Por la Libre (Dust tu Dust) - I don't love dramedies but this one has a perfect balance of drama and comedy avoiding the extremes of tragedy and goofines in a same story, good direction work. Bonus point for the soundtrack.
Tiempo Compartido (Time Share) - This movie displaced The Favourite as my favorite film from 2018. Is like a nightmare dressed of happy faces and places. The pinkish cinematography is hipnotic, the score intriguing and the performances mind-blowing.
Superlópez - Very silly, which I love it. Julián López is hilarious. It doesn't work totally as parody but definitively does as comedy.
Ciudad de Ciegos (City of the Blind) - Great opening scene and masterful ending scene with the appaerance of a powerful trio of musicians (Saul Hernández, Sax and the goddess Rita Guerrero); is a shame that the stories between feels repetitive for the love-sex-heartbreak item.
La Región Salvaje (The Untamed) - A little disturbing and bizarre but is good as a metaphorical critic of society and I appreciate that directors works in risky films.
The fighting sequences are spectacular, and the story is engrossing, uplifting, and fun. Wonder Woman is heroic and spirited. Wonder woman is a nice movie!