Well, Night Shift Was Certainly Made In 1982, No Denying That

The vast majority of movies reflect a certain time period, whether it's the actual era they were made in or a specifically chosen past time period that's intended to reflect the themes of the story. Sometimes, these specific time periods manage to manifest themselves in subtle ways, other time, they come out in intentionally more overt mechanisms. And then there's Night Shift, a Ron Howard directed movie which wears the fact that it was made in the 1980's (1982 to be exact) on its sleeve just by the wardrobe choices of Michael Keaton's character and the presence an extended 1980's montage sequence alone. The fact that it's such an obvious time capsule of this decade is probably the most interesting thing about this breezy but super forgettable and messy comedy.

The Body-Switching Subgenre Gets Switched Up In The Super Well-Done Your Name.

Note: This review covers the version of Your Name. with Japanese audio and English subtitles.

The body switch subgenre (wherein two individuals switch bodies as shenanigans ensue) feels like it's been dead for a long while now. Chalk it up to there not being too many box office juggernauts in the subgenre unless they come with the Freaky Friday brand name or the fact that it's been parodied to death, but there's no denying the scarcity of this subgenre that was never all that ubiquitous to begin with. Your Name., an international box office juggernaut and particularly successful in its home country of Japan, dives head-first into the world of body switching storytelling and manages to inject some real clever twists into the formula as well as some surprisingly well-done depth that make it a real treat.

The Next Thor Movie Has Its First Brilliant Trailer

The Thor movies are definitely the sore spot in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that isn't Iron Fist or Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. I like the first movie well enough and think the second one has its moments (most of them all coming from Tom Hiddleston) despite some heavily flawed storytelling. But this upcoming third Thor movie, Thor: Ragnarok, has had everyone eagerly anticipating for it one big reason: Taika Waititi. The man behind What We Do In The Shadows and Hunt For The Wilderpeople is taking the director's chair. How can you not get excited for that???

Well, prepare to have your anticipation skyrocket further as the first trailer for Thor: Ragnarok actually just drop, almost out of nowhere. Take a look below!

Life Is A Harsher Presence And Pather Panchali Filters That Truth Through Engrossing Writing And Acting

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #20
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #42 (tied with Some Like It Hot, Getrud, Pierrot Le Fou, Playtime and Close-Up)

There isn't much glamor in the way director Satyajit Ray films the living conditions his lead characters in Pather Panchali reside in and that's a key component of why the movie manages to be so enthralling, it feels like we, the audience, are getting a glimpse into an accurate depiction of a way of life foreign to me and many others but all too familiar for the real-life individuals Pather Panchali takes inspiration from. Satyajit Ray is not looking to gussy up the lives of these human beings to make it more palatable or what have you but rather desires to make an accurate depiction that can stand as a testament to their courage and sacrifices in the face of all the hardships of life.

The Boss Baby Wins The Box Office Again As Smurfs Get Lost And Going In Style Looks OK

It was a quieter weekend this frame, probably the most subdued box office weekend we've had in all of 2017 thus far as The Boss Baby was number one for the second weekend in a row, taking in another $26.3 million, a 47% drop from last weekend that's bigger than the second-weekend drops for March DreamWorks Animation releases The Croods and How To Train Your Dragon but slightly better than the second weekend drop of Home. The Boss Baby has now grossed $89.3 million in ten days. Meanwhile, in second place, Beauty And The Beast grossed $25 million, a 45% drop from last weekend that gives it the tenth biggest fourth weekend of all-time. Beauty And The Beast has now grossed $432.3 million and is currently the fifteenth biggest movie of all-time.

While we've had a number of family movie box office hits this year (The LEGO Batman Movie, Beauty And The Beast and The Boss Baby), not everything with a PG MPAA rating attached to it is gonna make tons of cash. The Smurfs: The Lost Village proved that this weekend by debuting to a dismal $14 million, below the opening weekend of both past Smurfs movies (the second of which burned off demand by opening on a Wednesday), the lowest opening weekend ever for a Sony Pictures Animation release that wasn't tied to Aardman and the first time a computer animated movie from one of the six big American movie studios opened to under $20 million since The Book Of Life in October 2014. Sony/Columbia has had a pretty dismal year so far and this new Smurfs movie that will struggle to clear $45 million domestically only adds more bad news to the pile.

Going In Style beat out weekend projections that didn't even have it clearing $10 million by debuting to $12.5 million, garnering a slightly bigger per-theater average ($4,084 vs. $3,882) than The Smurfs: The Lost Village. That $12.5 million bow isn't as strong as the $16.3 million debut of Last Vegas (another "elderly people get into wacky antics" comedy starring Morgan Freeman) and it still needs to make way more to cover its $25 million budget, but it's an OK debut that's better than the bows of the other two major comedies this year (Fist Fight and CHiPS).

Ghost In The Shell rounded out the top five by grossing another $7.3 million, a 60% drop from last weekend that brings its domestic cume to only $31.5 million in ten days. With The Fate Of The Furious on the way next weekend, it'd be shocking if this movie cracked $50 million domestically. Continuing to fall heavily after its opening weekend was Saban's Power Rangers, which grossed only $6.2 million, a 56% drop from last weekend, which shows this one is strictly resonating with family audiences and it's having trouble competing with Boss Baby and Beauty And The Beast. Saban's Power Rangers has grossed $75.1 million in eleven days and will likely end its domestic gross just under or over $90 million.

A March 2017 blockbuster holding way better right now is Kong: Skull Island, which went down only 32% to gross another $5.8 million, bringing its domestic gross to $156.5 million. Kong has also not also cracked $500 million worldwide but also surpassed the final $529.1 million worldwide cume of Godzilla, an impressive feat for the monkey business movie. Logan also continued to hold on well, adding another $4 million (a 33% dip from last weekend), bringing its domestic cume to $218 million, taking it past the $214.9 million domestic cume of X2: X-Men United. Adding another $4 million this weekend was Get Out, a tiny 29% dip from last weekend that brings its domestic cume to an amazing $162.8 million.

Per usual one weekend before Easter, a new Christian movie debuted, with this year's entry being The Case For Christ, which debuted to an OK $3.9 million, about 10% better than the Spring 2015 Pure Flix (the studio behind The Case For Christ) title Do You Believe? and slightly below the $4 million debut of fellow Pure Flix movie Woodlawn. This one should probably make a little over $10 million domestically, an alright total in terms of Christian movies.

The Zookeeper's Wife held well as it expanded into 806 theaters, grabbing another $2.8 million for a $3,584 per-theater average for a 10-day domestic total of $7.6 million. Could this get past $20 million domestically? I wouldn't be shocked! International box office phenomenon Your Name. finally debuted here domestically and actually opened to a solid $1.6 million at 303 theaters for a per-theater average of $5,281. That's the ninth biggest domestic bow for an Anime-Animated feature film and sixth biggest if you discount the Pokemon movies. No word yet on if Funimation has plans to expand the movies theater count in the weeks ahead.

Alright. now let's get to the other newbie limited releases. Bowing in 56 theaters this weekend was Gifted, which grossed $476,000 for a per-theater average of $8,500. Also debuting was Colossal, which took in $125,809 from 4 theaters for a per-theater average of $31,452. But those two weren't the only limited releases bowing this weekend, as Their Finest also premiered to $77,000 at 4 theaters for a per-theater average of $19,250. The Ticket, the first major movie from Shout! Factory as a theatrical distributor, also premiered this weekend, but I have no box office data for it yet. Finally, in bewildering developments, Before I Fall re-expanded into 268 theaters this weekend for no reason I can discern and grossed another $65,169 for an abysmal per-theater average of only $243. Before I Fall has now grossed $12.1 million.

The Top 12 movies this weekend grossed only $114.5 million, a middling total for an early April weekend and one of the lowest fourteenth weekends in any given year in recent memory (in this decade, the only fourteenth weekend to fare worse as in the box office dead zone of the first four months of 2011). This entire top 12 total will likely be exceeded by The Fate Of The Furious alone next weekend.

Personal Shopper Is A Fresh Take On Coping With Loss That Ain't Afraid Of No Ghost!

I've remarked in past reviews (namely my review of Manchester By The Sea) about how each of us grapples with the loss of loved ones in profoundly different ways. This also extends to how long each person copes with the passing of people near and dear to them. Some people can manage to filter all those emotions in a rapid manner and manage to go through the process of accepting this major quietus that has disrupted their lives, others take a much longer time to come to terms with this kind of event. No one ever fully overcomes the death of a loved one but it obviously varies in countless ways in terms of how long it can take people to return to a state of normalcy after these kinds of passings. For the protagonist of Personal Shopper, well, she may never be able to fully get over the death of a loved one that's causing her so much pain.

The Iron Giant More Than Earns It Status As A Masterpiece Through Incredible Storytelling

I am far from the first person whose ever wrote about how awesome The Iron Giant is as a piece of cinema. Coming at the tail end of the 1990's, a decade that had theatrical American animation reinvent itself as the a huge moneymaker after decades of dormancy after the death of Walt Disney, The Iron Giant was unlike anything else seen in that decades crop of animated fare. Most of the studios chasing the tail of Disney in this era, including the studio behind The Iron Giant (Warner Bros.) were looking to do the kind of musical fairy tales that Disney had turned into box office powerhouses, leading to a lot (and boy do I mean a lot) of animated fare that just boiled down to "Disney knock-off".

Uber Endearing Fun And Cool Dragon Action Make Reign Of Fire A Real Treat!

There were a bunch of high-quality blockbusters that made heaps of cash in the summer of 2002, such as the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie (still one of the high points of superhero cinema), Lilo & Stitch and Minority Report. But you did have a bunch of outright abysmal movies also selling lots of tickets (a phenomenon far from uncommon in the summertime), such as the worst Star Wars movie, Attack Of The Clones, that live-action Scooby-Doo abomination and a middling Men In Black sequel. It's a pity those three duds were able to ride brand name recognition to major success while the vastly superior original movie Reign Of Fire had to settle for box office scraps.

My Thoughts On The Nutty News That Squirrel Girl Is Going To Star In A Marvel TV Show!

So, it looks like the movie side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe constantly dragging its feet when it comes to doing any type of female-led project (where is that Black Widow movie we've all been wanting for so long?) means, once again, another notable female superhero from their comic books will be heading to the small screen instead, following Jessica Jones and Inhumans characters Medusa and Crystal. That character in question is Squirrel Girl, whom The Hollywood Reporter notes will star in a New Warriors TV show for Freeform, the network formerly known as ABC Family.

A Load Of Pointless Computer Effects Trickery Can't Boost The Serviceable But Substance-Free Beowulf

For a good chunk of the first decade of the 21st century, Robert Zemeckis devoted himself to being the first filmmaker to dabble in the world of full motion-capture animation (a process whereby actors wear special suits and have their movements put onto CGI characters) movies, a subgenre that basically died off after 2011, though motion-capture animation itself has become quite the frequent presence in live-action movies like the two most recent Star Wars movies. Two of those three efforts were The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol, a duo of family-skewing Christmas movies. Naturally, in between those movies, Zemeckis also used the motion-capture animation artform to create one of only four American computer-animated movies to get an MPAA rating harsher than PG: Beowulf.

Before He Had The High Ground, Ewan McGregor Was Doing Tremendous Acting In The Bleak Classic Trainspotting

Little did avid moviegoers in the 1990's realize how many of the movies they were watching from then unknown filmmakers would turn out to be the start of careers that would forever change the face of cinema. The early part of this decade had the likes of Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino all leap onto the silver screen and immediately leave their mark on the artform they loved in a way that is still being felt and influencing new filmmakers today. Lest you think all the early films from soon-to-be prolific filmmakers were limited to the early days of this decade, one of the middle years of this decade (1996) delivered the first movie from Wes Anderson and the second feature film from one Danny Boyle.

Let's Talk About Stalker, The Movie, Not The Short Lived Ill-Advised CBS Drama

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #19
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #29 (tied with Shoah)

Between Andrei Rublev and now Stalker, my primary impression of Andrei Tarkovsky as a director is that he's a methodical man, a guy who likes to let both his shots and ideas linger for the viewer, letting the larger ramifications of what he's depicting on-screen sink in for the audience and leave them with plenty to ponder once the entire motion picture is finished playing. This slow-burn approach sometimes left me a bit cold in Stalker (though that should be taken less as a major critique of the movie and more on me being sometimes unresponsive to certain slower pieces of storytelling), but there's no denying Tarkovsky has an incredibly evocative way of creating cinema that's both bold and intriguing.

KNOCK KNOCK YOU ABOUT TO GET (Ghost In The) SHELL SHOCKED

There's a lot of blockbuster movies that combine thoughtfulness with high-octane action. The Matrix is a great example of this, ditto for The Dark Knight or Mad Max: Fury Road or the original Jurassic Park. The new live-action take on Ghost In The Shell appears to be striving to join the ranks of those films as beloved pieces of filmmaking that manage to contain both lots of punching and an equal amount of ideas that'll leave viewers pondering for quite a while. Unfortunately, neither the themes nor the action in Ghost In The Shell turn out to be all that interesting with both elements coming out as simply being frustratingly undercooked.

The Boss Baby Bounces To Top Spot At The Box Office While Ghost In The Shell Is Dismantled

Looks like cookies were for both closers and general audiences everywhere if The Boss Baby's big opening weekend is any indication.  Opening to $49 million at the top of the box office, the newest DreamWorks Animation film was way above anyone's expectations for the title (which were mostly in the $30-35 million range) and gained the tenth biggest opening weekend ever for a DreamWorks Animation motion picture and the eighteenth biggest opening weekend ever for a movie in March. It's also the fourth biggest opening weekend ever for Alec Baldwin, steadily ahead of his previous fourth biggest opening weekend ever, the $38 million bow of The Cat In The Hat.

Indulging In Sentimentality And Conventionality Derails The Discovery

Death is an inevitability but just because it's guaranteed to come does not make its imminent arrival more enticing, similar to how knowing Nickelback will eventually have another album unleashed on the unwitting masses does not make that actual event more pleasing to experience. We always fear death, no matter what circumstances bring about its arrival, but in The Discovery, the prospect of death has become something people eagerly greet with open arms, to the point that there's been a swarm of suicides over the course of two years. What on Earth kind of event could account for this morbid turn of events?

The Future Is Melancholy, Heartfelt And Incredibly Thoughtful In The Science-Fiction Masterpiece A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

"And I want a moment to be real
Want to touch things I don't feel
Wanna hold on
And feel I belong
And how can they say I never change
They're the ones that stay the same
I'm the one now
Cause I'm Still Here" 
- John Rzeznik, I'm Still Here

The filmography of Steven Spielberg is so stuffed to the brim with excellence that you're bound to get a wide variety of answers regarding which movie is his best. Some will choose one of his numerous high-quality blockbusters, another will choose one of his intimate dramas, there's oodles of strong cinema to choose from. One that had always struck me as garnering a more mixed reception as a kid was A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, a 2001 science-fiction drama that had terrible box office legs in its initial theatrical release and one that I always saw getting mocked for being overly cloying or its ending not working or any number of similar complaints. Over the years though, it seems to have become more and beloved, with the.....unique, let's say, critical personality Armond White being one of the film's most ardent supporters.

L'avventura Wrung Character-Centric Drama Out Of A "Gone Girl" Before It Was Cool!

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #18
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #21

Each of our individual identities gets heavily informed by the people around us. When we're impressionable children, the behavior and characteristics displayed by our parents to be inherited by the children they raise while the de facto traits needed to be one of the "popular" people in High School is likely going to be imitated by those looking to obtain some sort of higher social status. This is one of those universal psychological quirks of us as a species that show easily susceptible we can be in order to gain acceptance from our fellow peers. For the two individuals at the center of L'avventura, the entire dynamic they share is upended when a woman they're both dearly close to goes missing under mysterious circumstances.

Why Is Netflix's Movie Division Currently Failing?

This Friday see's the release of a solidly reviewed sci-fi dramedy from director Charlie McDowell called The Discovery. It stars Jason Segel, Rooney Mara and Robert freaking Redford and follows a few human beings as they cope with the titular discovery that the afterlife truly exists.

You may be wondering why exactly you haven't heard of this movie.

Well, that's because it's a Netflix movie. And it's not the first time a feature film directly from Netflix has basically gone unnoticed by the general public.

I Ain't Afraid Of No Ghost In The Shell

The original Ghost In The Shell motion picture from 1995 came at an interesting time in the history of technology. The internet was just about on the verge of dominating households across the planet and forever change how we consumed information and communicated with each other. No one could possibly predict what a paradigm shifter the widespread acceptance of the internet would be, but Ghost In the Shell did dare to tell a tale of human beings greatly intertwined with the technology around them and ponder how that affects their psyche and personalities. More than two decades after its release and countless upheavals in the world of technology, Ghost In The Shell is just as potent as ever in its thoughtful storytelling.

Safety Last! Is The Sort Of Film That Puts A Grin On Your Face And Makes You Love Movies

Safety Last! is not just a movie I thoroughly enjoyed (to put it gently), but also one that cemented my feeling that the silent movie comedy is one of my cinematic subgenres. It's such an enjoyable corner of filmmaking, charming, humorous and showing a remarkable amount of craft on the part of the filmmakers and the actors who are working with a medium of storytelling that was still in its most nascent stage. Without sound or color by their side, the guys and gals behind these classic silent movie comedies managed to create wonders with the limited amount of tools at their disposal, demonstrating an incredible amount of artistic ingenuity.

The Sense Of An Ending Falls Quite Short Of Being A Riveting Page-Turner

The past is always a difficult thing to grapple with, particularly past regrets and mistakes. Lord knows I myself have spent countless nights sitting in bed thinking about all the social faux pas and other mistakes I've committed over my life and I do not think I'm the only one who's been consumed by such late-night mournful reminiscing. I'd wager very single human being has got their own personal foibles from their past that they can't help but obsess over and Tony Webster (Jim Broadbent), the lead character of the new drama The Sense Of An Ending, is far from an exception in this regard.

Saban's Power Rangers Is...Diverting Fun? Wait, What, It's Actually Fun? Huh.

Someone at Saban Entertainment (the company that owns Power Rangers) obviously wanted to make a live-action feature film about the Power Rangers in order to cash in on the craze of big-budget live-action movies adapting childhood TV shows with massive nostalgia-driven fanbases. And so, lo and behold, the resulting project is Saban's Power Rangers, a $100 million budgeted motion picture whose starting premise basically amounts to "What if we merged The Breakfast Club and Pacific Rim into one movie?". That very much sounds like two motion pictures that should never ever be mashed together but they've gone and done just that. The resulting movie is....actually not bad, much better than I expected it to be, though this whole thing carries more than a few major shortcomings to its name.

Get Trapped With Overly Familiar But Sometimes Chilling Thrills In Life

Jake Gyllenhaal has been on quite the roll lately. His exemplary lead turn in Nightcrawler was one of the peak moments of his entire career and even in something more middling like Southpaw Gyllenhaal managed to craft a solid performance out of a subpar script. Last years Nocturnal Animals continued his recent career choices of doing bold and daring projects by offering Gyllenhaal a chance to inhabit a tortured persona to fascinating results. So, of course, after all these challenging dramas, it's no shocker that the next big movie Jake Gyllenhaal is headlining is Life, a science-fiction horror film chock full of blood and mayhem, just like Nocturnal Animals. What I'm trying to say is that Life is the exact same movie as Nocturnal Animals.

Sea A Revolution Begin In Battleship Potemkin

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #17
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #11

Every revolution begins somewhere. Even the biggest uprisings in history have started with ideas from one human being, a singular mind that had had enough of the status quo and were looking to upend it for their own gain and for others. Sometimes these events end in prosperity, other times they esult in chaos. Either way though, these large interruptions come from humble origins as most things do. To quote the movie Lawrence Of Arabia, "Big things have small beginnings", and that's very much true for the rebellion seen in the 1925 Sergei Eisenstein motion picture, Battleship Potemkin, which recreates a real-life mutiny from twenty-three years prior.

Beauty And The Beast Has Gorgeous Second Weekend While Power Rangers Does Decent Business And Life And CHiPS Flop

With another $88.3 million, Beauty And The Beast continued to be an incredible box office juggernaut, handily leading the domestic box office and securing the second best second weekend drop for a movie opening over $150 million, only .4% the exactly 49% dip of Jurassic World. A 49.4% is truly fantastic for the release though, on par with the 48% drop Cinderella saw in its second weekend despite that 2015 Disney family film making over $100 million less on opening weekend. Beauty And The Beast has already taken in $316.9 million in ten days and looks to be on track for a final domestic gross of at least $460 million.

Broken Souls Find Momentary Comfort And Longer-Lasting Pain In Persona

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #16
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #28

Let it never be said that Ingmar Bergman does not start off his movies in a manner reminiscent of the immortal Smash Mouth lyric "...hit the ground running." The very first scene in Persona is an abstract compilation of seemingly unrelated footage playing off, some of it grisly, some of it silly, before we see a nameless character emerge from a hospital bed and approach a giant screen. Then the opening credits start up, kicking off the plot proper. Once that was all over, I kind of just had to pause for a moment and figure out what on Earth I had just watched. The fact that the film itself just casually goes about its business after that perplexing opening sequence. Okee-dokee, I guess that's the kind of motion picture I'm in for?

My Mixed Thoughts On The Justice League Trailer

Well.

Here we go.

No need for a preamble here folks. My negative feelings towards Batman v. Superman are well-known at this point, we all know a Justice League movie is headed our way, let's just dig into the first trailer proper.

The Movies Begin: A Treasury Of Old Cinema | 1894-1913 (feat. Eadweard Muybridge & Thomas Edison Short Films, The Great Train Robbery, A Trip To The Moon) Review

Reviewing this Kino Lorber DVD collection of some of the earliest pieces of cinema was a total accident, I'll freely admit. While browsing the shelves at my college's library, I stumbled upon The Movies Begin: A Treasury Of Old Cinema | 1894-1913, without having either heard of this The Movies Begin series of DVD's, let alone this specific entry in the franchise. Upon discovering it, of course, I couldn't pass it up, especially since I had seen none of the numerous incredibly important shorts it contained within. It really is true how sometimes truly awesome experiences emerge from spontaneity.

What Kind Of An Impact Can One Man's Life Have? Andrei Rublev Sets Out To Answer That Very Question

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #15
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #26 (tied with Rashomon)

It's gonna be tough for me to review Andrei Rublev, Andrei Tarkovsky's widely raved 1966 motion picture chronicling the life of an actual famous Russian painter. You see, I'm not familiar with Russian history in the slightest, let alone the various portions of the 15th century in that country this movie depicts. This means that, while I found much to appreciate, admire and even be outright enthralled by in watching the feature film, I did find myself feeling like I'd carry a greater appreciation for Andrei Rublev if I carried more familiarity with the time periods it depicts or even was just more accustomed to Andrei Tarkovsky's obviously individualistic style of filmmaking (this is my first time watching one of his movies).

A Key Component Of My Childhood Comes To Life In The First Trailer For The Captain Underpants Movie

I was a huge reader when I was a kid but few books left as great of an impression on me as Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants books. I read all of the books in that series too many times to count, their gross-out humor making youngsters like myself feel like we were getting away with something inappropriate whilst actually doing some reading. Lord knows I haven't read one of those books in eons (they're still going right? I remember the last one I read as a kid ended on a major cliffhanger that I think only got resolved a few years back), but it's no shocker to me that the books are still relevant enough with today's youngsters to warrant a theatrical movie, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie.

Normalcy Gives Way To Gruesome Bloodshed In The Belko Experiment

Horror movies have always played up the idea that those closest to you can't be trusted, that they have the potential to become monsters under certain circumstances. That's kind of the crux of the whole zombie genre, the concept of your loved ones, friends and neighbors being turned into mindless flesh-eating monsters. You can also see this idea coursing through horror movie masterpieces like The Happening, where both an airborne virus and terrible screenwriting has seemingly normal people acting strange. The Belko Experiment, a new horror film from director Greg McClean, that takes that concept of normal people going malicious and places it in the confines of a cubicle-filled office space.

Audiences Decide To Be Disney's Guest As Beauty And The Beast Has Record Breaking Opening Weekend

A live-action remake of a classic animated Disney movie making big bucks in the Spring? What malarkey is this??? Nah, but sarcasm aside, Disney got their 2017 slate off to a massive start as Beauty And The Beast opened to a tremendous $170 million, the seventh best opening weekend of all-time and the biggest opening weekend ever in March. That's also the biggest opening weekend in history for a movie that wasn't rated PG-13 and already makes it the second biggest movie of 2017, only narrowly putting it behind Logan which it should surpass by Tuesday. It's also already the biggest movie Kevin Kline has ever appeared in, the sixth biggest ever for Emma Thompson and easily the biggest non-Star Wars movie ever for Ewan McGregor. It's also by far the biggest opening weekend ever for a live-action musical, becoming the first time in history a live-action musical opened to over $50 million, let alone $150 million, and beating out the previous opening-weekend champ in this subgenre, High School Musical 3: Senior Year, by $128 million.

Disney's Live-Action Beauty And The Beast Is Overly Derivative Of The Original Animated Classic But Is Still An Entertaining Musical Romp

This new live-action take on Beauty And The Beast is an oddball little movie. It wants to be so much like the original 1991 animated classic its remaking, yet it also wants to be a more quasi-realistic take on the source material. That sense of realism also rubs up against its desire to be a big splashy over-the-top musical in some spots. When it just goes for being a straightforward fairy tale (not unlike the tone set forth in Jean Cocteau's 1946 take on this tale as old as time), it actually works fine. When it's trying to figure out how to ground things in realism while also being overly slavishly faithful to the original movie, well, that's when problems emerge.

La Belle at ta Bete (Beauty and the Beast) Is A Classical Take On A Beloved Fairy Tale

The various 56 films in the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon have become so ubiquitous in pop culture, it can be difficult to remember that, for many of these feature films, they were not the first attempts to translate their source material to the big screen. There's been plenty of big screen versions of Cinderella beyond just the animated Disney version, for instance, Two other Snow White movies (one of them starring Betty Boop!) preceded Disney's historic animated Snow White motion picture in 1937. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Disney was far from the first studio to adapt the tale of Beauty & The Beast in feature-length narrative form.

The Matrix Is Getting A Reboot Because Screw Original Filmmaking

Late last night, word broke out that Warner Bros. was looking to put together a room of writers to concoct ideas on how to continue the Matrix franchise with Michael B. Jordan reportedly eyeballed for whatever lead role the project eventually creates. There is no word yet on if The Wachowski Starship will be involved but I doubt it. I wouldn't be shocked if Keanu Reeves or Laurence Fishburne showed up though for the sake of fan-service though. This endeavor is in super early stages but it's basically happening, especially given how franchise-hungry Warner Bros. is right now.

The Animals Are Running Mild In We Bought A Zoo

We Bought A Zoo. We Bought A Zoo. We. Bought. A. Zoo. A little over five years after its initial theatrical release, the title of this 2011 Cameron Crowe motion picture still feels like a goofy joke, to the point that the host of this year's Oscars, Jimmy Kimmel, devoted an entire segment of the ceremony to mocking the film as part of his fictitious long-standing feud with Matt Damon. Add in how Cameron Crowe's recent artistic endeavors haven't gone great (Aloha was one of the worst movies of 2015 and his Showtime drama from last year, Roadies, has already been forgotten) and it's not hard to see how We Bought A Zoo has become a punchline.

70's Tinged Monster Mayhem Turns Out To Be A Lot Of Fun In Kong: Skull Island

Far too often, remakes and reboots find themselves being merely repeats of the original films they're attempting to remake and/or reboot, to the point where you're left wondering "Why did they even remake this? Couldn't I have just stayed home and watch the original movie instead?" Thankfully, the newest King Kong adventure, Kong: Skull Island, avoids being just a rehash of well-known moments from past Kong movies. No Empire State Building, dinosaurs, movie crew or "Twas beauty that killed the beast" to be found here, much to my personal happiness. Instead, we get an all-new period setting, story and group of characters to follow, though they do retain the loveable nature of Kong himself, of course.

Skip The Shack And Go Stay At The Love Shack (Baby, Love Shack!) Instead

In terms of the general type of quality found in the Christian movie subgenre, The Shack is slightly better than average, which means, for general cinema, it lands slightly below mediocre. That's a drastic improvement over the likes of the two God's Not Dead movies, but it's still plagued by plenty of sins, er, flaws, of its own. Based upon a book I've never heard of but a lot of people I know just can't stop raving about, The Shack attempts to separate itself from many other recent Christian movies by tackling some darker material in its plot, particularly within the confines of a prologue that seems like it could easily serve as a supervillain origin story.

Few Movies Capture Aching Enveloping Loneliness Quite Like The Federico Fellini Masterpiece 8 1/2

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #14
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #10

Upon doing some internet-based research on director Federico Fellini, I stumbled upon this quote of his that says "All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.". It's a surprisingly profound thought, wrapped around an easy-to-understand comparison that drives the entire point of the statement home. Art does tend to reflect the inner workings of its creators, their ideas, their ambitions, their viewpoints on the world they inhabit. That's what makes exploring art so much fun from an analytical perspective; it's incredibly exciting to probe idiosyncratic artists and the art they create to express their innermost thoughts.

Kong: Skull Island Creates Financially Successful Monkey Business At The Top Of Box Office

Well well well, looks like we have our second box office hit of the month, as Kong: Skull Island managed to surpass expectations and opened to a strong $61 million. That's an opening weekend 12% above the opening weekend of the 2005 King Kong movie, the eleventh biggest opening weekend ever in March, the eighth biggest opening weekend ever for an Adventure film in a period setting, the fourth biggest opening weekend ever for what Box Office Mojo defines as a Creature Feature (films starring monsters or creatures), the fourth biggest opening weekend ever for a movie set in the 1970's and the tenth biggest opening weekend ever for a Legendary Pictures film. It's also already the third biggest movie Brie Larson's ever appeared in, the biggest live-action opening weekend ever for John Goodman and for Tom Hiddleston, Kong: Skull Island is only behind War Horse in terms of being his biggest movie ever where he's not playing a certain God Of Mischief.

To Look Upon I Am Not Your Negro Is To Look Upon The Horrors Of American Society

James Baldwin has got to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, a man whose perspective on the struggles of African-Americans through this century and how it relates to centuries-old oppression is revered throughout the literary world as a crowning achievement and a vital look into the psyche of the disenfranchised. Tragically, I have been unfamiliar with his pieces of writing, though the Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro offered up a prime opportunity for me to get more acquainted with this prolific author and the words he's weaved on racial struggles in America.

The Darjeeling Limited Is Sometimes Tonally Disjointed But Still Entertaining Wes Anderson Cinema

In every Wes Anderson film, the elements of whimsy and reality are always prevalent, with the whimsy usually coming in the form of the sets and dialogue while reality rears its head in the character arcs, plot points and overall themes of the stories. In his three most recent movies, Anderson has found phenomenal success going for more heightened stylized tendencies while also exploring fresh new dramatic terrain that's more complex and mature, helping him solidify his place as a truly remarkable artist. Just before that trio of masterpieces, Anderson created The Darjeeling Limited, which, interestingly, leaned on realism more heavily than a number of other movies in his filmography.

Rock Dog Is A Bad Boy

Are the various animation studios now just playing Mad Libs with these computer-animated movies? Inspired by the success of Ratatouille and Kung Fu Panda a decade ago, are they just now taking random animal names and random occupations that would juxtapose against the aforementioned animal and just calling that a plot? We've seen this phenomenon with the likes of Turbo and Norm Of The North and now a plot device intended to drum up an underdog story (that can be used well in the right circumstances it should be noted) that's easy to get invested in just feels stale at this point. The newest entry in this trend is Rock Dog, which is, as the title suggests, about a dog who wishes to be a rock musician.

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc Reveals The Humanity Of A Brave Historical Figure

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #13
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #9

As I've mentioned many times before how one of the best parts of Hamilton is the way it zeroes in on the humanity of larger than life historical figures. You get to fully understand the likes of George Washington, Aaron Burr (sir!) or Alexander Hamilton in a way that reminds you these were just human beings, like you or me, trapped in larger-than-life scenarios. Director Carl Theodore Dryer takes this same approach for his 1928 French film The Passion of Joan of Arc, which applies this style of storytelling to, as the title indicates, the real life figure of Joan of Arc, an individual with a story more than ripe for being told in the format of a feature film.

It Is In Its Most Subtle Moments That King Kong Really Earns Its Status As A Classic

The trailers for the new King Kong feature Kong: Skull Island have come with a tagline that simply reads "We Don't Belong Here". It's an eye-catching phrase that stuck out in my mind throughout watching the original 1933 version of King Kong for the very first time, as it's very much true in relating to both the group of human beings who travel to a mysterious island and for the titular ape when he's brought to civilian surroundings in the third act. Before all of that occurs though, a number of sailors, cameramen and a lone actress, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) set out to sea under the guidance of famous director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong).

(A United) Kingdom Hearts

No romantic relationship comes without its own set of hurdles, and for many individuals in society over the ages, such struggles go well beyond "communication difficulties" or similarly mundane ordeals. Same-sex couples and interracial couples particularly have found a great amount of strife in attempting to have the same marital rights as white heterosexual couples. For the two lead characters in the romantic drama A United Kingdom, the complications associated with interracial couples in the late 1940's are further complicated by the fact that one of the two individuals is the prospective king of Bechuanaland.

Good Wall Hunting

For those hoping The Great Wall turned out to be a big-budget misfire diamond in the rough ala the highly underappreciated John Carter, alas, it is not. For those curious if The Great Wall is a big budget colossal failure like Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice or The Last Airbender, it is also not fitting of that description. Instead, what we get here is a mostly boring result of being merely a forgettable motion picture with decent production value found in the myriad of colorful costumes and some actually decently well-designed monsters while its scattershot script lets those positive elements down big time.

Logan Slices Up Fourth Biggest R-Rated Opening Weekend Of All-Time While Moviegoers Have Faith In The Shack At The Box Office, Before I Fall Tumbles And Table 19 Is Empty

Hugh Jackman's Wolverine went out with a bang this weekend as audiences expressed their obvious displeasure with superhero fare by shelling out $85.3 million bucks for the final Hugh Jackman Wolverine adventure. This is a debut that put the movie in fourth place on a number of impressive charts, including it being the fourth biggest opening weekend ever for a March release and the fourth biggest opening weekend ever for an R-rated movie. It's also the fifth biggest opening weekend ever for an X-Men movie. That's put it ahead of the $85 million bow the PG-13 and far more expensive first Wolverine movie had back in 2009.

Journey To A Captivating World In Pan's Labyrinth

Despite being a massive Guillermo Del Toro fanboy, I've never seen his 2006 feature film Pan's Labyrinth before, which I suppose is akin to being a massive fan of The Beatles while thinking Abbey Road is solely a road in London. Anywho, sitting down to watch this one was a fascinating experience in terms of placing it in the larger picture Del Toro's filmography, as his later films would carry over certain elements of Pan's Labyrinth, such as a period era setting that plays heavily into the story (Crimson Peak) and the heavy use of mythic fairy tale characters (Hellboy II: The Golden Army). It's apparent that the experience of Pan's Labyrinth left a profound impact on Guillermo Del Toro as a director.

Bicycle Thieves Ponders How Far You'll Go To Protect What Little You Have

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #12
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #33

Right from its opening scene, Bicycle Thieves has a remarkable talent for plunging the viewer into the desperation soaked world its lead character lives in. Dozens of human beings crowd around one man whose handing out job assignments, with all of these people eagerly hoping they can get an assignment that'll ensure they and their families will be able to eat in the coming days. Their entire lives hinge on one human being, this guy assigning people to certain tasks. It's insane to imagine one's fate being solely determined by a singular person, but that's very much the reality for all of these people.