A Year In Cinema

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Jason Maloney reviews

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A Year In Cinema

Firstly, a list of the top films in Britain during 2000 based on UK Box-Office takings :

All of the above made at least £5million during the year, over half of them passing the £10million mark… a considerable improvement upon previous years, although how much of that is attributable to increasing ticket prices remains a moot point.

The top ten will offer few surprises to those with at least on eye on what’s been drawing in the crowds over the last 12 months. This year’s most successful movie, Toy Story 2, fairly doubles the takings of its predecessor….a fine achievement, even accounting for the inflation in admission costs since 1996. Gladiator ended up some £12million adrift in second place, just holding off the hugely popular Chicken Run to avoid an animation double-whammy at the top.

Though it snared several Oscars at the beginning of the year, and met with almost universal acclaim, American Beauty is not your typical blockbuster, yet it ranks as the fourth biggest movie of 2000 with over £21million at the UK Box-Office. Previous award-winners in recent times such as Shakespeare In Love and The English Patient also proved commercially sound (to the tune of £19million and £13million respectively), but neither were quite as challenging or controversial as Sam Mendes’ brilliantly evocative tale of Suburban dysfunction.

Yet more kiddie-oriented fare completes the top five, with Stuart Little finding a similar level of success in Britain as it did Stateside. An old-fashioned yarn – timeless even, based as it was on a story published in 1945 – of an orphaned mouse, wonderfully brought to life by CGI wizardry. Sentimental yes, but with a wicked sense of mischief courtesy of a feline mafia voiced by the likes of Chazz Palmienteri and Bruno Kirby.

John Woo‘s take on the Mission: Impossible franchise split opinion, some claiming the M:I element too loosely adapted this time around. Ultra-narcissistic vehicle for a meglomanical Tom Cruise, or a great slice of dumb, noisy, visceral fun? The jury’s still out on that one.

X-Men was the latest cartoon strip to be turned into a major movie, and despite an avalanche of press coverage and inordinate hype, it still made less money than Batman & Robin. Make of that what you will.

The Full Monty award for homespun feelgood success story of the year went to Billy Elliott, proof that a hackneyed but cleverly-marketed piece of pseudo-working class fluff will always win the hearts of the British public. While us Brits congratulate ourselves on its phenomenal popularity, a sobering reminder: this was the “best” we could come up with, yet the Americans gave us Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, Three Kings and of course American Beauty. And that’s just for starters. We won’t even mention the slew of garbage eminating on a weekly basis from these hallowed isles. The bottom half of this year’s complete list of Box-Office figures are packed with the rotten things.

Leonardo Di Caprio (anyone remember him?) starred in 2000’s first big hit, The Beach, brought to the screen by the team behind Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and.. er,A Life Less Ordinary. It allowed its makers to break free from the constraints of being hip “Indie” types, while also offering something a little different from the usual stylised nonsense that passes for cutting-edge cinema.

Such as Snatch, for instance. Brad Pitt‘s presence notwithstanding, the film was little more than a rehash of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels… a pretty good film itself, but repsonsible for the deluge of mindlessly violent rubbish trotted out by the UK Film Industry ever since. Guy Ritchie helmed both movies, but Snatch prevailed through reputation and by association more than anything else.

Look beyond the Top 10, however, and the statistics provide a telling insight to the vagaries of this modern multiplex age of cinema. Box-Office figures for 2000 reflect the preference that appears to be given to the same comparatively small (but lucrative) mainstream audience films, as any visit to your local UCI, Odeon, Showcase or Warner Village will attest to. More money in the coffers of the larger studios, therefore, but a case of ever decreasing circles for the rest.

Scary Movie, the 17th-biggest film of 2000, earned nearly twice as much Hollow Man, as the latter ranked 22nd. That’s a sharp fall-off by anyone’s standards. 73 movies reached the magic £1million mark, but 181 of the year’s releases didn’t. Some of them, obviously, were given only a limited screening in selected areas of the country, so too much should not be read into, say, Jaya Ganga‘s returns of £662, the £823 of Sacred Flesh or the many other low-profile films.

Restricted exposure could not be so easily given as the cause of For the Love of the Game‘s utterly dismal performance. A meagre £58,592 for a Kevin Costner movie speaks volumes about his current plight as a forgotten screen favourite, although a film about baseball (and Costner’s third on the sport) is always going to struggle this side of the pond. Quite how Breakfast of Champions, an offbeat flick starring Bruce Willis, bottomed-out at just £8,760 is a mystery. Then again, it received precious little press coverage, and it wouldn’t be surprising to find that hardly anywhere actually showed the movie.

Also among the stragglers are the tediously dull Million Dollar Hotel (justice prevails), Snow Falling on Cedars (surprisingly for a fairly well-received drama, it took less than £80,000 in total) and Luc Besson’s Joan of Arc: The Messenger. Besson’s last two projects had made significant impressions at the UK Box-Office – Leon was one of 1995’s bigger films, while even the much-maligned Fifth Element. raked in some £7million three years ago. The abject failure of Joan Of Arc is one of the more unexpected events of 2000 – and with figures of £275,141 it must be considered a quite spectacular flop.

Only marginally less disastrous were the Keaton/Ryan/Kudrow “comedy” Hanging Up, a case of too many ditzy actresses spoiling the broth perhaps (just like First Wives Club then – DVDfever Ed), Girl, Interrupted (Winona Ryder does mental illness… the world is singularly uninterested), 28 Days (likewise for Sandra Bullock and alcoholism), the Bruce Willis/Michelle Pfeiffer divorce flick The Story Of Us and Madonna‘s most recent attempt to establish herself as a Hollywood star of any magnitude, The Next Best Thing. Each racked up in the region of half a million green ones during 2000, and relative obscurity is the best they can hope for….not quite horrendous turkeys, but not profitable enough to escape criticism.

A batch of romantic comedies reside in the commercial limbo of £700,000 – £900,000. Return to Me, Keeping the Faith, The Bachelor and Down To You made almost identical amounts, suggesting that the same people watched all four of them.

Despite rave reviews, and subsequently well-recieved DVD releases, Magnolia and The Insider – two of the year’s best films – both failed to really strike gold at the Box-Office. No doubt their three-hour running times and cerebral content played a part. The brilliant, ingenious Being John Malkovich on the other hand – along with the Coen Brothers’ O Brother Where Art Thou? – did respectably good business as well as wowing the critics.

Equally heartening, Hollywood’s penchant for rewriting the history books to serve its own ends thankfully didn’t wash with the British public. The two most notorious examples during 2000 – the World War 2 submarine thriller U-571 and Mel Gibson’s Civil War actioner The Patriot – seriously underperformed during the summer. The latter’s £4,058,582 was well down on previous Gibson outings and at least 50% short of expectation.

Review copyright © Jason Maloney, 2000. E-mail Jason Maloney

Check out Jason’s homepage: The Slipstream.

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