Well, it took a few days, but here's the rest of April 2000 - all first-time watches for me:
Rules of Engagement
release: April 7
dir: William Friedkin
pr: Scott Rudin / Richard D. Zanuck
scr: Stephen Gaghan, story by James Webb
cin: William A. Fraker / Nicola Pecorini
A military lawyer must defend his former colleague, an officer who ordered his soldiers to fire on civilians during a siege of an American embassy.
What qualifies as "murder" during combat? Did Samuel L. Jackson's decorated officer fire on unarmed civilians protesting outside an embassy, or was he the only man able to discern armed threats in the crowd - and even if true, were his orders beyond the pale? For his old comrade-in-arms and defense lawyer Tommy Lee Jones, there is another conflict, one of loyalty: is he willing to continue standing by this man when everyone, even his own government, says what he's done is morally appalling? Taut and tense throughout, with Jackson and Jones turning in two of the best performances of their careers. The movie is comfortable living in the ambiguity for a time, but gets cold feet about halfway through - clunkily, comically so - making for an hour-long anticlimax.
Keeping the Faith
release: April 14
dir: Edward Norton
pr: Stuary Blumberg / Hawk Koch / Edward Norton
scr: Stuart Blumberg
cin: Anastas N. Michos
A rabbi starts dating an old childhood friend, a shiksa goddess, much to the chagrin of their third childhood friend: a Catholic priest.
How did it take me this long to see this? Ben Stiller and Edward Norton are a great team, Jenna Elfman slides in comfortably: you believe these are friends who grew up together. Norton and Michos shoot leading lady Jenna Elfman so breathtakingly, you wonder if one or both or maybe every man on set was secretly (?) in love with her. It's thoughtful about its depiction of faith and religion, mining laughs without making a mockery of its subject: I love the scene where the temple elders grant that his new approaches are exciting but the older generation appreciates tradition not just as habit but as an everlasting connection between the past and the present, a testament to how they've lasted despite the world's best efforts. It's a Valentine, too, to the melting pot of NYC, USA, a place where a priest and a rabbi can be best friends, fall in love with an agnostic, and spill their guts to a Sikh Catholic Muslim bartender.
Croupier
release: April 21
dir: Mike Hodges
pr: Jonathan Cavendish
scr: Paul Mayersberg
cin: Michael Garfath
Writer takes a job as a croupier, perhaps for material, but finds himself drawn into a dangerous scheme hatched by a sexy regular.
Plays like a satisfying pulp novel, I was surprised to see it was an original and not an adaptation. The main draw is Clive Owen's performance in the lead role, sexy, sardonic, smart, a great presence to be around.
Love & Basketball
release: April 21
dir/scr: Gina Prince-Bythewood
pr: Sam Kitt / Spike Lee
cin: Reynaldo Villalobos
Following a boy and a girl, both basketball players, navigating their favorite sport and their romance together from adolescence through adulthood.
Familial love: the son bonding with his father through their shared talent in the sport, the daughter yearning for her mother's acceptance and getting her frustrations out on the court. Romantic love: the eroticism of one-on-one, a clothed foreplay with sweat and skin, tension when one gets the upper hand over the other. Love of the game itself, the kind of love that makes you go overseas just for a space on a team. And then the disappointments of both: the father not living up to his duties as a husband and father, the rivalries on and off the court. "When you're a kid, you see the life you want, and it never crosses your mind that it's not gonna turn out that way." You feel like you could spend another minute in every scene, not because they're too short, but because it's a pleasure ot just soak in this level of filmmaking.
U-571
release: April 21
wins: Best Sound Editing (Jon Johnson)
nominations: Best Sound (Steve Maslow / Gregg Landaker / Rick Kline / Ivan Sharrock)
dir: Jonathan Mostow
pr: Dino De Laurentiis / Martha De Laurentiis
scr: Jonathan Mostow and Sam Montgomery and David Ayer, story by Jonathan Mostow
cin: Oliver Wood
American soldiers in WWII take over a German U-boat carrying an Enigma machine.
I got to tell you, I don't remember diddly about this one. Did not stick.
The Virgin Suicides
release: April 21
dir: Sofia Coppola
pr: Francis Ford Coppola / Julie Costanzo / Dan Halsted / Chris Hanley
scr: Sofia Coppola, from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
cin: Edward Lachman
In 1970s suburban Detroit, five sheltered sisters become the objects ot mystery and desire for the local boys.
Of course, the most obvious aspect is how teenage girls are never allowed to thrive, to be themselves, so concerned is the world with their status as Sexual Objects. To the parents, this manifests in an ultra-strict protectiveness that keeps them from socializing and, eventually, even from school, lest they be tainted by the outside world (what regrets does the mother have to guard her children so?). To the young men, it's the shaping of these girls' lives not even as a tragedy or a cautionary tale, but as a mystery, a promise of something deeper, if only they were able to be the boys to crack it. But, they don't seem very complicated at all, they're teen girls, they listen to popular music and dream about faraway places and generally behave like people their age do, all the way to making permanent decisions that reflect the tumultuous forever feeling of that age. That's why the airy-fairy narration rings false, the picture-perfect photography disturbs, the reminiscence of one girl's ex of their "true love" so infuriates: it is all completely at odds with what we're seeing, what they're experiencing. Sofia Coppola conveys all this so...perfectly.
The Last September
release: April 28
dir: Deborah Warner
pr: Yvonne Thunder
scr: John Banville, from the novel by Elizabeth Bowen
cin: Slawomir Idziak
A young woman comes into her own on the faded estate of Anglo-Irish gentry during the last days of British rule in southern Ireland.
Provocative setup, meh execution. Maggie Smith shines, of course, in what might be her most unsympathetic role as a grande dame holding on to her old values with no acknowledgement, no knowledge, that everything around her is changing. The film needs fangs and clarity to tackle this milieu, and Smith and Michael Gambon (as her husband) are the only ones providing. Beautiful, empty photography.
Tomorrow, the rewatches and new watches of May, including Best Picture winner Gladiator!
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