Traditionally, Hollywood has operated under the assumption that every genre has a gender. Thrillers and action movies, stockpiled with phallic weaponry, are the archetypal Guy Movies, while women are presumed to be drawn to warmer, character-driven ensemble films or romantic comedies. There are intriguing signs, however, that these stereotypes are being challenged. One of the most anticipated action movies, “Strange Days,” is directed by a woman, Kathryn Bigelow, who showed in “Blue Steel” and “Point Break” that she can pump adrenaline with the big boys. Set on New Year’s Eve 1999 in a post-riot Los Angeles, “Strange Days” stars Ralph Fiennes as a hustler pushing hits of violent virtual reality to a populace strung out on cheap sensation. But it’s Angela Bassett who has the real action role, as a chauffeur/bodyguard. This apocalyptic vision comes from a story by Bigelow’s ex-husband, James Cameron (“Terminator”). To Bigelow, who comes out of the New York art world, there’s a false dichotomy between male and female subject matter. “For some reason, men are more associated with hardware movies and women not. I think ultimately the best films are about people and emotion, whether imbued with hardware or not. I’m really surprised there are those distinctions because I think it ghettoizes gender.” Bigelow is determined to be a ghetto blaster.
Nonetheless, something tells us it won’t be women lining up to see “Showgirls,” the Las Vegas peep show from those sensitive guys, director Paul Verhoeven and writer Joe Eszterhas, who brought you “Basic Instinct.” The drawing card here is female flesh, in the form of Elizabeth Berldey as an ambitious lap dancer. The movie will be a test case of the commercial viability–or liability-of the NC-17 rating. R’s the first big-studio release since “Henry and June” in 1990 that’s been slapped with the restrictive label, and some exhibitors won’t show it as a matter of policy. This season even Hester Prynne gets a nude scene–that’s right, “The Scarlet Letter’s” Hester Prynne – now played by Demi Moore in Roland Joffe’s reworking of the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic.
Las Vegas is obviously the hot Guy Movie locale this season. In addition to “Leaving Las Vegas”–a gritty romance with Nicolas Cage as an alcoholic and Elisabeth Shue as a call girl– the movie all buffs are most eager to see is Martin Scorsese’s “Casino.” Scorsese will take us to the Strip in the 1970s, where high-roger Robert De Niro and his alcoholic wife, Sharon Stone, open a casino and run afoul of the mob. After his foray into Edith Wharton society, the director is back on familiar turf, working with his “Goodfellas” writing partner Nicholas Pileggi (BOOKS, page 79). One question: what depths will Scorsese plumb from Stone, who in the past has gotten more publicity than respect?
We suspect people will be looking at Nicole Kidman with new eyes, too, after seeing Gus Van Sant’s “To Die For.” In this dark satire written by Buck Henry from the Joyce Maynard novel, she plays a small-town TV weather girl who’s so ambitious she’s not above putting murder on her resume. According to the buzz, her sly comic performance will forever erase Mrs. Cruise’s image as a bland blonde. Van Sant has also cast River Phoenix’s brother Joachim (formerly known as Leaf) as a grotty teenager erotically ensnared into Kid-man’s criminal scheme.
The fashion color for fall is definitely noir. Perhaps the astounding success of “Pulp Fiction” has something to do with this. The word is particularly good about two films based on a couple of the best crime-fiction writers around- Elmore Leonard and Walter Mosley. In “Devil in a Blue Dress,” Denzel Washington plays Mosley’s hero Easy Bawlins at the beginning of his sleuthing career in 1948 L.A. Jennifer Beals is the femme fatale he’s trying to find. The director, Carl Franklin, made a name for himself with the remarkable low-budget genre movie “One False Move,” so there are lots of reasons to be hopeful. The movie of Elmore Leonard’s novel “Get Shorty” puts mobsters and Hollywood dealmakers in bed together. John Travolta (rumored to be terrific) plays a debt collector who muscles his way into showbiz in this satirical crime flick directed by Barry (“The Addams Family”) Sonnenfeld. Costarring Danny DeVito, this promises tasty bites of Leonard’s inimitable vernacular style.
You expect to see Arnold or Bruce packing guns, but even Johnny Depp is shedding his angora and angst to get into the action act. In John Badham’s “Nick of Time,” Depp’s daughter is kidnapped, and the baddies give him an hour and a half to assassinate the governor of California to get her back. Call it Don Juan Da Marksman. Not to be outdone, that other heartthrob, Brad Pitt, gets down and dirty with cop partner Morgan Freeman as they track down a nasty serial killer in “Seven.” The number refers to the seven deadly sins: each of the victims is caught enacting his favorite. Anyone for Sloth? And did we mention that Sylvester Stallone has a movie called “Assassins”? It’s not a musical.
As an antidote to all this yang, there is Hollywood’s adaptation of Terry McMillan’s best-selling novel about career women, “Waiting to Exhale.” Set over the course of one year in Phoenix, the film stars Whitney Houston, who’s looking to become a TV producer and find the right man. Loretta Davis, Lela Rochon and the ubiquitous Angela Bassett–who also pops up this fall with Eddie Murphy in Wes Craven’s “A Vampire in Brooklyn”–round out the east. Guiding these actresses is actor-turned-director Forrest Whitaker, who doesn’t see why a man shouldn’t direct a women’s story. “I directed a film about a drug dealer, but I wasn’t one,” he says, referring to his HBO movie “Strapped.”
For a reminder that gender bending has been with us all century long, there’s the highly touted “Carrington.” Playwright and director Christopher Hampton takes us back to the Bloomsbury era to reveal the passionate, highly unusual love affair between painter Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson) and homosexual writer Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce), a bond that lasted through her marriage to another man, several extramarital affairs and his affairs with other men. Pryce walked off with the best-actor prize in Cannes.
This takes us only through Thanksgiving: a peek at Christmas holds such goodies as Oliver Stone’s “Nixon,” Sydney Pollack’s remake of “Sabrina,” Emma Thompson in Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” and Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Michael Mann’s cops-and-robbers thriller “Heat.” From the look of things it may be safe for adults to venture out to the movies again without fear of brain damage.
CORRECTION In our Fall Movies Preview (THE ARTS, Sept. 18), actress Loretta Devine, one of the stars of Waiting to Exhale, was incorrectly referred to as Loretta Davis. NEWSWEEK regrets the error.
