By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Weekend Estimates by Oscar Boy Klady
Black Panther pounces on $500 million domestic. Red Sparrow estimates a $16.8m launch, which is #7 among seventeen 2,000-screen openings this year. It’s a weak J-Law open in that the other two in this range were Christmas releases, giving them a big advantage over the first weeks. Death Wish is a bad movie that manages not only to poke at open wounds in America, but to do it in a way so generic as to make it insulting to those being killed on America’s streets.
Meh.
Saw Death Wish. It was so bland that I watched a few minutes of a movie I utterly despise – Hostel II – to remind myself of Eli Roth having had ambition as a misogynist prick at one point. Now, he is… unbleached paper.
I don’t know the history of the script, but I know that Joe Carnahan is not Mr Bland. Even if they felt compelled to avoid a lazy use of race, the film might have been better had our antihero been mistaken about race and turned in the process (while slaughtering people) or if he had a chip on his shoulder about being rich or something… anything… ANYTHING.
I don’t like hateful movies. But boring non-committal movies are even worse.
Boring weekend at the box office. Seven of the nine Best Picture nominees are still in theaters. Here’s how they looked this weekend.
The real story here is that “small” movies did a strong amount of business. This is the legacy of the expanded field (5+). The field is laid out almost exactly as the noms would probably have been had we been in a year with only five nominees. Dunkirk and Get Out, plus Shape and 3 Billboards, and either Lady Bird or Darkest Hour. Would that have made anyone feel better? Would anyone have been happier with Call Me By Your Name and Phantom Thread left out?
Of course, in a five-film race, maybe Universal would not have gone wild selling Get Out. A24 might not have had nominees three years in a row… or any… and likely no win for Moonlight. The Spielberg of The Post may have been more aggressively positioned. Et cetera. Lots of moving parts.
It’s endlessly fascinating that many of the people who are most passionate about The Academy picking “better” films are also into going back to 5 BP nominees, which would retard their interests more than anything else they could do.
I am going to watch E! for the first time in years, just to see how people deal with Seacrest. It reminds me of the moment after Fallon messed up Trump’s hair so adorably. “Are we still doing Fallon?” was a popular question. Tonight, will they do Seacrest or will they go to the anorexia queen or skip E! completely?
Have fun…
Three weekends in, Black Panther has a weekend that any other film should love. Peter Rabbit, Jumanji and Greatest Showman are really digging in and did Shape Of Water get more screens, or is the subtle public radio exposure giving it that increase?
Edit: I see that Shape of Water picked up 111 screens and BP picked up 64. I see Peter Rabbit and Jumanji lost screens and still did decent holds.
I’d say something about how Bruce Willis needs to go back to some “Pulp Fiction”, “Nobody’s Fool” supporting roles for a rebirth…but does he care anymore? Maybe. That’s kind of what he tried to do in a Woody Allen film a few years ago (and then he was fired (!)) and his Broadway stint was “meh”. He just seems passionless these days.
Great Black Panther numbers….Hey maybe Disney can take some of that money and pay the artist whose work was plagiarized for the Solo A Star Wars Story posters:
https://mobile.twitter.com/BurnettRM/status/970016452496433152
Is this movie trying to be a dumpster fire?
I can’t believe you hate HOSTEL 2!
Night Owl, that’s absolutely insane. How exactly does that sort of thing happ… ooh. It’s LFL. The dumpster fire of the Disney operation. Here’s hoping that artist gets paid, and now I know why they looked so familiar to me.
I remember when Dave reviewed a pirated copy of Hostel 2. Not judging. I don’t care. I wouldn’t spend money on that shit either. Fuck Eli Roth. Green Inferno was the last time I’ll be tricked by him.
All those “small” films didn’t do squat. The arthouses aren’t getting more current product and it shows in the per-theater averages. This was especially true on a weekend when a good chunk of the East Coast was shut down by snow/rain/power outages from Winter Storm Riley.