Paul Dooley is alive… ALIVE!

I killed off the great character actor in a Thursday review of Insomnia and e-mails slithered in throughout the weekend, until the correction was finally made to the review.  A number of Dooley associates chimed in, each with good humor and generosity of spirit.  Thanks.  Dooley is one of my favorite character actors ever and I’m happy to have him back, even if he was never gone.

Perhaps the most interesting box office result of the weekend belonged to Dooley’s Insomnia.  The film pulled in an estimated $26 million, which is happy news for people who appreciate quality film.  In Chris Nolan-like coincidence, $26 million was the entire domestic take of his breakthrough film from last year, Memento. 

On the flip side, Spirit: Septuagenarian of the Centurions estimated just $23.1 million, which is awfully close to last year’s embarrassing $20.3 million opening for Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which led to a $80 million domestic total.  Thing is, I still think that DreamWorks saw it coming and will be comfortable, all things considered, with a $90 million domestic haul for its one-mule team. 

The third opener, Sony’s Jennifer Lopez with a bad haircut classic, Enough, did an estimated $17.5 million, on its way to about $55 million… which I imagine will be enough for the studio.  The opening proves two things.  1) Jennifer Lopez is still no Julia Roberts (though she is a very tall indie publicist who looks s lot like Mariska Hargitay… but that’s a whole different Ms. Lopez… sorry for the digression)  2.  Jennifer Lopez can open a movie and if she ever selects a script that isn’t written in excrement or crayons, she’s going to make someone an awful lot of money. 

About A Boy added 30 percent more screens, had a holiday Sunday and still fell about 10 percent for the 3-day, based on estimates.  It’s not horrible, but it doesn’t assert itself as the start of something big – like a $70 million domestic gross… which is a shame for lovers of quality film.

Clones vs. Spidey is still riddled with questions.  Spider-Man is beginning to drop like a more normal film, while Clones is rolling along, but may also show its vulnerability before it gets to the $400 million mark.  Thing is, no one really saw The Phantom Menace doing the business it did… but it just kept coming.  Point is, we’re all guessing.  Sony seems to be hoping that Spider-Man can hit $450 million domestic, passing Phantom Menace.  But it will have to play strong well into July for that to happen.  Time will tell on both films.

KICK THE CANNES:  It ended, not with a bang or a wimper, but with a vague sense that the festival, which has become the champion of more and more films of less and less significance to actual moviegoers, really wanted to return to the mainstream, but just couldn’t do it.  They gave a special award to Michael Moore’s still U.S. distributor-free Bowling for Columbine.  They gave Paul Thomas Anderson half a Best Director award, shared with Im Kwon-Taek, a Korean director who deserves all the attention that he will not get because of sharing the award with a famous American.  (Anderson was very, very gracious about sharing the award and my concern should not be read as a poor reflection on him.)

Roman Polanski’s Palm D’Or win for The Pianist assures that we will be reading discussions about whether the aging child-lover will be given a prison-free opportunity to return to Hollywood in this era of headline pedophilia. The film was picked up over the weekend by the newly reformed Universal Focus, which seems to want to now be called Focus (sans the name of the parent studio).  The popularity of an Adrien Brody movie about surviving the Holocaust?  Look for a possible Oscar nomination for Polanski, a hard push for Brody and less than $10 million at the box office.

Sony Classics will release A Man Without A Past, which took the Grand Jury Prize and Best Actress award.  Re-title it Movie With A Foreign Language Oscar Nomination But No Revenue Stream Until Video.

The movie that got the most press, almost all negative, was Gaspar Noe's Irreversible, a movie about a rape and its aftermath, which includes what is said to be the most graphic and realistic rape sequence ever put on film.  Ironically, I had a conversation just this Friday night about why I think Baise Moi does not deliver on its promise of being a serious movie about a rape.   I hope, however unpleasant it might be to watch, that Irreversible does deliver.  After experiencing the still tragically unreleased rape documentary Raw Deal: A Question of Consent with six different audiences, I wonder whether a dramatized on-screen rape can ever have the same impact as viewing the real thing.  But it is such an important subject, especially in a time when we have all become so myopic in the light of terrorism.  Individual human relations are still at the core of humanity, no matter how large some of life’s other events loom.  (Irreversible has opened in France and Italy to disappointing business.)

EL VEZ GOES TO CANNES:  Elvis Mitchell write one of his best pieces yet for the New York Times last week.  (If you are signed up for free access to the NYT Online, click here)  Then I saw and heard him again in the Roger Ebert slot on IFC’s coverage of the Cannes closing ceremonies.  And you know what?  He was great.  The thing about Elvis that I always forget is that he is at his very best in short bursts.  As a long distance runner, I stop caring.  But with a quip here and a brilliant insight there, he really delivers.  Which is all the more reason to wish that he had been the man after the ampersand on the Ebert show.   He belongs on short-form TV, more than at the Times or even his radio show.  He could definitely rise to icon status with the right producer and the will to let that producer do his/her job.

ALSO FOREIGN:  Looking at a story about Spidey and Clones and the overseas box office, I noticed that Thunderpants had opened a little soft.  No, this is not a pornographic sequel to the Val Kilmer movie.  It’s a movie about, as Variety put it, “a compulsively flatulent schoolboy.”   The movie has United Artists as a domestic distributor, though I haven’t found a release date yet.  And if you want a laugh, look the film up on IMDb and read the “reader’s review.”  I can only assume that it is meant as a joke.

UNDERCOVER WEBSITE:  I have been anxious to see Undercover Brother again because I laughed my big white butt off the first time.   Then I realized that I had not yet seen John Ridley’s original animated web series that served as the source of the movie.  So I went to UrbanEntertainment.com and watched all 14 episodes… and laughed my okay-it’s-not-so-bad white ass off some more.   Actually, I like the movie better.  Rarely have I seen source material as effectively used as a foundation that was then sprung past.  The other really funny thing is also reflective of the film, which takes no prisoners.  Ridley actually took on  Eddie Griffin, his eventual Undercover Brother, as the co-title-star of Malcolm & Eddie, a series that U.B. calls out as a destructive force against black culture.  In fact, the Undercover Brother animated series bites a lot on movie industry hands like a werewolf brought to life by the light of the fake studio moon.

SNAPPY:  Insomnia and its surprising performance by Katharine Isabelle inspired me to watch John Fawcett and Karen Walton’s Ginger Snaps, an (EEK!) Canadian movie that had quite a following at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival and is scheduled for one more showing on Cinemax (tonight, 8p eastern).

This film deserved better.  The movie sets up the perfect ending and then disintegrates in its final minutes, which is a shame, but no reason for this film not to fly.  Maybe Columbine made domestic distributors nervous.  But Ginger Snaps is about as close to a new millennium Heathers as anyone has gotten.  This film makes Jawbreaker, which wants to be about something but can’t keep itself from exploiting its exploiters, look like a softball. 

The story focuses on two sisters who act like twins, though they are a separated in age by a year.  (The younger sister has skipped a grade in school, so they are in the same social realm.)   Much like Bob Balaban’s brilliant near-miss, Parents, the film mixes youthful anxiety with events that seem impossible.  In Parents, there was cannibalism. In Ginger Snaps, there is a werewolf.  Karen Walton’s screenplay integrates the hyper-emotion and physiological trauma of first menstruation with the experience of werewolfism.   And as I wrote before, it is a magnificent symphony of adolescent psychosis until it loses steam in the last ten minutes or so. 

Emily Perkins plays the other sister, who is really the film’s lead, opposite Ms. Isabelle’s sexier, more dramatic sister.  Both are exceptional.  Kris Lemche is “The Cute Guy,” in this case a marijuana dealer who gets involved with the girls after he hits the originating werewolf with his van.  And Mimi Rogers appears as mom.  But as good as the entire cast is, the star here is the screenplay. 

Somehow, this film manages to cover a remarkable range of adolescent experience in its horror movie trappings.   Rejection, attraction, stupid choices, sex, violence, parental disconnection, parental love, pets, cows, drug use, mood swings, alienation, siblings, tight dresses, oral sex and death… for starters.  Teen Wolf this is not.

Director John Fawcett has returned to hour-long TV and Ms. Walton has become an hour-long TV writer.  And I guess that the idea that they are teen experts leads to TV these days… especially series that are shot in Canada.  But I think it’s a shame that these two Canadians are stuck in Canada, even if we are losing too many L.A.-based jobs to Canucks already.  They have real skills and someone needs to get their head out of their ass and to take advantage of the duo’s abilities.

If you miss this movie on cable, try the video store.  It’s one of a kind. 

DID I HEAR:  There was a promo on cable for some crappy movie and Bridgette Wilson was announced as “Brig-ee-t.”  Huh?  Don’t you have to be taken seriously as an actress before you change how everyone says your name and isn’t that move usually the mark of a career at an end?

READER OF THE DAY:  MiLyn writes:  “Went to see Insomnia which induced "nap" time.  Very tiresome plot although the acting saved what little there was as far as a storyline.

On the other hand, since the price of movies is going up up up I decided to splurge and go see 2 movies this holiday.  What a surprise in Enigma.  I was expecting nothing since the reviews have been mediocre but was pleasantly surprised with an entertaining wartime movie.  Although I was looking for the Dougray Scott that was in Ever After, I was pleasantly surprised by the sensitive performance he presented.  And who can go wrong with Kate Winslet? That girl does not know how to give a poor performance. She is simply irresistible.  

So if you want to stay awake for a surprisingly good movie, see Enigma and stay away from Insomnia.”

And Sammy “I Don’t Know Where David Got The Movie” Fibs counters:  “insomnia is one of the best movies of the year so far, if not of the decade.  pacino's performance is probably the best of his this phase of his career that began with sea of love.  i've always felt that he won an oscar for scent of a woman as a sop to make up for not winning in the 70's.  if he wins for this one, it will be well deserved.  there are a lot of good moments in the film, but one of the best comes early on when his partner tells him that he is going to settle with i/a.  pacino's reaction is very subtle, just sitting there looking at donovan and telling the waitress that he's not hungry. 

and yes, everyone else is at the top of their game.  swank's performance is indeed very subtle and williams has never been better and totally devoid of the sloppy sentiment that seeps into his work. 

what's more, i never was able to guess the ending.  (edited for spoiler)

very encouraging to see this terrific movie heading towards an estimated $26.5 million gross.  now while it's good to see an actress able to open a movie, as j lo has done once again with enough, but jeez, it seems like a lifetime movie, so what's there really to celebrate.  it reminds me of the late 70's when that other multimedia diva, barbra streisand kept putting out one mediocre movie after another that made money, but did little to enhance her reputation as an actress.”

E ME:  I wish I could say I was an Enigma fan… but I am not.  However, there seems to be good audience word-of-mouth floating around out there.  The Episode III Project is coming.  What did you see this weekend?