British films took a bashing -
Inbetweeners,
Pandaemonium,
Whipped - but then
it's easy to forget the ones you liked -
Enigma,
Late Night
Shopping,
South
West Nine,
Strictly
Sinatra,
Born
Romantic,
Beautiful
Creatures,
High
Heels & Lowlifes,
Last
Resort. They do so much better when they're not trying to
be Hollywood.
There was no Mike Leigh, but there were two Ken Loachs -
Bread
And Roses and
The
Navigators - for which heaven be praised. As well as
having a baby, losing a husband, finding a new man and
being generally in-the-tabs with Liz Hurley & The Love Rat,
Kate Winslet made a couple of movies. She was brainy'n'interesting
in
Enigma and completely
wasted in
Quills.
Penelope Cruz was everywhere, flaunting it in the unspeakable
Woman On Top,
being a bitch in
Blow
and looking angelic in
Captain
Corelli's Mandolin. Quite soon, she'll be in
Vanilla
Sky, which is a remake of the Spanish movie,
Open
Your Eyes, written and directed by Alejandro Amenabar, who
made
The Others, with
the former Mrs Tom Cruise. What goes around comes around.
The year began with a thing of beauty -
Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon - and ended with Tolkien's masterpiece
-
The
Lord Of The Rings. When filmmakers take imagination seriously,
it is heartening. Effects have become the new art form.
Final Fantasy and
Shrek
took animation into another realm, while
Christmas
Carol - The Movie was a reminder of how bad it used to be.
The monstrously hyped
Harry
Potter & The Philosopher's Stone gave Chris Columbus
the opportunity to play with J K Rowling's toys. It
wasn't, as shrill critics piped, the best movie ever made. Compared
to Peter Jackson's first part of Tolkien's saga, it lacked character
- too many effects, too little substance.
Tom Hanks won the Weightwatchers award for
Cast
Away and Ben Kingsley the Mad As A Bat award for
Sexy
Beast. Winona Ryder deserved far more attention for
Lost
Souls. The movie was underrated as well. The Bravery award proved
quite a tussle. There was Kevin Spacey's skin disease in
Pay It Forward, Renne
Zellweger's thighs in
Bridget
Jones's Diary, Isabelle Huppert's weird sex in
The
Piano Teacher and Kerry Fox's basement bonk in
Intimacy.
