Tuesday, 2 January 2001

WEEKEND REVIEW

Tom was right. Everyone else, including me, was wrong.

Yes, I’m talking about Cast Away. But I’m not talking about Tom Hanks. Sure, he came up with the idea and developed it with screenwriter William Broyles Jr. and producer/director Bob Zemeckis. But it was Fox’s Tom Rothman who stepped up in mid-November and sought me out to tell me not to underestimate this movie. And Rothman put Zemeckis’s movie where his mouth was and let me see it early.

By the time you read this, Cast Away will have grossed more than $110 million domestically. That’s more than I honestly expected this desert-island art film to make in total. That’s not because I didn’t like it, but because I just saw it as a small film. And it’s not just that it has Tom Hanks... this was his second-highest opener ever, after Saving Private Ryan. No, audiences want to see this film and the word of mouth is strong... $200 million-plus strong.

But Cast Away is not the only holiday-season phenomena. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with as estimated $3.6 million weekend, has a $22,006 average on 162 screens. Last weekend, it was $25,843 on 143 screens. A few movies have had better per-screen weekends in wide release. (Yes, The Lost World. The Phantom Menace, no. The Grinch, no.) And it happens with exclusive runs all the time. But I can find only one example of a per-screen weekend this high for a film with more than 100 screens and less than 1,102 screens. I picked that number because The Blair Witch Project was on 1,101 screens, jumping from 31, with a wide start of $26,538 per-screen. Of course, Blair dropped to $11,367 per screen the next weekend, a little more than half of this weekend’s Weekend Two number for Crouching Tiger.

So, what does that mean? I think it means that Sony Classics should be moving to over 1,000 screens with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon immediately. Don’t wait for Oscar, because Oscar may not happen. Don’t wait for the Golden Globes, because: a) there is no guarantee that they will win anything; and, b) the Golden Globes aren’t going to sell a lot of tickets. Heat... excuse me... HEAT is going to get people in the Midwest to this movie. It’s sizzling in L.A. and New York... take advantage and take advantage now. A handful of expansions and three wide releases are all that is in the way right now. Crouching Tiger is hotter than Traffic, hotter than Chocolat, hotter than Finding Forrester. Do you know how much a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar will mean to a film that is already over $13 million and which will be over $50 million by Oscar time, even under Sony Classics current release plans? Nothing!!!! Do you know how much six Oscar nods including Best Picture will mean to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Twenty to forty million bucks!

Just do it.

THE GOOD: I was thrilled to see that Rod Lurie & Co. grabbed Mark Ruffalo for The Castle, the Robert Redford project about a prison. I would have been more thrilled to see it in this column first, but what can you do? Robert Redford is the Robert Redford of his generation. Mark Ruffalo may be the Marlon Brando of his. No kidding. Ruffalo doesn’t have the size that made Brando so dangerous. But he has the soulful eyes and fierce passion, even in restraint. There hasn’t been a more important acting debut in film than Ruffalo’s in You Can Count on Me since Ed Norton’s arrival in 1996’s Primal Fear.

Now, the casting continues as DreamWorks tries to close a deal with James Gandolfini. Think about this. Rod Lurie has Kevin Pollak and Timothy Hutton in his first film. Next, Joan Allen, Gary Oldman, Jeff Bridges, and Sam Elliott. And now, a picture with Redford and Gandolfini and the fast-rising Ruffalo, whose movie stardom could be solidified by this role above the others. What’s next? Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in Rod’s revamp of From Here to Eternity?

THE BAD: The DVD revolution has hit the Academy. Variety does an excellent job detailing some of the problems that have arisen as Academy members and members of critics groups look for DVDs instead of video from studios promoting their films. (Click here for the story.) One story they don’t get is that DreamWorks is the one studio that hasn’t fallen behind the DVD 8-ball, getting a complete package of their films on DVD (with Bagger Vance promised in the near future -- it arrived last week) right around Thanksgiving.

THE UGLY: Jason Robards and Julius Epstein both died while I was out for the holidays. Epstein co-wrote Casablanca, The Bride Came C.O.D., and the movie adaptation of The Man Who Came to Dinner, amongst 50 other films he had a hand in writing. He was 91 years old, so the spring was out of the chicken. Nonetheless, he will be missed.

Robards was, for me, one of the greats. The Iceman Cometh, A Thousand Clowns, A Big Hand for the Little Lady, Once Upon a Time in the West, All the President’s Men, Julia, Melvin and Howard, The Day After, Inherit the Wind, Parenthood, Quick Change, Philadelphia, Beloved, Magnolia... just a start to the list of his astonishing work. Even in absolute crap, like Max Dugan Returns, he was wonderful. Three Oscar nominations and two wins, plus an Emmy for Moon For The Misbegotten, a Tony, an Obie, and a Palme D’Or.

Robards was film’s ultimate straight-shooter. You wanted the hard truth? You could find it in that voice, those eyes, that body language. Robards kept it close to the vest, but when he won, you got all the excitement in a second, and when he lost, the disappointment hit as hard and as quick.

A great actor to the end... dying, in play and for real, in Magnolia. You never quite knew where the line was drawn. And so it is in death. He will be missed every time we get to enjoy the memory of his work. And that means he will be missed all the time.

RADIO RADIO: I cursed on the radio this weekend... but we caught it in time. Between Cuba and my mouth, they’ll be coming for me soon. George and I are on every Saturday, 11 am to 1 pm, on KABC 790 AM and kabc.com.

NY TIMES QUOTE OF THE WEEK: A. O. Scott wrote a pretty darn good piece in this Sunday’s New York Times about the year in film. (Click here; registration required.)

Additionally, Scott appears as part of a critic’s roundtable in Slate’s Movie Club, in which we find out, amongst many things, that Scott goes by Tony... Tony Scott... get it? Anyway, you can read this movie gangb**g between Slate’s David Edelstein, Scott, Roger The E, the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman, and Vogue’s Sarah Kerr by clicking here. It’s a fun, if complex, read.

BAD AD WATCH: How did Miramax get the L.A. Times to send second-stringer and well-known softballer Kevin Thomas to both Chocolat and Malèna? I understand Malèna, which is kind of a throw-away movie. But Miramax is hard-core serious about an Oscar run for Chocolat, and Kevin Thomas’s imprimatur is not going to cut it around here. Turan did review All the Pretty Horse and called it "A Handsomely Mounted Film." Hah! Handsome mounting of Ms. Cruz indeed.

READER OF THE DAY: JJ writes: " I disagree with only your choice for the worst film of 2000, and the only explanation I can conceive of is that you must not have seen it yet (and fortunately so, if that’s the case). Dude, Where’s my Car? was the most abominable major studio concoction I have ever had the infinite displeasure of paying good money to sit and insult my intelligence through. I sincerely believe that staring at a blank, black screen for a feature-length stretch of time must be more pleasurable than this excuse for a movie. I aver this, because a blank screen would at least be boring and a waste of money. Dude is an annoyance, an insult to its audience, an assault on those who wish to laugh and strain themselves attempting to do so, and it simply reaches in and brutally strips its audience of its hard-earned money with a facade of a comedy. With certainty one of the top five worst movies ever spawned."

And this from The Iron Lung: " I realize this was a terribly weak year, but your championing of Erin Brockovich continues to befuddle me. Number 4, no less! I hated this movie! What’s more, the more I thought about it, the more I hated it. (I didn’t quite hate it, hate it, hate it, though.)

"Right off the bat, I’m willing to concede that Soderbergh is tremendously skilled and that Julia Roberts’s performance was strong, if not terrific. However, the whole piece reeked to me of Hollywood horses**t, to use William Goldman’s charming phrase. I don’t claim to be a toxicity expert, but I am a physician and, following viewing the film, I did some quick research, and it turns out that the scientific consensus is chromium 6 did not cause any of the illnessess attributed to it in the film. Unfortunately, scientific truths are routinely ignored in courtrooms in favor of emotional appeals from lawyers representing ‘victims.’ Knowing this, PG&E probably realized they were dealing with the kind of vultures willing to exploit an entire town and figured settling would be cheaper in the long run.

"I might even excuse a movie glorifying the worst kind of ambulance-chaser if there was even a hint of ambiguity or irony in its handling of the story. But no, Brockovich is portrayed as Saint Julia of the Smart-mouth. Saint Julia is genuinely surprised by her big cash bonus, even though everything we learn about her character indicates that she would have had the toughness and smarts to negotiate her cut of the action long beforehand. Saint Julia never gave a thought to the money! She was doing it all for the families! Gimme a break! An endless succession of far-fetched scenes where she repeatedly outsmarts and humiliates anyone in the movie who doesn’t have breasts and teeth as nice as hers doesn’t help matters.

"Is it important that a movie based on a true story have some relationship to the truth? The postmodernists would have it otherwise, but I say yes. Just because a movie is skillfully made and perpetuates any number of feel-good populist clichés doesn’t excuse such assault and battery to a) the truth and b) our intelligence. Again, I realize that I am in the minority here, but Erin Brockovich feels to me like the result you would get if you took A Civil Action but gave final script approval to the marketing department. It exemplifies everything that is phony and false about Hollywood product. As A. O. Scott stated, "It ardently embraces every cliché that is placed in its path."

"It’s not just that this movie is bad. It’s obviously bad. As I said, I am befuddled by the number of usually perceptive critics (I count yourself in that category) who were completely bamboozled by this movie. Is it just the Soderbergh name? The retro appeal of a film that doesn’t even try to hide the fact that it’s trying to push every single populist button? The hypnotic power of Ms. Robert’s breasts?"

E ME: No... Julia is not about boobs. Not for me, at least. Soderbergh did masterful, subtle work in the film. The story is simple, but solid. I love the characters, from Erin to the locals. What can I say? One man’s meat is another man’s cat. Or something like that? More of your thoughts on 2K please!