Covid Classics: 90’s Rewind…Or Blockbuster Will Fine You!
It’s been a minute y’all! While I enjoyed my movie history lesson in 2020, there was simply more stuff to do in 2021 post vaccination, so my movie history lesson was more sporadic last year.
I thought I would start this new batch by going back to my roots. My upbringing. The 1990s. What a time for movies it was! The greats like Steven Spielberg were pumping out big blockbuster after big blockbuster, plus upstarts like Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater and Steven Soderbergh were out making impressive daring new features culminating in an amazing decade for releases.
The 90s also had all sorts of trends in culture: the wrestling boom, Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, Boy Bands, Tie Dye. I paired each of these 90s flicks below with a 90s trend that best encapsulates what the movie has going for it!
Shane Black is the king of writing macho, over the top action movies, of which this is proudly a member. The formula is simple: take two “good guys” who don’t like each other (in this case, Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans) and needle each other endlessly. Surround them with charismatic, creepy bad guys, and an explosion or incredible action sequence every 10 to 15 minutes. What Black conjures up here is stupidly incredible, including a finale as joyously bonkers as the amazing opening.
The 90s Trend
I know it’s existed since the 1970s, but this Crossfire ad is ingrained in my memory: it’s all fire, lightning, fake guns, and battle and futuristic hoverboards for the 90s, the one thing The Last Boy Scout doesn’t have.
A Scarface remake set in 1990s Harlem. Sign me up!
Why It’s Good
Why remake Scarface? Because the story of the rise/fall of a gangster is bonafide compelling watching! Also compelling watching is Wesley Snipes, whose Nino Brown is an electric force around which this movie revolves. On top of Snipes’s performance is director Mario Van Peebles, who brings the gangster movie into the 90s hip hop era, replete with amazing costumes, a kickass soundtrack, and themes previously unseen by movie watchers.
The 90s Trend
Mario Van Peebles movie is akin to the birth of the Internet Era. New Jack City opened the door for all sorts of new voices and stories in Hollywood. Some were good, some were bad, but everyone gets a chance to be heard, and the (movie) world would be forever changed as a result.
One of the stranger buddy action comedy pairings, thanks to the action weirdo, Luc Besson.
Why It’s Good
You’ve got a lot of the main people involved in this project on the rise. Luc Besson had just done La Femme Nikita, and this movie cemented him as a new type of action director, with his brand of strange storytelling and crazy action. Gary Oldman was in the weird phase of his career: just finishing True Romance the previous year, and really hamming it up in this one in gleefully evil ways. Jean Reno rejoined with Besson to get a starring role here, doing a 90s version of an emotionless action hero who gets a heart. But the highlight is Natalie Portman, lighting up the screen in her first role. The talent is so evident from Portman that Besson makes the Portman (12 in this movie)/Reno relationship way more strange and charged than was probably on the page, which gives The Professional more of an edge over its mundane action counterparts.
Better Title, or Better Movie?
The Portman/Reno pairing feels a lot like a Furby: lightning in the bottle in the moment but over time, gets creepy and uncomfortable because of some strange choices.
A romance between two titans of Hollywood: Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep
Why It’s Good
Let’s take things down a few notches…with a Clint Eastwood movie??? For anyone who only thinks Clint can do action/shoot-em ups, watch this beautiful, deliberate solemn poem to a doomed, but beautiful romance. Meryl Streep’s Francesca is stuck in a relationship with a man, but not her soul mate…whom she unfortunately meets in the form of Clint Eastwood’s photographer Robert Kincaid. This might be the most empathetic movie toward infidelity that has ever existed. That’s because Eastwood takes his time and shows us why this short lived connection means something to Streep and Eastwood, using that fuel to return to a life refilled with feeling and happiness.
Better Title, or Better Movie?
Sometimes out of sadness and longing can rise something special, that turns that sadness into magic, and comfortable clothes: that would be Kurt Cobain, Nirvana, and the grunge movement, even if their ascent to stardom was probably doomed from the get go, the memory of that Madison County bond will last forever.
James L. Brooks and Jack Nicholson back together again! Right? Right????
Why It’s Good
This is a movie that is entirely of its time, and like a new car, aged immediately as it was released into the world. It’s also a movie split right down the middle. The selling points at the time were the Brooks/Nicholson reteaming, but what worked in 1983 doesn’t translate super great to 1997, and even worse in 2022. Nicholson is positioned as having OCD, but he mostly comes off as an obnoxious little brat, forcing the world to bend to his will and being incisively mean when he doesn’t get his way. And yet, wonderful sweet people like Greg Kinnear and Helen Hunt keep “seeing” through his faults into the sweet exterior, even though they have to put up with a hilarious amount of cruelty to get there. Thankfully, Kinnear and especially Hunt modernize James L. Brooks’s material, and any scene with either of them at the center (about half) are as riveting as some of Brooks’s best material. And if none of this matters to you, it’s at least got a really cute dog.
Better Title, or Better Movie?
Nicholson is a Tamagotchi, demanding all the time and resources from the “kids” Greg Kinnear and Helen Hunt, who would be better served living in the real world and making real friends instead of buried in his oppressive needs.
Wes Anderson’s version of a coming of age story. Umm, sure.
Why It’s Good
Wes and I run hot and cold with each other. This is a colder one for me. I understand why Jason Schwartzman’s Max Fischer is beloved by some: his way with words and salesmanship is quite impressive. However, not unlike Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick, the more you uncover with him the more vile and full of sh*t Max becomes. In Wes’s world, apparently if you’re bad and young, cutting someone’s brakes basically is a simple fine and not attempted murder, sure. The delights of Rushmore are the world of the school itself: it’s endless extracurriculars, the insane plays the school puts on, Bill Murray’s contempt for his own kids, Fischer’s friends and enemies: all of them are more fun and compelling, and made me wish Rushmore was more about the place than its overbearing douche of a student/main character.
Better Title, or Better Movie?
Max Fischer is a slap bracelet of a man. He’s kinda stylish and fun once or twice, but after a few slaps, you’re just irritated and annoyed with him.
