June 24th, 2020
Trolls World Tour is easily the biggest release on this week’s list. In fact, it is bigger than the rest of the films combined. That said, while it should entertain kids, it isn’t the best release. The best is a two-way tie between The Ghost of Peter Sellers and Tokyo Olympiad—two documentaries that are worth checking out.
More...
March 13th, 2018
I, Tonya was a player during this most recent Awards Season earning a lot of nominations and even picked up several wins. The film will finish with $30 million domestically, which is great for a limited release. Did it deserve this success?
More...
March 4th, 2018
It’s Oscar night and we will be live blogging the show. We will announce the winners and have our reactions as they happen, while keeping track of how our readers did in predicting the outcomes.
More...
March 4th, 2018
Voting is now closed in our 21st Annual Predict the Academy Awards Competition, and we’re ready to announce the predicted winners in each category.
We have overwhelming favorites in virtually all of the major categories this year, with one glaring exception: Best Picture. That race is a virtual tie between Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Shape of Water. Three Billboards has a very slight edge, with 44% of the vote, while Shape of Water has 43%. Get Out is a long shot, at 6%, and Dunkirk and Lady Bird are the only other films to get a look in, with about 3% each.
With the top two films both getting less than 50% of the votes, it’s fair to say there isn’t a favorite in this race, and any of these five films seems like a conceivable winner. The winner of our contest will likely be someone who makes the right call in this category.
Things are much more clear cut in other categories…
More...
March 4th, 2018
It’s Oscar night and we will be live blogging the show. Before that, let’s take a last look at the nominations with a few annotations. Nominees in Italics are those that have received the most votes from our readers so far in our Oscar contest (which is open to new entries until noon, Pacific, today—enter now!). Bold films are those films I think will win. Meanwhile, those that are Underlined are those I want to win. Not all categories have underlined nominees, because not all categories have someone I’m cheering for, or because there are two nominees I couldn’t pick between. For example, I will be happy no matter who wins Best Supporting Actress. One last note: The contest is still going and the leading for Best Picture Switched from The Shape of Water to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to tied over the time I was writing this story. This is the closest I’ve ever seen it. Guessing the best picture correctly will go a long way to winning.
More...
March 3rd, 2018
The Independent Spirit Awards were handed out tonight, and Get Out was the big winner, sort of. It earned two Awards, including the two most prestigious, awards. However, it wasn’t the only film to pick up two awards tonight.
More...
February 20th, 2018
With our annual Oscar Prediction contest underway, now is the best time to look at the nominees and try and figure out who the favorites are and who should just feel honored to be nominated. This week we look at the four acting categories, starting with Best Supporting Actress. In this category, there is an overwhelming favorite. And here’s a spoiler for the rest of the week, every single acting category has an overwhelming favorite.
More...
February 18th, 2018
The BAFTAs were handed out on Sunday night, with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri winning the most awards at five. This is not too surprising, as it was technically a British film, despite its setting, and that gave it a leg up on the competition.
More...
January 23rd, 2018
The Oscar nominations were announced starting at just after 5 am Pacific time. They do this every year and no one has been able to adequately explain why to me. At least there were some interesting results this year. The Shape of Water led the way with 13 nominations, which is one below the current record and nearly as many as the next two films combined. Overall, there were seventeen films that earned two or more nominations.
More...
January 21st, 2018
The Screen Actors Guild announced their winners on Sunday night and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri won every category it was nominated in.
More...
January 11th, 2018
The BAFTA nominations were announced and this time The Shape of Water led the way with 12 nominations. The same films appear on many of the lists of nominees, but so far no one film has come to dominate the list. This makes it interesting, to say the least. There’s a good chance no one film will win the majority of prestige awards and that multiple films will have lots of reason to celebrate on February 18th when the awards are handed out.
More...
January 7th, 2018
The Golden Globes winners were announced on Sunday and there were a few surprises worth talking about, starting at the top. I was not expecting Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to be the big winner of the night, but it was with four wins. Only two other movies, The Shape of Water and Lady Bird, won more than one award during the night.
More...
December 13th, 2017
The Screen Actors Guild were the third group to announce their nominations for this awards season. So far there have been three different films earning the most nominations. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri picked up four nominations, which is extra impressive, as there are only six theatrical categories.
More...
December 11th, 2017
The Golden Globes nominations are the second major Awards Season set to come out. Sort of. (WGA announced the nominations for TV, radio, etc., but not their theatrical nods.) It is still very early in the year, so it is hard to say if there are any real snubs, or if there are any real favorites. The Shape of Water led the way with seven nominations, while The Post and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri were right behind with six a piece.
More...
November 22nd, 2017
The Independent Spirit Awards nominations were announced yesterday and thus the 2017 Awards Season begins. The movie with the most nominations is Call Me by Your Name, which opens on Friday. This is amazingly good timing. It’s not the only film that should get a financial boost.
More...
July 29th, 2016
It’s a week of “good, but not great” movies as there are a number of films earning Tomatometer Scores in the 70s. Generally speaking, films usually need 80% positive reviews or better to survive in limited release. There are a couple of films with amazing reviews, Gleason and Miss Sharon Jones, but both are documentaries, so they don’t have a lot of box office potential. The film I’m most interested in is Into the Forest, which is playing on Video on Demand.
More...
October 12th, 2015
Spy is the latest collaboration between Melissa McCarthy and Paul Feig. The previous two were hits, both with critics and with moviegoers. Does Spy complete the hat trick? And is the Blu-ray worth picking up?
More...
June 14th, 2015
The Duff opened in February, which isn't a good time of the year to release a film. It earned good reviews and topped its meager expectations. Now that it is out on the home market, is it worth picking up? Was it unfairly overlooked by moviegoers the first time around?
More...
June 1st, 2015
May turned out to be softer than anticipated with The Avengers: Age of Ultron missing expectations by about $100 million. Additionally, only Pitch Perfect 2 really topped expectations. May 2015 kept pace with May of 2014, more or less. June doesn't have any films as strong as Age of Ultron, but there are two films that should have no trouble getting to $200 million. Those two films are Jurassic World and Inside Out and I'm not sure which one will turn out to be the biggest hit of the month. Last June, the biggest hit was Transformers: Age of Extinction, but both Jurassic World and Inside Out should top that film, albeit by small margins. On the other hand, last June had four other films that reached $100 million, while this time around only Spy! and Ted 2 have a real shot at that milestone. 2015 is stronger at the top, but has weaker depth. It will be interesting to see if 2015 will keep pace with 2014 over the course of the full month.
More...
November 7th, 2014
Another late review, but there are special circumstances here. Fox has gone with a digital delivery system for their screeners, which means I have to stream the movie or TV show. Here's the problem with that. At any given time, I'm working on two or three projects for work and Firefox tends to quickly suck up a lot of resources, which cause me to restart the browser rather frequently to free up the RAM. (It's not uncommon for Firefox to be using more than 2 gigs of RAM at a time.) This is fine when all I'm doing is reading box office data or cast lists. But it makes it nearly impossible to stream something. Oh if only I had a separate machine I could use to watch movies. ... Oh that's right, it's called a Blu-ray player and I have one right under my computer desk. Anyhow, so after trying and failing to get the streaming to work, I just decided to buy a few of the screeners for movies and TV shows that I previously signed up to receive a physical copy. Of course, I only did this for films and TV shows I thought were going to be good, because it's my money. The first to arrive was Mr. Peabody & Sherman. I loved the original cartoons, but was the adaptation into a feature-length movie a success? Or do these characters work better in a five-minute format?
More...
November 15th, 2013
The Way Way Back is written by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. For most of their careers, they have been actors. However, they wrote the script for The Descendants, which won them an Oscar. This time around, they not only co-wrote the screenplay, but co-directed the film as well. Was The Descendants a fluke? Or do they have another critical darling on their hands?
More...
October 4th, 2012
There are a large number of limited releases on this week's list, but very few have a serious shot at box office success. There are several films with casts with strong name recognition that were earning pre-release buzz, Butter, The Oranges, and The Paperboy, but none of them are earning strong enough reviews to suggest they will thrive in limited release. Fat Kid Rules the World might be the film with the best chance at mainstream success on this week's list, while Escape Fire might do well for a documentary.
More...