What We Can't Wait to See

The Big-Money Battle

Catch Me if You Can is part of a Hollywood gang war between two Oscar-hopeful Leo DiCaprio blockbusters. DreamWorks has Catch Me (Dec. 25), while Miramax has Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (see review). As Joseph McBride's definitive bio demonstrates, father-son conflict is the key to Catch Me director Steven Spielberg's soul, and there's a father-figure subtext here: Spielberg started out, according to film historian Peter Biskind, wanting to be Scorsese, whose gang of 1970s directors looked down on Spielberg's upbeat populist style. They nearly shamed him into turning down Jaws. Later, Spielberg traded Scorsese Cape Fear for Schindler's List. But Scorsese never made it in Spielberg's big-bucks game, while Spielberg's Schindler won him auteur gravitas, twin Oscars, and ever more money.

Now the two titans (and studios) go mano a mano with dueling Leo films. If Scorsese loses, he may be exiled to the art house. My money is on Spielberg.

Tim Appelo

Song and Dance

Madonna lobbied for it; Britney considered it; Goldie Hawn was practically guaranteed to star in it at one point. A desperate Harvey Weinstein even offered Barbra freakin' Streisand the directing reins in a moment of sheer desperation. Now, after nearly 25 years of limbo and turnaround, the Broadway musical Chicago is finally coming to the big screen (Dec. 27) with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Odds are that the dark tale of two murderous showgirls and their flamboyant lawyer in the tabloid-obsessed '20s will be either a Heaven's Gate-style disaster or mind-boggling success—loads of fun, regardless.

Zeta-Jones has the looks and bearing of an iconic Hollywood star, but so far she's more famous for marrying old coot Michael Douglas and hawking T-Mobile than for any spectacular display of acting. It will be interesting to see whether the steely ambition crouching just beneath her lovely surface—look at that mercenary ho; can you possibly imagine her marrying for anything as silly as love?—translates into a film-carrying performance as showgirl-ber-alles Velma Kelly. Ren饠Zellweger, meanwhile—all 86 pounds of her—forgoes her sweet 'n' loopy image in the role of Roxie Heart, an also-ran with a near-sociopathic need to succeed. And, in a coup of what we're hoping is visionary casting, Richard Gere, one of the most physically reserved and wooden of actors, not only sings but dances up a storm as the shady attorney/ Svengali. Support from Lucy Liu, Queen Latifah, and consistently brilliant character actor John C. Reilly rounds out the crazy smorgasbord.

And who directs them all? Not the rumored Alan Parker (who would seem to fit, having helmed both Fame and Evita) or Herbert Ross (Footloose), but one Rob Marshall, whose principal credits are as a choreographer for Annie. Could Streisand have done it any better? Or any worse? I can't wait to find out.

Leah Greenblatt

The Liars

I'm dying to see what the endlessly inventive screenwriter Charlie Kaufman does next with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (Dec. 31 in N.Y.C. and L.A., Jan. 24 here), because it will have nothing to do with the truth. Just look at his track record with Being John Malkovich and Adaptation (see review). I mean, the guy is an out-and-out liar, like all great writers; he prevaricates for a living. If that sounds like the professional envy of a scrupulous fact-checking journalist who gets angry e-mail for every little niggling error he makes, it is. I am, after all, the idiot who once transposed the surnames of Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in a feature review in this paper. If I were Charlie Kaufman, people would think that was intentional—genius!

Mind is Kaufman's adaptation of the memoir by TV's Gong Show host Chuck Barris, who claims to have been a CIA hit man (but is more widely considered to be a delusional nutcase). So much the better. Truth goes right out the window. Apart from documentaries, I'm sick of strict veracity in historically grounded and fact-inspired movies. Who really cares about the exact history or shirt color of this gang or that in Gangs of New York? And who really wants to write about those profound details? Not me.

Better to be reckless about the truth, as Kaufman is. Perhaps it's that spirit that's drawn George Clooney to direct his first film (he also plays a small role). And given the CIA's actual record of wacky/inept schemes (Castro's exploding cigars, LSD as a weapon, etc.), is it really so unthinkable that tinsel-town fantasies might creep their way into our nation's top-secret espionage operations? Maybe Barris was crazy. Or maybe he was just so crazy that he was actually sane. I'm just hoping there's a midnight White House meeting with Nixon or Reagan to validate the latter theory. Oh, wait—could there be an alien spacecraft, too?

Brian Miller

Scorsese's Last Stand

For a lifelong Martin Scorsese fanatic, these are exciting and, frankly, worrisome times. Rumor is, if Gangs of New York bombs after opening Dec. 20, Marty may hang up his viewfinder for good.

I've always felt a deep affinity for the guy—both as a filmmaker and as a person. It's hard not to root for Scorsese. Like me, he's a short, nervous movie and music geek deeply affected by the experiences of his childhood. He's also the last truly important filmmaker America has produced. Scorsese's experiments, his genre exercises, even his flat-out failures evince more passion and personal vision than any of his me-decade contemporaries. Unfortunately, with a string of marginal flicks since the mid-'90s, his star has diminished considerably. While populist hacks like Spielberg and Lucas can punch their own tickets, the commercially corrosive Scorsese has had to wait nearly three decades to get this sweeping historical drama off the ground.