SANTA MONICA, CALIF., Feb. 6, 2000 — A call to teen-age girls and middle-age men — Leonardo DiCaprio and Annabel Chong are coming to theaters this week.
That’s right. After weeks and weeks of deferred opening, the long-awaited “The Beach” and the equally long-awaited “Sex: The Annabel Chong Story” (a crowd shocker at last year’s Sundance Film Festival) are finally making their way to multiplexes.
For viewers whose tastes run more toward family fare, there are the releases of Disney’s “The Tigger Movie” and Paramount’s “Snow Day.” Here’s a list of films opening this coming week:
FRIDAY
“The Beach” (Fox) — The aforementioned Leo plays a backpacker in search of a mythical island after he secures a map of its whereabouts in Bangkok, Thailand. (Wide release) “The Big Tease” (Warners) — Craig Ferguson plays a Scotsman who travels to Los Angeles for an international hairdressing contest. (Expanded release)
“Holy Smoke!” (Miramax) — Kate Winslet plays a young Australian woman who journeys to India for spiritual enlightenment. When her family suspects her transformation is in fact the doing of religious brainwashing, they hire a character played by Harvey Keitel to deprogram the young woman. (Expanded release)
“The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg” (Cowboy) — A documentary on Hank Greenberg, the legendary Bronx-born Jewish baseball player who came close to breaking Babe Ruth’s record. (Expanded release)
“Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr.” (Lions Gate) — The subject of this fascinating portrait is the infamous Fred A. Leuchter Jr., the erstwhile engineer of death-row technology who in 1988 disclaimed the occurrence of the Holocaust. (Expanded release)
“Sex: The Annabel Chong Story” (Strand) — An unsettling look at Annabel Chong, who as a 22-year-old gender studies scholar/porn actress set a record by having sex with 251 men in 10 hours. (Limited release)
“Snow Day” (Paramount) When a school in upstate New York is snowed in, a group of students hijack a plow to keep the school indefinitely closed. Chevy Chase, Pam Grier and Iggy Pop co-star. (Wide release)
“The Tigger Movie” (Buena Vista) — The big-screen Pooh adventure follows pal Tigger as he sets out on an arduous quest to find his family. (Wide release)
