Author Archive
 

 

Behind the US/Worldwide Weekend Box Office – 8/30/15

  OPENINGS:  Every time a Christian movie sells some tickets, the pundits treat it as though they’ve seen… well, a miracle.  But at this point there have been plenty of these “miracles,” and peopl...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Pilot + 1 Review: “Fear the Walking Dead”

  FEAR THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 6PM on AMC   Previously… on FEAR THE WALKING DEAD:  Something odd is happening in Los Angeles, years before and a continent away from Rick Grimes and his troupe of survivors. ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Scream”

  The MTV version of SCREAM nailed its own problem back in the pilot, courtesy of its one-man meta machine Noah (John Karna)–but diagnosing one’s own illness is a long way from curing it.  A TV series, indeed,...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Mistresses”

  MISTRESSES faced some challenges in its 3rd season.  Two were interrelated:  for budget reasons, the network and studio decided to relocate the production to Vancouver, and that prompted marquee star Alyssa Milano to d...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

EARLY FRIDAY BOX OFFICE: Hollywood Takes The Holiday Off

  Labor Day weekend is always the exhausted last gasp of the summer movie season, but this year the studios didn’t even try.  Partly it’s the effect of August having generally been a disaster in 2015 (last yea...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

Behind the US/Worldwide Weekend Box Office: “War Room” Conquers “Compton”

  Note:  Because of the holiday weekend and consequent strong Sunday, weekend-to-weekend drops will look softer than usual. OPENINGS:  It was a weak battle of newcomers, with A WALK IN THE WOODS (Broad Green) ahead at $8...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “You’re The Worst”

  YOU’RE THE WORST:  Wednesday 10:30PM on FXX The secret shame of Jimmy (Chris Geere) and Gretchen (Aya Cash), the protagonists of YOU’RE THE WORST, is that they’re far more conventional than they’...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “A Tale of Love and Darkness”

  Natalie Portman certainly hasn’t made it easy for herself with her debut as a writer/director, A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS.  The film, which premiered at Cannes (but tellingly, doesn’t yet have a US distribu...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “London Road”

  LONDON ROAD may have seemed marginally less odd as the stage musical it originally was.  No matter how naturalistic a play may be, the mechanics of theatre make it somewhat stylized, and that may have brought the show&#...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “I Saw the Light”

  Marc Abraham, for his second film as director (prior to that, he was a veteran producer), has chosen his second consecutive mid-20th-century biography, following 2008’s Flash of Genius with I SAW THE LIGHT, which p...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “Sicario”

  The director Denis Villenueve has been staking out some interesting Hollywood territory for himself.  His new SICARIO, which debuted at Cannes and screened at the Toronto Film Festival prior to arriving in theatres next...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “The Lobster”

  The allegory is piled on so thickly in Yorgos Lanthimos’ THE LOBSTER that after a while, it’s not clear just what the underlying subject is supposed to be.  Lanthimos is a cult-favorite filmmaker (the cult m...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “The Martian”

  Ridley Scott’s THE MARTIAN is the jaunty sci-fi offspring of Apollo 13 and McGyver, Scott’s least self-important movie in years and not coincidentally his most enjoyable.  Drew Goddard’s expertly craft...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “Truth”

  The screenwriter James Vanderbilt has made his directing debut with TRUTH, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival tonight, and at times it’s clear that this is a writer’s movie:  Vanderbilt gives no fe...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Review: “Trumbo”

  It’s an unfortunate irony that TRUMBO, the story of one of Hollywood’s great blacklisted screenwriters, is undermined by an inadequate script.  It’s written by John McNamara, also the man behind NBC...
by Mitch Salem