Star-Bulletin file photos
#1: "Strange Days" is a post-millennium future flick;
#2: "The Rapture" stars Mimi Rogers; #3: "Animal House"
is the consummate frat-boy party scene, starring the late
John Belushi; #4: The sci-fi "12 Monkeys" pairs Bruce
Willis and Brad Pitt; #5: Mel Gibson at his post-Apocalyptic
best as "The Road Warrior."

No party? Then
how about seeing the
year out with movies

It may be a good chance
to review pet films

By Burl Burlingame
Star-Bulletin

So you aren't going to party like it's 1999. Instead, the option is to stay at home and rent a movie or two.

Face it, if you're at home on New Millennium Eve this year, watching rented movies, chances are you're hopeless. Or simply a dork. Or - just maybe - you're a genius who senses that chaos will erupt at midnight and the post-Y2K world will slide headlong into howling Armageddon, for which you've craftily psyched up by watching Hollyweird's idea of the Apocalypse. Who's the dork now?

You could always go online and chat with people on the other side of the dateline and here and there. For the record, if Y2K truly turns out to be a problem, Guam will be struck first, and you'll have 20 hours of heads-up. That's enough time to withdraw every penny of savings out of the ATM and convert the cash into cigarettes and ammunition.

Although the sensible New Year's Eve option is to be outside with a garden hose wetting down the roof, here are some movie suggestions:

"The Road Warrior": Mel Gibson's Mad Max movie is the granddaddy of post-Apocalypse westerns, and still good fun. "Beyond Thunderdome," the sequel, is a decent follow, but "Mad Max," the series's cheaply made first film, doesn't hold up.

"The War of the Worlds": George Pal's version of the Wells story is deftly told, and if your TV is bad enough, you won't see the strings holding up the mantalike Martian death machines. Good world-is-ending adventure. Pair it with "Mars Attacks!"

"Animal House": The great, subversive frat-boy party movie in case you do feeling like cranking up the volume. Or maybe John Landis' similarly socially-deconstructive "The Blues Brothers." But if you get "Blues Brothers 2000," fast-forward to the musical numbers. And any movie that features teens home alone includes a scene in which the parents' house is destroyed in a party sequence -- it's a rule.

"The Party": When it comes to on-screen parties, you can't do better than this Peter Sellers' flick, which was, yes, a day in the life of a gear-fab Hollywood party. Or "Dazed and Confused," to remind you why adult life is better than high-school life.

"On the Beach": Neville Shute's tale of encroaching radioactive doom is eerie and sad. Unless they finally make a movie of "The Last Ship" before the end of the year, a bottom-bill would be the thoughtful "The Quiet Earth" or the harrowing "Testament."

"The Rapture": Michael Tolkin's meditation on the (literal) Apocalypse was unlike anything produced by Hollywood, with an extraordinary performance by Mimi Rogers. But it's also plain weird. Don't pair it with "Armageddon," the asteroid-is-coming howler that surpasses "Raise the Titanic!" as the grandest waste of filmmaking money in history, unless you count "Batman and Robin" as a dismal disaster, too - and you should.

"12 Monkeys" dealt with both the future and the present in ways that confuse the two, and that's pretty cool. Pair it with "A Boy and His Dog," Harlan Ellison's tale of a post-Holocaust future. Get the edition with the ending that has Don Johnson deciding whether to cook and eat either his dog or his girlfriend.

"Strange Days" is one of the few movies that deal specifically with a post-millennium future and dazzlingly -- and queasily -- manages to capture the cheap thrills of virtual reality. The current "Entrapment," a standard-issue heist-thriller, dates itself exactly on the millennium button as a plot point, and should be rentable by year's end.

Or just watch your favorites, in case the VCR goes down in digital flames at the stroke of midnight. It might be a long time before you can see them again. We've got dibs on "The Crimson Pirate" or "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," or anything with Humphrey Bogart or Myrna Loy or Janeane Garofolo, so hands off! And get candles and lanterns. 'Round midnight, you'll probably have to play movie-charades by self-generated light.