Wednesday, 2 May 2001

IS THIS ON???

Sorry for the brief disappearance of the column.  We were in the process of switching servers and got caught in the downtime.  My apologies.  Happy to be back. 

The good news is that I got to see a movie on Tuesday night that was a really happy surprise.  Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming’s The Anniversary Party is the best new film I have seen this year so far.   Of course, that isn’t quite the compliment it would have been last year, in the wake of Erin Brockovich.  But I imagine that The Anniversary Party will survive 7 more months of movies to find a high place on my Top Ten list for 2001.

The Anniversary Party is Cumming/Leigh’s Digital Video (DV) project, inspired by a creative friendship and Leigh’s experience on the Dogme 95 flick, The King Is Alive.  Seeing how flexible DV was, Leigh and Cumming created a framework for a film and wrote the script for the 19 day shoot.  And then they recruited some of Hollywood’s best to fill out their onscreen family of friends.  The group includes married couple Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, who play a married couple with two kids ... kids who are played by the Kline spawn, Owen and Greta.  Gwyneth Paltrow plays Hollywood mega-star and closet intellect Skye Davidson.  John C. Reilly gets to play a director in a very centered, strong performance.  And the movie is pretty much stolen by Jane Adams, who plays his wife, one of the great neurotic characters ever put on film.  Look for Adams to be in Supporting Actress contention at next year’s Oscars if this film finds any audience at all.

Then Leigh and Cumming offer up some unknown or little known names who really surprise.  John Benjamin Hickey plays Parker Posey’s extremely uptight business manager husband with horrifying fearlessness.  Mina Badie plays the next door neighbor who discovers her joy as the evening progresses.   Michael Panes plays uptight and playful at the same time as Leigh’s character’s best friend.  And the return of Jennifer Beals as Cumming’s character’s too-loving best friend is a revelation, giving Beals easily the best role she has had since Flashdance.

But at the center of all of this are the performances of Leigh and Cumming themselves.   Parts of their performances are familiar from other work they‘ve done.  But the duo wrote twists and turns of character that allow them to hit the in-between notes in which other movies haven’t been interested. 

As directors the duo made the great choice of bringing in John Bailey (Silverado, In The Line of Fire, etc, etc, etc) to shoot the picture.  One can still tell that it’s a DV movie, but it looks pretty great and Bailey actually takes advantages of some of digital’s limitations to create new kinds of images. 

I haven’t really told you much about the plot.  Well, it’s not really a plot kind of movie, even though there is a rather intricate web of storylines.  This is a movie about character.  Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a famous actress who is distracted by the ups and downs of her marriage to Alan Cumming’s character, a novelist who is about to become a first-time director, helming the movie based on his most recent book.  The movie takes place on the day of their 6^th anniversary.  And, obviously, they are having an anniversary party.  The movies careens around the relationships that the pair has with about 20 friends, three strangers, two housekeepers and a dog.  (Actually two dogs - but who’s counting?) 

This is an insightful, powerful film that feels as real and unreal as life.  It is a sensational debut for Leigh and Cumming, as both writers and directors.  There was only one scene in the entire movie that I felt was overshot or distracting from the storytelling, which is quite unusual for first timers.  Of course, the question of recreating this effect when the two aren’t working in a relaxed atmosphere with real-life friends is real.  But, dear God, let them try.  Almost more importantly, this film is, for me, the second best DV feature film - The Celebration is #1 - ever made and probably the most accessible.  Cumming, Leigh and Bailey do what others have started to do with digital effects ... they use the tool instead of letting the tool use them.  Bravo and brava.

Less inspiring -- well, not inspiring at all -- was Ted Demme’s Blow, a they’ll-love-it-on-cable level drug movie with a very good performance by Johnny Depp.  But, otherwise, it feels like the movie could have been cut together from a dozen other films, removing only the depth and insight.  I can see what some like about the film, but the film is really as lightweight as the polyester shirts that inhabit its frames.

It was kind of surreal watching the movie.  I could see Demme doing nice work.  But every moment seemed too familiar.  And nothing ever seemed to be about anything. 

It didn’t seem to be about the seduction of the life, like Goodfellas, since the central character, George Jung, always seemed to be losing or on the verge of real danger.  Was this guy like his father, as the film seems to say?  Why didn’t his father go down a similar route?  Why did his dad marry such a strict woman?  Is the drug life about sex?  Where’s the sex?  Is the film about the relationships that drift away on a raft of stoned confusion?  Then why does his first friend, Tuna, just disappear?  And why does George waffle in and out about who he trusts and how much he trusts them?  Is he a fool or just wishy-washy?  Is he callous? 

Here’s what I know about George Jung after seeing this film ... he loves his daughter and his father.  That’s about it.  I don’t know how the drug distribution world works.  I don’t know the internal politics of the game.  I don’t know why George’s marriage to the Penelope Cruz character is anything more than the predictable tale of a great looking woman who wanted everything and turned on her man as soon as he couldn’t give it to her.  I don’t know whether George’s relationship with the Frank Potente character really had any depth.  And I certainly have no idea why these people end up living is a low-rent Florida town when things finally go, inevitably, bad.

I can’t say that it was unpleasant to watch Blow.  But in the end, it felt like a light snack from a vending machine instead of the full meal it seems to desperately want to be.  Too bad.

READER OF THE DAY:  DK Not NY writes:  "I have been wondering these last few days what is the current state of Hollywood?  More specifically, the state of the Movie Industry.  The movie industry gave birth to so many other industries or outlets, like movie magazines, shows, movie theaters, websites, etc.  And these outlets need Hollywood as much as Hollywood needs them.  But many of these outlets seem to be dying with the current fall of the Movie Industry.  Most of the dot.com movie sites are gone, several movie theaters went into bankruptcy, Salaries and Production costs are killing studios, ShoWest has become So What (with some film festivals following suit) and the possible WGA strike will only make things worst.  So where does this leave the film?  Will the number of films produced each year drop significantly?  Will the indie film business get smothered under a mountain of production costs?  Will the Overlooked and Bermuda Film Fests be a thing of the past?  Will the Studios no longer be able to invest in movies like Traffic or American Beauty or Almost Famous?"

E ME:  Good questions ... what do the rest of you think?

Overlooked Film Fest 2000
Part I
Part II

Bermuda 2001
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

Overlooked Film Fest 2000
Preview
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V