THURSDAY. AUGUST 22, 2002
FILM
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 3
Painful memories: Films recall agony of youth
By Stephen Shupe Jayplay writer
College renders even the most party-hearty student a little sick with apprehension. After all, adulthood lies ahead, just over the next tassel and mortarboard-laden hill.
Students can take some comfort, however, knowing they already survived one of the grimmest periods of their lives—adolescence.
Just think, you could have ended up bludgeoning your mother to death or falling off the face of the earth, as the films below illustrate. So push ahead, and between long bouts of caffeine-induced hysteria, watch these small films you might have missed, and remember that no amount of academic torture will ever compare to the pains of growing up.
Heavenly Creatures calls to mind the pains of adolescence, giving reason to take in stride the arguably lesser pains of college life.
Heavenly Creatures
In Peter Jackson's sensational (and fact-based) story about the chokehold power friendship has on teenagers, friends conjure woe for those who threaten the artifice they create.
Contributed photo
Two girls meet at a New Zealand boarding school: shy Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) and eccentric Juliet (Kate Winslet). Soon the girls have memorized the entire lineage of the royal family and have unlocked the key to a place Juliet names "the third world," where knights and princes duke it out for the throne. The girls see it as a substitute for heaven, if only because there they can be alone.
The two are soon chasing one other through the woods in their briefs and hallucinating visions of Orson Welles as a conduit through which they can make love. Their sexuality takes on the form of expression, as if lovemaking were the only way they could obsess over every little detail each has to offer.
The violence that concludes the film represents the real and imaginary worlds colliding, and only spilled blood can separate the girls.
interests by quoting Hitchcock: "Some people's films are slices of life. Mine are slices of cake." Feel free to gorge yourself on this one.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Jackson's answers may seem harsh, but the director keeps it all bright and inviting, using even the darkest moments to entertain, much in the same way he did in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. He once described his
Another beautifully filmed tale of violence amongst teenage girls, Picnic at Hanging Rock theorizes that repression of adolescence will not withstand the temptations of nature, human and otherwise.
On a steamy Valentine's Day in 1901, a class of parochial Australian schoolgirls visit a park to lounge away the day below a stunning rock formation. Some members of the group wander into the mountains — and don't come back.
As directed by Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society), the film has little use for conventional plot structure. A few suspects are introduced, but only to reiterate Weir's notion that something supernatural was involved.
Little adds up here, but concrete solutions would surely break the film's hypnotic spell. Other mystery movies sledgehammer home their missing pieces, but Weir wants his theories to stretch beyond borders, refusing to contain them in the time limit of a movie. As a result, the mystery grows, as it did in The Blair Witch Project, in the scariest place — the viewer's imagination.
Storytelling
In this year's most brutally modern comedy, director Todd Solondz embraces cynicism as fact, adolescence as blackout and ambition as a concept few are willing to work at to fulfill.
The film is broken into two sub-movies. If you can get past the first (in which a college student's innate liberalism tricks her into becoming a whore to earn respect and good karma as a writer) without offing yourself, you'll land in the familiar, suburban territory of Scooby, a droopy-eyed teenager with talk-show host ambitions.
In high school, I knew a Scooby or two, the sleepwalking burnout who lived in a locked room at home and another world at school. Solondz's version is so self-absorbed he forgets to interact, and when the opportunity arises in the form of Scooby's best friend propositioning him for oral sex, he accepts with a bored shrug.
A documentary filmmaker emerges, using Scooby to piece together a mocking take on suburbia. A group of film students viewing the documentary laughs hysterically as Scooby confesses onscreen that he might want to direct movies some day.
Scooby's lack of direction stems from a society that wants to see people fail for a cheap thrill. This leaves us wondering whether Scooby had it right when he settled for blocking out the world rather than stepping forward to expose himself to it.
Contact Shupe at jayplay@kansan.com.
With change of seasons, Hollywood to offer promising films
As summer comes to an end, films may be more interesting than summer's blockbusters By Peter Black
By Peter Black
Jayplay writer
Peter Black
pblack@kansan.com
The summer is quickly coming to an end, leaving behind a slew of films that were overhyped, unfulfilling and soon to be forgotten. Enter fall — the most exciting time of the year for avid moviegoers, when movies actually give reason to go to the theaters beyond stuffing one's face with popcorn. The following promise to be some of the most interesting films of the semester.
FILM
The Rules of Attraction: The trailers indicate a hybrid between the slick stylization of Snatch and Requiem for a Dream and the characters you grow to like but have every reason to hate in Cruel Intentions. However, this could just be a
film that James Van Der Beek is using to break out of the over-emotional character type he has built during his tenure on Dawson's Creek. Van Der Beek's character, Sean Bateman, explores the throes of a being a college drug dealer looking for his next thrill. It just so happens the next thrill he wants is Lauren, played by Shannyn Sossamon from last year's 40 Days and 40 Nights. Let's just hope all the split screens and teched-out camera effects add to the movie rather than cover up a lack of story. The film is set
I Spy: Another pairing of two of Hollywood's funniest men (this time, Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson) teaming up to fight some cheeseball, scheme-hatching criminals. Wilson historically stars in movies that look horrible (Behind Enemy Lines, Shanghai Noon), but he is able to use his charm and his deceptively dumb line deliveries to leave critics championing his films and audiences rolling in the aisles. And while spy films are being made exponentially this year, I Spy seems to make fun of the Bonds and the XXXs. They may have cool gadgets and sexy women, but these guys are having all the fun as well. Check it out on Nov. 1, 2002.
About Schmidt: While Schmidt is partially set in Lawrence, don't expect to see much more than a few familiar buildings — most filming was done in Nebraska. Election writer and director Alexander Payne tells the story of a man trying to find himself in a trek across Nebraska after the death of his wife, retirement and the realization that his entire life has been a failure. Scheduled
for limited release on Oct. 11,2002.
for release in December, Schmidt is already being called one of the must-see films of the year. Jack Nicholson gives what preview audiences are calling an award-worthy performance. Expect to see it in theaters in January 2003.
Solaris: Writer and director Steven Soderbergh's last film before he takes a few years off from filmmaking promises to send this filmmaking icon out with a bang. Teaming up with George Clooney for the third time, the duo leaves the lights of Vegas of Ocean's Eleven for the chill of deep space. From a space station, Clooney observes the possibly supernatural events taking place on the planet Solaris. We'll see whether Soderbergh successfully brings his controlled, down-to-earth approach to the galaxy's outer limits. Solaris is set for release Nov. 27, 2002.
Contact Black at pblack@kansan.com. This story was edited by Amanda Sears.
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