Cinematic Throwbacks: October 1993/2003/2013

1993:

It's the future: Los Angeles 1996. The city burns, overtaken by gangs, and master criminals like the psychotic Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes). Into the fray comes super cop John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) aka the Demolition Man. He takes down Phoenix, but innocents die in the process, and both are sentenced to cryo-prison. 

So begins Demolition Man, arguably the greatest 80s action movie of the 90s.

The plot proper kicks into gear when Phoenix is thawed out for a parole hearing and breaks free, into the long into the future of 2032 where the world has become pacifism on steroids. What constitutes police in this future are unable to deal with violent criminals. They don't even have guns. So the police thaw out Spartan to go after him.

Demolition Man would probably have been plenty entertaining if it were just content to have Stallone and Snipes go at it in a collection of amped-up action sequences. But this movie has endured because it is REALLY funny, building a future world that is one funny gag after another. All restaurants are Taco Bell. Does this mean all restaurants take away nacho fries at random? 

Both leads are total fishes out of water. And this leads to tons of good comedy. Stallone had a couple flops with straight comedies before this movie, but here he has a really good touch with the jokes. And Snipes is one of the most unhinged, over the top villains of all time. Dennis Rodman based his whole personality on him for years. 

And stealing every square inch of every scene is Sandra Bullock. I know most cite Speed as her breakout, but man, for me it was this movie. She is impossibly cute and funny in this. 

 

Rudy is one of the football movie classics. It tells the (largely) true story of Rudy Ruettiger, an undersized kid from a small town, who improbably wound up playing football at Notre Dame. For one game. 

Rudy is pure sentiment, but it is told with such an unceasing sincerity that it is completely disarming. As played winningly by Sean Astin, Rudy could easily come off as annoying in his single-minded quest, but you root for him anyway.

The excellent supporting cast includes Charles S. Dutton as the ND grounds keeper Rudy winds up working for, Ned Beatty as Rudy's dad, and early Jon Favreau as Rudy's college friend.

The last half hour of Rudy is just banger scene after banger scene. Some of this fudges the facts. The laying down the jerseys scene is fake. Some of the facts about the game are inaccurate. There wasn't even a chant. But as far as memorable movie drama goes it's hard to beat. And yes, Rudy did get a sack, so that's real. 

2003:

There are two groups of films that don't have a lot of great entries. One is the Thanksgiving movie. The other is great films with Katie Holmes as the lead.

They intertwined for Pieces Of April, one of the best indie gems of its era.

Katie is April, the black sheep daughter of the family, who has invited her largely estranged family to her apartment for Thanksgiving.

Half of the film is April trying to get the dinner made, with her stove out and her boyfriend (Derek Luke) out on a secret errand. The other half is the family (including Oliver Platt and Oscar nominated Patricia Clarkson) on the road trip to the city.

It's a minor film. It was shot very much on the cheap, and runs barely 80 minutes. But it packs in a great deal of heart, and some terrific performances. This was Katie's 1st movie to come out after Dawson's Creek ended, but was in the middle of a hell of a run she had in her pre-Cruise movie career. For some reason though the films where she was THE lead never took off the same.

As for it being a Thanksgiving movie amongst few, well, I wouldn't quite say it became a standard, but I've watched it around the holiday a few times. The choices ARE a little slim. 

Hayden Christensen was really thrown into the fire when he got cast as Anakin Skywalker. People already were pre-disposed to just hate on anything Star Wars at that point (so little has changed). He was barely known at all at that point, with just a couple minor credits, but it was like his potentially rising career was instantaneously doomed.

Now, he wasn't unbelievable in Episode 2 (he was very good in 3 though), but it convinced people he couldn't act. I'm guessing most of these people did not bother to check out the movie that came just one year later and proved that the man COULD act, and quite well.

Shattered Glass is the movie about the columnist Stephen Glass, who in 1998 was exposed as having fabricated many of his columns for The New Republic magazine.

The film presents the whole thing very matter of factly, so we see both how Glass got away with this so long, and had so many defenders. The beginning of the end came when he made up a story about a hacker, and then a pair of writers (Steve Zahn and Rosario Dawson) for Forbes caught wind of it and exposed the story. 

You wouldn't necessarily think watching Glass's lies unravel would make for great drama, but it really does. The way the film shows Glass admitting to little mistakes in order to try to mask his bigger lies is really slick and clever. Til very late in the film Glass looks like he may get away with his job intact. But his editor, extremely well played by Peter Sarsgaard, smells the bullshit. 

The terrific supporting cast also has Chloe Sevigny, Melanie Lynskey, and Hank Azaria in a rare serious role. The film didn't get the awards attention it likely needed in order to break through, and of course it didn't ultimately do a whole lot for Christensen's career. But like the previous throwback, this is a hidden gem of a film.  

 

2013:

12 Years A Slave is one of the very few times where my choice for the #1 film of the year also went on to win Best Picture.

Although there are probably a lot of movies from 2013 I have watched more than this. Rewatchability is not at play here. 12 Years A Slave is not a fun movie. You don't just toss it on if you want to pass the time for a couple hours. It's a hard watch. But it's also a masterpiece, and would still probably be my #1 film of that year. 

It tells an incredible and wrenching true story. Solomon Northrup (played by a probably should have won best actor Chiwetel Ejiofor) was a free black man, with a family, living in the north a couple decades before the end of slavery. He was kidnapped, and taken south and sold into slavery. The film spans the whole 12 years.

There have been many films depicting slavery, but I've never seen any that were as fully committed to showing just how bottom of the barrel cruel and evil it was as this film does. There are so many scenes in this film that are harrowing to watch. 

Solomon's journey takes him first to a plantation owner (Benedict Cumberbatch) who, all things considered, is not unreasonable. But very unreasonable is a character played by Paul Dano, whose actions force Solomon to be sold to another slave owner played by Michael Fassbender. And the Fassbender character is truly the devil, taking pleasure in torturing slaves, even raping the women. His favorite is Patsey, played in an incredible film debut by Lupita Nyong'o (who won the Oscar).

Ejiofor is incredible at conveying Solomon's arc from panic to acceptance. Opportunities arise that he thinks could free him from this nightmare, and obviously you know eventually he must have been freed, but each failed chance is crushing.

Finally Solomon encounters the right person, a carpenter played by Brad Pitt. Yeah it's a little bit distracting to have Pitt show up 2 hours into this grim movie, but it's a good, small performance, and this WAS the encounter that led to Solomon's freedom.

So yes, the film does have a happy ending, and it's very cathartic, even though when this particular story ends we're still a decade away from the Civil War.

Steve McQueen's film took home 3 Oscars and was a big success. It also kind of felt like the final authority on slavery-based films. I know there have been projects since that used the subject, but nothing will likely better this for drama and substance again. 

Gravity is one of the all time examples of a film MADE for theaters. It still plays on the small screen, but can't help but be less immersive.

Alfonso Cuaron's film is set entirely in Earth's orbit. A pair of astronauts (Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) are working outside of the shuttle, when a debris field bears down on them, ultimately destroying their shuttle and stranding them in space. To survive they have to somehow get to the relatively nearby International Space Station. 

Cuaron won Best Director for this, and he probably deserved it for the opening alone, a nearly 20 minute one shot. The fx work on this film is quite simply some of the best of all time, without debate. It's only been 10 years, but it wipes the floor with most fx right now.

At 90 minutes, the film never lets up. It's an inherently dramatic situation and Cuaron milks it for all it's worth. It even manages to stay at least reasonably realistic. 

This is a director and fx team showcase, but it also is a stellar film for Bullock. Now, had Natalie Portman not turned the film down this would be in pantheon territory for me, but Bullock is fantastic. She got a Best Actress nod, and I frankly wish this had been her Oscar win instead of The Blind Side. It's one of those classic cases where you just focus on one actor for most of the movie. They rarely don't pay off. 

Clooney is effortlessly charming in his brief screen time too.

Other non-deep dive flicks:

1963:

-From Russia With Love: The 2nd James Bond film. 

1973:

-Mean Streets: Very early Martin Scorsese. Good film. A little light on plot, but great early performances by Harvey Keitel and Robert Deniro. 

1983:

-Never Say Never Again: Sean Connery returned to play James Bond one last time. 

-All The Right Moves: Early Tom Cruise. He plays football. Not on a beach this time.

1993:

-Judgment Night: Really excellent thriller with a group of city guys (led by Emilio Estevez) getting lost in inner city Chicago. Denis Leary is a fantastic bad guy. Great soundtrack. 

-Cool Runnings: The Jamaican bobsled movie. I saw this in theaters but probably haven't since. I believe this was John Candy's last movie released  before he died. 

-Short Cuts: Robert Altman film. 

-The Nightmare Before Christmas: Tim Burton's cult classic which I have actually never seen. 

-Malice: You think I have a God complex? Let me tell you something. I AM God. 

-Fatal Instinct: A spoof of erotic thrillers that totally flopped. 

-The Beverly Hillbillies: Another of the TV show to movie adaptations that ruled the early 90s. 

2003:

-Scary Movie 3: Not the best of the series but a solid entry. 

-The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: I think this is one of the genuinely good horror remakes. And Jessica Biel was very good in it. 

-Out Of Time: Solid caper thriller with Denzel and the rarely hotter pair of Sanaa Lathan and Eva Mendes. 

-Wonderland: Movie about porn star John Holmes and the murders he may have been involved in. I recall having very high hopes that were not met. 

-Intolerable Cruelty: A Coen Brothers romcom with George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

-Mystic River: Sean Penn and Tim Robbins won Oscars for this Eastwood drama. 

-School Of Rock: Didn't watch this til years later. Probably Linklater's most mainstream movie. Very well liked. I kinda did too. 

-Runaway Jury: The last of the John Grisham movies. 

-In The Cut: It was a big deal at the time that Meg Ryan got naked. 

-Radio: Cuba Gooding Jr. as a mentally challenged guy. Can't imagine this has aged well at all. 

-The Singing Detective: Bad movie, but it had Katie Holmes in a small part so it was a semi-big deal for me. I actually have a signed photo of her from the movie. 

2013:

-Captain Phillips: Paul Greengrass's gripping thriller about the pirate attack on a shipping vessel, with Tom Hanks in one of his best 21st century performances in the title role. 

-Carrie: It's not that it's a bad remake per se, but it was absurd that they cast the crazy cute Chloe Moretz in the title role. 

-Machete Kills: The slightly less satisfying Grindhouse sequel that still taps into the dirty fun at times. Was kind of wild at the time having Mel Gibson as the bad guy. 

-All Is Lost: Excellent film in which Robert Redford goes sailing and encounters disaster. Great survival story, with one of my favorite ambiguous endings. 

-Blue Is The Warmest Color: Okay, I have watched certain scenes more than the overall film. 😉 Sue me. But, I will say that the film IS a pretty effective, bittersweet romantic drama. 

-Runner Runner: A terrible movie starring the terrible Justin "pressure an abortion onto my girlfriend then cheat on her and trash her reputation" Timberlake. 

-Escape Plan: They actually made several sequels to this forgettable Stallone-Schwarzenegger movie. 

-The Counselor: A rare Ridley Scott flopola, sinking with a great cast and a Cormac McCarthy screenplay. 

-Bad Grandpa: I kind of liked this Jackass movie, even if it had some of that Borat thing where we were supposed to believe things were unscripted but obviously were. 

Coming in November...

Mercifully there is a little less. A few Christmas classics are included, as is the 10th anniversary of the underrated Thor: The Dark World.