Schindler's List
rating: *****
review: This is Spielberg at the height of his powers, telling a story that speaks for itself in terms of significance, but also subverts a lot of expectations by casting its hero as anything but a superhero. Liam Neeson has never again had a role like this. Ralph Fiennes, meanwhile, is good enough to have parlayed his bad guy into a very good career in which he's rarely played the bad guy again. Except, y'know, as Voldemort.
Groundhog Day
rating: ****
review: For a generation, embodied the concept of the repeating day narrative, and easily served up Bill Murray's most endearing performance.
Grumpy Old Men
rating: ****
review: I've never understood why critics tend to be so grumpy about this one. It's classic comedy at its finest, improbably reuniting a classic comedy pairing (Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, the original Odd Couple) for the best comedy of their careers.
True Romance
rating: ****
review: In the rush to capitalize on Quentin Tarantino's sensational debut, Hollywood turned to...Quentin Tarantino for some help. His script helped make this arguably better than Tarantino's own Reservoir Dogs. It's a preview, at the very least, for the kind of filmmaker Tarantino would become.
Heaven and Earth
rating: ****
review: Oliver Stone returns to Vietnam to explore the native experience in this little-known drama.
Philadelphia
rating: ****
review: Tom Hanks' first great drama is also the one that netted him his first Best Actor Oscar.
Much Ado About Nothing
rating: ****
review: Guaranteed to make anyone leery to embrace Shakespeare to in fact love the Bard.
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
rating: ****
review: Mel Brooks directly parodies Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and despite what history tends to say, ends up with another classic.
The Snapper
rating: ***
review: Colm Meaney, the Irish actor who for years plied his trade in Star Trek TV shows, had a series of movies in which he got to stretch a little, and this was his first direct spotlight in them.
Mrs. Doubtfire
rating: ***
review: Robin Williams finds all but the perfect role post-Aladdin, and most of it works perfectly, until you look back at it in hindsight. Jim Carrey made this kind of movie better in Liar, Liar.
The Fugitive
rating: ***
review: Classic retelling of a cult TV series features Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones in one of their signature movies, but spends so much time in the chase that neither one, upon further examination, has too much to do, as made all too clear in how each of them followed it up. Jones made the quasi-sequel U.S. Marshalls, which made it all too clear how little his character really had to work with, and Ford made more action movies with more clearly-defined roles. But it's still a milestone.
Kalifornia
rating: ***
review: This is the movie Juliette Lewis made before Natural Born Killers and is every bit its spiritual predecessor. The problem is, it's not as good. It's a Hollywood version of Quentin Tarantino without Quentin Tarantino. This time it just doesn't work. But the good news is that it's also got Brad Pitt, so it's worth watching anyway.
The Thing Called Love
rating: ***
review: In the eternal search to discover what kind of actor the mature River Phoenix would have been, fans will always examine what he left behind to find out. This otherwise standard drama also has a young Sandra Bullock going for it, so it's not a bad place to start.
Gettysburg
rating: ***
review: In many ways, as full of romanticism as Gone with the Wind.
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
rating: ***
review: It's sad that the greatest martial artist ever to appear in the movies didn't live long enough to be in a movie truly worthy of his talents. This is close enough.
The Man Without a Face
rating: ***
review: In the wake of Mel Gibson's sensational The Passion of the Christ, well-meaning but horribly misinformed fans thought this was some kind of biopic. It's a good movie, but it's...definitely not Gibson's life story.
Dave
rating: ***
review: Is Kevin Kline really the president? No. Is this still a fun movie? Yes! Of course, it's also just the tip of the iceberg in the emerging Hollywood obsession with presidential movies, which still sees no end in sight.
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas
rating: ***
review: I can think of fewer movies that have impacted the culture more with less memory with what actually happened in the movie. Less a holiday classic and more Burton's, perhaps, ideal movie.
Jurassic Park
rating: ***
review: A whole cultural phenomenon in its own right (and last year spawned a sequel that again rehashed a plot that really has nowhere to go), part of the dinosaur obsession of that time, that helped define the '90s blockbuster.
Romper Stomper
rating: **
review: Russell Crowe's breakout film is probably not what you'd expect. His subsequent Hollywood career really doesn't reflect it at all, which is kind of weird.
El Mariachi
rating: **
review: Robert Rodriguez's breakout film is more recognizable, meanwhile, because it was basically remade, better, as Desperado.
It's All True
rating: **
review: Fascinating attempt to reconstruct, as a documentary about a documentary, a lost Orson Welles film, which curiously falls apart when it unwisely presents an extended sequence that for its lack of completeness, fails miserably to provide the coda that would have sealed the deal. More successful is the credits music featuring Welles boisterously detailing his observations on Brazilian music as we listen to it.
Cool Runnings
rating: **
review: An odd mix of a comedy attempting to simultaneously provide a feel-good message.
Tombstone
rating: **
review: I continue to contend that it's outclassed in every regard by Wyatt Earp.
Hocus Pocus
rating: **
review: Odd comedy that attempts to make witches sympathetic by making them as pathetic as possible.
Free Willy
rating: **
review: The most famous example of that era's push to make people care about whales as an endangered species.
Showing posts with label 1993. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1993. Show all posts
Monday, February 29, 2016
Sunday, January 18, 2015
1993
Viewed/Ranked
- Schindler's List
- Groundhog Day
- Grumpy Old Men
- True Romance
- Heaven and Earth
- Philadelphia
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Robin Hood: Men in Tights
- The Snapper
- Mrs. Doubtfire
- The Fugitive
- Kalifornia
- The Thing Called Love
- Gettysburg
- Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
- The Man Without a Face
- Dave
- Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Jurassic Park
- Romper Stomper
- El Mariachi
- It's All True
- Cool Runnings
- Tombstone
- Hocus Pocus
- Free Willy
Other Notables Releases
- Addams Family Values
- Another Stakeout
- Army of Darkness
- Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
- Beethoven's 2nd
- Benny and Joon
- Carlito's Way
- Cliffhanger
- Coneheads
- Dazed and Confused
- Dead Alive
- Demolition Man
- Dennis the Menace
- The Firm
- Geronimo: An American Legend
- In the Line of Fire
- Indecent Proposal
- Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
- The Joy Luck Club
- Last Action Hero
- Look Who's Talking Now
- Manhattan Murder Mystery
- Menace II Society
- The Meteor Man
- Mr. Nanny
- The Pelican Brief
- Robocop 3
- Rookie of the Year
- Rudy
- The Sandlot
- Searching for Bobby Fisher
- Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
- Six Degrees of Separation
- Sleepless in Seattle
- Son of the Pink Panther
- Super Mario Bros.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
- The Three Musketeers
- Wayne's World 2
- Weekend at Bernies II
- What's Eating Gilbert Grape
- What's Love Got to Do with It
Thursday, May 2, 2013
The Fugitive
***
directed by: Andrew Davis
starring: Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, Andreas Katsulas, Julianne Moore
Released in 1993.
Based on the classic '60s TV series that famously drew huge ratings to finally catch the "one-armed man" who killed Richard Kimble's wife, The Fugitive is best known today as a classic '90s thriller, one of several such blockbusters to star Harrison Ford. It also helped launch the popular career of Tommy Lee Jones. In fact, it's the rare moment where the intended star and in fact title character might be said to have the movie stolen from out of under him. Jones was so popular (he earned a Supporting Actor Oscar) that he earned a spin-off, U.S. Marshals, which was pointedly far more about his character than another fugitive like Kimble.
The Fugitive, like the Humphrey Bogart Maltese Falcon, is a classic example of Hollywood managing to buck the apparent rule that remakes can't at least match the original (Cecil B. DeMille accomplished this himself with the remake of his own The Ten Commandments, with the later Charlton Heston version becoming the one perennially broadcast at Easter). If it hasn't already, the movie will eventually replace the legacy of the series.
That's the strength of the basic archetype. This kind of story is told all the time on TV, usually within a single episode. The original series was a rare instance of a single plot sustaining a continuing arc, something far more common in the modern era. It'd be like Prison Break being made into a movie. The pursuit really is a give-and-take between the sequences, Jones convincing us that his duty is the only thing that matters and Ford helping us believe that he's innocent.
None of it is very deep, but it's iconic. Now that it's been told twice you can just as easily imagine someone else doing the story again, and maybe finding something a little greater in it. The strength of this version will always be what it always was, Ford and Jones, but even Jones has since become ubiquitous that The Fugitive alone isn't completely necessary to keep his legacy intact.
But just for the record, it's a heck of a ride while it lasts.
directed by: Andrew Davis
starring: Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, Andreas Katsulas, Julianne Moore
Released in 1993.
Based on the classic '60s TV series that famously drew huge ratings to finally catch the "one-armed man" who killed Richard Kimble's wife, The Fugitive is best known today as a classic '90s thriller, one of several such blockbusters to star Harrison Ford. It also helped launch the popular career of Tommy Lee Jones. In fact, it's the rare moment where the intended star and in fact title character might be said to have the movie stolen from out of under him. Jones was so popular (he earned a Supporting Actor Oscar) that he earned a spin-off, U.S. Marshals, which was pointedly far more about his character than another fugitive like Kimble.
The Fugitive, like the Humphrey Bogart Maltese Falcon, is a classic example of Hollywood managing to buck the apparent rule that remakes can't at least match the original (Cecil B. DeMille accomplished this himself with the remake of his own The Ten Commandments, with the later Charlton Heston version becoming the one perennially broadcast at Easter). If it hasn't already, the movie will eventually replace the legacy of the series.
That's the strength of the basic archetype. This kind of story is told all the time on TV, usually within a single episode. The original series was a rare instance of a single plot sustaining a continuing arc, something far more common in the modern era. It'd be like Prison Break being made into a movie. The pursuit really is a give-and-take between the sequences, Jones convincing us that his duty is the only thing that matters and Ford helping us believe that he's innocent.
None of it is very deep, but it's iconic. Now that it's been told twice you can just as easily imagine someone else doing the story again, and maybe finding something a little greater in it. The strength of this version will always be what it always was, Ford and Jones, but even Jones has since become ubiquitous that The Fugitive alone isn't completely necessary to keep his legacy intact.
But just for the record, it's a heck of a ride while it lasts.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Tombstone
**
directed by: George P. Cosmatos, Kevin Jarre
starring: Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliot, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Charlton Heston, Jason Priestley, Jon Tenney, Stephen Lang, Thomas Haden Church, Dana Delaney, Michael Rooker, Billy Bob Thornton, Billy Zane, John Corbett, Terry O'Quinn, Frank Stallone
Released in 1993.
Tombstone is not as good as Wyatt Earp. Both films were released around the same time, both feature the same characters and the same scenario, but one does it better. Don't get me wrong. It's certainly worth watching both. Tombstone probably has a better overall reputation, mostly because it's not the one starring Kevin Costner in yet another historical epic.
What both films unmistakably are is Hollywood's attempt at the time to keep the Western alive. The Western was a genre that dominated movies and television for decades. With the passing of John Wayne, its most iconic star, however, the Western fell out of favor with the general public. Everyone moved on, and for a while it was a lot easier to pretend it simply no longer existed. Yet Hollywood loves to revive things, and in the 1990s the Western was the subject of a persistent revival effort. Clint Eastwood, who had earlier made his name with the "Man with no Name" trilogy, scored with Unforgiven, but then no one seemed to know what to do next. Instead of a monolithic presence, it had become a specialty genre. Tombstone represents one way to make this special attraction a real attraction, by amassing a notable cast in the place of a notable star.
Kurt Russell has been a Hollywood project since he was a kid. He's been a successful star, sure, and has had his share of signature hits, but he's never really been iconic. As this film's Wyatt Earp it's much the same. He's not really a Western actor, anymore than he's any given genre actor, just someone who can appear in any given one and be fairly respectable. He's the main reason why there has to be so many other notable actors in the project, beginning with Val Kilmer, who at this point in his career cuts a more recognizable figure as Doc Holliday than his Wyatt Earp (and in this role, superior) counterpart Dennis Quaid. Everyone else is far lower on the instant recognition scale, but the cast is packed with talent all the same, even a few (Thomas Haden Church, Billy Bob Thornton) whose subsequent careers make their appearances here more significant to newer audiences than those who saw them originally.
You can certainly enjoy Tombstone for what it is, but it didn't at the time and never will represent anything more than a movie Hollywood made to be a Western, rather than a true contribution to the genre.
directed by: George P. Cosmatos, Kevin Jarre
starring: Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliot, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Charlton Heston, Jason Priestley, Jon Tenney, Stephen Lang, Thomas Haden Church, Dana Delaney, Michael Rooker, Billy Bob Thornton, Billy Zane, John Corbett, Terry O'Quinn, Frank Stallone
Released in 1993.
Tombstone is not as good as Wyatt Earp. Both films were released around the same time, both feature the same characters and the same scenario, but one does it better. Don't get me wrong. It's certainly worth watching both. Tombstone probably has a better overall reputation, mostly because it's not the one starring Kevin Costner in yet another historical epic.
What both films unmistakably are is Hollywood's attempt at the time to keep the Western alive. The Western was a genre that dominated movies and television for decades. With the passing of John Wayne, its most iconic star, however, the Western fell out of favor with the general public. Everyone moved on, and for a while it was a lot easier to pretend it simply no longer existed. Yet Hollywood loves to revive things, and in the 1990s the Western was the subject of a persistent revival effort. Clint Eastwood, who had earlier made his name with the "Man with no Name" trilogy, scored with Unforgiven, but then no one seemed to know what to do next. Instead of a monolithic presence, it had become a specialty genre. Tombstone represents one way to make this special attraction a real attraction, by amassing a notable cast in the place of a notable star.
Kurt Russell has been a Hollywood project since he was a kid. He's been a successful star, sure, and has had his share of signature hits, but he's never really been iconic. As this film's Wyatt Earp it's much the same. He's not really a Western actor, anymore than he's any given genre actor, just someone who can appear in any given one and be fairly respectable. He's the main reason why there has to be so many other notable actors in the project, beginning with Val Kilmer, who at this point in his career cuts a more recognizable figure as Doc Holliday than his Wyatt Earp (and in this role, superior) counterpart Dennis Quaid. Everyone else is far lower on the instant recognition scale, but the cast is packed with talent all the same, even a few (Thomas Haden Church, Billy Bob Thornton) whose subsequent careers make their appearances here more significant to newer audiences than those who saw them originally.
You can certainly enjoy Tombstone for what it is, but it didn't at the time and never will represent anything more than a movie Hollywood made to be a Western, rather than a true contribution to the genre.
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