Friday, 3 March 2000

WEEKEND PREVIEW

It's black Friday.

No, I'm not running a full-page homage to Don Cheadle. I've been hinting about some of the worst movies of year for weeks now and it's time to tell all. Well, most. While I was raging about a couple of this weekend's releases, I caught another one that deserved immediate incineration. But dear God, I hope that's the final (hint, hint) one for a while. I've been using the phrase "car wreck" more often than Holly Hunter in a David Cronenberg movie lately. (God, I love Canadian content!)

There are three wide releases this weekend. One, Drowning Mona, has managed to stay almost completely off my professional radar. (I have seen ads and billboards.) The funny thing is that I have heard some decent things about the film...and not just from Jim Ferguson of The Dish Network. (I think that ads should now start, "A couple of critics and a lot of quote whores agree...") There is a fourth film called Three Strikes, that seems to have a very interesting idea (a comedy about a felon trying not to get his "third strike" under California law, which will send him back to prison for life), but I'm pretty sure that despite the films report of its wide release to some outlets, it will actually be released no more widely than a bread box.

In official limited releases, you have your Agnes Browne (Angelica's the wrong star and the right director) and Beautiful People (a good movie that takes a full act to start rolling). Also, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. This is my favorite Jim Jarmusch film yet, though it is possible that it's the Any Given Sunday of art films...people who love Jarmusch don't seem to like it as much as some of us who aren't real fans. (After meeting the man at a junket this week, I am a fan of Jim Jarmusch: The Person and will probably go back through his films to see if I missed something.)

For the full look at the dollars and nonsense, check out Box Office Extra after noon, e.s.t. (And yes, I shall return to keeping a weekly list of how all the Oscar nominees are doing.)

THE GOOD: There is light in the world in the face of the next two movies I'm going to write about. You may remember me writing a lot about a movie called Dolphins that played at Slamdance this year. Farhad Nawari is, if he ever returns to L.A. from Germany, going to be something special in this business. He has the skills and he has more passion than a White House intern. (By the way, Dolphins will screen here in Los Angeles at the Egyptian Theater on March 22 as part of a Best of Slamdance evening. It will really be worth the effort to attend this.)

But so do the filmmakers at MacGillivray-Freeman Films. They are the people who have become leaders in the business of making IMAX films, starting with To Fly! in 1976 to Speed, Stormchasers, The Living Sea, Cronos (among more than a dozen) and onto the most successful IMAX film ever, Everest, which is nearing the $100 million mark in gross receipts.

And so, I went to see their film called Dolphins, both as a treat for my godkids and just to see the thing. I end up seeing most IMAX films between all my nephews and nieces and other infantile family members. And I'll say this for Dolphins. It was easily the best IMAX film I have ever seen. Because unlike every other IMAX film I've seen, Dolphins understands the frame that IMAX delivers on a level that the best non-IMAX filmmakers do. This is also the best edited IMAX film I've ever seen, not just cutting from one shot to the next with the occasional shock cut designed to leave you breathless. This film moves along artfully. When they do a CG effect, they do it in perfect IMAX scale and then when the opportunity comes to repeat the successful gag, they go somewhere else, showing a respect for the audience that has rarely been seen in an IMAX theater.

I don't mean to devalue the work of IMAX filmmakers, including MacGillivray-Freeman filmmakers, from before Dolphins. Some of the films have been breathtaking. But they were, in their way, freak shows. "Look how big this is...and it's on a really big screen. Wait! Here's something even bigger!" It reminds me of the early work in movies and then in sound and then in color, as the effort to get the technology right overwhelmed the artfulness of the filmmaking. Here, it seems that they have been doing it long enough that they finally went from making IMAX films to making films.

Dolphins suggests that a great filmmaker can use the IMAX format to make films that happen to use the IMAX format and not just make the print real big, as Disney has done with Fantasia 2000, which is nice to experience on the huge screen, but clearly wasn't made with that experience in mind. Everest was a financial landmark for IMAX. Dolphins will stand as an aesthetic one.

And by the way, it's also a very good film with a very compelling set of stories. I learned a lot about Dolphins (and about scientist Kathleen Dudzinski's tush which gets a lot of screen time covered only in a small red bikini bottom) and I had a good time doing it. Oddly enough, when I was off interviewing Jim Jarmusch about Ghost Dog, we talked about a relationship of best friends in his movie between two men who don't speak the same language, which is quite wonderful. In Dolphins, the relationships between some of the humans and the dolphins are equally compelling and actually have the same underlying meanings. Great.

I usually get antsy in an IMAX at some point in this middle, ready for it to stop showing me the vistas and to get on with the saga. Not this time. I was with the movie from start to finish, as it left me with just enough to thrill and inspire and provoke thought without landscaping me to within an inch of my life.

Unfortunately, Dolphins won't hit L.A. for a number of months because of the dearth of IMAX screens. But it will appear around the country and around the world in the next weeks. So if you are a huge IMAX fan or if you are tired of the format or if you haven't gone yet, Dolphins is a chance to see what IMAX can and should be.

PAGE TWO: Madonna Outdoes Garry Shandling