Welcome to Week 12 of the Knock on Wood Movie Fantasy League dispatch. Every week (more or less), we’ll bring you a recap of the past weekend’s box office, alongside an overview of the new release films and an updated leaderboard, complete with full teams and points!
This weekend’s domestic box office was up 91.9%, an unsurprising fact given that Toy Story 5, which promises to be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, touched down on Friday. It was the only new release in the top five, followed by Disclosure Day (down 60%, and dropping more by the day) and Obsession, which sustained an impressive 30% drop in its sixth week. Horror rules the remainder of the five with Backrooms and Scary Movie bringing up the rear, and old dogs Michael and The Mandalorian and Grogu fighting to stay in the top ten. The gap between Toy Story (at #1) and Disclosure Day (at #2) is as wide as the Mariana Trench – $160 million versus $17 million. Whether or not Toy Story has legs remains to be seen (historically, the franchise does incredibly well in the months after release, but it’s not usually been up against other animation tentpoles in an extraordinarily crowded summer), but it is certain to make the eight people who drafted it very happy.
Speaking of, Toy Story 5 is finally out in the world, seven years after its predecessor provided another emotionally resonant conclusion to the long-running franchise. Whether or not this movie is “necessary” is not a conversation I am particularly interested in – it exists, and that’s the end of it! We have to meet it on its own terms, and I found a lot to love within Toy Story 5. I feel like a broken record (especially after rewatching all four Toy Story films, most for the first time, in the weeks leading up to 5), but consider me shocked and delighted that a Toy Story sequel I was increasingly skeptical about is actually very touching, endearingly silly, and thoroughly enjoyable. Joan Cusack finally gets her moment in the sun to lead the film as Sheriff Jessie, and she turns in a surprisingly heart-wrenching voice performance that feels like the apex of the franchise’s history with incredibly iconic roles. It’s not the best Toy Story, but it’s very good, and that instantly makes it better than what I (and many others!) hoped for. I only hope that it can cling to the #1 spot for as long as Minionly (sorry, humanly) possible.
The Death of Robin Hood is also new this week, coming to us courtesy of Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One director Michael Sarnoski. It debuted at #8 with about $2.8 million, a modest showing for the A24 folk drama (think The Green Knight meets The Northman). A movie like this was never going to be a massive hit – its tone and structure are deliberately subversive and could certainly be seen as purposely alienating, though I believe Sarnoski is telling this darker, more violent story about the “true” Robin Hood with an entirely earnest point of view. His point extends beyond the man that is Robin Hood – it’s a deconstruction of a legendary figure, the mythology that guides their legacies, and the stories that become their reality, all while interrogating our own relationship to those stories. It’s right there in the title; this is about the death of the idea, an idea we have become very comfortable with over nearly a thousand years of storytelling. Sarnoski will always have my number, and I’m just glad that The Death of Robin Hood got made in the first place. For cases like this, the production is the victory.
Just in time for Pride Month, Hayley Kiyoko’s Girls Like Girls is also new this week, an incredibly sweet coming-of-age lesbian romance based on Kiyoko’s debut novel, which is itself based on her seminal song (and accompanying music video). It dove in at #11 this weekend in 504 theaters, far less than its box office competitors. While it very much feels like a debut feature, there’s a lot to love in Kiyoko’s tender drama, which features lovely performances from general newcomers Maya da Costa and Myra Molloy and a solid 2000s ambiance that, yes, stirs up some sense memories from my youth. Maybe that’s the new name of the game – nostalgia plays for older Gen-Z.
If you wanted some more evocative tension with your queer storytelling, also released this week (though sadly not eligible for the draft) is Leviticus, an Australian psychological horror flick in the vein of It Follows. Joe Bird (Talk to Me) stars as Naim alongside Stacy Clausen (Thrash) as Ryan, two young gay men who find themselves pursued by a murderous entity that takes the form of the person they desire most, which happens to be each other. It’s an existentially scary tale about both age-old and modern-day conservatism, which draws a deliberate uncrossable line between people who love each other, separating them through fear. It’s well worth a watch, if you can stomach 90 minutes of tense, creepy atmosphere and a few solid jump scares.
Disclosure Day’s polarizing reception has largely skewed positive on the critical side, but it’s not the warmly-received classical Spielberg hit that many hoped it would be (don’t believe the propaganda – the movie is fantastic!). It netted 50 critical points, while Stop! That! Train! ended up with 30; both scores came almost entirely from Metacritic, which has proven to be a valuable booster for films that might not exceed at the box office.
Check out our leaderboard here. For the most up-to-date scoring on each movie, check out this spreadsheet. Additionally, I’ve made a Letterboxd list of every film chosen by our players for the Fantasy League. You can view that anytime here.
Next week, the DCU experiment continues with Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl, Sundance darling The Invite finally lands in limited theaters, and a bunch of guys in their mid-fifties try their best to physically and psychologically torture each other for our entertainment. That’s right, it’s Jackass: Best and Last! This feels like a slate with something for everyone, unless you’re looking for children’s programming – the Minions will soon come to snatch that crown, but for now it belongs to Toy Story, baby.
As a reminder, submissions for the MFL are now closed. Thank you all for playing, and I am very much looking forward to seeing the board change every which way over the next few months! Please let us know if you have any feedback, and don’t forget to come back here next week for a recap and the updated leaderboard!
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