Halfway Mark - Team Experience Favourites

I'll be sharing my midyear ballots (such as they are) over the next couple of days but first let's hear from the whole team. Or, some of them - those that volunteeered their little in progress top fives. The team hopes you enjoy these little peeks into our individual film experiences from January through June at the movies (and in some cases, at home).

Chris Feil's midyear top five  
Twitter | Instagram | This Had Oscar Buzz | TFE Articles 

01 Her Smell's redemptive anarchy in five acts

02 Ari Aster's hilarious Midsommar -time sadness

03 Claire Denis' sci-fi descent into the black hole of our biology High Life.

04 The haves-and-have-nots horror of Us.

05 Zhao Tao giving another masterclass in Jia Zhangke's Ash is Purest White.  

Paolo Kagaoan's midyear top five
Twitter | Instagram | All of Paolo's articles

01 Homecoming: A Film By Beyonce... When  Beyonce descended from those steps, Sergei Eisenstein rose back from the dead, burned every copy of Battleship Potemkin, and killed himself.

02 Elizabeth Olsen in Endgame because she reminded me that Thanos is an asshole... 

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Linkgame

• IndieWire Avengers Endgame, which is still in wide release (985 theaters) at this writing will be "rereleased" on Friday. LOL. That just means it's adding more theaters again and this time it will have a deleted scene. It's fitting that the special poster for it is Thanos' fist since they're still trying to pummel Avatar's #1 status. 
• Variety on Wes Studi's landmark Honorary Oscar

After the jump news on Bond 25, The Irishman, a new take on Flash Gordon, animation awards, and a movie you probably forgot all about (I did!) finally getting released years after people wrote it off...

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Review Catch-Up: Superheroes, spies, gangsters, and street rats

by Nathaniel R

As ever we've fallen behind. Here are four pictures currently in theaters that didn't get a proper review or a podcast discussion on the site. File under better late than never because we didn't mean to ignore them. Would love to hear your thoughts, too... 

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No Hit Ever Dies: Cruella, Juno, Saw, Snowpiercer, and Capernaum

• Coming Soon Emma Thompson is in talks to join Disney's Cruella movie. No word on what her role is, though, since its Emma Stone playing the title character
• Playbill Leos Carax (Holy Motors) begins shooting a movie musical called Annette this summer. Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver star
• MNPP Rocketman photocall at Cannes. Fun suit, Taron Egerton
• Screen Daily how Nadine Labaki's Capernaum became a major hit in China's growing arthouse cinema market
• Variety ...and speaking of. Labaki is working on a documentary on the making of Lebanon's all time biggest hit film

More after the jump including Avengers Endgame, a reboot of Saw, recent Hollywood deaths, and the latest news from Broadway...

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What did you see this weekend?

Weekend Box Office Estimates May 3rd-5th (ESTIMATES) 🔺 = New or Expanded Theater Count
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES 800 screens or less
Long Shot	El Chicano
1 Avengers: Endgame  $145.8 (cum. $619.6)	1🔺 El Chicano  $700k on 605 screens *NEW*
2 🔺 The Intruder $11 *NEW*	2 🔺 Amazing Grace $367k on 263 screens (cum. $2.7)
3 🔺 Long Shot  $10 *NEW* REVIEW	3 🔺 Red Joan $253k on 139 screens (cum. $527k) DAME JUDI
4 🔺 Uglydolls  $8.5 *NEW*	4 The Mustang  $151k on 229 screens (cum. $4.8)
5 Captain Marvel $4.2 (cum. $420.7) REVIEW	5 🔺 The White Crow $98k on 19 screens (cum. $210k)

Though they didn't hit the top five among limited releases both Olivier Assayas's Non-Fiction and Zhang Yimou's Shadow opened with decent per screen averages in very limited release so expect them to expand a bit soon. Meanwhile Claire Denis's High Life just crossed the million dollar mark making it her biggest hit in the US since Chocolate back in 1989. 

Avengers Endgame is already the 2nd biggest film of all time globally (not adjusted for inflation) having beaten Titanic's total gross this weekend by just a single million at this writing. Only Avatar remains to be conquered.