Cinematic Throwbacks: July 1994/2004/2014

1994:

Alright, fine, we will get the elephant in the room addressed first. No, Forrest Gump should not have won best picture over Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption. But that one thing does not remove one issue that a whole lot of people seem to ignore:

Forrest Gump is also a great film.

And it was an absolute sensation when it came out 30 years ago. Amid a summer full of massive hits, Gump was the biggest.

I don't think anyone really knew it was coming. By 1994 I was very much into reading the movie magazines and would know what movies were coming out. Gump wasn't an unknown, but it wasn't expected to be what it was. You had Tom Hanks coming off his 1st Oscar win, and director Robert Zemeckis had had hits, but he wasn't like one of those guys whose name meant instant hit.

But by the end of that summer, Gump was the film that scored the biggest. 

The backlash this thing has suffered over the years has been extreme. Sure, there are some elements to the film that aged weird, and would not be done this way today. Chief among them might be Hanks playing the role at all.

But Hanks is brilliant in this movie. He won a back to back Oscar for this, which never happens. 

Everyone knows the movie. Gump is a low IQ guy who lives this extraordinary life. We follow him from childhood, through college, through Vietnam, up until the early 80s. So, like 30 years of life, a real journey. And Gump finds himself coming into contact with some famous people and famous situations.

The through line in the story is Gump's love for his childhood best friend Jenny, played as an adult by Robin Wright. Now, here, no doubt the internet memes are valid. Jenny is a terrible person, at least as an adult. She is deeply manipulative and cruel to a guy she knows loves her, and she knows is not aware enough to know what her mistreatment does. And she only wants to be with him at the end, when she is maybe sying of AIDS. I don't know that it hurts the movie necessarily. Wright is decent in the movie, and there is something to her parallel storyline working as a metaphor for the BAD of boomer era America, but whenever the film focuses on her it does dip a bit. 

Everything else is great though. The best section of the film is everything related to Vietnam, with Leiutenant Dan and Bubba. 

Lt. Dan is my favorite character, with the best arc. The scenes of him on the shrimp boat are a highlight.  Gary Sinise was one of the 90s most reliable character actors.

Sally Field is spunky and warm as Gump's mom. Haley Joel Osment pops up at the end as Gump's son. 

Forrest Gump endures because it manages to be both very funny and very emotional. The film succeeds in making Gump and all his Gump-isms funny without making him an actual joke.

The film made hundreds of millions of dollars, won a bunch of Oscars, and really touched on all areas of society. I did go to the Bubba Gump restaurant once or twice. 

They almost made a sequel (a sequel book was written), but I think it's good they didn't. You weren't going to strike twice with this, and I don't think the hopeful tone of the character would have fit in late 90s cinema. 

True Lies marked the end of a couple of eras. It was the last movie that had Arnold Schwarzenegger in his action star prime. And it was the last time James Cameron made a movie that was just a movie.

A classic big spectacle, big action, big explosions summer blockbuster, True Lies was looked at as an Arnold comeback movie after the relative bomb that was Last Action Hero. Even then I found that kind of silly.

One of the most expensive movies ever made at the time, True Lies deftly mixes enormous action with some fun comedy. Arnold is an operative for a secretive government agency (led by an eyepatch-wearing Chuck Heston), but his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) thinks he's just a dull salesman.

The main bad guy plot involves some middle eastern terrorists trying to detonate a nuclear bomb in the US. That's not particularly interesting, and the main bad guy is a dud. A little better is Tia Carrerre as an accomplice. Still think she should have had a bigger career.

Much more entertaining and memorable are the scenes on the home front, with Arnold's marriage. The middle act of the film detours into a subplot involving Curtis maybe having an affair with an over the top sleazeball played hilariously by Bill Paxton. We get a lot of laughs and a pretty memorable Curtis stripping scene. And then it dovetails back into the terrorist plot, and a third act that is just a massively fun spectacle involving a chase sequence on a bridge, and then Arnold absconding with a jet. You just were not going to find better set pieces.

The technical aspect of the film is peak, but I really think it's the comedic side of the film that stands out the best. Even though he did some hit comedies, this might be Arnold's funniest performance. Curtis gets to do a lot of silly screwball stuff. And shocking to this day is how funny Tom Arnold is as THE Arnold's partner (kind of his man in the chair). Arnold got a whole career out of this, which, you know, he squandered with some bad starring vehicles. But he's great here. 

This movie was also my intro to a young lady named Eliza Dushku. She plays Arnold's daughter, who improbably gets kidnapped in the 3rd act, but at least it gets her more to do. It's not much of a part, but I thought she was super cute and it put her immediately on my radar. Then a few years later she got the Faith role and it was on.

True Lies was a big hit, and put Arnold back on top for a while, although this was his last truly great film during his prime. It's kind of shocking that they never made a sequel. Cameron got wrapped up with Titanic, and Arnold's star soon faded, but they WERE working on a sequel. But then, as the story goes, 9/11 happened.and nobody involved wanted to do a silly action film anymore. I still think that was a missed opportunity. 

2004:

If there was a funnier movie in the 2000s than Anchorman I can't think of it.

I would have never guessed. It's not that I didn't like Will Ferrell. He is obviously an all-time SNL great, and had been funny in movie appearances too. But I wasn't that big a fan of his 2 early hits Old School and Elf. Those movies being big hits though basically gave him the juice to do whatever he wanted.

And what he wanted was to do was make an absurdly weird and random movie about a 70s TV anchorman. 

Anchorman sort of has a plot. Ferrell's Ron Burgundy is on top of the world as San Diego's #1 newsman, but his life gets thrown into upheaval when a female anchor, Christina Applegate's Veronica, comes to work at his station.

From there we get the most laugh out loud comedy of the decade, packed with the most inspired lunacy I have ever seen. Anchorman's disinterest in logic is wonderful. If it's funny, it's in the movie. Period. The news team rumble makes absolutely zero sense, yet it's one of the funniest things ever put to film.

There are too many brilliant lines and jokes to list. The outtakes alone are so good they were able to cobble together a whole other movie from them.

And Anchorman is far from a Ferrell solo act. It has one of the best ensembles of any comedy. The news team trio of Paul Rudd, Steve Carell and David Koechner are all hilarious. Applegate more than holds her own. And the movie is full of small roles and cameos aced by the likes of Fred Willard, Vince Vaughn, and others.

I liked this movie right away, even though I saw it during kind of a life low point. But it was later on that the movie really blew up. All the best comedies seem to get funnier the more you watch. 

2014:

Richard Linklater had an idea: Spend 12 years making one movie. He would tell a story about a boy's childhood by filming a little bit of it every year.

Obviously this is not what 99.99% of filmmakers would choose to do. But his plan paid off big time. Boyhood is a wonderful film, one of Linklater's very best.

He started around 2002, centering his movie around Mason (Ellar Coltrane), a young kid living in Texas with his mom (Patricia Arquette) and sister (Linklater's daughter Lorelai). Dad (Ethan Hawke) doesn't live with them. 

It's isn't a movie about plot. Stuff happens. A lot happens, but that's not what the movie is about. It's a great reflection of childhood. Sometimes you remember the little events as much as the big ones. But whether something major is happening or something minor, it's all absorbing. Even at over 2 1/2 hours the film flies by. 

Arquette won an Oscar for her part. Hawke was nominated. Coltrane is fine, though I'm not surprised he hasn't exactly gone on to have an adult career. I wish Linklater had given more stuff for his daughter to do. She was great.

The expectations were low when they rebooted the dormant Planet of the Apes franchise in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But it was surprisingly great.

But the best of the trilogy came next, with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (and yes, the titles really should be reversed). When this one starts, humanity has been nearly wiped out by the virus from Rise. Apes are thriving though, still led by Caesar.

A group of human survivors (including Jason Clarke and Keri Russell) show up, eventually setting off a conflict that leads to war.

Caesar tries to help the humans, but not all the apes are so accommodating. And not all the humans are nice either. Gary Oldman's character would probably just as soon exterminate the apes.

This whole trilogy is just terrific with character work. Caesar is one of the great movie characters of the decade. The humans are never quite as interesting, but the bond that develops between Caesar and Clarke is very well done. And the ending is just heartbreaking. 

Other non-deep dive flicks...

1984:

-Purple Rain: A cult classic carried by its music. I mean, it's not ACTUALLY that good of a film. 

1994:

-The Client: Very good Grisham thriller. Terrific Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones performances. Brad Renfro gave one of the best kid performances I have ever seen. 

-The Mask: The smash that really cemented Jim Carrey as a major star, and also introduced Cameron Diaz. I never loved this one, but it's fun. 

-Blown Away: The other terrorist bomber based movie from that summer. It got overshadowed a lot by Speed. 

-Angels In The Outfield: Real angels help the California Angels win. I saw this in theaters, but never since. 

-It Could Happen To You: Romcom with Nic Cage and peak Bridget Fonda cuteness. Rosie Perez played maybe the worst human being in history in this. 

-The Shadow: A failed comic book adaptation with Alec Baldwin. 

-North: A failed Rob Reiner comedy that was truly awful, but fondly remembered due to the hilarious Roger Ebert review

2004:

-I, Robot: Pretty cool Will Smith sci-fi action flick, where he squares off against seemingly harmless robots that might not be so harmless. Smith is just at peak movie star mode here. 

-The Bourne Supremacy: Second Bourne film. They all kind of bleed together but I do recall liking this one better than the first. 

-The Village: Here is where the M. Night Shyamalan train started to derail for me. I was totally with this film for probably 80% of the way. As I was watching, I thought that a great parody idea would be to have the real modern day world taking place outside this sheltered village. And then that's what the ACTUAL twist was. Completely ruined the movie for me, although it was still a pretty big hit. 

-The Manchurian Candidate: Remake with Denzel and Meryl. I saw it but it was just ehh. 

-Before Sunset: Second part of Linklater's Before series. 

-King Arthur: I think here is where we knew the great Jerry Bruckheimer run was kind of over. Lame movie, with Keira Knightley as a badass Guinevere. 

-A Cinderella Story: I was kind of feeling Hilary Duff by now, but I didn't dare see this in theaters. 

-Catwoman: So...I have kind of a strange memory regarding this film. It's not a good movie, but given the day I saw it it did provide me with an invaluable 2 hours of escapism. So I will always have a bit of a soft spot for it. 

-She Hate Me: One of the weirder Spike Lee movies. Anthony Mackie get paid by lesbians to impregnate them. And now he's Captain America. What a country! 

2014:

-Snowpiercer: Bong Joon-ho's excellent dystopian sci-fi film where the last remaining humans on a dead, frozen world all ride on a train that circles the world. Excellent Chris Evans. Wild Tilda Swinton. The TV series pales. 

-Wish I Was Here: Man, people really hated on this film, Zach Braff's crowd-funded sophomore directing effort. No, it's no Garden State, but it hits a lot of those same notes. It is a very emotional, often funny film. 

-Lucy: Bonkers Luc Besson action film with Scarlett Johansson (never hotter) being able to access 100% of her brain. 

-Begin Again: Very charming musical indie, with some peak Keira Knightley, scruffy Mark Ruffalo, and, hey, legal Hailee Steinfeld.

-Life Itself: Fantastic documentary about the life and death of Roger Ebert. 

-The Purge: Anarchy: The 2nd Purge movie and the first one I liked. 

-Magic In The Moonlight: Woody Allen movie with Emma Stone. 

-Sex Tape: I think this lame, wannabe edgy comedy was the last movie Cameron Diaz has made. 

-Tammy: Poor Melissa McCarthy comedy. One of the ones where it's just "She's Fat: The Movie"

Coming in August...

I saved Garden State, which was technically a July release 20 years ago but hit Minnesota in August. 

Natural Born Killers turns 30.

And the friggin Guardians of the Galaxy turns 10.

A much lighter slate, thankfully.