September 1, 2000
The Fall 2000 Movie Preview: September - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- Fall is the season that most resonates on the Oscar radar screen. Usually the films that get Oscar nods are movies released in the run up to the December 31st deadline for consideration. This September hold your wigs and keys for the return of Jerry Maguire’s scribe and director Cameron Crowe, Denzel Washington and a couple of Cannes favourites. Not to mention another instalment of Highlander. Ah, the movies...
September 29th sees Denzel Washington’s REMEMBER THE TITANS bow. It’s a football film that, may get compared to The Replacements and that will certainly hurt its box office chances, if it does.
ALMOST FAMOUS is Jerry Maguire’s Cameron Crowe’s return to the big screen following his previous Oscar nominated success. Starring Billy Crudup who tanked in Without Limits two years ago, Famous follows a fictionalised account of a teenage rock journalist in the ‘70s. It co-stars Kate Hudson, the daughter of Goldie Hawn and previous Oscar winner Frances McDormand. Almost Famous opens September 15th.
Björk won the actress award at Cannes last June for her performance in Lars von Trier’s DANCER IN THE DARK. The Catherine Deneuve co-starrer, won the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes, as well. Dancer is a dark Danish musical shot in a vérité format that is dear to von Trier, who employed much of the same techniques in his previous effort Breaking The Waves. Icelandic diva, Heidi Rogers, oops I mean Björk, plays a Czech mom that is going blind and whose love of musicals leads her to the Pacific Northwest in the 1960’s. This is a critical fave that will do well for the art house crowd and it bows on September 23. This is the first of the real Oscar contenders.
Renée Zellweger, who was last seen in Me, Myself and Irene, co-stars with Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock and Greg Kinnear in Neil LaBute’s NURSE BETTY. Betty won a writing prize at Cannes and the return of LaBute, who wowed critics with his previous efforts: In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbours. Nurse Betty opens September 8.
Penélope Cruz got all the attention when she played a nun with HIV in Pedro Almodovar’s Oscar winning foreigner All About My Mother. She returns on September 22 with a Brazilian art house hit, WOMAN ON TOP.
William Friedkin’s 1973 classic The Exorcist is re-released. THE EXORCIST-THE VERSION YOU’VE NEVER SEEN opens on the 22nd with 11 minutes of footage previously unseen.
Where have you gone Joey Lawrence? Well, he returns to the acting biz as Joseph Lawrence in URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT, a sequel to the mild hit of two years ago. That opens on the 22nd as well.
James Spader who’s spent his last number of movies (Sex, Lies and Videotape and Crash,) getting laid, plays an FBI agent that sees his life turned upside down with the appearance of Keanu Reeves and Oscar winner Marisa Tomei. THE WATCHER opens on September 8th.
HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME brings both Christopher Lambert and Adrian Paul for another edition of Highlander, which opens on September 1st.
Bob Redford’s Sundance film festival gave the Grand Jury Prize to GIRLFIGHT, a female version of Rocky that stars 22 year-old unknown, Michelle Rodriguez. Girlfight opens September 29th.
THIS IS SPINAL TAP, Rob Reiner’s 1984 mockumenary about a rock band is re-released. Joining it are real documentaries on Jay-Z and the Barenaked Ladies. Jason Priestley’s documentary on the Ladies, BARENAKED IN AMERICA opens sometime in September, as does BACKSTAGE a rap documentary on a tour conducted by Jay-Z.
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