Hollywood kicked off the Thanksgiving weekend Wednesday with a half-dozen feature films (reviewed in Floridian on Wednesday) that aren't filled with holiday spirit.
That's certainly true for Bad Santa (rated R), despite the Christmas-season setting. Billy Bob Thornton is hilarious as Willie T. Soke, a shopping mall Santa Claus by day and shopping mall thief by night. Willie hates children, boozes too much, curses even more and has a thing for plus-size women and a certain sex act. Not exactly Miracle on 34th Street material.
Director Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World, Crumb) stays true to the raunchiness of the screenplay by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, who have created the anti-Elf, a pitch black comedy generating the most laughs of any movie this year - that is, if you don't mind Bad Santa's pervasive profanity, grim obscenity and complete distaste for sentimentality. Grade: A-
More appropriate for the entire family is The Haunted Mansion (PG), although some of the gruesome special effects may be too intense for young children. Eddie Murphy stars as a smarmy real estate salesman listing a cursed castle. His wife (Marsha Thomason) is a dead ringer for the ghost-host's deceased lover.
The Haunted Mansion isn't as much start-to-finish fun as Pirates of the Caribbean or as cleverly conceived as The Country Bears, films also based on Disney theme park attractions. But it gives Murphy a chance to do what he does best these days: mugging for the cameras and reacting to special effects that are drawn in later. The last 30 minutes pick up steam, elevating the movie to a Grade: B-.
Times correspondent Philip Booth wasn't impressed with Timeline (PG-13), giving it a C. Paul Walker (2 Fast 2 Furious) stars as an archaeology student transported to the 14th century to rescue his father (Billy Connolly). The movie is based on a Michael Crichton novel, and Paramount Pictures will happily remind you that he wrote Jurassic Park. I'll toss in Sphere, Twister and Congo to assist your ticket-buying decision.
The best film debuting this weekend, and one of the best of 2003, is Gus Van Sant's chilling Elephant (R), a mostly improvised account of a high school heading for a Columbine-style disaster. Van Sant doesn't try to make sense of such senseless violence or cheapen the terror with Hollywood heroics in the last reel.
Elephant makes teenage life seem mundane, then suggests that's one reason two students (Alex Frost, Eric Deulen) go on a shooting rampage. Little hints of blame are dropped everywhere: ineffective authority figures, peer rejection, jealousy, things teens face every day. That's what makes Elephant such a subtle warning that something - who really knows what? - must be done before it happens again. Grade: A
Madstone Theaters' grand opening
Van Sant's film is the centerpiece of the opening week of business at the new Madstone Theaters in Tampa's Hyde Park shopping district. Madstone's focus is on independent and foreign films, plus a few major studio productions to pay the bills. All three types are included in the inaugural lineup.
In addition to Elephant - and way behind in terms of quality - is Danny Provenzano's This Thing of Ours, an organized crime potboiler that plays like leftovers from Goodfellas. Provenzano knows the mob (he's serving time now for racketeering) but little about filmmaking, making a stagy impression in what will likely be his only shot at movie fame.
A few scenes benefit from dependable tough guys - James Caan, Frank Vincent, Vincent Pastore - doing their bada-bing thing. The material with freshness potential, such as the first Internet heist in mob history, gets shoved aside by bone breakers and spaghetti summits. This Thing of Ours is only for Sopranos freaks, though even they'll likely be disappointed. Grade: D
The French shocker In My Skin (Not rated, probably R) was unavailable for a review screening. That may be a blessing. Writer-director Marina de Van stars as Esther, a woman who survives a maiming accident, then develops a fascination with self-mutilation and eating her skin. In My Skin will be shown with English subtitles and no shame.
Madstone is also devoting a screen to The Missing (R), a film by Ron Howard in wide release. Cate Blanchett stars as a frontier medicine woman whose daughter is kidnapped by Indians to sell as a sex slave in Mexico. Tommy Lee Jones plays the woman's estranged father and tracker, another white man in the movies teaching an ethnic group a thing or two about its culture.
Howard's movie is a mess of supernatural mumbo jumbo, sexist endangerment and unsavory Indian stereotypes that have been embarrassing for years. On top of that, The Missing is also unnecessarily violent, and Opie, bless his heart, simply doesn't have a knack for making mayhem matter. The Missing is this Thanksgiving's plumpest turkey, ready to carve. Grade: D
ABOVE: Buena Vista Pictures' 'Haunted Mansion'
LEFT: Fine Line Features' 'Elephant'