Section B·Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Thursday, September 16, 1999
Entertainment
Commentary
New films add spice to fall season's line up
By Aaron Passman Special to the Kansan
This time every year, Hollywood opens up the gates for Oscar season and releases some of the best films of the year. The majority of the films tend to be of a more dramatic nature, featuring high-level actors and directors. In honor of the coming fall movie season, the following is a list of 10 of the most intriguing films set to be released.
The Green Mile: Based on Stephen King's serialized besteller, starring Tom Hanks, The Green Mile is the story of the relationship between a 1930s death-row prison guard and a very unusual inmate (Armageddon's Michael Clark Duncan). The film looks to be at the top of the heap for the rest of the year and should be a definite Oscar contender. Warner Bros. first test screening had some of its highest results ever. Directed by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption). Opens Dec. 17.
Any Given Sunday: Oliver Stone directs Al Pacino, Dennis Quaid and Cameron Diaz in a film about a fictitious football team — the Miami Sharks — and the pressures on the team as it reaches the end of a winning season. Stone is certainly an able director, and with Pacino in the lead, this should be a can't-miss hit. Opens Dec. 25.
Bringing Out The Dead: Nicholas Cage as a burned-out New York City paramedic. Also starring Patricia Arquette (True Romance), and Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction). It should be fabulous by default just because it is directed by Martin Scorcee. Opus Oct. 23.
**Dogma:** Easily the most controversial movie of the year, the new film from Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy) features 'Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as angels kicked out of heaven and Linda Florentino as a descendent of Christ who works in an abortion clinic. The film, which is a satire about organized
religion, also features Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, Alan Rickman, Jason Lee and Alanis Morrissey as God. Opens Nov. 12.
Man On The Moon: Milos Forman (Amadeus, The People V. Larry Film) directs Jim Carrey's most ambitious outing yet: a biography of the late comedian Andy Kaufman. Also starring are Courtney Love and Danny DeVito. It's a risky film for Carrey because audiences aren't used to seeing someone like him act in a real drama. Regardless, the film has some serious potential and could surprise some people. Opens Nov. 5.
Sleepy Hollow: Anyone who's seen the trailer for this knows that it's almost nothing like the Rip Van Winkle classic. Instead, Tim Burton's new film has Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) investigating a string of vicious murders in colonial New England. Expect something scary. While Burton always has made rather bizarre films, he never has made an all-out horror film, which this is. Sleepy Hollow also stars Christina Ricci and Christopher Walken as the Headless Horseman, Opens Nov. 19.
End Of Days: Arnold Schwarzengeger versus Satan. Enough said. Opens Nov. 24.
The World Is Not Enough: Pierce Brosaen is back for his third go-around as James Bond. This time, Agent 007 is up against a Bosnian terrorist out to monopolize the world's oil supply. Expect your typical James Bond film: gorgeous women, evil villains and cool gadgets. Opens Nov. 19.
Fight Club: Brad Pitt and Edward Norton star in this film by director David Fincher (Seven, The Game) about disenchanted twenty-somethings searching for meaning in their lives. Despite being one of the years' most bizarre films, Fight Club should pull in a fair amount of money at the box office thanks to its top cast and one of the most talented directors working. Opens Oct. 15.
Commentary
Now and then — far too infrequently — a film comes along that offers a sliver of legitimate wisdom about the condition of the American family in 20th century.
The Associated Press
Film tackles tragedy of ordinary families
Robert Redford's Ordinary People (1980) did it. So did Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997). Now, director Sam Mendes' American Beauty takes its place among the best family dramas of recent decades.
Subtle and harrowing, full of cockeyed humor and visceral pain, American Beauty explores a modern family — what makes it tick, and how each tick can herald the existence of a time bomb moving inexorably toward detonation.
Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), writer for a booster-oriented ad magazine, is coping with early middle age. A comfortable, suburban life has left him self-indulgent and a bit disoriented.
"I know I've lost something," he savs, "but I don't know what it is."
His wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), is insolent and self-pitying, driven inside her frosty shell by years of rising anger at her husband and her lot. A real estate agent who dresses and furnishes like a bon vivant, she nonetheless is so emotionally eviscerated that, when she cries, she simultaneously upbraids herself for doing so.
Their high-school-age daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), is hovering near the junction of adulthood and troubled teen — she is certain she is ugly and is thoroughly disgusted at her parents' suburban artificiality.
Add a cryptic boy who lives next door named Ricky (Wes Bentley) and his strange parents, throw in a teenage Lolita named Angela (Mena
Suvari) and you have a potboiler that could go any direction.
And it does.
Lester encounters Angela, Jane's cheerleading buddy, and falls immediately and obviously in lust with her, much to his daughter's disgust. Jane catches Ricky watching her and is both repelled and fascinated. Carolyn flirts with her competitor (Peter Gallagher, at his oiliest). Ricky's Marine Corps father grapples with the presence of a gay couple in the neighborhood. Illicit lust blossom.
If all this seems dizzying and disjointed, that's sort of the point. What unifies it all is Lester, who is either falling apart or finally awaking. His attraction for Angela and the confusion it produces sends him on a journey of self-destruction and discovery.
He molts convulsively from a randy Walter Mitty into some sort of rampaging suburban John Beliush, energized by the very things that should hurt him, watching his life unravel even as it becomes enjoyable again.
As matters hurtle toward their conclusions, it is Lester who — with both his vices and his formidable attempts at being honorable — pushes them along.
Spacey's Lester is a wonderful, terrible junk pile of whimsy and rage, self-doubt and resurgent hormones. And Bening, who deserved a break after an unintelligible script scuttled her fine work in January's In Dreams, gives a career performance here.
Birch, whose emotions bubble quietly and sear viciously, plays Jane just right — an adolescent struggling between wanting to love her parents and seeing their blemishes in stark relief, as only an offspring can.
Chris Cooper and Allison Janney are just as spellbinding as next-door neighbors Col. Frank and Barbara
AMERICAN BEAUTY
Production Company: Dreamworks SKG
Director: Sam Mendes
Producers: Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks
Writer: Alan Bell
Rating: R
tarring: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening,
Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena
Suvari, Peter Gallagher, Chris
Cooper, Allison Janney
Fitts. He is a barking, sinewy disciplinarian who'd just as soon bloody his own son as face his failings; her years of obedience have left her one tiny notch away from catonia. And both Bentley and Suvari give performances of astonishing depth that are beyond their years.
As haunting piano and strings push this misfit block party to its agonizing climax, you know what's ahead, because Lester's narration told you at the beginning: He is going to die. Things will implode. But in what manner?
Ultimately, Lester's end comes at his moment of redemption, and it resonates with quiet irony. His liberation becomes his undoing, but not before he has emerged as the kindest, most stouthearted person in a confused lot of misdirected souls.
What makes the film such a desolate snapshot of American life is the normalcy of its dysfunction: Everybody's horrible, and everybody's normal. American Beauty is an American tragedy. In it, we can recognize ourselves. And the mirror is not only cracked; it's shattered and cannot be fixed.
American Beauty, a Dreamworks release, is written by Alan Ball and produced by Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks. It is rated R.
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