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The month's last hope at the U.S. box office is Steven Spielberg's 'Ready Player One,' which opens Thursday, the eve of Easter weekend. With less than a week to go, Hollywood's major March releases have failed to bloom at the North American box office, triggering the worst year-over-year decline for the month in recent memory. March revenue through Sunday was an estimated $722.5 million, a 28 percent decline from the same time period last year ($997.3 million), according to comScore. The last hope for redemption is Steven Spielberg's pricey Ready Player One, which Warner Bros. and Amblin Entertainment open in...

1. If You’re Not Having Sex Right This Second, You Are a Loser When all the winners on the screen that you’re supposed to root for are having sex the way most of us are shaking hands, it makes a lot of people in the real world think they should be doing the same thing. Couldn’t they show James Bond’s shaken expression as a doctor informs him he's contracted syphilis or something? 2. The Key to Success Is Being Born Special or Being Handed a Gift You know, like Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, eeee, Superman, and nearly every other superhero....

Faith-based films performed well at the box office for a second straight weekend, with "I Can Only Imagine" capturing the third spot once again. "Paul, Apostle of Christ" landed in the eighth spot in its debut weekend, earning $5 million for Sony's Affirm Films. "I Can Only Imagine" held strong in its second weekend in theaters, scoring a solid $13.8 million. That brings its total earnings to $38 million – an impressive performance for a film that only cost $7 million to create.

The movie business owes Ryan Coogler and his Marvel team a debt of profound gratitude. Had Coogler and company not pulled off the massive cultural and financial success of “Black Panther,” the industry would be emerging from a long and brutal winter. As it stands, the Marvel movie about the king of Wakanda is the only new release in the past three months to achieve blockbuster status. The film’s outsize success is the sole reason that the domestic box office through the first quarter is running flat with revenues from 2017. It’s yet another illustration of the new commercial dynamics...

One New York City firefighter has died and two have been seriously injured battling a blaze that broke out late Thursday on a film set in upper Manhattan, authorities said. The deceased firefighter was Michael Davidson, 37, authorities said. The 15-year department veteran, who had reportedly been cited for bravery four times, leaves behind his wife and four daughters.

“Paul, Apostle of Christ” comes from the Affirm label, which has produced such Christian-themed dramas as “Heaven Is for Real.” Less interested in blunt proselytizing than more open-ended explorations of faith and its challenges, Affirm films have gratifyingly avoided the kind of Sunday-school pageantry that characterizes so many movies of the genre. “Paul, Apostle of Christ” is no exception. A portrait of the titular Christian convert and leader of the early church as he faces imprisonment and martyrdom at the hands of Roman oppressors, this absorbing drama benefits from lush production values and first-rate performances from a cast of seasoned...

When the Dennis Quaid starring movie I CAN ONLY IMAGINE released last weekend, few thought that it would gross $17 million in its opening weekend, with a per-screen average of $10,400. Considering the movie had a production budget of $7 million, this is an outstanding return no matter how you slice it. In comparison, 21st Century Fox’s LGBT teen romance movie which opened in 800 more theaters than I CAN ONLY IMAGINE grossed only $11 million with a per-screen average of $4,700. It also beat out Disney’s A WRINKLE IN TIME in its second weekend, which only brought in $16...

Hollywood actor Jim Caviezel is gearing up for the release of his new film, "Paul, Apostle of Christ," and says he feels called to make Christian films and share the love of Jesus Christ throughout his industry. "Paul, Apostle of Christ," hits theaters March 23rd and will bring to life the story of Saul of Tarsus, who was known for persecuting and murdering Christians but went on to become one of the most powerful and important figures of the Church after he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus. Caviezel said he wanted to do this film because it's the...

The faith-based film "I Can Only Imagine" brought in $17.1 million at the domestic box office during its opening weekend, going far beyond early expectations and ranking third, behind "Tomb Raider" and "Black Panther." Based on the true-story of Christian artist Bart Millard's life, the family drama opened at 1,629 locations in the United States and received an A+ CinemaScore with an audience that was 67 percent female and 80 percent over 35. This is the distributor Roadside Attractions' highest grossing opening ever. "We felt that the film's inspiring story of hope and forgiveness made for a very compelling collaboration,"...

Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” is the second of five all new adventures in J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World™. At the end of the first film, the powerful Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) was captured by MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America), with the help of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne). But, making good on his threat, Grindelwald escaped custody and has set about gathering followers, most unsuspecting of his true agenda: to raise pure-blood wizards up to rule over all non-magical beings. In an effort to thwart Grindelwald’s plans, Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law)...

The nation’s moviegoers look to be turning out in bigger numbers for a Christian-themed independent film than for the first mainstream teen movie with a gay main character. Roadside Attractions’ “I Can Only Imagine,” based on the story of the biggest-selling Christian song of all time, is looking at an estimated $14 million-plus for the weekend from 1,629 locations, far outdoing earlier estimates of $2 million-$8 million. Meanwhile, Fox’s “Love, Simon” is garnering attention for featuring a love story centering on a teenage boy coming out, and is looking at a $12 million-plus weekend on 800 more screens than the...

The Fighting 69th a movie starring James Cagney and great movie for St. Patrick's day is now on TMC. The 69th leads the NYC St. Patrick's Day parade. Although haven't seen Darby O'Gil and the Little People playing this weekend.

Not since the Windsor Castle fire has there been a makeover of one of our national treasures on such a scale. Indeed, the restoration of Chatsworth House has cost only a few million pounds less than the £37 million lavished on the castle. However, the facelift of Chatsworth, in Derbyshire — where Keira Knightley’s heart as Miss Bennet first fluttered over the brooding Mr Darcy in the big-screen version of Pride And Prejudice — was prompted not by adversity but because its owner, the Duke of Devonshire, had no wifi. That became the trigger for the biggest, costliest and longest...

In 2008, John Michael Finley – a student at the prestigious performing arts school at Roosevelt University – came home to Lebanon after his spring semester only to hear bad news. His father told him that Roosevelt University was simply too expensive, and he’d need to finish his college education elsewhere. This news didn’t necessarily bode well for his aspirations as an actor, yet Finley took it in stride. But only a few weeks later, he and his family were shaken by tragedy. On May 31, 2008, Finley’s 21-year-old brother, Army Specialist James M. Finley, was killed in Jalalabad City,...

Over the weekend, Armando Iannucci's critically acclaimed The Death of Stalin did impressive business upon launching in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, grossing $181,308 for a per-screen average of $45,327 — the second-best average of the year to date behind Black Panther. Moreover, the comedy scored the second-best opening average ever for veteran indie distributor IFC... The movie will be listed on the marquee in a total of nine cities next weekend — including Washington — on its way to rolling out nationwide at the end of the month. Set in 1953, The Death of Stalin is...

Boy, are the Kennedys going to hate this new movie about Teddy. The title of the movie: “Chappaquiddick.” What more does America’s First Family need to know before they start booing and hissing? The movie debuts April 6, and after viewing it Monday night, I can tell you it’s a great film. Here are a few of the more memorable scenes: As the Oldsmobile sinks in the tidal pond and the water rises around Mary Jo Kopechne, with her final panicked breaths she is reciting the Act of Contrition. As Ted tells his crippled, dying father Joe what has happened,...

“I thought my last film was hard,” Zhao laughs, “but for a Chinese woman to try to wrangle a bunch of young cowboys?” Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao is making her second trip to the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight this year, with sophomore feature The Rider. Born in Beijing, Zhao went to school in the UK and college in the U.S. before settling in Denver, basing her first two feature films on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. Zhao’s 2015 drama, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, was developed at the Sundance Institute and premiered in Park City that year. It centers...

I like Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator as Commodushttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W71Cg00R0w and Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner at Roy Battyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCucXQ3IASs> but I'm sure I have others if I really pondered it.

Fifty years ago next month, invitation-only audiences gathered in specially equipped Cinerama theaters in Washington, New York and Los Angeles to preview a widescreen epic that director Stanley Kubrick had been working on for four years. Conceived in collaboration with the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, “2001: A Space Odyssey” was way over budget, and Hollywood rumor held that MGM had essentially bet the studio on the project. The film’s previews were an unmitigated disaster. Its story line encompassed an exceptional temporal sweep, starting with the initial contact between pre-human ape-men and an omnipotent alien civilization and then vaulting forward...

Disney's big-budget adaptation of the best-selling novel "A Wrinkle in Time" falters in many of the same ways the book does— but there was one major change made in the movie from the novel. The film's version of events strips away explicit mention of God or religion, instead trimming down the central conflict to one between "evil" and "light." Though the film adaptation has several critical flaws — namely pacing and an off-kilter wobble between too much exposition and then not enough — the removal of L'Engle's religious overtones leads to a key issue. By removing the religious themes, the...