Hollywood serves up its buffet of year-end movies

By Steven Rea
Knight Ridder News Service

Johnny Depp, left, and Freddie Highmore star in "Finding Neverland," scheduled to open Wednesday nationwide. Miramax Films

Gael Garcia Bernal, right, and Rodrigo de la Serna are featured in Walter Salles' "The Motorcycle Diaries." Paula Prandini • image.net

Dustin Hoffman, left, stars as Bernie Focker and Robert De Niro is Jack Byrnes in the comedy "Meet the Fockers." Barbra Streisand also stars. Tracy Bennett

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Howard Hughes in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator," scheduled to open Dec. 17. Andrew Cooper • Miramax Films

From left, Jessica Biel, Wesley Snipes and Ryan Reynolds are featured in "Blade: Trinity," scheduled to open Dec. 8. Diyah Pera • New Line Cinema

Sophie Okonedo is Tatiana and Don Cheadle is Paul in United Artists' tribal-war drama "Hotel Rwanda." Blid Alsbirk

The November-to-New Year's holiday window is the traditional time of year for Hollywood to lay out not only its big-ticket, kid-friendly family fare, but also the pictures deemed worthy of Academy Awards. Hence, "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" sharing an opening date with Liam Neeson's bow-tied performance as a pioneering sex researcher in "Kinsey" ("SpongeBob" opens today in Hawai'i; "Kinsey" opens today in some Mainland cities); and Jim Carrey's deliciously twisted kiddie vehicle "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" going toe-to-toe with Martin Scorsese's high-end Howard Hughes biopic, "The Aviator" (both Dec. 17). (Editor's note: All release dates are subject to change, and in Hawai'i, some independent films might never open.)

Speaking of Alfred Kinsey and Howard Hughes, this is a season heavy with real-life biographies. "Ray," anchored by Jamie Foxx's uncanny (and Oscar-nomination shoo-in) performance as Ray Charles, is already in theaters. So, too, "The Motorcycle Diaries," Walter Salles' road pic about the young Ernesto "Che" Guevara, which is being touted for Oscar consideration.

In "Callas Forever" (Nov. 26), Fanny Ardant portrays opera legend Maria Callas during the later days of her career. In "Finding Neverland" (scheduled to open Wednesday nationwide), Johnny Depp dons Victorian duds and a strange Scottish accent to offer an imaginative account of how author and playwright James M. Barrie dreamed up "Peter Pan."

In "Beyond the Sea" (Dec. 29), Kevin Spacey plays pop idol Bobby Darin. And in "The Sea Inside" (Dec. 17), the great Spanish actor Javier Bardem portrays Ramon Sampedro, a paralyzed former ship mechanic who gained world renown for his 30-year fight to win the right to terminate his own life. The film is Spain's entry in the foreign-language Academy Awards category.

The folks who dole out the Oscars have historically favored biopics, and there are best-actor and -actress candidates aplenty in the true-life field this time around. (Look for Laura Linney as Clara Kinsey in "Kinsey," too.)

Oliver Stone's "Alexander" (Wednesday), with Colin Farrell as the 4th-century B.C. Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, promises to bring pomp and paranoia to the genre of historical epics. The saga features Rosario Dawson, Angelina Jolie, Jared Leto, Val Kilmer and Anthony Hopkins. The buzz? There's not much. It could be this year's "Gladiator" (big hit). Or this year's "King Arthur" (a bomb). (OK, that one was actually released this year, so "King Arthur" really is this year's "King Arthur" — but we digress.)

More recent historical events are examined in two films warmly received at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. In "Hotel Rwanda," Don Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who became an unwitting hero during the tribal civil wars that devastated the African nation in 1994. And in "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" (Jan. 14), Sean Penn is Sam Bicke, a traveling salesman who, suffering a nervous breakdown, schemes to kill the president.

Note to overachievers looking for a role model: Cheadle of "Hotel Rwanda" has a key role in "Richard Nixon," too. And the actor is in a pair of big-studio popcorn pics: "After the Sunset" (opened last week), opposite Pierce Brosnan, and "Ocean's Twelve" (Dec. 10), opposite the returning cast of Steven Soderbergh's jaunty 2001 hit, "Ocean's Eleven."

In terms of potential crowd-pleasers with high box-office expectations, "Ocean's Twelve" — with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and others — is certainly on the short list. So is "Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera" (Dec. 22), the Joel Schumacher-steered adaptation of the hit Broadway musical about a disfigured genius lurking around a Paris opera house. Scottish actor Gerard Butler has the title role. Minnie Driver is along for the ride.

And let's not forget "The House of the Flying Daggers" (Dec. 17), which comes from Chinese director Zhang Yimou, responsible for this year's $100 million-plus martial-arts success story, "Hero." This exhilarating Tang-dynasty epic, which stars lithe and limber Zhang Ziyi of "Hero," is a dazzling, cinemagenic love story and a chopsocky spectacle that outperforms anything in "Hero" or the actress' other Oscar-winning Asian magic-and-mayhem film, 2000's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

More popcorn potential: "National Treasure" (today), a cliffhanger starring Nicolas Cage as an archaeologist searching for "the most spectacular treasure in history" stashed by our founding fathers during the Revolutionary War, and "Blade: Trinity" (Dec. 8), starring Wesley Snipes as the cloaked comic-book vampire-slayer.

Family discord, comic division, is the subject heading for "Christmas With the Kranks" (Wednesday), an adaptation of John Grisham's fluffy yuletide tale about a couple who decide not to celebrate the holidays. Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis star. And in "Meet the Fockers" (Dec. 22), the in-law nightmare of 2000's "Meet the Parents" is revisited from the other side of the aisle, with Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as new hubby Ben Stiller's dad and mom, trading quips with Robert De Niro.

Fans of Wes Anderson's left-of-center screwball portraits "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" can be heartened by the impending release of "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" (Dec. 25), in which Bill Murray sports a red wool cap and a Speedo to portray a world-famous oceanographer looking for a killer shark and attempting to patch things up with his estranged son (Owen Wilson). Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe are on board the vessel, too.

Although "Million Dollar Baby," from director Clint Eastwood, won't get here until January, the film is opening in mid-December in New York and Los Angeles to qualify for the Oscars. Hilary Swank stars as a female boxer training for the Big Fight. Likewise, "The Woodsman," with an Oscar-caliber turn from Kevin Bacon as a pedophile, won't open in the rest of the country until the early weeks of 2005. The same, alas, can be said for "Bad Education," the latest from Oscar-favorite Pedro Almodovar, which tracks the friendship of two men shaped by their experiences in a strict Catholic grade school.

"Closer" (Dec. 3) is another likely award contestant. The adaptation of the tough Patrick Marber play about two couples cheating on each other with each other (or suspecting as much) comes from director Mike Nichols. The cast: Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Natalie Portman.

There's much more out there. Two anticipated titles: "A Very Long Engagement" (Dec. 17) stars Audrey Tautou ("Amelie") in a film set in the trenches of World War I. And "Spanglish" (Dec. 17) stars Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni in a xenophobic comedy.

Another helping, anyone?

Maui film fest gets big attention

"It's a 15-day, 48-film festival — our sixth year — and we've grown quite a bit since we first showed 10 films over five days in 1999," said organizer Barry Rivers. Titles to be shown range from biographies ("The Aviator," "Kinsey," "Beyond the Sea"), musicals ("Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Phantom of the Opera' "), comedies ("Sideways"), dramas ("A Love Song for Bobby Long"), animated features ("The Incredibles") and foreign films ("A Very Long Engagement").

Traditionally writers, directors, and actors view and whittle down their choices for Academy Award consideration during this time. Why not from Maui? It's too early to know who from the Hollywood community will be here, said Rivers.

"The Academy Award and other nominations for the upcoming awards season are so valuable to studios, some of them offered film titles from as early as July," said Rivers, who also is the driving force behind the Maui Film Festival every June.

"It's in the best interest of the studios to take advantage of this prime (nominating) time and they know that they can reach members of AMPAS (the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences), the Directors' Guild and the Writers' Guild, and other unions," he said. "And when they watch films here in a great theater (Castle Theater, at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center), it's a relaxed atmosphere."

Indeed, the glitterati stay in high-end resorts in Wailua and have the days to laze in the sun. The festival offers matinee and evening screenings but takes a breather on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Dec. 29 and New Year's Eve.

"Exposure in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety has raised our profile," said Rivers. "We have 12 or 13 studios showing their films here — at least a baker's dozen — so there's something nice cooking out here."