Rating: NNNNN
ALMOST FAMOUS (Cameron Crowe, 2000) isn’t the movie Jerry Maguire was, but it didn’t deserve to tank like it did this fall. Crowe’s follow-up to Maguire went back to his own early years, telling the story of a teenager who scores a gig writing for Rolling Stone, and the tour that saw his long, debauched loss of rock-and-roll innocence. Crowe has a talent for teen-boy sensitivity he wrote Fast Times At Ridgemont High. He’s fascinated by the to and fro of female sacrifice, and is the only working director who can make straight-ahead rock tracks weep onscreen. But Almost Famous is a movie of great supporting performances — Frances McDormand, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Billy Crudup — buzzing around a centre that’s too normal for these times. (December 22-23, Kingsway December 26-27, Revue) NNN