A Look Back At What Did & Did Not

Work On The Big Screen In 2005

At what moment does perception become reality? If we continually think the sky is falling, about how long will it take before we find clouds at our ankles?

For much of the first half of 2005, movie pundits were spinning their wheels trying to figure out the reasons for a 19-week box office slide that began in late February and continued through early July. As we conclude the last half of the year, there is much hand-wringing in Hollywood as the numbers show total attendance at the movies has dropped over seven percent in comparison with last year.

What does it all mean? I wouldn’t presume to know the answer. But since this is my column, I’ll throw out a few ideas as we close the book on 2005.

First off, one might presume that the declining numbers equal a decline in the quality of the movies… and to some extent, that’s true. After all, did we really need a big-screen version of The Dukes of Hazzard and Bewitched to go with such remakes as House of Wax, The Honeymooners, Guess Who, and the like?

Steven Spielberg’s take on War of the Worlds was one of the five most popular films at the box office (it took in well over $200 million)… but I must admit I liked that film only marginally better than Hook, his overly precious, car-wreck of a take on Peter Pan (and if you couldn’t tell, I didn’t like Hook).

That being said, however, the year also showed us that remakes and sequels are not devils in and of themselves. With true, talented storytellers at the helm, even some of the most adored texts and concepts can come gloriously to life as if they were new.

Master Kiwi visionary Peter Jackson, hot off his success with The Lord of the Rings adaptations, is currently rocking multiplexes with this epic take on King Kong. Earlier in the year, gifted filmmaker Christopher Nolan applied his gifts to telling the story of Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins and his classy hit subsequently breathed new life into the DC Comics legend.

Tim Burton atoned for his leaden reworking of Planet of the Apes in 2001 by giving us a colorful, mischievous take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and relative newcomer Joe Wright has served notice as a director to watch with Pride and Prejudice, a winning, snappy yet faithful adaptation of Jane Austen’s beloved novel.

But secondly, apart from the plethora of sequels and remakes, this year is also marked by Hollywood’s unintentional conditioning of moviegoers to stay away from theaters except for a few scant months in the summer and winter. By increasingly bunching it’s “tentpole” films within the May-July summer months and late November-December Oscar-crunch time, the industry is inadvertently making us ignore them for most of the year and the rest of the time is making us choose between too many selections.

How else to explain the relative obscurity of the quality drama Cinderella Man, which had the misfortune of being released during the time of the aforementioned Batman Begins, not to mention a little film called Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.

The current surplus of intriguing films (from Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain and Spielberg’s Munich to Woody Allen’s latest, Match Point, to name a few), created because their studios want to release them close to the end of the year so they can battle to gain that all-important “buzz” during awards season, is sure to leave more than a few worthy entries left out in the cold and ignored. That’s truly a shame.

But as 2005 draws to a close, one thing you can almost always count on is a good underdog. This year, it came in many sizes and genres, from the hit documentary The March of the Penguins to the hit comedies Wedding Crashers and The 40 Year-Old Virgin… and if we’re unable to fight the crowds to catch some of the intriguing offerings now playing at our local theaters, we can always count on a DVD rental of early-season critical favorites like Crash, Hustle & Flow, Junebug, A History of Violence and the aforementioned Cinderella Man.

Happy New Year everyone, and happy viewing!