The Hot Button by David Poland

Monday, 4 January 1999

WEEKEND REVIEW

Welcome to 1999. I hope you all had a great holiday.
The movies had a pretty good holiday. As I warned last week, there wasn't much variation this weekend. The top four films all stayed in order, each losing between 21 and 24 percent of their business from last weekend. (That would be Patch Adams with $20.1 million, Stepmom with $15 million, You've Got Mail with $14.1 million and The Prince of Egypt with $11.5 million.) The next four films, the Disney/Disney/Miramax/Touchstone checkerboard, lost just 1 percent, 18 percent, 31 percent and 6 percent, respectively. A Bug's Life ($10 million), Mighty Joe Young ($8.7 million) and Enemy of the State ($5 million) were the continuing winners. The Faculty would have been the big loser in the top 10 (taking $8 million in a relatively large fall), but Star Trek: Insurrection took that prize with a 34 percent drop to $4.8 million and the nine slot. The last member of the Top 10 was Jack Frost, holding tough with just 18 percent in meltage to add $3.2 million to its total. Shakespeare in Love came in just behind Jack Frost and could move into the Top 10 with the announcement of final numbers later today. Whether it does or does not, the film will have the biggest per-screen average by far in this group, with $10,702 a screen.
With all five of the top five films and Enemy of the State having legitimate shots at the $100 million mark, the holiday movie season of 1998 may offer as many as seven (add The Waterboy) of the year's 17 $100 million movies. That's in comparison to just five holiday openers out of a total of 16 films that passed $100 million last year. On the flip side, there were five films that scored between $50 million and $100 million last holiday season (Flubber, Mouse Hunt, Anastasia, The Jackal and Starship Troopers) but only two this year (The Rugrats Movie and Star Trek: Insurrection), though Mighty Joe Young and The Faculty have outside shots at the $50 million mark and who knows what Oscar nods may do for an ever-expanding Shakespeare in Love.
THE GREAT: Of the five films that I thought to be possible contenders for my Top 10 list that I haven't seen, I managed to see the only two that were still in release over the holiday. One would have made the Top 10, much to my surprise. (The other is in The Good, below.) Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration is a great film. I really had no idea what I was walking into when I saw it at the one theater that it's still running in here in Los Angeles. Wow! All the absurd Dogma 95 rules (no artificial lighting, no sets, no special effects, etc, etc.) served mostly as a meaningless distraction. But the raw emotional power of the performances, excellent across the board, and the extremely realistic story about extreme family dysfunction made this a "must-see" film for serious moviegoers. Oddly, the film serves as a kind of doppelgänger to Happiness, the same way that The Thin Red Line does to Saving Private Ryan. Not that I'm saying that the Swedish-language film would bore anyone, but that both films are really well made films on the same overall subject with extremely different approaches to the material. Happiness is a comedy that horrifies you sometimes while The Celebration is a horror show that make you laugh sometimes. I haven't seen the Iranian Oscar entry Taste of Cherry, which has taken many critics awards. But right now, I'd have to say that The Celebration is easily the best foreign language film of 1998.
THE GOOD: I enjoyed The Hi-Lo Country, despite being stuck in a badly designed, sound-equipment-starved room at Cineplex Odeon's Beverly Center theater, the only screen the film has in L.A. I can't wait to see it in a "real" theater because this Western should surround you in sound the way it does with its imagery. Director Stephen Frears took this project, which Sam Peckinpah tried to get made for years, and brought the epic Western down to human scale. Billy Crudup gives his second commanding performance of the year (the first was in Without Limits) as a cowboy who isn't in control at all. Patricia Arquette brings her natural ripeness to the role of the femme fatale, not as the impossible beauty, but as the believably wild and hungry object of men's desires. But Woody Harrelson is the real winner here. "Big Boy," as he is called in the movie, isn't the biggest boy. He isn't the smartest guy. And he isn't the strongest boy. But his heart makes him the biggest man in town. This is a little film that lives somewhere between art and commerce and succeeds on both levels. But, boy would I like to see it in a good theater.
THE MISUNDERSTOOD: Sometime a few weeks ago, one reader wrote "Stop saying that you're not a critic!" And here I am again, critiquing two films. Offering up my 10 Movies I Didn't Get List, My Worst 10 of 1998 and My Top 10 of 1998. There's no doubt that criticism has become a part of The Hot Button, much to my surprise. So, I guess I will stop whining that I'm no critic. It irks me that a couple of hundred words would serve as my critical calling card, but I will try to stay brief and succinct and to call them as I see them. And I hope you will all continue to rip me to shreds when you disagree.
MARCHING TO SUNDANCE: Starting today, I'm starting a new feature that will feature a different Sundance entry every day until I arrive at the festival for daily reports and chats, beginning here on Jan. 22. I'll also cough up any relevant info that I come across as the weeks pass. Today's film: Hitchcock, Selznick and the End of Hollywood. A documentary on the "good old days" of Hollywood, focusing on the great director (Alfred Hitchcock) and one of the great studios' chiefs (David Selznick), the film tells the story of two men who were at the top of their games while they were still just in their 30s. The director is Michael Epstein, who last gave us the terrific The Battle Over Citizen Kane, which has been optioned as the basis for a feature film. Gene Hackman narrates.
THE CHAT: It's me, me and me this week on Yahoo! Chat, 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT on Wednesday. Come on by and sit a spell. Or spell a sit.
JUST WONDERING: Did you miss me while The Hot Button was in The Holiday Zone? I missed you. (Don't feel too bad. A few of you made sure to remind me that The Prince of Egypt is doing better than I expected a week ago and that I should take it easy on Jonathan Frakes. And I'm on double secret probation amongst the Val Kilmer fans. If I don't like At First Sight when I see it, I'm going to have to go into the witness protection program.)
QUOTE WHORING USA: For Another Day in Paradise: "Heroin hasn't been this much fun since Drugstore Cowboy!" "James Woods in really tight pants, Melanie Griffith in really loose skin, and two young hot bods in nothing at all! A must see to believe!" "If you like underage boys as much as Larry Clark, you'll love Another Day in Paradise!" "Vincent Kartheiser is sure to be the Ken Wahl of the '90s!"
HAPPY TRAILERS TO YOU: I actually caught the trailer for Sony's Still Crazy, a really wonderful mockumentary about a successful rock band from the late-'60s getting back together for a tour. The trailer did a really nice job of establishing the story and each of the four musicians. It also wisely lays on the performance of Bill Nighy, which is seriously deserving of Oscar consideration. But one odd thing: Billy Connelly, co-most famous member of the cast (with Stephen Rea) is nowhere to be found. Connelly is kind of the glue that holds the story together and is a laugh every time he hits the screen. I don't know what gives, but maybe this will make him the surprise cherry on this wonderful concoction of a movie sundae.
BAD AD WATCH: How can I kick a new year off without kicking Ron Brewington? The truth is, Mr. Brewington and Mr. Wunder have been in short supply in this season's ads. But if you want (if you really, really want) "A perfect holiday gift," Ron B. is your man. That was his assessment of Stepmom. True, I liked the film more than most (that is to say, I didn't hate it and accuse it of being serialized crap), but is a movie about a broken family with a dying parent really a "holiday gift?" All in all, I'd rather have a sweater.
READER OF THE DAY: One reader, one of my favorite theater owners in the Mid-west, wrote in this response to one of my New Year's Resolutions about people who talk in movies. I removed her name to protect her "innocence." You go, girl!: "No, David, we do not have ushers. In small theaters you cannot afford to hire them. Even if you did hire them, they would probably be teens or young adults who hate yelling at people. And any theater owner would tell you that they do not want the movie companies butting into their business any more than they have to. In my theater it is Big Bad Me that handles talking. If it is a bunch of kids, a lot of times I yell out at the beginning of the movie that everyone has to be quiet before I start the movie. I also tell the adults to come and get me if they have any complaints. This works very well. I have had a lot of compliments on it. I also have someone sitting in a movie where there are a lot of kids just to make sure they aren't talking. I, myself, periodically check movies to make sure people are not talking. My sister is called The Dragon Lady. She doesn't take any crap from kids either. My suggestion to you is to tell whoever is talking to shut up, which I have done many times in other theaters that I have gone to. Or get the manager. But telling a movie company to tell theater owners to hire more ushers will not solve the problem. You need a qualified witchy adult to handle the situation, not a kid."

E ME: Talking in theaters, my best and worst lists and all these wonderful movies! You have to be able to think of something worth writing me about. NOW!