quote:

Originally posted by cardaddict:
I have just read an explanation of MOTHER! on a website, and it only served to enhance my viewing of the movie, because I then said to myself, "Oh! So that's what it was all about!"

There's going to be no middle ground. People will either really like mother! or they will really hate it.

As for explanations, there are at least THREE possible roads to go down and any combination of the THREE, depending I guess on what's most important to you. I don't know which meaning you read about and I don't want to spell them out, as you say some people don't want to know what they are watching. I suspect Aronofsky hedged his bet and threw in enough clues so that viewers could support which ever road matters most to them. That is of course if you are buying any of it.

I do like to know about movies before I see them. Perhaps not the entire plot, and certainly not who done it in a who done it, but enough to know that I won't walk into something I think is a PoS.

I also don't want to have to read a thesis on what I have seen afterwards. Some things can and should be left to interpretation, but when you have no idea what you're watching, it doesn't make it genius. It doesn't make it profound. It just might be lousy self-indulgent story telling.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Raven,

Bottom line - MOTHER! was about...

Two hours and one minute!

Looks like Mother did poorly, but "IT" is now the 8th biggest film of the year, and within a few days will surpass Logan and Fate of the Furious and move to # 6 for 2017.

I saw IT (IT not it) yesterday. For a movie that was going to provide few surprises I thought it (it not IT) was very well done.

The movie is well crafted and in spite of being very familiar with the story, I really had fun watching it. (it or IT your choice)

As of today, the Top 10 grossing films of the year at the U.S. box office are

1) Beauty and the Beast
2) Wonder Woman
3) Guardians of the Galaxy 2
4) Spider Man Homecoming
5) IT
6) Despicable Me 3
7) Logan
8) Fate of the Furious
9) Dunkirk
10) Lego Batman Movie

The biggest movie of the year is Get Out.

It made 175M domestic and 252M with the international and currently sits at #11 for total grosses.

Why is it the biggest? Because it cost 4.5M to make. Now that's what I call a return on investment.

IT was also very good at a budget of 35M. All the rest in the top ten were 80M - 200M to make.

Some of the films released in the last week or so have not exactly been lighting up the box office.


American Made with Tom Cruise. Only 21 M

Lego Ninjago Movie. 36 M

Flatliners (remake) 8 M

Look for Blade Runner 2049 to do very well this weekend, partially because there is little new competition. Its supposed to be very nice to look at, but much less soul than the original. Funny thing is that Blade Runner never opened well and was a bit of a flop until it built a cult following years later.

Just in time for Halloween, The Snowman looks pretty wicked in trailers.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
Look for Blade Runner 2049 to do very well this weekend, partially because there is little new competition. Its supposed to be very nice to look at, but much less soul than the original. Funny thing is that Blade Runner never opened well and was a bit of a flop until it built a cult following years later.

Blade Runner 2049 is a 'Hit' in the UK, but a 'Movie Miss' in the USA. A bit of analysis here:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41546692

I liked it, but the 3D version I saw was in too small of an auditorium, and the movie needs a LARGE screen to be fully effective. I want to go back and see it in IMAX, but I probably won't.

AMERICAN MADE would have been a MUCH better movie if they'd used locked-down cameras instead of the all pervading and annoyingly wobbly hand held cameras, which all the directors and editors seem to think makes everything more 'real'. All it does is irritate me.

Yes, they expected Blade Runner to make 50 M this weekend in the U.S. and instead it made 31 M

On the radio, they said that the vast majority of people who saw it, were ones who saw the original in 1982

In other words, people who saw the new film were older folk, and the new film did not appeal to people who did NOT see the original

Tom Cruise has not had a good year.

2 underwhelming films.

Maybe time to hang it up ?

quote:

Originally posted by WOMBLE:

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
Look for Blade Runner 2049 to do very well this weekend, partially because there is little new competition. Its supposed to be very nice to look at, but much less soul than the original. Funny thing is that Blade Runner never opened well and was a bit of a flop until it built a cult following years later.

Blade Runner 2049 is a 'Hit' in the UK, but a 'Movie Miss' in the USA. A bit of analysis here:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41546692

Yeah, it made 31.5M on a budget of 150M, so not what I expected. But its particularly bad because the other film competition was so weak this weekend. I mean the Mountain Between Us, two people and a dog in the snow for 2 hours. Yippee.

So a couple of things in the aftermath.

The movie is WAY TOO LONG. At 163 minutes, who has the attention span anymore? Certainly not the young audience the studio wants to pull in. What the heck is the DVD Director's Cut going to be, 5 hours? This story does not need all that time, so a lot of it is going to be atmosphere and fancy camera angles.

Sci-fi films have been numerous lately and besides Star Wars, they haven't done that well. I think its because sci-fi has always been about bigger ideas than the story, but that was in the novels. When made to films, most of the cosmic musings and quasi-religious philosophies got diluted out of them. That's why the books were always better. Now a lot of those themes are being left in, but mass audiences don't want them and don't understand them.

Finally, sure audiences for this one are older. That's the Blade Runner fans. However the original movie did not do well either. The fans came afterwards from other viewings. Blade Runner had very dark themes. I always liked the replicants better than the humans. I thought Rutger Hauer was much better than Harrison Ford. If you recall the movie, Hauer is the one who lets Ford live, but his time runs out. Not having read the synopsis of the new film, I don't know what this new story is about.

So yeah, maybe this one will be a dud and stay that way, or maybe it will also have to be discovered later on. Of course with the way things work today, it could still get its money back when its all tallied up.

Assuming Blade Runner ends up grossing less than 100 M in the U.S., it won't even be in the Top 25 films of the year in terms of domestic money made. Very disappointing.

I thought THE MUMMY was great.

And yes, I did see BLADE RUNNER a long time ago at the theater.

There weren't many fancy camera angles in BLADE RUNNER 2049 as far as I could tell. Lots of nice easy to fathom shots except, of course, in the fight scenes. I guess it's hard to make a fight scene without 20 cuts per second - NOT! See KINGSMAN SECRET SERVICE and the early James Bond films for example.

Regarding Blade Runner-- when you think about it, aside from Star Wars VII and Indiana Jones, nearly 10 years ago, Harrison Ford has not had a major hit at the U.S. box office since the ghost movie, "What Lies Beneath", with Michelle Pfeiffer...and that was way back in the summer of 2000.

You could say the same thing about a lot of big name movie stars. The movies that make block buster type money now a days are franchise titles and most have many stars working as a group. So the individual star has a money maker, but really its the title that's doing all the work. They are not carrying the film all by themselves.

When is the last time a George Clooney movie made any money besides Ocean's # whatever? What has Depp been doing besides Pirates? Brad Pitt, only so-so. Pratt can be the star of a Galaxy or Jurassic, but Passengers bombed. Names like DeNiro and Pacino and Douglas are long gone as leading men.

Gosling is probably your big male actor now, but even he won't carry Blade Runner just because he's in it.

So they still get paid a small fortune on their names and reputations, yet modern audiences don't seem to have many must-see favorites anymore. And that's also because these same actors make some awful films when they decide they want to do "art" and win Oscars.

I looked it up.

The last big hit that Clooney had was that astronaut film, "Gravity", in 2013.

Johnny Depp, aside from the Pirates films, his last hit was the animated kids' movie "Rango" in 2011. Before that, probably "Alice in Wonderland" in 2010.

DeNiro, probably the stupid "Meet the Parents" films with Ben Stiller.

Pacino, nothing since the mid-1990s !

In case you're wondering who the highest paid actors were the past 5 years:

2013- Robert Downey, Jr.
2014- Robert Downey, Jr.
2015- Robert Downey, Jr.
2016- Dwayne Johnson
2017- Mark Wahlberg

Here's a breakdown of what studios have had the hits so far in 2017, the Top 20 highest grossing films:


Warner Bros.-- 5 films

Disney-- 4 films

Universal-- 6 films

Fox--- 3 films

Sony-- 1 film (Spider-Man)

Paramount-- 1 film (Transformers)


However, I'm sure that the above list will change when Star Wars, Justice League, and Thor 3 are released. Disney will then have 6 films in the Top 20, Warner Bros. will also have 6, Universal will be knocked down to 4, and Paramount will be knocked off the list completely.