This time of year Im often asked, So, what was the best picture
you saw in this 12-month stretch? (Actually, nobody really says
12-month stretch, but claiming they do saves me from having
to use the word year twice in the same sentence.) For 1999,
thats easy. A moving picture Ill never forget Solar Eclipse
enjoyed a brief but glorious run on August 11.
The last total eclipse of the millennium offered suspense (Will
the clouds part in time for me to see heavens discus and its
colorful corona?), scale (Whoa is the sun BIG or what?) and
a cast of millions (People all over the band of totality are
wearing funny glasses and watching the same spectacular phenomenon.
We are united in our common humanity and in our willingness
to be seen in public in funny glasses.) Eclipses were the first
global blockbusters. Before there were blocks, even.
Movies the popular entertainment and occasional art form that
can arguably be said to have dominated this century are actually
a holdover from the tail end of the 19th century. Le Ticket du
Siècle, handed out in tandem with each full-price admission sold
on January 15, 1995, was originally meant as a voucher to be honored
at any point during the subsequent 100 years. But the powers that
be backed down, and made that one year (actually through December
27, 1995) instead of one hundred.
With the coming onslaught of digital video and digital projection,
we are mere years away from losing whatever the intangibles are
that make moviegoing magic. (Most moviegoers dont give it any
thought, but what you experience in a movie theater is the result
of light from a projector bulb shining through a strip of celluloid,
creating an image that is REFLECTED back to the audience off a
white screen. In contrast, when you watch TV or stare at a computer
screen, the light source is positioned BEHIND the image, pointing
into your eyes and, by extension, your brain. Some theorists believe
that the picture tube pointing at you, added to the refresh
rate of a given monitor, creates a hypnotic pull. Everybodys
had the experience of watching television and thinking, This
program is awful. Why am I watching this? and yet continuing
to do so. In digital projection, which has already debuted in
some mainstream US movie houses, the essential dynamic of reflected
light and shadow is forever changed.
If thats too complicated to grasp, think of it this way: Coke
drunk from a tin can or a plastic bottle tastes good enough, but
Coke from a glass bottle tastes that much better. The global film
industry is gearing up to dispense movies from tin and plastic
rather than glass. Digital projection will be easier and better
in many respects no more heavy film cans to transport, no more
scratched prints but it will also be a colossal trade-off in
terms of the warmth of the image when the principles of photography
give way to the supremacy of zeroes and ones. This is not a problem
on the order of banning and eradicating land mines, but the consequences
may be just as explosive. My advice is to go to as many movies
in cinemas as you can, while you still can. The Millennium Bug
may come and go without lasting effect, but glorious, seemingly
ubiquitous movies are breathing their figurative last.
Should the Y2K bug hit in such a way as to IMMEDIATELY render
filmgoing a thing of the past, I plan to earn my keep by reciting
the plots and choice passages of dialogue from the films we will
no longer be able to see. Ill start with the really good ones:
Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, Harold and Maude. Eventually
maybe Ill get around to more recent fare, like the flicks below
the flick below.
The Wizard of Oz
(Le Magicien dOz)
Im often asked, What is your favorite flying-monkey movie in the
past 720-month stretch? The Wizard of Oz wouldve been the
US entry at the initial edition of Cannes in 1939 had WWII not
broken out on the second day of the festival. Sixty years on,
the depiction of dreams in movies (see Eyes Wide Shut) has only
occasionally matched this show. Fresh prints from the restored
negative make the rerelease of this Technicolor (and black-and-white)
extravaganza an extra special treat. If you grew up with annual
doses of Oz, the mere mention of key phrases (Toto, Ive a
feeling were not in Kansas anymore. Ill get you, my pretty
and your little dog, too. Follow the yellow brick road. Surrender,
Dorothy. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Theres no place
like home.) should inspire you to don the nearest pair of ruby
slippers and get thee to the cinema. If you, or youngsters you
know, have never seen this movie on the big screen, DO NOT let
this opportunity slip past.
(Dec 15)
A Price Above Rubies
(Sonia Horowitz)
WWriter-director Boaz Yakins ambitious tale follows the emancipation
of a woman who marries into a devout Orthodox Jewish household
in contemporary Brooklyn, only to discover she doesnt have a
prayer. Intelligent, sexy, full of defiant strategy and alliances
of expediency, A Price Above Rubies features a very impressive
central performance by Renée Zellweger.
(Jan 12)
Holy smoke
Jane (The Piano) Campions latest pic gets off to a terrific
start, only to fizzle. Kate Winslet gives yet another in an uninterrupted
series of fine performances as an Australian tourist who finds
enlightenment while on vacation in India. Her concerned family
lures her back to Australia under false pretenses and, against
her clear-headed wishes, throws her into a one-on-one confrontational
weekend with a world-class deprogrammer (a cult exiter, to be
precise) played by Harvey Keitel. The stage-setting and character-establishing
portions of the movie are vivid and engaging, but once Winslet
and Keitel settle into their theological and sexual showdown in
the outback, the proceedings struggle to be intense and revelatory
only to come out arbitrary and dilute. Theres something irritatingly
faux-daring about this entire enterprise, although Winslets characters
convictions hold up to hearty scrutiny.
(Nov 24)
Fiona
To say that Fiona will not be to everyones taste is a safe
pronouncement, on the order of Water is wet and Money is useful.
The harsh and haunting story of a woman with a Ph.D. from the
school of hard knocks, Fiona follows fearless actress Anna Thomson
as she portrays the title prostitute, a walking advertisement
for the perils of nature-without-nurture. If you havent yet seen
Thomsons previous film with director Amos Kollek, Sue (Sue
perdue dans Manhattan), I suggest you first take it in, as it
is less dire, though equally melancholy. If you respond to Sue
now in its second year in Paris theaters you might find Fiona
of interest. No matter how many movies youve seen, I guarantee
theres one development in this film youve never seen before.
(Nov 24)
Following
(Le suiveur)
This is a very nifty low-budget item about a conceptual burglar,
a chap who breaks into peoples houses and ADDS things. If most
low-budget films are shot on a shoestring, then this one was shot
on the little nubs at the end of the string that prevent it from
unraveling. [Its called an aglet. Ed.] What the film lacks
in cash resources it makes up for in ingenuity. Following is
about curiosity, which, as the saying goes, has done in many a
representative of the feline realm. Its about daring to bend
the rules, but without stopping to think you may be bending them
into the business end of a catapult that will snap back and hit
you someday. Its about relying on the kindness of strangers
if kindness, indeed, it be. Following deserves to develop one.
(Dec 1)
Dogma
This meandering and juvenile picture has prompted yet another hysterical
campaign by the film critics I least respect: self-appointed guardians
of propriety who condemn a film without actually having seen it.
Classic targets of this genre of preemptive reviewing include
Martin Scorseses The Last Temptation of Christ and Jean-Luc
Godards Hail Mary. The Scorsese was a much better film than
Dogma, but shares with it the fact that it was made by a devout
Catholic. For writer-director Kevin Smith, Dogma is definitely
a step backwards from his Clerks and Chasing Amy, but it has
its moments.
This is a sprawling, silly film in which one fallen angel says
to another, You cant be anal retentive if you dont have an
anus, and a priest played by George Carlin introduces the user-friendly
Buddy Christ, a sort of Jesus-as-surfer-dude, to accompany his
new campaign whose slogan is: Catholocism: Wow! As laconic true
believer Smith put it at Cannes in May: How could anybody get
offended by this movie? Its got a Golgathan Poop Monster in it.
I think when people see it, theyll say, THIS is supposed to
be controversial? This is adolescent. Not only is it adolescent,
its all over the map. But one cant help but love the scene where,
when confronted with a silent female deity, a youthful hipster
asks, What the **** is this The Piano? Why cant that broad
talk?
At the films Cannes press conference, Linda Fiorentino, who plays
a crucial role in Dogma, opined: If you think about the possibility
of humans creating a heaven on earth, we wouldnt need organized
religion. God to me is that part of us that in all of us is exactly
the same. Thats where faith dwells, thats where love dwells.
(Jan 19)
The World Is Not Enough
(Le Monde ne suffit pas)
Dumb fun, with plot holes galore, the 19th James Bond movie makes
the excellent point that just because a woman is gorgeous and
shapely, that shouldnt be an impediment to her career as a nuclear
physicist. And its corollary: Who says shapely nuclear physicists
cant look really intelligent in skintight wet tank tops? Other
topics for debate: If 007 has a dislocated collarbone, how come
he can do all that stunt work without wincing?
Sophie Marceau who, as a host of this years Cannes closing
ceremonies, proved that she can be the spaciest thing since Mir
does a nice turn as Elektra King, the daughter of a recently
murdered international tycoon who takes over the construction
of dads oil pipeline. Shes also one of the worlds leading practitioners
of the Gosh although Im in bed naked, this sheet covers me
in strategic areas no matter how I move technique. The flamboyant
action is parsed by exotic locations, familiar theme music and
excruciatingly bad puns. Judi Denchs M is a long, long way
from The Wizard of Ozs Auntie Em.
(Dec 1)
Being John Malkovich
(Dans la peau de John Malkovich)
A Tilt-o-Whirl ride for the brain synapses, the film that Spike
Jonze has made from Charlie Kaufmans script is close to sublime
in its take on fame and sexual longing. Simultaneously amusing
and creepy, its the story of scruffy but gifted puppeteer Craig
Schwartz (John Cusack), who upon taking a job in a very strange
Manhattan office discovers a hidden passageway that turns out
to be a portal into the title characters gray matter. In what
is just a fraction of the wacky yet presented-as-plausible narrative
hijinks, Schwartz and his urban-to-the-bone co-worker Maxine (Catherine
Keener) charge the hoi polloi $200 a head to sample the inside
of Malkovichs head for 15 minutes. Personally, I would pay ten
times that for an ironclad guarantee that I will NEVER have to
be John Malkovich, however briefly. But you, dear reader, should
pay the going rate to experience this movie, a metaphysical bungee
jump that is laugh-out-loud funny yet pleasingly bittersweet.
(Dec 8)
The Muse
(La muse)
A slightly ornery one-joke movie with a few scenes and cameos that
make it worth the price of an early-bird show, The Muse stars
screenwriter-director Albert Brooks as a blocked Hollywood screenwriter
who is no longer perceived as a hot property in Tinseltown. His
hip buddy (Jeff Bridges) reluctantly gets him a meeting with an
ethereal woman he says is a bona-fide, Greek-mythology-style muse
a source of inspiration, if you will. Like all her heavenly
ilk, the muse in question played by Sharon Stone thrives on
gifts and trinkets. Her powers appear genuine, but they land in
unpredictable patterns. The Muse is merciless with the downside
of an industry where some people think the venerable exclamation
By Zeus! is spelled Buy Zeus!
(Dec 22)
An Ideal Husband
(Un mari idéal)
Oscar Wildes vintage witty dialogue holds up better than a lot
of the dialogue in the freshly minted movies mentioned elsewhere
on these pages. Courtly, funny, full of good manners and jittery
suspense, An Ideal Husband is painlessly entertaining easy
on the eye and a delight for the ear. This tale of a successful
man primed for the next level of success only to be threatened
by evidence of a prior indiscretion that, if revealed, will do
to his standing in society what giant asteroids did for the dinosaurs,
seems so contemporary its almost scary.
(Dec 15)
Found in translation
I am often asked, Whats your favorite French-to-English translation
of the past five minutes? That would be the following passage
from the November 25 issue of Rolling Stone: Laetitia Casta,
the French model we chose to symbolize hot way back in August
1998, has been chosen by her own country to embody liberté, égalité,
fraternité (freedom, equality, college-guy-ness.)