BEST FILMS OF THE 90'S:
1. Last of the Mohicans – THEY SAID: 98th. I SAY: A wildly underrated movie, all but ignored by the academy due to a mid-year release. I don’t know anyone who has seen this movie who doesn’t love it. Everything about it is perfect. The soundtrack and the villain, as we've established the keys to a good film becoming great, are amongst the best of the decade. The director’s cut currently available on DVD Speilberg-izes the film, bringing the themes into words instead of leaving them as deeds. It is to be ignored. But the film is not. Flawless. I still root for Duncan. I still want Magua to lose the first knife fight.

2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day – CRITICS SAID: 14th. I SAY: So i do have more to say here. An important film in many ways – the CGI still stands up against today’s standards for the most part, But the big story was troducing the strong female lead to film in a way that is still more real than the anime version routinely foisted upon us today. Compare Linda Hamilton's woman...stripped of her femininity, transformed by the first movie, occasionally outmatched physically, but tough, with Angelina Jolie is Wanted or Uma Thurman in Kill Bill - skinny girls inexplicably able to destroy all competition. Also, in a rarity, the kid isn't unbearable. Then there's the staples - the soundtrack is good and the villain is so memorable that the actor can never play himself clean-shaven again.

3. Miller’s Crossing – CRITICS SAID: 76th. I SAY: Possibly the best written film ever. The best Coen brothers’ movie, a very adult, very intellectual gangster movie that’s secretly a love story. Again, acting great, cinematography great, soundtrack great. I’m tempted to have it first, but I have to factor in that it made no impact. All that said, I love how the movie essentially revolves around a guy who talks...so each scene is almost entirely dialogue. He brings nothing to the table but his head, he's routinely beaten up and he takes it without complaint. All of this only serves to highlight the brief spurts of action. My one complaint is that I've never thought the actress who played Verna was up to the role. OK, one other complaint - Gabriel Byrne occasionally drops the accent.

4. Fight Club – CRITICS SAID: 40th. I SAY: Yes I like this movie. Yes I'm comfortable with that. I am enlightened.

5. The Hudsucker Proxy – CRITICS SAID: NOT IN THE TOP 100. I SAY: The best movie overlooked in the critics' top 100. One of the true Coen Brothers' classics that strikes the balance between comedy, romance, and drama without getting too Coen-y so as to be inaccessible. Tightly woven, fun to watch, brainy without being too much. The best and fairest movie about business ever made. Oh and, yes, the soundtrack is good and so is the villain.

6. Jerry Maguire – CRITICS SAID: 96th. I SAY: Jerry Maguire starts where most movies end – a fake person becomes real. And it goes from there. Again, like most great movies, it has no real genre. It’s a comedy, it’s a buddy pick, it’s a sports movie, it’s a love story. It has a great villain (Bob Sugar), it has a good soundtrack, it’s well written. It’s just good. Before Cameron Crowe did Vanilla Sky, I really thought he was a genius. Who’s coming with me?

7. Rudy – CRITICS SAID: NOT IN THE TOP 100. I SAY:, While everyone else lauds dull epics like American Beauty…I challenge you. Which movie can you remember more lines from? Which movie more scenes? Rudy’s just a great inspirational movie, it looks good, and it’s as unpretentious as its lead. Heck if I don’t point it out again – great soundtrack.

8. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels – CRITICS SAID: NOT IN THE TOP 100. I SAY: It created the lad movie genre, it was witty, stylish, and just fun. Stylistically, it was a pioneer in film techniques. Might I add that the villains are all great and the soundtrack is good? A movie many times copied, but only rarely quite as good (it's pretty much Snatch and that's it).

9. Rushmore – CRITICS SAID: 57th. I SAY: Wes Anderson when he still had an editor was something else. So was Bill Murray when he first began taking stock. At first, the movie is just different. You’ve never seen anything like it, you’ve never heard writing like it…it’s just new. But the more you watch it, the more substance reveals itself. It’s a work of literature. And it’s fun to watch. And buying the soundtrack isn’t the worst investment you could make.

10. Beauty & The Beast – CRITICS SAID: 51st. I SAY: Disney brought back the animation film with The Little Mermaid and won a new generation of fans only to lose them in the late 90’s to the computer animation revolution. I can’t fault the strong if forgettable formula Pixar honed in Toy Story et al – watchable for adults, a flight of fancy for kids. But buried in the revolution was the decade’s best animation film, and it’s only true classic – Beauty & the Beast. Sure the other Disney pics are good, Aladdin overwhelmed by Robin Williams for example, and the Pixar movies are perfectly watchable, but Beauty & the Beast is the only one that warms your heart to remember the way Bambi does. Plus it has 2 key great movie elements: a good villain and a good soundtrack.

11. The Big Lebowski – CRITICS SAID: 39th. I SAY: The cult classic of the 90’s and the only great Coen farce. I can’t tell why I like this movie so much. It’s not THAT funny. It just makes me smile. I know half the movie by heart and I imagine there’s a lot of Achievers out there who know the other half too. It brought back the White Russian. I wrote a paper about this movie's applications to the 90's political sphere and the Gulf War. I have no idea if I was right, but I'm just throwing it out there. I also went bowling at that alley before it was destroyed and pretended to be Liam with my friend playing Jesus.

12. Liar, Liar – CRITICS SAID: NOT IN TOP 100. I say: The funniest movie of the 90’s. Most comedies are uneven. Most great comedies are only kind of funny the first time, and get funnier the more you watch them. Not this one. It was funny the first time, it’ll be funny the last time. Bonus - another appearance by Cary Elwes in a good movie. The guy has been in tons of good movies and he has zero star power. I'm not sure he's been introduced to the paparazzi.

13. LA Confidential – CRITICS SAID: 45th. I say: Yes, this movie is better than Silence of the Lambs. The secret is better, the dialogue is tighter, the acting is better. It’s a tough, tough call though.

14. The Silence of the Lambs – CRITICS SAID: 3rd. I say: This movie is good. No doubt. But #3? The movie is a compelling thriller with a great villain and a few layers of literature. That’s strong. But #3 in ten years strong? It’s just the best of the 90’s serial thrillers. That'll do Clarice, that'll do.

15. Fargo – CRITICS SAID: 6th. I SAY: This movie bears the collective love of the Coen’s less well-lauded but better films from earlier in the 90’s, plus the weight of an everyman/everywoman theme. Yes, it’s very good. But in the end, it’s not as full of creativity as the Coen movies I put above it. But it does have Jerry Lundegard.

16. Bottle Rocket – CRITICS SAID: NOT IN THE TOP 100. I SAY: I know most people don’t like this movie. I think it’s brilliant. Wes Anderson’s first movie. Owen and Luke Wilson’s first movie. I think it’s funny, it has that Hitchcock element of taking you somewhere completely different every 20 minutes. Sorry.

17. Heat – CRITICS SAID: 70th. I SAY: Pacino and DeNiro together in an all-out acting war, with Val Kilmer blazing away at the both of them. Adult, strong, secretly hiding Natalie Portman in there. I can’t say much about this movie except that it’s just good.

18. Get Shorty – CRITICS SAID: NOT IN THE TOP 100. I SAY: Jump-started the Hollywood cool caper genre. Travolta’s best movie. This led to Lock, Stock and other such classics.

19. The Usual Suspects CRITICS SAID: 16th. I SAY: For those of us who managed to catch this movie without having the gotcha-twist revealed in advance, all I can say is that if I were coffee drinker in the 90’s, I would have dropped my cup too. Never saw it coming. Besides, this led to several droll paraphrases of this film by yours truly such as, "The greatest trick the Soviet Union ever pulled was convincing 90's social science academics the Cold War didn't happen."

20. Office Space - CRITICS SAID: NOT IN THE TOP 100. I SAY: I celebrate this film's entire catalogue. You may be wondering, "How could Office Space be a better movie than Schindler's List." Ask yourself - which would you rather own? Which would you rather watch? Office Space dabbles in Holocaust awareness, "You know, the Jews had pieces of flare that the Nazis made them wear." But does Schindler's List speak to our office lives? Not at all. Case closed.

21. Hoop Dreams – CRITICS' RANKING: Not in the top 100. I SAY: The best documentary ever. Ever.

22. Tombstone – CRITICS' RANKING: NOT IN THE TOP 100. I SAY: Let's start out with the negatives - the love story is Dana DeLAME-y. It's so bad that I just used that pun. Also, the bad guy is so thoroughly humiliated by Val Kilmer that he's hard to take seriously. It just always seems clear that these are drunken buffoons. Finally, Jason Priestly? Really? That out of the way, Kurt Russell makes a good cowboy, Sam Elliott was born in the wrong era and should have been in all the great westerns, and Bill Paxton is present. Which leaves us with Kilmer's Doc Holliday, which is what puts this movie on this list. This movie dances circles around Unforgiven's 2+-hours of growling.

23. Forrest Gump – CRITICS' RANKING: 9th. I SAY: Of the 90’s most-famous movies, this is one I feel obligated to include, even if it’s a kitchy nostalgia film, essentially a road trip through history, hiding a surprisingly reactionary message behind a politically correct outlay. When you take the movie apart, at first you think, in typical 90's fashion, all the white guys in the movie are evil except the physically handicapped guy and the mentally handicapped guy. But dig deeper and you see a movie harshly critical of the 60's, one that emphasizes simple faith, fidelity, and hard-work. So in the end, ideologues are left to wonder what they should think, whereas I think most normal people can just accept it as a sweet little collage of Americana, well-timed in coming out at the end of an era.

24. Jurassic Park – CRITICS' RANKING: 31st. I SAY: I was a serious dinosaur kid (Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus were my 1 and 2). I’ll never forget the wonder the first time you saw CGI dinosaurs. A revolutionary moment in film.

25. Scream – CRITICS' RANK: 48th. I SAY: It was clever and funny, a parody that was better than its source material. I don't generally care for horror movies. I watched this movie for the first time at home, alone, on VCR. I'm man enough to admit that I was terrified of answering the phone.

90's In Film...Best Director/Writer, Plus Teaser for my Top 25 Countdown

Best Director/Writer of the Decade - A word of note...I've combined this into a question of end-to-end authorship.:
NOMINEES:
* Tim Burton – (Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, Sleepy Hollow). Tim Burton is the sort of guy who never wins an academy award because he's always just making Tim Burton movies, which is really creative and interesting, but kind of a genre unto itself. Creepy but not scary...he has that nailed.
* James Cameron – (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, True Lies, Titanic) - Three massive directorial undertakings followed by nearly 13 years of silence. Cameron scores high on degree of difficulty. Quality-wise, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
* Joel & Ethan Coen – (Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski). Re-read that list of movies. 4 of 5 are instant classics and the one that isn't (Barton Fink) is a think piece about writer's block.
* Michael Mann – (The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider). The no-name of this bunch. I have to admit that I've never seen The Insider. But those other two are taught, strong entries and I've heard the same about The Insider. He barely beat out Wes Anderson and Cameron Crowe, but ultimately, I think his catalogue is deeper.
* Stephen Spielberg – (Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan). I know, I whine about how overrated Spielberg is. And it's true. He picks big topics and then gets credit for not screwing the up. He's not a great artist, and he always works the same theme (reunite the family, Christian redemption). Even with those complaints, he has to be on this list, and he deserves to be. I'll just say it now - the most watchable and most important of his 90's movies was Jurassic Park. Schindler's List, the presumed champ, was just the first movie about The Holocaust. Now that we have several of those, its artistic value can be fairly weighed (and dismissed).
WINNER: The Coens. Was there ever a doubt?

TEASER FOR MY TOP 25 COUNTDOWN:
THE CRITICS' GENERAL CONSENSUS TOP 25 (i.e. HORRIBLY WRONG ACCEPTED WISDOM).
I'll tell you now, no more than 5 of these 'top 25' make the cut.
1. Schindlers List (1)
2. Goodfellas (3)
3. Silence of the Lambs (3.5)
4. Pulp Fiction (3.5)
5. Saving Private Ryan (4.5)
6. Fargo (5.5)
7. Unforgiven (7.5)
8. Shawshank Redemption (8.5)
9. Forrest Gump (9.5)
10. Malcolm X (10)
11. American Beauty (10)
12. Dances With Wolves (11.5)
13. Titanic (13.5)
14. Terminator 2: Judgment day (14)
15. Braveheart (15)
16. The Usual Suspects (16)
17. Barton Fink (18)
18. Reservoir Dogs (18)
19. The Sixth Sense (18.5)
20. Boyz’Nthe Hood (19.5)
21. JFK (20.5)
22. Se7en (21.5)
23. Toy Story (23)
24. Dead Man Walking (23)
25. The Nightmare Before Christmas / The Piano (25)

The 90's in Film Review Rolls On: Best Acting Awards

Before we get started, you'll notice the dirth of females. I decided against doing a category for the ladies as I began researching the matter to discover that almost no actress has sustained success. Don't blame me, blame Hollywood. Don't believe me? I looked up a poll of the top actresses of the 90's on the-movie-times.com. The results:
1. Julia Roberts (Notable 90's Films: Pretty Woman, a few middling romcoms, Hook, Notting Hill)
2. Meryl Streep (Notable 90's Films: Postcards from the Edge, The River Wild, Death Becomes Her, The Bridges of Madison County)
3. Jodie Foster (Notable 90's Films: The Silence of the Lambs, Maverick, Nell, Contact, Anna & the King)
4. Sharon Stone (Notable 90's Films: Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Sliver, Last Action Hero, The Specialist, The Quick and the Dead, Casino, Sphere, The Muse)
5. Meg Ryan (Notable 90's Films: Joe Versus the Volcano, The Doors, Sleepless in Seattle, IQ, French Kiss, Courage Under Fire, City of Angels)

Now, that's a fair top 5. But the disparity between those filmographies and those of the best actors is cavernous. If I had to pick, I like Sharon Stone for talent and Meg Ryan for movie quality. And I might substitute Michelle Pfeiffer for Julia Roberts. Anyhow, I just wanted it clear...one of America's most liberal institutions is also one of its most sexist.

On with the show...

Best Supporting Actor of the Decade (CRITERIA: In Everything, Good, Never Used as Much as He Should Be As A Leading Man):
NOMINEES:
- Morgan Freeman (The Bonfire of the Vanities, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Unforgiven, Shawshank Redemption, Outbreak, Se7en, Amistad, Deep Impact)
- Gary Oldman (State of Grace, JFK, Dracula, True Romance, Immortal Beloved, The Fifth Element, Air Force One, Lost in Space)
- Bill Paxton (Predator 2, Tombstone, True Lies, Apollo 13, Twister, Titanic)
- Kevin Spacey (Glengarry Glenn Ross, The Ref, Swimming with Sharks, The Usual Suspects, Outbreak, Se7en, A Time To Kill, LA Confidential, A Bug’s Life, American Beauty)
- Christopher Walken (King of New York, Batman Returns, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Suicide Kings, Sleepy Hollow)
WINNER: A narrow victory for Kevin Spacey over Morgan Freeman. Please note that I wanted to nominate Samuel L., but he's not acting. He’s in everything, and he’s always the same character - bad-ass brotha'.

Best Comedic Actor of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
- Steve Martin – Highs (L.A. Story, Father of the Bride, Leap of Faith, Prince of Egypt, Bowfinger) Lows (Grand Canyon, Sgt Bilko, Father of the Bride 2)
- Bill Murray – Highs (What About Bob, Groundhog Day, Ed Wood, Kingpin, Wild Things, Rushmore) Lows (The Man Who Knew Too Little)
- Jim Carrey – Highs (Ace Ventura, The Mask, Dumb & Dumber, Ace Ventura 2, Liar, Liar, Truman Show, Man on the Moon) Lows: (Batman Forever, Cable Guy)
- Adam Sandler - Highs (Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, Dirty Work, Water Boy, Big Daddy), Lows (Coneheads, Airheads, Bulletproof)
- Mike Myers – Highs (Wayne’s World, Austin Powers 1 & 2, Mystery, Alaska) Lows (So I Married an Axe Murderer, Wayne’s World 2, 4-year hiatus between films, messy fight with Dana Carvey)
WINNER: Jim Carrey. I don't think it's close, even with his late decade quest for meaning - he only really got unbearable in the next decade, though he beat Bill Murray there. Oh how we could have used a Fire Marshall Bill movie while the iron was still hot, if only to remind us of the irony that the only successful actors from In Living Color were the white guy (Carey) and the fly girl (Jennifer Lopez)...until Jamie Fox came along and ruined that useful parable on race. (I still heart you Damon Wayans. Homey D. Clown 4-Life). Interestingly, Adam Sandler (a strong candidate) would use the otts to feel out a quest for meaning much like Carey and Murray, only to settle instead for a much more successful quest for mediocrity. Mike Myers' resume is too thin. In the end, I guess we could only really count on Steve Martin to just be funny for the next 10 years as well.

Best Actor of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
- Nicholas Cage – HIGHS (Leaving Las Vegas, The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off), LOWS (Guarding Tess, Innumerable small movies, City of Angels, Snake Eyes, 8MM). Another guy who dilutes his case with tons of bad films. A nice run in the mid-90’s lands him here.
- Tom Cruise – HIGHS (A Few Good Men, Interview with the Vampire, Jerry Maguire, Mission Impossible, Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia) LOWS (Days of Thunder, The Firm). I think what stands out about Cruise is that he does very few movies comparatively. That list there...that's pretty much it. He does not work for a paycheck.
- Robert DeNiro – HIGHS (Backdraft, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Casino, Heat, Wag the Dog, Jackie Brown, Ronin, Analyze This) LOWS (Frankenstein, Lots of bad small movies, The Fan, Great Expectations). A great decade, marred by what must be some debilitating addiction that needs feeding through constant roles in bad movies.
- Tom Hanks – HIGHS (The Bonfire of the Vanities, A League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle, Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Toy Story, Saving Private Ryan, Toy Story 2, The Green Mile), LOWS (Joe Versus the Volcano, Radio Flyer, That Thing You Do). A strong resume…a lot of breadth there.
- Anthony Hopkins – HIGHS (The Silence of the Lambs, Howards End, Dracula, Chaplin, Remains of the Dday, Legends of the Fall, Nixon, Amistad, The Mask of Zorro, Meet Joe Black) LOWS (Numerous small movie tripe) Too much tripe, not enough movies I actually like.
- Brad Pitt – HIGHS (Thelma & Louise, A River Runs Through It, Kalifornia, True Romance, Interview with the Vampire, Legends of the Fall, Se7en, Twelve Monkeys, The Devil’s Own, Seven Years in Tibet, Meet Joe Black, Fight Club) LOWS (Cool World). A strong resume. People pretend he’s not a great actor, but that’s pretty impressive.
- Keanu Reeves – HIGHS (Point Break, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, Dracula, Much Ado About Nothing, Speed, The Devil’s Advocate, The Matrix) LOWS (Johnny Mnemonic, A Walk in the Clouds) A surprisingly strong run. But those lows were low…and it’s Keanu after all, not Laurence Olivier.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger – HIGHS (Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Last Action Hero, True Lies) LOWS (Junior, Eraser, Jingle All the Way, Batman & Robin, End of Days). Great early decade, but awful last half does him in.
- John Travolta – HIGHS (Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, Broken Arrow, Face/Off, The Thin Red Line, A Civil Action), LOWS (Look Who’s Talking movies, White Man’s Burden, Phenomenon, Michael, Primary Colors). Nice to have you back…but tone down the social activism.
- Denzel Washington – HIGHS (Mississippi Masala, Malcolm X, Much Ado About Nothing, The Pelican Brief, Philadelphia, Crimson Tide, Courage Under Fire, He Got Game, The Hurricane) LOWS (Devil in a Blue Dress, Virtuosity, The Siege, The Bone Collector)
WINNER: Tom Hanks.
COMMENT: First of all, I included 10 actors just to show you how much deeper their resumes go than the actresses. Secondly, I can't earnestly say that in terms of sheer talent, it's Tom Hanks. Frankly, if Daniel Day-Lewis hadn't spent the decade cobbling shoes somewhere in rural New England, who knows what movies we'd have had? But Hanks carried all of those films, he's a different person in many of them, he's my boy from Sacramento, and ultimately, that is an astoundingly productive decade of Beatles'-esque dimensions. What interests me is that supposed pretty boy Brad Pitt is my number 2. If he's dumb, he sure has a good agent. That said, Keanu really is dumb, and he still put up a strong decade. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that a lot of the real talent, the bright guys like Johnny Depp and Robert Downey Jr., forfeited this decade to a drug-related problems or, at least in Depp's case, playing somebody with drug-related problems in most of his films. I suppose all's well that ends well...if only the same were true of music, we'd still have Biggie and Kurt Kobain to make us music. Instead, they died, we got Creed, Britney, and Sean John, and now a generation is left adrift without knowing what it's like to have music worth loving.

90's In Film Continued: Worst High-Grossing Films and Ten Most Wasted Talents

Worst Movie Over 500 Million World-Wide Gross: Ghost
Worst Movie of the Top 50 Grossing Movies: The Flinstones

10 MOST WASTED TALENTS OF THE 90’S (Alphabetical):
• Dana Carvey – He was funnier than Mike Myers, who tried to write him out of Wayne’s World until the producers decided the same thing (Carvey > Myers) and wrote him back in (hence all of the scenes with Garth by himself). Cancer, Wayne’s World 2, and dissing your sponsors in the first episode of your TV show though…that’s a lot to overcome.
• Robert Downey Jr. – “Quitting drugs is easy, I’ve done it hundreds of times.” A lost decade in his prime. Good to have him back.
• Angelica Houston – Between Addam’s Family and being rediscovered by Wes Anderson in the otts, nothing. It’s not a kind business to an aging woman.
• Jennifer Jason Leigh – After being the energy of The Hudsucker Proxy, essentially nothing. It’s not a kind business for a younger woman either.
• Dennis Leary – I admit it. I liked The Ref. Every time you see a hack like Dane Cook get another part, you have to wonder why a real comedian like Leary didn’t get more parts.
• Norm MacDonald – Another guy I think is hysterical who had no movie career of note.
• Tim Roth – After Reservoir Dogs and a dominant performance in Rob Roy, he sat the bench. I have no clue why. Maybe he has a bad agent.
• Marisa Tomei – One has to wonder if the story that she was blackballed after a semi-senile Jack Palance read the wrong name and gave her the Best Supporting Actress award is true. There’s really no other way to explain how a beautiful, funny actress with an academy award in a popular movie falls of the face of the earth.
• Denzel Washington – I know. It’s hard to say Washington ‘wasted’ his talent. But, to me, Denzel is the best actor of his generation. He should be making classics. Instead, this was his 90’s post-his epic 1989 performance in Glory: Heart Condition, Mo’ Better Blues, Mississippi Masala, Ricochet, Malcolm X, Much Ado About Nothing, The Pelican Brief, Philadelphia, Crimson Tide, Virtuosity, Devil in a Blue Dress, Courage Under Fire, The Preacher’s Wife, Fallen, He Got Game, The Seige, The Bone Collector, The Hurricane. Some of those are good movies. But that’s not the line-up of the best actor of his generation. He wanders between African-American social issues roles and bizarrely tame scripts. Is/was America not ready for a black leading man in a race-less role or is/was it just Hollywood that wasn’t ready? Was no one willing to cast him, or were the great writers and directors unwilling to write for him? Or does he limit himself…is this the career he wanted? An unanswered shame.
• James Woods – Few people know this, but in Sylvester Stallone’s long decline, The Specialist was the movie that could have put him back on top. It had Sharon Stone, it had Antonio Banderas, and it had James Woods playing a terrific bad guy. Instead, Woods’ film-stealing bad-guy was left on the cutting room floor due to Stallone’s ego. As a result, Woods’ rounded out the 90’s playing bit parts in should-have-been movies like Casino, Nixon, Ghosts of the Mississippi, and Any Given Sunday plus starring in one of the great 90s HBO features – Indictment: The McMartin Trial. James Woods is a truly talented actor. But this is Hollywood.

90's in Film Review Cont. - Rounding Out the Genres - Best Action/Sci-Fi, Best Comedy, Best and Worst of the Best Picture Winners.

And now, the moneymakers:

Best Action/Sci-Fi Movie of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
Jurassic Park
The Matrix
Speed
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Total Recall
WINNER: Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Argue if you can.

Best Comedy of the Decade (CRITERIA - Can't have any real art, message, or focus on a love story.):
NOMINEES:
Happy Gilmore
Liar, Liar
Office Space
Tommy Boy
Wayne’s World
WINNER: Liar, Liar. All of the movies are really funny. I just chose Liar, Liar because it's that rare comedy that's funny the first time and funny on repeated watching.

Best of the ‘Best Picture’ Winners (Nominees, winner in BOLD):
1. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
2. Forrest Gump (1994)
3. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
4. Unforgiven (1992)
5. Braveheart (1995)
Worst of the ‘Best Picture’ Winners (Nominees, winner in Bold):
6. Schindler’s List (1993)
7. American Beauty (1999)
8. Titanic (1997)
9. Dances With Wolves (1990)
10. The English Patient (1996)
Personally, I think the top 3 are truly good, the next 4 are OK movies that got over-hyped based on the names connected to them and the serious subject matter, #8 is a major directorial achievement but a tedious film, and the last 2 have no business winning any awards for anything other than their uses as a substitute for valerian root.

Day 7 of the 90's Review: Most Tolerable Rom-Com/Love Story, Best Horror Pic, Best Western. 2 Genres I don't like that exploded in the 90's into cash cows, 1 that's almost dead that I do like.

Most Tolerable Romance/Romantic Comedy of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
French Kiss
Jerry Maguire
Shakespeare In Love
There’s Something About Mary
The Wedding Singer
WINNER: Jerry Maguire. Gosh, these movies are downright watchable. Maybe I shouldn't bag on this genre so much.

Best Horror Pic of the Decade:
The Blair Witch Project
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Scream
Sleepy Hollow
Tremors
WINNER: Scream. Sleepy Hollow isn't scary, just Tim Burton weird.

Best Western of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
City Slickers
Maverick
The Quick and the Dead
Tombstone
Unforgiven
WINNER: Tombstone. No contest. I love westerns, it's a shame there's so few good ones these days. Of these films, 2-3 are comedies. I know we're supposed to sacrifice our first born before Clint Eastwood making a western, but really, Tombstone is a much better movie, even factoring in the lame love story. Kurt Russell had a pretty solid 90's for a guy who doesn't really seem like a star.

Day 6 of the 90's Movie Review: Best Sports Movie, Best Gangster Movie, Best Social Issues Movie.

Best Sports Movie of the Decade (CRITERIA - best sports scenes, makes you love/hate/appreciate the sport):
NOMINEES:
Diggstown
Hoop Dreams
Jerry Maguire
Rudy
White Men Can’t Jump
WINNER: Rudy. Jerry Maguire is a better movie. But Rudy has those Rocky inspirational scenes and achieves the rare feat of making you like Notre Dame football for 2 hours. Jerry Maguire and Hoop Dreams are great movies for something more than the sports. White Men Can't Jump knows its role. Diggstown is one of my 90's guilty pleasures. Three underused actors (James Woods, Louis Gosset Jr., Bruce Dern) team up to make a movie about an underused sport (boxing).

Best Gangster Movie of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
Goodfellas
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
Miller’s Crossing
Reservoir Dogs
The Usual Suspects
WINNER: Miller's Crossing. Lock, Stock, Reservoir Dogs, and The Usual Suspects aren't gangster movies proper - more caper pics. That leaves Goodfellas and Miller's Crossing, which came out the same year. Miller's Crossing is better acted, better written, and better directed. If you switched the names of who did it, Miller's Crossing would be Scorcese's crowning achievement and Goodfellas would be one of those 'eh' Coen brothers movies from the otts.

Best Social Issues Movie of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
Courage Under Fire
Dangerous Minds
Falling Down
Forrest Gump
Philadelphia
WINNER: Philadelphia. Forrest Gump kind of wanders across issues, even if it's more enjoyable than Philadelphia. Philadelphia I like because it really went after 1-2 social issues, it did it at a time when it was relevant rather than chasing the issue down, it made the bad guys believable, but mostly because Denzel's character doesn't learn some lesson about embracing gay. Instead, he learns a more basic and bracing lesson about tolerance and humanity in living with a prejudice and respecting someone's humanity rather than changing his normative views.

90's Movie Review Day 4/5

I skipped a day so I'm doubling up. 6 categories: Best Movie About Lawyers, Best Documentary, Best War Movie, Best Animated Film, Best Parody of the Decade, Best Cult Hit of the Decade.

Best Movie About Lawyers (CRITERIA: Movie about lawyers, features court room drama, rampantly ignores due process):
NOMINEES:
A Civil Action
A Few Good Men
Liar, Liar
My Cousin Vinnie
Philadelphia
WINNER: Liar, Liar. First of all, I haven't seen A Time to Kill so I still don't know what might have become of Matthew McConaughey's shirt-wearing career. I think all of these movies are to a varying degree good. I go with Liar, Liar, despite its weakness as a court room drama, because it spends a healthy amount of time in court room nonetheless. A Few Good Men, the worst of the movies, should be credited for this being a genre. In fact, one of Liar, Liar's great services was to destroy the disturbing Clarence Darrow notion that lawyers are nothing but crusading do-gooders. Which is what ultimately puts the 'huh?' choice (A Civil Action) on this list - our hero is actually something of scumbag, but he's a scumbag in behaving like a crusading do-gooder,

Best Documentary:
NOMINEES:
Hoop Dreams
WINNER: Hoop Dreams. Sorry, I'm not taking any other applicants. Best documentary ever. Back before Michael Moore created the drive-by crusader self-promotion vehicle, people actually made gritty documentaries about things like urban dreamers. The documentary was about the subject matter, not the film maker. It was painstaking work, it was desperately honest, and it made no money. In perhaps the most ridiculous outcome of Academy Award history, this film was not nominated in the Best Documentary category because it was considered 'too good' for a documentary, but didn't make the final cut for best picture. Which it could rightfully have won.

Best War Movie:
NOMINEES:
Braveheart
Courage Under Fire
Last of the Mohicans
Saving Private Ryan
Starship Troopers
WINNER: Last of the Mohicans. Having safely covered the Vietnam topic backwards and forwards, Hollywood had a strange decade of war films. Most of them are historical in nature, so that we can attribute heroism in war to some lost era, like a costume ball or travel by sail. So we have William Wallace and the unnecessarily ahistorical rendering of blue faced scots. I must say that with most of Mel Gibson's post-lethal weapon films, I find myself wondering, "Why was this made?" even if they're pretty good. Saving Private Ryan began the 'we weren't so much heroes as just scared witless' trend which builds on a lot of social history but is sort of like making a western where people just herd cows. Courage Under Fire decided at least women could be combat heroes. Starship Troopers decided to mock the whole business with a quasi-facist, stylized send-up that featured the much under-used Dina Meyer and brought Doogie back from the dead. But all this was child's play to the classic Last of the Mohicans, a movie about one of the most obscure wars in American history which somehow eschews modern politics entirely to get the historical era right without seeming to lecture. Make sure to avoid the director's cut, which adds some preachy sections, and stick to the original theatrical version.

Best Animated Film of the Decade:
NOMINEES:
Aladdin
Beauty & The Beast
The Lion King
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Toy Story
WINNER: Beauty & the Beast. Look, all of these are good movies. I'm routinely shocked at how good kids' movies are given that they're so excited to be at the theater that you could show them anything a step up from a baby giggling in the sun and they'd watch it. What's that? Tele-who-now? Huh. Anyway, special points for the inexplicable Nightmare Before Christmas for having the smallest target audience of a decent movie in cinema history - the 13 year old experimenting-with-Goth. With respect to the best, these and several more were all worthwhile animation films, but Beauty & the Beast is the only one that touches a nerve of nostalgia, even in this hard heart. Also, it has the best bad guy. So, yes, welcome Pixar, you'll have your millenium yet, but Beauty & the Beast wins this one for Disney...before they bought Pixar.

Best Parody of the Decade:
NOMINEES
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
The Freshman
Hotshots!
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Scream
WINNER: Scream. You probably looked at this category and thought 'those movies stink.' Yes, Adventure Movie stinks. But look at that list...those are a lot of good movies. Ultimately, The Freshman isn't enough of a parody, and Austin Powers just misses out for stealing the idea from Dana Carvey. Robin Hood is probably my favorite of the traditional-style parody films. But Scream, to me, distances itself by taking the parody idea and turning it into an homage to its genre, and a classic of its genre, all at the same time. Neat trick that.

Best Cult Hit of the Decade (Criteria: Came Out of Nowhere, Bizarre Loyalty and Re-Enactment Ritual, Not Popular on Initial Release, More Enjoyable with Each Re-Watching, Not Originally Marketed as a Cult Movie):
NOMINEES:
The Big Lebowski
The Blair Witch Project
Bottle Rocket
The Full Monty
Office Space
WINNER: The Big Lebowski. The Blair Witch Project was marketed as a cult movie, and it's extremely tedious on repeated watching. The Full Monty isn't so much a cult movie as much as it was just independent and British. And it's disappeared with-a-quickness. I have to acknowledge that, although i hear tell of other people liking Bottle Rocket, I notice more-and-more that almost no one else seems to like it besides me. Which leaves us with Office Space. It hits all the categories out of the park, but hasn't really drawn that Rocky Horror type following to it. It needs more printer smashing parties and Oh face contests before it can compete withe The Big Lebowski. I will always regret how few scenes we got with the oh-face guy. As for the champ, there's just no avoiding it. It resurrected the White Russian, it has an annual fest with arcane rituals, if you're in the know, you'll see plenty of achiever paraphernalia out-and-about. The last time I went, the movie started, and people on both sides of me just started talking, line-by-line, with the movie. I looked to my left and my right, and everyone just had a big smile on their face. This movie's just got it.

Day 3 of the 90's Review: Most Over-Rated Movie of the Decade, Most Important/Influential Movie of the Decade, and the 10 Best Inadvertent Porn Titles

Most Over-Rated Movie of the Decade (Criteria - Won awards it didn't deserve, doesn't stand up to repeated viewings, generally liked, considered artistic but is actually a lame mainstream Hollywood idea of what artistic should be, purports to be revolutionary but is actually quite derivative):
NOMINEES:
American Beauty
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler’s List
Titanic
The Truman Show
WINNER: American Beauty. Spielberg is involved with 3 of these movies. That comes from his capacity to lend his name to something and have it taken more seriously than it deserves. All 3 of those first 3 films are above average movies which have come to be regarded as classics because of a) subject matter and b) attachment to Spielberg. American Beauty I have written on at length but suffice to say that it is Spielberg's (or Spielberg produced) movie on materialism and gayness. Two well-covered topics, getting the mainstream Hollywood treatment. Saving Private Ryan was 15 minutes of revolutionary war footage followed by 2 hours of tripe based on undergraduate social history classes and borrowed scenes from better war movies. Schindler's List was about the Holocaust. Apparently, it's impossible to make a bad Holocaust movie. By comparison, Titanic was panned by many reviewers, but the sheer weight of the directorial effort plus the huge popularity of the film mean it qualifies for this category. The Truman Show...all I can say is that we should have just given Jim Carrey the Oscar so that he could feel 'taken seriously' and go back to making us laugh. I blame his sub-par otts on this ultimately somewhat tedious 'high concept' movie being fawned over.

Most Important/Influential Movie of the Decade (Criteria - truly insightful, changed the way people think/behave, introduced new film techniques, created new genres):
NOMINEES:
Fight Club
Jurassic Park
Pulp Fiction
Scream
Toy Story
WINNER: Fight Club. Let's get the ones that weren't close out of the way first. Toy Story and Jurassic Park had a huge impact on film technique and the business of film. But they didn't have much to say, so they can't compete across the board. Scream created/revolutionized the horror genre but again, it was not socially important in any way. That leaves Pulp Fiction, which is a strong contender. Half of Hollywood wanted to be Tarantino almost overnight. He had a Nirvana-esque impact on the way scripts were written. He also has a true appreciation for the craft of film technique and many have mimicked his camera angles, etc as well. And in a sense, the elevation of style over substance, of homage over meaning, is itself socially important and relevant to a decade of irony and cynical detachment in love with self-reference. But ultimately, I think Fight Club is more important. Fight Club has had fewer copy cats...it's too unique to re-do. And it has also influenced film technique in the way it was shot and spliced. But the real key is that it hits a nerve with a broad segment. The funny thing is that reviewers don't have that nerve; they're not the audience. But to 18-to-25 year-old men of the 90's, this movie was on the tip of our tongues, this movie just gave it a name. It's American Beauty sans gay and plus balls. The fact that fight clubs sprung up all over the country is just icing on the cake. Also, this movie is just a better movie than Pulp Fiction.

Best Inadvertant Porn Title of the 90's:
I CANNOT PICK A CHAMP. YOU DECIDE:
The Bone Collector
Double Impact
Get Shorty
Free Willy
Mad Dog & Glory
Much Ado About Nothing
The Nutty Professor
Quigley Down Under
Sister Act
While You Were Sleeping
COMMENT: I have to say, I'm partial to Mad Dog & Glory, Much Ado About Nothing, and While You Were Sleeping.

Day 2 of the Round-Up: Worst Sequel of the 90's, Best Sequel of the 90's, Most 90's Movie.

Worst Sequel of the 90’s (CRITERIA - crushing lack of originality, high expectations from source movie, series/career killing):
NOMINEES:
* City Slickers 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold. The legend was that more Jack Palance would make this movie better than the first...even though he died in the last movie. The reality - I crap bigger than this movie dreams.
* Honey, I Blew Up The Kids. Of course, at least there was no other direction to go. "Honey, I made the kids 2D"? Of, perhaps the more appropriate, "Honey, I made the kids morbidly obese."
* The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2. Take the first film, remove any sense of wonder, have one suspenseful scene (the car window cracking while they're over the cliff), farm the rest out to the interns. This world was best left virgin territory.
* Speed 2: Cruise Control. It's never a good sign when one of the stars won't sign on for round 2. Even Keanu was smart enough to see this coming. But then, to give it a subtitle that a) points out a gaping plot hole (why not just set it to cruise control) and b) suggests your action movie is proceeding at a leisurely pace...well, let's just hope Sandra Bullock needed the money.
* Wayne’s World 2. This was one of those 'grown up' moment movies where I realized that sometimes, it wasn't enough to just be at the theater. Maybe it's because I watched this on VCR. I literally was astounded at how un-funny this movie was. I was a pretty serious kid.
WINNER: Wayne's World 2. If I told you that Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Christopher Walken, and Chris Farley had top billing in a comedy with a cameo by Aerosmith and Charleton Heston, plus Tia Carrere, Heather Locklear, Kim Basinger, Drew Barrymore, and the funniest guy from Scurbs, you'd have high expectations. Wayne's World was funny. This movie was not. It's as though they forgot to film the funny scenes and just left the set-up in. This movie destroyed Dana Carvey's career and nearly ended Mike Myers' as well. Wow.

BEST SEQUEL OF THE 90's (CRITERIA - Good stand alone movie, better than the original):
NOMINEES:
Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Die Hard With A Vengeance (The Samuel L/Jeremy Irons one)
Scream 2
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Toy Story 2
WINNER: Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Not a contest. I will say that I think you can argue that Toy Story 2 is better than the first, and that it's very easy to argue that Austin Powers 2 was better than the first (Mini-me). And Die Hard gets 'best series of the 90's' status by default. But Terminator 2 is the quintessential sequel. It takes everything from the first movie, turns it on its head, and makes it better. The first movie was a B-movie Iliad. This movie was an epic Cyber-Odyssey.

MOST 90'S MOVIE (CRITERIA - Reflects attitudes prevalent only in the 90's, audience would only be 90's audience, plot devices only relevant to 90's, has that 90's feel):
NOMINEES:
American Beauty - The standard 'non-standard' thought of the 90's.
Clueless - If historians called the 90's the 'Clueless Decade'...would you argue?
Dangerous Minds - Ah, the heroic teacher in the inner city epic. A generation inspired to spend 2 years in Teach for America before beating a hasty retreat to suburbia.
Space Jam - You might not know this, but Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny used to be big. Like i-phone big.
You’ve Got Mail - Perhaps never has a rom-com been so prisoner to a company and technology so swiftly irrelevant. A sad comment on the demise of AOL that the "You've Got Mail" notification's era was about as lengthy as the relatability of a film about e-mail being unfamiliar. The Coen Brothers should redo this movie as a send-up of the 90's. Then you're have something.
WINNER: Clueless. Smack dab in the middle of the decade, the film hits right at the notion that the 90's became the decade in which adolescence led the culture. Technically, we learn 'that there's more to life than clothes and popularity,'...but not much. In the end, it's better err on the side of pretty and blonde. This movie is less of an anachronism than its competitors, but it just seems more right. And, by teeny-bopper standards of our time, it's hopelessly innocent.

Rolling Out the FULL 90's REVIEW:

I've been hard at work on the full 90's review. I'll roll out a few categories every day, leading up to our actual top 25 movies of the decade.

Today: The Top 10 Bad Guys of the 90's, The Top 25 Scenes, and the award for best soundtrack of the 90's.

Top 10 Bad Guys of the 90's:
1. Hannibal Lecter – The Silence of the Lambs
2. Magua – Last of the Mohicans
3. Dr. Evil – Austin Powers/Austin Powers 2
4. The Scream Guy – Scream
5. Bob Sugar – Jerry Maguire
6. Evil T-1000 – Terminator 2
7. Lumberg – Office Space
8. The Dane – Miller’s Crossing
9. Shooter McGavin – Happy Gilmore
10. Castor Troy – Face/Off

The Top 25 Scenes of the 90's:
1. Christopher Walken vs Dennis Hopper – True Romance
2. The Hoola-Hoop – The Hudsucker Proxy
3. Look In Your Heart - Miller’s Crossing
4. Normandy – Saving Private Ryan
5. Verbal Kent = Kaiser Soze – The Usual Suspects
6. Happy Gilmore vs. Bob Barker – Happy Gilmore
7. You Can’t Handle The Truth! – A Few Good Men
8. You Had Me At Hello – Jerry Maguire
9. Pacino v. DeNiro – Heat
10. T-Rex Comes - Jurassic Park
11. Do You Like Scary Movies? – Scream
12. Are You Sure? I’m Positive – My Cousin Vinny
13. The Lobby Fight – The Matrix
14. Rudy’s Sack – Rudy
15. Doc Holliday Mocks Gun Acrobatics – Tombstone
16. Who’s Coming With Me – Jerry Maguire
17. Mercutio’s Death – Romeo + Juliet
18. Specks Kisses Wendy Peffercorn – Sandlot
19. Magua Cuts Out Greyhair’s Heart – Last of the Mohicans
20. The Final Heist – Bottle Rocket
21. JFK Assassination Explanation – JFK
22. Woody Harrelson Throws It Down – White Men Can’t Jump
23. Motorcycle Chase – Terminator 2: Judgment Day
24. I Killed My Sale – Tommy Boy
25. The Aliens Blow Up the White House – Independence Day / The Aliens Attack – Mars Attacks

The Award for Best Soundtrack (music had to be created for movie)
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
Good Will Hunting
The Hudsucker Proxy
Last of the Mohicans
Rudy
THE WINNER: Last of the Mohicans

1999 In Film: A Listless Decade Waddles to a Close

Just a note, I'm taking a break, then I'll come up with my decade in review practice.

1999
TOP GROSSING
1. Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
2. The Sixth Sense
3. Toy Story 2
4. The Matrix
5. Tarzan
6. The Mummy
7. Notting Hill
8. The World Is Not Enough
9. American Beauty
10. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

COMMENT: The 90’s end with George Lucas’ vigorous destruction of everyone from the 70’s childhood and a few quite good tech films like The Matrix and the Mummy. You can see where the Otts are headed.
WHAT WERE WE THINKING: The World Is Not Enough. This is the other bad Brosnan Bond movie before the last one.

ACADEMY AWARDS:
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: American Beauty, The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider, The Sixth Sense
Best Picture: American Beauty
Best Director: Sam Mendes - American Beauty
Best Actor: Kevin Spacey - American Beauty
Best Actress: Hilary Swank - Boys Don't Cry
Best Supporting Actor: Michael Caine - The Cider House Rules
Best Supporting Actress: Angelina Jolie - Girl, Interrupted
COMMENT: Hollywood puts its foot down – political movies are the only kind of art. And Angelina gets a pre-emptive academy award.

THE REAL TOP 10:
1. Fight Club
2. Office Space
3. The Matrix
4. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
5. The Thomas Crowne Affair
6. Eyes Wide Shut
7. The Sixth Sense
8. South Park
9. The Blair Witch Project
10. Payback

MOST OVERRATED: American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, The Boondock Saints, Magnolia
Let me explain. I liked American Beauty the first time I saw it. I thought it was brilliant. I was 18. The girl I went with said her dad did the same thing with her friends. Anyway, I grew up. It’s not brilliant. It’s an artifact of late teenage despair. What I don’t get is why grown adults think it’s brilliant. Are they still 18 inside? Anyway, let’s not pretend this was a great film. It wears its ideas on its sleeve. The floating bag is trite, the notion that all the gay people are normal, the conservative is gay, and the straight couple is jacked up is the distilled essence of all the standard ‘non-standard’ thought of the time. It is a relic of the counter-culture-as-culture mindset. As for the others, Being John Malkovich is better on paper than in execution, like most Spike Jonze movies, overthought. Boondock Saints is one of the growing fad of ‘because its cool’ movies. I like Irish accents, but this just didn’t do it for me. Magnolia I remember being regarded as a big deal, but in retrospect, it is tedious and unwatchable.
MOST INFLUENTIAL: Fight Club
MOST 90’s: American Beauty
SHOULD HAVE SEEN: The Insider
SLEEPER/CULT HIT: Office Space
TOLERABLE ROM-COM OF THE YEAR: Notting Hill
BEST LINE (IN A BAD MOVIE): Tie.
- The Muse, “Are you a lesbian?” “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” “Oh, come on, dignify it with a no.”
- The World Is Not Enough, “I thought Christmas only comes once a year.”
BEST SCENE: Samuel L. gets eaten by a shark in the middle of his Deep Blue Sea inspirational speech.
SHAMELESS PROFITEERING: You might wonder why Analyze This and Mickey Blue Eyes both came out this year. Both of these movies are fairly funny movies about regular Joes getting mixed up with gangsters. The Sopranos started this year. For shame sirs. This makes me wonder – is Hollywood secretly sitting on all the good scripts, waiting for some reason to cheapen them by making them seem like quick profiteering schemes?
BEST SEQUEL: Austin Powers 2, Toy Story 2.
IMPLAUSIBLE PLOT TWIST IN HIGH SCHOOL MOVIE: So football players go to a strip club the night before a game, and we’re supposed to hate the coach because of their rampant irresponsibility?
TOTALLY IMPLAUSIBLE PLOT IN HIGH SCHOOL MOVIE: She’s All That. Let’s get this straight, Freddie Prinze, Jr. is well-liked…because he’s a soccer star and honors student. Because that sounds a) like America and b) likely for Freddie Prinze Jr. So then his high school girlfriend leaves him for a reality TV star she met at spring break…because a) high school girls go to spring break and b) that’s legal. So he makes some bizarre bet that anyone can be his girl friend and his best friend has to pick the least hot girl to turn into a decent girl friend. And his best friend picks the girl who, if she were to take her glasses off, is a model. Not even Paul Walker is that stupid. Everyone knows, in that situation, you pick the fatty. There’s not even a debate. The fatty. This was a Saved By the Bell episode. They picked the fatty. How else do you learn a lesson? The lesson in this movie is, "If a cute girl takes her glasses off, she's cute." The point is supposed to be to pick a physically unattractive person and teach us all about not being so shallow. Instead, Freddie Prinz Jr. teaches us, "You may not think you're hot, but you are."
HEADED THE WRONG DIRECTION: Comedy. Big Daddy begins Adam Sandler’s listless quest for mediocrity. The Man on the Moon hammers home Jim Carey’s already overlong quest for self…or an Oscar. Neither showed up.
HEADED IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS: Renee Zellweger chases Chris O’Donnell in ‘The Bachelor’. Unlikely that'll happen again.
GOING TOGETHER IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS: Ryan Phillipe and Reese Witherspoon hook up in Cruel Intentions. I could have told her then this was a bad career decision.
WE SHOULD BE DONE HERE: The Runaway Bride. Apparently people will pay 150 million dollars to relive Pretty Woman. Richard Gere should have gone away by now.
WE REALLY ARE DONE HERE: Kevin Costner - For Love of the Game, Message in a Bottle. Not even a desperate attempt to recapture Field of Dreams pays off…I guess Kevin can sympathize with being washed up and alone. The message in the bottle says, “it’s over.”
YEP, THAT WAS A BAD HALF DECADE: Arnold’s “End of Days”. A little too close to home with that title.
SHOULDN’T WE HAVE STARTED HERE: South Park creators finally make a South Park movie.
IT WAS A BAD YEAR: Matthew Broderick. The alarmingly tedious Election vies with Inspector Gadget for a career quickly slipping into ‘standing next to Sarah Jessica Parker’ status.
WHY DIDN’T THAT WORK: Wild, Wild West.
CAN WE TRADE THIS BROSNAN MOVIE FOR THAT ONE: Is there some reason The Thomas Crowne Affair wasn’t just declared The James Bond Affair, and then we could be spared 1-2 further bad Bond films. It’s light years better than The World Is Not Enough.
KILLING ALL GOOD WILL FROM THAT ONE SONG: An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster. Fivel sells out.
I HAVE TO SAY: Everytime I see the title ‘Love Stinks’ I think of the deodorant commercial. “Love Stinks, Arid Works.”
I CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING TO SAY: Sleepy Hollow. Tim Burton does these sorts of things.
BEST INAD…WAIT, CHECK THAT, ALARMINGLY EXPLICIT TITLES: Just A Little Harmless Sex, The Loss of Sexual Innocence, The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human,
BEST INADVERTANT PORN TITLES: Anywhere But Here, Better Than Chocolate, The Bone Collector, In Too Deep, Dick, Sweet and Low Down, Why Not Me?

1998 in Film: Another Year of a Nation Without Direction

This is about to get ugly. Those with a sense of artistic decency should avert their eyes.
TOP GROSSING
1. Armageddon – Passably fun disaster movie – in the end, things don’t go boom.
2. Saving Private Ryan – Spielberg rocks the first 20, then steals the rest from better war movies
3. Godzilla – A childhood icon gutted and turned into an overlarge iguana.
4. There’s Something About Mary – Funny movie.
5. A Bug’s Life – Ho-hum computer animation. Family attendance compulsory.
6. Deep Impact – Not so fun disaster movie – things go boom. Climax: climb a hill.
7. Mulan – Less than ho-hum old school animation. Family attendance still compulsory
8. Dr. Doolittle – Eddie Murphy’s selling out begins
9. Shakespeare in Love – No complaints
10. Lethal Weapon 4 – Jet Li was a better addition than Joe Pesci. My favorite thing about the Lethal Weapon movies, as Chris points out, is that apparently there are no black or hispanic drug dealers in Los Angeles.

Academy Awards:
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, Life is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line
Best Picture: Shakespeare in Love
Best Director: Steven Spielberg - Saving Private Ryan
Best Actor: Roberto Benigni - Life Is Beautiful
Best Actress: Gwyneth Paltrow - Shakespeare in Love
Best Supporting Actor: James Coburn - Affliction
Best Supporting Actress: Judi Dench - Shakespeare in Love
Best Foreign Language Film: Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella), directed by Roberto Benigni, Italy
HOW BANAL CAN WE BE: Three movies about WW2, two movies about late renaissance England.

THE REAL TOP 10:
1. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
2. The Big Lebowski
3. The Wedding Singer
4. Rushmore
5. Shakespeare In Love
6. There’s Something About Mary
7. A Civil Action
8. Life Is Beautiful
9. Rounders
10. Saving Private Ryan
OVERRATED MOVIES:
- American History X. Social issues movies always age poorly.
- The Truman Show. High concept usually ages poorly as well.
- Saving Private Ryan. 20-minutes of epic footage does not a movie make.
- Out of Sight. We’re all supposed to like this movie because it’s about George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez being cool. So they are; it's still not a good movie.
UNDERRATED MOVIES:
- A Civil Action. I’m not much for crusading lawyer movies, but absent the Grisham hype, this movie quietly was much better than the bizarrely popular early-90’s adaptations that tore up the box office.
- Dead Man on Campus. After Jessica Spano pounded the stake into the heart of Saved by the Bell that had been placed there by The College Years, Zach quietly made a pretty funny movie.
- Dirty Work. I will always wish Norm McDonald had a career. Guy kills me.
CHARACTER OF THE YEAR: Jesus – The Big Lebowski. Close runner-up: Cliff – Dead Man On Campus.
TOP 10 REASONS THIS WAS A BAD YEAR FOR MOVIES:
1. Lingering 90’s detritus that refuse to go away – 1 too many sequels (at least): 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, Air Bud: Golden Receiver, An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan, Major League: Back to the Minors, Dennis the Menace Strikes Again, Halloween: H20, Species II. Bride of Chucky almost seems reasonable.
2. Bad remakes and conversions: Blue Brothers 2000, The Avengers, The Mask of Zorro
3. Waste of Talent: BASEketball, Vince Vaughn in the Psycho remake
4. Bad, Purely Political Movies: Bulworth, Primary Colors.
5. Lazy Animation Cash Cows: Antz, A Bug’s Life, Mulan, The Prince of Egypt
6. Forced to Pretend Movies About Writers are Interesting: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I like Johnny Depp as much as the next guy, but come on. Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘style’ was to get drunk and high and send in his notes because he couldn’t finish. A pox on what he did to writing.
7. Ethan Hawke continues to make movies in a misguided attempt to be taken seriously as a literary figure: Great Expectations.
8. Godzilla is a rancid disappointment
9. Pretending a foreign movie is good: Run, Lola, Run.
10. Attempted RomCom Sequel : You’ve Got Mail.
MOVIES I SHOULD HAVE SEEN: A Night at the Roxbury, Apt Pupil, Enemy of the State, Half Baked, Ronin
MOVIES I WANT TO LIKE: He Got Game, Meet Joe Black
I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT WORKED: After Chris Tucker ruined the Fifth Element, they give him a whole film to be annoying in (Rush Hour) and it’s actually pretty good.
PASSABLE ROMANTIC COMEDIES: Shakespeare in Love AND The Wedding Singer AND There’s Something About Mary.
GOOD BAD GUY: Jet Li made Lethal Weapon 4.
WORST MOVIE REVIEW: The guy who wrote the I Still Know What You Did Last Summer review I read didn’t sit through the whole movie and called out a supposed plot hole, that they get the capital of Brazil wrong, which is in fact explained at the end. If your job is to review movies, don’t you think you should at least sit through the whole thing?
BEST MOVIE REVIEW: As I walked out of the dollar theater where I watched The Thin Red Line, some Sacramentan said to no one in particular, “Three hours of fruit bats. Some war flick.”
BEST TITLE: What could beat How Stella Got Her Groove Back? Simple: Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna: Warriors of the Light.
90’S-EST MOVIE: You’ve Got Mail. What’s this new fangled internet business? Woof. How’s AOL’s stock doing these days anyway? Can’t Hardly Wait – good effort, but still a little too relevant.
MOVIES THAT SEEMED IMPORTANT AT THE TIME AND INVOLVED ‘THINGS’: Wild Things, Very Bad Things
MOVIES THAT SEEMED IMPORTANT AT THE TIME NOT INVOLVING THINGS: Waterboy, X-Files
BEST INADVERTENT PORN TITLES: Deep Impact, Dirty Work, Great Expectations, He Got Game, I Got the Hook-Up, No Looking Back, Slappy and the Stinkers, The Thin Red Line, The X Files.

TOP GROSSING
1. Titanic
2. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
3. Men in Black
4. Tomorrow Never Dies
5. Air Force One
6. As Good as It Gets
7. Liar Liar
8. My Best Friend’s Wedding
9. The Fifth Element
10. The Full Monty

Oscars Winners
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: Titanic, As Good as It Gets, The Full Monty, Good Will Hunting, L.A. Confidential
Best Picture: Titanic - 20th Century Fox, Lightstorm Entertainment, Paramount Pictures
Best Director: James Cameron - Titanic
Best Actor: Jack Nicholson - As Good as It Gets
Best Actress: Helen Hunt - As Good as It Gets
Best Supporting Actor: Robin Williams - Good Will Hunting
Best Supporting Actress: Kim Basinger - L.A. Confidential

TOP 10:
1. LA Confidential
2. Liar Liar
3. Donnie Brasco
4. Austin Powers
5. Good Will Hunting
6. Starship Troopers
7. Men In Black
8. The Full Monty
9. Face/Off
10. Con Air
(Honorable Mention) As Good As It Gets
COMMENT: I was tempted to put in the re-release of The Empire Strikes Back because that is not a strong top 10. True story: the guy sitting in front of me hummed the entire soundtrack and cried when Han Solo was frozen.

MOST INFLUENTIAL: None. Titanic sank everything else.
MOST OVERRATED: Titanic. Honestly, did anyone see this movie a second time? Does anyone watch the DVD version? Yes, it’s a technical achievement to rebuild the thing. No, it’s not an entertaining movie. I think this was the movie where I realized what a “Larry” was…as we were walking out, some dad said to his son, “The important thing is…he never let go.” I wonder how long it took that kid to figure out his dad was a weiner.
MOST OVERRATED (INDY VERSION): Chasing Amy. I did see this Kevin Smith movie. It’s not that good. Deal with it.
MOVIE THAT BEST TYPIFIES THE 90’S: Chasing Amy.
MOVIE THAT I WISH COULD ONLY HAPPEN IN THE 90’S: Spice World
STEVE…STEVE…PLEASE GET OVER YOURSELF: Amistad
YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DO AMISTAD AND FARM YOUR MONEY MOVIE OUT TO THE INTERNS: The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
MOVIES THAT SEEMED LIKE A BIG DEAL AT THE TIME: The Saint, Rocketman, Face/Off. I loved Face/Off as a teen. I tried rewatching it recently and realized it was a B movie. Who knew?
MOVIES THAT HAVE AGED WELL: I knew Starship Troopers was a B movie at the time. If you watch it again, you find a surprisingly entertaining movie. Plus it opened the door for Neil Patrick Harris’s turn in How I Met Your Mother.
MOVIE I VAGUELY RECALL LIKING BUT CAN’T BE SURE OF: Suicide Kings
PASSABLE ROMANTIC COMEDY OF THE YEAR: As Good As It Gets
IT SEEMS LIKE WE’RE DONE HERE: Batman & Robin. Both Arnold and Batman get put on time out. Chris O’Donnell had a career by the way. You might have missed that otherwise.
YES, WE ARE DONE HERE: Kevin Costner in The Postman.
DEVASTATING CASTING: Chris Tucker in the Fifth Element. Everything up to that point was shaping up to be a great film. Then the director asked the Dumb and Dumber question, “Want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?” and answered with Chris Tucker’s character.
I’M JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU: Grosse Pointe Blank, Gattaca
WHY DON’T YOU BE MORE FUNNY?: Beverly Hills Ninja.
WORST DECISION: Capitalizing on the popularity of South Park, Orgazmo gets made?
MOVIE YOU FORGOT HAPPENED: Tomorrow Never Dies. Between the reintroduction of Bond and the awful invisible car, they made that one with Michelle Yeow. It certainly slipped my mind.
MOVIES I SHOULD HAVE SEEN: Boogie Nights, Seven Years in Tibet, Spawn
BEST SEQUEL: Scream 2
WORST SEQUELS: Jurassic Park 2, Speed 2: Cruise Control. If Keanu Reeves won’t sign-on post A Walk in the Clouds and Johnny Mnemonic, chances are that there are script problems.
FAVORITE MOMENT: The pandas at the Fierce Creatures zoo are out of order.
FAVORITE LINE: “This is nothing,” Wag the Dog.
BEST INADVERTENT PORN TITLES: All Over Me, Double Team (Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme AND Dennis Rodman no less), Excess Baggage, In & Out, Love Jones

1996 - A New Dawn

Top Grossing
1. Independence Day
2. Twister
3. Mission: Impossible
4. Jerry Maguire
5. Ransom
6. 101 Dalmatians
7. The Rock
8. The Nutty Professor
9. The Birdcage
10. A Time to Kill

WHAT WERE WE THINKING AWARD: The Birdcage. Inexplicable.

ACADEMY AWARDS
BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: The English Patient, Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets & Lies, Shine
Best Picture: The English Patient
Best Director: Anthony Minghella - The English Patient
Best Actor: Geoffrey Rush - Shine
Best Actress: Frances McDormand - Fargo
Best Supporting Actor: Cuba Gooding Jr. - Jerry Maguire
Best Supporting Actress: Juliette Binoche - The English Patient
WE KNOW WHAT THEY WERE THINKING BUT STILL, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING: I liken The English Patient’s victory to the Raiders’ drafting of Jamarcus Russell #1 overall. It has the tools, it just can’t play ball. Everyone knows it is going to happen, everyone knows it is a mistake, all are powerless to stop it, none can explain it afterwards. Hollywood just can’t help itself, despite the presence of two vastly superior films (Fargo, Jerry Maguire).

DISTURBING TREND: The marketing of academy awards slots comes into full view with the despicable inclusion of Secrets & Lies AND Shine. If you’re unfamiliar, academy members get copies and get told ‘this is a piece of art’.

REAL TOP 10:
1. Jerry Maguire
2. Bottle Rocket
3. Fargo
4. Happy Gilmore
5. Scream
6. Romeo + Juliet
7. Courage Under Fire
8. Independence Day
9. The Rock
10. Evita

This wasn’t a deep year, but those are some good films. A lot of new talent fills the gap – Wes Anderson, Cameron Crowe, the Coens hit the big time, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ewan MacGregor break through.

MOST INFLUENTIAL: Scream. Tough call, Bottle Rocket’s really come on for indy-films and introducing Wes Anderson. And Independence Day and Twister created a whole new $$ game. But Scream recreated the horror genre for the next decade.
BETTER THAN YOU THINK: The Great White Hype, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Multiplicity, Space Jam. With the 90’s falling apart, these were all good movies that deserve a second look now that we can all breathe and look at things objectively. Michael Keaton should have had a better post-Batman career. That’s right, Space Jam. What of it?
MOVIE TOTALLY OUT OF PLACE OUTSIDE THE 90’S: Space Jam. Remember Jordan pre-Wizards? He was big. Like Pepsi big.
I’M JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU: Kingpin
MOVIES I THOUGHT WERE GREAT AT THE TIME: Broken Arrow
CULT HITS THAT HAVE AGED POORLY: Swingers, Trainspotting.
TITLE THAT MAKES ME WANT TO COCKPUNCH THE WRITER: Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day
WAIT, ARE WE DONE HERE?: Arnold makes Eraser…and Jingle All The Way.
PRETTY SURE WE’RE DONE HERE: Tin Cup. In Costner’s defense, this movie’s pretty good as far as Costner movies go.
MUST HAVE NEEDED THE MONEY: Marlon Brando comes out of retirement to make…The Island of Dr. Moreau?
WHY EUROPEAN DIRECTORS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE MOVIES ABOUT BASEBALL: The Fan’s climactic scene takes place in a baseball game played during a driving rain storm.
WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ABOUT: Mars Attacks!
HOW DARE YOU SIR!: Muppet Treasure Island destroys two icons at once.
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN: Cable Guy was originally slated for Chris Farley and David Spade until Jim Carey expressed interest. That would have been a different (READ: Better) movie. Instead, they make the bland Black Sheep, Farley goes off the deep end, and Jim Carey begins experimenting with drama. Things fall apart.
WORST POST-COMEBACK DECISIONS: John Travolta, cool again, makes Michael AND Phenomenon. Dude.
WORST DECISION: Demi Moore, apparently jazzed by Jessica Spano’s career crippling turn in Showgirls, decides to make Striptease. Let’s face it…she was never good.
PASSABLE ROMANTIC COMEDY: Romeo + Juliet. Good Mercutio.
WORST REMAKE OF A GOOD 80’S MOVIE: Escape From L.A.
PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE WATCHED BEFORE MAKING THIS LIST: A Time to Kill, Ransom, Waiting for Guffman
PROBABLY OK THAT I MISSED: Barbed Wire, Kazaam
BEST LINE IN A MOVIE NOT DISCUSSED ELSEWHERE: “We all thought that kid had tourette’s until Mr. (Jon Lovitz) figured out that he was a foreign exchange student.” – Tia Carrere, High School High
BEST BAD GUY: Bob Sugar (Jerry Maguire), whoever Ed Harris played in The Rock, Shooter McGavin (Happy Gilmore), John Travolta (Broken Arrow – come on, Christian Slater can beat him up?), the Martians (Mars Attacks)
BEST INADVERTENT PORN TITLES: The Nutty Professor, Larger Than Life

1995: Second Half of the 90's Begins...Nation Badly Adrift

Top Grossing:
1. Toy Story
2. Batman Forever
3. Apollo 13
4. Pocahontas
5. Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
6. GoldenEye
7. Jumanji
8. Casper
9. Seven
10. Die Hard: With a Vengeance
COMMENT: Wow is that a bad list. Batman Forever was an honest mistake. Pocahontas…the need to take kids to the movies is completely understandable. But Jumanji? Casper? Scarier still – Waterworld was #12. Americans didn’t know how bad Kevin Costner could be. I mean, I’m not Braveheart fan, but how does Waterworld make 13 million more? Based on 1995 ticket prices, that’s what, a difference of 2 million people? An unsettling look at a nation without purpose.

Award Winners:
Best Picture Nominees: Apollo 13, Braveheart, Babe, Il Postiino, Sense and Sensibility
Best Picture: Braveheart
Best Director: Mel Gibson - Braveheart
Best Actor: Nicolas Cage - Leaving Las Vegas
Best Actress: Susan Sarandon - Dead Man Walking
Best Supporting Actor: Kevin Spacey - The Usual Suspects
Best Supporting Actress: Mira Sorvino - Mighty Aphrodite

You know things are bad when Hollywood's doing better on taste than the American public. Just as an aside...when I say 'Goddess of Love'...does Mira Sorvino come to mind?


The REAL Top 10 of 1995:
1. Heat
2. Get Shorty
3. Seven
4. The Usual Suspects
5. Tommy Boy
6. Twelve Monkeys
7. Clueless
8. Apollo 13
9. Billy Madison
10. Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. “The mother rhino is giving birth!”

MOST INFLUENTIAL: Toy Story. Like Athena, Computer Animation leaps from the head of Pixar in full battle armor, replete with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen.

Disturbing Trend 1: Propaganda Films for Sitting President. The American President was truly novel…it’s amazing that people will pay to see a campaign commercial
Disturbing Trend 2: Gina Davis’ career essentially ruined by Cutthroat Island
Disturbing Trend 3: This Happened – 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up
Disturbing Trend 4: Major Payne. The death of the best Wayans’ brother’s career.
Ambivalent Trend: Saved By the Bell crossover transition strangled in the cradle by Showgirls
Glimmer of Hope 1: Welcome back Saturday Night Live. Tommy Boy and Billy Madison mark a welcome departure from desperate retreads like Coneheads.
Glimmer of Hope 2: GoldenEye brings back Bond. Even though I never cared for Brosnan, at least his Bond started out passable.
FILM THAT EVERYONE THINKS IS INFLUENTIAL AND IMPORTANT BUT, IN TRUTH, IS EMBARRASSINGLY UNWATCHABLE: Basketball Diaries
MOVIES I WILL NOT WATCH: The Bridges of Madison County
MOVIES I DON’T CARE ABOUT: Dead Man Walking, Casino, Leaving Las Vegas, Nixon
WORST IDEA FOR A MOVIE: The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain. In case you are curious, this is the story of a two cartographers who decide that a mountain is a mole hill.
ANOTHER WORST IDEA FOR A MOVIE: How to Make An American Quilt. Even as an instructional video, it would seem tedious.
PASSABLE ROMANTIC COMEDY: French Kiss
BAD SEQUELS: Grumpier Old Men, Demolition Man 2: Judge Dredd.
IT WAS A BAD YEAR FOR: Keanu Reeves. Johnny Mnemonic AND A Walk in the Clouds. That hits both kidneys. Whoa…down but not out.
MOVIES THAT SEEMED IMPORTANT AT THE TIME: Outbreak, Species
MOVIES I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE WATHCED: Mallrats, The Quick and the Dead
EVILEST BAD GUY OF THE YEAR: Tim Roth in Rob Roy. Him and James Woods should have had better careers.
MOVIE THAT BEST TYPIFIES THE 90’s: Clueless. Dangerous Minds was close.
BEST INADVERTENT PORN TITLES: Bad Boys, Get Shorty, Now and Then, While You Were Sleeping

1994
Top Grossing
1. Forrest Gump
2. The Lion King
3. True Lies
4. The Santa Clause
5. The Flinstones
6. Dumb and Dumber
7. Clear and Present Danger
8. Speed
9. The Mask
10. Pulp Fiction
Overall, not bad 1994. Except the Flinstones outdrew Dumb & Dumber AND The Mask...AND Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. A lodestone on all our souls.

ACADEMY AWARDS:
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: Forrest Gump, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption
Best Picture: Forrest Gump - Paramount Pictures
Best Director: Robert Zemeckis - Forrest Gump
Best Actor: Tom Hanks - Forrest Gump
Best Actress: Jessica Lange - Blue Sky
Best Supporting Actor: Martin Landau - Ed Wood
Best Supporting Actress: Dianne Wiest - Bullets Over Broadway
Dianne Wiest has to be a MOST OBSCURE AWARD WINNER nominee. I’ve never seen her name or the movie title in my life. I can name most of Jason Statham’s catalogue though, so I've got that going for me. Also…Quiz Show? Really? Over Hoop Dreams? Quiz Show...It’s one of those easily forgotten things of the 90's…like the show Northern Exposure. Or Dianne Wiest.

This year belongs to: Jim Carey – That’s 3 comedies (Ace Ventura, The Mask, Dumb & Dumber) in one year than most people can’t top in a career. Perhaps the single greatest year for an actor in movie comedy history. Runner-up – Tim Robbins (Hudsucker Proxy AND Shawshank Redemption)

THE REAL TOP 10:
1. Hoop Dreams
2. The Hudsucker Proxy
3. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
4. Dumb and Dumber
5. Forrest Gump
6. True Lies
7. Clear and Present Danger
8. Maverick
9. Shawshank Redemption
10. Speed

* Movies I thought were great at the time: Stargate, Blue Chips, Little Big League, Little Giants, The Shadow
* Most Influential: Pulp Fiction
* Most Overrated: The Lion King. This was the Disney movie I didn’t like. I think it’s because our football coach in high school forced us to sing Hakuna Matata while doing sit-ups and plyometrics.
* Bizarre Trend: Movies that didn’t need sequels: Ahem – 3 Ninjas Kick Back, Death Wish V: The Face of Death, Highlander 3: The Final Dimension, Leprechaun 2, My Girl 2, Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, White Fang 2: Myth of the White Wolf, The Next Karate Kid.
COMMENT: My Girl 2? 3 Ninjas Kick Back? These things are as culturally important as trying to revitalize MTV’s The Grind. I would put Mighty Ducks 2 on there but something tells me that’s where the Knuckle Puck came from. The Knuckle Puck was good.
* Bad Sequels: City Slickers 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold, Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar,
* Movies I Probably Should Have Seen Before Making This List But Didn’t Because I Was On a Damn Good Little League Team: Blue Sky, Clerks, The Crow, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Interview with the Vampire, Natural Born Killers, Reality Bites
* Movies I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Seen: Godzilla Vs. Space Godzilla
* Inexplicable Failure to Launch: Helen Mirren played a British queen in Madness of King George. And we let her sit there for another 15 years, not playing the queen.
* The Year in Jean Claude Van Damme: Timecop was maybe his best film.
* Best Inadvertent Porn Titles: Above the Rim, I’ll Do Anything, A Low Down Dirty Shame, Lightning Jack, Threesome (I can’t believe this was a serious title)
* Favorite Line: North, “I’ve always wanted to know what it was like to live without the ever-present nuisance of electricity. Allow me to retrieve my butter-churn from the overhead compartment.”
* The Kings of the early 90’s Announce They Are Done: Junior, Wyatt Earp
* So That’s What They Were Up To: Apparently Marissa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr. made a movie called “Only You”. And you thought they wasted the 90’s on someone’s blacklist/drugged out.
* Movie Totally Out of Place Outside the 90's: Streetfighter. We didn't yet know that somehow it's easier to make a compelling movie out of an old Disney ride than a video game. Streetfighter (and Raul Julia inexplicably being chosen to play the world's fighting champion M. Bison) blazed this trail.

1993 – A Truly Bad Year in Cinematic Tastes
Top Grossing:
1. Jurassic Park
2. Mrs. Doubtfire
3. The Fugitive
4. The Firm
5. Sleepless in Seattle
6. Indecent Proposal
7. In the Line of Fire
8. The Pelican Brief
9. Schindler’s List
10. Cliffhanger
A truly awful list of movies. The Firm AND The Pelican Brief? Thank goodness we tied up those customers with Law & Order: CSI Chattanooga. And Cliffhanger? Indecent Proposal? Cliffhanger failed to embrace the pun while Indecent Proposal should have been the rejection response to the script. Maybe this is just the result of ‘what everyone who didn’t go see Jurassic Park?’ No, actually there were good movies this year.

ACADEMY AWARDS:
Best Picture Nominees: Schindler’s List, The Piano, The Age of Innocence, In the Name of the Father, The Remains of the Day
Best Picture: Schindler's List -
Best Director: Steven Spielberg - Schindler's List
Best Actor: Tom Hanks - Philadelphia
Best Actress: Holly Hunter - The Piano
Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones - The Fugitive
Best Supporting Actress: Anna Paquin - The Piano

Not to be outdone by American consumers, the Screen Actors Guild said, “NO NO NO, AMERICA, WE’LL SHOW YOU BAD TASTE.” And by that we mean dry period dramas. Let’s ignore Schindler’s List for now. Allow me to give you the one sentence summary of The Piano from Wikipedia:
The Piano is a 1993 film about a mute female pianist and her daughter, set during the mid-19th century in a rainy, muddy frontier New Zealand backwater.
Who is the producer who said, “OOOOOO. Tell me more!”

TOP 10:
1. Rudy “You’re 5-foot nothin’, a hundred and nothing’…” I miss the rock v. 1
2. Tombstone “I’m your huckleberry.”
3. Jurassic Park
4. Philadelphia
5. Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
6. Groundhog Day
7. Schindler’s List
8. Grumpy Old Men
9. Searching for Bobby Fischer (Secret not revealed in the movie – he was in the Philippines doing a radio show as a conspiracy whacko.
10. The Sandlot

- The Year in Kevin Costner – Tombstone had the added bonus of setting up Costner for the knockout blow – Wyatt Earp. 1993 was spent prepping his doom…while making something called A Perfect World, which had Costner AND Clint Eastwood and yet I secretly doubt its existence. If you don't know, when Costner found out about Tombstone, he rented all the western costumes in hollywood out of spite - karma's a mofo. Kurt Russell, a tip of the hat.

Which leads to:
• SPECIAL AWARD FOR BEST PARODY: Robin Hood: Men in Tights – Mel Brooks piles on the rapidly vacating Costner-train! One of the better parody films ever.
• SPECIAL AWARD FOR I CAN’T REMEMBER IF IT WAS GOOD OR NOT: The Fugitive
• HONORABLE MENTION FOR BEING #11: Dave
• SPECIAL AWARD FOR MOVIE THAT’S ACTUALLY NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK: Last Action Hero
• SPECIAL AWARD FOR MOVIE THAT IS ACTUALLY THAT BAD: Demolition Man
• SPECIAL AWARD FOR ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT WORKED’ – Keanu Reeves does Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing
• THE ‘TARGET AUDIENCE?’ AWARD FOR BEST UNBRIDLED CREATIVITY: Nightmare Before Christmas
• THE PASSABLY WATCHABLE ROMCOM AWARD: Sleepless In Seattle
• ‘IT WAS GOING TO INCLUDE CHUCK NORRIS IN A CAPE BUT THE SCREEN CAN’T HOLD ANYMORE AWESOME’ AWARD FOR BEST SCENE: Dennis Hopper vs. Christopher Walken – True Romance - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm_LbJTvTWA
• MOVIES THAT I THINK ARE SUPREMES’ LYRICS: Nowhere to Run, No Place to Hide

MOST INFLUENTIAL: Jurassic Park. Ushered in the era of CGI. And looking at that 10 Top Grossing Films…just in the nick of time.
MOST OVERRATED: Schindler's List. Am I a bad person? Is that a hate crime? Sorry folks. Not only did it mark Spielberg's wantonly wasteful move into drama, it's also rather dull now that we've had a few more Holocaust movies come down the pike. Oooo, he used black and white, what a genius.
MOVIES I THOUGHT WERE A BIG DEAL AT THE TIME: Alive, Falling Down, The Firm, M Butterfly, The Program, Rising Sun
MOVIES I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE WATCHED: Army of Darkness, The Age of Innocence, Dazed & Confused, Menace II Society, In the Name of the Father, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
MOVIES I PROBABLY SHOULDN’T HAVE WATCHED: Another Stakeout, Matinee
WORST SEQUELS, AND WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THEM: Beethoven’s Second, Look Who’s Talking Now, Robo-Cop 3, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3; Wayne’s World 2, Weekend At Bernie’s 2.

Let’s face it, those are some bad sequels. So first off, don’t make sequels to dog movies. Same goes for babies. And implausible plots like pretending a dead guy is alive…guys, he’s starting to smell. Robocop kind of sucked from the start, so the lesson there is, don’t make a sequel to a bad movie. TMNT 3 was a pure money grab. Which leaves us with Wayne’s World 2. This movie is so epically unfunny that it makes Molly Shannon look like Richard Pryor. I mean, there’s nothing holding you down, guys, no plot gimmick or anything stopping the funny…how could this movie be this bad? It'd be funnier if it was just 2 hours of hangin' w/ Garth.

SEQUEL I SHOULD HAVE SEEN JUST FOR THE MYSTIFYING TITLE: Best of the Best 2…um, didn’t we settle this in the first movie?

MOVIE TOTALLY OUT OF PLACE OUTSIDE THE 90’s: Weekend @ Bernie’s 2

BEST INADVERTANT PORN TITLES (At least 93 came up big in this category):
- Best of the Best 2,
- Dazed & Confused,
- Demolition Man,
- Free Willy,
- Hard Target,
- Flesh & Bone,
- Mad Dog & Glory, (you have to admit, that’s good)
- Married to It
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
- Sleepless in Seattle
- Striking Distance
- Speak Up! It’s So Dark (I can’t believe that’s a movie title)

PS: Did anyone else hate the early 90’s Batman cartoon? I mean, it was so dull. How do you make Batman suck? Oh right, the rest of the 90’s answered that question.

Continuing 90’s Movie Reviews:
1992
Top Grossing Films:
1. Aladdin
2. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
3. Batman Returns
4. A Few Good Men
5. Lethal Weapon 3
6. The Bodyguard
7. Sister Act
8. A League of Their Own
9. Basic Instinct
10. Wayne’s World

What were we thinking: The Bodyguard? Kevin Costner’s drawing power strikes again. This is how we got Waterworld and Postman. He thought he could make anything and we’d go to it. Apparently we did.

Academy Award Nominees and Winners:
• Unforgiven (WINNER)
• The Crying Game
• A Few Good Men
• Howards End
• Scent of a Woman
• Best Picture: Unforgiven - Malpaso Productions, Warner Bros.
• Best Director: Clint Eastwood - Unforgiven
• Best Actor: Al Pacino - Scent of a Woman
• Best Actress: Emma Thompson - Howards End
• Best Supporting Actor: Gene Hackman - Unforgiven
• Best Supporting Actress: Marisa Tomei - My Cousin Vinny

COMMENT: This was where the Academy Awards started to ruin itself. Three terrible artsy movies nominated for reasons unclear to America. Several great movies all but ignored (Last of the Mohicans? Did this movie get disqualified for NCAA rules violations of something?) And the Marisa Tomei controversy…which turns out to be one of the more justifiable picks on this list.

The Definitive 1992 Best 10 Films:
1. The Last of the Mohicans
2. Bram Stoker’s Dracula
3. Batman Returns
4. Wayne’s World
5. Reservoir Dogs
6. Diggstown
7. My Cousin Vinny
8. Noises Off
9. Aladdin
10. White Men Can’t Jump

Most Influential Film: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So it wasn’t a landmark of cinema. Still, it created a new genre
Most Overrated Films: A Few Good Men (More like ‘One Good Scene’), The Bodyguard
Hidden Trend: Movies with good soundtracks. Last of the Mohicans, Leap of Faith, The Bodyguard and Sister Act.
Worst Sequel: Honey, I Blew Up the Kids
Movies I Should Have Watched Before Making This List: Malcom X, El Mariachi, Glengarry Glen Ross
Movies I Thought Were A Big Deal At The Time: Newsies, Thunderheart
Movie Totally Out of Place Outside the 90s: Cool World
Best Inadvertent Porn Title: Unlawful Entry, The Babe, Sister Act.

Continuing 90's movie reviews - 1991

1991 comes on a lot stronger than 90 in terms of viewers knowing what the hell they were doing. In fact, 1991 was a good year for movies, especially comedies.

Top Grossing Films

1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

2. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

3. Beauty and the Beast

4. The Silence of the Lambs

5. City Slickers

6. Hook

7. The Addams Family

8. Sleeping with the Enemy

9. Father of the Bride

10. The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear

COMMENT: Seven out of ten ain't bad.

WHAT WERE WE THINKING AMERICA: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Kevin Costner's drawing power may be the biggest mystery of the early 90's.

Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees:

- Silence of the Lambs (Winner)

- Beauty and the Beast

- Bugsy

- JFK

- The Prince of Tides

COMMENT: An interesting mix. I had no idea Beauty and the Beast was nominated...ahead of its time. Bugsy and JFK were a scoche overrated epics featuring big names that really aren't that compelling. At least the best of the 5 won.

The Definitive 1991 Top 10 Best Films:
1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
2. Silence of the Lambs
3. Point Break
4. LA Story
5. Beauty & the Beast
6. City Slickers
7. Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey - "They melvined me."
8. What About Bob?
9. Backdraft
10. Earnest Scared Stupid - Jim Varney's best work. I stand by this one.
HONORABLE MENTION: Addams Family, Father of the Bride, Naked Gun 2 1/2 , Hot Shots!.
SEMI-HONORABLE MENTION: Dutch - it wasn't that good, but there's a few classic lines and I loved Al Bundy.

Most Influential Film: Boyz n the Hood - people forget no one was doing movies like this before this film. Even if it doesn't stack up these days, it was influential.
Most Overrated Films: JFK, Bugsy, Prince of Tides, Barton Fink
Worst Sequel Nominees:
- Highlander 2: The Quickening
- An American Tale: Fievel Goes West
- Problem Child 2
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze
There are 5 lessons to be learned here.
#1 - Fievel did not need to go west. Fievel needed to go straight to video.
#2 - Even as a kid, I knew Problem Child 2 was bad. I had a birthday party that included it and I was thinking, "Wow, I hope they come to my party next year. Have to go back to that Major League / UHF marathon sleep-over."
#3 - When Star Trek: Next Generation is already a clearly better show, another bad movie isn't gong to save anything
#4 - Consider your subtitle and think, "Does Secret of the Ooze just sound lame?" If only Spielberg had paid attention we'd never have gotten 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.'
#5 - There can be only one.
Movie I steadfastly refuse to consider: JFK, The Doors, Thelma & Louise. Sorry Oliver Stone, you are ineligible for history-related reasons.
Movies I probably should have seen all the way through before making this list but didn't in the interests of good taste: Boyz n the Hood, Bugsy, Cape Fear, Fried Green Tomatoes, Thelma & Louise, JFK, Prince of Tides, Regarding Henry, Jungle Fever
Movies I totally thought were a big deal at the time and can't quite remember why: The Rocketeer, White Fang.
Movie Totally Out-of-Place Outside the 90's - Jungle Fever
Best Inadvertant Porn Title Nominees: Double Impact, The Hard Way, New Jack City, Necessary Roughness,
Special Award for Big Star Dud Double Whammy: Bruce Willis for Hudson Hawk AND The Last Boyscout.
Special Award for Weird Simpsons Tie-In: I don't know how to explain that the movie McBain got made...after the Simpsons invented the character...and Christopher Walken was in it...and the movie sued the Simpsons. What next...OJ Simpson got arrested while trying to steal back all of the merchandise he sold to pay his legal debts for killing his wife and whistled 'if i only had a brain' as he was lead away? Oh wait...both of those things happened.