
DATE: Sunday, November 23, 1997             TAG: 9711210098

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  215 lines

HOLLYWOOD'S BIG SPLASH FROM ``TITANIC'' TO ``THE RAINMAKER,'' WILL NEW FILMS SINK OR SWIM?

FOR LAUGHS, there's Robin Williams playing with green goo, two brothers stymied by a mouse in the house and another kid left ``Home Alone.''

For drama, there's the tragedy of slavery in America, oppression in Tibet, and the sinking ``Titanic.''

For literary folks, there are cinema versions of Charles Dickens and Henry James. For those who like to shriek there's everything from ``Alien Resurrection'' to ``Scream 2'' and ``An American Werewolf in Paris.''

This holiday movie season is the most heavily competitive in movie history, with literally billions of dollars at stake. ``Titanic,'' the most expensive movie ever made with a price tag of over $200 million, is by itself enough to sink a studio under normal circumstances.

The other major financial challenge is the 20th Century Fox assault upon the Walt Disney animated franchise, with a $50 million marketing campaign for the current Russian-princess adventure ``Anastasia.''

There will be more movies released between now and the end of the year than at any similar holiday period. Somewhere, big money is going to be lost. But somewhere on this list is likely to be the Academy Award winner. Somewhere, too, will be the movie that becomes the don't-miss, word-of-mouth favorite.

Only the poor beleaguered movie critics have time enough to see all these. Careful planning is required by even the casual moviegoer if these cinematic entries are to be traversed.

Let's go shopping.

OPENED FRIDAY

``Anastasia'' - Fox's Russian fantasy pits a sea storm, a train wreck, a passionate romance and an albino bat against Disney's hold on the animation franchise. Meg Ryan and John Cusack are among the voices. It's not history, so don't expect the Bolshevik revolution to be unpleasant. It's rated gee.

``The Rainmaker'' - Francis Ford Coppola takes on a John Grisham novel in this latest courtroom entertainment. Matt Damon plays the rookie lawyer who takes on the establishment on behalf of an indigent family whose son died after being denied medical care by an insurance company. The cast includes Jon Voight, Danny DeVito, Claire Danes, Mary Kay Place and Mickey Rourke. It's fast-paced, but also suggests that Coppola has become no more than a pop director.

``Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'' - Clint Eastwood directs Kevin Spacey, John Cusack and Jude Law in this adaptation of John Berendt's best-selling book, set in Savannah, Ga. A murder happens there, and so does voodoo; the Georgia atmosphere is better than the mystery. The cast includes Alison Eastwood (Clint's daughter), Jack Thompson and The Lady Chablis.

OPENING WEDNESDAY

``Alien Resurrection'' - Sigourney Weaver's Ripley comes back from the dead with the help of DNA cloning and the vision-obsessed French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who made the weird-looking ``City of Lost Children.'' Winona Ryder, looking like Mutt to Sigourney's Jeff, helps fight the mother monster. Most of the audience has been there before and will be pleased to know this is a broadly played monster flick - not like the ``intellectual'' third entry.

``Flubber'' - After the success of ``101 Dalmatians,'' Disney is hot on remakes. This is a repeat, sorta, of the 1961 Fred MacMurray film ``The Absent-Minded Professor,'' but less sweet and more hectic. The title stuff is ``flying rubber.'' Marcia Gay Harden, who once worked at Virginia Stage Company, is the love interest. Les Mayfield directs from John Hughes' screenplay.

OPENING DEC. 12

``Amistad'' - Steven Spielberg seems intent upon paying penance between each of his blockbuster no-brain movies (``Jurassic Park'') by doing a serious drama. After ``Schindler's List'' took on the Holocaust, this one takes on slavery in America, dramatizing a little-known 1839 incident when 53 slaves rebelled and took over the Spanish slave ship Amistad. They murdered the ship's officers and were captured off the coast of New England. Starring Morgan Freeman, Djimson Honsou, Matthew McConaughey and Pete Postlethwaite.

``Scream 2'' - What was the biggest moneymaking movie of the past year? No, it wasn't one of the high-priced blockbusters. It was ``Scream,'' which opened last Christmas and ran almost the entire year. And this was a film made on a shoestring. Now, Neve Campbell leaves Woodsboro for college where, surprise, a slasher is loose on campus. Returning from the original are David Arquette as the deputy, Courteney Cox as the TV newscaster and Liev Schreiber as Cotton Weary.

``For Richer or Poorer'' - Two TV stars and a villain everyone loves to hate, the IRS, are featured. Tim Allen and Kirstie Alley flee the country when they learn they owe the IRS $5 million. They end up in Amish country after a wrong turn. It's funny, but only when it happens to someone else.

OPENING DEC. 19

``Titanic'' - James Cameron uses $200 million to re-create the disastrous sinking of the unsinkable luxury liner, making it the most expensive movie ever made. Delayed from July, it's the most eagerly awaited of the bunch. Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet are the young lovers. The talk has been that it's great, but if it's so good why are the producers (Paramount) preventing print press from seeing it, or interviewing the stars? It's the biggest question mark of the season. In order for the movie company to break even, just about every person in the United States has to see it.

``Tomorrow Never Dies'' - He's Bond, James Bond, and Pierce Brosnan is again playing him. Agent 007 is assigned to a routine mission high in the Khyber Pass, but he ultimately must face a media mogul played by Jonathan Pryce. Roger Spottiswoode directs, with Teri Hatcher, Joe Don Baker and Dame Judi Dench.

``MouseHunt'' - Nathan Lane (``Birdcage'') and British comic Lee Evans play brothers who simply want to get a mouse out of their house. Easier said than done. This outrageous comedy had to hire a ``mouse wrangler'' to handle all the mouse stunts. It's from Dreamworks, which means the pest is certainly not Mickey Mouse.

``Home Alone 3'' - Alex D. Linz is the name of the new kid, but is there one more movie to be mined from this $450 million franchise? Writer-producer John Hughes thinks so. The new star is age 7 and you can bet that adults will be mauled.

OPENING DEC. 25

``Jackie Brown'' - Quentin Tarantino may not have been just a flash in the ``Pulp Fiction.'' His supporters hope this will be his directorial comeback. It's based on Elmore Leonard's ``Rum Punch.'' Samuel L. Jackson plays a gun runner, Pam Grier is a streetwalker and Robert Forster is a bail bondsman. Robert De Niro is a pretty dumb ex-con and Bridget Fonda is his blond escort in a tale that catches fire when Grier's prostitute is caught carrying dirty money and must play ball with the feds.

``As Good as It Gets'' - James L. Brooks directs Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt in a romantic comedy. He's a romance novelist and she's a waitress. The company of quirky characters includes Greg Kinnear as a gay artist, Cuba Gooding Jr. as an art dealer, and Skeet Ulrich as a male hustler. Brooks won an Oscar for ``Terms of Endearment.''

``Kundun'' - Martin Scorsese, still Oscarless even if he is generally regarded as one of our great directors, tells this story of the Dalai Lama and oppression in Tibet. The script is by Harrison Ford's wife, Melissa Mathison (``E.T.''). May open later locally.

``The Postman'' - Kevin Costner directs and stars in yet another post-apocalyptic drama. This one sounds like ``Waterworld'' on dry land: Costner finds an abandoned postal truck and begins delivering mail, starting communication for the first time in a destroyed world. The ruling regime wants, though, to keep people apart. The cast includes Will Patton, Olivia Williams and Larenz Tate.

``Mr. Magoo'' - Leslie Nielsen plays the nearsighted old curmudgeon in Stanley Tong's live-action version of the famed cartoon character.

``An American Werewolf in Paris'' - Tom Everett Scott (``That Thing You Do'') is one of three college graduates on a trip to Europe. Julie Delpy is the French girl of his dreams, but she's actually a nightmare. Don't get near her during a full moon!

``Good Will Hunting'' - Matt Damon plays the title role of a gifted youth with troubles at home in South Boston in this film directed by the quirky Gus Van Sant. Ben Affleck plays a working-class pal, Robin Williams plays a therapist and Stellan Skarsgard (the ``Breaking the Waves'' oil rigger) plays a mathematician who takes Good Will under his wing. Damon, also in the current flick ``The Rainmaker,'' wrote the script with his friend.

``The Horse Whisperer'' - Robert Redford is the director and star of this adaptation of the novel by Nicholas Evans. It's about a wrangler with a mystical ability to calm horses. Kristin Scott Thomas plays the British magazine editor whose 13-year-old daughter is maimed when the horse she is riding is struck by a vehicle.

OPENINGS UNSCHEDULED

``Deconstructing Harry'' - Woody Allen has Kirstie Alley, Richard Benjamin, Billy Crystal, Judy Davis, Mariel Hemingway, Amy Irving, Julie Kavner, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Elisabeth Shue, Stanley Tucci and Robin Williams in this new comedy about a neurotic novelist. As usual, Woody has troubles in his relationships with women.

``Great Expectations'' - Anne Bancroft is Miss Havisham. Ethan Hawke is Pip. Gwyneth Paltrow is Estella and Robert De Niro is Abel Magwitch in this modern-day version of Charles Dickens' novel. It will be a challenge to match the classic David Lean movie version. Possibly opening Dec. 31.

``The Big Lebowski'' - Joel Coen directs and Ethan Coen produces a tale of mistaken identity written by the movie-making brothers of ``Fargo.'' Jeff Bridges has the title role of a Los Angeles layabout nicknamed ``The Dude,'' whose apartment is broken into by misguided thugs who think they are invading the domain of an eccentric philanthropist. John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, John Turturro and Jon Polito, Coen veterans all, lend support.

``The Boxer'' - Daniel Day-Lewis teams again with director Jim Sheridan (``My Left Foot'') in this tale of a once-hot fighter released from prison after 13 years who returns to strife-torn Belfast. His former lover, played by Emily Watson (Oscar nominated for ``Breaking the Waves'') now has a husband in prison and a teen-age son to raise.

``Les Miserables'' - No singing. This is the latest of many movie versions of the Victor Hugo novel. Bille August directs Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Claire Danes and Uma Thurman. Neeson is Jean Valjean and Rush is Inspector Javert, who mercilessly hounds him.

``Sphere'' - Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson and Peter Coyote star in Michael Crichton's tale of an underwater mission to find a space ship that disappeared 300 years ago. The submarine horror story also features Benicio De Toro, Queen Latifah and Liv Schreiber.

Add popcorn and you've got a few dozen dates here.

Check with us in January, if the eyes and the body are still functioning. We'll let you know how they all turn out. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

ANASTASIA

(OPENED FRIDAY)

FLUBBER

(OPENS WEDNESDAY)

THE RAINMAKER

(OPENED FRIDAY)

AMISTAD

(OPENS DEC. 12)

TITANIC

(OPENS DEC. 19)