So, that was the summer, being widely called the worst season for movies since whenever the last really-bad spell was. Time to move on, and see what the Christmas season is likely to offer…but first, let’s ‘fess up and see how our May predictions held up, based on the critical and/or financial success of our picks.

May (2 out of 4)

• Sure thing: The Mummy Returns. $201.5m – any questions?
• What we’re looking forward to: Shrek. Look, I’m sorry…
• Dodgy ground: A Knight’s Tale. Rating a surprisingly decent 6.7/10 in the Internet Movie Database.
• Please bomb…please bomb: Pearl Harbor. Normally, $195.5m wouldn’t count as a bomb, but when you’re the most expensive film ever greenlighted, it’s not enough.

June (3 out of 4)

• Sure thing: A.I. Artifical Intelligence. No laughing at the back, please.
• What we’re looking forward to: Tomb Raider. Well, I liked it.
• Dodgy ground: Evolution. Painful, obvious and very dull, much as expected.
• Please bomb…please bomb: Swordfish. Failed to cover its budget, despite Halle’s breasts.

July (3 out of 4)

• Sure thing: Planet of the Apes. $173m and still going. Say what you like about the ending (“it sucked”, perhaps?), it certainly got people going back again.
• What we’re looking forward to: Final Fantasy. Despite bombing spectacularly (taking $105m less than it cost), we’ll be first in line for the DVD.
• Dodgy ground: Scary Movie 2. A $71m gross is less than half the original’s.
• Please bomb…please bomb: Jurassic Park III. With a $176m take, the franchise is unfortunately not extinct.

August (2 out of 4)

• Sure thing: Rush Hour 2. We say: one of the worst of the year. The box-office says: $200m.
• What we’re looking forward to: Rollerball. Pushed back from August to February 2002 and will be cut to a PG-13. No longer eagerly anticipated.
• Dodgy ground: American Pie 2. Revved up past $125m, breaking the string of R-rated comedy flops.
• Please bomb…please bomb: Ghosts of Mars. Will be lucky to take $10m. Carpenter now batting 0-for-6.

Making my tally for the summer season ten out of 16, which is not that much better than sticking pins in at random. Mind you, it’s probably not all that much worse than studio executives do, since they will insist on continuing to employ John Carpenter. Is he their drug connection or something?

Anyway, we continue undaunted. Here’s a look at what’s coming up between now and Christmas.

September/October

Sure thing: Award withheld. Looking at the release schedules, I see nothing until November to get the masses queuing at the multiplex. Training Day with Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke might do it, as might Bandits (Willis and Thornton), but it looks a lean spell.

What we’re looking forward to: From Hell (October 19) – Johnny Depp has come a long way since Cry-baby, and while some of his career choices might be questionable, he does have an eye for interesting movies. And having worked in Jack the Ripper’s territory for ten years, we have a fondness for such flicks.

Dodgy ground: Collateral Damage (October 5) – “Arnie is regular guy fire-fighter stalking the terrorist who killed his family”. Deja-vu? Fifteen years ago, this’d have been a massive video hit, but Schwarzenegger seems to have lost it badly recently.

Please bomb…please bomb: Zoolander (September 28) – Inspired by a skit Ben Stiller did for the VH1 Fashion Awards. Need I say any more?

November

Sure thing: Monsters, Inc. (November 2) – Disney’s animation reputation took a bad hit with Atlantis, which was seriously out-Shrek‘d. But the toy-boys of Pixar are back, and the results should be massive.

What we’re looking forward to: Brotherhood of the Wolf (November 2) – A French cross between Predator and The Howling starring Eurasian martial artist Mark Dacascos? It’s a million-to-one shot, but it just might work…

Dodgy ground: The Black Knight (November 21) – Martin Lawrence goes back in time to King Arthur’s Court. Oh, hold my aching sides…

Please bomb…please bomb: Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (November 16) – I see so much Potter merchandise sitting on the “50% Off” shelf already, it’s clear this one has missed the boat. Last year’s biggest hit may be as much use as a new Pokemon movie.

December

Sure thing: Fellowship of the Ring (December 19) – Compare and contrast Jackson’s expert handling of publicity with the Lucas-botch for Send in the Clones (or whatever it’s called). This will be huge, whether or not it’s any good – and I think it may well be.

What we’re looking forward to: The Time Machine (Christmas) – Guy Pearce starred in Memento, the only intelligent movie to hit the multiplexes this year. Hopefully, this will prove an equally intelligent reworking of the classic SF story.

Dodgy ground: Ocean’s Eleven (December 7) – George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts. I guess Steven Soderbergh has tired of making innovative and original films, opting instead to remake an old Frank Sinatra movie.

Please bomb…please bomb: Vanilla Sky (December 14) – Both stars and the director all have names that start with CR – Cruise, Cruz and Crowe, and given the egos possessed, it wouldn’t surprise me if the result can be summed up starting with CR as well.

Well, everyone and their web-able mother are putting out previews of this summer’s movies. So why should we be any different? Here’s the TC guide to what we have to look forward to over the next four months (here in Phoenix, anyway – check local press for details, as they say). Be sure to check back at the end of August, when we’ll no doubt be terribly embarrassed by our selections. [And the links now go to the appropriate review. Christ, I can’t believe we were actually looking forward to Rollerball]

May

Sure thing: The Mummy Returns (May 4) – follow up to one of the most successful brainless popcorn consumption devices in recent years. Expect more of the same plus WWF’s The Rock (even if we knew he’d lose at Wrestlemania, since he’d be off doing promotion).

What we’re looking forward to: Shrek (May 18) – anything which takes pot-shots at Disney, with a villain strangely reminiscent of Michael Eisner, has to be worth seeing, even if Eddie Murphy’s sidekick schtick is not exactly breaking new ground.

Dodgy ground: A Knight’s Tale (May 11) – we’ve never been able to take medieval movies seriously since Holy Grail, and this looks pretentious as hell. And it has modern rock music behind the jousts! Sure it seemed like a good idea to someone.

Please bomb…please bomb: Pearl Harbor (May 25) – World War II didn’t star until 1942, after Ben Affleck sorted out his love-life. This desperately wants to be Titanic: a love story cunningly disguised behind an action-packed trailer. Let’s hope it doesn’t succeed.

June

What we’re looking forward to: Tomb Raider (June 15) – you expected perhaps something else? Angelina Jolie running around for 90 minutes, firing guns. Yes, we know all about computer game movies. I just don’t care. Will be there on the Friday for this one. Maybe Saturday too.

Dodgy ground: Evolution (June 8) – a bunch of goofy scientists save the world. David Duchovny has shown no ability to carry a movie without an “X” in the title. A lot will rely on the special effects here, which is thin ice for big success.

Please bomb…please bomb: Swordfish (June 8) – two of the less interesting X-Men (Jackson and Berry) team up with Travolta. It’s been fun watching Travolta’s overpaid and overhyped career explode in his face since Battlefield Earth, so fingers crossed this continues the trend.

July

Sure thing: Planet of the Apes (July 27) – as soon as we heard Tim Burton was on board, it was so obvious, in a smack your own forehead way. No doubt, this will look fabulous – however, will they be able to replicate the fabulous ending of the original?

What we’re looking forward to: Final Fantasy (July 11) – see previous qualms about computer games, yet there were moments in FF7 which were genuinely moving. If they can capture that spirit, and with undeniably jaw-dropping CGI, this could be the genuine groundbreaker of summer. Outside shot: just saw a trailer for Cats and Dogs which pits live-action kitties and pooches against each other, somewhere between Austin Powers and Mission Impossible. It looked fabulously crass and funny. Whether it can sustain it for ninety minutes, rather than ninety seconds…

Dodgy ground: Scary Movie 2 (July 4) – an idea which was initially fabulous, was already seriously running out of steam by the end of the first film. How many recent horror hits have there been for it to parody? I sense a departure into general movie parody territory: anyone remember Mafia!?

Please bomb…please bomb: Jurassic Park III (July 20) – enough with the dinosaurs already! What was once new and impressive has become nothing more than another studio franchise. They’re extinct: get over it. Though I can see how CGI dinosaurs would be better than having to deal with Demi Moore.

August

Sure thing: Rush Hour 2 (August 3) – this time, they’re in Hong Kong, so expect a lot of Chris Tucker-out-of-water gags. Otherwise, expect the same as last time – aimiable comedy, in which Jackie never gets out of second gear – and we cruise to another $100 million gross.

What we’re looking forward to: Rollerball (August 17) – while remaking classic films is often a recipe for disaster (Get Carter), this has potential, and the subject matter is even more fitting in these days of media conglomerates. From the director of Die Hard? Might just work.

Dodgy ground: American Pie 2 (August 10) – seems like the gross-out sex comedy has had its day, going by the grosses for the likes of Saving Silverman and Tomcats. It may not just be the apple-pie that gets screwed here, more like a few movie careers.

Please bomb…please bomb: Ghosts of Mars (August 24) – Carpenter’s career has been running on fumes for years. Since They Live, he’s batting 0-for-5; it’s a miracle any studio will touch him. He’s planning Vampires 2. Will someone please stop the man before he hurts others?

Hollywood, Los Angeles, April 20-28, 2001

You know you’re in California when every piece of electrical apparatus, from automatic doors to lifts, has instructions on it detailing what to do when the power fails. Fortunately, the Los Angeles Film Festival was mercifully spared any of the rolling blackouts which been all too common in the state recently – the thought of projecting movies by pulling the film past a candle really doesn’t bear thinking about.

This year, the film was incorporated into part of the Independent Feature Project/West, a strangely named group looking after indie film-makers and cheerleading for their movies. One was left to contemplate the significance of the logo – as seen at the top. This portrays someone desperately pushing a film reel up a very steep slope, which is a good enough metaphor for the process of movie-making by all accounts. The fact that, at the top, there appears to be nothing but a precipice is presumably a good enough metaphor for the eventual fate of most non-studio product. Is that a Blockbuster video card lurking at the bottom?

The nine day festival had over ninety films, but due to time constraints we could only sample a few, opting (as you might expect) for the ones that didn’t involve powerful coming-of-age sagas, poignant and sometimes hilarious stories about what happens when life moves on, or fresh takes on the subject of sex and the single girl. [All three could be found in the festival program] For what’s the point of being independent if you’re going to churn out the same kind of thing as a mediocre movie-of-the-week on a mainstream cable channel? Thanks, but we’ll pass.

Most of the screenings took place at the Directors’ Guild of America headquarters on Sunset Boulevard. Naturally, I took the chance to play at being Spielberg, striding into the building, barking loudly into a cellphone about weekend grosses and pay-for-play deals. I think my poor mother was very confused by the end of the conversation, but never mind. The screening rooms were fine, if a little spartan – I mean, no drinks-holders, and while they sold food in the foyer (this being California, it was sushi and cappucino rather than popcorn and Coke), they wouldn’t let you take anything into the screens. So much for the cinematic experience. Still, nothing that couldn’t be solved, thanks to a capacious hockey-shirt, capable of holding an entire picnic in its sleeves.

The LA Film School and the Laemmle Sunset 5 also provided venues, though we never got to the latter, presumably because it was playing the kind of fodder appropriate to its multiplex nature. The Film School was further along Sunset Boulevard, with the cinema tucked round the corner in a low-key manner inappropriate for anything to do with film schools, but we did discover a really decent BBQ joint up the street which helped keep those of us less keen on sushi nutritionally sustained.

The big buzzwords at the festival appeared to be “digital video”, with several of the screenings coming off this medium, yet looking barely inferior to regular projection. People like Bernard (Paperhouse) Rose are extremely enthusiastic about its possibilities, and with good packages available for just a few thousand dollars, it does seem to offer low-budget film-makers a great deal of flexibility and possibility. Disturbingly for those in the business, it may eventually also mean an end to the need for special lighting, cinematographers and a lot of the other paraphenalia traditionally associated with “movie making”. We script-writers, however, should be safe. 🙂 For an example of the possibilities, check out www.filmisdead.com.

But enough of such technical issues! Film festivals are, after all, about the films. So, without further ado, I’ll point you in the direction of the reviews, while I keep on trying to discover how I can get a Trash City star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame…

Festival Reviews 

• Ever Since the World Ended
• Ginger Snaps
• 90 Miles
• Revolution #9
• Wendigo
• The Young and the Dead

Dir: Lorenzo Doumani
Star: Sophia-Adella Hernandez, Edouardo Yanes, Tony Plana, William McNamara, Maria Conchita Alonzo

I was going to write this article as the Knockout drinking game, with contestants having to take a swig each time a boxing cliché appears – but an interest in the health of readers prevents me from so doing, because this film is so full of them, that you’d be dead of alcoholic poisoning before the end of the first act. I don’t know whether Doumani had never seen a boxing movie before (his career gives no reason to suggest he has, including such highlights as Bug Buster), or simply chose to combine them all into one. For this is the kind of diabolical script you would get if you distilled every boxing flick down.

The only significant difference is that here, the hero is…well, a heroine, Belle (Hernandez). Though nobody really bothers to mention it, because she’s so busy slogging her way through the usual problems that have bedevilled pugilistic wannabes since Edison was turning the crank: unsupportive family, a dubious managers, gym-owners doubtful of your talent, a ferocious opponent, etc. So, here goes with an approximate listing, in dialogue and images, of the things you’ll have seen a million times before – just never in such distilled and condensed strength.

The Characters

• “Was papa a great boxer?”
  “He was the best…”
• “What should I be when I grow up?”
  “You can be whatever you want, because nothing is impossible. That’s for you to find out, and once you do, don’t let anyone hold you back. Let your light shine…”.
• Father (Plana) is a cop, who works nights so he can spend the days “with the kids at the gym”.
• “That’s what your Mom used to say. Think she’d be proud of how we turned out?” Yep, Mum (Miss Venezuela 1975, Maria Conchita Alonzo) is dead – but do you think that’s going to stop her from turning up? Chance would be a fine thing.
• Dad bravely talks two Hispanic kids into putting their guns down. I think he largely bores them into submission, with a monologue including the following: “I know you’re scared, but this isn’t the way…You have your whole lives ahead of you. What’s it gonna be: do you lay the weapon down, or do we lay you in the ground?”

The Plot

• Belle’s home-girl Sandra is a boxer – at a fight againt Tanya ‘The Terminator’ Tessaro (real-life fighter Fredia Gibbs) we also meet Michael DiMarco, whose business card might as well read “Slimy Manager”.
• Needless to say, Tessaro destroys Sandra – thanks largely to what one review described as Sandra’s “leading with her face”. The film, inevitably (a word that will crop up a lot in this review, so get used to it), goes into slow-mo as Sandra collapses to the floor with a “NOOOOOOOOOO…SANDRAAAAAA” from Belle. Cut to a hospital bed, where Belle says things like “You were always the strong one…I’m gonna take care of you.” If I was Sandra, I’d be looking up Kevorkian’s number in my Rolodex about now, rather than sitting through:
  “Do you believe in fate…that things were meant to be…that everyone has a destiny?”
  “I hope Sandra’s destiny isn’t to die. Or be a vegetable because of me.”
  “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. She loves it. She lives for it…In the ring, that’s where she lives…The only thing crazy in life, is not living it.” Is it just me, or does it seems rather crass to say that while your friend is in intensive care?
• Equally inevitably, Belle signs up with DiMarco – “Boxing – I guess I’ve always wanted to do it.” He takes her to see Ron Regent, wheelchair-bound promoter played by Paul Winfield, who’s about the best actor present despite having to handle dialogue like:
  “So, you think you got the goods, huh?”
  “Yeah, I got the goods.”

The Difficulties

• Dad tries to dissuade her: “Professional boxing is brutal…You’re talking crazy. I don’t want to hear any more of this”.
• She keeps training anyway. Oh, what a surprise.
• The only element underplayed to this point is her mother’s deat…no, hang on – what’s this flashback?
  “I don’t have good news. The tests reveal you have a malignant tumor in your frontal lobe.”
  “So how much time do I have?
  “It’s hard to say. But not long.”
  —-
  “You have got to be strong…let’s appreciate the little time we have left.
  “But you gotta promise me something…you gotta let her find a way to let her shine…”
• Inevitably, Dad comes along to first fight, inspiring her to victory.
• Then we get a montage of further victories, Belle tending to Sandra, Ron listening to money, fake mag covers, and the usual training sequences, all of which leads to:

Revenge

• But first, Sandra regains consciousness. “The doctors – they say that I’ll never walk again”
• Belle fights with DiMarco because he wants to keep her from fighting Tessaro: “I thought you were different..but you’re just another ungrateful wetback bitch. You were just another ignorant barrio lowlife. You’re nothing without me.”
• Ron Regent arranges the fight with Tessaro instead – when announcing this, Belle pretends to be going to Las Vegas to marry DiMarco. How amusing!
• Another training montage.
• “Thanks for being there, Dad”. Except he isn’t, because the “next few days are all hype, but I’ll be there for the fight…in your corner…”
• And, inevitably, he won’t. He gets shot by drug-scum as he tries to protect a kid.
• Cue more slow-mo and – a particularly crass touch, this – blood spattering across a magazine cover with Belle’s picture on it.
• Funeral footage. “He loved you just like a son”.
• “I get the feeling he’s gonna be there at the fight”.
• Stultifyingly-stilted chat from Tessaro: “What’s my name? The Terminator! What am I gonna do to her? Terminate her!” And they claim boxing doesn’t promote brain-damage.

The Big Fight

• Belle has a glowing backlit vision – is she going to be abducted by aliens? Sadly not: it’s only her Mum and Dad, telling her, inevitably, to “Let your light shine”.
• Tessaro’s ring-entrance is like a discard from Grace Jones, complete with feather head-dress and dance routine, totally destroying her credibility and threat.
• Shots of Sandra, shouting “Get up, Belle – c’mon!”. That’ll help.
• One last montage: round cards, trainer in corner, and occasional boxing, all shot in a manner that is startling only in its tedium.
• With Tessaro losing, she butts Belle, forcing the bout towards a hugely contrived conclusion
• Albeit after another glowing, Let Your Light Shine-y, vision.
• Belle has just one more round to knock Tessaro out – will she do it?
• Any guesses?

Right down to the final scene, where flowers are laid on Mom and Dad’s grave, this film is crass, predictable and jaw-droppingly badly written. You can’t really blame the cast for this – they are all trying pretty hard, it’s just the material that doesn’t leave any room for improvement. Even though it came out before Girlfight, it is a waste of space on every level: Doumani’s lack of script-writing talent would get him thrown off any self-respecting daytime soap. His trust fund was allegedly taken away and poured into The Cotton Club, but on the showing here, I think it might have been higher forces at work, trying desperately to keep him out of the movie business.

Footnotes:

• Some other, just as savage, reviews:
  • “0 stars”
  • “possibly the worst boxing movie ever made”
  • 5 out of 100 – “This grade-Z programmer is a painfully earnest, clichéd, amateurish waste of time”
  • 0 stars – “could make you swear off movies”.
  • “a relentlessly stereotypical script”
  • “a burning hell of extreme sincerity” – a relatively kind review!
• An interview with Doumani
• Fredia Gibbs’ site
• Other women’s boxing movies

Never mind Moms and apple-pie, drive-ins are perhaps even more of an American archetype, one that could only ever be accepted in a land where the automobile is king. Of course, there are other reasons why they never became a part of the post-war landscape in Europe – except, bizarrely, in Denmark, which still has at least five operating. Firstly, there’s the issue of land: a drive-in occupied a large chunk of space, and sits more or less redundant during the day, since you can’t start showing films until after dark. Try that in Britain, and you’d find houses being built in screen two by the end of the week. Indeed, in Central London, you’d probably find people prepared to pay admission, merely to find somewhere to park. There’s also the thorny issue of weather, since going to the drive-in is, basically, a fair-weather spectacle – you don’t want to be watching through your windscreen wipers, even if it would add a certain atmosphere to something like Twister.

No: the dry, wide-open frontiers of the United States are the perfect place for drive-ins. The first opened on June 6 1933, in Camden, New Jersey – the price of admission was a quarter per car, plus a further 25c. per occupant, and the opening movie was Wife Beware. From here, their growth was explosive, reaching a peak in 1958, when there were almost five thousand. To put that figure into some kind of context, there were only about 12,000 indoor screens at that time. Some of them were huge – the Troy in Detroit, Michigan and the Panther of Lufkin, Texas could both hold three thousand cars – and all kinds of other gimmicks were incorporated to lure in traffic…and indeed, in at least one case, air-traffic. During the late forties, Asbury Park, New Jersey had a “fly-in” with room for 25 airplanes as well as the more usual methods of transport.

Nowadays, however, they are a dying breed. The rise of the multiplex has meant a steady and almost irrevocable decline in their numbers, and it’s not hard to see why; when compared for things like comfort, sound and vision, the results all weigh heavily against them. Their advantages – such as the ability, shall we say, to make your own entertainment during the film – have largely been equalled or surpassed by home video, and thus drive-ins will likely go the way of tail-fins, malt-shops, bee-hives and many other items of hyphenated pop culture. Arizona may be bigger than Britain, but only has five left, and the number nationwide is only around 800 or so.

But at least I can say I’ve now been to one; the Glendale 9-screen, Arizona’s biggest, located on the upper West Side, on the other side of the railway tracks — but not so far away on the other side, as to prevent the occasional train-horn from punctuating proceedings. You certainly can’t quibble over the price: $5.50 per adult (and however many you can smuggle in the boot) gets you two just-gone features, in our case Valentine and The Pledge. The former had barely arrived in “proper” cinemas two weeks ago, but had already dropped through them faster than a Brick Lane curry, and was languishing at Glendale in front of an audience of precisely two cars. Oddly, the equally lame Dracula 2000 was doing healthy business elsewhere in the complex, suggesting that there is such a thing as a genuine drive-in movie, independent of its success elsewhere.

The first task though, is finding your screen. After going past the one of the toll-style admission booths, you are confronted by an almost totally dark maze of fences and bollards, surround the central projection and concession buildings, with little in the way of signs to direct you to which part of the field you’re meant to park. After patiently queuing for a while behind some other cars, waiting in front of a blocked-off opening, we took a detour through two other screens (doubtless to the annoyance of their occupants – it’s bad enough in a normal cinema, imagine if people came in making engine noises and shining bright lights around) and finally found our spot.

In early versions of the drive-in, sound was provided by speaker posts mounted outside the car which you pulled into your vehicle to hear the movie. These were notorious for their low-fi-ness, and were perpetually having to be replaced because people tended to drive away, forgetting they still had the speakers inside. Nowadays, technology has moved on, and you now tune your radio to a different low-powered FM station for each sceen (105.1 in our case), broadcasting from the centre, and can therefore enjoy all the quality your car stereo can deliver. At least, that’s the theory: the reality at Glendale was crackly, scratchy and teetered on the edge of inaudibility, turning even the best Blaupunkt into a fading battery portable, located in the middle of the Himalayas. Perhaps it was just a touching tribute to earlier efforts.

The visual qualities also left more than a little bit to be desired. Going to see a horror movie, while sitting in the middle of an almost-deserted parking-lot certainly adds to the ambience, the large amount of creeping around in the darkness doesn’t come across well, particularly when seen through a tinted windscreen (not really an optional extra in Arizona). The illustration below shows the sort of thing you can expect, so you would do well to choose your movie with caution – pick a film which takes place either during broad daylight, or in an operating theatre.

There was something kinda cool about being able to set your seat to its most laid-back position, and if the film wasn’t up to much, you could talk without disturbing anyone else. Well, within reason – our co-habitants had their young children sitting on the roof of their vehicle, and they were not exactly stunned into silence by the qualities of Valentine. It would have been amusing to be a fly on the windscreen of that car for the journey home, and hear the explanation of the scene where Denise Richards poured candle wax onto a guy’s genitals. Young minds are just so inquisitive.

The interval between movies provided an opportunity to head for the concession stand, which was even more deserted than the screen we’d left; after a few minutes of steadily increasing straw-rattling, I was just about to climb over the counter and help myself, when a salesperson appeared, in a manner reminiscent of the shopkeeper in Mr. Benn. According to Chris, at weekends, when business is likely to be much brisker, this is a focal point of the whole event, with the actual movies reduced to a secondary role to socialising, hanging out, gossiping and other traditional teenage pursuits – such as gang warfare. Even if, admittedly, the usual refrain of “this film’s crap, let’s slash the seats!” becomes rather self-destructive when you’re in your own car.

And it is these facets which will decide whether the drive-in has any future. The advance of technology, in areas such as LCD screens, could provide a means of matching indoor cinemas for quality, but the crux of the matter is, for them to survive, they need to attract a new generation of attendees who can already watch movies in any number of other ways. Their success in doing so will determine whether their viability extends into the 21st century.