Friday, 28 May 1999

WEEKEND PREVIEW

Star Wars: Episode One -- The Phantom Menace gets some actual competition this weekend. But Universal's Notting Hill, which should have a nice opening, has zero chance at the top slot. You can get all the specific projections, based on (gasp!) actual facts by clicking on Box Office Extra.

Universal should be the proud owner of two of the top three slots with The Mummy continuing apace. With Entrapment as the only other holdover managing more than $5 million last weekend, The Thirteenth Floor is likely to fill up that Number Four slot. The movie is very scary, but not in the way you might think (see "The Ugly" below). The Matrix, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Love Letter, Never Been Kissed and Election should fill in the six through ten spots.

There are some nice indie films hitting some screens this weekend. Last year's Cannes winner, Eternity & A Day, finally hits American shores. Mike Figgis' latest, The Loss of Sexual Innocence is demanding, but builds into an original and insightful, if episodic exploration of passion. And Penelope Cruz is the Hispanic Gwyneth Paltrow in Twice Up on A Yesterday.

And this weekend's Golden Opportunity is the little-seen Olympia from Slamdance alum Robert Byington, playing at the Laemmle Monica 4 in Santa Monica, CA at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. In New York, Film Forum is presenting a Harold Lloyd film festival. Lloyd is, for me, the best of the silent comedians. He and Keaton are kind of like the Kelly and Astaire of silents. Both are beautiful and graceful, the choice between them is just about style. At 3:40 p.m. on Monday, Peter Freisinger will be accompanying a showing of Lloyd's Why Worry? Please feel free to submit Golden Opportunities, as I'm looking for non-L.A. entries for this slot, which I'll try to present every Friday.

THE GOOD: Wow. I just looked back into my personal vault to see what comments I made after seeing a screening of Notting Hill a few weeks ago. I made none. Why? Probably because I felt that I didn't like it enough. My rule of thumb with early screenings is that a pan waits until the opening weekend and praise (my preferred tone) starts immediately. Yet, I don't dislike Notting Hill. It's just that some people love it so much, being somewhat positive somehow translates to negativity on my part. (Note: The look at the inner workings of a junket will give the film a criticism-free past for many journalists who have gone through that process. Unfortunately, the sequence, like much of the movie, is both incredibly subtle and insightful and over-the-top and false at the same time.) This film is not the singular surprise that Four Weddings & A Funeral was. This film is not as smart about show business as it aspires to be. This film makes the mistake of giving up its fairy tale at times to try and be edgy, but doesn't play off the edge at all. And all that said, it is a pleasant romp. Unless you have a personal vendetta against Julia Roberts or Hugh Grant, you should have a good time at this movie. (I still hope that Runaway Bride has the zing that this film lacks.) Like any sequel, Notting Hill carries the weight of its past, for better or worse.

Now, you say that Notting Hill isn't a sequel. No one told screenwriter Richard Curtis, who tries to reassemble the quirky family/friend structure of Four Weddings to support this psuedo-Cinderella story. This group gives us moments of joy. Especially Rhys Ifans as Spike and Gina McKee, who absolutely radiates as Bella. (McKee battles herself at the box office this weekend, also appearing in a smaller role in The Loss of Sexual Innocence.) But too often the group is forced into the story with a mighty shoe horn and an outstretched arm. Worse, the group doesn't quite have the spark of the glorious Simon Callow-James Fleet-John Hannah-Kristin Scott Thomas-Charlotte Coleman combo of 4 Weddings. The irony of this paint-by-numbers screenplay is that the idea for the story is wonderful and wonderfully original and that Richard Curtis' work has been so original previously (The Tall Guy, Bean and 4 Weddings) that going back to the well again has served us all badly. But I still like Notting Hill. It just left me wanting a screening of a better movie right afterward.

THE BAD: Let's see...I counted about 7,000 articles last week about how Star Wars sucked and how Star Wars was going to "tank" like Godzilla and how the second-highest gross ever on a Thursday was an indication of audiences backing away and how not winning the 3-day box office battle vs. a Memorial Day weekend 3-day was a disaster. So, where are the self-recriminations now that Star Wars is proving that $400 million domestic is a distinct possibility? Where are all the articles about the massive Monday gross and the Tuesday gross that beat The Lost World: Jurassic Park by 44 percent even though Star Wars was in its seventh day vs. Lost World's fifth day? Andrew Hindes at Variety did do a story on the Monday gross. And The Hollywood Reporter has been pretty upbeat from the beginning. But where are the little snakes like Lew Irwin, who headlined a report "Menaced!" after last Thursday's gross? Where is his "Break Up The Phantom Menace!" headline? Where's the L.A. Times, which has decided to use only negativity from the Internet to rip the movie whenever possible? Where's the Reuters story, which had the cajones to cite Box Office Guru as a news source, that now discusses how wrong the media's take on this film was? I still am more than willing to support anyone who hated this film and their right to hate it publicly. Opinions are welcome. But only when they are presented as opinions. Not when you pretend they are news to serve your purposes. And not when you run away from the light when your opinion-driven "news" is proven to be wrong. The next thing will be, by the way, a media watch on Star Wars vs. Titanic, which is a false idea from beginning to end. I'd say and have said from the beginning, that the odds of Star Wars beating Titanic are miniscule. But it will be another cudgel to beat Star Wars with as it rewrites some of the box office records for the next month. This is Mark McGwire vs. Hank Aaron. Completely different set of records.


The Ugliness On 13, The Trailer Trail And Writers On Parade