The first instalment of our Holiday Gift Guide dealt with First-run Releases and the second instalment with, TV on DVD releases. The third installment of our Holiday Gift Guide deals with limited releases, classics, and foreign imports and this list can get out of hand rather quickly, so I will try and keep it to a dozen items or so, starting with...
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The Golden Globes nominations are the second major Awards Season set to come out. It is still very early in the year and the predictive value of the Golden Globes is a little suspect, but there are still some things to learn here. For example Vice led the way with six nominations, so its Oscar chances have gone up, but don’t expect it to lead the way when the Oscars nominations are announced.
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The Independent Spirit Awards nominations were announced on Friday and thus the 2018 Awards Season begins. We The Animals topped the list with five nominations, while A24 earned 12 as a studio.
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Eighth Grade opened with stellar reviews and I even heard Oscar talk for its star, Elsie Fisher. This does have the negative side effect of increasing expectations. Can it live up to those expectations? And is the DVD / Blu-ray worth picking up?
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There are several films based on real life events on this week’s list, three of which look like they were precision engineered to win Oscars. Of these, only Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is earning good reviews. It’s not even earning the best reviews of the week, as Eighth Grade takes that title. Those two films could be in a battle for top spot on the theater average chart over the weekend.
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Minions is one of the four, probably soon-to-be five films that earned more than $1 billion worldwide this year. Impressive. When I first heard they were making a spin-off of the Despicable Me films, I was not shocked in the least. Those two films were monster hits and were loved by critics. However, I was worried this movie wouldn't live up to its predecessors, because a little Minions goes a long way. Could they handle a movie to themselves? Or do they work better providing comic relief for the main characters?
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Despicable Me came out in 2010 and it was the first digitally animated film released by Universal. There was a lot of pressure to do well, because its level of success would not only determine if more Despicable Me movies would be made, but if the studio would continue to release digitally animated films in general. It beat expectations. Not only was it a great movie, but it earned more than $500 million worldwide on a $69 million budget. Needless to say, Despicable Me 2 was given the greenlight right away. However, can it live up to its predecessor? If not, is it still worth checking out?
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For the most part, June was a really strong month at the box office with nearly every film either matching expectations, or at least coming close enough to call it a victory. Looking forward, there are a dozen films opening wide in July, more or less. One of them, The Smurfs 2, is opening on a Wednesday, so I'm going to hold off talking about that movie till the August preview. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain is opening in less than 1000 theaters, but it has a shot at reaching the top ten during its opening weekend. If we include both of them, there are twelve films, but I think it is better to stick with the ten truly wide, truly July openings. Of these, Despicable Me 2 is clearly going to be the biggest hit at the box office. It could become the second biggest hit of the year so far. It is not the only film that could be a $100 million hit. In fact, there are six films opening in July that I think have a better than 50% chance of reaching that level. There is currently only one film that I think won't at least become a midlevel hit. By comparison in 2012, there were three $100 million movies, led by The Dark Knight Rises, but the rest of the new releases struggled. There's no chance any movie opening this month will top $400 million, in fact, it is quite possible no film will get to $300 million. That said, 2013 has a lot better depth, so it might come out on top in the end.
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