Late-year pics get little love from critics
'Traffic,' 'Thirteen Days' only clear-cut winners
Of all the films packed into the end of 2000, the only pictures with any clear-cut critical acclaim -- at least among the New York and Los Angeles scribes polled by Variety in Crix' Picks -- are USA Films' "Traffic" and New Line's "Thirteen Days."
"Traffic" scored overwhelmingly well, with no Cons and a few Mixed. New York Times crit Elvis Mitchell called "Days" a "competent, by-the-numbers re-creation" of the Cuban missile crisis, but he was virtually the sole dissenting voice in a chorus of favorable reviews.
Where does that leave such late-December Oscar hopefuls as "Cast Away," "Chocolat" and "All the Pretty Horses"? Mostly in the tepid column: Although "Cast Away" garnered 16 Pro choices from Gotham crix, nine were Mixed, and Miramax's December entries fared a bit worse than such previous late-year powerhouses as "Shakespeare in Love" and "The English Patient."
Five New York critics gave thumbs up to Billy Bob Thornton's "All the Pretty Horses," with Time's Richard Schickel calling it "a rattling good yarn." But five were Mixed and six Con. The New York Times' A.O. Scott may have delivered the heaviest blow, calling it "as slick and superficial as a Marlboro advertisement on the back of a glossy magazine."
Only 10 Gotham and L.A. crix were sweet on "Chocolat" while 12 offered Mixed advice.
Miramax's "Malena," Giuseppe Tornatore's coming-of- age pic being pushed in the foreign-lingo Oscar category, didn't translate with New York critics, six of whom voted Con, while three offered Mixed and three gave it a Pro vote.
Newsday's Gene Seymour offered one of the harshest assessments, writing that the pic was "crude and predictable enough to make you want to impose an indefinite quarantine on coming-of-age stories involving younger boys and older women."
Gothamites were pretty evenly divided in the Pro, Con and Mixed columns on Sony's "Finding Forrester" while their Left Coast counterparts were noncommittal, with four Mixed votes, one Pro and one Con.
Fox Searchlight's "Quills" also received almost equal votes in all columns from Gotham critics, but L.A. penned more favorable reviews for the Philip Kaufman pic.
Stronger positive feelings prevailed among critics for "Before Night Falls" from Fine Line, Sony Pictures Classics' "The House of Mirth" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and Buena Vista's Coen brothers period piece "O Brother, Where Art Thou."
Considering how little agreement there is between the National Board of Review, the official New York and L.A. critics' associations and the members of the foreign press behind the Golden Globe nominees, those Academy screeners have begun to take on more and more importance.
