The Hot Button by David Poland

Friday, 13 November 1998

WEEKEND PREVIEW

Welcome to the first week of the new and improved Weekend Preview. How is it going to be different? Well, if you are here first thing on Friday morning, you won't be able to get my box office predictions. For some of you, I know, that's a plus. But in order to be as accurate as possible, roughcut.com will be publishing my box office estimates by noon EST each Friday. You see, I can't get accurate screen counts until Thursday night, about five hours after my Friday deadline for The Hot Button. So welcome to the new system. I hope it works for you.
This weekend puts Brad Pitt up against The Waterboy. (I need some Maalox after writing that.) Universal's Meet Joe Black also stars some guy named Anthony Hopkins, who, I think, will get an Oscar nomination for his least affected work in years. He's still got that voice, but there's something really intimate here. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer proves that Sony doesn't really know what made the first film such a big hit -- the combination of young flesh, good direction and some good thrills. Only one of these items survived the first movie. (I caught a few minutes of the original on cable the other day. Jim Gillespie looks like Martin Scorsese when compared to the sequel's director, Danny Cannon.)
Jonathan Taylor Thomas stars in the all-midget version of Planes, Trains & Automobiles, I'll Be Home For Christmas. OK, so only the star is a midget. I skipped the screening because I know in my heart that I wouldn't make it all the way through. (Maybe I'm wrong. Please let me know if I am. I'll apologize.) Plus, the much-anticipated Meryl Streep film, Dancing at Lughnasa, opens in NY and L.A. only. And Hard Core Logo, a very clever mock-u-docu on a punk band trying to come out of retirement is in limited release. It's like Spinal Tap, but even more dry. I was really wondering if it was real through most of the movie.
THE GOOD: I really enjoyed Little Voice. That's despite the fact that the movie, based on a stage play, is still fairly stagery. That's despite the uninspired work of director Mark Herman, who got good notices for Brassed Off, but can't seem to get any more from this script than a TV-level production might. That's despite a print that was distractingly broken throughout. So, what's so great? It's hard to not enjoy yourself in a movie loaded with the very best musical performances of such performers as Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey, Frank Sinatra and even Marilyn Monroe.
Brenda Blethyn and Michael Caine are terrific as unredeemable grotesques. Ewan McGregor plays a tiny role very charmingly. (I'm about ready to blame the media, including myself at times, for not allowing McGregor to be the character actor that he seems to want to be. Of course, the studios overhype him, too, and we'll all be sick of him by next August, but I'm just saying.) The real star of the show, though, is Jane Horrocks, who plays Little Voice and sings dead-on impersonations of all the female singers mentioned above and more. Great performance. Is it a real Oscar contender? Maybe. This is a tiny film that should be quietly enjoyed. But a stunt like Horrocks' singing performance (Not her fault that it's a stunt, but it is) always get Academy attention, so we'll see.
THE BAD: Sam Raimi is a beloved director of weird action movies that have hard core cult followings, but he seems ready to throw that all away to be a "real" studio director. There is no sign of the Sam Raimi who made The Evil Dead in A Simple Plan. And right now, he's off shooting For the Love of the Game with Kevin Costner. Ooooh! Grossss! Now, Raimi did a nice job on his new movie. But he was one-of-a-kind in the whacked-out horror genre. Kind of a shame to see him putting that in his rear view mirror.
THE UGLY: Nothing really ugly this week.
CRITICS CORNER: I've suggested a number of times in this column that you grab a copy of The New York Observer to read the great critic, Andrew Sarris. But it was an AOL-only read on the 'Net. Until now. Click here and then click on the left side for Arts & Entertainment and look for Mr. Sarris' byline. This week, he's in love with Living Out Loud. (He calls it one of his two candidates for Best Film of 1998, the other being Out of Sight). He and I don't always agree, but he is always worth the read. He does more than offer an opinion. He offers insight.
HAPPY TRAILERS TO YOU: Instead of inspiring me, the trailer for The Theory of Flight repels me with the power of a nuclear weapon. There's something so cloying about the whole thing. And watching Helena Bonham Carter playing the physically challenged female lead has the feel of stacking the deck. Kenneth Branagh gets involved with one of the most beautiful women in the world and we're supposed to find him noble? And I'm still kind of ticked off for Emma Thompson. (Don't look for Gwyneth in line for Meet Joe Black this weekend either.) Some are saying that there are Oscar nods in the offing here. So, I have to see it. The trailer has convinced me that I won't be happy when I do.
BAD AD WATCH: Gotta say, Universal quoting Larry King on a movie like Meet Joe Black is probably the nadir of Martin Brest's career. Forget that they also dredge up the Prevue Channel and Gene Shalit (at least he didn't say "It's death-erific!"), but Larry King seems to get as excited about a good steak as he does about a movie he likes. Just change the key nouns on his pull-quote. ("Duke Ziebert's is what great meals are all about. The service is incredible. The waiter is magnificent, his Caesar salad is beyond magnificent. The steak was perfect. I didn't want the meal to end.") Sound familiar?
READER OF THE DAY: Ivy wrote: "You really shouldn't try to argue that because certain African-American actors reach a level of success, they are no longer black. The phraseology you use makes yourself come off like a racist. As for Eddie Murphy 'reclaiming his ethnicity' with Harlem Nights, it tanked because he directed it himself -- and it sucked. Boomerang, which was a more black-themed film, wasn't the smash that Coming to America was, but it certainly made money and earned Murphy some of his best critical praise as an actor at that time. Most of my friends dig the film eons more than CTA because Boomerang at least has some threads of real life going through it. And you consider The Distinguished Gentleman a predominantly black film? There were three black characters, and the story had nothing at all to do with race, so I don't know what you're talking about there.
"There is most definitely a problem in Hollywood when it comes to ethnically themed and ethnically cast films. But to say that their success makes them 'no longer black' negates the progress that soldiers like Murphy, Lee, Washington, Fishburne and Jackson have made. And you should know better. By the way, the example you use, of Lee and Turturro in DTRT, arguing that Turturro's character's favorite celebrities are all black, and then Turturro disagreeing, saying that they 'aren't really black?' Lee used that to show the racism of Turturro's character. You should know better." [Editor's Note: Ditto.]

E ME: I actually agree with almost everything that Ivy said in this letter. And I understood Turturro's racism and self-delusion. That was my point. His opinion is pretty widely held in this country. Not as an outright racist, but as a classist overall. (Money equals ethnic purity. The older the money, the purer you are, and that's a long standing and unfortunate tradition.) And I thought that I had distinguished between Hollywood perception and my own. Hollywood is full of homilies about why things don't succeed, but I've never really bought that certain films can't make money or that certain months are naturally poison. But I do report on those beliefs. After Titanic, we should all be throwing the book out of the window. But everything is an anomaly until it happens a second, third or fourth time. What Hollywood "truth" do you consider its biggest myth?