Year: 2000

Director Simon West demonstrated his misogynistic tendencies with Con Air, an absurd carnival of a movie with no use for anyone not male and macho and a particular disdain for women and gays. With The General’s Daughter, West moves into the realm of the less overtly bombastic, but while Daughter might have a glossier veneer than Con Air does, but it’s just as disturbing once you peel away the shiny top layers.

Supernova is just like Alien, only not good. Following the standard issue SF plot No. 42, a bunch of people (1) out in the middle of nowhere on a spaceship (2) get picked off one by one by Something Evil (3). Here (1) is some sex-crazed paramedics, (2) is the hospital ship Nightingale, and (3) is a phallic-looking alien thingamajig.

Please, somebody keep David E. Kelley away from the big screen. His Mystery, Alaska was saved — barely — by a cast that refused to let their screenwriter get away with sappy melodrama. I don’t know what the cast of Lake Placid was thinking — they probably just kept their minds on their paychecks. In Lake Placid, Kelley’s attempt at horror comedy that is neither scary nor funny, what passes for lighthearted banter is downright disgraceful, and the miserable-looking cast seems powerless to do anything about it.

The script may be a mess, but to be fair to Pullman, it is nicely directed. It’s probably hard to shoot an ugly movie in gorgeous Big Sky country (Alberta stands in for Wyoming here), but vast locations like this can be greatly diminished on television. Pullman, though, eschews static shots of beautiful scenery and keeps his camera moving over his boundless outdoors settings.

Snow Falling on Cedars, then, is the story of Ishmael’s reluctant journey to become a man of compassion and fairness, as he finds himself having to decide whether the bitterness he feels over Hatsue’s rejection of him will stand in the way of correcting an injustice he is in a position to affect. It’s a very interior story, and probably not one that anyone could easily adapt for the screen.

Tobey Maguire is rapidly becoming one of my favorite young actors. His remarkably expressive face has done him great service so far with his characters, who’ve tended to be naive boys who get their eyes abruptly and unpleasantly opened, as in Ride with the Devil and Pleasantville. It remains to be seen whether he’ll be able to make the transition to more adult characters, but I’d lay odds that he’ll do just fine: The Cider House Rules is a step in that direction for him.