Bringing up Babies: Top Ten movies of 2016
Movies: Top Ten 2016
Some say Donald Trump won the Presidency playing to childish insecurity and name-calling, but the annual box-office derby also proved a public appetite for adolescent entertainments. Film Critic Katherine Monk breaks down the top-ten money earners, and offers her own take on the year's best.
By Katherine Monk (Published Jan. 2, 2017) The political arena wasn’t the only place where childhood behaviours prevailed in 2016. Movie theatres also played to our apparent desire for less-sophisticated, over-simplified entertainments. It was the year the Mouse House roared: The Walt Disney Company was responsible for five of the year’s top ten earners worldwide, for a record haul of $4.829 billion - just a little under half the cumulative worldwide gross of $11.3 billion. Disney raced to the pinnacle of a relatively static box-office heap with titles that included the top-earning Captain America: Civil War ($1.153B), Finding Dory ($1.027B), Zootopia ($1.023B), The ...
Ten Sundance titles that tweak our critical antenna
Film: The 2016 Sundance Film Festival
This year's festival includes a testament to Kristen Stewart's continuing career in art house cinema, Don Cheadle tooting his own horn as Miles Davis and one movie about a wiener dog, and another about a dog named Weiner.
By Katherine Monk
The festival kicks off in earnest later today with Robert Redford's annual press conference, but before the press corps gets pressed together and becomes a blurb-spouting Borg, I made a list of ten standout titles that may, or may not, get mileage when it's all over: Captain Fantastic: Viggo Mortensen plays a father who’s raised six kids off the grid, and — for reasons as yet unknown — is forced to plug back in the world he left behind. Certain Women: Kelly Reichardt is a true independent who embodies the Sundance ethos, and she returns with Certain Women, an adaptation of Maile Meloy’s short stories that stars Michelle Williams, Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone. Complete ...
