HBO (now Max) has been producing its own feature-length films since 1982, averaging 10-15 releases each year. Most of these films have little to no marketing behind them, nor are they distributed by a major studio or star A-list actors. With very few exceptions, these films go mostly unseen. However, there have been exceptions. These include The Normal Heart, Bad Education, Live from Baghdad, and Behind The Candelabra. Perhaps HBO’s most celebrated and widely received original movie is the Billy Crystal-directed (Forget Paris, Mr. Saturday Night) 61*, chronicling the 1961 single-season home run chase between New York Yankees teammates Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.
Category Archives: 2001
Training Day (2001)
Denzel Washington (Flight, He Got Game) and Ethan Hawke (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Boyhood) began their careers in 1985. Washinton has a more storied career with four Oscar nominations between 1987 and 1999 (Cry Freedom, Glory, Malcolm X, The Hurricane). The underrated Hawke had starred in movies such as Reality Bites, Before Sunrise, Gattaca, and Hamlet before the turn of the century. But it took Antoine Fuqua’s (Southpaw, Tears of the Sun) gritty, determined, and so far over the top that it might be believable Training Day for these two Hollywood heavyweights to meet on the big screen for the first time. The result is the crowning acting achievement in the careers of each actor.
Ghost World (2001)
Despite its title, 2001’s Ghost World is not a horror movie but rather is a movie about finding one’s place in the world or moving through the world as a ghost, unable to impact others despite one’s most honest intentions. Thora Birch (American Beauty, The Hole) plays the lead of Enid, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate trying to figure out what to do next in the months following her graduation. She has no plans for college or work. She barely knows what she will do for the day when she wakes up. A key member of her life is her best friend Becky (Scarlett Johansson – Match Point, Lost in Translation), who, at the beginning of the film, seems to share the same brain. Another is Seymour (Steve Buscemi – Reservoir Dogs, Armageddon), a self-proclaimed loser Enid befriends following a mean prank she pulled on him.