May 2000 continues from yesterday.
The month of May was fruitful for awards season, seeing the release of two films whose popularity and infamy, respectively, lasted well into March of the next year. I refer, of course, to Gladiator and Battlefield Earth.
Gladiator was a hit, Battlefield Earth was a bomb. Gladiator was the #1 film in the USA two weeks in a row, the #3 film of the whole year; Battlefield Earth bankrupted its studio, the #100 film of the whole year. Gladiator won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Battlefield Earth "won" the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture. Are their reputations warranted?
Read on:
Gladiator
release: May 5
wins: Best Picture, Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Best Costume Design (Janty Yates), Best Sound (Scott Millan / Bob Beemer / Ken Weston), Best Visual Effects (John Nelson / Neil Corbould / Tim Burke / Rob Harvey)
nominations: Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Joaquin Phoenix), Best Original Screenplay, Best Score (Hans Zimmer), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Arthur Max / Crispian Sallis), Best Film Editing (Pietro Scalia)
dir: Ridley Scott
pr: David Franzoni / Branko Lustig / Douglas Wick
scr: David Franzoni and John Logan and William Nicholson, story by David Franzoni
cin: John Mathieson
A Roman general is betrayed, enslaved, and becomes a gladiator out for revenge.
We'll discuss more when I get into the Oscar race next month. I do want to say that, while I get what people mean when they say Gladiator II is just a rehash of this one, I don't agree; besides, they're both great. This is an old-fashioned Hollywood spectacle with real thespians acting their asses off, BIG music, BIG action, BIG sets, BIG emotions.
Battlefield Earth
release: May 12
dir: Roger Christian
pr: Jonathan D. Krane / Elie Samaha / John Travolta
scr: Corey Mandell and J.D. Shapiro, from the novel by L. Ron Hubbard
cin: Giles Nuttgens
In the future, a human kidnapped by alien colonizers begins a revolution while one of his captors plots his own coup.
Terrible reputation, one of the most reviled films of all time, critically and audience-wise. Does it deserve the hate? The makeup is a big swing, the costumes are interesting enough, the visual effects are clearly where most of the budget went, and it's never boring. Travolta plays his villain like Wile E. Coyote, intelligent but also over-confident in that intelligence, a comical figure. But, then again, many of the jokes become labored, the tonal disparity between the human epic story and the alien political farce never gels, there's no defending what Forest Whitaker is doing, the ending gets clunky... I've seen much worse, but I get the lack of appeal.
Hamlet
release: May 12
dir: Michael Almereyda
pr: Andrew Fierberg / Amy Hobby
scr: Michael Almereyda, from the play by William Shakespeare
cin: John de Borman
Shakespeare's classic is updated to contemporary Manhattan.
Is...is this the best version of Hamlet I've seen? I may have to rewatch the Branagh to make sure, but my slight misgivings about Bill Murray as Polonius aside, it's certainly the most consistently well-cast. Ethan Hawke's mopey film school brat is perfection, Kyle MacLachlan is the best Claudius I've seen, Julia Stiles is the Queen of updated Shakespeare. Liev Schreiber's Laertes returns to New York from studying abroad in England, complete with the most bizarre pseudo-Euro accent that only such a student would attempt with full sincerity. Almereyda has a clarity regarding the Guinevere-Claudius relationship that is direct and simple: maybe she didn't raise a hand, but she didn't object and she didn't mourn. The idea of these "royals" barely holding on to this fragile kingdom, their "palace" a series of anonymous suites in their hotel...yes, yes, these are the modern parapets of the American ruling class!
Road Trip
release: May 19
dir: Todd Phillips
pr: Daniel Goldberg / Joe Medjuck
scr: Todd Phillips & Scott Armstrong
cin: Mark Irwin
College buds go on a road trip when one of them accidentally sends a sex tape of him cheating to his long-distance girlfriend.
The rare comedy that comes and goes without a single laugh. Tom Green's scenes - only one of which is shared with the rest of the cast - feel like afterthoughts, a new character shoehorned in to take advantage of the comedian's popularity at the time. Do you remember how insanely famous Tom Green was? It was nonsense, not just non-sequiturs, but gross-out ones at that. My best friend at the time and I didn't miss an episode of his MTV show, and The Box (remember that?) offered us plentiful opportunities to watch the music video for his "Bum Bum Song." I talk a lot about who Tom Green was because there's not much else to say about this movie. Negative laughs, dull writing, charmless performances.
Mission: Impossible 2
release: May 24
dir: John Woo
pr: Tom Cruise / Paula Wagner
scr: Robert Towne, story by Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga, from the TV series created by Bruce Geller
cin: Jeffrey L. Kimball
Ethan Hunt teams up with a professional thief to stop a rogue agent from using a biological weapon.
I haven't watched all the Mission: Impossible films - I've still got to see Ghost Protocol and the first one - but this ranks high for me. It's focused, it's compact, each action scene is thrilling and necessary, the economical size of the ensemble allowing for an actual arc, genuine growth between Tom Cruise and Thandiwe Newton's characters. Dougray Scott brings surprising pathos to his villain. The entire franchise has suffered from overstaying its welcome, though, and this one's no different, though it's still probably the best climax of all the ones I've seen.
Tomorrow, how I spent my June 2000, a summer I still think about 25 years later...
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