Hollow Man (2000)

Paul Verhoeven’s gleeful brutality and sex make films like Total Recall, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers much more fun, but it ends up making this film feel way more creepy an unpleasant than any goofy sci-fi SFX extravaganza has any right to be. James Whale’s The Invisible Man has it’s titular character slowly descend into madness do to being an outcast with no accountability. He slowly works his way from causing general mischief to joyfully murdering people (even masses of people) for the fun of it. In this, Kevin Bacon’s been invisible for about 5 hours before he starts sexually assaulting and raping people. As if he was an insane rapist the entire time, he just never could figure out a way to get away with it. Which is odd, because he also openly harrasses and abuses women at his work when he’s visible, and they all seem to just accept it as part of who he is.

So few special effects-driven films age well (not that this looks horrible now), but this could have at least been goofy fun if it weren’t so incredibly unpleasant. But Kevin Bacon already feels like a super-villain before he becomes invisible, so it’s less a tale about a descent into madness than a constant exercise in assholery. C-

What Lies Beneath (2000)

Not even Michelle Pfeiffer’s legitimately terrific performance can save this schizophrenic movie. The script feels like 4 different thrillers mashed together into a weird pulp in which the only consistency is the dreary and subdued tone. Oddly, the film is most compelling in it’s first 30 minutes, before you could claim anything interesting is actually happening, because Zemeckis does such a great job establishing character, setting, and tone. It’s because of this strength that the rest of the film feels like such a betrayal. What Lies Beneath can’t decide if it’s a Poltergeist rip-off, a Fatal Attraction rip-off, a Rear Window rip-off, a Gaslight rip-off…plot points are set up and abandoned with such fickleness it’s hard to keep your interest around the third time it happens.

Which isn’t to say it’s entirely ineffective. As I mentioned, Pfeiffer is really terrific, somehow crafting a three-dimensional character out of the lousy script. And there’s a sequence involving a bathtub (one of many) that is way more tense and scary than anything in Diabolique. But it’s in service of nothing. For me, it’s most interesting as one last throwback to the days when a film like this could be one of the top ten successful films of the year C-

Gladiator (2000)

They try to make you hate Joaquin Pheonix by piling every negative trait a character can possibly have into one person, but it only serves to make him pathetic and less of a worthy foe. It’s a shame that the Gladiator spin-off sitcom “Everybody Hates Commodus” never made it past the pilot status, because he’s accidentally the only one in this film with an intriguiging premise: what do you do when your emperor is bad at EVERY POSSIBLE THING? He’s so hapless and talentless, making him the villain almost feels cruel, like putting a “kick-me” sign on a mentally disabled person’s back.

Less intriguiging is Maximus’ boilerplate revenge story, or the tiresome way they try to make the story not just about one guy with a grudge, but saving ROME ITSELF. The rah-rah “save our country” speech at the end has the same flavor as something you’d hear in a propaganda war movie from the 40’s, which is so ridiculous in this context I actually fell on the floor laughing (sorry, but I never got as far as rolling). It’d be enjoyably old fashioned entertainment if it were shorter and the fight scenes were worth a damn, but it isn’t and they’re not and I doubt I’ll remember much about it in a week’s time. C-

State and Main (2000)

Probably not the most savage attack on Hollywood, but it’s up there. I have a soft spot for both movies about filmmaking and Mamet dialogue, so this was a real treat. B+

Uzumaki (2000)

This was recommended to me as an example of good J-Horror, but I feel like calling it that is kind of a stretch. It has way more in common with other manga adaptations I’ve seen (emphasis on effects, crazy formalistic camera work, frequent static tableaus that are clearly replicated manga frames) than J-Horror I’ve seen. But all that means is that it’s batshit insane so I’m down with it, even if I think the concept of an entire town becoming obsessed with a symbol to the point of insanity could have been a great starting point for a restrained yet truly cinematic horror film. What we get instead is a wet rag of a heroine and her boyfriend (with some form of Aspergers) wandering from scene to scene of batshit insanity, each more batshit than the next. Which, again, is something I am down with, even if it ultimately feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

Randomly, the thing I most got out of this film was how wonderfully director Higuchinsky shoots the town. Scenes like the initial trek home of our heroine to a scene a little bit later of her riding on her boyfriend’s bike somehow manage to make the town seem both energized while still being a forboding maze. Can’t quite put my finger on what it does for me and since it doesn’t really contribute to the film as a whole (you could make the whole maze = spiral connection, but by the time the spiral stuff kicks in this sense of the town is long gone) I guess it doesn’t matter. B

The Gift (2000)

A failure on nearly every level. Though, surprisingly, Keanu Reeves is pretty good. D

George Washington (2000)

Incredible movie, equal parts Terrence Malick and Charles Burnett. One of those devestating movies that I’m not sure I 100% “get”, but I find sifting through the emotional pieces tremendously rewarding. A

Scream 3 (2000)

A really really dumb script fails this one but there’s still some good stuff with the nightmare sequences. I wish they put some effort in the kills, though. C-

U-571 (2000)

It’s called a potboiler because, without all the other ingredients, all you’re gonna get is steam. Which can be fine, when done properly. U-571 is without a doubt, done properly. The barest of essentials are given our characters (That McConaughey’s character’s leadership would be put to the tests was already a given. But then the film explicitly warns us “by the way, that’s really the whole character and arc we’re gonna give this guy”, which is appreciated.), the plot is set up quickly, efficiently, and excitingly, and seemingly insurmountable obstacles arise at a steady (but believeable) clip, but because of the inherent Hollywood bullshit (including an execution scene to REMIND US THAT NAZIS ARE THE BAD GUYS), we’re able to experience the rush of “How will they get out?” without ever once worrying “Will they get out?”. Even McConaughey, who I’ve previously always hated whenever he wasn’t playing some kind of creep, bulges his eyes and sweats enough to convince us that he’s terrified. It’s a performance that stops well short of an actual character, but it serves it’s purpose.

Submarine movies are the best for a reason: even capable but middling direction (though there were a few brief moments where I detected Mostow was getting his art-film rocks off, focusing on the beauty of barrels and floating corpses a little longer than absolutely necessary), an anemic script (quick, name one character trait that anyone in this film exhibits!) and the unmistakable scent of Hollywood bullshit (swelling music over closing text about just how totally awesome America was in the 40’s) cannot change the fact that submarines are the single most inherently dramatic setting ever created by mankind. If the mafia used them, our entire culture would be nothing but submarine movies and submarine rap. Also, I should note that my opening sentence about the origin of the term potboiler is 100% made up. Sorry. B

Vinyl (2000)

A really confessional and wounding doc about the mania of collectors. It’s about a record collectors, but it could have just as easily have been anything. Little overlong but really raw. B