Friday, 15 September 2000

Somehow, someway, this festival seems to be revving its engines more effectively in the end than it did in its first week. After Before Night Falls and Fighter and Thomas in Love, now I've seen what I suspect to be the most commercial distributor unaffiliated movie of the festival. It's called Born Romantic and it's a real charmer, filled with young name Brits in good, challenging roles. My only fear is that Miramax has chased everyone else off the track of the ensemble Brit flick with their disastrous Human Traffic release, the early burial of Shall We Dance after it was disqualified for Oscar® and the studio decided to make a still-unmade English language version and various other small movie box office mistakes. But I believe that someone will pick this film up and, if handled properly, it will be both well loved and a launching point for the expanded careers of almost every actor involved. (Late Thursday, word was that the filmmakers were in negotiations with three companies for the rights and that the film would likely be sold on Friday.)

The movie is a series of small, interconnected love stories, all based out of a salsa club in London. Each is, in some way, a traditional romantic comedy vignette and in other ways, completely original and fresh. For instance, the "ugly ducking" of the group doesn't just work at a mortuary, but she has her own business cleaning and decorating grave sites for loved ones who can't get to the cemetery. One guy is in the traditional tough guy slot, yet he is a somewhat inept robber. And it is the cast who really brings the whole movie, written and directed by David Kane, together. Each takes a new career step as well.

Craig Ferguson--He plays a romantic lead-type here, carrying the relaxed confidence that should get him a role in Soderbergh's new Rat Pack remake, Ocean's Eleven.

Ian Hart--Wonderful as a diner sage, with too much to say about everything that goes on between men and women.

Jane Horrocks--After playing a squeaky loon in Absolutely Fabulous and an idiot sing-vant in Little Voice, Horrocks finally gets a role where she can play her comedy straight, with and edge and sexuality that could make her a Hollywood regular.

Adrian Lester--You saw him first in Primary Colors. He was the sole survivor of Branagh's Loves Labour's Lost. And here, he plays a handsome, thoughtful, sexy cab driver, in a deeply bittersweet love with his wife. Finally, he shows why he should be competing with the big boys for male leads in major movies.

Catherine McCormack--One of the most beautiful women in film plays the plain Jane. But the complexity of the character brings this one to life and McCormack gets a role that becomes more and more natural as it goes along. Thankfully, they never do the "swan emerges" moment, though she manages to regulate her blossoming into beauty almost completely from within.

Jimi Mistry--After East Is East was sold as a Jimi Mistry movie instead of as an Om Puri movie, which is what it was, I wondered whether the press push for Mistry would lead anywhere. It didn't. But his role here as a bumbling thief who is smitten beyond hope will take him to the next step.

Olivia Williams--She's been stuck playing a shy, low-key woman. Here, she busts balls with the best of them. Lean, tough and sexy, she plays the entire range of emotions as she slowly lets down her emotional guard.

I consider myself a born romantic, so perhaps I was a sucker for the movie. But I did love it, more with my heart than with my head. It is a tango of a movie and the beat drives from start to finish.

Some people are comparing Sexy Beast to Reservoir Dogs. With due respect, those people a f**king c**ts. Oops! I slipped into the parlance of the film. That language is about the only connection of this film to Tarantino. If you want to know who director Jonathan Glazer was stealing from, take a look at Mike Hodges, dragged kicking and screaming into the new esthetic.

The first thing you need to know about Sexy Beast is that it is not a Ben Kingsley movie. It's a Ray Winstone movie. I happen to think the world of Winstone, so I have no problem with that. It's the story of a retired mob-related thief, named Gary, played by Winstone. He gets word that Don, played by Kingsley, is coming to visit with the offer of a bank job. Gary wants to say, "No," but he knows that Don might not take that for an answer. And how!

I really liked this movie, from beginning to end. It's not really much of a story, but the ride is clean and curvy. And Glazer's camera play is ever interesting, but never excessive to the point of distraction. Particularly well done is a banking sequence. Ian McShane also makes a big impression as a slick, overtanned crime boss. Tans are standard issue in this film. Lots of aging male skin and lots of tanned skin.

You won't be able to see this film until next March, but if you enjoyed Croupier, you should definitely check out Sexy Beast.

The closing night gala here at Telluride is a film called How To Kill Your Neighbor's Dog. A little advice: Don't work with animals or children and don't put the word "dog" in your film unless the film is really, really good.

How To Kill Your Neighbor's Dog tries hard. Really, really hard…to be a charming delight. It suffers from the efforts of the lead character, a playwright played by Kenneth Branagh, to be funny. Really, really funny. Every time he opens his mouth. Unfortunately, he's only funny about 20 percent of the time, which is not a good percentage for someone who is trying so hard. The great Robin Wright-Penn plays his wife and I am as perplexed about why he took this nothing role as I was about her husband Sean taking the smoke-n-brood role in The Weight of Water (sold to Lion's Gate on Thursday). There's a throwaway of a role for Lynn Redgrave as the wife's Alzheimer-afflicted mother. And the film also skates on a story line about a little girl with Cerebral Palsy, making a monster out her mother, despite the playwright never taking the mother's emotions into consideration for a single selfish second. I can't really go on much further about this effort by first-time writer/director Michael Kalesniko, other than to say, "Please stop." This one will be okay on cable, but the expenditure of $8 and the time spent on a trip to the theater might well have you wishing you were that dead dog of the title.

Until tomorrow.

READER OF THE DAY: L2 writes: "I once wrote to tell you how I rarely enjoy the movies about which you rave the most. However, after seeing a screening of Almost Famous, I can say that the streak has been broken. It is a wonderful movie. And I say this as someone who isn't really a fan of the music or the period. But in this film, Cameron Crowe tells an interesting story with skill and humor and an obvious, but thankfully restrained passion. ('You had me at hello' and 'You complete me' both make me cringe every time.) Here, the only time that I wasn't swept along for the ride was during the airplane confessionals. I felt it was the only time Crowe went for the cheap jokes and the cliches. I don't have the same love for this movie as Chris from Chicago, but Almost Famous is a fantastic movie."

Not Trent wrote: "Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for going against the grain and speaking your mind on Helen Hunt, because it's an opinion I share wholeheartedly. Actually, I even think calling her 'an excellent TV actress' may be too kind, but at any rate, you're right: She sucks at this movie thing. The fact we gave her an Oscar is downright embarrassing, because she's so one-note, and that note isn't all that interesting to begin with."

E ME: Show me the way to go home. I'm tired and I wanna go to bed…I had a couple festivals a minutes ago. And they went right to my head.

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