C O N S I D E R - Best of the First Half of the Film Year

by Nathaniel R

For our halfway mark party we've covered biggest hits of multiple kinds, favorite actresses, and favorite actors. To be eligible for these "best ofs / favorites" whatever you'd like to call them lists, a film must have been released from January 1st through June 30th in 2018. Oscar holdovers like Loveless (Russia's nominee) don't count because the Oscar nomination permanently marks them as a 2017 film even though they weren't released until 2018. To conclude our halfway mark year in review party, here are seven favs from each category we hope Oscar will at least think about once the onslaught of fall prestige films happen. So, ready? Here we go...

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Streaming: Revisiting "Annihilation"

by Chris Feil

Alex Garland’s sci-fi psychosis film Annihilation is exhausting on several levels and in the best way, as if it was destined to be more beloved once reassessed. Its imposing, deliberate unhinging of time and reality is not exactly built for a complacent viewers. It’s also a brilliantly assembled metaphor for depression in dark times..

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What did you see this weekend?

Black Panther continued gobbling up profits with another $100 million this weekend. Game Night (reviewed) and Alex Garland's sci-fi whatsit Annihilation opened to $16 and $11 million respectively, picking up the superhero's scraps. But those are pretty good scraps. Meanwhile outside the top ten all the Best Picture contenders had their last full hurrah since they're all at less than 800 theaters now and some become "losers" a week from today. Last chance to see them on the big screen people. (You can see how each of them have fared at the domestic and global box office on the Best Picture chart.) 

What did I see this weekend? I finally saw Roman J Israel Esq. the last 2017 movie I'm going to be able to see now that the Film Bitch Awards have begun. It was... interesting. And I mean that in the literal sense and in the sense of what you say when you dont really want to talk about it or don't know where to begin. 

Tweetweek: Turkish cats, Billboards legacy, Kidman repurposed

Tee hee. The Best Picture nominees are still very much in the air in this week's tweet collection after the jump. Subjects include but are not limited to: Black Panther, Lady Bird, Best Picture time frames, and a visual reminders of what Three Billboards is good for. Plus a visual reminder why the cat documentary Kedi had such wonderful "characters"... 

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YNMS: "Annihilation"

Chris here. It's not too early to start getting excited for what's coming next year, right? Call it optimism to get 2017 over and done with (even if it's providing us with great films). And one of our most anticipated of next year is one that comes early: February's Annihilation.

The film is writer/director Alex Garland's follow-up to the beloved Ex Machina and is another stoic sci-fi endeavor. Based on the first book in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, Natalie Portman stars as a biologist exploring the mysterious Area X after her husband's expedition of the land ended in disaster. Area X is a geographical anomaly of sorts, and the government may or may not know the full extent of its power. VanderMeer's series is a tricky bit of first-person genre work, so I have long been curious how it could translate to film, particularly with his creepy but evasive details of Area X. Let's take a look at the first trailer and run down the Yes No Maybe So of the results:

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