Spike Lee came out with The Original Kings of Comedy and Bamboozled , and I didn't feel like seeing either one of them. Eleven years after the phenomenal Do the Right Thing , I'm wondering how Lee stopped being so vital. Bringing Out the Dead . I was overjoyed when he came back to prominence with the wonderful Out of Sight and The Limey . Then, last spring, he pushed Julia Roberts's boobies together and made Erin Brockovich , a movie whose artistic merit can best be summed up by the act of Soderbergh cashing a paycheck.
Time changes all things.
There are two pieces of big news for me, personally, in 2000. One is that I have pretty much stopped going to the movies. Armed with the knowledge it would suck, I could at least remove myself enough to enjoy the actors and their costumes. Bagger Vance made me wish they'd tossed away the drunken golfer and his Jedi Master caddy, and told the story of Charlize's character instead. But ever since blowing eight dollars on a miserable night at the theater cringing through What Lies Beneath , I've felt content to wait and plunk down a couple of bucks for the DVD rental.