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All opening dates correct at time of going to press.
WHO WAS THAT PHANTOM MENACE?
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Nicole Kidman and hubby Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick’s final film about a pair of married therapists and their sexual obsessions (US, Warner Bros, w/e July 17; also Australia, Roadshow, w/e August 7) |
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tar Wars came. Star Wars conquered - North America, in any case: the rest of us, at time of writing, are still waiting. Not that there haven’t been a few grumbles along the way: from Jedi aficionados who (inevitably) did not find The Phantom Menace lived up to their expectations; from exhibitors, who bridled at the conditions imposed on them (and, in Germany, where the Force won’t be with them until mid-August, are bridling still); and from those of us round the world who have dutifully waited until our allotted opening dates, only to be regaled weeks beforehand by some bloke in the pub (or bistro or bodega or Bierstube) who’d already seen it six times on pirate video.
But, as we all really knew from the start, there are other films this summer, some of them likely to do quite well, some of them likely to be quite good. There is Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, for starters: I wish I’d put £100 on that to be No 2 at the 1999 summer box-office when British bookmakers Ladbrokes were quoting it at 20-1. And there are the dynamic duo from Preview 39: The Matrix and The Mummy, both of which must be making their makers go “Mmm!” by now.
Plus, of course, there’s the ‘School’s out’ factor. Working on the assumption that summer movie crowds are even more skewed 18-25 male than usual, 10 Things I Hate About You, American Pie and Never Been Kissed ought to hit the spot (or should that be ‘squeeze it’?). And, for those who haven’t been truly spotty since the early eighties, there is a nostalgiafest called Detroit Rock City, about a group of adolescents desperate to get into a Kiss concert. Mind you, since Kiss was the second biggest touring band of 1998, that shouldn’t be one for the nostalgia freaks alone.
Somewhat puzzlingly - since we do tend to associate ghost stories with the winter dark - it’s a good summer for getting scared, what with Jan De Bont’s remake of The Haunting
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(in which, to judge by the stills, (in which, to judge by the stills, the original premise that what you don’t see is scarier than what you do has not entirely been observed) and the dark secrets lurking at the bottom of Lake Placid. Best of all, there is The Blair Witch Project, made for the price of a decent second-hand car by two film-school graduates from Orlando which wowed audiences at Sundance and Cannes (where it was celebrated with a party that must have cost at least five times the film’s budget). Already boasting a much-visited web-site, Witch could well be the sleeper of the summer.
Wild Wild West, meanwhile, falls way outside the definition of a sleeper (the very least that can be said is that a sleeper is not a film starring Will Smith that opens on 3,250 screens for the Fourth of July weekend, especially since that weekend has been Smith’s personal property for the past two summers - remember ID4 and Men in Black? Still, Wild Wild West has been back for a few reshoots, and there are certainly some risks involved. Like it’ll be perceived as a western, for instance.
Finally, on a more serious note, there is Eyes Wide Shut. When was the last time there was a movie that could simultaneously be marketed as both the last masterpiece of a great director and a chance to see Tom and Nicole get their kit off?
Not, of course, that North America is the only place films get made and become hits. Claude Berri’s Astérix et Obélix is going gangbusters in French-speaking territories (and has just broken records in Quebec). Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother has taken $15 million in France and Spain. And, in Mexico, a snappy little local comedy called Sexo, pudor y lagrimas - a sort of Latin Four Weddings but with better-looking people - has rewarded Fox Mexico’s faith in putting it out on 200 screens (virtually unheard-of for a local pic) by pushing in at No 2, ahead of Entrapment and just behind The Mummy.
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