HINDSIGHT IS 20/21: ENEMY AT THE GATES

Twenty years ago, I was prevented from seeing the World War II film Enemy at the Gates in theatres by an overzealous box office employee, who took the film’s 14A rating (meaning you had to be 14 or with an adult) far too seriously, demanding to see photo IDs from a couple of 13-year-old kids. My friend and I only had junior high school IDs (showing we were underage), so we took the L and saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon instead – in hindsight, a much better film, and incidentally the first subtitled film I ever watched in theatres. I eventually saw Enemy at the Gates at home on VHS, where I found it to be a relatively solid war movie, depicting a cat-and-mouse game between a pair of snipers (played by Jude Law and Ed Harris) during the Battle of Stalingrad. I hadn’t seen it in about fifteen years, however, so I was curious to revisit it for this instalment of Hindsight is 20/21.

HINDSIGHT IS 20/21: DOWN TO EARTH

The first film of 2001 that I watched in a cinema (back when that was a thing) was Down to Earth, starring Chris Rock and directed by Chris & Paul Weitz. Apparently I was a big Chris Rock fan as a teenager, as I also saw his directorial debut Head of State, in which he becomes the American President, two years later. Down to Earth is a similarly high-concept comedy: an adaptation of Harry Segall’s stageplay Heaven Can Wait, previously made into the films Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) with Robert Montgomery and Heaven Can Wait (1978) starring Warren Beatty, in which a mistakenly killed-too-early man is put into the body of a rich businessman by a pair of apologetic angels. Unlike the prior two adaptations, which almost entirely consisted of white actors, Down to Earth features a largely Black cast (also including future Oscar-winner Regina King and comedienne Wanda Sykes) and thus its comedy is highly racialized, with much of the humour coming from the juxtaposition of Rock inhabiting an old white guy’s body. With twenty years of hindsight, and having since watched the two previous adaptations of the story, I was interested to revisit the film for this instalment of Hindsight is 20/21.

HINDSIGHT IS 20/21: HANNIBAL

For this instalment of Hindsight is 20/21, I revisited the most controversial film of the Hannibal Lecter saga, simply titled Hannibal. Released in February 2001 and set ten years after The Silence of the Lambs (1991), it broke the record for the largest opening weekend for an R-rated film by more than $15 million; safe to say, audiences were highly excited for the continuing adventures of everyone’s favourite cannibalistic serial killer. Anthony Hopkins, who had won an Oscar in 1992 for the role, returned to his most famous character, yet Hannibal was rather a critical disappointment upon its release, receiving mixed-to-negative reviews and dissatisfying plenty of casual fans with its gruesome violence, grotesque imagery, and gross distortion of the characters. Much of the criticism for the film originated with Thomas Harris’ source novel, published in 1999 to controversy and discontent, and having read it just prior to rewatching the film, it’s easy to see why: not only does the plot, involving disfigured Lecter victim Mason Verger seeking vengeance, tend toward the ghastly and grisly, but the character assassination done unto the ostensible heroine, FBI special agent Clarice Starling, is borderline blasphemous.

HINDSIGHT IS 20/21: VALENTINE

Wes Craven’s Scream reinvigorated the slasher sub-genre in 1996 with its clever script and self-aware characters, but it also inspired an increasingly dire assortment of copycats and wannabes. One such aspirant was Jamie Blanks’ Valentine, released twenty years ago this week to critical derision and modest box office success. You probably know it as the horror flick with the guy from Angel and Denise Richards, where the killer wears a Cupid mask instead of a Ghostface one, and that’s how it’s been lodged in my memory for the last two decades, never having watched it.. As the only other films released that weekend were the Freddie Prinze Jr. romcom Head Over Heels and the Rapture thriller Left Behind starring Kirk Cameron, Valentine was the logical choice for this edition of Hindsight is 20/21.

HINDSIGHT IS 20/21: THE WEDDING PLANNER

Jennifer Lopez made history twenty years ago last week, when her romantic comedy The Wedding Planner topped the box office the same week that her sophomore record J.Lo debuted atop the Billboard 200 music chart – making Lopez the first (and still only) person to have a number one film and album launch at the same time. Her professional success over the last two decades has wavered, from starring in notorious flop Gigli (2003) to garnering Oscar buzz for playing an industrious stripper in Hustlers (2019), but the year 2001 was likely her zenith, at least culturally. I’d never seen The Wedding Planner – despite my girlfriend loving fellow J.Lo romcoms Maid in Manhattan (2002) and Monster-in-Law (2005), she had not yet asked/forced me to watch this one with her – so this seemed as good a time as any to scratch a borderline cultural artifact off my cinematic bucket list.

HINDSIGHT IS 20/21: ANTITRUST

There were no significant movies released on this weekend 20 years ago – the widest release, best I can tell, was the Sean Penn-directed, Jack Nicholson-starring detective mystery The Pledge, which is probably most notable for Jack’s moustache – so for this instalment of Hindsight is 20/21, I decided to revisit the techno-thriller Antitrust, starring Ryan Philippe and Tim Robbins. As I mentioned last week, Antitrust was released the same weekend in 2001 as Save the Last Dance and ultimately disappointed at the box office, grossing only $18m worldwide against an estimated $30m budget. The film was part of a cycle of technology-based thrillers that emerged in the wake of both lingering Y2K anxieties and The Matrix‘s pop phenomenon (also including future Hindsight candidates Swordfish and Spy Game), and even doubled-down on the comparison by counting The Matrix‘s score composer and film editor among its crew. It also received largely negative reviews, and has seemingly faded from the public consciousness – except in our household, where my girlfriend has owned the DVD for nearly two decades and still insists on its virtues as a great bad movie.

HINDSIGHT IS 20/21: SAVE THE LAST DANCE

Covid has made us all do crazy or unusual things to deal with the lockdown – in my case, that means revisiting films from 20 years ago, to see how well they’ve held up (or not). And since we’re probably going to be in this situation for a good portion of this year as well, why not document my adventure through the cinema of 2001? It’s as good a year to start with as any: many will say it represents the calendrical start of the 21st century, and historically it might as well, due to the obviously significant events that occurred. On a personal level, it’s the year when I really started getting into movies by tracking what I’d seen and how much I liked it. So I’ll use this quarantime to look back two decades, revisiting old favourites and confronting ones that I missed or avoided. Hopefully it’ll prove informative and enjoyable.

The first film I’m looking back on is Save the Last Dance, the teen dance drama released this week in 2001. It’s maybe safe to say that the studio, Paramount Pictures, didn’t expect a lot: the film only cost $13m and was released in 2200 theatres, 200 less than the Ryan Philippe techno thriller Antitrust opened in the same weekend. But when the dust settled, Save the Last Dance had more than quintupled the box office opening weekend of Antitrust, grossing $27.5m over the 4-day MLK holiday and becoming the first bonafide hit of the year. It ended up with $91m domestically and $131m worldwide, good enough for the top 25 financially. But its cultural footprint is what I’m more interested in.