We have now gone halfway through the year 2000, with 49 films logged and 73 films to go - the back end is always heavy, studios save their "prestige" projects for the winter awards season, banking on immediacy and short memories. But as we saw, lots of films in the first half of the year went on to nominations and wins! In fact, the only two months with no Oscar nominees in the year 2000 are January and July. Why July? I don't know, let's take a look at the options:
Disney's The Kid
release: July 7
dir: Jon Turteltaub
pr: Hunt Lowry / Christina Steinberg / Jon Turteltaub
scr: Audrey Wells
cin: Peter Menzies, Jr.
A slick crisis management exec gets a surprise visit from his ten-year-old self, who's not too impressed with how life turned out for them.
One day in 2000, I opened up the newspaper to check the showtimes and saw that my local theater was playing, as expected, Disney's The Kid starring Bruce Willis but also, unexpectedly, The Kid (1921) for one showtime in the late morning. Wow! I was already a cinephile at 11, once even skipped trick-or-treating so my dad could take me to see the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera with a live organist on Halloween, so you can imagine my joy at the opportunity to finally see Charlie Chaplin's classic, much less on the big screen! Mom kept saying, "Are you sure it's the right movie?" but there it was, in newsprint! Showtimes separate from Disney's The Kid, with the (1921) parenthetical! What could be clearer? Well, some years later, I would learn two things: the database for programming film titles required real specificity, and the Sun-Sentinel was not in the business of accuracy. Yes, it was a misprint, and we went home disappointed. I did, anyway. Mom even offered to take me to see this movie, but I declined, dispirited. It wasn't until I was home sick that I watched this, on video.
Turns out, it's a good movie! This is prime Bruce Willis, he's charming and funny, surprisingly vulnerable. He and Spencer Breslin playing two versions of the same character shouldn't work, but there is in Willis's performance the unmistakable horror of self-recognition that allows us to believe it. Still not sure what the "rules" of the fantasy are, but don't worry about it, it works, it works!
Scary Movie
release: July 7
dir: Keenen Ivory Wayans
pr: Eric L. Gold / Lee R. Mayes
scr: Shawn Wayans & Marlon Wayans & Buddy Johnson & Phil Beauman and Jason friedberg & Aaron Seltzer
cin: Francis Kenny
Parody of the last four years of horror, with Scream as the main template.
25 years, and I finally watched this "classic" - with an audience, no less! There are a handful of jokes that are very 2000: trans jokes, fat jokes, gay jokes, jokes against the disabled, and I suppose one could be offended, or one could see how some of these jokes - the cross-eyed derp Officer Doofy, the barely-closeted prettyboy, the stereotypical stoner - comment on Hollywood's archetypes and depiction thereof. Doofy in particular is a funny send-up of the impossible naivete and whiny cadence of Scream's Dewey, while Marlon Wayans' glass closet jock comments on the unadmitted homoeroticism of Hollywood's depiction of teen masculinity and its (then) overall refusal to acknowledge homosexuality even exists. That's how I read these, at any rate. It's funny, though: so many jokes about then-current pop culture, I wondered how many of my fellow audience members (most under 25) even understood the jokes - do they even know about the Super Bowl "Wassssuuuuuuuup" commercial, or do they think it's just Wayans Brothers nonsense? I don't think it's genius, but if it gave the Brothers the clout to make a masterpiece like White Chicks, it's a good thing.
Shower
release: July 7
dir: Yang Zhang
pr: Peter Loehr
scr: Yang Zhang & Fendou Liu & Xin Huo & Yi'nan Diao & Shangjun Cai
cin: Jian Zhang
A businessman returns to his hometown and the small bathhouse run by his aging father and disabled brother, just as their district is due to be removed to make way for commercial development.
I remember when this movie came out in Florida, I think it was even later in the year. The plotline intrigued me, but Mom wasn't going to take me without knowing the full "content" first and Dad had sworn off going to the movies (he couldn't stand the audiences). But it's so innocent! This is a simple family story about maintaining a tradition and community in the face of - that dread word - progress. And it does seem insane that the government can decide that all these businesses and homes and, oh, decades of building the exact society everyone preaches desire for, it's insane that the government can see all this and go, "NAH!" and make it all a commercial district. Well, that's the same all over the world, isn't it? I love the way this movie makes you feel the community that this bathhouse is the center of - the two old men with competing crickets, the man avoiding his wife, the shy opera singer who can only perform in the shower, and the father and son who run the place and know every detail of its operation and its clientele. Very sweet movie.
Chuck & Buck
release: July 14
dir: Miguel Arteta
pr: Matthew Greenfield
scr: Mike White
cin: Chuy Chávez
After his mother dies, a repressed man comes to Los Angeles to reconnect with a former childhood friend, hoping to rekindle a past the other wants to forget.
I find it difficult to talk about films I don't like, particularly those that are well-regarded by others. Chuck & Buck is particularly daunting because it wants to make you uncomfortable, it knows Buck is unwell in his obsession with Chuck, stalking him and writing a play about their childhood sexual awakening and casting someone with no talent but with a passing resemblance to him...and also that Chuck's refusal to say no, the constant push-pull where he seems to draw a line but then nourishes the attention, is just as uncomfortable, perhaps flummoxing. I certainly found it so. Ultimately, the conclusions it comes to do not satisfy me, and I don't buy parts of the resolution, and I don't think Mike White or Chris Weitz are particularly strong actors, but it's thought-provoking.
X-Men
release: July 14
dir: Bryan Singer
pr: Lauren Shuler Donner / Ralph Winter
scr: David Hayter, story by Tom DeSanto & Bryan Singer
cin: Newton Thomas Sigel
Adaptation of the comic series about super-powered "mutants" trying to navigate a society that hates them.
Missed this in theaters, but there were ample opportunities to catch up. Feel like this was an FX mainstay within months of its theatrical release. I know that can't be true, but it feels like it. This may have been my first time ever seeing it without commercial breaks, all in one sitting.
Popular wisdom has held that X2 is the best X-Men film but, I have to say, I think this one has held up better. There's a balance between the comic book banter and the dramatic gravitas: it's refreshing to actually feel the plight of the mutants, but there's enough wit to keep from feeling over-serious. Ian McKellen's Magneto is one of the best performances in the genre, a rage borne of trauma, a villain you can understand. Does a good job fleshing out its large ensemble.
The In Crowd
release: July 19
dir: Mary Lambert
pr: James G. Robinson
scr: Mark Gibson & Philip Halprin
cin: Tom Priestley, Jr.
Troubled girl gets a summer job at a country club, whose younger members revolve around one girl with a secret.
Saw this one on HBO as a teen, thinking I'd see something hot in a sexy teen thriller. There's very little of that, I'm afraid. Not quite campy fun, not uninteresting.
But I'm a Cheerleader
release: July 21
dir: Jamie Babbitt
pr: Leanna Creel / Andrea Sperling
scr: Brian Wayne Peterson, story by Jamie Babbitt
cin: Jules Labarthe
A cheerleader is sent to a gay conversion camp to be "straightened" out.
Came home one day to find the roommate watching this as part of her movie club - fortunately, she had just hit play. Seen it a few times since, and that was just three or four years ago!
It's very rewatchable. The subject of gay conversion camps is not a fun one, but this film lives by the ethos once expressed by RuPaul (who appears as one of the counselors), "You're born naked, and the rest is drag." There's the contradiction in what qualifies as "good" straight behavior: Lyonne makes out but doesn't put out, as a good Christian girl is taught to do, yet this is used as evidence that she must be gay; otherwise, she'd be a hypocrite, like normal people! Mesh football jerseys, hideous "Adam & Eve" jumpsuits, the most blinding shades of blue and pink you've ever laid your eyes on: each element of the "de-gaying" process is more extreme than the last, more ridiculous. As over-the-top as it gets visually, it remains grounded emotionally. Lyonne's realization that she is gay and falling in love with fellow camper Clea DuVall is patiently, romantically developed; there's also a funny/heartbreaking section where the campers' parents are all gathered and blamed for their children being not just gay, but sometimes, ugh, comfortable with who they are. As a comedy, it's an approachable way to discuss the harm, the lie of conversion therapy; and maybe an approachable broaching of "coming out", too.
What Lies Beneath
release: July 21
dir: Robert Zemeckis
pr: Jack Rapke / Steve Starkey / Robert Zemeckis
scr: Clark Gregg, story by Sarah Kernochan and Clark Gregg
cin: Don Burgess
A woman recovering from an accident believes she is being haunted by a vengeful ghost.
Michelle Pfeiffer's performance as a woman coming undone, uncertain of her reality even as she's sure of what she saw, oh it's a good one, a stressful, paranoid performance that recalls Bergman in Gaslight or Stanwyck in The Night Walker. Harrison Ford's in full silver fox mode, great layered performance. Zemeckis's work here has been called Hitchcockian, but there are elements of William Castle, too; I mean, in the end, we're just saying that he masterfully keeps the suspense ratcheting up from the first frame to the last, keeps you guessing, terrifies you with the climax, and, finally, leaves you on a movie high. Diana Scarwid! Gorgeous house, too, what a set!
The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
release: July 28
dir: Peter Segal
pr: Brian Grazer
scr: Barry W. Blaustein & David Sheffield and Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz, story by Steve Oedekerk and Barry W. Blaustein & David Sheffield, from characters created by Jerry Lewis
cin: Dean Semler
Sherman Klump is about ot get married and has discovered a youth serum, but his old alter ego Buddy Love yearns for freedom and his family is going through their own trials.
Never saw the Jerry Lewis movie, never saw the first Eddie Murphy one. And I loved it. Eddie Murphy's performances are distinct from each other, the pounds of makeup hindering him not one bit. His mild-mannered, intelligent Sherman, of course, but I found his performances of the parents to be heartfelt: the father accidentally drinking a serum that makes him younger, giving him a second chance at youth, a mid-life crisis externalized, while the mother goes through her own crisis, feeling an unmistakable shift in her marriage, a growing chasm felt all the more by her own son's impending marriage. Murphy puts real feeling into these performances, I think mother Anna Pearl alone may be one of his best. On the other end are his more outlandish comic skills, put to work through the horny grandmother Ida Mae (the most cartoonish creation here, but it works) and the resurrected Buddy Love, now with enough dog DNA so that his manic manipulations are easily interrupted by, say, a squirrel; how Murphy sells this physically is...I mean, the man is a master! Janet Jackson is the only false note here, but her song "Doesn't Really Matter" is good, so we forgive her.
Next week, we reach August, September, and October!
No comments:
Post a Comment