Tuesday, 22 February 2000

WEEKEND REVIEW

Oy! It's amazing how long a 3-day weekend can be and how many of you spent time writing me asking that I not mention the H-word again for a while. (I'm not using his name for that reason.) Believe me when I tell you, I was quite sick of the story myself by the end of last week. And so was he. But I also felt an obligation to complete the story fully. And so, I did.

The box office had a 4-day weekend and (what's new?) of course, there was a lot of politics as the studios estimated their weekends for the benefit of the media. This is what's clear: The Whole Nine Yards won the weekend. Hanging Up leads a crowd of four movies (the others are Snow Day, Pitch Black and Boiler Room) which will probably drop, depending on their honesty, by around $500,000 from each of their weekend estimates. In particular, Hanging Up estimated a Monday gross $800,000 higher than The Whole Nine Yards despite trailing the Bruce Willis comedy by $500,000 on Saturday and $400,000 on Saturday. And not to tick off the folks at Sony too much, but tracking had the movie over $20 million for the weekend. So despite the fact that $15 million-plus is a very strong start for a movie with a male box office draw, and the best ever for Meg Ryan without a major male star opposite her, it is still a disappointment for the studio, despite what it's saying publicly.

Hanging Up should remain in second place, followed by Snow Day and Pitch Black, and Boiler Room should stay ahead of the re-release of American Beauty, but not by much. Given that The Green Mile had almost double The Cider House Rules' box office last weekend and neither expanded much, it seems likely that The Green Mile will be ahead for a Top Ten slot come today's final tallies. But who knows?

One thing is clear now about the Oscar® race. American Beauty is absolutely the favorite, across the board. And everyone else is an underdog. One can't count out Miramax, which managed to get multiple media outlets to start selling the race as a head-to-head between Beauty and Cider House. The studio has already started unhappy rumbling about those of us who have chosen to write otherwise. But more on that below in The Ugly

THE GREAT: Erin Brockovich is not only the best movie of the year so far. It's not only a movie that marks Steven Soderbergh's ascendance into the pantheon of the great living directors. It's not only a movie that may be the rare March release that becomes a dominant player in the Oscars a year from now. It's not only a movie that in other hands would be a small $50 million hit but will, with this team, likely gross about $125 million domestically.

Erin Brockovich is a joy.

For Julia Roberts, this movie is every bit as special and important to her stardom as was My Best Friend's Wedding. She is as charming a she can be in this film, but more importantly, Soderbergh and she rein in the character, which could have easily gone over the top. Albert Finney has a great role and gives a great performance as an aging lawyer in the film Aaron Eckhart finally has gotten a role that will put the raging idiot he played in the Neil LaBute film, In The Company of Men, in the rear view mirror. Again, he plays a role that could have gone off course very easily. He's a biker with heart of gold. But he is not a stereotype. Even though his character is not always at the center of the film, he is as alive and real and honestly motivated as Erin Brockovich herself.

And then there is the supporting cast. Marg Helgenberger is soft and vulnerable and heartbreaking. Cherry Jones pops up in yet another small role (she is a stage legend in New York) and gets every drop out of her 5 minutes on screen. Conchata Ferrell brings it, as always. And perhaps most exciting to me, Tracey Walter, who has played every kind of freak and geek known to man, hits a home run in about 5 minutes of screen time. This is probably the best role he's had since Conan the Destroyer and he shows that he has the goods that have made him a regular with directors like Jonathan Demme and David Lynch. Great work.

I don't want to tell you too much about the movie itself. Don’t let anyone tell you that it's just a remake of Norma Rae because it's not that at all. It is, however, very much like a movie from the early '70s. It is quick and sharp and hits double after double after double, never indulging itself by swinging for the fences, but never missing a single at bat. You will laugh a lot and cry some too, if you let yourself. And like Norma Rae, you will cheer. But unlike some of those political dramas of the '70s, Erin Brockovich never manipulates you with the "love me" stuff.

The movie this most reminds me of is A Civil Action. Unfortunately, Steven Zaillian, a great writer, is not Steven Soderbergh. Of course, Steven Soderbergh wasn't Steven Soderbergh until recently. And now, there are very, very few filmmakers whose films I anticipate with more excitement. He makes simple, elegant, brilliant movies and his taste is just magnificent. Anne V. Coates, his editor, is doing her best work ever, now at 74 years of age. (There are some jaw-droppingly brilliant cuts in this simple little film.) Ed Lachman, who I felt was too flexible a D.P. for first-time director Sofia Coppola to lean on in The Virgin Suicides, is perfect here, shooting his second Soderbergh film.

And what can I say about the team at Jersey Films (Shamberg, Sher & DeVito) who have consistently fought to do the most interesting work with the most interesting directors. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But with Reality Bites, Pulp Fiction, Out of Sight, Man on the Moon, Living Out Loud, Get Shorty and Erin Brockovich representing half of their company's output, I'd challenge anyone to point to a more impressive quality producing record.

I hope there is another film I like as much as Erin Brockovich sometime soon. If there are five films this good this year, it will have been a very, very good year.

P.S. MIT SCHPOILER: Mike Nichols endorsed the film as well over the weekend. It is a bit of a SPOILER, so if you want to go in pure, skip to the next story before the SPOILER appears in the endorsement. Nichols said, "My friend Soderbergh has this wonderful movie and I'm pissed off and very jealous because what it is is Silkwood with a happy ending. But we couldn't find a happy ending for Silkwood. That's just how it goes." (More from a delightful interview with Nichols in the column later this week.)

THE COULDA BEEN GOOD: It could have been a good movie. You can see the seeds of something wonderful in the Diane Keaton-directed Hanging Up. But you can't really call it a Diane Keaton film and that seems to be exactly where the problem is, at least in terms of quality. Simply put, Hanging Up is the story of one woman and the impending death of her father. The two sisters are side characters because the movie is, in no small part, about the fact that neither sister really contributes to the responsibilities that the central sister (Meg Ryan's character) takes on at the cost of her husband, son and business. This is a movie that starts with the Ryan character doing what we think are cute, ditsy Meg Ryan bits of schtick and suddenly explains to us that she has given so much of herself to her father and his illness that everything else is being squeezed beyond anyone's ability to act rationally. That's the movie, folks!

But instead of allowing Keaton to focus in on what the movie is about, business concerns demand that this be turned into a surreal reflection of The First Wives Club. Good for the box office, obviously, but terrible for the movie. Because there was something wonderful there underneath.

The film also suffers, it seems, from being the real story of the Ephron sisters, which combined with the chick-trio effort, keeps simple things from being fixed. For instance, nothing in the world would make more sense in this story than to have all three sisters come from different mothers. It would explain the age difference. It would create a tension that seems forced on the movie now. It would allow the other sisters, whose mothers may not have stayed with Matthau as long, to feel distance but to also feel a connection that could be used in the last act. And it would give the movie the freedom to let it be about Ryan's character. As it is, you never really get the relationship between the other sisters and Matthau and there is no effort even made to connect with Mom in any way, even in her loss, except by Ryan.

The scenes that work here are not the "We Are Family" sequences, strutting down hallways (wait until you see what's really going on in that shot from the trailer and ads.) They are the beautifully rendered scenes of Ryan remembering her past. They are the touching scenes between Ryan and Matthau. They are Ryan and her family. Not that Diane Keaton or Lisa Kudrow are bad or anything. They are just out of balance because some decided that this movie was better a predigested package. And that's a shame.

PAGE TWO: Yes, It's Still Bad...But Not Ugly