April 25, 2003

Confidence is a piece of shit.

Sorry to be so graphic.  But I don’t want to get the e-mail from anyone suggesting that I should have warned them more clearly. 

Yes, this is the movie that features the performance that is “like watching paint think.”  You have Dustin Hoffman chewing scenery and trying to convince us that ambiguity is a good thing in a villain.  (I prefer sharp dialogue and clean direction.)  There’s Andy Garcia playing fat, unshaven and uninteresting.  Rachel Weisz is wasted, as is Paul Giamatti, playing a role he could have played in his sleep.  Robert Forster and Donal Logue… also wasted.  Luis Guzman plays a role that pushes the envelope… in Anger Management. 

But the main trouble is the script, the almost satirical direction from a director who is at his best when he is the most simple, and a central performance by a man who has the onscreen personality of a large block of tofu. 

Wait.   That’s an insult to tofu, since tofu absorbs the flavor of what surrounds it. 

I haven’t seen a worse film that’s been slated for distribution this year.  There seem to be some people who like it.  To me, the abject failure of this movie is so clear that I can only insult anyone who would defend it.  So I will stop now.  DON’T find out for yourself.

Ironically, Miramax is releasing the worst Al Pacino performance ever, in People I Know, on the same weekend as this horrible film with a good Dustin Hoffman performance.  Meanwhile, MGM drops the bomb that is It Runs In The Family, with its great star of a bygone era, Kirk Douglas. 

The only really significant film to open wide this weekend is The Real Cancun.  Why is a feature shot TV-style as an R-rated pseudo-doc important?  Well, I think the popular take is a bit over the edge.  Fictional cinema is not going away any more than fictional television is.  There is nothing revolutionary about reality television.  And time has proven that most formulas wear out quickly on TV.  Big Brother never lived up to expectations.  Survivor is getting a little desperate.  Monica Lewinsky’s ratings sucked.  (HA HA HA!!!) 

The Real Cancun targets a very specific movie market that is not the same as any other major studio release this summer.  It is a movie that is a big success if it grosses $25 million total.  Jackass: The Movie did $64 million last year and was one of Paramount’s most profitable titles, maybe its most profitable.  Divine Secrets Of The Ya Ya Sisterhood did $70 million and is considered by most to be a flop. 

The word “revolutionary” is rarely appropriate in the film business.  My Big Fat Greek Wedding was not revolutionary.  Jackass: The Movie was not revolutionary.  And The Real Cancun is not revolutionary.  No doubt, these films will all draw more attention to the under-$10 million productions that are out there. 

What The Real Cancun offers is not revolution but an alternative.  Amazingly, I agree with Harry Knowles in one way… it should have and could have been harder edged.  There could have been more nudity and sex.  I have always said that if you are doing raunch, go all the way.  But what The Real Cancun delivers is a handful of strong storylines that get you through the movie with a smile.  It is, despite the ads, more than T&A.  It ain’t genius.  It is fun and relatively smart.  But don’t worry.  Even if the freaky happens and the movie does over $30 million, screenwriters and directors and actors aren’t going anywhere.

I find it fascinating that Identity is tracking in the low teens.  I can’t imagine how people are connecting with the film.  The ads are good looking, but there is no real box office name in the movie and the trailer is not completely clear about what the movie really is… or maybe it gives away too much.  Either way, I think this movie is a word-of-mouth movie if it is good.  I haven’t seen the picture, but as I always point out, opening weekend is about nothing but marketing, so…

WEEKEND GUESSTIMATES

1. Anger Management – 3656 venues - off 45 percent - $13.8 million
2. The Real Cancun - 2261 venues – new - $10.3 million
3. Holes – 2349 venues - off 38 percent - $10.1 million
4. Identity - 2733 venues – new - $9.7 million
5. Malibu's Most Wanted – 2503 venues - off 43 percent – $7.2 million
6. Confidence – 1871 venues – new - $4.4 million
7. Bulletproof Monk – 2955 venues - off 55 percent – $3.9 million
8. What a Girl Wants – 2450 venues - off 36 percent - $2.9 million
9. It Runs in the Family - 1207 venues – new - $2.2 million
10. Bringing Down the House – 1668 venues  - off 35 percent - $2.1 million
11. Phone Booth – 2113 venues - off 33 percent - $1.9 million

15 WEEKS OF SUMMER:  Summer has started at MovieCityNews.com.  My new weekly column went up yesterday afternoon and I need all the feedback I can get so I can change the charts to be as accurate as possible.  (They’ll be perfect on July 30.)  Take a look.

READER OF THE DAY:  This is one of the best ROTD letters I’ve seen in a while… WELLYWOOD BRRRRRR writes:  “Many have rightly noted that if movies are important to you there is only one type of relationship you can have with film criticism - love-hate.  Ones delight at discovering that a personally loved film received well reasoned praise from one critic turns to infuriation when it is dismissed or minimized by another.  The latter is softened when the critic entertains with the high quality of their writing - e.g. Kael - or admits that the film is of a genre that he/she does not favour irrespective of its execution.

However, there are three inter-related things that once I discern them in a review immediately turns me off it.

First, film criticism as English undergraduate paper.  This school of criticism is more likely to be characterized among "high-brow" publications - e.g. Film Comment, major US city dailies such as NYT and LAT.  One feels like what is being read is a short-story or book review.  The focus is primarily on the script - its structure, dialogue, plot etc. and,

most critically, its intellectual concerns.  The secondary focus is on the acting.  The director is seen as the auteur - irrespective of whether or not he wrote the screenplay.  This framework invariably means that only one type of film has any chance of receiving a favourable response - movies that are chamber-pieces, typically dialogue heavy and that give actors a great opportunity to deliver a more nuanced and complex performance. 

Despite the auteur focus the actual art of direction is given scant attention and directorial skill is mainly implied through the quality of script and performance alone.  Other critical aspects of film as art - cinematography, editing, art direction etc. - are less emphasized.  Most of us love or admire such films at their best.  But, they are only one broad film genre. As many films do not align well to this framework the resultant reviews are invariably negative and intellectually contemptuous.  This leads into the second irritation.

Film criticism as narcissistic projective-test.  I loath reading a review that tells me more about the critic than what they are critiquing.  This is particularly tedious when the critic tends to be negative about the majority of films only to treat a rare favoured one with sublime hyperbole.  But this is the way with narcissism.  In order to believe oneself to be special it is necessary to hold strong opinions about the world, in particular those that leave one feeling superior relative to the more commonplace.  Such film critics are of little or no interest to me, why I'm reading the review - prior to seeing a film - is to make a judgment about it as a candidate for my attention.  I need enough of a description across the different aspects of film - irrespective of the critic's appraisal - to make my own call. Knowing too much about the critic's taste acts as a barrier.  Of course, critics cannot separate themselves from their function.  However, there is a continuum across which individuals are more or less explicitly presenting themselves.  As noted earlier, I have no problem with critics who declare their bias, particularly in such a way that implicitly acknowledges everyone's inability to ultimately judge art.

Third, film criticism as cinematic ignorance.  There seem to be a great number of "lazy" critics - those who appear to put little time into learning about the art of film within its more technical dimensions - e.g. editing. These crucial dimensions of film most distinguish it as an art form.  I don't expect art critics to be artists of the calibre of those whose work they critique but is it unreasonable to expect some ability to discern and judge a film's more technical achievements/failings?  I know this is asking a great deal as the technical dimensions work more implicitly for a viewer and can take time and repeated viewings to fully analyze.  However, the absence of analysis at this level leaves me thinking that many critics know little more about film as a technical art form than the most technically naive general viewer.  By way of example, how many critics showed a depth of appreciation, and ability to substantiate it, for the technical achievements of the Two Towers?  As a kiwi I'm probably biased towards Peter Jackson's film but it nevertheless serves as a striking recent example of "lazy" criticism.

Anyhow, this is one man's opinion.”

E ME: What’s your opinion?