- Paris, 5 January:
 With great foresight, Swiss director Alain Tanner has commemorated the new millennium and the 25th birthday of his fictional character Jonas, born of course during Tanner's 1976 film Jonas qui aura 25 en l'an 2000 (Jonas Who Will Be 25 In The Year 2000), with a follow-up film, Jonas et Lila: à demain (1999). It could be misleading to call Jonas et Lila a sequel. Realising, perhaps, that the new film would be seen by an audience unfamiliar with the original (the French-Swiss co-production was primarily financed by television), Tanner, working here with co-writer Bernard Comment, makes no direct reference to the earlier film, to its characters or the cataclysmic events of May '68 that are so central to their lives. Jonas (Jérôme Robart) is now 25, and lives in Geneva with his girlfriend Lila (Aïssa Maïga), who is originally from Senegal but long settled in Switzerland. Jonas and Lila are childhood sweethearts and are still smitten with each other. Jonas is a cameraman and occasional documentary filmmaker. -- Full story.
 - Paris, 19 January: The French are masters of the middlebrow farce -- give them an infant's foreskin, a bar-mitzvah-mobile and the imminent arrival of Pope John Paul II, and they'll give you a film like Dante Desarthe's Cours toujours (Dad on the Run). Though the film is self-effacing and trivial to a fault, it deserves points for using a foreskin as a macguffin -- a cinematic first. After his first son's circumcision, young father Jonas (Clément Sibony) is stunned to be told by the mohel that he has three days to bury the foreskin in the ground. (Apparently, director Desarthe was equally ignorant about the ritual until the birth of his first child, and had a similar reaction.) Torn between the demands of his family and those made by his job as a bar-mitzvah pianist, Jonas allows the three days to pass before he gets around to the ritual. It doesn't go as smoothly as he planned, and he's forced to rush through the Paris night in his van topped with a neon star of David, burying and reburying the tiny package. To make matters more absurd, hundreds of thousands of excited Catholics have been mobilized for the Pope's visit to the city. -- Full story.
- Park Cities, 21 January:
 Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. Delicate business is being transacted in this quietly devastating stunner about two estranged siblings, Sammy (Laura Linney) and Terry (Mark Ruffalo), who try to bond as adults. Linney and Ruffalo give richly detailed performances that rank with the year's best in a film without an ounce of Hollywood fat on it, just humor and heartbreak, superbly rendered. Lonergan the gifted playwright (This Is Our Youth, The Waverly Gallery) is the man of the hour, here making a vibrant directing debut. He has an ear for dialogue that is poetically attuned to the nuances of everyday speech. In the first scene, a wife driving home with her husband asks, "Why do they always put braces on teenage girls at the exact moment they're most self-conscious about their appearance?" A truck rears up, there's a crash, and two young kids at home in upstate New York are suddenly orphans. That line about the moments in life that scar us resonates as Lonergan picks up the story with the adult Terry returning home after a long period away to see his sister, who is now the single mother of eight-year-old Rudy (Rory Culkin, Macaulay's brother, who shows real talent). Sammy is the responsible provider, sublimating her wilder side to become a churchgoing pillar of small-town life with a sensible job at a bank. Terry is the fuck-up, a hot-tempered nomad out to hustle a few bucks off sis. Terry's short visit, in which he tries to reconnect with Sammy and forge a bond with Rudy, is the core of the movie. -- Full story.
- Park Cities, 29 January: The jury has announced the winners for this year's Sundance Film Festival. It awarded its Grand Jury Prizes to Long Night's Journey into Day (documentary) and Girlfight and You Can Count on Me (dramatic). Special Jury Prizes went to the documentaries The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack for artistic achievement and George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire for writing a documentary; in dramatic films to Donal Logue in The Tao of Steve and to the ensemble of Songcatcher for their outstanding performances. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Paragraph 175) won the documentary Directors Award, and Karyn Kusama (Girlfight) took the Award for dramatic films. Audience Awards went to Dark Days (documentary), Saving Grace (world cinema) and Two Family House (dramatic). Kenneth Lonergan won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for his You Can Count on Me. This year's Tribute to Independent Vision Award was presented to Kevin Spacey.
- Los Angeles, 31 January: The Directors Guild of America has named Steven Spielberg the recipient of its highest honor, the lifetime-achievement award previously named for motion picture pioneer D. W. Griffith. Spielberg will collect the hardware March 11.
- Aspen, 14 February: Comedian Jerry Lewis stunned audiences Saturday at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, when he said he doesn't like women comics and views women as "producing machines" for children. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 18 February: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may take legal action against Web gossip site Aint-it-cool-news.com for publishing a supposed advance list of Oscar® nominees -- even though the info was wrong. (Full story.) In other Oscar® news, for the first time in history, the Academy is allowing its strictly protected, trademarked Oscar® statuette to be used promotionally -- the golden guy will adorn plastic Diet Pepsi cups. -- Full story.
- Berlin, 21 February: Magnolia won the Berlin Film Festival's best film award today, the prestigious Golden Bear. Denzel Washington won best actor for his performance in The Hurricane.
- New York, 25 February:
 These days, we're used to seeing Michael Douglas in all his airbrushed glory. So perhaps the best thing about Wonder Boys is seeing Douglas, an unquestionably good actor when he puts his mind to it, drop that charade to play Grady Tripp, a once-great novelist, now a creative writing teacher at Carnegie-Mellon, caught in a mid-life crisis. In fact, it's not really a good weekend for Grady: his married girlfriend (Frances McDormand) has just told him she is pregnant; his flamboyant editor (Robert Downey, Jr.) is visiting to check on the progress of his new, still unfinished book, and to top it off, he finds himself playing guardian and mentor to James Leer (Tobey Maguire), his talented but rather strange student. Witty, intelligent, and sophisticated, Wonder Boys is a Hollywood rarity. A film with the courage to do what it wants, safe in the knowledge that its characters are strong, funny, and interesting enough to suck the audience in. You might come to expect it from director Curtis Hanson, who made the modern classic L.A. Confidential", and he has come up trumps once again, drawing excellent performances from this fine ensemble cast. Particularly good is Douglas as the world-weary author trying to find his spark amongst the snowy surroundings. Quite frankly, with the formulaic, blockbuster dirge frequently spilled out by Tinselown these days, we could do with more Wonder Boys. -- Full story.
 - Paris, 1 March: With Le Goût des autres (The Taste of Others), French cinema has once again produced an exemplary ensemble piece, with a script as warm, witty and insightful as the performances. In this case, it probably helped that the script was written by two of the stars, one of whom, Agnès Jaoui, is also making her directorial debut. Her acting background is evident in her direction, giving the cast the freedom to bring every last character to life with total conviction. The film centers on Mr. Castella, a rich but uneducated and uncultured businessman, played to perfection by Jaoui's co-writer and long-term partner, Jean-Pierre Bacri. Between his intolerable wife, an officious English teacher and a tough business deal, life is less than satisfying. He needs passion and emotion and finds them unexpectedly on a reluctant trip to a local theatre to see some boring play or other. Giving a powerful performance in the lead role is Anne Alvaro as the teacher, Clara. From this moment, he develops a flattering obsession with her and her cultural tastes. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 14 March:
 Well, here it is - the first great Julia Roberts performance. Roberts plays the titular character, a badly-dressed human rights crusader, in Steven Soderbergh's latest film, Erin Brockovich, which premieres today. After receiving what was supposed to be a clerical job from lawyer Albert Finney, Roberts quickly tackles her first case: The poisoning of a small town by a big company. Of course, nobody thinks she's up to it, but she's got a lot of spunk and determination and gosh darned it, she's gonna prove everyone wrong. And that she does. Soderbergh's film tells a familiar David vs Goliath story, but the characters and the performances really make this movie stand out. Roberts, of course, essentially steals the spotlight from everyone else - she's in virtually every scene - but she's very good here. She's taken her ingratiating persona and flipped it. She's still ingratiating, but now she's using it to her advantage. Witness, for example, the scene in which she flaunts her uplifted bosom for the sole purpose of gaining access to key files. It's hard to imagine another actress pulling this off without appearing sleazy. When Roberts does it, it's endearing. -- Full story.
 - Paris, 15 March: François Ozon's third feature, Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes (Water Drops On Burning Rocks), is a treat for devotees of European film culture. In adapting for the cinema a play written in the mid-60s (but never staged) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ozon conjures a complex film experience out of what would have been relatively thin -- if typically provocative -- theatrical material. The reasons why Fassbinder never directed the play are a matter of speculation; perhaps he considered this first work an apprentice exercise -- the claustrophobically perverse sexual-power dynamic between young student Franz (Malik Zide) and older sophisticate Léopold (Bernard Giraudeau) finds echoes in the relationship between the two gay protagonists of Fox and his Friends (1975) and the lesbian couple in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972). Having already established his credentials as a pasticheur in Sitcom (1998), Ozon here adopts some of the most obvious stylistic traits of mid-period Fassbinder. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 20 March: Oscar®'s great adventure has ended in the most unlikely of places: a dumpster in one of L.A.'s seedier sections. Crates containing at least 52 of the 55 statuettes swiped from a Southern California loading dock a week ago were discovered last night by a dumpster diver in trash bins behind a 24-hour supermarket and coin-op laundromat. Meanwhile, Los Angeles police announced today that arrests have been made in connection with the Oscar® heist. Two (now former) employees with Roadway Express, the shipping company that lost the little golden guys back on March 10, are charged with stealing the statuettes and subsequently dumping in the bins. More details are expected later today. -- Full story.
 - Los Angeles, 26 March:
 American Beauty has won five Oscars® at the 72nd Academy Awards - including best picture, best director for Sam Mendes and best actor for Kevin Spacey. The dark satire on American suburbia's success also won best cinematography and best original screenplay. Accepting his best director prize, Mendes - who had never made a feature film before making American Beauty - thanked Steven Spielberg's production company DreamWorks for "having the courage to hire a bloke from England to direct a film about American suburbia". For Spacey, it was the second Academy Award of his career. He won best supporting actor for 1995's The Usual Suspects. Newcomer Hilary Swank, 25, beat Spacey's co-star Annette Bening to the best actress prize for her role in Boys Don't Cry, based on the true story of Teena Brandon, who lived her life as a man called Brandon Teena in Nebraska before being murdered. Meanwhile, British movie icon Michael Caine took the best supporting actor prize for The Cider House Rules. In an emotional acceptance speech Caine told the audience he "did not feel like being the winner", and paid tribute to each of his fellow nominees. He singled out 11-year-old Haley Joel Osment, nominated for The Sixth Sense, calling his achievement "astonishing". It is Caine's second Academy Award. He first won in 1987 for Hannah and Her Sisters. Angelina Jolie, the 24-year-old daughter of actor Jon Voight, took the best supporting actress prize for her role in Girl, Interrupted. One of the night's memorable lines came from Mel Gibson as he introduced the Best Original Screenplay award: "Consider the writer. Locked away in a lonely room, waiting for Lady Muse to alight gracefully and turn the stark blank empty void of a page into the stuff of masterpiece... geez, who writes this stuff?" -- Full story.
- New York, 28 March: The Sixth Sense is now the 10th highest grossing film of all-time in North America, about $290.3 million.
- Los Angeles, 31 March:
 In Stephen Frears' latest film, High Fidelity, arrested development confronts 30-something Rob Gordon (John Cusack) when Laura (Iben Hjehle), his smart and successful lover, leaves him because he hasn't changed since they met. He reviews his top five worst breakups (he constantly makes top five lists, though usually about music). He recalls each breakup, reconnects with these former loves to find out why they dumped him, and wallows in misery losing Laura. Much of it plays out at his vinyl record store where he and two clerks (Todd Louiso and Jack Black), socially-inept savants, live and breathe obscure contemporary music. Rob makes fruitless attempts to win Laura back, indulges in new relationships laced with fantasy (notably with exotic singer-songwriter Lisa Bonet), and tries introspection. This one is worth seeing just for the soundtrack.
- Marin County, 10 April: George Lucas announced that he will use high-definition digital cameras to shoot "most" of the live-action scenes in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, due to start shooting in June. -- Full story.
 - San Francisco, 21 April: Previously criticized for her marginal acting skills, Sofia Coppola makes her feature directorial debut with The Virgin Suicides, which opens here and in Los Angeles and New York today, and silences her detractors. No amount of coaching from her director father (Francis Ford Coppola) or husband (Spike Jonze) could have guaranteed a film this assured, and in adapting Jeffrey Eugenides's novel, Coppola demonstrates the sensitivity and emotional depth that this material demands. Surely the pain of youth and public criticism found its way into her directorial voice; in the story of four sisters who self-destruct under the steady erosion of their youthful ideals, one can clearly sense Coppola's intimate connection to the inner lives of her characters. Played in a delicate minor key, the film is heartbreaking, mysterious, and soulfully funny, set in a Michigan suburb of the mid-1970s but timeless and universal to anyone who's been a teenager. The four surviving Lisbon sisters lost a sibling to suicide, and as its title suggests, the film will chart their mutual course to oblivion under the vigilance of repressive parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods, perfectly cast). But The Virgin Suicides is more concerned with life in that precious interlude of adolescence, when the Lisbon girls are worshipped by the neighborhood boys, their notion of perfection epitomized by Lux (Kirsten Dunst) and her storybook love for high-school stud Trip (Josh Hartnett). Unfolding at the cusp of innocence and sexual awakening, and recalled as a memory, The Virgin Suicides is, ultimately, about the preservation of the Lisbon sisters by their own deaths -- suspended in time, polished to perfection, and forever untainted by adulthood. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- Paris, 26 April:
 Taste, obsession and the temptations of the good life swirl around Une affaire de goût (An Matter of Taste), a deliciously dark tale of insidious seduction. Bernard Giraudeau is the urbane millionaire aesthete Frederic, a bored industrialist whose search for an "acceptable" food taster ends when he discovers the sensitive palette and refined tastes of working-class waiter Nicolas (Jean-Pierre Lorit). It soon becomes clear that Frederic wants more than simply a taster. The exhaustive training regimen introduces Nicolas to the gourmet food, fine wines and luxurious lifestyle that will be his with the position, as much seduction as shaping. In return, Nicolas becomes Frederic's double, a stand-in to experience the world that the physically meek and socially withdrawn businessman can't or won't. He's part self-made doppleganger and part plaything at the beck and call, at the mercy, of the emotionally controlling and demanding Frederic. Director Bernard Rapp elegantly melds the sexual power games of Rainer Werner Fassbinder with the dark doubles and mad obsessives of Alfred Hitchcock for this portrait in possession and control. -- Full story.
 - Los Angeles, 1 May: A big-budget summer epic with money to burn and a scale worthy of its golden Hollywood predecessors, Ridley Scott's Gladiator premieres today. It's a rousing, grisly, action-packed epic that takes moviemaking back to the Roman Empire via computer-generated visual effects. While not as fluid as the computer work done for, say, Titanic, it's an impressive achievement that will leave you marveling at the glory that was Rome, when you're not marveling at the glory that is Russell Crowe. Starring as the heroic general Maximus, Crowe firmly cements his star status both in terms of screen presence and acting chops, carrying the film on his decidedly non-computer-generated shoulders as he goes from brave general to wounded fugitive to stoic slave to gladiator hero. Gladiator's plot is a whirlwind of faux-Shakespearean machinations of death, betrayal, power plays, and secret identities (with lots of faux-Shakespearean dialogue ladled on to keep the proceedings appropriately "classical"), but it's all briskly shot, edited, and paced with a contemporary sensibility. Even the action scenes, somewhat muted but graphic in terms of implied violence and liberal bloodletting, are shot with a veracity that brings to mind -- believe it or not -- Saving Private Ryan, even if everyone is wearing a toga. As Crowe's nemesis, the evil emperor Commodus, Joaquin Phoenix chews scenery with authority, whether he's damning Maximus's popularity with the Roman mobs or lusting after his sister Lucilla (beautiful but distant Connie Nielsen); Oliver Reed, in his last role, hits the perfect notes of camp and gravitas as the slave owner who rescues Maximus from death and turns him into a coliseum star. Director Scott's visual flair is abundantly in evidence, with breathtaking shots and beautiful (albeit digital) landscapes, but it's Crowe's star power that will keep you in thrall -- he's a true gladiator, worthy of his legendary status. Hail the conquering hero! -- Mark Englehart, Amazon.com
- Cannes, 10 May: Commissioned by the heads of the 2000 Cannes Film Festival to make an opening-night short commemorating cinema as it enters its second full century, Jean-Luc Godard instead offers up L'Origine du XXIème siècle (Origins of the 21st Century), a 17-minute barrage of re-edited footage of wars and Nazi atrocities, interspersed with clips of Maurice Chevalier in Gigi and Godard's own À bout de souffle.
- New York 12 May:
 Perhaps the least important thing about this latest film version of Shakespeare's Hamlet, which opens in Los Angeles and New York today, is its setting in modern-day New York. Yes, such locales as the Guggenheim Museum are used wittily; answering machines and faxes are logically worked into the plot; and it was both inspired and entirely appropriate to make the prince of Denmark a moody, introspective filmmaker whose avant-garde collages provide the context for some of his famous monologues. All of which would be so much pleasantly humorous eye-candy if it didn't come hand in hand with a sympathy for and understanding of this remarkable cast of characters. For that, ultimately, is what makes Michael Almereyda's Hamlet such a delight to watch. Forget that the immortal rumination on suicide is placed in a Blockbuster Video aisle and notice instead how Ethan Hawke's own youthful, callow arrogance makes Hamlet's vacillations believable. And how the comical but infantilizing way Bill Murray's Polonius dotes upon his daughter Ophelia (Julia Stiles) -- and her mute acceptance of his attentions -- lead her to thoughts of a watery grave even before her bout of madness. And also notice how much Claudius truly does love Gertrude (when gazing at her, Kyle MacLachlan's face relaxes from its usual plasticity) and how Sam Shepard's ghost is less vengeful or tortured than stiffened by remorse. These are the shining moments of invention in Almereyda's bold updating of the play, and they are why this will be a film to watch and enjoy long after its setting has made it as much a period piece as Olivier's adaptation, with its broodingly lit castle, or Branagh's, with its gleaming 19th-century court. -- Bruce Reid, Amazon.com
- London, 16 May: British-born actress Elizabeth Taylor was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, the female equivalent of a knight, today by Queen Elizabeth II.
 - Cannes, 21 May:
 The Y2K Cannes Film Festival wrapped up today after 12 days that resembled an orchestra of cartoon sound effects: a little bit of buzz, a lot of pop... and a touch of Björk. But in the end, it was Danish helmer Lars von Trier who came away with the festival's top honors -- and some widely varying opinions -- as his brooding musical melodrama Dancer in the Dark won the coveted Palme d'Or for best movie at today's awards ceremony. The film, starring Icelandic popster turned actress Björk and Catherine Deneuve, was both applauded and booed at its first screening. It was embraced by much of the European press, but others were just plain mad about how it ended. However, Björk did receive the best actress award for the festival. The Golden Palm for short films went to Raymond Red's Anino from the Philippines. The jury awarded its Grand Prize to Wen Jiang's war drama Guizi lai le (Devil on the Doorstep), and jury prizes went to Roy Andersson's Sånger från andra våningen (Songs from the Second Floor) and Samira Makhmalbaf's Takhté siah (Blackboards). Tony Leung Chiu Wai won best actor for his performance in Fa yeung nin wa (In the Mood for Love), a Hong Kong-France-Thailand co-production. The Critics Week Grand Prize went to Amores perros (Love's a Bitch), directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu from Mexico. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 5 June: In a push to consolidate its status in the independent film world, Lions Gate Entertainment is finalizing a deal to pay nearly $50 million to buy Los Angeles-based film company Trimark Pictures, Inc.
- Burbank, 6 June:
 Twentieth Century Fox has come out of the celluloid closet and entered the digital age at full throttle with today's historic premiere of Titan A.E.. The studio beamed its animated sci-fi epic from Burbank, California, over the Internet to a digital projector in Atlanta, making it the first time a Hollywood studio has distributed a film without, well, film. It also foreshadows how the digital revolution may one day make Hollywood's method of distribution obsolete and make celluloid go the way of the dodo, with flicks simply beamed via the Web (over a secure line, of course) to a digital theater near you. -- Full story.
 - Los Angeles, 14 June: The American Film Institute (AFI) announced the 100 funniest American films, as selected by a blue-ribbon panel of leaders from across the film community, last evening during a three-hour special television event. Some Like It Hot, the 1959 classic starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon which was written, directed and produced by Billy Wilder was ranked #1. Following Some Like It Hot in the top 10, in order, were: Tootsie (#2), Dr. Strangelove... (#3), Annie Hall (#4), Duck Soup (#5), Blazing Saddles (#6), M*A*S*H (#7), It Happened One Night (#8), The Graduate (#9) and Airplane! (#10). -- Full story.
- Paris, 21 June:
 A slightly caustic view of secret forces at work -- namely, serendipity of the Magnolia variety -- Laurent Firode's Le Battement d'ailes du papillon (The Beating of Butterfly's Wings) is too irreverent to be arch. Life paths intersect at Rube Goldberg junctures, karmic acts circle around, small events trigger larger ones, and the two dozen or so characters glance off each other like slow-motion bullets ricocheting around a small room. Amélie's Audrey Tautou plays another wide-eyed urban sprite, this one informed by a horoscope-reading stranger that she'll meet the love of her life; from there, it's cross-purposes, fateful heads of lettuce and splats of bird crap, bad luck, good luck, que séra séra. The original title refers to the meteorologists' much abused Butterfly Effect (a butterfly in Peking = altered storm systems in New York), but Firode's characters are hardly far apart, and their arbitrary connections are seductive but trite, particularly once you realize the entire machine has been engineered to bring Tautou face to face with her dream date. Being French, the film at least has indelible details -- something a Hollywood remake would fix but good. -- Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice
 - New York, 21 June: In Nick Park's Chicken Run, Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha) leads a group of chickens as they try to escape from Tweedy's farm. After failure upon failure, life takes a nasty turn as the Tweedys decide to go into making chicken pies. Yet help appears to come in the shape of Rocky (Mel Gibson). Rocky, a rooster, flies into the farm giving hope to Ginger that she and her team can learn how to fly out. It's The Great Escape as performed by chickens and is every bit as good as you could imagine. No pun is left unused but it's all done with such immense charm that you are completely won over by this clay world. More, you come to care greatly for these chickens and become nothing short of proud of Ginger and her efforts. There was a fear that in the UK this US-backed movie by the makers of Wallace and Gromit would bow to American audiences and you may be suspicious of its use of Gibson as Rocky. But, not to give anything anyway, it is Ginger who is the hero and the star and there are as many anti-American gags as could be done without losing the film's glorious good humor. -- Full story.
- London, 25 June: A crown-jeweled cast of India's biggest film stars gathered at London's Millennium Dome on Saturday night for the Bollywood Oscars®. The event: the first International Indian Film Awards Ð designed to stress the cultural and economic importance of the world's second biggest film industry.
- Los Angeles, 28 June:
 The Patriot deserves a salute as the first Hollywood epic about the American Revolution to successfully blend ferocity and feeling (Johnny Tremain was Disneyfied dreck, Revolution was desperately stupid, and 1776 was, well, a musical). This thunderous spectacle stars Mel Gibson as farmer Benjamin Martin, a South Carolina widower with a brood of seven and no desire to fight the redcoats -- that is, until a sadistic British officer, Col. Tavington (the hissable Jason Isaacs), orders Benjamin's eldest son, Gabriel (Heath Ledger), hanged for treason and commits an act of such despicable brutality against another Martin son, a mere boy, that Benjamin unleashes all of his demons. It is remarkable to see a mainstream movie -- the team of director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin is known for the escapist likes of Stargate, Independence Day and, yikes, Godzilla -- patrolling such rough terrain. And Gibson, who gives one of his best performances, doesn't shrink from exploring the dark side of the American character. -- Full story.
 - Paris, 7 July: Premiered last night on French television, Agnès Varda's Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (The Gleaners & I) opens in theaters today. A side-door entrance into the French character and economy, Varda's eccentric and thoroughly winning film is jam-packed with information, personalities, and affecting images, and its downbeat, slightly bedraggled air is perfectly married with its subject. Varda spent nearly a year touring France with a small crew and several tiny DV cameras, capturing the people who scavenge and salvage the food and objects left behind by others. Gleaning is protected by law in France, but the laws vary from province to province, from potato fields to oyster beds, and from private property to public space. Tied together by Varda's voice-over narration, the film allows all kinds of digressions from its central subject: whether individuals can sustain themselves on society's discards and waste. Throughout, Varda likens her filmmaking to the gleaning of ideas and images from interior and exterior journeys. A woman in her early seventies working in a profession that is as youth-oriented and male-dominated as when her first feature, Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), made her the only female director of the New Wave, Varda is in some ways as marginal as most of her subjects. "I have the feeling that I'm an animal," she comments over a close-up of her wrinkled hand, accidentally caught by her own camera. "Worse, an animal I do not know." -- Full story.
- London, 10 July: Director Ridley Scott finally confirmed to Britain's Channel 4 the long-held belief by Blade Runner fans that Harrison Ford's character is really an android replicant.
- Los Angeles, 12 July: Eastman Kodak is paying $75 million to put its name on the new Hollywood theater where the Academy Awards ceremony will be broadcast for the next 20 years.
- Los Angeles, 14 July: Director Steven Spielberg is commissioning a group of international filmmakers through his Shoah foundation to make documentaries about the Holocaust set in five countries: Poland, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Russia and Hungary.
- New York, 21 July:
 In Robert Zemeckis' new supernatural thriller, What Lies Beneath, a woman believes that a visitor from another dimension is trying to guide her into a sinister mystery. Feeling lonely after her daughter leaves home for college, Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) begins to sense that something is wrong in her house, and feels a spirit is trying to contact her. At first her husband Norman (Harrison Ford), a scientist doing research in genetics, attributes her paranormal beliefs to stress or possibly a nervous breakdown, and sends her to a psychiatrist (Joe Morton) who puts no more stock in Claire's stories than does Norman. While Claire's contention that someone or something sinister is afoot leads her down a number of blind alleys, in time she becomes convinced that the mysterious happenings at her home are somehow connected to the disappearance of a woman who was a student at the nearby college -- and bore a striking resemblance to Claire. What Lies Beneath marks the writing debut of Clark Gregg, better known as an actor, whose script is based on a story by himself and Sarah Kernochan; the supporting cast includes Diana Scarwid as Claire's best friend Jody, and James Remar and Miranda Otto as a contentious couple living next door. -- Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
 - Los Angeles, 4 August: Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, who left the canals for California many years ago, is the kind of major player who has the creative freedom (because of his juggernaut commercial success) to make any film he wants. Most folk in the cinemagoing universe have probably seen Robocop, Total Recall, and Basic Instinct, and part of Verhoeven's appeal is that -- in the midst of the mainstream -- he keeps supplying us with moments of oddity, or at least moments to remember. Each of his films (including Soldier of Orange, one of Holland's best ever pictures) has at least one striking image, and Basic Instinct famously delivered Sharon Stone's uncrossed legs. In Hollow Man we are soon struck by the bloody disintegration of a mouse, and this is only the first of quite a few unsettling, semi-unpleasant images, like Kevin Bacon losing his skin, his bones and finally his entire self in an experiment of his own making. He is Sebastian Caine, a super-scientist, arrogant maverick and egotist from the first division ("Da Vinci never slept", he quips) who thinks nothing of lying to the Pentagon, whose members agree to support his experiments with invisibility (and in Caine's case, he believes, invincibility). Caine succeeds with animals, and Isabel the gorilla (in one of Verhoeven's knockout visual triumphs) is rendered both invisible and visible again. Ordered not to tinker with humans, Caine naturally disobeys and, fancying the power of being invisible, makes himself a guinea-pig. His first step towards the advance of mankind is to undo his colleague's cardigan and fondle her (Elisabeth Shue). Hollow Man is a film of two parts, with part two belonging to another, less original film. When it is a character study of Caine, and is very much anchored in his psyche, it has bags of dramatic force; when it is reduced to a race-against-time thriller (colleagues struggling to stop Caine becoming a mass murderer), it becomes the silliest kind of cartoon, with one of the scientists, his stomach already sliced in half, finding the energy to zip up a steel cable to prevent Shue from being squashed between a lift and a hard place. Hokey lines abound. Psychology 3, action 0. -- Full story.
- Paris, 15 August:
 Shown at Cannes, Tokyo and Munich, Dominik Moll's Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien (With a Friend Like Harry) opens in theaters here today. It takes nearly an hour for anything unusual to happen in the film, but that first hour is oddly unsettling. German filmmaker Moll reveals the trouble with Harry (Sergi López) with low-key precision, his thriller sensibility channeled from Hitchcock through Claude Chabrol, while emphasizing casual conversation in the style of Eric Rohmer. Harry's found Michel (Laurent Lucas) in a public restroom, identifying himself as an old schoolmate who remembers far too much about Michel, even though Michel has no recollection of Harry at all. But Harry's an ingratiating type, and nice enough on the surface, so Michel invites Harry and his girlfriend, Plum (Sophie Guillemin), to the summer cottage he's renovating with his wife, Claire (Mathilde Seigner), and their three young daughters. The Spanish actor López modulates his performance so carefully that Harry's psychosis -- never explained, but strangely compelling -- reverberates well beyond the film's shocking conclusion. It turns out Harry's been a helpful friend after all, but that's cold comfort in a film that warns us against the kindness of strangers. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
 - Los Angeles, 18 August: In The Cell, schizoid serial killer Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) has been captured at last, but a neurological seizure has rendered him comatose, and FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughan) has no way to determine the location of Stargher's latest and still-living victim. To probe the secrets contained in Stargher's traumatized psyche, the FBI recruits psychologist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez), who has mastered a new technology that allows her to enter the mind of another person. What she finds in Stargher's head is a theater of the grotesque, which, as envisioned by first-time director Tarsem Singh, is a smorgasbord of the surreal that borrows liberally from the Brothers Quay, Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, Hieronymous Bosch, Salvador Dali, and a surplus of other cannibalized sources. This provides one of the wildest, weirdest visual feasts ever committed to film, and The Cell earns a place among such movie mind-trips as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Altered States, What Dreams May Come, and Un chien andalou. Is this a good thing? Sure, if all you want is freakazoid eye-candy. If you're looking for emotional depth, substantial plot, and artistic coherence, The Cell is sure to disappoint. The pop-psychology pablum of Mark Protosevich's screenplay would be laughable if it weren't given such somber significance, and Singh's exploitative use of sadomasochistic imagery is repugnant (this movie makes Se7en look tame), so you're better off marveling at the nightmare visions that are realized with astonishing potency. The Cell is too shallow to stay in your head for long, but while it's there, it's one hell of a show. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 27 August: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is suing a memorabilia dealer to get back Judy Garland's special Oscar® she won for her role as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
- Paris, 30 August:
 Caroline Vignal's Les Autres filles (Other Girls) introduces a talented woman director who graduated with a degree in linguistics and modern literature before entering FEMIS, the French film school, to study screenwriting. Her first short feature, the 11-minute Solène change de tête (Solène Changes Her Face, 1998), was an immediate success and received invitations to several festivals. Her second short feature, Roule ma poule (Take It Easy, 1999) proved to be even more successful by winning three top awards: the Prix Louis Daquin for the screenplay, the Prix Canal Plus at Grenoble, and the Special Jury Prize at Alès. Both shorts in turn prepared the way for Les Autres filles, a project she began while studying screenplay writing at FEMIS. "You have to build up your confidence before taking that important step towards a first feature film," Caroline Vignal said. "The short films permitted me to demystify the theme and to swallow a bit of the fear before shooting a feature." In Les Autres filles Solange (Julie Leclercq), a shy 15-year-old from a village in southern France, leaves home and her parents to enroll at a trade school in Toulouse to learn how to become a hairdresser. She strikes up a friendship with Gary (Benoîte Sapim), who is completely her opposite: fun-loving, street-wise, chatterbox with a loud sense of humour. Through Gary she meets other girlfriends, who are into boys, disco dancing, and changing the colour of their hair whenever the notion hits them. Solange wants to be like her girlfriends, save for one hitch: she's still a virgin, and it weighs on her like a millstone. Once she decides to get rid of the burden, the next question is how. More than a tale of sex and teenagers, this one has enough twists in it to surprise, titillate, and tug at the heart.
- Venice, 1 September: Robert Altman world premieres his new comedy, Dr. T and the Women, Friday night at the Venice Film Festival, the first time he's in the official competition since 1993's Short Cuts. The director also revealed his next project will be Gosford Park, a ensemble piece set in London between the two world wars.
- Lincoln, NM, 7 September: Richard Farnsworth, the unassuming former stuntman whose acting career was jumpstarted this year with an Oscar® nomination for The Straight Story, has died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 80. Sheriff's deputies confirmed that Farnsworth died Friday afternoon at his rural Lincoln, New Mexico, home. Farnsworth's fiancée, Jewely Van Valin, said he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer several years ago, and authorities speculate that he committed suicide because of the pain. -- Full story.
- New York, 15 September:
 Almost Famous is the movie Cameron Crowe has been waiting a lifetime to tell. The fictionalization of Crowe's days as a teenage reporter for Creem and Rolling Stone has all the well-written characters and wonderful "movie moments" that we expect from Crowe, but the film has an intangible something extra -- an insider's touch that will turn the film into the ode to '70s rock & roll for years to come. We are introduced to Crowe's alter ego, William Miller (Patrick Fugit), at home, where his progressive mom (Frances McDormand, just superb) has outlawed rock music and sister Anita (Zooey Deschanel) has slipped him LPs that will "set his mind free." Following the wisdom of Creem's disheveled editor, Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman in an instant-classic performance), Miller gets on the inside with the up-and-coming band Stillwater (a fictionalized mixture of the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, and others). A simple visit with the band turns into a three-week, life-altering odyssey into the heyday of American rock. Of the characters he meets on the road, the two most important are groupie extraordinaire Penny Lane (Kate Hudson in a star-making performance) and Stillwater's enigmatic lead guitarist (Billy Crudup), who keeps stringing Miller along for an interview. From the handwritten credits (done by Crowe) to the bittersweet finale, Crowe's comedic valentine is an indelible, heartbreaking romance of music, women, and the privilege of youth. --Doug Thomas, Amazon.com
 - New York, 19 September: Best in Show, the new movie from the people who brought you Waiting for Guffman, premieres today. Shown earlier this month at the Toronto Film Festival, the film follows a clutch of dog owners as they prepare and preen their dogs to win a national competition. They include the yuppie pair (Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock) who fear they've traumatized their Weimaraner by having sex in front of him; a suburban husband and wife (Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara) with a terrier and a long history of previous lovers on the wife's part; the Southern owner of a bloodhound (Christopher Guest, who also directs) with aspirations as a ventriloquist; and many more. Following the same "mockumentary" format of Spinal Tap and Guffman, Best in Show takes in some of the dog show officials, the manager of a nearby hotel that allows dogs to stay there, and the commentators of the competition (a particularly knockout comic turn by Fred Willard as an oafish announcer). The movie manages to paint an affectionate portrait of its quirky characters without ever losing sight of the ridiculousness of their obsessive world. Almost all of the scenes were created through improvisation. While lacking the overall focus of a written script, Best in Show captures hilarious and absurd aspects of human behavior that could never be written down. The movie's success is a testament to both the talent of the actors and Guest's discerning eye. -- Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com
- Paris, 27 September:
 Legendary police commissioner Niémans (Jean Reno) travels to a remote university village in the Alps to solve a grisly murder while hotheaded Lieutenant Kerkerian (Vincent Cassel) is investigating the desecration of the tomb of a young girl killed in an auto accident 20 years ago. When the detectives discover that the incidents are related, they reluctantly join forces. Les Rivières pourpres (The Crimson Rivers) looks French but feels American. If it doesn't hit the heights of The Silence of the Lambs or Se7en, it bests many of the thrillers that have followed in their wake. Mathieu Kassovitz directs as if this were high art, which is actually to the film's benefit: the cast is terrific (including Jean-Pierre Cassel, Vincent's father), the cinematography is stunning, and the classy score evokes The Exorcist. Although the mountaintop showdown at the end doesn't quite work, Les Rivières pourpres is still a superior entrant into an increasingly overcrowded genre. -- Kathleen C. Fennessy, Amazon.com
 - New York, 29 September: With only one major star (Denzel Washington), an appealing cast of fresh unknowns, and a winning emphasis of substance over self-indulgent style, Boaz Yakin's Remember the Titans -- which opens nationwide today -- is, like Rudy before it, a football movie that will be fondly remembered by anyone who sees it. Set in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1971, the fact-based story begins with the integration of black and white students at T.C. Williams High School. This effort to improve race relations is most keenly felt on the school's football team, the Titans, and bigoted tempers flare when a black head coach (Washington) is appointed and his victorious predecessor (Will Patton) reluctantly stays on as his assistant. It's affirmative action at its most potentially volatile, complicated by the mandate that the coach will be fired if he loses a single game in the Titans' 13-game season. The players represent a hotbed of racial tension, but as the team struggles toward unity and gridiron glory, Remember the Titans builds on several subplots and character dynamics to become an inspirational drama of Rocky-like proportions. Yakin -- whose debut, Fresh, was one of the best independent films of the 1990s -- understands the value of connecting small scenes to form a rich climactic payoff. Likewise, Washington provides a solid dramatic foundation (his coach is obsessively harsh, but for all the right reasons) while giving his younger co-stars ample time in the spotlight. The result is a film that achieves what it celebrates: an enriching sense of unity that's unquestionably genuine. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- London, 29 September:
 The title character of Billy Elliott is a would-be dancer growing up in a mining community - always a tough existence but during the strikes of the 1980s, an unbearably harsh world. Afraid of the reaction he'll get from family and friends, Billy keeps his newfound and unexpected love of ballet secret. Yet if he's good enough, this could be what saves him from the pit. You are heartless if you don't love every minute of this - and the makers, led by BBC Films, should be very pleased about it, too. It's a simple tale but one that is extremely well told and acted. Fittingly for a story about dance, it doesn't put a foot wrong and is engrossing, funny, very sad, very moving and very uplifting. Jamie Bell as the young Billy Elliot is especially impressive as he manages the complex emotions his character goes through when his secret is discovered and his hopes are blocked. He's also outstanding at the dancing - managing not just to be great at it but also to show us a progression as he struggles to become that great and the effort it takes to keep it up. It's really about anyone who has wanted to do something with their lives but it does also show ballet as being as hard as physical labour. Something does stop this just shy of being perfect, though it really is only marginally short of that. Possibly the tale at heart is too simple and the idea of the child struggling to become an adult is too familiar to make the story as good as the telling. But it's the best British movie for years - and certainly more movingly told than The Full Monty. -- William Gallagher, BBC
- Paris, 4 October:
 Already shown at festivals in Japan and Germany, Claude Mouréras' new film, Tout va bien, on s'en va (Everything's Fine, We're Leaving) opens in theaters today. Grown up sisters Laure (Miou-Miou), Béatrice (Sandrine Kiberlain) and Claire (Natacha Régnier) all live near each other in Lyon and are each successful in their own way. But none of them is prepared when their long-lost father Louis (Michel Piccoli) shows up at their doorstep after a 15-year absence. Béatrice and Laure are at first angry and unforgiving, while Claire shows more sympathy, but soon they all realize that Louis is suffering from symptoms of what may be Alzheimer's disease.
 - New York, 6 October: Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark opens nationwide today. Winner of the Golden Palm at Cannes, the film has made the rounds of European festivals and has already been released in Scandinavia, dividing audiences and critics into those who saw it as a cynical shock-opera from a manipulative charlatan, and others who wept openly at its scenes of raw emotion and heart-rending intensity. There is, however, no in-between. Dancer in the Dark is that rarest of creatures, a film that dares to push viewers to the limits of their feelings. In her first and most probably last screen performance (she has foresworn acting after her bruising on-set rows with von Trier), brittle Icelandic chanteuse Björk plays Selma, a Czech immigrant living in a folksy American small town with her young son, Gene. Selma is going blind and so will Gene if she does not arrange an important operation for him. To cover the expense, Selma works every hour she can, cheating on her eye tests so she can keep working at the local factory long after her vision has become too unreliable to work safely. Her friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve) covers for her at work and tries to help, but Selma refuses any assistance. Jeff (Peter Stormare) is romantically interested in her, but again, she resists his advances. She sublets a house from a local cop, Bill (David Morse), and his wife, Linda (Cara Seymour). When nearly bankrupt Bill asks Selma for a loan, she refuses, but he later returns and steals the money, which she demands back in a furious confrontation. In the ensuing melée, Bill is fatally shot and Selma is arrested and put on trial.
Von Trier's passionate, provocative film runs all our emotional resources dry with suspense, giving us occasional flashes into Selma's gold heart and mind with superb song-and-dance numbers she conjures to banish the nightmare (Björk also wrote the score). At some two-and-a-half hours, it's not for lightweights, but anyone bored with today's smug, "ironic" cinema will relish this as an astonishing assault on the senses and a stark reminder of von Trier's uncompromising talent. -- Damon Wise, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 6 October:
 Robert De Niro and "ha-ha" don't seem to go together. Maybe it's the indelible gallery of mad dogs that the Oscar®-winning actor has played for director Martin Scorsese in films from Raging Bull to Cape Fear. Even in The King of Comedy, he went psycho. But the fact is that De Niro started his film career being roguishly funny in Brian De Palma's Greetings (1968) and Hi Mom (1970). He showed a deft comic touch in the otherwise laborious 1971 farce The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight and in Midnight Run (1988) (go rent them and see). And certainly De Niro's most distinguished recent work hasn't been in turgid dramas like Flawless, The Fan and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but in comedies that let him show his gift for ham (Analyze This) and wry (Wag the Dog).
All of which brings us to Meet the Parents, a hilarious hodgepodge of The In-Laws and Annie Hall, in which De Niro gives his best comic performance to date. Director Jay Roach, who guided both Austin Powers flicks, casts De Niro as retired horticulturalist Jack Byrnes, the very model of suburban WASP respectability with a Colonial house on posh Long Island, a devoted, dithering wife, Dina (Blythe Danner), and two gorgeous daughters, Pam (Teri Polo) and Debbie (Nicole DeHuff). The serviceable script by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg hangs on the premise that Pam, now a teacher in Chicago, is coming home to attend Debbie's wedding, and she's bringing along her new boyfriend to meet the parents. Here's the thing: Dad is really a CIA operative, and the boyfriend is male nurse Greg Focker, played by a never-funnier Ben Stiller as an urban neurotic who feels as lost as Woody Allen in Annie Hall when Diane Keaton tells him sweetly, "You're what Grammy Hall would call a real Jew." Among the supporting cast, Owen Wilson is a merry standout as Kevin, Pam's rich ex-fiance -- it doesn't comfort Greg when Pam says she and Kevin were "just a silly sex thing." But the movie, which wobbles along amiably in a hit-and-miss way, comes down to a goofball duel of wits, and De Niro and Stiller play the crazy comic hell out of it. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 24 October: Twenty-eight television writers who say they have been relegated to Hollywood's "graylist" because of their ages filed a $200 million class-action lawsuit Monday against several major TV networks, studios and talent agencies.
- Paris, 25 October:
 Already shown at the Montréal, Venice and Toronto film festivals, Claude Chabrol's new film, Merci pour le chocolat (Thanks for the Chocolate; a.k.a. Nightcap) opens in theaters today. Chabrol, the most Hitchcockian of the New Wave directors, is at 70 not merely still working, but with this (his 53rd film) has made as many as his distinguished predecessor. Mika (Isabelle Huppert) inherits a gloomy mansion near Lausanne after marrying André, (Jacques Dutronc) a concert pianist and recent widower with a son, Guillaume. Then Jeanne (Anna Mouglalis), a young beauty, turns up on their doorstep with a story that Guillaume and she may have been given to the wrong families following a hospital confusion at birth. She is a talented pianist and soon André is tutoring her as a protegée. After Jeanne discovers that some hot chocolate prepared by Mika for Guillaume has been heavily spiked with a sleeping drug, there is a suspicion that André's wife may have died following a similar concoction prepared by Mika. -- Full story.
 - Paris, 6 November: In 17th century France, a royal command performance doesn't mean the monarch can simply sit back and admire the spectacle. At the court of Louis XIV, the King is the show. Gérard Corbiau's lavish costume drama Le Roi danse (The King Is Dancing) vividly illustrates how the young Louis used dance to project his image to the world and strengthen his hold on power during a turbulent time for the kingdom. The King's rise is told in flashback through the eyes of the court composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully (Boris Terral). Together with the poet and playwright Molière (Tchéky Karyo), they create elaborately choreographed ballets in which the agile young king (Benoît Magimel) takes the leading role. Sublime exercises in self-promotion, these dances see Louis transform himself from a shy, immature dauphin into the all powerful Sun King -- the embodiment of his realm. In his 1994 Oscar®-nominated film, Farinelli: Il Castrato, Corbiau turned the world of baroque music into kinky melodrama. He does the same here, as we watch the bisexual Lully oscillate between debauched hedonism and his platonic love for the King. -- Full story.
- New York, 8 November:
 He's mean, he's green, and he's doesn't like the Yuletide season one bit -- Jim Carrey stars in Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a live-action adaptation of the classic children's story. High atop Mt. Crumpet, the Grinch (Carrey) observes the residents of Whoville joyously preparing to celebrate Christmas. The Grinch was born in Whoville years ago, but was shunned due to his scary appearance, and his unrequited love for Martha May Whovier has turned him bitter; the good cheer of the Whos has been a thorn in his side ever since. Finally the Grinch decides he's had enough of all this happiness, and with the wary aid of his dog Max, the Grinch conspires to steal Christmas from Whoville, making off with their presents, holiday decorations, Christmas trees, and everything else used to enjoy the holiday. Molly Shannon, Christine Baranski, Jeffrey Tambor, and Clint Howard play several of the citizens of Whoville, while Anthony Hopkins narrates (taking over from the late Boris Karloff, who memorably read Dr. Seuss' story in Chuck Jones' 1966 animated adaptation of the story). Ron Howard directs. -- Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
 - Paris, 15 November: A prize-winner at Cannes and shown at the Karlovy and Toronto film festivals, German Michael Haneke's Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages (Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys) opens in theaters today. On a busy Parisian street, Anne (Juliette Binoche), an actress on the brink of success, bumps into Jean (Alexandre Hamidi), the younger brother of her non-committal war photographer partner Georges (Thierry Neuvic). After disclosing that he has run away from his father's farm, Jean insults Maria (Luminita Gheorghiu), a Romanian illegal immigrant by dropping his rubbish into her lap as she begs. The incident, which leads to Maria's deportation, is spotted by Amadou (Ona Lu Yenke), a teacher of deaf children who angrily remonstrates with Jean. It is an incident which briefly links the lives of these five very different people. Haneke's richly complex and intellectually rewarding film -- his first French language feature -- is a characteristically inquisitive and philosophical look at questions of communication, xenophobia, victimization and the abject coldness of contemporary consumer society. Haneke being Haneke the film, much like both Benny's Video (1992) and Funny Games (1997), also calls into question the illusive, deceptive nature of narrative cinema (and degrees of reality) and the collusive, voyeuristic position of the spectator; best demonstrated in a scene where Binoche pleads direct to camera for her life as she rehearses for a part. -- Full story.
- London, 16 November: Oscar® winner Michael Caine was knighted by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday. The actor described himself as "quietly ecstatic" at receiving the honor.
 - Paris, 22 November: Les Blessures assassines (Murderous Maids) opens in theaters today. The 1933 murder of a bourgeois woman and her daughter by their two maids, the Papin sisters Christine (Sylvie Testud) and Léa (Julie-Marie Parmentier), was the first modern media frenzy in France, the "crime of the century." Because of the mystery surrounding the motives behind the crime, the brutality of the killings, the insanity of the murderesses, and the scandal of their incestuous lesbian relationship, the Papin sisters have become burned into the French collective consciousness. There have been numerous artistic interpretations of the gruesome crime, most notably Jean Genet's 1947 play The Maids, which inspired a 1974 English-language film adaptation starring Glenda Jackson and Susannah York. Despite the risks involved in covering territory already well-covered, writer-director Jean-Pierre Denis' Les Blessures assassines, which uses Paulette Houdyer's historical novel as its primary source, is more narratively and psychologically satisfying than previous artistic interpretations. It's a surprisingly fresh take on an old story. Interestingly enough, a feature documentary entitled En quête des sœurs Papin (In Search of the Papin Sisters) by Claude Ventura was also released today. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 6 December:
 Usually it might seem a tad unfair to begin a review by referring to the director's missis. But then the missis in question wouldn't usually be Madonna -- a woman whose ability to reinvent herself several times before breakfast seems in marked contrast to that of hubby Guy Ritchie. Certainly, Snatch (which opens in LA today), a follow-up to the filmmaker's breakthrough film -- the high-energy, expletive-strewn cockney-gangster movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels -- hardly breaks new ground being, well, another high-energy, expletive-strewn cockney-gangster movie. OK, so there are some differences. This time around our low-rent hoodlums are battling over dodgy fights and stolen diamonds rather than dodgy card games and stolen drugs. There has been some minor reshuffling of the cast too, with Sting and Dexter Fletcher making way for the more bankable Benicio Del Toro and Brad Pitt, the latter pretty much stealing the whole shebang as an incomprehensible Irish gypsy. And, sure, people who really, really liked Lock, Stock --or have the memory of a goldfish -- will really, really like this. The suspicion lingers, however, that if the director doesn't do something very different next time around then his career may prove to be considerably shorter than that of his missis. -- Clark Collis, Amazon.com
- New York, 6 December: The National Board of Review, traditionally the first critics group to weigh in with a pre-Oscar best-of list, has tapped the Marquis de Sade flick Quills as the year's top movie. Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) and Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls) were named the top actors.
- College Park, 6 December: The late Jim Henson is honored by his alma mater, the University of Maryland, with a life-size bronze statue featuring the Muppets creator and Kermit to be erected at the student union.
- Los Angeles, 7 December:
 Cast Away, which premieres here today, is a good movie that wants to be much better. While director Robert Zemeckis' earlier film Contact (1997) achieved a kind of mainstream spiritual significance, Cast Away falls just short of that goal. That may explain why the film's most emotionally powerful scene involves the loss of an inanimate object, even as it presents a heart-rending dilemma in its very human final act. It's three movies in one, beginning when punctuality-obsessed Federal Express systems engineer Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) departs on Christmas Eve to escort an ill-fated flight of FedEx packages. Following a mid-Pacific plane crash, movie number two chronicles Chuck's four-year survival on a remote island, totally alone save for a Wilson volleyball (aptly named "Wilson") that becomes Chuck's closest "friend." Movie number three leads up to Chuck's rescue and an awkward encounter with his ex-girlfriend Kelly (Helen Hunt, in a thankless role), for whom Chuck has seemingly risen from the grave. It's fascinating to witness Chuck's emerging survival skills, and Hanks's remarkable physical transformation is matched by his finely tuned performance. With slow, rhythmic camera moves and brilliant use of sound, Zemeckis wisely avoids the postcard prettiness of The Black Stallion and The Blue Lagoon to emphasize the harshness of Chuck's ascetic solitude, and this stylistic restraint allows Cast Away to resonate more than one might expect. Even the final scene -- which feels like a crowd-pleasing compromise -- offers hope without shoving it down our throats. You may not feel the emotional rush that you're meant to feel, but Cast Away remains a respectable effort. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 13 December: In July of 1999, one Florida filmmaker was left in the proverbial woods after allegedly being cheated out of profits for the biggest faux documentary in Hollywood history. One year later, his credit was found. The makers of The Blair Witch Project have settled a lawsuit brought by one Sam Barber, an aspiring filmmaker who accused Blair Witch codirector Daniel Myrick, producer Haxan Films and the movie's distributor, Artisan Entertainment, of cheating him out of a credit on the smash horror phenomenon. Barber -- a cofounder of the Florida-based Barber-Myrick Pictures -- claimed he deserved a stake of the indie scarefest's staggering $245 million domestic gross because he helped pay for Blair Witch's early preproduction costs and developed the film's story, character situations and famous movie trailer. -- Full story.
- New York, 13 December: Tom Hanks was named best actor today by the New York Film Critics Circle for his work in the upcoming Cast Away. Laura Linney was named top actress for You Can Count on Me. Traffic was named best picture.
- New York, 15 December:
 Quills, the new film from Philip Kaufman, opens nationwide today. The Marquis de Sade was a man who liked to stir up trouble, at a time when his native France was in a state of tremendous political turmoil, and this historical drama examines how much controversy he could cause even under repressive circumstances. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, de Sade (Geoffrey Rush) manages to narrowly escape execution during the Reign of Terror, and instead is sentenced to the Charenton Asylum for the Insane. Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix), the priest who heads the asylum, is sympathetic to the political machinations that have put the Marquis in his care, and allows him not only to write what he pleases, but to stage theater pieces using the other patients as actors. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine), a tyrannical doctor overseeing the mental institutions of Napoleonic France, is as outraged as the emperor when he reads Justine, a scabrous volume the Marquis penned while an inmate at Charenton, and he demands that de Sade be stopped. But Royer-Collard soon learns that stopping the Marquis from writing is not so simple; when de Sade's quills and ink are taken from him, he uses wine and even his own blood to write his stories. When these options are no longer available, he dictates his work with the help of Madeline (Kate Winslet), a laundry girl working at the asylum, who is fascinated by the notorious de Sade, though she declines his frequent requests to satisfy his notorious sexual appetites. Kaufman, who previously documented the line between eroticism and literature in Henry & June and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, directs Doug Wright's screenplay, who based it on his play. -- Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
 - New York, 15 December: Having made the rounds of the Venice, Toronto and New York film festivals, Ed Harris's debut film as producer, star and director, Pollock, is released in New York and Los Angeles today. The long road to Pollock began when Harris received a biography of Jackson Pollock from his father, who noticed that his son bore an uncanny resemblance to the artist. Harris's fascination with Pollock matched his physical similarity; the actor chose to direct and star in this impressive film biography. And his devotion assured a work of singular integrity, honoring the artist's achievement in abstract expressionism while acknowledging that Pollock was a tormented, manic-depressive alcoholic whose death at 44 (in a possibly suicidal car crash) also claimed the life of an innocent woman. The film also suggests that Pollock's success was largely attributable to the devotion of his wife, artist Lee Krasner, played with matching ferocity by Marcia Gay Harden in an Oscar®-worthy performance. In many respects a traditional biopic, Pollock begins in 1941 when Pollock meets Krasner, who encourages him and attracts the attention of supportive critic Clement Greenberg (Jeffrey Tambor) and benefactor Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan). As Pollock rises from obscurity to international acclaim, Harris brings careful balance to his portrayal of a driven creator who found peace during those brief, sober periods when art brought release from his tenacious inner demons. The film offers sympathy without sentiment, appreciation without misguided hagiography. As an acting showcase it's utterly captivating. As a compassionate but unflinching exploration of Jackson Pollock's intimate world, there's no doubt that Harris captured the essence of a man whose life was as torturous as his art was redeeming. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- New York, 15 December:
 Chocolat, the new film from Lasse Hallström, opens here and in Los Angeles today. Driven by fate, Vianne (Juliette Binoche) drifts into a tranquil French village with her daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol) in the winter of 1959. Her newly opened chocolatier is a source of attraction and fear, since Vianne's ability to revive the villagers' passions threatens to disrupt their repressive traditions. The pious mayor (Alfred Molina) sees Vianne as the enemy, and his war against her peaks with the arrival of "river rats" led by the Irish gypsy Roux (Johnny Depp), whose attraction to Vianne is immediate and reciprocal. Splendid subplots involve a battered wife (Lena Olin), a village elder (Judi Dench) and her estranged daughter (Carrie-Anne Moss), and Leslie Caron as Mme. Claudel, a widow who has been the longed-for secret love of John Wood. While the film's broader strokes may be regrettable (if not for Molina's rich performance, the mayor would be a caricature), its subtleties are often sublime. Chocolat reminds you of life's simple pleasures and invites you to enjoy them. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 17 December: Ang Lee's martial arts romance Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) named the year's best film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Associaion. Michael Douglas (Wonder Boys) and Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) named best actors.
 - Los Angeles, 22 December: One of the most acclaimed films of the 2000 festival circuit, Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) opens nationwide today. Hong Kong wuxia films, or martial arts fantasies, traditionally squeeze poor acting, slapstick humor, and silly story lines between elaborate fight scenes in which characters can literally fly. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has no shortage of breathtaking battles, but it also has the dramatic soul of a Greek tragedy and the sweep of an epic romance. This is the work of director Ang Lee, who fell in love with movies while watching wuxia films as a youngster and made Crouching Tiger as a tribute to the form. To elevate the genre above its B-movie roots and broaden its appeal, Lee did two important things. First, he assembled an all-star lineup of talent, joining the famous Asian actors Yun-fat Chow and Michelle Yeoh with the striking, charismatic newcomer Zhang Ziyi. Behind the scenes, Lee called upon cinematographer Peter Pau and legendary fight choreographer Yuen Wo-ping, best known outside Asia for his work on The Matrix. Second, in adapting the story from a Chinese pulp-fiction novel written by Wang Du Lu, Lee focused not on the pursuit of a legendary sword known as "The Green Destiny," but instead on the struggles of his female leads against social obligation. In his hands, the requisite fight scenes become another means of expressing the individual spirits of his characters and their conflicts with society and each other. The filming required an immense effort from all involved. Chow and Yeoh had to learn to speak Mandarin, which Lee insisted on using instead of Cantonese to achieve a more classic, lyrical feel. The astonishing battles between Jen (Zhang) and Yu Shu Lien (Yeoh) on the rooftops and Jen and Li Mu Bai (Chow) atop the branches of bamboo trees required weeks of excruciating wire and harness work (which in turn required meticulous "digital wire removal"). But the result is a seamless blend of action, romance, and social commentary in a populist film that, like its young star Zhang, soars with balletic grace and dignity. -- Eugene Wei, Amazon.com
- New York, 22 December:
 Premiered at Cannes in May and released abroad during the past six months, the new film from the Coen brothers, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, finally opens nationwide today. Only Joel and Ethan Coen, the fraternal director and producer team behind art-house hits such as The Big Lebowski and Fargo and masters of quirky and ultra-stylish genre subversion, would dare nick the plot line of Homer's Odyssey for a comic picaresque saga about three cons on the run in 1930s Mississippi. Our wandering hero in this case is one Ulysses Everett McGill, a slick-tongued wise guy with a thing about hair pomade (George Clooney, blithely sending up his own dapper image) who talks his chain-gang buddies (Coen-movie regular John Turturro and newcomer Tim Blake Nelson) into lighting out after some buried loot he claims to know of. En route they come up against a prophetic blind man on a railroad truck, a burly, one-eyed baddie (the ever-magnificent John Goodman), a trio of sexy singing ladies, a blues guitarist who's sold his soul to the devil, a brace of crooked politicos on the stump, a manic-depressive bank robber, and -- well, you get the idea. Into this, their most relaxed film yet, the Coens have tossed a beguiling ragbag of inconsequential situations, a wealth of looping, left-field dialogue, and a whole stash of gags both verbal and visual. O Brother (the title's lifted from Preston Sturges's classic 1941 comedy Sullivan's Travels) is furthermore graced with glowing, burnished photography from Roger Deakins and a masterly soundtrack from T Bone Burnett that pays loving homage to American '30s folk styles -- blues, gospel, bluegrass, jazz, and more. And just to prove that the brothers haven't lost their knack for bad-taste humor, we get a Ku Klux Klan rally choreographed like a cross between a Nuremberg rally and a Busby Berkeley musical. -- Philip Kemp, Amazon.co.uk
- Los Angeles, 22 December:
 Based on the posthumously published memoir by Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls (Antes que anochezca) -- which goes into limited release in the U.S. today -- is artist-director Julian Schnabel's second exercise in artist biography, but where Schnabel's earlier film Basquiat was relatively conventional, this film is bolder in both style and execution. Schnabel is perhaps too enamored of his subject as a noble martyr, lending the film a somewhat inflated sense of importance. Still, it's rare to see an artist's life and work so elegantly interwoven, and Before Night Falls uses all of Arenas's life as its canvas, from impoverished youth to lively gay freedom in mid-1950's Cuba; imprisonment during Castro's antigay regime; and to New York City in 1980, followed by Arenas's battle with AIDS and subsequent suicide (depicted here as assisted) in 1990. Through these extreme rises and falls, Arenas is always writing, his typewriter his most faithful lover and weapon (by way of smuggled manuscripts) against the dark forces that surround him. As Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, Arenas is "a serious actor's dream role: to be a gay Jesus in a modern Passion Play," and Javier Bardem -- the first Spanish actor to be seriously considered for an Oscar® nomination -- inhabits the role with subtle ferocity, charting this emotional odyssey with outer reserve but blazing infernos of internal passion. And while Schnabel suffers from a hyperactive camera, there's poetry here -- visual, dramatic, and literal -- and vibrant humor to temper the deep tragedy of Arenas's life. Schnabel also uses his actor friends to good advantage: a nearly unrecognizable Sean Penn adds an ironic touch to his brief appearance as a peasant, and Johnny Depp is both funny and fearsome in dual roles as a drag queen and vicious army interrogator. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- New York, 25 December:
 Vatel, which opens here today, lavishes beaucoup de francs on re-creating the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV, in the France of 1671, and then kills the effect with a script that's from hunger. Whatever they spent hiring Shakespeare in Love Oscar® winner Tom Stoppard to adapt an original screenplay by Jeanne Labrune, they was robbed. What there is of a plot involves cooking. Gérard Depardieu, looking alarmingly beefy, plays Vatel, the steward to the Prince de Conde (Julian Glover). The prince is going bankrupt, but if Vatel can cook up a feast fit for a king when Louis (Julian Sands) visits the prince's country château all will be well. That's the movie, with Vatel acting like a pre-Food Network Emeril taking time out for bedding a courtesan (Uma Thurman) and stopping the king's brother (Murray Lachlan Young) from buggering little boys. This putrid dish marks a new low for director Roland Joffé and - mon Dieu - he's the guy who gave us Demi Moore in The Scarlet Letter. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
 - Los Angeles, 27 December: You can't get hotter than director Steven Soderbergh right now. So when he decided to turn a generally forgotten British TV serial into a movie, you would imagine he had good reason. And judging by the result - a sprawling, artistic, superbly acted, informative, and mainstream Hollywood movie - he did. Traffic -- which opens here and in New York today -- tells three separate tales, which don't overlap, but are all held together by one thematic thread. Michael Douglas is Robert Wakefield, the newly-appointed US drug czar who is forced to confront addiction first-hand in the shape of his wayward daughter (excellent newcomer Erika Christensen). At the same time, Javier, a noble Mexican cop played by Benicio Del Toro, is fighting a losing battle against his local cartels and decides to stand up and be counted. Added to that is the story of narcotics cops Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman who are trying to get proof that society wife Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is privy to her husband's drug smuggling operation. It's an ambitious undertaking, but one that succeeds thanks to truly award-winning work by all concerned. Not one actor deserves singling out for praise, although Del Toro's understated performance and a heavily-pregnant Zeta-Jones will undoubtedly be associated with Oscar® buzz. -- Full story.
- Washington, DC, 28 December: Apocalypse Now, the 1931 Dracula (starring Bela Lugosi), Network and the original 1971 Shaft among the 25 films inducted into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry Wednesday. The list recognizes "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant motion pictures.
- New York, 29 December:
 Shadow of the Vampire, the new film from E. Elias Merhige goes into limited release today. Clever, engaging, and boosted by the sublime casting of Willem Dafoe as Nosferatu actor Max Schreck, this is a film full of good ideas that are only partially developed. Its premise is ripe with possibilities, but the movie's too slight to register much impact, so you're left to relish its delightful performances and director Merhige's affectionately tongue-in-cheek homage to a landmark of German silent cinema. John Malkovich is aptly loony as the eccentric director F.W. Murnau, whose passion in filming the 1922 classic Nosferatu leads to the extreme casting of Schreck as the vampire, a vision of evil who, in this movie's delightfully twisted imagination, actually is a vampire, sucking the blood of cast and crewmembers who've dismissed Schreck as an overzealous method actor. As these on-set maladies and "accidents" continue, Schreck wields greater control over Murnau, who descends into a kind of obsessive art-for-art's-sake madness until diva costar Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormack, doing wonderful work) is served up as the actor's ultimate motivation. Merhige and his actors (including Cary Elwes, as intrepid cameraman Fritz Wagner) have great fun with this ghastly escapade, and the humor is kept delicately subtle to balance the movie's artistic aspirations. To that end, Dafoe is just right, his bald pate and gaunt features a perfect match for the mysterious Schreck, his grimace and talon-like fingers suggesting a human vulture on the prowl. Likewise, the re-creation of Nosferatu's expressionist style is both fanciful and brilliantly authentic. Too bad, then, that this movie suffers a mild case of vampiric anemia; if it shared the depth and richness of, say, Ed Wood, this might have been a cult classic for the ages. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- Stockholm, 29 December: In a rare interview published Friday, legendary Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman called the movie business an industry of "butchery and whoring."
- Hollywood, 31 December: Is it just us, or did 2000 feel like it was just four months long? That's probably how studio execs are feeling, after a weak summer and a series of late-season blockbusters saved them from what could've been a nasty box-office hangover. With Y2K now a crusty memory, the film industry scored yet another record year for box-office revenue: Americans plunked down some $7.7 billion for movie tickets in 2000, up about 3 percent from 1999's record of $7.5 billion, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas became the highest-grossing film of the year, earning $253.4 million so far, while the holidays also yielded impressive last-minute showings from Mel Gibson in What Women Want and Cast Away, the Tom Hanks vehicle that hit $100 million faster than the emaciated Hanks could gain his 50 pounds back. This, of course, seems to counter doomsayers who, up until late September, appeared ready to declare this year a dud. Receipts lagged behind 1999's record numbers up until fall, when business picked up with Disney's football flick Remember the Titans, Universal's home-visit-from-hell Meet the Parents and Sony's three butt-kicking babes, better known as Charlie's Angels. -- Full story.
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Best Picture: Gladiator
16 February, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada -- 
