Preview of fall movies
PUSSSYKATT
Whatever else may be said about the prospects of the fall movie season, there's
this: "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."
The first film from J.K. Rowling's mesmerizing books about a magical world of
witches and wizards is the surest box- office bonanza since George Lucas
revived his "Star Wars" series. And with a subject proven to be as compelling
to adults as kids, it has the potential to challenge "Titanic" as the all-time
champ.
"Harry Potter" opens Nov. 16, the week before Thanksgiving. Between now and
then, the major studios will release more than three dozen movies nationally,
and another three dozen or so are scheduled for release by independent
distributors.
If past is prologue, some of the year's best movies will arrive in that time.
The studios, in particular, like to schedule their "serious" movies in the
fall, after kids are back in school, when critics are starved for protein and
many dedicated moviegoers come out of their summer hibernation to reclaim the
megaplex.
But it's hard to see exactly which films they have in mind for awards. Mostly,
the major studios' fall schedules look like a continuation of their summer
schedules.
The lineup is thick with action-adventures movies, thrillers and comedies. And
there aren't many movies with Academy pedigrees — directors and stars who
have won before.
If you like Billy Bob Thornton, Leelee Sobieski and Ethan Hawke, you're in good
shape. Each actor is in three fall films. And Robert Redford, who appeared in
only four movies during the last decade, is suddenly starring in two — "The
Last Castle" and "Spy Game" — that will open within a month of each other.
If you like period films, you're in good shape, too. Peter Hyams's "The
Musketeer" is about the fourth musketeer, D'Artagnan, from Alexandre Dumas'
classic 19th-century novel "The Three Musketeers." "Brotherhood of the Wolf" is
an 18th-century thriller about an amateur detective and his Iroquois sidekick
who, on behalf of Louis XV, set off to investigate killings that may be the
work of a monster. And in a real fish-out-of-water film, Martin Lawrence plays
an amusement park employee who gets a knock on the head and wakes up in
medieval England.
The entries that sound most like Oscar material are: director Iain Softley's
"K-PAX," adapted from Gene Brewer's best seller about a man (Kevin Spacey) who
claims to be from outer space and the psychiatrist (Jeff Bridges) who's not
sure he isn't, and Irwin Winkler's "Life as a House," starring Kevin Kline as a
dying man racing the clock to rebuild his family while building his dream
house.
In the following stories, Jami Bernard takes a look at "Harry Potter" and
Elizabeth Weitzman scouts the independent films. Below, I assess 18 films for
which I hold out unreasonably high hopes.
HEARTS IN ATLANTIS
Stars Anthony Hopkins, Hope Davis, Anton Yelchin, David Morse. Directed by
Scott Hicks. Scheduled opening Sept. 28.
William Goldman adapted this Stephen King novella — actually, just one of
five stories in a massive anthology — and Hicks ("Shine") directed it, so it
has a chance. It stars Hopkins as a mysterious man who moves in with a widower
and her young son in 1960s Virginia and gradually reveals mind-reading powers
that not even he fully understands. Both he and the child are being stalked,
the boy by local bullies, the lodger by "low men in yellow jackets." The
stories in the anthology all pertain in some way to King's view of Vietnam and
in this particular story, it's the notion that there are predators in every
village, even at home.
JPY RIDE
Stars Paul Walker, Leelee Sobieski, Steve Zahn. Directed by John Dahl.
Scheduled opening: Oct. 5.
Walker, who was the good-looking hero in "The Fast & the Furious," is on the
road again in Dahl's free-range thriller about two college buddies who, while
driving through the Southwestern desert, pull a prank on a truck driver that
lets loose the hounds of hell. Or something just as bad — a psycho killer
with no sense of humor.
The trailer suggests the strong influence of Steven Spielberg's classic TV
movie, "Duel," but with more hands-on terror. Walker's college chum is played
by Zahn and Sobieski is the girlfriend Walker picks up just in time for the
fun. Matthew Kimbrough is the voice of the truck driver who goes by the CB
handle of Rusty Nail. Now, why would you want to mess with him?
SERENDIPITY
Stars John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale. Directed by Peter Chelsom. Scheduled
opening: Oct. 5.
Before he walked into the star-powered, big-budget buzzsaw that was "Town &
Country," English director Peter Chelsom made two of the most marvelously
eccentric comedies of the 1990s — "Hear My Song" and "Funny Bones." After
working with Warren Beatty and the rest of the all-star ensemble for the
hilariously unfunny "Town & Country," we'll be anxious to see if he has a sense
of humor left.
Here, he's working with the superb light comedian John Cusack and "Pearl
Harbor's" love-struck nurse Kate Beckinsale, in a story about love and luck.
They play a couple who meet at Bloomingdale's, have a wonderful time flirting
with each other, then separate and don't meet again for 10 years. So, is it
serendipity when they meet the first time or the second?
BANDITS
Stars Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett. Directed by Barry
Levinson. Scheduled opening: Oct. 12.
Still smarting over the lame marketing and critical drubbing of his low-budget
goof "An Everlasting Piece," Levinson returns to the broad canvas — and we do
mean broad — with this contemporary knock-off of "Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid." It stars Willis and Thornton as a pair of escaped convicts who
both fall in love with the victim of a kidnapping. And the victim, a rich man's
ignored wife (Cate Blanchett), falls for them right back. Soon, the trio is
cutting a swath of empty vaults through California, as they follow the
perennial outlaw's dream — to own a bar on a beach in Mexico. But will they
get there, or will Bruce and Billy Bob, like Butch and Sundance, fall in a hail
of bullets?
THE LAST CASTLE
Stars Robert Redford, James Gandolfini. Mark Ruffalo, Robin Wright Penn.
Directed by Rod Lurie. Scheduled opening: Oct. 12.
Former film critic Lurie ("The Contender") directs Redford and Gandolfini in
this military drama about the battle of wills between a court-martialed
three-star Army general and a sadistic military-prison warden. Redford's been
in prison before, as an undercover warden checking out the living conditions in
"Brubaker," and Gandolfini is sure to get there eventually, as Tony Soprano.
Meanwhile, the always-heroic Redford, playing a legendary military strategist,
will rally 1,200 suddenly-reformed inmates in a revolt against the corrupted
system, and we figure he's got a pretty good chance to win.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE
Stars Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Haring, Justin Theroux, Dan Hedaya, Ann Miller.
Directed by David Lynch. Scheduled opening: Oct. 12.
A few years ago, long after "Twin Peaks" escalated into anti-commercial
surrealism, Lynch was visited (perhaps from the planet K-PAX) by television
executives who invited him to make a pilot for another series.
Whatever you like, they said. He made it, and the network hated it. Now, it's a
cause celebre among cineastes, many of whom saw it at its world premiere in
Cannes earlier this year. Its new producers ponied up extra cash for the
post-production work necessary for Lynch to reshape it as a stand-alone
feature, and he took away the festival's Best Director prize for it. Critics
there described this strange tale of an amnesiac actress befriended by a
wanna-be starlet as vintage Lynch — the maker of "Blue Velvet," not "The
Straight Story" — with overlapping storylines, dangerous characters and a
rush of inscrutable symbolism. It has no major stars, but neither did "Twin
Peaks."
FROM HELL
Stars Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm, Robbie Coltrane, Paul Rhys.
Directed by Albert and Allen Hughes. Scheduled opening: Oct. 19.
Jack the Ripper is one of the most popular serial killers in movies, a virtual
hero in some of the more perverse tales spun from the notorious prostitute
killings in fog-bound Victorian London. And now he's in the unlikely hands of
the Hughes brothers, who warmed up for this English menace with their own
"Menace II Society" and "American Pimp." In a role once assigned to Brad Pitt,
Depp plays Inspector Fred Abberline, a troubled cop with possibly psychic
abilities, and Graham is Polly, one of the streetwalkers in harm's way. The
project is adapted from Alan Moore's graphic comics.
THE HEIST
Stars Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Rebecca Pidgeon, Delroy Lindo. Directed by
David Mamet. Scheduled opening: Oct. 26.
With a plot that sounds very much like the recent Brando-De Niro-Norton film
"The Score," David Mamet's latest thriller stars Hackman as a jewel thief
pulling one last job before retiring to the Caribbean, and having to outsmart
not only the protectors of the gems but rival thieves. As a filmmaker, Mamet
remains something of a rough stone himself. That's mostly because he likes to
experiment with different genres. But the thriller is the one he has attempted
most often, and which makes the best use of his famously muscular dialogue. The
film co-stars Lindo as Hackman's accomplice and Mamet's wife, Pidgeon, as his
major distraction (ours, too, if reports of her nude scenes are accurate).
K-PAX
Stars Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Alfre Woodard, Mary McCormack. Directed by
Iain Softley. Scheduled opening: Oct 26.
What's a psychiatrist to do? There's a new patient in his ward who claims he's
a tourist from the planet K-PAX, and he's got everybody else in the place —
staff and patients alike — believing him. In fact, the more the psychiatrist
talks to this disarming fellow with an otherworldly command of the galaxy, the
more he begins to doubt his own diagnosis. That's the premise of Gene Brewer's
1995 best seller, which comes to the screen after a long time in development.
Spacey plays the would-be alien and Bridges, who played a similarly
good-natured visitor in "Star Man," is his shrink. Softley ("The Wings of the
Dove") directs what promises to play like a combination of "One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest" and "Forrest Gump."
LIFE AS A HOUSE
Stars Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, Hayden Christensen, Mary Steenburgen,
Jenna Malone. Directed by Irwin Winkler. Scheduled opening: Oct 26.
If you're looking for that sleeper that might arrive in the fall, like
"American Beauty," and hop an early ride on the Oscar train, this could be it.
Kline stars as a man who reacts to the news that he has terminal cancer by
deciding to build his dream house and recruits his estranged son and ex-wife to
help him. Major metaphor alert: strong foundations make strong families. But
Kline is a first-rate actor who hasn't had many strong dramatic roles since
"Sophie's Choice," and Irwin Winkler, a producer ("Rocky") turned director
("Guilty By Suspicion") has shown real talent.
THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF
With Samuel Le Bihan, Mark Dacascos, Monica Bellucci, Emilie Dequenne. Directed
by Christophe Gans. Scheduled opening: Nov. 2.
Back in the 1760s, a bunch of French peasants were killed by some kind of
animal so terrifying their countrymen that King Louis XV faked the capture of a
large wolf and paraded its body in Paris. The real culprit was never caught,
and a legend was born. Christophe Gans and his writers come up with the rest of
the story in this expensive fable — essentially a metaphor for the brewing
French Revolution — about a king's gardener who travels with his
American-Iroquois sidekick to the scene of the maulings and works the mystery
like an 18th century Sherlock Holmes.
THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE
Stars Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, James Gandolfini, Tony Shalhoub,
Jon Polito. Directed by Joel Coen. Scheduled opening: Nov. 2.
Normally, you know a film is in trouble when the advance word is about how good
it looks. But this is a Joel and Ethan Coen movie, and if it looks especially
good, it must be sensational. Though it was shot in color by long-time Coen
collaborator Roger Deakins, it's printed in black and white, which is said to
enrich the film noir-look of the late '40s setting. This is "Blood Simple"
territory for the Coens, a story about a stoic, small-town barber (Thornton)
whose suddenly ambitious scheme to blackmail his wife's lover goes awry in
weird and scary ways. McDormand is his wife and Gandolfini her lover.
MONSTERS, INC.
Animated. Directed by Pete Docter. Scheduled opening: Nov. 2.
Pixar's latest computer-animated film for Disney turns the tables on
time-honored childhood fears. It's about a world where monsters are afraid of
kids! "Don't touch a child; they're toxic," one mutant advises another. With
Billy Crystal voicing a one-eyed something-or-other, and John Goodman, Jennifer
Tilly, Steve Buscemi and others filling out the voice cast, "Monsters, Inc."
makes it payback time for all those bogeyman scares. And, as Billy Crystal
would say, it looks … simply marvelous.
CAT'S MEOW
Stars Kirsten Dunst, Cary Elwes, Jennifer Tilly, Eddie Izzard, Edward Herrmann.
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Scheduled opening: Nov. 9.
Bodanovich's directing history is a mixed bag of inspired movies and drek, and
he's 16 years removed from his last good movie ("Mask"). But the subject matter
of "Cat's Meow" is irresistible to anyone with an interest in Hollywood lore.
What happened to pioneering Hollywood filmmaker Thomas H. Ince aboard William
Randolph Hearst's yacht, Oneida, on November 19, 1924? Ince (played by Elwes)
died that day, but how and why? From acute indigestion, the recorded cause? Or,
as urban legend has it, from a bullet fired by Hearst (Herrmann), who was
thought to have been aiming at Charlie Chaplin (Izzard), whom he suspected of
dallying with his mistress (Dunst)? Ince was cremated without an autopsy, so
we'll never know. But the legend persists, largely because one of the only
witnesses to Ince's death, gossip columnist Louella Parsons (Tilly), soon after
got a lifetime contract with the Hearst organization and never mentioned Ince
again.
SHALLOW HAL
Stars Jack Black, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jason Alexander, Susan Ward, Tony Robbins.
Directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly. Scheduled opening: Nov. 9.
You might want to prepare yourself for some disgusting fat (note: no r) jokes,
as the Farrelly brothers — the gross-out artists behind "Dumb & Dumber" and
"There's Something About Mary" — advance the art form with a story about a
guy (Black) so shallow he only dates gorgeous women. That is, until he meets a
600-pound version of Paltrow and falls for her inner beauty.
WINDTALKERS
Stars Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Christian Slater, Frances O'Connor, Mark
Ruffalo. Directed by John Woo. Scheduled opening Nov. 9.
The idea of Hong Kong action-master Woo directing a World War II movie is more
frightening than anything short of going to war yourself. His forte is
heightening reality; World War II, as Steven Spielberg demonstrated with
"Saving Private Ryan," came pre-heightened. Maybe Woo will pull back on the
throttle with a story based on the wartime practice of coding messages in the
Navajo language, for which the Japanese had no translators. Cage stars as one
of the G.I.s assigned to protecting Navajo soldiers from being taken alive and
forced to become translators. After the critical drubbing he just took for his
role as an Italian officer in "Captain Corelli's Mandolin," Cage could use a
successful mission.
HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE
Stars Daniel Radcliffe, John Cleese, Richard Harris, Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith,
Alan Rickman, Julie Walters. Directed by Chris Columbus. Scheduled opening:
Nov. 16.
Steven Spielberg, who might have made it too sweet, and Terry Gilliam, who
might have made it too weird, passed on the opportunity to direct what may
become the most popular family movie in history, and Chris Columbus got it.
At first, that sounded ominous. What would the director of such broad comedies
as "Home Alone" and "Mrs. Doubtfire" bring to J.K. Rowling's magical world of
witches and wizards? But, if reason prevails — and too much is at stake for
it not to be — this franchise is going to be as faithful to the first book as
possible. We want to see children flying on brooms, vanishing under the
Invisibility Cloak and playing Quidditch on a sunny afternoon, and the
technology exists for those things to be done as authentically as Rowling
envisioned them. The trailer seems to confirm it. And the casting — Rickman
as the sinister Snape, Harris as Headmaster Dumbledore — seems inspired.
Bring it on.
SPY GAME
Stars Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane, Kimberly
Paige. Directed by Tony Scott. Scheduled opening: Nov. 21.
Here's a mother-daughter's night-out action film if there ever was one —
Redford and Pitt as mentor-pupil spies: "You take the old blond, mom, I'll take
the young one." Father-son teams should like it, too. It's got that old bull,
young bull appeal. Redford plays a CIA agent who, on the eve of retirement,
discovers that his protege (Pitt) has been arrested in China for espionage. As
he heads to the Far East, he recalls tutoring the young agent and their years
as smooth-as-silk partners and the woman (McCormack) who had to choose between
them.
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Ickyboy1
>there's
>this: "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."
Or Philosopher's Stone, for countries that can cope with more than three
syllables.