Hollywood’s Year-End Clearance

Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” the most enjoyable film you’ve never heard of, was an extravagant success at the Cannes Film Festival back in May. Its sophisticated take on acrobatic Hong Kong action films won more fans at the Toronto and New York events in September. When is it going to appear in theaters? December.

Cormac McCarthy’s National Book Award-winning “All the Pretty Horses” was the literary rage of 1992, and the Billy Bob Thornton-directed version was said to be a Cannes contender. When is it going to appear in theaters? December.

“A Hard Day’s Night,” starring the young and restless Beatles, was a huge hit back in the day, 1964 to be exact, and a fully restored version with a few new songs added debuted at the Sundance Film Festival nearly two years ago. When is it going to appear in theaters? December.

The Coen brothers’ sublimely wacky “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” a one-of-a-kind mixture of Southern and Greek mythology, made it to Cannes, and it opened the AFI Film Festival in mid-October as well. When is it going to appear in theaters? December.

“Vertical Limit,” an action-adventure film about mountain climbing with a coming-attractions trailer that has had audiences swooning, could probably open any month of the year and make a profit. In fact, it was at one time scheduled for the summer, but when is it going to appear in theaters? December.

Does anyone sense a pattern here?

No matter when they started or where they came from, those suspects in a movie company’s lineup that are deemed most likely to find success all seem to be assigned release dates in the six-week period from mid-November to the end of December, the fabled holiday season.

It’s not just that studios are suspicious, hidebound or imprisoned by tradition (though of course they are). And it’s not like some films don’t have practically a birthright to be released at this time of the year: The Jim Carrey-starring “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” from the modern children’s classic, would look silly as silly can be if it came out in July. It’s that Hollywood feels there are real reasons (or at least as real as reasons get in executive suites) for this kind of overload.

First off, better films get released in the fall because of a general feeling that the industry members who nominate and vote on Oscar choices early in the new year are afflicted with cinematic Alzheimer’s and would not remember an involving piece of cinema that played in theaters in February, March or even July. While this piece of wisdom has self-fulfilling prophecy written all over it, every time a late release like “Shakespeare in Love” beats an early release like “Saving Private Ryan” at the wire, it gets reinforced.

The industry also feels that ordinary moviegoers are, for whatever reason (the snap in the air, the schoolbooks on the table, the holiday spirit), more receptive to serious films in the late fall. This year, the most prestigious items on tap land in three overlapping categories.

Films With Literary Origins

* “The Claim,” in which Thomas Hardy’s very British “The Mayor of Casterbridge” is retold amid the grandeur of California’s Sierra Nevada during the Gold Rush years.

* “The House of Mirth,” from the Edith Wharton novel, directed by artistic Brit Terence Davies and starring Gillian Anderson and Dan Aykroyd.

* “Quills.” Lest we forget, the Marquis de Sade was a heck of a scribe in addition to all those other things, and director Philip Kaufman dots the i’s, crosses the t’s and flashes the whip.

* “State and Main.” No slouch in the writing department either, David Mamet presents a penetrating yet surprisingly warm satire on what a Hollywood movie company does to a small New England town.

Films With Artistic Roots

* “Before Night Falls.” Painter-turned-filmmaker Julian Schnabel takes a look at the troubled career of the Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas in a biopic that was an award-winner at the Venice Film Festival.

* “Pollock.” Actor-turned-first-time-director Ed Harris wisely stars himself as the tormented Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock, Marcia Gay Harden as his wife, Lee Krasner, and Harris’ wife, Amy Madigan, as Peggy Guggenheim. Well done all around.

* “Shadow of the Vampire.” Speaking of acting and artistry, Willem Dafoe gave the best performance seen at Cannes as the actor Max Schreck, who, in this backstage story about the filming of the classic vampire drama “Nosferatu,” is in fact a vampire himself.

Films From Top Directors That Need Special Handling

* “An Everlasting Piece.” Barry Levinson looks at “the troubles” in Northern Ireland through the hairpiece business.

* “Chocolat.” Lasse Hallstrom describes the power of that confection in a small French town.

* “The Gift.” Sam Raimi investigates a psychic in a small Georgia town.

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Studios can also sense that, what with people having time off from work and from school, this is a big moviegoing season, period. They especially like the image of large numbers of relatives getting together for the holidays, running out of things to say to each other and rushing out to theaters en masse to keep from lunging at each others’ throats. Star vehicles are especially good for feeding this hunger, and this season has a ton. Ten of the most prominent, in alphabetical order, are:

* “Bounce.” Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck in an unlikely romance.

* “Cast Away.” America’s most loved actor, Tom Hanks, finds himself alone on a remote island.

* “Finding Forrester.” Sean Connery plays a cranky, reclusive novelist and likely makes us like him.

* “Miss Congeniality.” Who better than Sandra Bullock to be an FBI agent undercover at a beauty pageant?

* “Proof of Life.” Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe in the film that ignited all those magazine covers.

* “The 6th Day.” Bad people try to clone Arnold Schwarzenegger and wish they hadn’t.

* “Thirteen Days.” Kevin Costner takes us inside 1962’s Cuban missile crisis.

* “Traffic.” Michael Douglas finds out more than he wants to about why it’s important to say no to the war on drugs.

* “Unbreakable.” Does this word describe Bruce Willis and if so, why?

* “What Women Want.” Mel Gibson both stars and personifies the title.

Anyone trying to sample all these offerings in one brief period is risking sensory overload, and one of the sad realities of the holiday season is that so many interesting films get shoehorned into these short six weeks that some invariably get lost in the chaos and overlooked. But to suggest this to studios, who love the end of the year like a brother, is to risk being mistaken for that noticeably unpopular Grinch.