Summer Movies 2000 (Part 6)
(08/24/00)
Some of you may not want to hear this, but summer is almost over. The sun's going down earlier, school is back in session, and Labor Day is only a week and a half away. Naturally, summer movie season is pretty much over as well, or my summer movie watching anyway. So here I'll deliver a few parting shots before listing (as always) my favorite movies of the summer.
Traditionally, summer movies are aimed at the young, with lots of flashy special effects, music-video-style editing, and hip Gen-X stars. So how on Earth did the new Clint Eastwood movie, "Space Cowboys," with its leisurely pace, geezer-friendly subject matter, and cast of--as my mom put it--"aging hunk" actors, end up opening smack dab in the middle of July? Not only that, how did it make a fair amount of money? Such questions are not for me to answer. However, I can assure you that, even from my "barely legal" perspective, it's not half bad.
Clint Eastwood (who also did a fine job directing), Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner star as former Air Force test pilots who would have been the first men in space if budget cuts hadn't replaced them with a dang cute chimp named Mary Ann. Decades later, they get a second chance at space when an ancient Russian satellite malfunctions, since they're the only ones who understand the technology. Now another movie would give the aging astronauts twenty minutes to establish their motivations, then shoot them into space and spend the next hour and a half blowing things up. ("Armageddon," anyone?) But "Space Cowboys" takes more than an hour to even get them off the ground, and even then the plot drifts around like Alan Shepard in orbit even when our heroes are faced with the most special of special effects and the most dramatic of dilemmas. Sure, it drags a little from time to time. But it's also a nice break from tense, speedy plotting, and the four main characters are all so lovable that it's great just to hang out and listen to them banter.
All four actors do a fine job (although Garner is horribly
underused as a fighter-pilot-turned-Baptist-minister), the script is
incessantly clever and charming, and the visuals are always pretty and
occasionally stunning. I think this is
one of those movies that the older you are, the more you like it; I enjoyed it,
my dad loved it, and when we saw it the septuagenarian next to us was laughing
so hard, I hoped he was wearing Depends.
But no matter your age, if you've got the attention span for it I think
you'll find it a nice break from Speedy Gonzales on celluloid. The Verdict: See it, particularly with
someone 40 or older; if nothing else you'll get a kick out of their
reactions. 3 out of 5.
Perhaps only for lack of things to do, I also moseyed on over to "What Lies Beneath," starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer and directed Robert Zemeckis (of "Back To The Future," "Forrest Gump," and one of my favorites, "Contact"). Great director, and I've been a Harrison Ford fan practically from birth, so I really wanted to like this one. Now, in the aftermath, I'm left asking myself how a film with such a fine pedigree could suck so dreadfully much.
Don't get me wrong; Zemeckis is in rare form as always, shooting lovely scenery in equally gorgeous ways, and both actors acquit themselves nicely. But they're hobbled by a standard, moronic vengeful-ghost script. A movie about a woman experiencing supernatural events and beginning to suspect those around her of wrongdoing should be brimming over with Hitchcockian suspense, but "What Lies Beneath" constantly goes for cheap, hey-look-made-you-jump surprises that are scary for the first twenty minutes or so (people in the theatre screamed out loud a number of times--didn't even see that with "Blair Witch!") and then just get boring. Plus, the trailer gives everything away and renders the first hour and a half of the movie utterly pointless; there's supposed to be a huge twist at the end, but the only thing that surprised me was the sheer contrived hideousness of the plot. This movie begs to be the next "Psycho"--it replaces the shower with a not-half-bad bathtub scene--but "Psycho" made us fear water because it knew how to be surprising. "What Lies Beneath" doesn't know when to shut up in the marketing arena, and thanks to that what could have been an okay movie is transformed into dreck. Thanks a lot, Madison Avenue. The Verdict: It's all wet. 1.5 out of 5.
For me, the last movie of the summer has become a sort of ritual predicting the quality of the rest of the year's movies. Last summer, my final movie was the excellent "The Sixth Sense," and what ensued was one of the best movie years in recent memory. So I saw "The Cell" last Friday with high hopes despite an ad campaign that made it look like a "Silence Of The Lambs" ripoff for the MTV generation. Let's just say that if my ritual works, we're in for a hell of a winter.
"The Cell" has "crappy mega-flop" written all over it. It has the most derivative tagline ("Enter the mind of a killer!") in the history of mankind. Audience response to the trailers I saw was something along the lines of "Huh? That's screwed up." Director Tarsem Singh's previous credits are all music videos and commercials. And as for Jennifer Lopez portraying a child psychologist--well, I think the only reason she's so popular is her big--well, it starts with A and ends with two S's, and it sure as heck ain't "albatross." And the story (a necrophiliac serial killer who drowns his victims is captured, but slips into a coma before he can reveal the location of his most recent victim--only Lopez, using a machine that allows her to enter his mind, can save the girl) does leave a bit to be desired on the surface. But I went to the first show on opening day (so did a lot of other people, judging by its box office receipts) for a totally different reason: Those visuals!
This movie is so utterly gorgeous that I could just lick it. Tarsem's images are dreamlike and acid-trippy in their disturbing beauty: A shipwreck rots in the middle of a desert. A horse is sliced and diced into cold cuts in an eyeblink as its organs continue to pump. Women are transformed into mechanical puppets in bizarre peep shows. The killer imagines himself as an androgynous emperor, meting out justice from an Asian-looking throne room. Snow falls from an orange sky onto cherry trees as Jennifer Lopez stands before a reflecting pool. I am expecting even more great things from this director. Even the violent scenes (and man, are there a lot of them) are beautifully shot; who would've thought that slooooowly pulling out someone's intestines could be artistic? Well, it is here. And not only does "The Cell" look great, it has the captivating story to back it up. Movies like this too often become a simple-minded game of Good vs. Evil, but not here; Lopez discovers good as well as evil in the mind of the so-called monster, and realizes that if she wants to kill the evil, the good must die along with it.
"The Cell" certainly has its flaws, not the least
of which is Vincent D'Onofrio's over-the-top performance as the killer, Carl; I
believe this places him neck-and-neck with Gary Oldman for first place in the
race to see who can chew the most scenery.
And its dark, gory imagery isn't for everyone, in the same way that
"The Silence Of The Lambs" and "Seven" weren't for
everyone. I can tell you it contains graphic
images of sex, torture, death, and child abuse; I can also tell you that every
single one of those images is necessary.
It has a lot to say about good and evil, things we might not necessarily
want to hear. Because it argues that no
matter how much we demonize murderers and criminals and make them into
something more or less than human, we're all still the same underneath. We all have the capacity both for boundless
good and terrifying evil--in Carl's case, illustrated perfectly and
terrifically by the tyrannical emperor figure, Carl as an adult, and Carl as a
frightened little boy. So if you think
you can handle it, by all means see "The Cell." You'll be debating this one for hours
afterward, and I think you'll enjoy it.
The Verdict: *sluuuuuurp* 3.5 out of 5.
Honorable Mention: "Titan A.E." A beautifully rendered (if somewhat cliché-laden) cartoon and a pleasant surprise.
#5: "Hollow Man." Full of jaw-dropping special effects and perversely clever situations, it's summer's niftiest guilty pleasure.
#4: "X-Men." Action-packed, true to its comic book roots, and unexpectedly touching--it was worth the wait.
#3: "The Cell." Shocking and disturbing. Beautiful and thought-provoking. Utterly memorable.
#2: "Gladiator." Thrilling, moving, and visually astonishing. And it has Russell Crowe...tasty.
#1: "Chicken Run." Hilarious, clever Claymation. There is a rumor this movie was made for children.
Worst Movie Of The Summer: (tie) "The Patriot" and "What Lies Beneath"
Best Picture: "Chicken Run"
Best Actor: Russell Crowe, "Gladiator"
Best Actress: Jennifer Lopez, "The Cell" (despite what I said about her earlier in this column!)
Best Supporting Actor: The "It's my birthday" guy in the plane with Tommy Lee Jones, "Space Cowboys"
Best Supporting Actress: Babs, "Chicken Run"
Best Director: Ridley Scott, "Gladiator"
Best Screenplay: "The Cell"
Best Special Effects: "Hollow Man"
Best Explosion: The X-Men take out Magneto's doomsday machine, "X-Men"
Best Screen Couple: Hugh Jackman and Anna Paquin, "X-Men"
Best One-Liner (Drama): "Are you not entertained?" ("Gladiator")
Best One-Liner (Comedy): (tie) "This certainly is a big...round...room." and "You're a dick." (both from "X-Men")
Best Chase Scene: Tom Cruise on the motorcycle, "Mission Impossible 2"
What We'll Remember This Summer For: Mega-cool visuals. From the invisibility effects of "Hollow Man" to the fight scenes of "X-Men" to the stunning animation of "Titan A.E.," "Chicken Run," and "Dinosaur" to the lush inner landscapes of "The Cell" to the dazzling starscapes of "Space Cowboys" to the hallucinatory battles of "Gladiator," this summer has been nothing but eye candy. I can't wait to have a second taste on the small screen.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Beth Kinderman. This is my original work, so please respect it.
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