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The film marked a comeback for a gifted writer named Steve Conrad, who made a splash by selling his first screenplay, Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, to a major studio in his early twenties. In the years following that film, he soured on Hollywood and moved away with his family. When he wrote another solid script a decade later, he approached the producer who’d bought Hemingway, Todd Black; he liked it and got Nicolas Cage to star. Gore Verbinski, who’d gone from directing music videos and commercials to great success with such gargantuan productions as Pirates of the Caribbean, also responded to the screenplay and broke away from a string of blockbusters to give this special project the TLC it deserved.

Cage plays David Spritz, a sad-faced fellow who doesn’t like people very much—especially strangers who recognize him as the local TV “weather guy” in Chicago. He’s made it on a major-city station and now has a chance of advancing to a network morning show in New York, but this upward career trajectory can’t compensate for the unhappiness that pervades his personal life. His ex-wife (Hope Davis) considers him a loser, he has a strained relationship with his two children, and worst of all, he feels he hasn’t earned the respect of his father, a renowned, prize-winning author (Michael Caine).

How Dave Spritz deals with all of this and manages to find some measure of self-esteem is the crux of the story. It isn’t a comedy, but it does traffic in the irony of American life. Dave is an all-too-recognizable character, and while at times he seems to be his own worst enemy we still root for him, hoping that somehow he can overcome his self-imposed obstacles and find a path to happiness.

With his hangdog expression and low-key delivery, Nicolas Cage is perfect in the leading role. (When producer Black submitted the script, he received a call from the actor’s agent summoning him to Cage’s home that same evening…and as Cage walked into the room to greet him he said, “Hi, I’m Dave Spritz.” Black knew then and there that Cage was committing to the film—and the character.)

Because it doesn’t deal in platitudes and formulaic storytelling I suppose The Weather Man is never destined to win over a mass audience, but I think it’s a terrific movie and a credit to everyone connected to it.

143. WELCOME TO SARAJEVO

(1997)

Directed by Michael Winterbottom

Screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Based on the book Natasha’s Story by Michael Nicholson

Actors:

STEPHEN DILLANE

WOODY HARRELSON

MARISA TOMEI

EMIRA NUSEVIC

KERRY FOX

GORAN VISNJIC

JAMES NESBITT

EMILY LLOYD

JULIET AUBREY

GORDANA GADZIC

IGOR DZAMBAZOV

We’ve all seen stories about war correspondents—good ones, too—but this one is unique. It’s based on the experiences of British TV reporter Michael Nicholson, but that alone wouldn’t set it apart. Being true doesn’t necessarily make a movie good. What gives this film its cachet is that it dares to paint its emotional, real-life drama against a backdrop of journalists at work, sharing the battle-worn cynicism that is their stock in trade.

Director Michael Winterbottom shot his film on location just months after a cease-fire was declared in 1996, giving it a feeling of actuality that’s often harrowing. The time is 1992 and the place is Sarajevo, under siege from Serbs who are protesting Bosnia’s newly won independence by bombing the city and shooting innocent people in the streets.

This was the first time I’d taken note of British actor Stephen Dillane. (Since making this film he’s played Karenin in an acclaimed TV miniseries of Anna Karenina, Leonard Woolf in The Hours, Merlin in King Arthur, British golf champion Harry Vardon in The Greatest Game Ever Played, and Thomas Jefferson in the popular HBO miniseries John Adams.) He is perfect in the role of Michael Henderson, a well-known TV reporter who rushes in where angels fear to tread with an intrepid team at his side: a cameraman, producer, and driver (played by Croatian-born