I’m not supposed to be here, on these pages, with yet
another meticulously crafted piece of writing for you to skim over
and throw away.
For those who don’t remember, I declared back in August,
with no small degree of self-importance, that I had written my last
column. Like other fellow greats in their respective realms of
dominance ““ Michael Jordan and, of course, Jay-Z ““ I
was retiring from the game to move up the corporate ladder. From
lowly columnist to Film & TV editor I would go.
But retirement didn’t stop Jay-Z from releasing a song
such as “Dear Summer.” His bread-and-butter had always
been the summer anthem, and it only felt right when he swooped down
earlier this year off his perch atop Def Jam Records to bless us
with an ode to the season, shooing off the wannabes and ever-pesky
fake thugs trying to stake their own undeserved claim.
For guys such as MJ and Hov, summer is their chance to shine,
but for film writers, that time of the year has to be now. Not only
is Oscar season finally peaking, but now that the year is wrapping
up, debate opens about what the best films of the year are. We
thrive off this kind of stuff.
So, naturally, here I am, swooping down on Dec. 1 to expose all
the wannabe Oscar films out there.
There are a lot of films out this time of year that are
pretending to be better than they are. Apparently, it’s no
one’s job to weed them out ““ the public doesn’t
care, the Academy certainly doesn’t, and neither, seemingly,
do a lot of critics.
The two biggest of these fake thugs out right now have dominated
the box office the past two weekends: “Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire” and the Johnny Cash biopic, “Walk the
Line.”
The newest “Harry Potter” has, not surprisingly,
already taken in over $400 million worldwide at the box office. It
is an utterly conventional film, which is also not surprising,
considering that director Mike Newell is the auteur behind such
cutting-edge fare as “Four Weddings and a Funeral,”
“Mona Lisa Smile” and, by my unofficial IMDb count,
over a dozen TV movies. Newell plays it safe, from the narrative
structure down to the cinematography. What is surprising is that
critics have not only been giving it a free pass, but championing
it. The film has received rave reviews from the Hollywood Reporter,
Premiere, Slate, Variety, Salon, the Wall Street Journal and the
Los Angeles Times. According to review-compiling Web site Rotten
Tomatoes, it is the best-reviewed film currently in the box office
top 10.
The critical consensus seems to be that this is the best in the
Harry Potter series, which is downright laughable. Of the four so
far, the third is the only one displaying even a shred of
creativity. Anyone who thinks that, in the 21st century, a Mike
Newell film is of more merit than an Alfonso Cuaron probably snuck
a few sips from that LSD fountain at MOCA’s altered states
exhibit.
“Walk the Line” might be even more conventional than
“Goblet of Fire.” That doesn’t seem to be keeping
away critical support or pundits from predicting it as a lock for a
Best Picture nomination come Oscar time. The acting is stellar,
sure, but the film manages to stuff just about every biopic cliche
into its shallow, formulaic story. Essentially every scene has been
done elsewhere in some kind of variation.
So if audiences, critics and the industry are all happy,
what’s the problem? Well, the movies are the problem. Despite
all the praise, neither of these films would be called risk-taking
by even the most ardent of supporters. What we have is a low-risk,
high-reward system that encourages films to play it safe.
I would rather see films that aspire to greater heights and fail
““ such as “Jarhead” or “The Brothers
Grimm” ““ than films that aim low and succeed.
What I do love about this time of year is that studios are
willing to take a chance on less compromising films in the hope
that they might pick up awards buzz. In the coming month we get
“Match Point,” Woody Allen’s unflinching take on
Dostoevsky; “King Kong,” a three-hour, over-budget film
where Kong fights a T-Rex; and “The New World,” the
latest by visionary Terence Malick.
Now I may be no Jay-Z, but, pretenders exposed, it’s back
to my cushy day job.
Don’t get Lee started about the Oscars, but e-mail him
at alee@media.ucla.edu.