It’s not been a bad year for the UK box office. With the total takings of 2019s top 10 highest grosser’s (at time of writing) being approximately £388,967,274 (according to Box Office Mojo and google money converter).

So today we are going to look at how the top 10 currently stands. Which movies have earned the most in the UK so far? And what have critics and audiences had to say about them?

10. The Secret Life of Pets 2 – £19,570,258

The latest offering from Illumination managed to rake in the box office, despite a rather lukewarm reception.

Audience Thoughts: 90% – Rotten tomatoes / 6.6 – IMDb

Critics Thoughts: “A sequel that feels less necessary than willed into being, but that doesn’t mean it’s not pleasantly entertaining.”

9. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World – £21,219,615

While the concluding How to Train Your Dragon movie wasn’t as successful as its predecessors at the box office, it continued to impress both audiences and critics in equal measure.

Audience Thoughts: 87% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.6 – IMDb

Critics Thoughts: “Who would have thought that DreamWorks’ “How To Train Your Dragon” would end up as one of the best film trilogies out there?”

8. Rocketman – £23,572,360

The Elton John biopic followed in the footsteps of last year’s Bohemian Rhapsody and became a smash hit across the UK.

Audience Thoughts: 88% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.6 – IMDb

Critics Thoughts: “Rocketman is an honest, heartfelt tribute to Elton John’s music and his public image.”

7. Dumbo (2019) – £26,964,177

The first of Disney’s live-action remakes this year, left an odd taste in the mouths of cinemagoers. As despite its high takings, no one really seemed overly enthused about it.

Audience Thoughts: 51% – Rotten Tomatoes / 6.4 – IMDb

Critics Thoughts: “The problem with this latest entry in Disney’s ever-expanding range of recycled classics isn’t that it hews too close to the studio’s original animated masterpiece, but that its many departures only muddle the original’s nursery-rhyme simplicity”

6. Spider-Man: Far From Home – £31,524,501

The most recent film in the ever dominant MCU, like many of its predecessors, deftly managed to please both audiences and critics.

Audience thoughts: 95% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.9 – IMDb

Critics Thoughts: “It’s not quite the home-run of Homecoming, but Far From Home isn’t far from matching it, with heaps of humour, energetic action, and the answers Endgame left you craving.”

5. Aladdin (2019) – £37,496,448

Back with Disney’s live-action remakes, unlike Dumbo, Aladdin did manage to please audiences, critics however were very mixed.

Audience Thoughts: 94% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.4 – IMDb

Critics Thoughts: “Another lavish and largely entertaining Disney re-do, with strong turns from Massoud and Scott. But…Smith’s genie performance feels disappointingly constrained — both by overdependence on the original and some ghastly CGI.”

4. The Lion King (2019) – £37,816,339

The latest Disney remake has, in only 2 weeks, already proven to be Disney’s most successful solo developed project in the UK. It also managed to capture the love of the general public. But critics have been less kind to this effort:

Audience Thoughts:  88% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.2 – IMDb

Critics Thoughts: “Unfolding like the world’s longest and least convincing deepfake, the new “Lion King” fatally misunderstands what once made Disney special.”

3. Captain Marvel – £42,632,688

Despite its divided reception by both audiences and critics, Captain Marvel continued to prove the power of the MCU’s marquee value.

Audience Thoughts: 55% – Rotten Tomatoes / 7.0 – IMDb

Critics Thoughts: “Captain Marvel is … a solid enough movie, but it suffers from an overbearing need for its agenda to be pushed – had it been handled with a little more care, it could have been fantastic.”

2. Toy Story 4 – £53,611,537

9 years after Toy Story 3, Toy Story 4 finally made it to cinemas. It continued the high standards set by the original Toy Story films, opening to almost unanimous praise across the board.

Audience Thoughts:  94% on Rotten Tomatoes / 8.2 – IMDb (#170 on IMDb’s top 250 films)

Critics Thoughts: “This franchise has demonstrated an impressive ability to beat the odds and reinvent itself…It’s a toy store of ideas, with new wonders in every aisle.”

1. Avengers: Endgame – £94,559,351

Lastly, we come to the highest-grossing movie of the year (and of all time). After over a decade of build-up, the MCU finally culminated with a fond farewell that pleased almost everyone.

Audience Thoughts: 91% – Rotten Tomatoes / 8.7 – IMDb (#24 0n IMDb’s top 250 films).

Critics Thoughts: “Avengers: Endgame is all that you hope it’ll be and a bag of chips. The Russo brothers hit all the right notes from start to finish, and the ending in particular is thoroughly satisfying.”

So ends the UK box office top 10 of the year so far. And with big releases like IT: Chapter 2 and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker coming up, this year’s top 10 may even beat last year’s top 10 gross (approximately £523,006,040). We’ll just have to wait and see.

Also Read: What’s Next For Disney?

The post Top 10 UK Box Office Movies of 2019 (So Far) appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

Another Avengers movie release, another midnight showing, another day as a work zombie…all totally worth it.

Avengers: Endgame finally hit the big screen on 25 April, and I was one of the hundreds of ecstatic movie-goers packing out one of several booked-out screens at our local cinema. I’ve been to a few midnight showings, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many super-enthusiastic fans gathered in one place. The atmosphere was electric – it’s the perfect way to enjoy a much-anticipated film, because everyone who’s there really has to want to be there at that time.

Anyway, on to the review. This one is SPOILER-FREE, but I’ll probably do a follow-up piece soon discussing the film in more depth.

For now, here are my initial impressions of the final Avengers movie.

Why now?

Endgame was released on 25 April and is in cinemas in the UK right now.

In a nutshell

With half of all life in the universe ‘snapped’ out of existence by the titan Thanos, the remaining handful of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes set about trying to find a way to reverse what their arch nemesis achieved at the end of Infinity War. I can’t say any more than that without dropping a spoiler, but from the trailers, you’ll know that Ant-Man and Captain Marvel play a part in it all.

Who’s it for?

The movie is rated 12a, so some children may need an adult along. It’s just Marvel-level violence for the most part though, so don’t worry too much about it.

Who’s in it?

I’m not even going to touch this one because the cast of this film is freakin’ huge. If you’ve seen Captain America Civil War, Infinity War, Ant-Man and Captain Marvel, however, you’ll already be acquainted with the entire cast.

Really struggling to contain myself here…

The good stuff

Man, I wish I hadn’t set that no-spoilers rule at the start of this review!

If you’re a Marvel fan (and of course you are), this film is everything you’ll have wanted it to be. It is at least as good as Infinity War, if not a few shades better, and if you’ve read my review on it you’ll know that’s high praise indeed.

On every level – writing, direction, acting, special effects, etc – Endgame exceeds expectations. I went in having no real clue what was going to happen, as I think most fans did, but even if I’d formulated my own carefully-concocted version of the plot, it would never have come close to what actually happens in the film. Right from the start, the plot spins off in directions I could never have predicted. Characters die who I expected to live (that’s not a spoiler, you knew some of them would die), others survive who I assumed would be killed off at some stage; certain heroes play key roles while others sit a little further back, but every member of the cast gets their time to shine. How the Russo brothers managed to achieve that in such an effortless way, I’ll never know.

And that’s another awesome thing about this movie – the great moments you hoped would happen do happen, just not necessarily in the ways you anticipate. There are fantastic twists, set pieces, stunts and phenomenal cinematography throughout, and the final battle sequence tops anything ever played out in the history of action movies, let alone those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Pretty sure that isn’t an exaggeration, either.

Finally, on an emotional level, Endgame trumps everything that’s come before it. There were plenty of tears in our screening towards the end, explosions of laughter all the way through, and spontaneous applause when the final credits rolled. Be warned – this is an emotional experience, and you will leave the cinema feeling very sad and very happy in equal measure.

The not so good stuff

There really isn’t much to say here. My only complaint, and it’s extremely minor, would be with some of the early sections of the film that seem a bit slow, but there’s a lot of character development going on here and numerous story arcs being concluded simultaneously, so I suppose that’s to be expected. I would have liked to have seen a few of the characters get slightly more screen time as well, but again, it’s a tall order getting everyone into a film that acts as the culmination of ten years’ worth of storytelling.

The bottom line

Avengers: Endgame is all that you hope it’ll be and a bag of chips. The Russo brothers hit all the right notes from start to finish, and the ending in particular is thoroughly satisfying.

Like I said, I’ll write a second review TEEMING with spoilers in the near future, but for now, just take my word for it that this film is incredible – see it as soon as possible on the biggest screen you can.

Verdict: (5 / 5)

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