It’s all happening
One cinema visit marked with a *. I inadvertently ended up with a season of Cameron Crowe films that ought to be called Bring Me the Head of Cameron Crowe. But isn’t. Though you can imagine that it is if that makes you feel better.
Elizabethtown (2005)
William Goldman makes great play of beginnings and endings in Adventures in the Screen Trade, and how good the end of North by Northwest (1959) is and how bad the end of Excalibur (1981) is by comparison. Unfortunately, this film fits into the latter category. It is another warm film about people and your ability to tolerate it may depend upon your like or dislike of Orlando Bloom or Kirsten Dunst. I liked it, but Crowe has got the ending badly wrong. Without giving too much away, the film ends with a (much-criticised) road trip. The problem is that Crowe hasn’t realised that the road trip is his equivalent of Hitchcock’s MacGuffin, an item the characters in a film care intensely about, but which should be of no importance to the audience. And the road trip lasts ten minutes at a time when the film is basically over. All you would need is about one minute of road trip running over the main end credits, then the film’s ending and that’s it, out in two minutes. Without nine minutes of padding that it doesn’t need.
Say Anything… (1989)
After his unhappiness at the way his script of The Wild Life (1984) was brought to the screen, he was determined to direct his next script. And this was the result, a great movie from the 80s, a teen romantic comedy no less, that has none of the horribleness of the John Hughes movies, or, even worse, the sub-John Hughes movies.
Singles (1992)
Even though I think it had been some years since Crowe worked for Rolling Stone, he’s remained in touch with popular culture in the way that other film directors haven’t. Hence his next film, which is what Friends (1994) could have been like if it hadn’t been made for TV, is set in Seattle miraculously as the thing that journalists labelled grunge was happening. So there’s the amusing spectacle of Kyra Sedgwick and Campbell Scott politely moshing at an Alice in Chains gig. Alright.
Jerry Maguire (1996)
Even though it has a picture of Tom Cruise smiling on the cover, this is a film about failure. It has its moments of warmth, but for most of the movie, Jerry Maguire is dancing on the abyss of emptiness at 33. It also highlights how darned good Tom Cruise is as an actor, an actor cursed with movie star good looks. For all the well-deserved flak he’s taken recently, what remains is his performances, as long as he works with a good director who pushes him.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) *
As the books have got longer, the films have turned into a kind of precis rather than the overly slavish approach of Chris Columbus in the first two movies. Although it may seem rather gratuitous to some, I actually saw this at the Imax with the final 20 minutes in 3D. And wow is all I have to say about that. Bring on The Dark Knight (2008), that’s what I say. Harry Potter isn’t for everyone, but it is cool to see how the actors have grown into their roles.
Untitled (2000)
For the record, this was the extended version of Almost Famous in DTS 5.1. Very nice. The film won an Oscar for Best Sound, a fact that may seem rather strange until you realise that it won it for the onstage sequences where in a film, you actually had the sound, the volume, the depth, the bass, that you would have got if Stillwater had performed at a real concert. The film is nostalgic in the best sense, an elegy for a way of life and a time and a place that have disappeared forever, except in the memories of the ones who were there. Almost Famous is the culmination of Crowe’s interest in people, relationships and character, and it will be interesting to see what happens next after the criticism of Vanilla Sky (2001) and the financial disappointment of Elizabethtown (2005).