All films eligible for 2000 list.
Alphabetically:
Almost Famous
Best in Show
Cast Away
Down to You
Gladiator
Hamlet
High Fidelity
Mr. Death
Not One Less
Nurse Betty
Return to Me
The Road to El Dorado
You Can Count on Me
REEVALUATION: (C) The more I think about Gladiator, the more I remember it as cold and bloated. I still think Crowe's performance is wonderful, but all the (ocassional) hints at emotion feel like gimmicks and the film is, visually, a blur. I'm not one of those people who's against CGI, but the effects here draw attention to themselves with their artificial grandeur. Scott handles the flow, pacing, and attention to space and framing quite poorly.Almost Famous (2000) (B-)
This good but overrated remembrance of the '70s rock scene is semiautobiographical, yet Cameron Crowe still finds a way to pander to the audience like he did in the superior Jerry Maguire. He makes sentimental melodramas with wit and sitcommy situations, and he's skilled at pushing the right buttons. During the first half hour or so, particularly with the concert scenes which have the hectic excitement of a rock show, I felt Almost Famous would be a great film that would capture all that I love about rock 'n' roll. But probably the greatest rock moment in the film comes in one of the first scenes, in which a young boy thumbs through a collection of LPs left to him by his sister. The album covers, luminous and large, have a certain magic to them, and it's almost moving to see this kid discovering the likes of Led Zeppelin, the Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, and The Who. The child turns 15 and, wide-eyed, follows the band Stillwater as a rock journalist on a tour through America. He learns about groupies and band-member-jealousy, and then a coming-of-age story takes place. Patrick Fugit has an earnest awkwardness to him; his delivery of the lines doesn't always work, but as William, the precocious kid journalist, he's a bit more than adequate. Frances McDormand is fun but often a bit too much as the over-protective mom; Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance is beautifully precise. Billy Crudup, in a somewhat magnetic performance, seems to have adopted Tom Cruise's nice-guy mannerisms in Jerry Maguire. The film is all over the place, and builds up to a rather tacky deneoument where everyone follows his/her dream and becomes the obvious good guy. The film succeeds atmospherically; there's a loneliness to its depiction of the rock lifestyle. The film also brings up good questions on where the line between fandom and journalism is, and it has us conclude that the critic is the fan with a clear head.
Best in Show (2000) (C+)
Christopher Guest's new comedy is frequently hilarious, but the laughs don't stay with you. The film is about people who live for their dogs (or for the glory their dogs can bring them). They all gather at Philadelphia's Mayflower dog show where they compete for awards by breed, and then the award for the best dog overall. Guest follows the contestants before, during, and after the show, and he marvelously plays the role of a hick with a bloodhound. The film is filled with likable, even impressive, performances; the actors, who sometimes look like they are improvising, seem to be competing with each other for the Wildest Performance prize. The catchiest performances, though, are not always the most admirable. Parker Posey is a riot as a perpetually angry wife with exceedingly unattractive braces and a depressed dog, but her performance is marred by her obvious contempt for her nutcase character. The scenes with Catherine O'Hara (as a woman with a sexually mischievous past) and Eugene Levy (as her awkward husband with, literally, two left feet) are the warmest pieces of ensemble acting in the whole movie. Christopher Guest's jokes are meant to be satirical, but they're affectionate and not particularly stinging. Some of them will have you rolling in the aisles, but too many are overly cutesy and cookie-cutter. The film, despite a rainbow of appeasingly colorful situations, ends up being a flat, calculated freakshow that doesn't leave a strong impression.
Cast Away (2000) (B+)
Cast Away is so incredibly satisfying that it's pretty disappointing when it can't seem to get its act together during its third part. It is divided into three distinct segments, the bulk of it being the second part which is the kind of gorgeous entertainment one always hopes for in straightforward Hollywood fare. Tom Hanks still has ambition and has remained a very good actor after all these years and all this success and wealth. He has teamed up once again with Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis, but this film is so not the type of self-flattering accent-exercise the former collaboration was. Rather, it's a testament to the power of Hollywood-actor-charisma, a good movie premise, and maybe even to the relevance of silent film. Hanks, in a tour de force performance, plays Chuck Noland, a time-obsessed FedEx exec who leaves behind his probably-would-have-been wife Kelly (Helen Hunt) when he is called upon to take a flight to straighten things out in Malaysia. His plane crashes into an enormous, dark, visual-effects mass of ocean in one of the film's most chilling scenes. This segues into the Robinson-Crusoe-meets-The-Odyssey second part in which Chuck is stranded on an uninhabited island for four years and is forced to get in touch with his animal-instinct self. This part of the film, the greatest piece of clear-cut Hollywood moviemaking I've seen this year, is in the tradition of the silent film. All the action is communicated to us in pictures, and Chuck goes through a series of utterly riveting, harrowing events, including christening a volleyball he finds in a FedEx package as Wilson, who becomes his only (albeit inanimate) companion on the island. His friendship with the ball is made believable and unhumorous by Hanks, who always seems unaware of the camera, and his attachment to it says something about our own attachment to the characters we see in movies. Over the course of two hours (or, in this case, two and a half), we learn about them and we give them our own characteristics because we identify with them so much. Thus, even when the final part of Cast Away manages to botch up the story by cramming too much poignancy and an unbearably lame monologue into thirty measly minutes in which Zemeckis shows a poor handling of movie time (Hanks and Hunt deliver some nice emotional stuff, though), the spell of the movie is not weakened much and I still find it impossible to let go of it or the character of Chuck Noland, who was the audience's sole companion on that island for an exciting, melancholy 75 minutes.
Chicken Run (2000) (B-)
The Wallace and Gromit films were some of the most delectable in '90s British cinema, and Chicken Run, directed by the same folks Nick Park and Peter Lord, is the first exciting Y2K film I've yet seen. The claymation sets are remarkable, and the movie is a lot of fun while it lasts. It's just a pity it's hardly as memorable or witty as any of the Wallace and Gromit shorts.
Down to You (2000) (C)
It is exactly as you would expect. Down to You is not a good movie, but it delivers what it promises. I was particularly surprised by the amount of sexual jokes and the fact that the young couple in the film hop into bed together after only three months of dating. Miramax, once a rather independent company, now has its hands in money-making, bland pictures-- what's going on? The cast isn't very impressive; Selma Blair got on my nerves. I can't say I loved the film, but I can't say I didn't like it, either. It's sweet and cheap, and Prinze and Stiles, both giving self-conscious performances, are pretty people. They make a nice couple and that's all you can ask of this sort of generic teen love-sex flick.
Erin Brockovich (2000) (B)
Erin Brockovich is, first and foremost, a nice piece of entertainment. It has the Soderbergh style written all over it, but the one who steals the show is Julia Roberts. Roberts' performance is extraordinarily, forecefully fun, yet we are always aware it is a performance because of the woman's fame. It is not her fault, but she always ends up being the Notting Hill or the Pretty Woman Julia Roberts thrown into the clothes of Brockovich. The film also is a retread of too familiar territory: the whistle-blower docudrama, and the single mother drama (examples I immediately think of are Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and The Goodbye Girl). We cannot take Erin Brockovich very seriously because it's all a performance and its all stylized (it's wonderful to watch the quick, cut-the-crap editing that is Soderbergh's and the great Anne V. Coates' trademark.) It's feel-good pop with a wonderful leading lady giving a remarkable, gloriously mouthy, feel-good turn. At least the film boasts a good heroine.
Gladiator (2000) (B-)
Well... the latest from inconsistent director Ridley Scott and Aussie talent Russell Crowe is this sword-and-sandal epic that glamorizes the masculine-fight-to-the-death heroism of the filthy Roman era. A lot of bloody things go on onscreen, and they are presented in such a dizzying, messy way that the editing and visuals in the film become a tad intrusive. The film's images are fascinating and often breathtaking nonetheless, but they are nothing new. Likewise with the story itself, which is your basic simplistic tale of vengeance and (twisted) honor presented in such films of the '50s and '60s. Russell Crowe is spectacularly stoic and very good as the hero, and Joaquin Pheonix is an annoying whimp as the villain. It's all good fun that the highbrow should avoid, and there is none of the Biblical, straightforward splendor of a Ben-Hur. Gladiator beats around the bush in its first few acts and never becomes completely compelling, but as a tribute to the spectacles of old, it works very well. Gladiator is not memorable, but it's the Roman-hero-formula topped with a lot of gore, yucky sexual intrigue and jealousy, and is a satisfying summer offering.Hamlet (2000) (B+)
Before rushing out to the theater to see Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, I decided I'd better get acquainted with the play. I watched Olivier's film version, and was bored to sleep, but understand enough of it, and was curious about this "update." I am usually annoyed when filmmakers choose to take old, old material and throw it into a modern setting, but Almereyda proves here that Shakespeare is still very relevant today. The result is the first film of the year that I didn't feel cheated by a few hours after watching it... it doesn't always work, but it's interesting, and its meshing of modern and Elizabethan elements tickled me. Visually, the film is a triumph. The beautiful, metropolitan sets of Gideon Ponte are starkly photographed by John deBorman, and the whole thing is edited with boldness. Carter Burwell uses both traditional and modern music effectively in his pulsing score. This Hamlet is set in New York in the year 2000 and Denmark is a corporation, with Claudius as the new CEO. Hamlet is a tormented young man. The film has great jolts of imagination, my favorite being the appearance of James Dean in one scene which compares the icon's on-screen anguish to Hamlet's. Am I allowed to say that this Hamlet was more moving to me than Olivier's? This film comes off as a wonderful experiment, but it is short of greatness. Often it is too conscious of its intelligence and, worst of all, there are no great performances. Bill Murray is miscast, and the younger actors, particularly Julia Stiles, speak their lines as if they were rehearsing in a high school drama class; the words get stuck to the roofs of their mouths and they come out flat and irritating (to give Stiles some credit, she is rather convincing in the scene where Ophelia goes ballistic before drowning herself). Ethan Hawke is not very good, but he has good moments when reciting some of Shakespeare's words on the voice-over. I have to say that Shakespeare's poetry struck me more emotionally when I heard it coming from these modern American mouths than when I heard it in Olivier's film, even though it is jarring and awkward seeing these ancient words coming out of Y2K people (it's obvious by now that I don't know much about Shakespeare... I've read Romeo and Juliet and tried to read Antony and Cleoptra, though...) This film is by no means the definitive Hamlet- much of the play's text is not even here- but it's the darndest thing I've seen all year.
High Fidelity (2000) (B+)
This Stephen Frears comedy is light and Woody Allen-ish and pretty much plotless. For me, it was reminiscent of another year 2000 film, Wonder Boys. Both are not "big picture" movies; they live in their brilliant details, the Frears movie vividly illustrating male insecurity and fetishism and the Hanson movie describing what it's like to be an aging, directionless man. They are character-driven movies that zig-zag here and there without much of a path. High Fidelity is refreshing, even when it ocassionally trips on its constant fourth-wall-breaking, which gradually becomes something in between awkward and aggravating. John Cusack has always been an unclassifiable oddball; he's certainly not the most charismatic of today's actors, but he's probably one of the best. He plays this young man who owns a failing record store who can't quite figure out why he has all this girl trouble. The film has some appealing supporting characters, particularly Jack Black's rambunctious-elitist co-worker and Todd Louiso's timid-stuttering co-worker, both characterized by their preference of music (Louiso's character puts on the new Belle and Sebastian and Black storms in and tries to shake things up.) And why is Joan Cusack always so consistently amazing? She steals every one of her few scenes with her usual Betty Hutton-aping quirkiness. Her role is largely insignificant, but who cares... The film is partly about the main character's love (and/or obsession) with pop music; he makes Top 5 lists daily, trying to bring organization to a life that is already such a mess. Music is such a personal thing and is surely one of God's gifts to this earth. Pop music fits one's mood, or does it create it? High Fidelity is a movie that is Seinfeldianlly about nothing at all, but manages to be about romanticizing life through music and bringing nobility to one's own pettiness, but all of this is done in the margins while Frears gives the film a nice weightlessness.
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (B+) (1999)
Mr. Death, a fascinating and engrossing documentary by Errol Morris, feels more like fiction than fact. Morris' movie is not the traditional non-fiction film; his use of haunting visuals is like none I have seen in any documentary before (of course, I haven't seen that many in my lifetime). His portrait of this Leuchter guy seems colored very much by his own opinion of him. Fred used to make great capital punishment equipment in his day; from the beginning, he seems like some sort of odd humanitarian because he's so humorously passionate about changing the abominable states of death penalty machines in America. His to-the-camera explanations of his work is a bit off-putting because he looks so unaware of how sadly funny he's being that he begins to seem like an actor with offensive material satirizing the very serious topic of capital punishment. The bulk of the film focuses on his involvement with Holocaust deniers; the audience is made to assume that Leuchter is a very lonely man (the stereotypical image of the twisted, antisocial engineer) and has been sucked in by this group of people just so he can get approval in some shape or form. He goes down to the "Holy of Holies"- Auschwitz- and basically commits an act of "sacrilege" by gathering rock samples from the remains to check for the presence of cyanide, not taking into consideration the time that has passed between WWII and present-day and the crushing of the samples that is needed to test them. The film gets repetitive during the end, but it is nevertheless a complex, compelling study of this pitiable yet creepy stooge who would rather be friends of neo-Nazis than to be stuck in a state of eternal friendlessness.
Not One Less (B-) (1999)
Zhang Yimou is a fantastic director and with his latest feature, Not One Less, we find that he has abandoned his beautiful epics(like Raise the Red Lantern) for simpler films in the Italian neorealist mold that most of the prominent Iranian filmmakers of today have successfully employed. He fiddled around more ostentatiously with neorealism in The Story of Qiu Ju, a film with bold streaks of irony that was one of his last collaborations with the wonderful actor Gong Li. Here, the story of a teenage girl from an impoverished Chinese village who becomes the substitute teacher at a very poor school is given a Hollywoodian twist at the end. This pretty much separates Not One Less from the neorealist classics by DeSica and from Qiu Ju; the resolution is too outrageous to make the kind of circular, inevitable sense that I associate with these kinds of pictures. However, while most of the critics who panned this film did so because of the feel-good resolution, I found the ending to be satisfying and quirky and even a bit ironic. Wei Minzhi, the thirteen-year-old substitute, is probably the worst teacher you've ever seen at the beginning of the film. Her ignorance is truly frustrating. The mayor of the village and the former teacher have promised her extra money if she can keep all the students from leaving, as several other kids have done. When the class troublemaker is forced to leave for the city to find work, teacher Wei goes through toil to get him back. Zhang Yimou forms the heroine impeccably, allowing her motives to change gradually through the film. The movie soon becomes an examination of the standard rules we set in life that are necessary yet often tragically restrictive; when Wei tries to get a spot on television so she can find the lost lamb in the lonely city crowds, she is, of course, denied access into the building because of the simple regulations at the T.V. station. The only real problem I had with the film was the epilogue presented in a title at the end of the film that gives all this info on the poor education in China. I have always had qualms with these tacked-on explanations. They feel so... tacky. Also, I was bothered a bit by unnecessary pieces of music that puncuated a few of the more emotional scenes. Zhang keeps trying to tell us how to feel when the movie is powerful enough that we can understand it emotionally without the artificial stimulators. Anyway, Not One Less boasts lovely performances from a cast of non-actors, whose names are the same as their characters. Zhang has pulled some authentic acting out of the young people and the mercurial Wei. Despite the screw-ups, there's a good story behind all this and an overall tone of sincerity.
Nurse Betty (2000) (B)
Renee Zellweger comes across as rather ditzy in public appearances, but in her films (I loved her in Jerry Maguire, and she managed to be more compelling and real than Meryl Streep in One True Thing) she has a daffy intelligence and wonderful sincerity. She also has a little Betty-Hutton-and-Joan-Cusack-style quirkiness. Her face has that modeling-clay characteristic shared by the two great comic actresses, but hers conveys emotion, and is more touching than outrageous. In Nurse Betty, she plays a woman who's frighteningly sincere, holding fast to impossible dreams and ideals. The great Morgan Freeman plays one half of a hit man duo with radiant dignity and wisdom; referred to by Pauline Kael as one of the greatest American actors, he has an aura of sophistication and civility. Chris Rock, who plays the other half of the team, is out-of-place; his funny shtick doesn't work in this marshmallowy film, though he does add spark to dull scenes. I especially enjoyed the supporting actors, among them a perfectly cast Greg Kinnear in the role of an egotistical yet understandably muddled actor on a soap, Tia Texada in splendidly outraged bouts of frustration, and the terrific Allison Janney. This is the cynical Neil LaBute's third film, and his first time not using his own script, which obviously, at least partly, accounts for the warmth of the film. The screenplay by John Richards and James Flamberg, which, for some reason, conjures up memories of The Truman Show, is wonderful and inventive, using very Hollywoodian formulas, like the road movie, and spitting out exciting results. LaBute's debut, In the Company of Men, had a visual artificiality, and so does Nurse Betty, only Jean Yves Escoffier's tart cinematography gives the film a more inviting feel. Nurse Betty is not without pessism, though; a lot of the film's criticsm on our TV culture made me groan. The film is rather sloppy, too. But by the end, LaBute stops ranting and raving and faux-philosophizing, and his jabs turn out to be affectionate. He deftly directs a tense scene in which obsessive fandom comes tumbling down, but at the end, fan Betty has the last laugh and the importance of our fantasies, upon which Hollywood thrives, is acknowledged.
Return to Me (2000) (B-)
This is a marvelous pep pill. It's like a warm cup of coffee on a frosty morning, and it is filled with fuzzy romantic notions. Bonnie Hunt, one of the most wickedly underrated actresses today, gets her hands into acting, directing (her first time), and writing. She's delightful in her performance here. She has always had a down-to-earth quality that makes you want to be a good friend of hers. This movie, despite its over-the-top plot, is picturesque and rooted in what is divinely simple in life. Hunt's on-screen relationship with James Belushi (they play husband and wife) is very real and hilarious. As for the film's core lovers, Minnie Driver and David Duchovny provide much appeal and chemistry. This movie is subtle and sweet. The ending leaves a bit to be desired, and I think a few things could have been trimmed, but it gives off a warm feeling and has more heart than a Nora Ephron.
The Road to El Dorado (2000) (C-)
Dank, lifeless film saved by the always interesting Rosie Perez. Shoots itself in the foot with lack of ambition; Elton John-Tim Rice songs are utterly disappointing. A failed solution of the adventure, visual, and mythic aspects of previous Disney outings.
You Can Count on Me (2000) (B-)
Time's movie critic Richard Schickel called this "The Best American Movie This Year." I'm not so sure about that assessment, but I think You Can Count on Me is certainly one of The Most American Movies This Year. It's a little flabbergasting that even the most most hard-hearted critics are praising this slightly-above-average film; on paper, its story is basically a Lifetime TV movie, and its execution is only a few notches above that. Still, Kenneth Lonergan shows a lot of potential. His script is often very tender, witty (the light comic touches are furthered by a pitch-perfect performance by Matthew Broderick), and observant, and his leading lady, Laura Linney, is the real deal, giving a multi-layered performance in the role of your average bitter, working, single mother whose ne'er-do-well brother (Mark Ruffalo in an impressive debut) comes for a visit to ask for money from sis and ends up turning her world upside down. Linney has always come across as a very intelligent woman; she has taken on many good roles and done great things with them. Here, she has charisma as the-woman-with-the-tough-exterior-but-the-not-so-confident-interior. In early scenes with Ruffalo, she gives her character a jittery quality and it's especially affective when her character's face never can seem to decide whether it's supposed to smile or look miserable. The film usually works on an emotional level; these two siblings who are extremely close (but can't quite count on each other, as the title would have you think) have no one but each other in the world, and neither the nomadic rascal brother or the responsible sister has quite figured out all of life's mess. The film also is quite eloquent about sibling relationships in general and how it gets harder to be close to one's relatives as one enters adulthood, and the final scene between Linney and Ruffalo pierces the heart with its desperation.
By Andrew Chan