Many questions were aroused when Universal green-lit another variation of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Wasn’t it too soon since the live-action Jim Carrey version? Can you trust the diminishing returns of the Despicable Me team to pull this off? And based on the initial trailer, is this supposed to be funny? Somehow people forgot, it’s called How The Grinch Stole Christmas and it prints its own money, people! Dr. Seuss’ cautionary tale about the commercialization of Christmas makes bank and it always has… Cue the Alanis Morissette song.

After the biggest October on record at the box-office, the 2018 Holiday Movie Pool kicked off November with a party of its own. There was music from the 20th century, music from the 19th century, and dollar signs from the 21st century which was music to the ears of movie-execs everywhere.

The Party City costumes have been picked over, the lawn sprinkler restrictions are back on, and, just like last year, after tonight’s Dodgers game I’m looking for some eggnog to spike, so it's time for the 22th Annual Holiday Movie Pool!

Holy Moly, we’ve had four months of movies just fly by! We had big-budget smashes, low budget scares, indy documentaries, animated hi-jinks, and a whole lot of “Wait, what did I see this summer” whenever people ask what you saw. It’s almost like we’ve become that dust at the end of Infinity War where everything we do sort of just slips away. “I’m pretty sure I was playing in the Summer Movie Pool, but the updates were so infrequent, maybe I forgot to play this year?”

With the summer starting to wind down, this was the time for some films to heat up. The low hanging fruit of Solo’s $210 million was ripe for the plucking. Here came some of the biggest things in the last 40 years: ABBA, Denzel, and Tom Cruise. Could they turn the tide or would they be eating tide pods?

While we pretend the summer weekend that only meekly offered Uncle Drew and Sicario 2 never happened, July tried to lay the thunder as June had done. Oh wait, June started off with Adrift and the “meh” Ocean’s 8. Raise your MoviePass if you saw history repeating itself coming.

For only the second time in history, two films have opened with $100+ openings in back to back weeks! This last happened in 2007 with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Shrek the Third. Wow, it’s weird to even think back and go, “Oh yeah, there was a time Johnny Depp and Mike Meyers were a pretty big thing.” The #1 song of 2007 was Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” and I guess she was right… Everyone else except for her was replaceable. To the left, to the left, indeed.