Movie scene 1999: A Year of experiments and scare fare

Movie scene 1999: A Year of experiments and scare fare

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): Moviegoing in Jakarta is essentially about two
things: good movie weeks and bad movie weeks.

When you are lucky, you can go from one critically acclaimed
film to the next, watching one award-winning picture after
another. But at other times, all that is offered is either a
schlocky horror show, an awful slapstick piece or a mind-numbing
action flick that is high in body count but low in cinematic
nutrition.

That could not have been more true in 1999, when our local
movie theaters showed symptoms of such severe moodswings. At
certain times they could really grab you with Oscar-winning films
and other high-profile material.

But soon after, they let you go, leaving no choice but an Adam
Sandler lowbrow comedy or an obscure action movie from obscure
action guy Mark Dacascos.

The good news is that the Studio 21 chain, the company that
distributes and screens movies in most Indonesian cinemas, seems
to be learning something.

It is obviously beginning to recognize the developing tastes
of the Jakarta moviegoing public. The evidence: a fewer number of
bad movie weeks this year.

Sure, we still have to deal with low-grade action flicks such
as Dacascos's The Base, the vigilantism propaganda of The
Substitute 2 or Steve Guttenberg's Airborne.

Some horror trashfests like Warlock III and Phantasm IV:
Oblivion also enjoyed a good amount of screentime here.

However, we have seen more and more internationally acclaimed
films reaching our screens too, especially from March through
April, when the city enjoyed an Oscar-fever aftermath.

This was the right time to show Affliction (starring Oscar
winner James Coburn), the Oscar-nominated The Truman Show and The
Thin Red Line, and the big Oscar champion Shakespeare in Love.
The obvious absentee in this group is the World War II saga
Saving Private Ryan, which was shown late last year.

Who would have thought that a film about a 16th century
British playwright suffering from writer's block would be a hit
in Jakarta?

Well, it happened, with the marketing-savvy Studio 21 opening
Shakespeare in Love a week before the Academy Awards ceremony,
letting the Oscars do the rest.

The result: people would not stop going to the cinema to see
what the year's Oscar winner for Best Picture was like.

And Studio 21 itself could not stop. In July, it screened
Afterglow, whose leading lady, Julie Christie, was nominated for
an Oscar last year.

This offbeat comedy-drama about two married couples who
inadvertently swap partners did not seem like a sure-fire box-
office winner here. But the gamble paid off and the film reaped
considerable success.

And so, "better late than never" became the apparent motto
that prompted the December opening of Good Will Hunting and The
Wings of the Dove, two films that also won Oscar accolades last
year.

Good Will Hunting, a drama about a math genius who opts for a
blue-collar life will benefit from the star power of Ben Affleck,
Matt Damon and Robin Williams, who all won Oscars for their work
in this film.

Meanwhile, Wings, slated to open late this year, will be a
testing ground to see whether a period costume drama will or will
not scare away an audience too accustomed to films with
contemporary settings.

Of course, the theater chain was not only busy experimenting
all year. Most of the time it stuck to an age-old formula: bring
in movies with established, household names, like Nicolas Cage,
John Travolta, Sharon Stone, Adam Sandler, Will Smith, Jean-
Claude Van Damme and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The funny thing is, only Travolta's detective story The
General's Daughter and Schwarzenegger's doomsday tale End of Days
earned anything meaningful among these star-led films (since
Studio 21 never publishes box-office results, we can only guess
at the success of a film from its lifespan at the theaters).

None of Van Damme's three films lasted long, and Stone's
sensual pose on the posters for Gloria was apparently not
magnetic enough to lure audiences into the theaters (a pity,
since it is actually a pretty decent film).

This year's main course at the movies was comedy, and we got a
wide variety of it: from slapstick (Wrongfully Accused,
Bowfinger) to action-comedy (Rush Hour, Blue Streak) to
offbeat (Office Space, Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me).

Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal made an effective comedy duo
in Analyze This. And there were even those movies from beyond
Hollywood -- Virtual Sexuality and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking
Barrels from the United Kingdom and Witch Way Love from France.

And we have not even mentioned romantic comedies, two of which
featured Hollywood's most-loved couples of today: Tom Hanks and
Meg Ryan (You've Got Mail) and Julia Roberts and Richard Gere
(Runaway Bride) in reunion movies that became bigger than the
films themselves.

While romance was in the air, we were also offered Entrapment
and The Thomas Crown Affair, two films about romantic thieves
whose plots are so similar one wonders if they stole story
pitches from each other. Thomas Crown star Pierce Brosnan
returned later this year with The World is Not Enough, a film
that sounds like a United Nation's family planning campaign but
turns out to be the newest James Bond spectacle.

Yes, our theaters this year were quite a colorful spectrum:
there was the high-energy sci-fi action extravaganza The Matrix;
there was the shot-by-shot remake of the Hitchcock classic
Psycho; and there were even selections for the thinking crowd:
the character-driven comedy Pushing Tin and the classy thriller
Arlington Road. Fans of Indian song-and-dance flicks continued to
go to Senayan 21, where such films are regularly screened.

There was also space for the "Annual Indonesian Movie". Again,
there was only one, Marselli Sumarno's directorial debut, Sri,
which has become the country's official entry for the upcoming
Academy Awards. Actually, there were a number of other Indonesian
films, but they were the usual soft-porn types which were shown
at smaller theaters outside the 21 system.

Still, something was missing, and it was the most highly
anticipated movie of 1999, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom
Menace. Now why would such an obvious cash cow not be shown here?
Studio 21 spokespeople would not speak, but sources said the film
came with a burdensome merchandising deal that local distributors
found unaffordable.

Filmgoers waiting for Notting Hill were also dismayed.
Logically, if they showed Stepmom and Runaway Bride, they would
screen a third Julia Roberts film, right? Wrong.

Explanation? None.

There is something else that should have been seen at local
cinemas: more movies for kids, in quantity and quality. Sure,
Tarzan was all right, but then we got other films about heroes in
loincloths -- Mowgli's First Adventure, Jungle Boy -- that were
not that great. And those lame adaptations of old TV series --
My Favorite Martian, Inspector Gadget -- did not cut it either.

Solution: bring in more stuff like The Borrowers and Toy
Story 2.

Following Hollywood's recent trend of scare fare, the theaters
gave us an array of man vs. menacing species films to choose
from. We could take our pick: snakes (King Cobra), crocodiles
(Lake Placid), sharks (Deep Blue Sea), aliens (The Faculty) or
devil-possessed human organs (Idle Hands).

And a venture into the supernatural realm was made possible by
The Haunting, The Mummy and The Sixth Sense.

The latter two, incidentally, were this year's winners, both
staying at major theaters for over six weeks, longer than any
other film in 1999. The Sixth Sense has just received Golden
Globe Award nominations for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting
Actor (for its spectacular young star, Haley Joel Osment), making
it a probable contender for the upcoming Academy Awards. Now that
is something for the Studio 21 people to get busy about come
March.