Film Fanatics: July 2001
by
News and Reviews
- Apparently child actor Haley Joel Osment, star of The Sixth Sense and the upcoming A.I., has slammed the makers of the forthcoming Harry Potter movie, despite having originally expressed interest in playing the lead role. According to entertainment magazine Heat he now says, "The film will take away the part of the book that's most important to its success - using your imagination." Now, the little tyke might well be right, but you'd still be forgiven for believing those grapes to be a little sour!
- "Boy, is my face red!" Apparently a worried Cher called in the exterminators when she spotted a rodent running loose in her Malibu mansion. It was soon discovered to be nothing more scary than a hamster which belonged to a friend of her son, Elijah Blue. The unfortunate pet was later trapped and caught in the laundry room.
- At the LA Premiere of their latest film, America's Sweethearts, Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta Jones appeared to be the very best of friends, with arms round each other, broad smiles and compliments flying back and forth. The truth of the situation, if the gossip from the set is to be believed, couldn't be more different. Apparently Julia was rather displeased that she had to play the 'frumpy' character, while Catherine played the glamour puss. She was also unhappy about the time that her co-star spent cooing over her baby son Dylan, while Catherine felt that she, rather than Roberts, the highest paid actress in Hollywood, deserved the biggest trailer. Miaow!
HIGH HEELS AND LOW LIFES (15)
Two friends, nurse Shannon (Minnie Driver) and her American friend, aspiring actress Frances (Mary McCormack), accidentally overhear plans for a bank robbery. After the police ignore them, they attempt to blackmail the thieves, only to find themselves a little out of their depth in the criminal underworld of 'break-ins, shoot-outs and drop-offs'.
The Times (Part 2): "High Heels is not without charm, mainly owing to the efforts of the leading actresses who, in defiance of the whiffy script, hold their noses and jump right in with admirable brio and self-deprecation. The Long Good Friday it isn't, but a Quite Good Friday Night Out At The Cinema it might be."
The Evening Standard (Hot Tickets): "[Mel Smith], who co-scripted Morons from Outer Space and directed The Tall Guy and Bean, has at least polished his act this time on screenwriter Kim Fuller's intricate game of blackmail and bluff, but it's still insistently crude, formulaic stuff in the currently endless Britgangster mode."
Heat: "Thankfully High Heels relies less heavily on slapstick for laughs than Smith's previous film Bean did, but its feisty femmes' hapless antics are endearingly amusing.. [However] the plot is completely unbelievable. These girls wouldn't last five minutes messing with real criminals. Driver's no Lara Croft, but her movie is an enjoyable, if silly, alternative to the blockbusting action flicks on offer this summer. "
ANIMAL ATTRACTION (12)
Based on the novel Animal Husbandry, the film focuses on daytime TV talk show producer Jane (Ashley Judd). When an affair with her boss (Greg Kinnear) ends unexpectedly, she formulates a theory that men's behaviour 'correlates to that of their bovine counterparts'. Her womanising colleague and flatmate Eddie (Hugh Jackman) provides the ideal starting point for her intensive study and analysis of male behaviour.
Heat: "Some of Jane's observations are comically perceptive. And there is no finer specimen of manhood than Hugh Jackman - a joy to behold, especially with his shirt off. [But the film suffers from] tired romcom clichés, one-dimensional characters, implausible plotting and a predictably mushy ending.. Bridget Jones's Diary spawned a rash of copycat novels, like Animal Husbandry.. Now it seems we should expect a wave of similarly sub-standard movie adaptations."
The Evening Standard (Hot Tickets): "Marisa Tomei and Ellen Barkin help [Ashley Judd] discover more about love than the script ever told her."
The Times (Part 2): "The flings are not spicy enough for Sex in the City fans, nor sharp enough for a B.J [Bridget Jones] audience. There is romance in Animal Attraction but it doesn't exactly crackle through the script.. The only character to thrive.is also the only one to treat romance (and the film) with the sublime indifference it deserves. Hugh Jackman bears an uncanny resemblance to the young, stony Clint Eastwood, including that piles-inspired grimace and the defiant quiff."
JURASSIC PARK III (PG)
Sam Neill returns as the 'morally inclined big-hatted palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant' who, together with his sidekick Billy Brennan (Alessandro Nivola), agrees to take wealthy thrill-seekers William H. Macy and Tea Leoni on an aerial tour of Isla Sorna, the location of the second movie. What they don't know is that these 'thrill-seekers' are actually a divorced couple desperate to land on the island and rescue their 14-year-old son (Trevor Morgan) who has been stranded there following a parasailing accident. Unfortunately no one has reckoned on the dinosaurs getting bigger, badder and better at communicating with each other since the events of Jurassic Park: The Lost World. When they crash land on the island, it becomes clear that several characters' days are numbered.
Heat: "Jeopardy aplenty as the non-stars get eaten and the rest of them repeatedly extricate themselves from a series of decidedly hairy encounters. .Universal know that the dinosaurs are the real stars of [these] movies, and have never bothered expending huge sums on an A-list cast. This gives them the opportunity to pick interesting character actors, and they've chosen well here. Technological advances since the first two movies ensure lots more dino action... The real problem this movie faces isn't lack of logic [though that too is often pointed out] but over-familiarity."
The Times (Part 2): "The dialogue is as Boy's Own Paper as you'd expect.and the ending is wet beyond belief: after 90 minutes of primal angst and blood-letting, you can't suddenly trot out Little Dinosaur on the Prairie. However, even without Spielberg, there's a sheen, a splinter of darkness, to the third Jurassic that sets it apart from most fantastical blockbusters. Yes, it's formulaic, but some thought has gone into getting it right. The dinosaurs really do look like killers.. Rotting corpses dangle from trees.. Human-dino combat on water could be scenes from war movies. However, for all the mayhem, suggestion rules supreme. You only realise one man has been eaten when his mobile phone eerily resonates from the killer's stomach. In another scene, one of the new 'thinking' dinosaurs deliberately cracks a man's spine, then leaves him, weeping, on the floor, as bait. It's a cruel, unnerving spectacle, and one which lingers in the mind far longer than a scene from something called Jurassic Park III has any right to."
The Evening Standard: "Hugely imaginative, far better than its two forerunners, but also very, very frightening for children under 15. I'd feel uneasy at letting very young children watch this film without their parents or guardians first seeing it for themselves. This isn't the awesome spectacle of the original [film]: this is a mosh-pit of a would-be massacre. Subsidiary characters are soon chewed up with over-amplified gnashing and crunching; then the surviving stars are made to run - they earn their fees by leg-power alone - on a nearly non-stop gauntlet of continuous attacks by needle-toothed raptors and newcomers in scaly horror, like the saw-backed spinosaurus and the outlandishly clawed pteronandon - the fauna of nightmares. Though a B-Picture in scale and (almost) running-time, Jurassic Park III has been engineered with all the expensive looks of a first feature - and, with it, a precise and purposeful intent to frighten folk out of their skin: a quantum leap in the technology of fear. All fantasy, of course; but fantasy pitched beyond the understanding of maybe many very young viewers is a risky commodity to bring to market."
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):
- Which famous film critic who worked first for the BBC, before being replaced by Jonathan Ross when he moved to Sky television, has recently retired?
- Mel Smith, director of High Heels And Low Lifes, directed his last film, Bean, in 1997. Who was the star?
Less Easy (two points for each correct answer):
- Which star of all three Jurassic Park films is about to present a series entitled Space for the BBC?
- Which actor from popular TV series The X-Files also stars in the current box office hit Evolution?
Difficult (three points for each correct answer):
- Who provides the voice for green ogre Shrek in the Dreamworks animated movie of the same name?
- Who wrote the book Jurassic Park which has inspired the movie franchise of the same name?
(Answers at bottom of page.)
Film chart
Obviously the audience figures only become available after the event so the film chart will always be a couple of weeks behind. Sorry!
UK BOX OFFICE (week ending 15 July 2001)
- Shrek
- Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
- Evolution
- Pearl Harbor
- Pokémon III
- Bridget Jones's Diary
- Sweet November
- The Mummy Returns
- Blow
- Get Over It
Quiz answers:
- Barry Norman
- Rowan Atkinson
- Sam Neill
- David Duchovny
- Mike Myers
- Michael Crichton
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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