Cinematic Throwbacks: June 1981/1991/2001/2011

1981:

So, the Indiana Jones franchise is probably one of the only big film franchises of my lifetime that I just have never been that into. For whatever reason they just have never clicked with me. I was too young to have seen the first couple in theaters, and even though the summer of 1989 was the first time I recall being really aware of current movies (I used to love pouring over the newspaper ads), Last Crusade never interested me. I did see the much maligned Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in theaters, and thought it was...fine, although it got this reputation as the worst thing ever (i.e. the South Park episode about it).

But AMC has been running these "film faves" lately, and had a Raiders of the Lost Ark screening, and there wasn't much out in theaters as of early June, so I figured I'd give it another shot. 

And now after seeing the very first Indy movie in theaters, I think it is...fine. 

Look, I'm sorry, I appreciate how impeccably well crafted the big action set pieces are, and I probably like Harrison Ford more here than in Star Wars (he's certainly more engaged here than he was in Return of the Jedi). I just don't see how this is so vastly better than some of the other adventure franchises that came in its wake. I think the last Tomb Raider or The Mummy Returns or National Treasure are just as good if not better. 

1991:

When you realize you are now older than the characters in this movie that were having a midlife crisis....😯

City Slickers is the best movie of Billy Crystal's career (really a high point for everyone else involved too). A comedy about 3 middle aged buddies who go on a cattle drive, this is the kind of mainstream comedy movie that just does not exist anymore. Like many of the best comedies of its era, it isn't just nonstop jokes. It takes time out for character, for heart, for even drama.

Crystal is at his very best, but so are Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby. Jack Palance of course won an Oscar for his role as Curly, and while I'm not sure it was really an award worthy role he is great in it. Terrific rest of the ensemble too, including an amusingly dorky looking Jake Gyllenhaal in his 1st role.

About the only thing this movie did wrong was prove to be so successful that they made a sequel... one of the absolute worst sequels to a good movie ever made. 

Nothing made me laugh more back in this era than the spoof movie, and the gold standard of the genre (for me, anyway) was The Naked Gun series. Leslie Nielsen was just so perfect as Lt. Frank Drebin. It's hard to grasp that prior to entering the ZAZ world he was a longtime dramatic actor. You wonder what current serious actor has this in them.

Anyway, this was the sequel to the best movie in the series, so it has to settle for being one of the best comedy sequels of all time. The plot is nonsense, but the jokes hung on it are just hilarious throughout. Sure some of the jokes are dated, but making fun of the Bushes never goes out of style. 

The whole OJ thing I think has maybe tainted the legacy of these movies, but sue me, he is very funny here too. 

2001:

So much has been and will be written about the Fast movies that it's always a little jarring to go back and watch how it all began with a very grounded and fairly low budget original.

I guess for a lot of people this movie popped up out of nowhere. Not for me. I remember being excited for this movie even when it was still called Redline. I didn't care about the cars. I cared about the cast. Vin Diesel coming off of the awesome Pitch Black. Michelle Rodriguez coming off her awesome Girlfight debut. Jordana Brewster from The Faculty. And, sure, even Paul Walker, who I was less of a fan of but who had been in a slew of big teen flicks. It was one of those times where a cast collected all these rising stars at once.

Obviously nobody knew where this franchise was headed, or even that there would be a franchise. We hadn't quite hit that moment yet where literally ANY hit movie was all but guaranteed a sequel.

A lot of people cite later movies in the series as the best. I still put the original at #1. Yes, as countless people have said, it rips off Point Break. So what? That's a really good structure to lay an action movie down on. And in many ways I think it improves on it. So much of this series has been mocked (in some cases lovingly) for the family stuff and all that, but it really works here.

The cast really worked out. Diesel gets shit on a lot, and yeah a lot of his non-Fast stuff the last 20 years has failed to live up to his early action flicks, but he is legit great in this. The relationship with Walker really works. None of the series works if that pairing doesn't draw you in. Ditto the Walker-Brewster.chemistry. This stuff worked perfectly. It sets up the whole franchise ultimately. I really don't think we ever get 20 years of these.movies without those 2 main relationships. 

The action was still set entirely on the ground. It was done almost all practically. And all the racing stuff was great, even if the car jargon meant nothing to me. It gets you jacked. I remember jumping on the freeway to drive home after seeing this movie and gunning it like never before. No speeding ticket though. 

The last great film John Singleton ever directed. 

At the time this was my favorite film of 2001, and 20 years later I think it still might be. I just love this film. There had been a lot of "hood" movies by then, but none ever had this kind of mix of drama, comedy, even some surrealism. 

This was sold as kind of a sequel of sorts to Boyz N The Hood 10 years later, even though only the setting was the same. Knowing what we know now, they could have sold it on the actors. Singleton sure found a couple of stars here in Tyrese Gibson (then known only as a singer) and Taraji P. Henson. Every scene featuring the two of them is terrific. Henson of course has gone on to be a multiple Oscar nominee, but this is still my favorite performance of hers. Gibson has kept busy with the Fast franchise, as well as Transformers, but he too has never topped this. 

But the even bigger standout amongst the cast was Ving Rhames. He is volcanic in this, in a great performance that showed everything he can do. It is criminal that he got no awards love for this, and that he really has never gotten another role anywhere close to this (but he keeps getting those Mission Impossible paychecks).

Famously, Singleton had written this movie for Tupac originally. It's hard to picture him in this, although I'm sure he would have been amazing in it. It's just a different tone I think without Gibson's extra layer of goofiness that he offers. Singleton obviously knew what he had, since he then cast Gibson in his next 2 movies too.

But Singleton never again hit these heights. This was his last classic, and closed off one of the best ten year runs any director has had. 

2011:

When X-Men First Class came out, the franchise was kind of in a bad spot. The last 2 movies had been X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and neither one was that well received (although I will defend Last Stand til my dying breath). We were years away from Marvel Studios getting the characters back. The franchise needed some rejuvenation.

First Class did it. Most everybody liked it, myself included. It's probably one of the best received prequels ever.

Director Matthew Vaughn was an early candidate to direct X-Men 3 before that job went to Brett Ratner. Then in between Vaughn made Kick Ass. And that no doubt got him this gig, which he took advantage of and really put a unique stamp on the franchise.

The plot cleverly mixes in real history, positing that the Cuban Missle Crisis was being orchestrated by a mutant (Kevin Bacon) trying to start a world war that would leave mutants to rule the world.

The movie plays a little loose with the existing X-Men movie timeline. For one, the character Angel was played by Ben Foster in X-Men 3 but here is played by Zoe Kravitz. And some character origins don't really match up.

No matter. The movie is very good. The new cast is mostly aces. Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence (just as she was getting big), Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne and a few other actors who didn't really go onto anything and in most cases didn't come back in any other movies. 

The glaring exception to the strong cast is January Jones, who is infamously awful as Emma Frost.

The movie of course does also feature one of the all time best cameos and all time best PG-13 f-bombs, simultaneously coming from Wolverine.

It all worked out. The franchise got re-invigorated, and it set the stage for the best movie of the whole franchise. 

Before he did Star Wars, JJ Abrams cashed in the chips he earned with Mission Impossible 3 and the Star Trek reboot to make Super 8, an unabashed tribute to early Spielberg (who produced it). This film makes no secret of its inspiration.

A group of young kids are trying to make a silly little movie, and get wrapped up in a real life government conspiracy involving an alien.

It's an excellent movie, that goes beyond just being a copy of other films and carves out its own place. Abrams nails the tone, in that spot between childlike wonder and grown up suspense. It's often very funny. The cast is great. None of the kids have since gone on to really do anything (other than Elle Fanning, who was already on the map), but they are terrific here and really carry the movie.

This movie undoubtedly helped lead to Stranger Things. And of course Abrams kept it going in both Stars Trek and Wars. 

Green Lantern pre-dates the official DCEU (whatever that even is anymore). I'm not sure if it was intended to be a part of the Snyderverse, but this movie was so poorly received and its box office so middling that it was pretty much dead on arrival.

I never thought it was that bad though. Oh, it has bad stuff in it for sure, chiefly Peter Sarsgaard in one of the absolute worst comic book movie villain performances of all time. 

And the movie is incredibly rushed. No way should they have had this be an origin movie AND also have GL face off against such a powerful big bad. It would have been like Iron Man facing Thanos right away.

I still kind of liked the movie though. Ryan Reynolds made a punchline of this movie later in Deadpool, but I liked him in this too. And while I don't usually like Blake Lively that much, she's really good here (and looks amazing). And they got married after this, so yay happy ending. 

I think this movie deserves a little better reputation. 

I'm higher on this franchise than most people, and generally higher on Michael Bay than most people. But even those who aren't kind of agreed that this was the best entry in Bayformers.

I might be inclined to agree. This one probably has the best balance between the action and story. It's more robot-centric. It has less of that sometimes cringe-inducing humor (save for the awful Ken Jeong part). It jettisons Megan Fox, for the more likable Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (who can't act at all but isn't actively loathsome like Fox). They bring in Frances McDormand. 

And it has that huge 3rd act set in a Decepticon-occupied Chicago. The fact that the human bad guys are holed up in Trump Tower aged incredibly well.

This third act honestly has some of the best large scale special effects work of any blockbuster ever. Shockwave taking out that building is a genuine jawdropper. And Optimus Prime finally stops playing nice and tears Megatron's spine from his body.

This movie made over a billion dollars if you can believe it. It was the peak of success for the franchise. The next couple Bay-directed movies were solid but not at this level. 

Other non-deep dive movies:

1981:

-Superman 2: The last of the good Christopher Reeve movies. 

-Stripes: (copy pasta from my award winning quarantine movie reviews) Again, how had I not seen this? The actual military mission that consumes the 3rd act is a bit take it or leave it. But that first hour is very funny, with Bill Murray in peak form. 

1991:

-Jungle Fever: Good movie, but I always felt this was second tier Spike Lee. 

-Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: This was one of Kevin Costner's biggest hits. I was never a fan. And it spawned that damn Bryan Adams song that I heard every 5 minutes that summer. 

-The Rocketeer: I saw this in theaters, but don't remember that much about it. 

-Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead: I saw this in theaters too cause of Christina Applegate, who tried to do the TV to film thing here and failed (although she did fare better with that later on).

-Dying Young: Pretty sure I saw this Julia Roberts misstep once. That was enough for me. 

2001:

-The Animal: One of the more enjoyably stupid Rob Schneider flicks. And remember when Colleen Haskell from Survivor was being hyped as a new movie star? 

-Moulin Rouge: Fucking garbage. It just was. Soundtrack itself wasn't bad though and we did get the immortal Lady Marmalade collabo out of it. 

-What's The Worst That Could Happen?: This flop signaled the beginning of the end for Martin Lawrence. 

-Evolution: Ivan Reitman tried to do Ghostbusters, but with aliens. It didn't go so well. 

-Swordfish: Ah yes, 2001. When one of the most hyped movies of the summer was so because of the hype around a Halle Berry topless scene. It was also Hugh Jackman's first non X-Men starrer and one of the last times John Travolta was an unironic lead in a big movie. 

-Tomb Raider: At the time this was highly anticipated by me, cause I was still buying Jolie hype. But man was this movie bad. Never saw the sequel. 

-Sexy Beast: Great Ben Kingsley performance. 

-Dr. Dolittle 2: Things were starting to go south again for Eddie Murphy by this point. 

-The Princess and the Warrior: Tom Tykwer's follow up to Run Lola Run, and also with Franka Potente. I remember liking this quite a bit at the time. 

-A.I. Artificial Intelligence: Steven Spielberg picked up an unmade Kubrick film, and it just did not work out at all. 

-Crazy Beautiful: One of the few times Kirsten Dunst led a good movie. 

2011:

-Cars 2: The first genuinely poor effort from Pixar. 

-Mr. Popper's Penguins: A lame Jim Carrey kids comedy 

-Bad Teacher:

Coming next month:

Another heaping helping of big anniversaries. The original Captain America  turns 10. Some of the best cult films of 2001 turn 20. And turning 30 are T2, Point Break, Hot Shots AND Boyz N The Hood. Jesus, July 1991 was an all timer!