Friday, 01 October 1999

WEEKEND PREVIEW

It's one of those "interesting" weekends.

Three Kings and American Beauty are now the only high quality films in the wide-release marketplace (assuming that you've seen The Sixth Sense eight times already). American Beauty goes to 1000 or so screens (for an exact count, go to Box Office Extra after noon e.s.t.) and Three Kings will open on more than twice that many. You also have the very pleasant option of going to see Happy, Texas, the mistaken identity comedy that is charming and performance driven and clever and fun and won't piss any ticket buyer off unless they have a problem with homosexuality. That's not to say that this is a gay movie. It's not. But it isn't a gay bashing movie either.

The rest of the newcomers are also singular. Mystery, Alaska is a singular dump job. I still haven't seen the film and I can't say that Disney hasn't made it available because I still don't know what I missed in September while festivaling. But one thing is always clear. Big movies sitting in the can for a long time showing up in early October before the film's star is about to turn up in an Oscar® caliber performance equals a dump. Drive Me Crazy is not a dump job, but it also is flying below the radar of anyone over 25 years of age. Melissa Joan Hart's ta-tas are gracing the covers of a few magazines, the publishers of Archie Comics are worried that Sabrina might be giving elementary school boys little chubbies and Adrian Grenier is giving little girls the vapors. (Notice how I can't make crude anatomically based jokes about little girls getting excited over the guy, but I feel perfectly free to mock the young and the pup-tented? Political correctness lives! Even here. Someday, the Hot Button will use the word "moist" and it won't be about a towelette. But not today.) In any case, there is zero teen movie competition in the marketplace. The road is clear. And there is no competition out there in the pre-school set either. Boy, is The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland gonna sell a lot of cassettes. One has to figure that Sony figures that they'll match their numbers from Follow That Bird and if that makes them happy, I'm happy for them.

THE GOOD: I am a big David O. Russell fan even though I didn't much care for Spanking The Monkey. Around the time of Flirting With Disaster, I got to talk to Russell about something for Entertainment Weekly and the business conversation was fine, but the conversation with the man created a genuine affection for what he was trying to do. Every bit of that man I liked so much that day is in Three Kings. That includes the option of his reach exceeding his grasp. That happens in Three Kings at times. So put me in the "positive mixed" category on this film.

Only a lazy critic or someone who really didn't understand M*A*S*H would compare this film to Altman's in any way other than to mark tone or the idea of a wartime comedy. To me, Altman's movie was about us first and about the war second. It was our irrational, unstoppable, insane humanity stuck in the mire of Vietnam. It was a reminder that there were people out there, on both sides, not machines. Russell's Three Kings is much more a movie about people regaining their humanity while lost in this jungle/non-war and for the one character who oozes human kindness (Mark Wahlberg's Troy Barlow) to be challenged the most powerfully. This is a movie of redemption. Yes, there are a lot of political jibes to go around. But this really could be set in the Sierra Madre or in a little Mexican Village to be saved by seven or even in a coffee shop in L.A. in the best moments of Pulp Fiction.

Russell probably could not have picked a better leading cast than he did. George Clooney is a movie star and you can always feel his heart under however many layers of bravado he puts on. Ice Cube is a great screen personality and should be in a movie soon without a gun involved. He has the fierceness that Black men have not really been allowed until recently to show on screen and a gentility worthy of Poitier. And Mark Wahlberg has become a great young goofy every man due to his sheer willingness to expose himself. And I don't mean in a Boogie Nights way. He is the young stud in a constant search for something and he never even seems to be able to figure out what he's searching for, much less being able to find it. Terrific actors. And Russell gets really nice work out of his supporting players, especially Nora Dunn, Mykelti Williamson and Spike Jonze, who is in a zone, with his directing debut, Inside John Malkovich, drawing raves and due for release at the end of the month that starts with Three Kings, in which he travels with the Kings. (P.S. Does anyone else find Judy Greer, a supporting player in Three Kings who opens the film by supporting Clooney, remarkably sexy?)

So, what do I have to say about the film that makes this a "mixed" review? Well, the choice of doing the bleached out, overlit cinematography was, in my never humble opinion, a big mistake. First, everyone on the planet seems to be playing with the color density in film these days. It's not unique anymore. But more importantly, what does the choice do to inform the film? At first, I though it was a "TV war" thing, but this is a widescreen movie and the pans and zooms stop after a few minutes. After that, it just looked cool. But what is cool for 15 minutes is distracting after an hour. There is enough dirt and sand and blood and toughness in this film that the irony would have played a lot stronger in a traditionally shot world. Also, the film does lag in the middle as motivations become muddled. This is an objection that I seem to be having with more and more movies. It's as though we are supposed to equate confusion with sophistication. No. Good stories well told often focus on ambiguity. But audiences have to be able to believe characters as motivated beings. Here's how I think about it sometimes: If you want to muddy the waters of who is really good and who is really bad among the good guys and the villains, you have to have put those characters into a fairly simple story arc so audiences, of whatever sophistication level, can follow. If you want to bounce your story off the walls, your characters better be clear and easy to follow. In this film, somewhere in the middle, the lines of motivations and character and story become so unclear that the movie gets sluggish and the audience starts shifting around in their seats.

But I like Three Kings a lot and recommend it strongly. Even with its flaws, there is a lot here to enjoy and a bunch of stuff to just outright fall in love with. Is it a masterpiece? No. Too flawed. Is it one of the best movies of this year? Absolutely. Will it play in the mid-west? That is a good question. Will it be a classic? Well, again, I think that the biggest stumbling block will be the style of photography, which is likely to seem quite dated as the future becomes the future.

THE BAD: I haven't seen Mystery, Alaska, Drive Me Crazy or The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland and I just don't care. Is that bad?

THE UGLY: Did you ever do something out of character? Something so meaningless and embarrassing that you already know it won't even be up to the standard of looking back and laughing some day? I like Sydney Pollack's work. I get the feeling I'd really like him as a human being if I ever got to know him. Even when his remake of Sabrina didn't quite work, there were redeeming values. There are those who try to put him down as a maker of Hollywood fluff, but his work, for me, tends to have a delightful weightlessness that a "Hollywood movie" is meant to have. It bops along. Even when it is serious. Three Days of The Condor moves. They Shoot Horses Don't They is slick and raw at the same time. He's made great flicks, near misses and bombs, but there was always something of his sensibility that I could take to his next picture. To be honest, I can barely remember Havana, except that I had a passion (as we all did, I think) for Lena Olin at that time and went home bored and disappointed. But it couldn't have been as bad as Random Hearts.

Random Hearts is a paint-by-the-numbers movie. Almost literally. There is so much blue in this film that I figured Pollack was experimenting with Kubrick's color concept from Eyes Wide Shut. When at one point, Kristin Scott Thomas stands in front of a blood red curtain and then a few scenes later, Harrison Ford's shirt actually has some red line running through it, I thought , okay, here comes the transition. Nope. Back to blue. There is a scene where all three characters are in blue tops and bottoms against a the blue painted walls of an apartment and you're just going, "Buy a bigger box of crayons!"

I love Dave Grusin and so does Pollack, using him as a composer to great effect in Havana and The Firm. But what the hell was he thinking sticking a jazzy score on a melodrama about a blue-collar (literally!) cop and a politician? If he was going to go jazz, he needed the dark chords of Eastwood's sidekick Lennie Niehaus, not the Grusin's lighthearted charms. And the costume designer, besides finding more shades of blue than a Jewel song (tee-hee), puts Ford in decidedly upscale clothes from start to finish. What the hell is he doing in navy cashmere or camel's hair sports jackets? If his wife dressed him, an interesting conceit, it's not part of the movie. This is a man so enraged that he throws out his cheating wife's possessions even before he's confirmed that she is dead. (No, I don't consider that a spoiler since it's in every ad.) And here is my list of great actors that they have in this movie who are 98 percent wasted: Charles Dutton, Bonnie Hunt, Dylan Baker, Dennis Haysbert, Peter Coyote, Paul Guilfoyle, Edie Falco, M. Emmet Walsh and Bill Cobbs. Great choices. How about giving them something to do?

As far as the story goes, this is one of those films where every step demands a misstep in a previous scene. The leaps of logic are astounding. Hotel rooms that no one showed up for staying empty for days. Last minute airline trips so people can have 20 minutes of conversation before going back home. Emotional ins and outs that are so softly sold that they never seem to really be feeling anything. The dialogue becomes like a book of bad haiku by angry teenage girls who are stuck with an unfamiliar form of expression because all the copies of The Bell Jar have already been checked out of the library. As much as I've never seen a Pollack movie without a pulse before, I don't recall Harrison Ford sleepwalking through a movie like he does here.

Even the attempt to intermingle Ford's character's police work and his pain over the loss of his wife and his false belief in her fidelity is done so softly as to never carry any weight. And there is, of course, the requisite suspension for punching someone even though that someone left a death threat on his answering machine. But Ford never tells anyone, not even his partner, that fact. And this is a character who saves every message throughout the movie. The problem would have been easily solved with a live untaped phone call, which would have also saved us from an awkward script construction that has Ford calling a bowling alley and asking if someone is there by name before going to find him. The fact that the film cuts away from the phone call before Ford gets an answer as to whether the guy is at the bowling alley probably came because his coy hang-up after being told "yes" was pathetic. And given his internal drama, getting to the bowling alley only to not find the guy there could have been as dramatic as finding him. Maybe more so. Maybe the guy isn't there, so his pent up frustration can't be released. What does he do then? He does something dramatic. And then maybe the guys walks in and gets the wrath of Harrison. Cause and effect.

I hate to read critics who write or talk about filmmakers not making the effort. Even here, there was clearly an effort. But this film also seems to suffer, in a big way, from people moving a film through the process more than really wanting to tell this one story. I felt this way after Jurassic Park: The Lost World, which I consider the only Spielberg movie in which Spielberg's heart could not be found. In a perfect world, Random Hearts never would have been made.

JUST WONDERING: Why are so many people writing off the box office potential of Fight Club, Sleepy Hollow and Princess Mononoke in the same breath as calling them some of the best films of the year? Are we all getting too inbred? Too number obsessed? Actually listening to tracking like morons with our heads to the railroad tracks needing the train to get so close to even make a good guess based on those numbers that we are going to get squashed? We get paid to write about movies. This is the world's greatest scam. We should have the balls to fight for what we know is good. And shucking aside my Drive Me Crazy concerns above, we should have the ovaries to fight too. When we are women. You get the point.

THE RADIO SHOW: This weekend, on KABC 790, I'm going to have on Ain't It Cool News' Moriarty as a guest. My co-host, George Pennacchio, is out of town, so I thought I'd invite in a fresh perspective on the movie business. We'll talk about upcoming movies, but also about the "mystery" of AICN and whether it is a good thing or a bad thing for business. I'm probably going to piss off more than a few studio types by even acknowledging his existence, but I'd rather they call in and challenge us both than just quietly fume. Moriarty also has his fans in the biz. They should call in, too. 1-800-222-KABC. So, take a listen. 10 a.m. p.s.t. You can also try to listen by Real Audio from the www.kabc.com Website.

HAPPY TRAILERS TO YOU: Warner Bros. has released the new trailer for Pokemon: The First Movie and I have to say, "What?" I know nothing about Pokemon other than that my nephew and godson both love it. And after seeing this trailer, I know nothing more. Points of interest are that WB is releasing this as a "Kids WB" release, so instead of creating new studios under the WB umbrella, I guess they are just going to use franchise names from the family as suits their needs. Also, they actually make the offer of a free trading card as part of the trailer. Never saw that before. So, I guess they are just going after the hardcore Pokemon people. That might work. But it seems they might try to get more of an anime' bounce off of Princess Mononoke than this. Maybe next trailer.

BAD AD WATCH: If you want to know what Miami Dolphin reserve linebacker Larry Izzo thinks of the latest flicks, you can hear him on a shockwave-based program at the Dolphins Website. "I give it two fins up!"

READER OF THE DAY: A disgruntled Roughcutter writes: "Dave, I've sat back and watched roughcut.com trash some pretty bad films over the last year by giving them a $2.00 review. But enough is enough. This time you guys have gone to far, trashing Elmo goes to Grouchland. What in the world is wrong with the staff? This is a beautiful film about a man who is trying to find the real world that he once lived in. A man lost who's in search of his soul. How could you overlook the troublesome path that the lead character must embark on? It depicts everything that is bad in society and how we treat outsiders. A true story of discrimination and the underlying reasons for it. I can't believe that you didn't notice this. Or the stellar performances by each and every actor or puppet. The director makes a masterpiece out of a very bad script. What about the use of the camera and colors? This is a very high quality movie that every adult should see. What in the world were you thinking, giving it only $3.00? Are you insane? Oh my Lord, I could go on for days about great this movie is. Sarcastically, Michael"

E ME: All I want to know is, where the hell is Snuffleupagus: The Movie? Brad Pitt IS Snuffy! With Edward Norton as Big Bird, Harrison Ford as Oscar The Grouch, Matt Damon as Bert, Ben Affleck as Ernie, Meryl Streep as Meryl Sheep, South Park's Kenny as Mr. Hooper and Maria Conchita Alonzo as Maria! As always, I want to hear how you felt about this weekend's crop o' flicks. And does Larry Izzo deserve a "Roger Ebert & The Movies" guest spot if the Dolphins win the Super Bowl or what?