Cinematic Throwbacks: January 2004/2014 (and 25th anniversary throwbacks too)
1999 25th Anniversary:
1999 was just an insane movie year. Classic after classic, including some of my absolute all time favorites.
The first one out of the shoot came just a couple weeks in. I was not anticipating Varsity Blues. Yeah it was a football movie, so I had interest there (fun fact: the movie came out the same weekend as the Vikings-Falcons NFCCG). But it also starred James Van Der Beek, right at the peak of my dislike for him. Look, this was when he was making out weekly with Katie Holmes on Dawson's Creek, so he was not on my good list. Those were the rules, man.
But then I did see it, and it was awesome. Varsity Blues is in the discussion for my favorite football movie of all time.
It's just brilliant execution of the sports movie formula. The players are colorful and distinctive. Van Der Beek is actually good in this, even if that southern drawl is a little silly at times. Paul Walker is super charismatic. Ron Lester does a great job of imbuing his character with real empathy.
He has since revealed himself to be a complete piece of shit, but Jon Voight makes for a great villain. And come to think of it, it actually makes him a perfect fit. The character is racist, too. Was this movie a confession?
We also get Ali Larter rocking the famous whipped cream bikini, and the irresistible Amy Smart, who really makes the most out of her girlfriend part.
Varsity Blues is willing to be a full R, with debauchery and language and a whole subplot where a teacher is a stripper.
And biggest key of all is that the football action is fucking great. You actually remember the key plays as if it were a real game. And the needle drops are perfect. Man, if you don't get excited during the final game when "My Hero" cranks up then you are plain dead inside.
Going in, I was fully prepared for Rachael Leigh Cook to become that next big favorite actress, during the era when actress fandom was everything. I had only seen her in a couple tiny roles at that point, but knew she was destined for more.
And she definitely lived up to expectations. She and the movie were instant smashes with me. I even got the poster (still have it, I think).
It has all the familiar high school movie cliches, for sure. And it's one of many movies around that time that had a romantic pairing based on some kind of deception. In this case, it's BMOC Freddie Prinze Jr. betting he can turn dumpy nerd Cook into prom queen.
The movie does seem to be in on the joke here, that a beautiful girl like Cook can possibly be ugly just by putting glasses and a wig on her. I maintain she's cuter pre-transformation btw.
This movie has one of the weirdest casts of any movie of that era. In 25 years, I have yet to figure out why Lil Kim is in this movie, playing one of the mean girl's friends and only having like 2 lines. The movie makes better use out of Usher.
They definitely could have cast the mean girl better. Jodi Lyn O'Keefe is so unlikable from the jump that you never really buy her as queen of the school.
Matthew Lillard is completely unrestrained for a few scenes. Those two are the weak links.
Better are Elden Henson as Cook's best friend, Anna Paquin sparking some scenes as Prinze's sister, and young Kieran Culkin as Cook's brother. Kevin Pollak also makes the most out of his.part as one of the movie's few meaningful adult characters.
This doesn't have quite the deep bench of future stars as some high school set movies, but you also got brief appearances by Gabrielle Union, Clea Duvall, and even a cameo by Sarah Michelle Gellar that was a huge deal at the time.
The movie is probably best known for a handful of scenes. One is the big transformation reveal set to "Kiss Me" (which is legit one of my favorite songs). And there is the prom scene with the choreographed dance to "Rockerfeller Skank" which is as 1999 as it gets.
A lot of the movie is superficial to its detriment, and I don't rank it among the best of the teen movies of that era anymore. But it's a fun movie, with a major nostalgic pull, and it really helps that amidst a lot of cartoony stuff, Cook and Prinze are genuinely charming and have good chemistry. This is peak Prinze, and wound up being peak Cook too. She never really had another role even close to this good.
It stars Ashton Kutcher as a guy who discovers that he has the ability to travel back in time, and he tries to use that ability to fix things from his childhood. But of course, as it always is in time travel movies, every time he fixes one thing a new problem springs up in its place back in the present.
This movie was actually a solid hit, but I'm not sure people knew what to make of it. This was Kutcher's first serious role, and I think he is very, very good in this. There are moments of levity here, but this film goes to some dark places. I had forgotten just how bleak parts of this.movie get. There's child molestation, animal torture, suicide, and prostitution. Heavy stuff for a mainstream thriller.
But it's really absorbing stuff. Kutcher is excellent. Amy Smart is fantastic, with her best movie role as Kutcher's childhood friend, who in some altered realities here is his girlfriend.
I prefer the director's cut ending. Kutcher has exhausted every means to alter the future so that he AND his friends AND his mother are all okay. So he literally goes back to the moment of his birth, and strangles himself in the womb. Now, I guess I can see why a film with that ending was not released to theaters (the theatrical ending is more bittersweet), but I think it is ballsy as hell and really an effective ending.
2014:
Spike Jonze's Her is one of the most heart-on-sleeve films I have ever seen. It's so genuine and sincere that it's almost hard to watch.
Some just laughed this movie off on premise alone. Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with his personal operating system, a sort of A.I. personal assistant, voiced seductively by Scarlett Johansson. It's obviously a metaphor.
I found this film extremely relatable, cause I have had a relationship with someone basically just through a computer before. In the film, set at an unspecified point in the future, technology is even more ubiquitous than it is now.
For the most part, the relationship in the film is accepted by others. Only Phoenix's ex (Rooney Mara, quite unsubtly a stand-in for Jonze's ex Sofia Coppola) insults him for it. But his co-worker (Chris Pratt), and neighbor (Amy Adams) both think it's great.
Phoenix, known mostly for playing darker characters and weirdos, shows a completely different side here. He is endearingly sweet and goofy here. And then heartbreaking when things go south later in the film.
Johansson's role is obviously voice only, and she was actually a replacement long after the film was shot. Now, it helps that she already has the sexiest voice imaginable, but it's one of the great vocal performances of all time. It's a real character.
At the time I saw the film, I called it both the most depressing and the most uplifting film I had ever seen. The last act of the film is truly a gut punch, but the ending is emotional and hopeful in a way that brings you to tears.
I get it. That feeling of devastation that a relationship ends, but the gratitude that you had the experience in the first place. Her captures that better than any film I have ever seen. I think it is a masterpiece.
Other non-deep dive flicks...
1964:
-Dr. Strangelove: Stanley Kubrick's classic. I think I watched this in my college cinema class long ago. Probably warrants a re-visit.
1994:
-House Party 3: Not a classic like the first, or a wet blanket like the 2nd. This one is all over the place, but pretty funny at times. First movie for Chris Tucker, and Bernie Mac is just incredibly funny in his handful of scenes.
2004:
-Win A Date With Tad Hamilton: Solid romcom with a charming cast. Ginnifer Goodwin stole this whole thing.
-The Perfect Score: A weird artifact of a teen movie with Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson.
-Chasing Liberty: Mandy Moore as the president's daughter. They had 2 movies with the same premise that year.
-Torque: Another of those failed Fast and the Furious ripoffs. This had Ice Cube.
2014:
-Gimme Shelter: Vanessa Hudgens uglied herself up to play a runaway pregnant teen (I mean, she's still hot). It's a bit of misery porn, but she is very good in it.
-Ride Along: Kevin Hart and Ice Cube in an action comedy that was a big hit.
-Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit: Chris Pine tried to resurrect the Ryan franchise, to poor results.
-Labor Day: An unbelievably bad melodrama that's probably the worst film Kate Winslet ever did.
-That Awkward Moment: Decent romcom that had early starring roles for Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller.
Coming in February...
Another slow month. We get to mark 30 years of Ace Ventura, Blue Chips and Reality Bites, 20 years of Miracle, and a bunch of other stuff. And it's a leap year, so I will have one extra day to procrastinate getting this thing done.
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