All semester, you've been too busy or too poor to make it out to the movies. \The Man Who Wasn't There"" was good? Yeah, I had like four papers due. Well, winter break just happens to coincide with the rapid-fire release of some of the year's strongest movies hoping to catch Oscar's eye. Coincidence? Yes, the word ""coincide"" suggests that. Take advantage of your break and your parents' pocketbooks while you can.
Already out, this latest Steven Soderbergh hit is a must see. Casting from a list of who's who in Hollywood, Soderbergh remakes the 1960 Rat Pack classic both in story and tone. George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon are just a few of the guys that add the charisma central to the film. Those critics bemoaning ""Ocean's 11"" as too superficial miss the point entirely; this movie isn't trying to be anything more than extremely cool.
With this adaptation of the 1997 Spanish thriller ""Abre los Ojos,"" director Cameron Crowe pairs up again with Tom Cruise. The complicated plot centers around a womanizing Cruise, a jilted Cameron Diaz and a beautiful Pen??lope Cruz. Running through an empty Times Square follows facial reconstruction surgery follows a car crash. It's not strange, it's psychological.
From the team that brought you ""Bottle Rocket"" and ""Rushmore"" comes the story of a family of geniuses and the father who abandoned them. Gene Hackman plays the father of Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow and Luke Wilson, coming back to inject some drama and dark humor in their lives. The tagline is ""Family isn't a word, it's a sentence."" Oh man, this is going to be good.
""The Fellowship of the Ring"" is the first installment in the film trilogy version of the J.R.R. Tolkien epic. Elijah Wood plays Frodo Baggins, a hobbit on a quest to destroy a powerful ring. It's yet to be seen if fans of the books will like the film, though early buzz sounds good. This is a huge gamble'probably the biggest in recent history'and it will make or break its studio. That's a lot to put on the shoulders of a director who gave us the puppet porn trash ""Meet the Feebles.""
They're selling it as being directed by the man who brought you ""The Shawshank Redemption"" and ""The Green Mile."" It stars Jim Carrey. Expect to have ""FEEL GOOD"" stamped on your hand as you go in. It's the story of a blacklisted Hollywood writer who loses his memory and gets mistaken for a long-lost son. Will Carrey sport a dopey grin? Yes. Do people deserve a feel-good movie over the holidays? Yes.
This was a huge hit among the Sundance crowd. Everyone is screaming for Oscar nominations for its entire central cast'Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Nick Stahl and Marisa Tomei. Stahl has an affair with the older Tomei, and something (not to give too much away) involving her abusive husband changes everything about Stahl and his parents. Character-driven plots like this tend to be the most dramatically powerful.
Director Michael Mann gave us ""Heat"" and ""The Insider."" Now he brings the biography of the great Muhammed Ali. Will Smith plays the fighter, starting at the beginning of his career and going through his defiant controversies. It's surprising the story hasn't been told earlier. This promises to be spectacular filmmaking. Apparently, Mann put pinhole cameras on the boxing gloves. That's right.
Sure, there are other movies coming out, too. If you need a place to sit between returning sweaters and cashing in gift certificates, there are some movies for people who don't care about movies. Good or bad, go see some of these movies over break. Hollywood crams so much energy into the end of the year that the next big movie won't hit the screens until Feb. 8'And that one will be ""Rollerball."" Shudder.
