Vanilla Sky

Cameron Crowe’s 2001 film follows David Aames, a media magnate who inherited it all from his father and then loses his face in a crash. Crowe adapted the screenplay from Amenábar and Mateo Gil’s Abre los ojos. Penélope Cruz, who played Sofía in that film, lobbied to play her again; in the production notes she says she secretly considered the part hers, yet that it was not the same part and she felt she was in a different film. The empty Times Square that opens the picture was not cleared digitally: the production shut the square down for real one Sunday morning, on a city permit, and Crowe says they were told from the start it would never happen again, and wishes it had not. Music is not decoration either. Crowe calls it his jumping off point and says Julie Miller’s By Way of Sorrow started everything rolling. Its one Academy Award nomination came in Music (Original Song), for the McCartney title song; Randy Newman won for Monsters, Inc. The film opened to $25,015,518 and took $203,388,341 worldwide. A good fit if knowing the opening emptiness was a permit, not an effect, changes the scene for you. Not for anyone wanting to know early what is real; the explanation is held until the final stretch.