Alright, I didn’t see every single movie released this past year, but having seen over a hundred of them should qualify me to at least narrow the list down to these fifteen.
I do have some kind of a life, so I was not able to see all the big year end releases. “Traffic” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” are expected to be in the running for Academy Awards, but I’ll have to give you my reviews on them in January. I think that most mainstream moviegoers will likely find something worthwhile in my ten favorites, and should avoid, at all costs, the five worst.
Here now are my 10 best:
10. The Tao of Steve - yes, an arthouse pick to start, but this one which deals with one guy’s rules for picking up women is full of many everyday realities for single people. For those who don’t know, “Steve” refers to Steve McQueen, Steve McGarrett and Steve Austin, coll guys men should emulate.
9. Gladiator - definitely a guy’s “testosterone-starter” movie. Russell Crowe could be the next action picture star, if he wants to be. Better ask Meg Ryan. This was the real action picture of the summer, along with “X-Men.”
8. Erin Brockovitch - great cast, great writing, even if they pushed the truth a bit over that legal case. Makes you think twice when you run that bath water.
7. Return To Me - here’s the girls movie of the year I bet probably few of you saw. You can see where this movie is going the whole way through, but it doesn’t matter. Not to mention the whole heart transplant thing is hard to believe to begin with. You cry, and you cry, because it’s so sweet, and yikes, I’m starting to sound like one of those bearded effeminite critics.
6. Scary Movie - this was the movie with the most laughs for me this year. Gross, juvenile, so what? I miss the old “Airplane” humor and this is probably as close as we’re going to get these days. Of course, if you didn’t see “Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Halloween, etc.,” you might be lost here.
5. Almost Famous - which almost nobody saw despite plenty of critics recommending it. The story of a high school kid going on assignment for Rolling Stone magazine and getting members of an up-and-coming rock group to open up to him is one of the most original story ideas of the year and was very watchable. So why didn’t anybody watch? I’m guessing nobody understood much of what it was about except the 1970’s, and most people would like to forget the 70’s.
4. Billy Elliott - this one was mostly passed up too, even though it went in wider release. It could be the British thing. It does take a while to be able to understand everybody here. But the story of the young boy who wants to be a ballet dancer and is growing up in a blue collar tough guy house still had a lot going for it.
3. Meet The Parents - I may have laughed the most frequently at “Scary Movie,” but I enjoyed the humor in this movie the most this year. The set-ups were a hoot with Ben Stiller playing the part of the daughters boyfriend and getting himself into bind after bind seeming just believable enough to make it all even funnier.
2. Nurse Betty - the story of a woman who suffers a trauma and then is convinced she’s one of the former characters on a TV soap opera has to be seen to be fully understood. Check out the scene where she first meets up with the soap opera stars and writers. It was the single most entertaining segment I saw this year. Add in Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock as hitmen after Nurse Betty, and it can’t get much better than this.
1. You Can Count On Me - yeah, so I picked an arthouse movie probably none of you has heard of as my favorite. What can I say? Laura Linney plays a small town single mom with a troubled brother coming to visit. Who, if anybody, really has their act together is the question. The poor son caught in the middle of this (played by McCauley Culkins’ younger brother) is finally portrayed just like a real kid. No brilliant observations, no precocious asides, just a regular kid. This felt a lot like I was really looking in on these peoples lives, sort of like a documentary, and that means it got through to me.
Now, here are the stinkers of 2000:
5. Scream 3 and Little Nicky - a tie for the this spot as I decided these two were bigger budget flops of which I enjoyed earlier versions(Screams 1 and 2, and Adam Sandler in just about any of his previous stuff). What happened? Not funny, not believable , not worth your money.
4. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 - another bad sequel with plenty of bad acting. Let a good idea die with one movie for a change!!
3. Final Destination - a few kids survive a horrible plane crash and then get taken out one-by-one, because that was their “destiny.” Why not save me some time and just kill them all in that opening sequence? This is another movie with bad high school acting .
2. Isn’t She Great? - well, no. She being Bette Midler, playing the author Jacqueline Susann. Embarrassingly unfunny. I can’t stand Midler, but what a waste of Nathan Lane and David Hyde-Pierce (what’s with the 2 last names for a guy anyway?). Next time Bette calls you guys, don’t answer. Her movie making days are over.
1. The In Crowd - I actually gave it a “0.” A nada, a nothing, yes, the null set. It played like one of those really bad daytime soap operas but, and this is hard to believe, with worse acting! All I can tell you is don’t go near it. Everyone and everything in this movie should be burned and forgotten. There, now what movie? The “In Crowd?” Never heard of it.
Sunday, December 24th, 2000
You’d have to be really unaware to not know what this movie is about. The trailers have been playing everywhere, and unfortunately, they probably tell you too much of what happens. So I’ll keep that part of the review brief..
Tom Hanks plays a guy named Chuck Noland, Federal Express employee, seemingly happy with his job and with his girlfriend, Kelly, played by Helen Hunt. He has a “devoted to his job, race against the clock life,” and that includes boarding a late night flight to help deliver some very important packages. I figure they must be important because there’s five guys on the plane and Chuck gets called away from Christmas dinner to do it. I say that because later on, Chuck opens some of them and it beats me what was so important here.
Well, as you probably know, the plane crashes and Chuck gets washed up on some remote Pacific island. In this year of the “Survival” TV show craze, we now get a movie almost devoted to the idea. What made me a bit nervous is that Hanks actually resembles that Richard Hatch guy and as his clothes start coming off in the movie, well, that’s something most of you would rather not see.
Most of the movie is spent on Chuck’s trying to survive. Too much of it? Not for me. There’s a certain quiet and logic to the way Chuck goes about his business and I was focused on it. The hunt for food and water, the quest for fire, and ultimately, the goal of escape, all come to Chuck in a way that just seems right. While watching this movie I got to thinking maybe a guy like Robin Williams might have been a better choice to play Chuck because he could have adlibbed his way through some of the craziness that solitude brings in a way that would have brought more laughs, but let’s face it, the whole thing is not a particularly funny matter. Hanks gives a few laughs, but as he usually does, he plays the part of the everyday guy caught up in something pretty scary quite well.
Chuck not only logically finds the answers to all his problems, he also logically starts to go over the edge from loneliness, rescued only by the picture of Kelly he keeps in view, and the use of a volleyball he names “Wilson”. “Wilson” becomes his human companion, and allows Chuck to finally speak out loud.
Many are saying this movie, which was supposed to be about a frenzied driven-by-the-clock guy being “cast away” from that life towards simple survival, and then finding what’s really important in life, is instead, only about that simple survival. Well, I guess they’re right and that’s fine by me. Because as you sit there, watching this pretty simple quiet movie, you realize that’s just fine. No explosions, no shootings, no yelling, the only loud thing in this movie is a few raging storms that threaten to blow Chuck away. That’s a nice change, and, in the end, you are kind of “cast away” yourself from this nutty Christmas rush for a couple of hours.
Even the ending of “Cast Away” doesn’t cheat with any Hollywood hoopla. Yes, you know by now Chuck reaches civilization again, and does everything have a happy ending? Yes, and no. And maybe. That’s the best part of “Cast Away.” It doesn’t fit so neatly into summing up in a few sentences. I give it an “8.0″ on the scale.
Sunday, December 17th, 2000
This looked like a cinch winner to me when I saw the trailers. A guy who can hear womens’ thoughts. And not just any guy. But a “man’s man”, a guy who thinks he’s a ladies man . Good looking but way too confident. Most women act amused by him, but actually think he’s a buffoon. He’s got the bad opening bar lines and not a clue he’s making a fool of himself. I saw it all in those previews and knew women would show up in droves. And, boy, was I right. There was a party of nine women sitting in front of me, they’d obviously talked about the movie and were excited to have a day out together to see it. Not since “The First Wives Club” have I seen such a turnout of 30 and 40-year old something women.
Well, did they waste their money? No, not at all. It’s not the must see “girls” movie of the year, but “What Women Want” is not all bad .
Mel Gibson plays Nick Marshall, the “man’s man”. He’s an advertising agency executive who’s living the bachelor life, except that he’s divorced and has to care for his 15 year old daughter for a couple of weeks while Mom’s off on her honeymoon with her new husband. Nick’s expecting a big promotion at work, but instead the job goes to Darcy Maguire, played by Helen Hunt. It’s shortly after this that Nick acquires the ability to read womens’ minds.
He goes from being overwhelmed to using his new powers to undermine his new boss, Darcy. But he also falls in love with her, complicating their lives. You see, by being able to read womens’ thoughts, Nick becomes much more empathetic, and rather than just want to get them in bed, he actually wants to make them happier, er, more fulfilled. This fable also extends to his daughter, who’s dating an 18 year old kid and on the verge of losing her virginity, and to an employee of the ad agency, a bookish looking quiet woman who may be on the verge of suicide.
So Nick has a lot to do and the movie covers most of it pretty well. I would have ditched the suicidal woman story, that was sentimental overkill. But I give the movie plenty of credit for not going overboard and trying to squeeze a joke out of every situation or a tear out of every emotional moment. The change in Nick appears immediate, but it isn’t, and at times, I couldn’t tell whether he was falling in love with Darcy or still undermining her .
What didn’t work so well were some scenes that seemed more like skit comedy, such as one with Bette Midler as a therapist who Nick visits to try and get a handle on his problem. Not funny and badly acted, it’s clear why Midlers’ TV show is failing too. So while the laughs weren’t tremendous, there were a few good ones. I did enjoy what is an everyday reality, and that is that people rarely say what they’re really thinking, particularly in the workplace. When Nick is able to hear what these women really think of him, it seemed very real, very well-written. And women will love the scenes where Nick is trying on ladies beauty care products. What worked best though was, I amost hate to say it, the sentimental claptrap. Nick is becoming a new man with a new perspective, with a new respect for the women in his life. And most women think men need a dose of that. Of course, Nick is not all men, after all, he was raised by a single Mom, a Las Vegas showgirl. “What Women Want” will be just that, a movie that many women want. I give it a “7.0″ on the scale. (See “How I Review Movies” for more on that )
Friday, December 8th, 2000
Ah, yes, the movie many are talking about because Meg Ryan supposedly fell in love with costar Russell Crowe while filming it, thereby breaking up her supposedly happy marriage to Dennis Quaid. Hey, how many hit movies has Quaid made recently? What are we talking about, “The Parent Trap?” This Crowe guy, star of “Gladiator,” one of the biggest box office hits this year, and currently the hottest selling video release, is the real deal. He’s kind of harsh looking though, isn’t he?
Anyway, the other odd thing is that the plot of this movie is sort of similar to the real life drama Meg and Russell are playing out. Meg plays a dutiful corporate wife, currently stuck in a South American country along with her husband, played by David Morse. He’s an engineer working on a dam project for an oil company. The oil company is only building the dam so they can actually build a pipeline and start pumping out some oil. Well, it seems some radicals, not happy with this fictitious South American government pipeline plan, take Megs’ poor husband hostage. Crowe, playing a “kidnap and ransom” expert, arrives on the scene to free the husband, and, of course, they fall for each other. So in the real life irony, meg=meg, crowe=crowe, and morse=quaid. Get it?
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, how was the movie? Pretty par for the course, I’m afraid. I was happy that they properly introduce us to Meg and her husband and we quickly see they love each other, but definitely have some baggage from all the years they spent travelling the globe for his job. Great early scenes with real domestic drama. Hey, nobody’s better than Meg Ryan for those “on the verge of tears” scenes. Always ready with the slightly wet face and the sniff-sniffs.
And Crowe makes a good entrance too. We get a pretty good idea as to what his job is, and he does have a presence. Tough, man of few words, to the point. But he can fall in love too. They try to show he’s a family man too, but that misses the mark with only a brief look at his 13 year old son, and little about his wife.
We also get a good look at the hostage negotiation process, the dos and donts the ups and downs. But here’s the problem with “Proof Of Life” - at 2 hours and 10 minutes, I began to get a bit antsy. There are many moments when it seems like somethings going to happen, but it doesn’t. And I mean either involving the hostage situation, that is, some real good violence, or involving the romance situation between Meg and Russell. I credit the moviemakers with taking their time and giving both of these situations plenty of time to grow, but I couldn’t help looking at the old watch after a while.
They have David Carouso in here as another kidnap and ransom expert trying to free another hostage and they give us peeks at the government versus radicals situation for some backround, plus there’s plenty of scenes of husband morse being moved around the mountains, but in the end, all that seems like padding. Give me more explosions, more violence, more sex! All right, just kidding, but this movie needed a shot in the arm somehow. I give “Proof Of Life” a 7.0 on the 1 to 10 scale. And here’s an amusing sidenote - the movie is set, as i mentioned, in a fictitious South American country called Tecala. Yes, you guessed it - wouldn’t want to offend any real South American country with a story of kidnappers, corrupt governments and nasty violent radicals who have no political motives anymore, and are just out to make money off the kidnappings. What if they protest or sue or something?
