And so comes May 2000 and the end of fifth grade. (OK, that may have been early June, but my June post has too much going on already, so let's say it was May)
My teachers liked to make the last week of school a "summer camp" for our mixed 4th/5th-grade class. This year's theme was based around a popular book series whose fourth entry was coming that summer and for which a movie had been announced - indeed, several classmates told me I should audition, despite me pointing out that casting calls were specifically in England. I speak, of course, of Harry Potter.
I was "sorted" into Gryffindor (we drew random names out of a bucket, I got Oliver Wood), and was completely at sea: I'd never read these books, though it seemed everyone else had, or at least enough for there to be a class debate over how to pronounce "Hermione." It was certainly a boon for Gigi, who had been partially raised in England and so became our in-house expert on how English schools with their houses and prefects worked. We even played a version of Quidditch where I had to be the "Keeper", and seeing as I already had no clue what was going on with actual sports, my memory of this made-up one was me standing in front of the three hula hoops and just kind of...staring. No idea what was going on.
The thing is, I wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter. There was a very short period where my family's Adventism kept such things at bay, the fear at the time being that the youth would be seduced into turning away from God and Christ by the Trojan horse of reading. My family's partaking in this kind of thinking lasted only a year, maybe, and was pretty much undone by my paternal grandmother gifting me The Goblet of Fire at Christmas. When my mom herself saw the first movie at home, there was a bit of a, "This is what people were worried about?" reaction - what was so wrong with an imaginative work where good triumphs over evil?
But that was later. I'm talking about the year 2000, where this was happening at the movies:
Center Stage
release: May 12
dir: Nicholas Hytner
pr: Laurence Mark
scr: Carol Heikkinen
cin: Geoffrey Simpson
Students at the American Ballet Company vie for top positions, navigate romances and friendships, find ambition and humility, and dance.
Saw this one in film school. I was working on props for a short film and the production designer and I would get together at my house, sculpting, stuffing, and sewing together toy animals. We watched fun movies during - Mamma Mia!, Spice World, The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Movie, and, at her suggestion, this.
I always enjoyed this movie, but admittedly didn't take it any more seriously than I did those other films. This rewatch - my third ever viewing - made me appreciate how genuinely good this is. Backstage dramedies are as old as the talkies, the types here are the same ones we've been seeing for years - the perfectionist, the new ingenue, the wisecracking dame, the beautiful men - but with enough fresh spins to appeal to a new, hip, young audience! The perfectionist struggles with an eating disorder and an identity beyond Dancer; the new ingenue proves to be more ambitious and calculated than even she imagined; the wisecracking dame is the most naturally talented, she just needs to sand the chip on her shoulder. Each gets their own Broadway vet, too: Debra Monk, Peter Gallagher, Donna Murphy, all excellent. You believe their interactions with each other, the sparks on and off stage are genuine. And it doesn't shy away from scandal, like, oh, company directors marrying their former students or star members being more or less pimped out to wealthy patrons, but nor does it feel too salacious, this is just life. Phenomenal.
Small Time Crooks
release: May 19
dir/scr: Woody Allen
pr: Jean Doumanian
cin: Zhao Fei
Inept bank robber has his wife open a bakery as a cover for his latest heist, only to strike it rich when her cookies become a sensation.
In 2004, I started getting really into Woody Allen, thanks mainly to seeing Antz and Everyone Says I Love You. I bought a boxed set from Suncoast of his DreamWorks films: Small Time Crooks, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, and Anything Else. Critically, this was considered one of Allen's slump periods, long enough so that Match Point in 2005 was considered a big comeback. It was my introduction, though, and for me, most of it worked. This one was my second favorite of the four.
Sometimes it feels like two movies stitched together, the heist comedy becoming a satire of wealth and the upwardly mobile, but criminality is the throughline. This is about people who enrich themselves through dishonest means - fraud, theft, manipulation, deceit - all of them men taking advantage of the natural genius of Tracey Ullman's Frenchy, an instinctive baker but a naive businesswoman. This is also about, of course, how money can't buy happiness, that old saw: Woody Allen plays Ray, Frenchy's hapless criminal husband, who can't wait to strike it rich; when he finally does, honestly, he can't stand the life or the people. It's not complicated, nor does it have to be. Ullman's the reason to watch. Compliments must be paid, too, to the tacky nouveau riche excesses executed by production designer Santo Loquasto and costume designer Suzanne McCabe.
Shanghai Noon
release: May 26
dir: Tom Dey
pr: Gary Barber / Roger Birnbaum / Jonathan Glickman
scr: Miles Millar & Alfred Gough
cin: Dan Mindel
A Chinese princess is kidnapped and taken to Carson City; Imperial guards are sent after her, with one of them becoming entangled with an aw-shucks outlaw.
I seem to remember seeing this in theaters, but with whom? I half-think I saw it either with my sister, my friend Tony, or both...or maybe I saw it with my sister and the Nielsons? Did I actually see it with my sister, or am I combining the time I saw this movie with the time Mom dropped us off to see Chicago and she snuck into Shanghai Knights instead? Anyway, I saw it, I know that for sure.
Owen Wilson's laconic cowboy is a great complement to Jackie Chan's determined Chinese soldier. Has fun with Western tropes and history, from the virtual enslavement of Chinese workers to build the railroads to the tensions between indigenous tribes separate from the tensions between all natives and the white man. The Chon Wang/John Wayne joke is still funny, the action scenes are still impressive in their acrobatics and the genuine pain that appears to be dealt out - what Jackie Chan does with a horseshoe in this movie must be seen to be believed.
Tomorrow, my first watches of May 2000, including eventual Best Picture winner Gladiator.
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