Interesting to see anime Jujutsu Kaisen 0 jump into the number 2 position after already pulling in $112M on the international scene. The two new domestic releases peak at number 4 and 11.

The Bat-Man continues to roll, wonder if Lost City can claim no 1 next week.

Spider-Man hits home/stream release, looks like they will let it float in theaters long enough to break the $800M domestic mark.

Dog could hit 4X its budget before the run is over.

Uncharted should hit world wide $350M. Respectable but not great. I would be surprised to see any further installments.

"The Power of the Dog" cost about 35 to 40 M to make and so far has grossed less than 400 K.

And yet Hollywood can't stop praising it.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
My favorite line was from Rotten Tomatoes

"The Power of the Dog reaffirms writer-director Jane Campion as one of her generation's finest filmmakers."

Which made me laugh a little as most of her generation has never even seen any of her films.

Maybe a little controversy might draw a bigger audience.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
"The Power of the Dog" cost about 35 to 40 M to make and so far has grossed less than 400 K.

And yet Hollywood can't stop praising it.

[/QUOTE]

I have to confess that I don't understand the support for this film among the Hollywood liberal community, unless they too haven't actually seen it.

They are trying to portray it as some sort of "Brokeback Mountain", so when Sam Elliot gave his thumbs down opinion, they jumped all over him for not getting with the program. But "Power of the Dog" is nothing like "Brokeback Mountain" and, despite being directed by Campion, has no audience to find.

It's probably been 20 years since a movie which won Best Picture Oscar was seen by a wide audience. I can recall in the early 2000s seeing Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, LOTR, and Million Dollar Baby. Seems like anything that won from 2005 onwards, your average person has never seen.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
It's probably been 20 years since a movie which won Best Picture Oscar was seen by a wide audience. I can recall in the early 2000s seeing Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, LOTR, and Million Dollar Baby. Seems like anything that won from 2005 onwards, your average person has never seen.

That is because they have to show how much `smarter' they are than us commoners.
Over the last 20 years I would put it at 50% of the movies are watchable and 33% are enjoyable.

Had to look them all up but the 20 before that (2001-1981) Is more like 75% watchable and 50% enjoyable.

Who knows maybe some of them will grow on me over time. The Artist and Crash never will!

Think of some of the films which have won over the past 15 years. None were commercial hits. Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, Hurt Locker, Argo, Moonlight, The Shape of Water, Parasite, Green Book, etc. Who actually saw any of these ?

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
"The Power of the Dog" cost about 35 to 40 M to make and so far has grossed less than 400 K.

And yet Hollywood can't stop praising it.

Yeah Power of the Dog is a joke but at least Dog is doing pretty good! Campion is just another tail wagging a dog.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Think of some of the films which have won over the past 15 years. None were commercial hits. Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, Hurt Locker, Argo, Moonlight, The Shape of Water, Parasite, Green Book, etc. Who actually saw any of these ?

I'm assuming sarcasm here.

With the exception of Hurt Locker (great film) all of them did very well at the box office. Argo, Shape of Water, Green Book and No Country for Old Men are all amazing.

I guess I am stuck in the past, as I have never seen any of the Best Picture winners of 2005 to 2020

I have seen all of the ones from 1990 to 2004, aside from "The English Patient", "Titanic", "Shakespeare in Love" and "American Beauty", which were the ones from 1996 to 1999.

I distinctly recall all of the Best Picture winners from the 80s, when I was a kid, aside from "Out of Africa" (1985)

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Think of some of the films which have won over the past 15 years. None were commercial hits. Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, Hurt Locker, Argo, Moonlight, The Shape of Water, Parasite, Green Book, etc. Who actually saw any of these ?

I saw all of them, and usually well before they won their Oscars. Without looking it up, I can tell you the directors were Boyle, Coens, Bigelow, Affleck, Jenkins, Del Toro, Bong Joon-Ho, and Peter Farrelly, most of whom were already at a point in their careers that I wouldn't have missed any movie I knew one of them made.

Power of the Dog is superb, but I've seen 3 other 2021 movies I would name Best Picture over it: Licorice Pizza, CODA, and Belfast. I have a few more to watch for my own pick for the best of 2021, including "Parallel Mothers" by Almodovar, who is capable of delivering a new classic every time.

This year's nominees are
"Belfast"
"CODA"
"Don't Look Up"
"Drive My Car"
"Dune"
"King Richard"
"Licorice Pizza"
"Nightmare Alley"
"The Power of the Dog"
"West Side Story"

I'd highly recommend all of them except "Drive My Car" only because I haven't seen it yet. But as it's on this list over "The French Dispatch" and "tick...tick...Boom!", it's probably pretty good.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
"The Power of the Dog" cost about 35 to 40 M to make and so far has grossed less than 400 K.

And yet Hollywood can't stop praising it.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
My favorite line was from Rotten Tomatoes

"The Power of the Dog reaffirms writer-director Jane Campion as one of her generation's finest filmmakers."

Which made me laugh a little as most of her generation has never even seen any of her films.

Maybe a little controversy might draw a bigger audience.

How exactly would a NetFlix movie go about making a bunch of money in cinemas?
The success of streaming movies relative to the financial investment of their producers is measured in minutes viewed, not tickets sold, when a film is distributed in that fashion.

So finally Morbius comes out this weekend and every early review I've seen says it "sucks".

If it hits more than 40M it will be OK. Less is a problem, but I think that Morbius may be the set up for the next Spiderman and, if that's the case, it won't matter how much it takes in, absent complete failure. They are just going to push these prequels, sequels, trilogies, multi-universe and whatever other name you can think of for rotating groups of superheroes in movies, out because they are guaranteed to have an audience in spite of bad reviews and some real clunkers.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
So finally Morbius comes out this weekend and every early review I've seen says it "sucks".

Yeah, so far not looking very promising. Should get some audience perspective tonight. I probably wont go see it until sometime next week.

Lost City did ok last weekend. I would think the star power of Bullock, Pitt and Tatum would give it a decent international run. With less than a $75M budget it should make a profit.

So far Audience score for Mobius looks a bit better than the critics. 16% to 67%

Thursday night box office pull is pointing to a possible $40M take for the weekend.

One thing Morbius has going for it is a modest $75M budget. We definitely can't count it out yet.

Went to see Morbius this afternoon. Although certainly not as bad as the critics hammer it does have its problems. Disjointed with a few "how did that happen?" moments, by the time it was over you felt the production crew just wanted it done as well.

STILL! Better than Twilight.

World box office at $84M it will be tough for this one not to at least make a profit.

"No Country for Old Men" was a good movie but it was also depressing. The only other movie I saw from that group is "Argo" and that was a good movie with a happy ending. A lot of recent movies look depressing so I think people lean away from those because real life can be depressing enough (or at least a struggle) that you don't need more of it from a movie. More and more, people want a break. Even if a superhero movie isn't that great, it tends to have a happy ending so people watch those.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Think of some of the films which have won over the past 15 years. None were commercial hits. Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, Hurt Locker, Argo, Moonlight, The Shape of Water, Parasite, Green Book, etc. Who actually saw any of these ?

Morbius cost about 80-85 M to make, at least, and so far the worldwide gross is around 90 M.

Maybe they will make more money on the DVD sales.

No surprise, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 leads the weekend with 71M.

Headed for the flop list is The Ambulance with 8.7M. Even with a fairly modest budget, it's likely to be further proof that Michael Bay's talent for blowing up everything in sight no longer makes for a successful movie all by itself. A reasonable plot and decent characters are sometimes necessary, especially when all you have is a 136-minute car chase.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
No surprise, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 leads the weekend with 71M.

Headed for the flop list is The Ambulance with 8.7M. Even with a fairly modest budget, it's likely to be further proof that Michael Bay's talent for blowing up everything in sight no longer makes for a successful movie all by itself. A reasonable plot and decent characters are sometimes necessary, especially when all you have is a 136-minute car chase.

Michael Bay still think'n it's the 70's!

Yeah, had Morbius achieved the typical 50% drop this weekend I would have given it some hope but 74% is a bit too much.

Everything Everywhere All at Once seems to be getting all of the critic buzz this week. Given that it is showing on only a quarter of the screens for a wide release it seems to be doing well.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
Everything Everywhere All at Once seems to be getting all of the critic buzz this week. Given that it is showing on only a quarter of the screens for a wide release it seems to be doing well.

Yeah. Even though I pretty much hate those multi-universe, everybody is somebody else plots, its still one of my favorites, Michelle Yeoh. Guess I'm gonna have to watch it.

This weekend the new Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore came in #1 with a disappointing 43M. Disappointing because the production cost was around 200M and its the lowest opening of the 3 films. The next film is considered shaky, but will probably be green lighted eventually.

Sonic the Hedgehog came in next in its 2nd week at 30M.

I never cared about Fantastic Beasts because it was always played as serious business on a subject that is so stupid, you should be having fun with it. The first one was the best because it was new. It should have stayed a one-off movie, but they always want a franchise, and that takes the plot to ridiculous lengths to be relevant to something.

When you hire actors like Jude Law and Mads Mikkelsen, it can't just be entertaining, now can it?