The Hot Button by David Poland

Tuesday, 19 January 1999

WEEKEND REVIEW

Varsity Blues won the weekend on the strength of its mighty, mighty advertising campaign, but it looks like Paramount did some quick shuffling with its four-day box office estimate of $17.6 million. The studio almost tripled the next highest differential between three-day estimates (Friday-Sunday) and four-day (Friday-Monday) estimates with a $3.3 million leap. (The Prince of Egypt estimated the unlikely $1.2 million jump, with most films estimating between a $800,000 and $1 million fourth day.) Why would Paramount, who would win the weekend by a wide margin regardless, fudge Monday estimates? Well, my guess is that when everyone gets back to work on Tuesday, they will claim a $15.3 million three-day weekend, breaking the January non-Star Wars/non-Titanic record that A Civil Action set last week. Why? Because they know that they have an uphill battle to try to avoid a 50 percent plus drop next weekend on this teen testosterone outing.
On the flipside of the three-day/four-day thing, Shakespeare in Love leapt past In Dreams and into the Top 10 when DreamWorks estimated less than $800,000 for In Dreams' Monday while Miramax estimated more than $800,000 for Shakespeare in Love. Final shaky numbers will come in Tuesday, but look for both films to be right around $4.8 million for four days.
On the basis of three days, A Civil Action dropped to second place, losing 28 percent, adding another $11.8 million over four days. Patch Adams, on the other hand, dropped only 17 percent, with a growing anger from the critical community (including Gene Siskel calling it the worst film of 1998) seeming to be in direct contrast to the public's enjoyment of the film. Patch adds an estimated $11.7 million over four days, while another critical miss, You've Got Mail added about $6.7 million in seventh place. Both films should be able to flaunt $100 million domestic grosses before next Friday comes around. (We should all be so abused.) Other holdovers in the Top 10 included Stepmom ($7.8 million and sixth place), The Prince of Egypt (down 18 percent over three days to add $6.2 million in eighth place over four days) and Shakespeare in Love (down 17 percent over three days for a four-day total of $4.8 million and 10th place).
The strongest newcomer was really an expander. The Thin Red Line came rumbling to life with a surprising $7,460 per screen (given the 2:46 running time) and an estimated $11.4 million over four days to take fourth place. (Please register my laughter in the faces of those critics who were sure the film would never gross more than $10 million total. It's still not going to be a major domestic winner, but with what I am sure will be a $100 million-plus international gross, it will be profitable. And, by not failing, it stands to stay in the running for a Best Picture nomination. It won't beat Private Ryan, but after how the film got smacked around even before its exclusive release, that is a major victory indeed. And I, for one, couldn't be more happy. I am willing to concede fallibility on my take on some films, but not this one. It is and will forever be a master work.)
Last but least, At First Sight took fifth with $8.7 million and little chance to hit the $25 million mark domestically, while Virus did just $6 million in ninth, with little chance of getting to the $20 million that Prints & Advertising (P&A) likely cost. (More on At First Sight below.) And I'd link you to Kevin Thomas' L.A. Times review of Virus to show that perhaps I was right to think that a funky, Bride of Chucky-like campaign for this film would have been in better service for the old-fashioned thrill ride of a movie, but I will not link to the L.A. Times anymore given their obnoxious page-stretching, money-grubbing 'Net philosophies. Stick a review, article or feature on less than a half-dozen Web pages and all is forgiven, my cyber-brethren.
THE GOOD: It seems to me that they finally found the right guy to direct the film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom of the Opera. And with that, a newly red-hot director (40 films into his non-American career) avoids repeating himself. Win, win. The director in question is Shekhar Kapur, the man who directed the glorious histo-drama Elizabeth. Antonio Banderas has long been rumored as the leading candidate to don the mask and anyone who watched him steal Evita from Madonna should be happy about that. Additionally, it seems that Catherine Zeta-Jones is in line for the role of his love, Christine. It's a little hard to imagine Ms. Jones as the very victimized woman who drives the Phantom's actions, but maybe Kapur will toughen up Christine a bit.
THE BAD: Over the weekend, news spread that director Phil Alden Robinson was out of the Kevin Costner project Thirteen Days. Why did Sony bother to push out the news over a three-day weekend? Probably because Harry Knowles got it first on his Ain't-It-Cool website on Saturday. While Sony's press release of a trade story claims creative differences, Knowles' e-mail insights cited Costner's disappointment with Robinson's latest draft of the screenplay. I guess, technically, that would be a creative difference. While this stands as a coup for Harry, it also points out the difficulties of his site. Clearly, someone with a beef wrote Harry with his or her spin on the saga. That doesn't mean that it's not true, but it does mean that we, as readers, do not know who is spinning the story that Harry ran and why. When the trades spin -- and they almost always do -- the source of the spin is usually self-evident. In any case, the "bad" here is not Knowles, but the dumping of Robinson, who was a key to Costner being who he is today (as the writer/director of Field of Dreams) and one of the most interesting filmmakers working in Hollywood today. In a better world, Costner, who has become well-known for dumping former friends in search of his own often misguided interests ("Another close-up, boss?"), would have been dumped and Robinson would have been retained. But Robinson didn't get Beacon the financing for the project, did he?
THE UGLY: Well ladies (and the rest of you), being blind would not have been enough to make At First Sight a good movie for me, but it would have helped. There are two huge problems with this movie. First, someone made the horrible decision to take a really fascinating story of insight and depth (which is probably what drew Kilmer in the first place) and made it into a dumb love story. And no, I don't hate all love stories. This one was simply dumb. It took almost an hour before the film even mentions the procedure to correct Val's vision. And then, it took about 15 minutes to discover the procedure (by way of a normal magazine article mysteriously stuck in the scrapbook of a blind man who has access to and reads lots of Braille magazines), get to the doctors and have the operation. The most interesting part of the film, about a person who finds that gaining vision can mean losing sight and how that affects his love and his life, was squeezed into a quick 30 minutes. Duh!
The second problem was Irwin Winkler's truly terrible direction of the film. I mentioned some of the most offensive moments to a director friend of mine and he said, "DP ideas," meaning that things like some of the seemingly meaningless shots from above and one character emerging from and exiting through steam indicated that Winkler was leaning on his Director of Photography for ideas and that the DP was probably a frustrated director. Good call. Winkler had one of the world's great cinematographers, John Seale, on board. But Seale has not been able to make the transition to director. And if these ideas were his, I hope he sticks to the area of his art that is sheer genius, cinematography. (Seale photographed such pictures as Witness, Gorillas in the Mist, Rain Man and The English Patient.) There were so many bad shots in this movie, I felt bad for Mira Sorvino, who got the worst of it. Winkler is a great producer (Rocky, Raging Bull, The Right Stuff and 39 more), but this is his fourth bad directing gig and they have gotten worse each time. (From Guilty by Suspicion to Night and the City to The Net to this.) Please. I beg of you, a man I admire. Stop it.
Last but not least, Val Kilmer was terrific in this movie. I can see what appealed to him about it, but he doesn't get to unearth the promise of his character. The great part, his exploration of the sighted world and his crushing difficulties, was given such short shrift that it hurts. This could have been a great, great movie. Keep the love story intact, but keep it secondary. It's Val/Virgil's story. Everyone else is in support. But not here. If I start to praise Kelly McGillis here (her best work as an actress ever), I have to start on figuring out why Nathan Lane has a two scenes that didn't actually impact the film. So, I won't. But I will recap in the monstrous tone that some Val fans have accused me of maintaining about Mr. Kilmer: Val good. Movie bad. Kill movie. Kill movie.
MARCHING TO SUNDANCE: I have been a bit long-winded today, so I'm chopping off some of the traditional Monday fare. I am marching to Sundance this Thursday and the first report from roughcut.com's Ten Days at Sundance will appear on Friday at around noon EST. There will a fresh report at The Hot Button every single day and a chat every single night the rest of the way. Keep an eye out for the latest guests on the Sundance chat schedule. There could be changes on any or every day of the festival. And if you check out the festival schedule, you can send me questions to ask on your behalf. I just bought new boots, put fresh batteries in the digital camera and put on five pounds of insulation. So, get ready for 10 days of fun in the snow.
HAPPY TRAILERS TO YOU: Before At First Sight, there was the none-too-coincidental duo of trailers for The Other Sister and Molly, two movies about disabled people. Both look pretty bad. First, I'd like to know what in God's name the title The Other Sister means. The trailer didn't tell me. There were a few moments that got laughs and I think the world of Giovanni Ribisi and Diane Keaton, but as Ribisi's character says at one point of the trailer, "Woof!" As for Molly, the floral-dressed and often wet Elizabeth Shue seems as believable in this role as she was as a prostitute in Leaving Las Vegas. (The performance was good, but Shue as a street hooker? Please.) Oh, that John Duigan. One film is genius, the next garbage. I can't figure it out half the time. The film opens a day after tax day. I look forward to the two events equally.
READER OF THE DAY: From Helen: "I just came in from seeing At First Sight, and I know you don't want to hear this, but I just loved it. I would like to let you know the theater was full, everyone seemed to enjoy it and there were times that everyone was so intent on the movie you could hear a pin drop. I find it refreshing that it was not an action-packed, blow 'em up, shoot 'em up, stunt-driven movie. I just can't figure out what the critics/reviewers want from a movie. Maybe someday you could enlighten readers of your column on what reviewers are really looking for in a movie. Many of the films they just love I can't stand. I just don't understand. By the way, the audience was not all chicks by a long shot. There was a very mixed audience in sex and age."

E ME: The theater I saw the film in was 70 percent female and I was the only male there on his own. What did the rest of you think of the weekend movies?