December 17, 2002

It’s just Monday and already the week is getting long…

In the last 96 hours, L.A., N,Y., Boston and AFI have chimed in to the award race and before the next 96 hours are up, BFCA, Golden Satellites, Golden Globes and others with have added more grist to the mill.  (If you are interested and aren’t checking MovieCityNews.com regularly, my latest Oscar leader board can always be found here and a new column today on the Oscar Race is here.)

Monday night, the premiere of Catch Me If You Can kind of closed the major premiere season.  By Friday, the final junket of 2002, for Nicholas Nickleby, will have come and gone.  And as of tomorrow, Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers becomes the next great box office story, likely to dominate the skyline for the next month or so.

I’ve started the process of developing my Top Ten, Worst Ten and Ten I Don’t Get Lists and I was shocked to find out that there were a lot more candidates for the Top Ten than for the Worst Ten.  When it comes to crap, mediocrity is the watchword.  As I go through the year’s releases, I pull the ones that I think, realistically, could be among the very best or worst of the year.  So, do I really think XXX is one of the worst movies of the year?  No.  It sucked and it was a waste, but it wasn’t really one of the walking dead. (Maybe it’s time for a new list… Favorite Box Office Stories of The Year.)  Likewise, do I really think that Blade II belongs in The Pantheon?  No. But I did like the movie and thought it was a terrific in and of itself.  Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone was, however, real Top Ten material.

But I have 43 films on my “potential” list for Best and only 26 for Worst.  I am please to report that there are 29 films that I haven’t seen that I thought might have the potential to make one of the lists.  Only three of the films (The Mothman Prophecies, Sunshine State and Death to Smoochy), however, had positive potential.  The other 26 were crap that I simply avoided. 

So, I guess that makes next week List Week.  The Ten Most Intriguing Box Office Stories, Ten Movies That You Didn’t See But Should Have,  Ten I Don’t Get, The Ten Worst Films of 2002 and The Best of 2002.  And on Monday, Dec 30, the traditional New Year’s Resolutions column…

GANGS:  The mail was interesting yesterday.  Some e-mails were emotional and others quite factually detailed.  But the primary theme was anger.  Only a handful of the e-mail was angry with me for being too tough on the movie.  On the other hand, there was a recurring theme about the standard being higher for Scorsese.

For the record, the release version of Gangs is the Scorsese film I’ve least liked since Boxcar Bertha, including The Age of Innocence, which I have always felt was terribly over-rated, yet had some of the most beautiful material in it that I have ever seen. 

And as far the Oct. 2001 cut winning last year’s Oscar, Gangs would have stood apart on so many levels.  A more serious epic than Lord of The Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, all the dramatic weight of A Beautiful Mind, the artistic credentials of In The Bedroom, the eyeful of Moulin Rouge and the legendary director status accorded to Gosford Park.  So, do I realistically think that the better version of Gangs would have taken home the Golden Boy last year?  Yeah.

READER OF THE DAY:  HE IS ETHICAL writes: “I have seen "Gangs of New York" and this is what I have to say: AHHHHHHHH!!!! I envy you for having viewed the 2001 cut, you lucky bastard, and pray for Scorsese to release the same cut on DVD in the near future. The edits were so abrupt and rough. You can tell Miramax wanted to trim every nook and cranny, using reappearing fade-outs and fade-ins. The voice-overs are unnecessary, and it all seemed so rough around the edges. I don't know if a second viewing is necessary, I'd hate having to sit through it again. How disappointing.”

DOH! DOY! writes:  “I haven't seen the film yet but I sense the validity of your argument.  One point I can't agree with is your Boxcar Bertha criticism.  In my opinion, Boxcar Bertha is cut from the same cloth as Mean Streets.  Most people are prejudiced against Corman films but some of them are really good (Jonathan Demme's films with him, in particular).  Watch it more closely.  It has the same casual precision of Mean Streets and some of the restraint that - from the sound of it -  the early version of Gangs benefits from.  Also, there's no way in hell you can argue that Cape Fear is better than either Boxcar Bertha or Gangs of New York (I haven't seen Gangs but I know it can't be worse than Cape Fear).  Cape Fear is not only Scorsese's worst film but I think it's one of the worst films, from a revered director, in the last 20 years (definitely worse than any of Coppola's low points).

MJ FROM THE VALLEY (with nose):  “I guess the real question at this point is, why is everyone drinking the

Kool-Aid, as it where??

Sorry, I had to slip a Jonestown-Guyana reference in there.

Already, so many Critics have put Gangs of New York on their Top Ten Lists, and have praised the Whazoo out of it.  Why??  Is Scorsese just that much of a Master??

I gotta admit, I went to NYU for Dramatic Writing, and I was surrounded at all times by a bunch of Scorsese wannabes and cultists (look Teacher, see how edgy am I?).  I had one Prof go so far as to say in class (about eighty or ninety times) that Scorsese was the only director he would never argue with about where he put the camera.  This is just a long way of saying that, given all this exposure, I've never been totally entranced by the guy.  He's a good Director to me, but that's it.  I find things about him interesting, but that's it.  I don't go to the Movies and pick apart everything he's done, and since he's the one who has done it automatically label it genius.  Then again, Scorsese has never made the kind of films that I wanted to make, so you can put a label right there on how much my opinion is worth.

Why does it seem that critical analysis of films is going out the window, and everyone seems to be following along in lockstep?  I remember after Costner did "The War" and "The Postman", nothing he did was good enough for the Critics.  Granted, his taste in material took a nosedive, but "For Love of the Game" was a least passable, and "Thirteen Days" (while it could have been a lot better) was earnest and worth viewing.  Same thing with the recent Star Wars films.  Episode I showed off a lot of Lucas's rust, while Episode II was a marked improvement (not perfect mind you, since I've talked to you about the cuts he should have made) but a really fun ride.  But go back and look at the reviews, most of them are still trying to rip Lucas for Episode I.

Now, the exactly reverse seems to be happening with Gangs.  Scorsese can do no wrong, and frankly, I don't know if I can trust the positive reviews anymore.

I haven't seen the movie, but the reason I trust the review you gave it was the specificity of the claims.  A lot of times, my own personal views of a film have significantly diverged from a Critics' view (and since I got an MFA in Dramatic Writing, I think I got a leg to stand on) has been where Critic has not been specific in their characterization of what the film in question is or is not.  The more details a Critic piles on, positive or negative, the more my inherent trust of that review grows.  Even if I disagree with it, at least I know a review is worthy because a Critic took the time to think out why he/she responded to it, or why he/she didn't respond to it.

That's what they always said in College when writing Term Papers...BE SPECIFIC.  (Heck, my Father, the Mathematics Professor has a phrase for it that you may remember from High School Math Classes, SHOW YOUR WORK.)

I watched Ebert and Roeper last night, and frankly, Ebert gave it a thumbs up but had some problems with GANGS, and every time he made a point Roeper just waved him off.  "Oh, that totally worked for me..." without really getting into the whys and wherefores (then again, he may have not had time...it is Television.

I'm just saying that I'm going to be cautious now with GANGS.  It was a film that I was going to check out just because everyone else was.  Now?  I think I'll get a bit more of the lay of the land before taking that first sip.”

NOT JULES DESTROOPER writes: “I happened to watch GONY two weeks ago in Paris. As a French entertainment journalist, I couldn't agree more with your review. Being a true Scorsese lover, it was a real pain to see a film that could have been his benchmark, his ultimate masterpiece, his Birth of a Nation, or at least his Once Upon a Time in America. We all know that Scorsese dreamt of this film for almost 30 years, and all we get is a shaky movie, filled with good scenes and glimpses of greatness, but ultimately devoid of emotion and power. From the opening scene, where the savagery of the battle is completely blasted by a wrong editing and a wrong music (and God knows I love Peter Gabriel...), I knew there was something bad going on... A missed occasion, that's what it is.

For the anecdote, I was sitting 3 rows behind Brian De Palma, who came to see his friend Marty's last effort. How ironic it is to notice that in 2002, these two directors, both geniuses of moviemaking, delivered two movies that could have been their best, but are near train-wrecks (a complete train-wreck in the case of Femme Fatale, if you ask me). Let's hope these two will come back at the top of their game the next time, we need great Scorsese and great De Palma films more than ever.”

THE HESSIAN goes off on another film:  “I am so sick of reading endless, confident diatribes about where Steven Spielberg's AI "should" have ended.  I can barely believe that the opinion that the movie should have ended with the robot child at the bottom of the sea, waiting for the blue fairy, still seems to be considered novel and informed by anyone, much less some of the otherwise-sharp viewers and film writers out there.  It seems to me that proclaiming a preference for "that" ending (in quotes simply because it was not, and never was, the ending of the film; it's not an alternate ending in any way, it's just a point where lots of people wish the movie had stopped) is simply a trendy, obvious way of saying "hey, I know how Kubrick would've made the movie, and I know what's right." Or, worse, "I know how I would've made the movie, and I know what's right."  Complete and utter crap. 

You can take issue with the ending of AI all you want-- it's anyone's right as a film viewer, critic, whatever-- but to say that the solution is simply to end the movie with David sitting under the water, waiting for the blue fairy forever is patently ridiculous.  Does anyone realize how clichéd *that* ending is?  To pine for the simple, obvious "dark" choice, rather than something ambiguous and off-putting, is simple-minded, even if it's in the service of a more superficially depressing ending.  I think the movie is plentifully sad and dark enough, even with its "happy" ending.  

Did it ever occur to anyone that Spielberg was doing this on purpose?  If he had "left" the movie with David underwater, I doubt more people would've appreciated the movie; only in retrospect do snobbier viewers implicitly congratulate themselves about how much they would have appreciated and enjoyed an ending which, if you really think about it, is a total copout.  Would they really prefer two hours of film being capped by "and so he waited, and nothing happened"?  For a fortune cookie ending, albeit an uncommonly depressing one?

I had some problems with the final section of AI, but I would never say that those problems could be solved by chopping it off entirely; similarly, Minority Report ending with Cruise being put in prison, while less of a potential copout than David waiting underwater, is an ending that seems impressive and preferable only to self-conscious viewers wishing they had something "darker" to latch onto.  And, again, I didn't love the way Minority Report ended.   But for so many viewers and readers to suggest that they would've had the vision and clarity to produce a cookie-cutter "dark" ending for either film is ridiculous. 

I think some viewers felt challenged by the ending of AI, and took that as a personal affront-- it's those average-American types that are supposed to feel challenged by this movie, not me!   I think it's best to critique the movie that was made (and on those terms, I accept criticism of AI, though I tend not to agree with it in the least), not the movie you wish they made.”

Finally, COVERED IN CHEESE writes: “So, two critics awards have come and gone and Adaptation has not even gotten runner-up for any category besides Screenplay and Supporting Actor. I realize the NBR borders on farce the way it's bought off year after year, but I don't understand how the LA Critics almost completely overlooked this movie? Is there a backlash already? Are critics failing to look past the cleverness of this film to its heart? When I first saw it months ago at a preview screening I expected that it would be almost unanimously embraced as the top film of the year ala GoodFellas, or LA Confidential in their respective years. No film has shot higher this year let alone actually hit its target. What's going on?”

DAVID RESPONDS:  This is why all of the obsession on awards is problematic.  There have been four major awards making announcements so far (NBR/LAFCA/NYFCC/BFCA).  NBR spreads their nods like jam (or certain actresses, if you prefer crude analogies).  BFCA has 10 nominees for best picture.  And between LA & NY, there are only three slots.  Far From Heaven and About Schmidt are both worthy films, needing critics support to move them into legitimate Oscar contention.  Adaptation has major stars, a lock for nominations for Charlie Kaufman and Chris Cooper and Sony’s Valerie Van Galder (and the rest of the team) working for this movie like studio publicists rarely work for any movie.  (There is always the appearance of hard work on the massive movies like Spider-Man… and it is a lot of work… but the press snaps everything up in those cases.  Adaptation is like Dorothy’s house dropping down and crushing The Wicked Witch of Movie Mediocrity out of the blue.  The munchkins are an easy sell, but getting those flying monkeys to buy tickets is a bitch!) 

But my point is, do not despair.  Perspective is everything.  BFCA nominated Adaptation.  If the Golden Globes follow suit om Thursday, Adaptation is right in the game.

EME.  You do know how.