Studio estimates show “Joker” with a slight edge over “Maleficent” in ticket sales this weekend, but the race is too close to call for now

A pair of holdovers had a photo finish this weekend as “Joker” and “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” jockeyed for first place at the box office.

Estimates, which sometimes change on Monday when final counts are in, give “Joker” a slight edge: The Warner Bros. villain tale is estimated to make about $18.9 million in domestic sales, while Disney’s fantasy sequel “Maleficent” is pegged at around $18.5 million.

The fact that the two movies are in such close competition is a testament to the success of “Joker,” which has performed well since it opened Oct. 4. According to Disney, “Maleficent,” which opened last weekend to about $9 million below already modest prerelease projections, made an additional $64.3 million overseas Friday through Sunday.  Warner Bros. said that “Joker” picked up roughly $47.8 million in international sales during that period.

Both movies re-imagine well-known villains. “Maleficent,” the follow-up to Disney’s 2014 hit “Maleficent,” casts Angelina Jolie as the evil fairy from “Sleeping Beauty.” “Joker” builds a bleak origin story of the titular DC Comics villain, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Though the movie caused widespread debate when it was released, with some questioning whether it painted a sympathetic portrait of a killer and others viewing that criticism as unjustified, it has had robust ticket sales.

Caption for Joaquin Phoenix 

Joaquin Phoenix in “Joker,” which sold an estimated $18.9 million in domestic tickets this weekend.  Warner Bros

Caption for Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie in “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.”  Estimated weekend ticket sales for the movie came in at around $18.5 million.  Disney Enterprises

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Abominable may feel boilerplate: Plucky loner finds an unexpected friend, a wild journey ensues with the help of a motley crew, and it ends with a buffet of lessons about the power of friendship, family, and self-respect. Also included: one incredibly cute magical yeti, all the better to incite both warm and squishy sentiments and encourage the inevitable purchase of a wide range of branded merchandise.

However, director Jill Culton adds unique touches to the formula including frequently stunning animation and goofy diversions of all stripe, along with at least two worrying soundtrack choices (kids like Coldplay?). The winning, warm nature of this China-set family film can’t be denied, and for all its predictable elements, “Abominable” is still well worth the trip.

Resourceful teen Yi (Chloe Bennett) is deep in the “denial and isolation” stage of her grief over her beloved father’s recent death. Instead of turning to the rest of her family for comfort — including her understanding mother (Michelle Wong) and her brassy grandmother (Tsai Chin) — Yi distracts herself by toiling at a series of odd jobs. Old friend Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor) is too busy trying to be Insta-famous to help, and his annoying but well-meaning little cousin Peng (Albert Tsai) isn’t entirely equipped to help a hurting pal.

And then there’s Everest (Joseph Izzo), a fluffy, bright-eyed, snaggle-toothed young yeti who has recently been captured by the nutty former explorer Burnish (Eddie Izzard, being very Eddie Izzard) and the tricky zoologist Dr. Zara (the great Sarah Paulson, indication enough that the character will have unexpected layers) and brought to Shanghai. “Abominable” opens from Everest’s perspective, as the young creature breaks out from his scary holding facility and hits the city, afraid and wounded and utterly alone.

Culton and her talented animating team strike a compelling balance here, capturing Everest’s fear and confusion without getting dark enough to terrify younger viewers. And seeing things from Everest’s frame instantly endears him to the audience. The sequence also introduces the yeti’s powers, which involve prodigious humming (conveniently, Yi is a musician) and vaguely amount to, “Well, he can do anything.”

Everest is soon hiding on the roof of Yi’s apartment building, where she also happens to spend most of her scant daydreaming time. Bound by their mutual affection for music, and with Burnish and Zara hot on Everest’s tail (clearly willing to take the young yeti back alive or dead), Yi makes a decision: Everest must get back to his home (Mount Everest, of course). Soon enough, she heads off to the peak with Peng and Jin, because this sort of story requires a mixed bag of good guys, and they trek across every inch of China in lush detail.

Told in vivid colors and a great respect for the awe-inspiring power of big, floating things (lights and flowers and even a lovely interpretation of music itself), the timeline mechanics and real-world implications of their map-spanning adventure fade away in the face of such a charming story. Culton’s script slips in plenty of laughs, from the introduction of another one of Burnish’s prized captures to good-natured jabs at the military team dispatched by Dr. Zara. The film’s many action sequences are zippy and well-constructed, and the best one even offers a nod or two to the classic imagery of King Kong.

Colton hits every beat required, including heartening evolutions for all the human stars and a slew of sweet lessons that should resonate with even the youngest audience members. The journey through some of China’s signature regions (from the Huangshan mountain range to the Gobi Desert and more), offering the chance for still more lovely animation and plenty of respect for the country as a location. The journey may be predictable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth taking.

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It feels like we’ve been spoiled by space. Ever since Gravity seemingly changed the game, science-fiction has had to work harder than ever to impress us. It’s almost like the genre’s already peaked. Picking up the space-gauntlet, director James Gray quixotically heralded Ad Astra as being “the most realistic depiction of space ever”. And fair dos, this film is beautiful: from the glistening cinematography to artfully celestial framing to the seamless visual effects (some shots use actual photos of the moon’s surface), it all looks real.

What sets it apart from recent gravity-defying films, however, is the setting. This is a future that feels recognisably familiar and deeply plausible, a world in which space travel has become commercialised, normalised, and blighted by the same overpriced pillows as the budget airline. The wonder of space has been replaced by the mundanities and conflicts of Earth; the moon is a gaudy tourist trap and disputed territory, not unlike an episode of Futurama. Throughout, we’re drip-fed morsels of information about the new inter-planetary infrastructure and each new revelation is a delicious bit of speculative world-building, ‘sci-future-fact’ rather than sci-fi.

It’s a setting that also causes our nominal hero, Roy (Pitt), some serious melancholy. Outwardly, Roy is cold and uncaring, his pulse never skipping a beat, his focus always on the mission. But his pessimistic voiceover laments the deterioration of the space era and hints at some familial yearning for his estranged father, who may be behind the catastrophic electrical surges that are suddenly plaguing Earth. Truly, you don’t know abandonment issues until your dad is floating beyond Neptune.

Roy’s narration sometimes sounds like a maudlin teenage diary (“I’ve let so many people down,” he whines at one point), but he’s a fascinatingly flawed hero, as incapable of emotions as he is a capable astronaut. His odyssey through the inconceivable vastness of the solar system has something of Willard sailing up the river in Apocalypse Now: confronted by loneliness in an unforgiving environment, the indifference of death stalking at every corner.

For such an ambitious film, it’s remarkably meditative; set across billions of miles, it is always only interested in Roy’s interior life, the camera trained in heavy close-up on his tired-looking face. (Spare a thought for poor Liv Tyler, playing Roy’s wife, who is often not even in focus, making her similar role in Armageddon look positively generous.)

But despite a dip in pace towards the end, it’s also a fantastically well-staged adventure. There’s a (literally) head-spinning opening sequence at the ‘International Space Antenna’, an encounter with an unexpected space-primate, and a moon-buggy chase which offers a thrilling preview of what ‘Fast & Furious In Space’ might look like. It has fun, even if its leading man doesn’t.

Through all this, it manages to ponder the existential questions facing humanity, and brings it back to the humanity we need to face. That, above the realistic depictions of space, is probably its real achievement.

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Hustlers Review

By Joi Childs

This is an advance review out of the Toronto International Film Festival. Hustlers opens in the US and UK on Sept. 13 and in Australia on Oct. 10.

The whole country is a strip club: you’ve got people throwing the money and you’ve got people doing the dance,” Jennifer Lopez’s Ramona says at a pivotal point of Hustlers; a simplistic but apt way of describing the search for power and control that drives this layered and unexpectedly weighty heist movie. Inspired by the 2015 New York Magazine piece “The Hustlers at Scores,” the Lorene Scafaria-directed and written film explores a group of strippers who brazenly embezzle money from rich club attendees.

We follow the group starting in 2007: Destiny (Constance Wu) is new to the club with the desire to take care of her ailing grandmother. She becomes entranced with Ramona, an ambitious veteran of the club whose entire focus is providing for her daughter, who soon takes Destiny under her wing. Things are going well until the 2008 recession: with powerful CEOs and stock brokers feeling the squeeze, they’re less likely to splash their cash in the club, prompting the enterprising Ramona to mastermind a new way of getting paid: drugging these powerful men and stealing their money.

On its face, this would be a perfectly serviceable story if it focused on the act of embezzling. But where the film elevates a potentially cliched Robin Hood story is in showcasing the bonds and motivations of the women, thanks to Scafaria’s one-two punch of script and direction. Behind the camera, Scafaria guides the scenes to avoid making the strip club look oversexed – not to say that the film is lacking in allure, but Scafaria approaches the performances with an artistic lens more than a voyeuristic one.

Stripping is equally sensual and athletic, and both are celebrated in Hustlers – a highlight of this is Ramona teaching Destiny some of the more difficult moves in a dancer’s repertoire to help her drum up tips. Getting instructions around the “tabletop” and the different “hooks” you can do with your leg is unexpected but welcomed, reinforcing the authenticity that’s been built.

As for the script, it’s clear Scafaria prioritized the complexity and friendship of these characters – and it pays off. One standout scene that highlights this pay-off is when the women celebrate Christmas together. It’s a time of celebration and extravagant gifts, not only amongst the women but their extended families as well. Moments like Ramona and Destiny’s grandmother swapping stories shine through as the soul of the piece.

Both elements wouldn’t work without the right actors breathing life into these words. Constance Wu conveys the emotional weight needed to carry this story and serves as the conscience of the operation. But it’s Jennifer Lopez’s driven performance as Ramona that steers the ship. Deploying some of the best acting in her expansive career, Lopez is particularly inspiring as the gang’s ring leader – able to flip from considerate to cold on a dime. Wu and Lopez’s chemistry on screen is electric with a friendship that feels so genuine, you’re almost disappointed this bubble they’ve crafted isn’t real.

Verdict

Thanks to Lorene Scafaria’s assured writing and direction, this often sensationalized profession is dimensionalized in fascinating ways without falling back on tired tropes. With a nuanced script, standout performances, and the adrenaline of a well-executed heist, Hustlers is an entertaining ride with something meaningful to say about power and control.

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Disney is now trying to make their best movies in live-action, and for some, that’s great news, but for others, it may seem like they ran out of new ideas. They have tons of movies, and some of them are good and should stay as they were. Lion King is the perfect example of that.

This adaptation is not bad; it’s pretty great, is beautiful. The animation is perfect; you can even think some scenes are recorded in the real savanna, but being honest, it looks kind of weird when you see a warthog singing ‘Hakuna Matata.’ The whole movie looks like a NatGeo documentary but with songs. It’s amazing the work they did with the animation, IT IS, but for a lot of people and myself, it just seems somewhat bizarre.

The movie follows the same story as the original, there’s nothing new, and they make a clear reference to another Disney movie, which is a nice touch. However, as a Disney fan and mostly as a Lion King fan, there’s one majestic lesson the movie taught me, and it’s not in this new film. One single quote could have made the film so much better.

“Oh yes, the past can hurt. But from the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.” Rafiki says it, and it’s a phrase that stuck on me since childhood. And everybody can agree that it is an excellent motto. It’s not as famous as ‘Hakuna Matata,’ but it’s just as good. For kids that will grow up watching this new film, it would be a bit of excellent advice for them.

Critics are destroying the Lion King on the internet all around the world. Even if the animation is damn good, it’s actually because of it, people believe that the characters lack expressions, animals look so real, and obviously, you can’t tell if a wild animal is happy or sad in real life, and that is what happened with this animation. It is amazing how realistic it looks, yet for a kid’s movie may not be the best option to see how Mufasa dies so graphic. I can recall hearing a lot of kids crying (maybe I did a little too), and scream when the hyenas attacked an animal.

The best part of the movie is when Simba, Timon, and Pumbaa sing ‘Hakuna Matata,’ and the song ‘Can you feel the love tonight,’ Beyoncé and Donald Glover make an astounding duo, the song is now on my playlist and probably will on yours too.

So now you know, the new adaptation is good, but not as good as the original. In my opinion, Disney has created great live-action movies like The Jungle Book, The Beauty and the Beast, and some others not that good like Dumbo, and now The Lion King. Let’s see what Disney makes next.

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4. The Wiz (1979) / The Wizard of Oz (1939)
This a 2×1 because is based on the same story, and both has spectacular performances, The Wiz has Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, and The Wizard of Oz has Judy Garland

3. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
This is a great movie that has become a cult classic, and let’s be honest, Dr. Frank-N-Furter is the sexiest transvestite scientist you can meet.

2. Grease (1978)
A real classic, if you haven’t seen it, what are you waiting for? You will want to live in the ’50s and roll like them, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John make of this musical a great movie.

1. La La Land. (2016)
The most recent of the list, and there’s no doubt why it won 6 Oscars. It’s a movie that catches you from the very beginning, great songs, and even if it looks like a cliché love story, it has a pretty realistic ending.

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Aster is very honored by the response his movie has, he even did a Q&A online to see what fans wanted to say to him, and he resolved some concerns the people had about the film. Aster is becoming a great director and screenwriter and has an excellent eye for projects.

This movie is a must-watch for many reasons, such as, it has beautiful landscapes, great performances, and the picture is appealing to the eye. Midsommar is an artistic movie and undoubtedly a terrifying one. It is more than the standard horror movies out there. It plays with your mind, and it gets stuck.

Midsommar is about a couple with a crumbling relationship that travels with a group of friends to a midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village; this festival is unique because it only happens once every 90 years. What seems to be a typical outing with friends begins to turn into something sinister and dark.

Rotten Tomatoes gave Midsommar 82% in the Tomatometer, and it’s quite a lot compared to other horror movies, the reviews and critics are mostly positive, and it’s all because of Aster’s brilliance. He makes you feel what the characters are feeling and put yourself in their places.

The movie catches you, and takes you on a ride you can’t get off. For instance, you will want to visit a midsummer festival and enjoy everything that it has to offer, but as the movie goes on, you will think that twice. Maybe you’re into creepy stuff, and you will still
want to go but let’s be honest, not everyone has the guts to face their fears.

If you like art cinema, open landscapes, and you feel capable of keeping up with a very disturbing roller coaster, this movie is the ideal for you. It’s not for everybody, some may find it boring, but if you’re a cult cinema fan, you will see the art of this movie. It’s exciting and entertaining and captures you until the very end. So don’t overthink and be ready to watch this!

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4. The Notebook (2004)
This a movie that will make you believe in true love again. It’s set in the 1940s, and it will show you that even a forbidden love it’s stronger than anything.

3. Love, Rosie (2014)
Timing is everything, and this movie will show you that. With stellar performances of Lilly Collins and Sam Claflin, you will see friendship sometimes it’s love in disguise.

2. A walk to remember (2002)
Yes, it seems like love movies were more significant in the past. But this one it’s a classic, take your tissues and ice cream and watch it with your bestie. The first love and how it can break your heart.

1. Me before you. (2016)
In the first place because even though since the beginning of the movie, you have a hunch of what will happen when it does, it breaks you, hard. Based on the same name book.

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Such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Wells, Federico Fellini or Roman Polanski, Kubrick captured his deepest obsessions in his films. But he went further, much further, where the level of perfection in his art was almost unbearable for those around him. His famous phrase was: “Very well, now again.” Something that made his stars nervous. “How can someone make you love him in a moment, and then hate him the next minute,” said actress Nicole Kidman after filming “Eyes Wide Shut.”

Early years

At the young age of 23, Kubrick began with short films such as “Day of the Fight,” but it would be “Fear and Desire” the piece that would premiere him as a filmmaker. His second film, “The Kiss of Murder” was his second film where he tells with wit and passion the story of 2 men who fight for the same woman. After “Perfect Beating,” a 1956 thriller where we see a detailed robbery perpetrated by ordinary people, Kubrick finally gives us his first great work “Paths of Glory” and from here the spotlight began to point to him. 

Paths of Glory

In “Paths of Glory” we see reflected one of the techniques that would define most of Kubrick’s films: lateral tracking with traveling following characters. In this film we see soldiers leave the trenches around bullets and explosions and, later this would be honored by Steven Spielberg in his movie “War Horse.”

Lolita

After “Spartacus,” Kubrick understood something. He knew how he wanted to make films, but the big producers did not let him. It was from this point that he did not allow anyone to come back between his heart and his art; and so that is how “Lolita” came.

This film is a controversial adaptation of the novel of the same name written by Vladimir Nabokov that tells the story of a pedophile man in his fourth decade that relates in detail his passion for girls, and how he fell in love with his 14 year old step daughter Lolita.

In those days, these type of taboo topics were very difficult to handle, and the chances of being rejected by the audience were too high for the taste of the producers. Kubrick however knew how to make an original, clear, concise and correct plot, with a lot of argumentative details and subplots that led to the first scene of the film, which was a murder, but Hollywood again censored the filmmaker.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Despite having appeared almost always on the list of Oscar nominees, as with his satirical “Dr. Strangelove,” he was always ignored by the Hollywood academy. The only Oscar he achieved in his entire life was for “2001: A Space Odyssey” where we can appreciate how Kubrick summarizes in a split second, millions of years of evolution: the greatest time ellipsis ever seen in the history of cinema.

This was also one of the most expensive projects of the capricious filmmaker, who came to spend 10 million dollars (a great excess for the time) of an initial budget of 6 million. What could you expect from a madman who does not rest until he is surrounded by experts from NASA and build a huge rotating centrifuge to recreate the gravity environment of space?

At the end of the day the expense was worth it. Few blockbusters achieved what this Science Fiction movie did, raising $57 million dollars only in the United States, a great success considering that this film was so indigestible for the public; there is barely 40 minutes of dialogue in a footage of much more than two hours, full of philosophical questions and musical compositions such as “The Blue Danube” and “Thus spoke Zarathustra.” It is practically one of the first examples of video art that triumphed by surprise in the moments before the psychedelic era.

A Clockwork Orange

The artistic sense of this giant of the cinema flourished in  “A Clockwork Orange” where the colors, the contrast and the unusual shots with their powerful lenses stood out. The most lucid moments with a dry and cold photograph; and the most insane ones with harmonies of colors and a certain irony in the environment.

To make the shot where “Alex DeLarge” jumps from the window to end his misery, Kubrick threw a reflex camera to recreate the scene with a subjective shot; the lens was destroyed but Kubrick got what he wanted. Everyone around him knew that he always got what he wanted, such as when he bought the song rights “Singing in the Rain” for $10,000 after actor Malcolm McDowell decided to hum it casually at the scene of the violation in the writer’s house.

In this piece we can appreciate that point where beauty and violence come together exquisitely to create a satire of evil and violence related to the most beautiful classical melodies. One of the films with the most history of censorship in the industry.

Barry Lyndon

The riskiest movie of Kubrick was probably Barry Lyndon. There are critics who consider the riskiest one was his last film (Eyes Wide Shut), but for that premiere, we knew who Kubrick was and from where the blows were going to arrive.

Barry Lyndon is a film with an impressive script, which is not based on the dialogue or its characters, but on the place where it develops; quite uncommon for the time. The movie is slow and elegant. Baroque style, both in musical ambiance and in set design. The costumes and hairdressing are unbeatable. Sets were more than adequate, and the photography worthy from the filmmaker.

Kubrick’s obsession was so much to present a piece taken from the memories of the eighteenth century that ordered hundreds of candles for the final illumination of this film, something quite risky and difficult for the cameras of the ’70s.

He took production and shooting so seriously that it was scary. They repeated a scene 40 times in a pigeon house, with real pigeons. Of course, they did not give the Oscar to Kubrick and friends close to the director commented that was probably the main reason why he did not make another movie in a long time. 

The Shining

However, it was not forever. “The Shining,” an adaptation of Stephen King’s book and one of the most remembered horror films meant, the return of the monster from the nightmares of the actors. The psychological torture that the actress Shelley Duvall received from the director to perform realistically the famous scene of “Here is Johnny!” was very intense to make her look really horrified. “My eyes were so swollen from crying for several hours that there were times when I wanted to quit,” said Duvall. But that was not all; Duvall was forced to perform the exhausting baseball bat scene 127 times. Afterward, Duvall presented Kubrick with clumps of hair that had fallen due to the extreme stress of filming.

Full Metal Jacket

Then he adapted “Full Metal Jacket,” returning to the warlike genre but with much more agility and violence than in “Paths of Glory.” The budget of the film was an exaggeration. Many buildings and bridges flew. They even resorted to military-type explosives. However, the war scenes are impressive, probably much more than “Saving Private Ryan.” The realism was atrocious and shocking.

Eyes Wide Shut

At the end of the ’90s, Kubrick ends with his most criticized film “Eyes Wide Shut.” The film was not completely finished and the version we see is that of montage. The film suffered many censorship problems due to the ritual scene followed by a massive orgy, as well as several sex scenes. Everything is narrated ambiguously as if everything were a dream; as if we saw episodes lost of something that did not really happen. Everything is dreamlike, metaphorical, full of cinematographic language, slow, elegant but at the same time terrifying.

Napoleon

Kubrick worked hard during his career in the research and documentation of one of his favorite historical characters “Napoleon.” This is considered the great work never made by Stanley Kubrick. It was the great monster of his nightmares. Despite having rooms full of documents and information, the filmmaker was not satisfied. He felt that he needed more to be able to achieve this masterpiece of his life, a film that would never see the light.

Kubrick inherited all this information, plans and ideas to Steven Spielberg along with a project he was working on just before his death. “A.I. Artificial Intelligence. “Although Spielberg did produce and direct the last one mentioned, he has not dared to produce Napoleon, because he feels that the only filmmaker capable of realizing it with the greatness and wit it requires is gone.

Great writer, creator, and narrator, Stanley Kubrick is the only director who is not pigeonholed in one or two genres since he has in his portfolio several genres of film. However, despite the fact that each of his films are so different amongst each other, the signature of Kubrick can be clearly perceived; when you watch a Kubrick film, you’re seeing the inside of his mind.

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