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>> Our cool picks for winter flicks


by MARK SLUTSKY

Winter’s always a little slow for movies, with most studios having hastily released their big or prestigious movies in the last few weeks of December to meet the pre-New Year’s Oscar-qualifying rush. So, as always, the next few months see a whole bunch of pretty ridiculous-looking flicks that, rightly or not, weren’t judged by the bigwigs to be that hit-worthy.

All the same, there are, scattered here and there, a couple of promising-looking movies slated for the season. Montreal gets to catch up to the U.S. with the release here—finally—of 2001’s In the Bedroom (Jan. 25), the lavishly lauded debut feature from character actor/director Todd Field. Another praised 2001 release opening here soon is Marc Forster’s Monster’s Ball (Feb. 8), with Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Billy Bob Thornton and Peter Boyle. Berry is the wife of an executed inmate who falls in love with racist prison guard Thornton—this one’s supposed to be pretty heavy stuff.

Similarly searing should be Sorority Boys (March 8), about a trio of hard-living collegiate types who go undercover in drag at a sorority house to avoid being kicked off campus for their antics. If that tickles you, you might want to also check out Slackers (Feb. 1), with Rushmore’s Jason Schwartzman as a campus nerd who blackmails a couple of student grifters into hooking him up with the girl of his dreams. Silly antics expected.

The cold months ahead also promise a veritable buffet of supernatural entertainments. Most exciting, perhaps, is Blade II: Bloodlust (March 29), sequel to the awesome Wesley Snipes vampire-busting original. Wes is back for this one, and this time he’s gotta fight a gang of super-vampires. Yes, super-vampires. In fact—just between us—these super-vampires are apparently so freaky that Blade has to team up with some regular vampires to take ’em out. Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone) directs. Queen of the Damned (Feb. 15) was already wrapped when star Aaliyah sadly passed away in a plane crash last summer. Based on the Anne Rice novel, the flick has famous vampire Lestat (Stuart Townsend) become a rock star whose music awakens the eponymous queen, who then goes looking for trouble. And Dragonfly (Feb. 22) stars Kevin Costner as a man who thinks his dead wife is trying to contact him.

Finally, the ball is rolling

Collateral Damage, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pathetically generically-titled new terrorist-revenge flick was bumped after September 11; if you’ve been waiting impatiently ever since, you can breathe easily, as it opens Feb. 8. The same day welcomes the highly unanticipated remake of Norman Jewison’s deadly-sports sci-fi flick Rollerball, with a dream cast that includes Chris Klein, LL Cool J, and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. John McTiernan, whose star has fallen considerably since Die Hard, directs. (The film’s release date has been postponed several times.) The Time Machine (March 8) promises further futuristic mayhem. Based on H.G. Wells’s classic novel, and directed by his grandson Simon Wells (at least until he cracked up and another director had to be brought in to finish the picture), this one promises to have a lot of neat special effects. We’re still holding out hope for the rest of the movie. Guy Pearce stars. He’s also in The Count of Monte Cristo (opens Jan. 25), the latest of many adaptations of Alexandre Dumas’s tale of revenge (the last one was in 1998). Pearce is the baddie here, with James Caviezel, who still hasn’t done anything to match his performance in The Thin Red Line, starring. Hopefully this one will see a little old-fashioned swashbuckling. And if The Count whets your appetite for period pieces, there’s always Charles Shyer’s The Affair of the Necklace, with Oscar winner Hillary Swank making her bid for big-time movie star status. (Can’t say if she will; she sure looks weird in that poster.) In a completely different vein (hopefully) is David Fincher’s The Panic Room, with Jodie Foster. She plays a woman hiding out in a mansion while thieves ransack it. Could be neat.

E.T. phone home, again

2002 marks the 20th anniversary of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and Steven Spielberg’s lovable-alien classic is thus being re-released in March. Sadly, Spielberg’s decided to follow buddy George Lucas’s incredibly bad example and digitally alter the original film to suit his whims—now the scary FBI agents will be holding walkie-talkies instead of guns. Someone’s gotta stop these ageing filmmakers before they go too far. Also in somewhat Spielbergean territory is Disney’s Return to Never Land (Feb. 15), a return to the world of Peter Pan. The plot seems to involve something about an ailing Tinkerbell. For your CGI fix you’ll have to check out Fox’s Ice Age (March 15), which has a bunch of prehistoric critters fleeing the approaching glaciers. Sounds suspiciously like Disney’s Dinosaur, which had a whole bunch of prehistoric critters fleeing the approaching meteors. More family entertainment is promised in The Rookie (March 29). Based on the true story of a 38-year-old high school baseball coach turned major league pitcher, the movie stars Dennis Quaid in the title role and is, as the advertising has repeatedly proclaimed, “from the studio that brought you Remember the Titans.” What kind of a guarantee is that?

If all of this—vampires, time machines, rollerballs—is too much for you, seek refuge at Montreal’s singular FIFA, or Festival international du films sur l’art, which, like E.T., celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The program hasn’t been announced yet, but it’ll likely be as diverse as previous years. It runs March 12–17. :