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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Podcast: Last Black Man in San Francisco, Toy Story 4

by Murtada Elfadl and Nathaniel R

 

Index (49 minutes)
00:01 Toy Story 4. Fun but was that necessary?
06:57 Emma Thompson shines in Late Night. Deserves a bigger audience.
20:10 Sienna Miller's character study American Woman 
32:00 We highly recommend the stylized, moving The Last Black Man in San Francisco.
47:11 The wrap-up 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Late Night and Last Black Man in San Francisco

What did you see this weekend?

Weekend Box Office Estimates June 21st-23rd (UPDATED WITH ACTUALS) 🔺 = New or Expanding / ★ = Highly Recommended
W I D E	PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES
Toy Story 4	Last Black Man in San Francisco
1 🔺 Toy Story 4  $120.9 *NEW* on 4575 screens	1🔺 The Dead Don't Die $1.1 (cum. $4.7) on 690 screens REVIEW
2 🔺 Child's Play $14 *NEW* on 3007 screens REVIEW	2 🔺  Pavarotti $431k (cum. $1) on 135 screens
3  Aladdin  $13.2 (cum. $288.5) on 3435 screens REVIEW, 1992 RETROSPECTIVE	3 🔺 The Last Black Man in San Francisco $410k (cum. $1.3) on 72 screens REVIEW ★
4 Men in Black International  $10.7 (cum. $52.6) on 4224 screens REVIEW	4 🔺  Echo in the Canyon $225k (cum. 1.1) on 81 screens
5 Secret Life of Pets 2 $10.2 (cum. $117.5) on 3804 screens REVIEW	5  Biggest Little Farm $164k (cum. $3.2) on 134 screens
6 Rocketman $5.6 (cum. $77.2) on 2414 screens  REVIEW ★	6 🔺 Wild Rose $52k *NEW* on 4 screens

What did you see this week? 

• True to the overstated but possibly real 'franchise fatigue' of summer 2019, Toy Story 4 opened lower than both studio and analyst's expectations though $118 million is still a hefty opening tally, and the third best of the year (Disney has the top four openings all to themselves). Meanwhile Child's Play also fell short of expectations continuing the trend. If only some original film would break out we could view it as people being tired of sequels and franchises, but it's probably not that as they're not seeking out anything new instead. Speaking of franchise fatigue, Godzilla: King of Monsters managed to inch over the $100 million mark this weekend. But with a budget of $170 million (not including P&A) that's still rough waters for the iconic kaiju to swim in.

• In platform releases, The Last Black Man in San Francisco and the music docs Echo in the Canyon and Pavarotti continued to do well all three crossing the $1 million mark this weekend. 

• The new titles not listed above included Anna, earning $3.6 million its opening weekend, the documentaries Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, A Bigger Splash (a rerelease of the art doc classic) and The Quiet One earning $48k, $18k, and $10k respectively.

April Foolish Predictions #1: Animated Feature

[drumroll] It's Time! Our annual April Foolish Oscar Predictions have begun.

Please bear in mind that, though the predictions may actually seem foolish and will surely be out of date within a few weeks (if not sooner as more concrete news about the film year emerges), we are actually pretty good at this. Before each category we'll tell you what we generally score this far in advance. And if you think it seems low, that just proves to us that you haven't actually written down your predictions during the first week of april, not changed them with every scrap of news you heard, and then checked that hard copy nearly a year later to see how well it held up!

First up is Best Animated Feature where our traditional prediction score this early is 3/5. But 2019 might well hold more suprises than usual...

Click to read more ...