Film Fanatics: February 2002
by
News and Reviews
- Oscar nominations are out! Among the British nominees are Tom Wilkinson (Best Actor for In the Bedroom), Judi Dench (Best Actress for Iris), Kate Winslet and Jim Broadbent (Best Supporting Actress and Actor, both also for Iris), Ian McKellen (Best Supporting Actor for The Lord of the Rings), Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith (Both for Best Supporting Actress for Gosford Park) and Ben Kingsley (Best Supporting Actor for Sexy Beast). 'British' films, i.e. those made for the most part in Britain, with a largely British cast and crew, include Gosford Park (see review below for categories), Bridget Jones's Diary (Best Actress), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design and Best Music - Score).
- The Lord of the Rings looks set to dominate this years Oscars, having received a massive 13 nominations in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, Best Visual Effects, Best Make-up, Best Music - Score, Best Sound and Best Music - Song. Elijah Wood, who stars as Frodo, may not have been nominated for an Oscar himself, but it is still unlikely that anyone will ever forget his name again as happened recently. When Wood turned up at the Golden Globes with the rest of the film's cast certain people in the press line couldn't quite put their finger on it and settled for calling out 'Hobbit!' obviously also forgetting that there were four hobbits in the film!
- A less coveted list of nominations has been released - the 22nd Annual Raspberry Awards, also known as the Razzies, celebrate the worst of Hollywood. The star of this year's Razzies looks certain to be Tom Green's attempt at comedy, Freddy Got Fingered, which has scooped an embarrassing eight nominations! Other high-flyers include Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta, Tom Green, Ben Affleck, Keanu Reeves and Kevin Costner, who are all nominated for Worst Actor. Penelope Cruz, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lopez, Charlize Theron and Mariah Carey will all be competing for Worst Actress, while Worst Picture nominees include Glitter, Pearl Harbor, Driven, 3,000 Miles to Graceland and Freddy Got Fingered. Finally, Worst Screen Couple nominees include Ben Affleck and "either Kate Beckinsale or Josh Hartnett for Pearl Harbor", and Mariah Carey's cleavage in Glitter!
MONSTERS, INC (PG)
The latest computer animated film to emerge from Disney, working in collaboration with Pixar (creators of the two Toy Story films and A Bug's Life) has received Oscar nominations in four different categories (Best Animated Film, Best Sound Editing, Best Music - Score and Best Music - Song). The film is set in Monstropolis, where monsters are specially trained to sneak through into the closets of earth's children and scare them enough to make them scream. It is these screams that actually power Monstropolis but, in an amusing twist, the monsters are just as terrified of the children as the children are of them. Our heroes, most successful scarer of the month, Sulley (voiced by John Goodman), and his sidekick Mike (Billy Crystal) work hard to contain the situation when a two year old girl called Boo somehow finds her way into Monstropolis and chaos reigns supreme.
Heat: "Yes, Monsters, Inc has beautiful computer animation rendered in lush, sensuous colours, but the reason we love this film is because we care about the characters, and because it's all so witty, clever, exciting and emotionally true. Plus this movie has a fun premise: that these big tough creatures are actually terrified of the infants they're scaring, believing them to be toxic. [But although] Monsters, Inc has a great storyline, .it sure is complicated, and the whole process by which the scarers travel from Monstropolis through the bedroom doors of the kids on Earth is never properly explained - you just have to accept it. Younger viewers might be confused."
The Times (Culture): "Monsters, Inc suffers from a lack of scariness. .[It] is being heralded as another great leap forward in the use of computer-animation technology. Maybe, but in terms of style and story line, it's a great leap backwards to old-fashioned, irony-free entertainment for small children. There's no Shrek-like iconoclasm or Toy Story cleverness here. And in a way, that's a good thing, for it has given pre-teens something that is strictly for them, something that doesn't pander to parental cynicism or pop culture. .The pace is frequently too frantic, the ideas are underdeveloped, the laughs are too few and Billy Crystal is more manic and irritating than Robin Williams - yet [there is] no doubt that children will love it."
The Observer: "The gifted team that made the computer-animated Toy Story films remain in the nursery with [this] tale of cheerful monsters scaring children. .Yet somehow .Monsters, Inc [is] less satisfying, less humanly interesting than [Pixar's] earlier films. If Monsters, Inc is, as it certainly seems to be, an allegory, then it's one that will appeal less to Americans than to their critics. The tale suggests that Monstropolis, which steals power from the rest of the world by theft and the infliction of pain, is actually the United States itself, whose population of around five percent of our planet consumes more than 25 percent of the world's energy."
GOSFORD PARK (15)
Gosford Park, currently at the top of the Sunday Times 'Top Five Films' list, is a country house murder mystery packed to the brim with almost all the stars of the British acting profession. It too has received a number of Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, two nominations for Best Supporting Actress (Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith), Best Original Screenplay, Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction.
The Evening Standard (Hot Tickets): "Robert Altman's return to brilliant form with a period (1932) story in an English country-house setting over a weekend's shooting party that cross-sections the social scene up and down stairs, and throws in a murder mystery as well. A sort of Agatha Christie meets Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game, it's scripted by a truly original British talent, Julian Fellowes, and acted by the cream of the profession - Maggie Smith, Alan Bates, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Jeremy Northam, Kristin Scott Thomas, Charles Dance, Clive Owen, Richard E. Grant and Stephen Fry - and Ryan Phillippe and Bob Balaban as the guests from the US. Handsome looking, sharply intelligent, with social bite and verbal wit. ."
Heat: "Altman... creates a richly detailed, amusing and endlessly fascinating portrait of upstairs/downstairs relationships interwoven with a compelling murder-mystery story. The cast is stunning, but Dame Maggie Smith steals the show. [Unfortunately] Stephen Fry's incompetent detective character feels a bit cartoonish in this splendid company. It might look like a fusty period piece, but this joyous confection is more fun than a dozen routine Hollywood blockbusters put together."
The Observer: "Half the British acting profession are upstairs and downstairs in Altman's pre-war country house whodunit, a sort of Remains of the Orient Express, [which is also number one in The Observer's 'Top Five Films on Current Release' chart.]"
FROM HELL (15)
American directors Albert and Allen Hughes, best known for 'gritty and bloody ghetto dramas' revisit the legend of Jack the Ripper, stalking the streets of Victorian London (impressively recreated in modern-day Prague). At the centre of the film is Johnny Depp's Inspector Fred Abeline who, during the course of the investigation, falls for one of the Whitechapel prostitutes, Mary Kelly, played by Heather Graham. The film itself is based on a well-regarded graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.
The Observer: "The depth Depp brings to his character is matched by the way the Hugheses flesh out the Ripper's five victims. We see them in the doss house, roped against the wall to keep them upright as they sleep, washing the next morning in a metropolitan cattle trough and preparing for another day of threepence-a-time back alley shags and consoling alcohol. But they're spirited, stoical, victims, fighting for their lives against pimps and malevolent social forces, not just anonymous unfortunates. There are occasional verbal lapses (but so there are in Moore's book), and crudities but for the most part this is an engrossing, hard-hitting, consistently well-acted picture."
Heat: "Visually stunning and always absorbing, this is a bold attempt to make an ultra-stylish serial killer thriller out of a familiar story. Depp and Graham are fine, although their English accents are rocky, while [Robbie] Coltrane and Ian Holm are great in showy supporting roles. Despite much blood-letting it's not as scary as it should be, and the credulity-stretching conspiracy-theory version of events becomes even more unbelievable whenever Depp resorts to clairvoyancy."
The Times (Culture): "From Hell offers a final solution of its own [to the mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity], one involving a conspiracy between masons and the monarchy that is so preposterous it would make Oliver Stone blush. It also offers us a new view of Jack. It seems it is no longer enough to be just a notorious serial killer. From Hell gives its antihero a spurious sociological significance, so that this brutal butcher ends up as the midwife of modernity. 'One day, men will look back and say I gave birth to the 20th Century,' he says. .Overall the film is a triumph of style over substance. .The trouble starts when the film tries to present a serious critique of the social horrors and evils of Victorian society. Hell is where the poor live, and the satanic Jack is portrayed as just an overeager avenging agent of the Establishment. This leads to the facile suggestion that there is no moral difference between the Ripper and the respectable. ...One great flaw of From Hell is Depp. .His youth and good looks .make him so visually wrong for the part .(and) his lazy performance leaves him looking conspicuously inauthentic. Another flaw is that it just isn't scary. And not only do the Hughes brothers opt for the neat, tidy solution to the Ripper mystery, they manage to squeeze out a happy ending that has no place in a film hoping to be a dark tale."
Film quiz
Just how much of a film fanatic are you? Answer these questions, add up your scores and find out!
Easy (one point for each correct answer):
- UK cinemagoers will soon be able to watch the Oscar nominated Will Smith 'float like a butterfly, sting like a bee', as he portrays which sporting legend?
- Billy Crystal played opposite which Hollywood actress in the classic romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally?
Less Easy (two points for each correct answer):
- Which actor, presently appearing in bigscreen comedy Rat Race, played Edmund Blackadder?
- Long Time Dead's Lukas Haas shot to fame playing a little Amish boy who witnesses a murder and then has to be protected by policeman John Book (Harrison Ford) in which film?
Difficult (three points for each correct answer):
- Julian Fellowes, screenwriter of Gosford Park, can be seen playing the aristocratic Lord Kilwhilly, close friend of the batty Hector MacDonald (played by Richard Briers) in which cosy Sunday evening BBC1 drama set in the Scottish Highlands?
- Gosford Park's Ryan Phillippe is married to which young Hollywood star, whose films include Election and Legally Blonde?
(Answers at bottom of page.)
Film chart
Since the figures are not always available until after the event, the Box Office chart may occasionally be a couple of weeks behind. Sorry!
UK BOX OFFICE (week ending February 3rd)
- Vanilla Sky
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
- Shallow Hal
- Gosford Park
- Training Day
- Black Hawk Down
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
- Rat Race
- Iris
- Long Time Dead
Quiz answers:
- Mohammed Ali
- Meg Ryan
- Rowan Atkinson
- Witness
- Monarch of the Glen
- Reese Witherspoon
How did you do?
0-4 points: Who needs film when you can listen to the radio, eh?
5-8 points: You're a fan all right, but you're not a fanatic yet.
9-12 points: Move over Spielberg, there's a new man in town!
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