As you can see the movie selections are starting to get really good now! Even though the Oscars remain out of touch (Driving Miss Daisy was the winner this year, just a hilarious miss with the other solid choices), great film’s aren’t as some of the great moviemakers and actors got their starts this year, including Steven Soderbergh, Cameron Crowe, and Spike Lee, and any year that has 4 unimpeachable bangers is a solid one in my book.
Tearjerker about southern belles. What makes this movie special is the killer cast of ladies, including Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Sally Field, and a young Julia Roberts. Their talents take the sappy screenplay and put real emotions and characters behind it, so when the tears eventually do arrive, they mean something.
In an amazing career, this will end up being Tom Cruise’s greatest performance. Cruse descends into the role of Ron Kovic, an uber patriotic kid that decides to go to Vietnam to serve his country. Along the way, the horrors of war and dehumanizing treatment of the Vietnam war veterans send Ron into a PTSD/depressive state from which he becomes an advocate for veterans’ rights. With Platoon, this cemented Oliver Stone as the best Vietnam storyteller in the movies.
Steven Soderbergh’s breakout, credited with jump starting the indie movement that made the 1990s special. This film is beautifully modern in its sexual politics, technically brilliant, and plotted intricately and differently than movies before it.
Also ushered in in 1989 is Disney’s second golden age with this animated delight. This film defined the golden age by great hand drawn visuals, screenplays from old fables, charming lead characters, and songs that pop. I wish I could be part of your world, Ariel.
Another Peter Weir gem. A movie about snotty prep school children instead transforms into a story about generational conflict, altering your perspective, and standing up for yourself. Robin Williams showed with this film he’s more than a comic, and Robert Sean Leonard, Josh Charles, and Ethan Hawke got their big breaks, deservedly so.
Cameron Crowe takes the best parts of John Hughes movies, and leaves behind the cringey racial stereotypes. Instead, we get the fascinating, adorable romantic relationship of the class valedictorian (Ione Skye) and a bumbling but good natured Lloyd Dobbler (John Cusack), who’s not quite ambitious but makes up for it by loving his gilfriend to the fullest extent of what that means.
Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron birthed the modern romcom with this beloved classic. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan nail all aspects of the male and female friends that sorta date, sorta don’t and then sorta do again. Ephron’s script is sharp and clever, clearly observant of modern dating politics.
Sports usually gets used as a metaphor for life, but this is one of the few times a sports movie ends up a fable that can be told for generations to come. Kevin Costner is an Iowa farmer who starts hearing a voice, telling him to build a baseball field. From there, the story gets more magical, more meaningful, and more emotional that you’d ever expect: the simple act of having catch will make men burst into tears…
Probably my favorite film about the Civil War. For a country fighting over the right to own slaves, Edward Zwick’s movie smartly covers an African-American regiment fighting against the South. You know Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman were going to bring it, but Matthew Broderick is a revelation as the white commander of these troops, as well as Andre Braugher, an African-American raised out of slavery trying to fit in, just a few of the many complicated, great characters, not to mention rousing soundtrack and majestically shot battle sequences. There’s a reason this movie’s a staple of high school American history classes.
Another Spike Lee masterpiece. Lee stars in this one as a pizza delivery boy in Brooklyn on the hottest day of the summer. This movie plunges you head first into the racial politics that Lee is invested in exploring, but exploring with a complex, razor sharp eye that’s destined to stay with you long after the movie is over.
