A Summer Movie Recap

STAR WARS 1

DK: The original Star Wars was a groundbreaking movie. Special effects aside, never before had the world seen what was essentially a kid's story told with such earnestness and excitement on the big screen. For better or worse, Lucas revolutionized the film industry, making the telling of myths and fables not only acceptable, but also extremely lucrative. But if Hollywood storytelling is going to be revolutionized again today, Lucas is not the one to do it. And The Phantom Menace was certainly not the movie to do it. It's not that it is a bad movie. For all the critics' gripes, I found it surprisingly entertaining. But the original Star Wars films had something that The Phantom Menace lacks: a certain energy and dedication that's rarely seen in big-budget movies these days. There was no way George Lucas could have known in the late '70s that his space epic would break all box office records to date. He wasn't planning on becoming a millionaire. He was simply trying to tell a story the likes of which no one had ever dreamed of putting on film. But The Phantom Menace has nothing new to show us. Indeed, most of it consists of filling in the details on what was already implied in the first three movies. There's no passion behind The Phantom Menace, or if there is, it isn't for storytelling. I imagine the passion is for something far more material than that.

SC: I used to be a Star Wars fan. That is, until I realized what the term "Star Wars fan" entails. One day while surfing the net, I found the enchanting site www.jarjarmustdie.com. Faced with pictures of Jar-Jar being bludgeoned, hacked, served on a silver platter, etc., I realized that some "Star Wars fans" have too much time on their hands. Now I'm just a "Star Wars observer." Less chance of spiraling into delirium, I would hope. I was actually happy The Phantom Menace wasn't the religious event it was supposed to be. After all, the marketing juggernaut clouded the fact that it was a movie--a series of shots captured on film that can be watched over and over again (fans murdering each other over opening night tickets realized soon enough that there were other showings--and nothing changed from one showing to the next!) The problem, of course, is that George Lucas lost his way a bit after a double-decade absence from the director's chair. He slowed down the plot with unnecessary detail (why, for goodness' sakes, did we need an introduction sequence to the first prequel that's supposed to start everything off?), forgot to make Darth Maul important, and tried too hard to make it a movie that could appeal to kiddies and adults alike (the best crossover hits, we've come to learn, are accidents). But most egregious was his wasting of an all-star cast--Ewan, Liam and Natalie tried to act their way out of Lucas' steel box, but they never had a chance. Star Wars, sadly enough, is no longer the hallmark of spontaneous creativity.

AUSTIN POWERS 2

DK: It would be a sad state of affairs if Austin Powers were remembered as one of the great cultural icons of this decade. That isn't meant to be a comment on Austin Powers himself. Quite the contrary, it is my belief that in his good-natured, if somewhat inept, international man of mystery, Mike Myers has found one of the greatest and most sustainable comic characters in memory. Myers as Austin Powers has that rare ability to make us laugh before he even says a word, and it is a laughter that comes without a hint of cynicism or meanness. Indeed, it is Powers' unending cheerfulness and excessive eagerness to please that makes him so appealing. In Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Myers comes of age as both Powers and his nemesis, Dr. Evil. Much of the first movie was spent creating Powers and Evil as characters, but in this sequel Myers is free to let his creations run loose. And in spite of the movies unnecessary bent towards the scatological, the result is fun. The sad part is that it would be unimaginable that this fun be set in the present day. Austin Powers is supposed to be a creature from another decade (a fantasy decade, really), and his good-humored revelry is meant to be in sharp contrast to our more cynical modern selves. We love him and love to watch him, not because we can identify with him, but because he reminds us so little of ourselves.

SC: I don't think the creative team behind the Austin Powers sequel had a script. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing--it just means that the movie needs to be awfully funny to counteract the lack of structure, story, meaning, logic, etc. And somehow, The Spy Who Shagged Me manages to be charming--even though making Elizabeth Hurley a fembot was idiotic, even though Heather Graham should have never opened her mouth, and even though the movie should have been called Dr. Evil 2: Austin Powers Has a Cameo. Myers has a knack for improvisation--and for taking a joke to its breaking point ("www.sh.com," "zip it," etc.). But some gags flopped miserably--Fat Bastard, most notably, was not only tired, but just flat-out gross. There's the feeling--so prevalent among sequels--that the Austin Powers concept has been milked to the bone. Parodies have a short shelf-life--they only last until new material arrives. And, of course, the "spy" genre isn't very trendy anymore. If the makers decide to spawn more sequels, I have no doubt that Austin Powers will stray further and further from the original concept and more towards the sight and shock gags inundating movie theaters (introducing Fat Bastard as exhibit A). Unless they can reinvent Austin or give him a sidekick with the same satiric verve, New Line might just have to launch a Dr. Evil franchise. After all, he's not only getting all the good lines, but he's getting all the screen time.

NOTTING HILL

DK: I've been told that some women find a certain degree of delicacy highly attractive in a man. But in Hugh Grant this delicacy is taken to an almost absurd level, and it quickly becomes a defining motif of almost all of his films. Notting Hill, Grant's first feature of the summer, is no exception. As bookstore owner William Thacker, Grant revels in his characters inability to get anything in order, whether it's his business, his love life or his housing situation. Enter Julia Roberts as the hopelessly flaky and confused American superstar Anna Scott, and you have a match made in heaven. Watching these two lost souls come together, though, is something like an exercise in emotional sadism. Without any sense of irony, they play at love like two young teenagers, not like adults made wise by past love affairs. And like teenagers, they fall away from each other and come back together with equal parts earnestness and bewilderment. Why director Roger Mitchell thought this age-inappropriate emotional roller coaster would be entertaining, I'll never know. It's not love that William Thacker and Anna Scott need. It's some semblance of emotional maturity, or at least organizational skills.

SC: Remember when they used to make good romantic comedies? When Harry Met Sally, Pretty Woman, Tootsie, etc. Now we get abominable drivel like You've Got Mail and Picture Perfect. Thank goodness for Julia Roberts. When she finds the right role, she can wrap even the most bitter of cynics around her finger. But in general, Julia gets offered good roles, so the results should be consistent, right? The problem, of course, is that Julia Roberts is nothing without her hair (her hair speaks for her--pay attention, this is subtle). Why did Mary Reilly, Michael Collins, I Love Trouble, etc. etc. flop? Because she couldn't model different hairstyles. Notting Hill avoids such a deadly trap. Not only does she get to smile (and sometimes even to be funny!), she has a different hairstyle in every scene. A more profound observation is the interesting choice to let the actors keep their "public" personas--Julia, of course, is the most famous actress in the world and Hugh Grant the bumbling idiot we've come to love. The twist, of course, is that both actors add new dimensions to their characters, making the story just unpredictable enough to trap its audience. It's a reverse-Cinderella story that is surprisingly timely--if sadly unrealistic. But like the best fairy tales, it gets us rooting for the foppish hero. And a couple of the scenes ("whoopsiedasie") are Julia classics. And even I--a relentless cynic--fell for that amazing ending. Without words, without Celine Dion yammering in the background, without heavy-handed fade-outs, we get a magically ironic ending to the fairy tale.

BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

DK: I have a sneaking suspicion that the hype around The Blair Witch Project this summer was as much generated by guilt as by respect for the picture. Perhaps this was inevitable for a summer in which we all suddenly realized we were making George Lucas even wealthier by going to see yet another Star Wars movie. Had The Blair Witch Project not actually existed, it, or something very much like it (eight-millimeter footage and all), would probably have been created by our collective unconscious. That's not to say The Blair Witch Project is a bad movie. In terms of premise alone, it's probably one of the most original features of the decade. But an Alfred Hitchcock film this is not. Its tireless commitment to the most bleak form of realism, while admirable in this age of special effects-laden horror films, gives it the emotional depth of an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. The fear of the movie's characters is raw and brutal, but the fear of the audience members is dulled by the absence of any emotional involvement in the film. Perhaps if writers/directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez had instructed their dazed and confused trio to put down the cameras for a moment and just talk, we would have had some emotional stake in the film. As the movie stands, though, its forte is style and not substance. Unfortunately, true horror is born of more than just jerky camera work.

SC: To quote Chris Rock, "Where did all the money go?" For $60,000, Blair Witch still seems like a ripoff. It's a gimmick of low quality wrapped in marvelous packaging. Without a doubt, the best production you'll see all year is the marketing magic of Artisan Entertainment, the small studio that suddenly isn't so small anymore. (I also think that Dramamine could have made a fortune by handing out samples at movie theatres to solve the rampant nausea.) But the movie itself was trifling --even though that wickedly clever little ending almost redeems the whole exercise (I like the word "exercise" to describe Blair Witch; it gives it that whole unpolished film-school-final-project kind of feel). The most important lesson of Blair Witch, of course, is not that hundreds of millions can be made by making unnecessary noises in the woods and filming them with a low-tech camera, but rather that audiences are looking for a genuine scare. (And no, The Haunting didn't quite deliver the goods.) But true horror comes from a blend of realistic awareness and the fantastic. And Blair Witch was so bogged down in the nuts and bolts of being realistic that it forgot to scare us in the process. Let's pray that for their next movie, the filmmakers spend their money wisely.

RUNAWAY BRIDE

DK: Genre, some say, is nothing but a set of expectations, and the great works are those which transcend those expectations. Runaway Bride, unfortunately, is a genre piece that does its transcending in all the wrong places. It begins, intriguingly enough, as a modern day fairy tale. In any good fairy tale, evil is summarized and allegorized by a single villain, but Runaway Bride splits evil in two and then sets its male and female halves at one another's throats. Julia Roberts as Maggie Carpenter is everything a man can fear in a woman: pretty and sweet but a heartbreaker of the first order. Richard Gere plays her male alter ego the cynical, emotionally distant, and self-assured journalist Ike Graham. Had director Gary Marshall simply let these two archetypes battle it out on the farm fields of Maryland, all might have been well. But inevitably, Maggie and Ike leave their fairy tale roots behind and fall in love, at which point any energy the movie had to begin with is lost. There is a painful lack of chemistry between Roberts and Gere as lovers, though they spar well as antagonists. They look bored with one another. And why shouldn't they be? They know how the movie is going to end. We all do. Perhaps that vaguely sorry look in their eyes is a longing for the movie that could have been.

SC: Here's a Hollywood rule of thumb--when you have more than two screenwriters, the movie will either be a) incoherent b) choppy or c) spotty. Sometimes, in particularly lame cases, the movie will be incoherent, choppy and spotty. Like Runaway Bride. Not only wasn't it as good as Pretty Woman, it rivaled The Haunting for the I-want-my-money-back award of the summer. Even five screenwriters couldn't come up with a decent joke--the only good gag was so contrived that a FedEx truck had to appear out of nowhere for the damn thing to work. And poor Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. In Pretty Woman, they both clicked so perfectly--man meets hooker, man falls in love with hooker, hooker becomes princess. In Runaway Bride, it's more like schmuck meets ditz, shmuck falls for ditz, ditz remains confused. And come on, that scene in the bride shop where Gere tries to recapture and one-up the giddiness of Roberts' revenge on the mean clerk in Pretty Woman? Lame-O. Further proof that you can't capture lightning in a bottle twice. (Please don't make I Love Trouble II with Nick Nolte, Julia. We beg you.)

THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR

DK: Maybe Pierce Brosnan just looks good in a tux. Or maybe he has that aloof air we like to think all people with significant bank accounts carry like a badge. Whatever the reason, he's getting a little too comfortable playing the man with the big bucks, and The Thomas Crown Affair is a case in point. The story of a Wall Street mogul turned art thief and the insurance investigator who loves him, Thomas Crown depends on the chemistry between Brosnan and Rene Russo, his investigator/lover. The scenes of high adventure and art thievery that overwhelmed the movies trailer is largely confined to the first half-hour of the film. The rest rides on stolen glances and whispered phrases. At least on Brosnan's part, those glances and phrases all seem a bit tedious to him as an actor, not to mention those of us in the audience. Rather than showing any true interest in Russo's character, Brosnan imports a sort of James Bond indifference to everything around him, as though money could chase even the last inkling of real feeling out of a person. Russo does her best to convey the emotional excitement that this movie needs, and she does a good job of it so long as Brosnan isn't around. But Brosnan's boredom is infectious, and by the end of the film both principals seem thoroughly weary of one another. Maybe that's the way wealthy people love. If so, it doesn't make for great cinema.

SC: A pleasant surprise. Pierce Brosnan has no intention of demonstrating any range over his career, but that's fine with me as long as he continues to find intriguing costars like Rene Russo to play off of. Russo is one of Hollywood's best kept secrets. Almost every movie she's in (save that monkey mess Buddy) is a bonafide hit. But Russo tends to hide her beauty (even though, ironically enough, she once was a supermodel) by taking goofy roles--she's usually a clumsy, awkward underdog. In Thomas Crown, she leads with her sexuality, and the chemistry she ignites with Brosnan is beyond electric. And the plot of the caper isn't so shabby either; even though we expect stud and vamp to unite in the end, there's enough twists and turns to cloud the possibility. I have no doubt that they'll remake this film again in five years, so here is my recipe for another blockbuster. Keep Brosnan and Russo, add Sharon Stone as a potential rival, lose Dennis Leary, add more sweaty sex scenes. Then you'll really have a guilty pleasure.

EYES WIDE SHUT

DK: Its often been said that Stanley Kubrick has a tendency to put mood ahead of content in his films. But while such a predilection for atmosphere would be a fault in other directors, in Kubrick it was a gift, and in Eyes Wide Shut this gift comes shining through. A sort of Everyman for a sexually liberated age, Eyes Wide Shut features Tom Cruise, a sex symbol himself, as its wandering pilgrim. And the overwhelming tone of the film is certainly one of wandering. Progressing from one self-contained vignette to another, the movie moves from a theme and variations motif to an outright symphony as Cruise desperately tries to come to terms with his wife's admission of near infidelity. But he can't seem to find any answers in his encounters, be they small or monumental. More than that, he isn't even sure which questions to be asking. Perhaps only Kubrick could be astute enough to realize that the definitive movie about sex, as he himself billed this film, must, of necessity, be ambiguous. A lesser director would have tried to end his career with an exclamation point. Kubrick, true to form, has ended his with just the faintest hint of a question mark.

SC: When a movie is neither funny, entertaining, deep, sexy nor meaningful, it has to work awfully hard to keep your attention. Kubrick's final film was an exercise in mediocrity. It was supposed to be his thunderous masterpiece, a rousing conclusion to a brilliant career. But alas, it was hyped to no end and the expectations clouded reality. Tom and Nicole took their clothes off over and over for every major magazine and everyone cheered the possibilities. A real-life married couple having sex! Orgies! An intellectual movie for the masses! But it was DOA. The problem, of course, is that Kubrick forgot to give a film its center. In Schnitzler's novel, which was faithfully adapted (part of the problem), the emphasis is on the discrepancies between Tom and Nicole's dream (I call the characters by the star's names since I don't see the difference) and the fleetingness of reality. The film is supposed to come together when they say, "The reality of one night is not the whole truth. And no dream is entirely a dream." Instead, the movie ends with a thud--a curse word, no less--that proves how desperate Kubrick was to shock. But even a shock would have been welcome. Instead, we got a tame lesson in perversion from supposedly the most astute director of our time.

SIXTH SENSE

DK: It is a rare occurrence when a movie as subtle and, yes, tender as The Sixth Sense becomes a major summer hit. Billed as a riveting film about ghosts, The Sixth Sense is really an examination of what we the living need in our lives. It begins by focusing on a trio of outcasts in this world: Bruce Willis as a psychologist estranged from his wife, Toni Collette as a lonely single mom and Haley Joel Osment as her socially awkward son. But before long the film makes isolation a theme capable of transcending worlds. The ghosts in writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's world don't want to hurt the living. They just want to talk to them. And the living are just as desperate to find a willing ear. Of course, The Sixth Sense is not without the marks of a traditional horror film. There are plenty of tight close-ups into which figures can jump unexpectedly. In a movie as delicate and insightful as this one, such moments could easily have seemed ridiculous. But Shyamalan spaces them so aptly according to the emotional arch of the story that they seem as natural as the main characters many confessionals. The end result of this combination of emotional depth and pure horror is astounding. It's not just any movie that can make the appearance of a dead twelve-year-old as touching as it is frightening.

SC: For some reason, I feel sorry for the parents of Haley Joel Osment, the 11 year-old star of The Sixth Sense. He just looks so sad. Even when he's happy, he probably looks sad. I hope his parents treat him well. Or at least increase his allowance--especially considering that this movie has chomped up the box office like nothing since Titanic since opening in early August. The reason The Sixth Sense has been so successful is because it's wonderfully tricky--not since The Crying Game have we been so utterly fooled that we must see the movie a second time to figure out its secrets. Bruce Willis finally produced a non-stinker and he has M. Night Shyamalan to thank; the Indian writer-director carefully wove together the necessary elements of reality and fantasy to create a truly spooky moviegoing experience. It's movies like these, the ones that open out of nowhere and slowly build a following sans hype, that restore our faith in the public--especially in a summer where The Haunting and Wild Wild West both manage to rack up almost $100 million despite being universally loathed.