But why accentuate the negative? With the Golden Globes behind us and Oscar nominations looming, the time has come for Tinseltown to salute the winners of a losing crop, and for snotty film critics to start making predictions. Without further ado, here are my picks for the Best Picture Oscar nominees.
Is the sword mightier after all?
The year's two heavyweights are "Gladiator" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." These blockbusters have received the most unanimously positive reviews of the year.
A la "Braveheart," which won Best Picture in 1996, "Gladiator"'s skirt-clad, grooming-deficient Maximus (Russell Crowe) quests for political and personal justice. Oscar loves big, old-fashioned epics, and Gladiator is the odds-on favorite at this point in the race.
Released over the holidays, "Crouching Tiger" is also an old-fashioned adventure yarn, but of the sort which has never before been mentioned in the same breath as "Oscar." This Chinese-language production directed by Ang Lee ("Sense and Sensibility") is a bona fide chop-socky flick, complete with flying wire stunts and a sword called Green Destiny.
The protagonist is a young noblewoman named Jen (Zhang Zhi Yi) who feels constrained by her privilege and moonlights as a wushu fighter. The other main characters are her wushu mentors, both good (Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat) and evil (Cheng Pei Pei).
"Crouching Tiger" is the first martial arts movie to be fully in touch with its feminine side. Most of the fighting is done by the women, and the fighting itself is beautiful and graceful as opposed to bloody and bone-crushing.
Unfortunately, "Crouching Tiger"'s overall impact is as weightless as its gravity-defying fights. There is enough plot for five movies, but precious little urgency. The big problem is that Jen lacks a compelling motive throughout. Veteran fighters Yeoh and Chow are bound by honor and duty, while the devious Cheng wants to conquer the world. Jen yearns to be a great martial artist-but why? She seems to be in it just for kicks (pun fully intended). That's fine to start with-she's young-but by the end I wanted more. The film's last shot, with Jen floating through the clouds, is confusing rather than resonant.
"Gladiator" feels similarly insubstantial, lacking the thematic ambition that usually marks Oscar-caliber epics. Cobbling together parts of "Spartacus," "Braveheart" and especially "The Fall of the Roman Empire"-the Sophia Loren-Stephen Boyd classic-Gladiator compares unfavorably with all three films. It lacks "Spartacus"' poignancy and "Braveheart"'s stirring patriotism. "Fall of the Roman Empire" ended movingly, on a note of elegy; "Gladiator"'s last scene, where Maximus decrees that Rome be returned to a republic, feels tacked on and is historically laughable.
Soderbergh vs. Soderbergh
A brilliant technician and peerless actors' director (he coaxed career-best performances out of George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in 1998's "Out of Sight"), Steven Soderbergh doubled our pleasure this year with "Erin Brockovich" and "Traffic." Both were slobbered over by critics and did brisk business at the box office.
Now available on video, "Erin Brockovich" tells the true story of a blue-collar legal assistant who discovered a pollution scandal and helped engineer one of the biggest class action lawsuits in history. Julia Roberts, as the cleavage-baring title character, projects enough sass and charisma to justify her $20 million paycheck. It's a true star turn, and it may net Roberts the golden statuette that has eluded her for so long-and perhaps Best Picture bragging rights.
"Traffic" is an even better film. Soderbergh weaves together three tangentially related stories to document America's War on Drugs from the bottom up: from the addicts to the dealers to the distributors on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. Border, from the Tijuana cops to the DEA agents to the President's appointed drug czar.
Standout performances include a marvelously vigilant Benicio Del Toro as a Mexican border cop and Michael Douglas as the drug czar who leads the War on Drugs while his own daughter becomes a cocaine addict.
The film's greatest achievement is that it feels utterly, stunningly authentic. With the help of hand-held, documentary-esque camera work, "Traffic" makes a powerful case for the futility of the War on Drugs. The law enforcement characters are smart, moral men who are determined to fight the good fight, but they end up perpetuating the drug trade and the violence that accompanies it. (After all, selling drugs would not be so lucrative if they were legal.) But as a counter-argument, the film also takes an unblinking look at the sordid reality of addicts. "Traffic" offers no easy answers, only harshly compelling truth.
And now, the dark horse
My last pick for Best Picture nominee is the Sundance favorite "You Can Count On Me." This may seem like an unlikely choice, with the more mainstream "Almost Famous" and "Cast Away" also in the running. My rationale: Coming on the heels of "Jerry Maguire," Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous" had a disappointing box office run, and reviews were generally positive but not ecstatic. The blockbuster "Cast Away" was greeted with mixed reviews. For a low-budget indie film, "You Can Count On Me" has been a terrific performer at the box office, and it was one of the best-reviewed releases of the year.
Directed by Kenneth Lonergan from his own script, "You Can Count On Me" is a comedy-drama about the strength of family bonds and the unpredictability and inconvenience of desire. Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo star as Sammy and Terry, a sister and brother who, as children, survive the deaths of their parents. Twenty years later, Linney is an overprotective single mother who still lives in their provincial hometown, while Ruffalo has become a troubled, pothead drifter.
In a career-best performance, Linney plays a woman who tries to create an emotional safety net for herself and her loved ones-and learns that no one is safe, least of all from one's own worst instincts. Ruffalo, I predict, is going to be The Next Big Thing. His Terry is brooding and charismatic and macho, yet somehow childlike. His interactions with Sammy's eight-year-old son, Rudy (Rory Culkin), are hilarious, largely because the two seem to be operating on the same level.
As a writer, Lonergan displays an uncanny sense of what to include and what to leave out; he cuts into scenes in the middle of conversations and cuts out before they have ended. The economy, understatement and sheer honesty of his writing combine with the remarkable performances to make "You Can Count On Me" the most emotionally satisfying film experience of 2000.