Cinematic Throwbacks: April 1995/2005/2015

Hey! It's the official 5 year anniversary of me doing the throwbacks blogs. Will I make it the full 10? 

1995:

A very long time ago, an action comedy called Bad Boys was in development. This was going to be a buddy cop movie starring comedic stars...Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz.

It's one of my favorite what ifs when it comes to casting. Now, tbh, I would have been damn curious to see that movie. But I'm very glad that things did not go as planned. 

Bad Boys is a quintessential 90s action movie, one of my favorites in the buddy cop genre, and minted both a pair of movie stars and a new filmmaker who would soon prove to have no peer.

What is the plot of Bad Boys? Oh, just some generic thing about a sneering euro bad guy stealing a bunch of drugs, and the cops trying to track him down.

Doesn't matter. The legendary producing duo of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, whose own dormant careers got supercharged that year (see you next month), did still cast a couple actors known for small screen comedy.

Neither Will Smith nor Martin Lawrence were unknown commodities in 1995. 

Lawrence had top billing, which may seem strange now, but he was far more of a sure thing then. His show Martin (one of my 90s favorites) was right in the middle of its run. And he had made big impressions in the House Party movies and Boomerang.

Smith was still best known for his rap career, but he had his own TV show in the middle of its run, and had been in a few movies.

I think each still blows up bigger without Bad Boys, but nothing like a big star-driven blockbuster to make it happen. Smith and Lawrence are an all-time great pairing here, taking a shaky script and through a lot of improv and natural charisma, making it something memorable.

I still think the biggest star of them all here is Michael Bay. Bay had made some big music videos before, but this was his film debut, and it's really one of the splashiest debuts ever. He shoots the shit out of this thing, immediately displaying all the traits that would define his career. The action in this thing is fantastic.

Bad Boys was a big hit, and launched a franchise. I've actually reviewed or recapped the rest of the franchise over the years here, and I hate how far it has fallen. But I still love that first one. 

The first half of the 90s was full of films set in the hood. Serious films. Films that had a message.

The most iconic of them was Boyz N The Hood, which co-starred Ice Cube in his acting debut. Cube continued to build up his filmography after that, and then dipped back into the genre. Except he pivoted and co-wrote and starred in Friday, a hood movie that was not serious, and had no message really.

Friday fits right in with 90s comedy classics like Clerks and Dazed and Confused in that it all takes place during a single day. I have always liked movies that take place over a single day.

Ice Cube's Craig and Chris Tucker's Smokey basically just spend the day hanging out on Craig's front porch. Various oddball characters pop in and out of the story, almost all of them pretty memorable. There's a tiny bit of a plot to carry the film along, but it's largely just there. 

It's one of the flat-out funniest movies of the decade, and it's easily one of the very best hangout movies. Like Bad Boys, it marked the directing debut of a guy (F. Gary Gray) known for music videos, and who would go on to a long career. 

I don't think we had any idea Cube could even do comedy at the time, but he's got an easygoing straight man charm. But c'mon, Tucker obliterates everything around him in a live wire performance that immediately made him one of the biggest up and coming comedy stars. You can't learn what Tucker did in this movie.

Really fun cast beyond them, full of names that either were already known or soon would be. Can't beat the ravishing Nia Long as the love interest. John Witherspoon is hilarious as Craig's dad. Bernie Mac has a great little part. 

Of course the soundtrack was great. Bad Boys had a great one, too. Man, those 90s soundtracks.

Friday, like Bad Boys, had sequels with diminishing returns, and they didn't have Tucker (who didn't want to do vulgar comedy anymore). 

2005:

I'm not sure what the coolest movie ever made is, but Sin City is a strong contender.

Probably my favorite 2005 film not involving lightsabers, Sin City is also one of the best comic book-based films ever.

I first saw the trailer for this at a Christmas Day movie (The Aviator, I think), and it blew my fucking mind. I likely knew something about this movie's existence, but then came the trailer. That's when it became one of the most anticipated films of the year.

It was two things. One was the insane visuals, which I had never seen anything like before. And the other was the cast, particularly a murderers row of actresses.

The comics were from Frank Miller. The film was directed by Robert Rodriguez, one of the 90s upstarts, who had spent a decade not exactly living up to his potential. He had done 2 greats, From Dusk Til Dawn and The Faculty, but in both cases it felt like who wrote it was the bigger deal. Then he had gotten into those Spy Kids flicks.

Sin City is his best film. Miller co-directed, and Quentin Tarantino stopped by to direct one sequence too, but this is on Rodriguez.

The visuals were peerless. The whole thing was done in green screen, and in gorgeously stylish black and white. It's the cliche, but it LOOKS like a comic book come to life. And at no point does the film cut corners with its violence. This is a HARD R.

The cast, well, this is one of the very best of all time. It is loaded. The aforementioned actresses were only part of it, but yes, they were a focal point.

Jessica Alba...I mean god DAYYYYUM! Brittany Murphy, only in 1 scene really, but great. And Rosario Dawson in elite sexy badass mode. Those were the big 3, but we also get Jaime King, Alexis Bledel, and Carla Gugino. 

The male actors are not their match in looks (not that there's anything wrong with that), but they drip with cool. 

None cooler than Mickey Rourke's Marv. He was one of the best characters ever, badass, funny, and honorable.

Bruce Willis gives one of his last great performances as the one cop in town with integrity. Clive Owen is the coolest guy ever. 

Elijah Wood has a wild part as a mute ninja cannibal (typecasting). Benicio Del Toro is also unhinged as a scuzzy cop.

On top of all that, the anthology stories they have in this are really good. You could have done these hard boiled stories straight and it still would have been good. Then you throw all this other elite stuff on top of it and you have a film that made by ten best of the 2000s.

A funny thing happened not long after this movie centered around a tortured Red Sox fan went into production. The Sox went and won their 1st world series in 86 years, including the epic comeback against the Yankees. So they had to re-work the whole last part of the movie. 

Jimmy Fallon, in his best stab at post-SNL movie stardom, plays that Sox fan. He meets and falls in love with Drew Barrymore, and who could blame him since she is at peak lovability here, but his Sox obsession could wreck everything.

Aside from all the baseball stuff, which was catnip for me, this is one of the best romcoms of the decade, even though some of the stock genre things in the movie are forgettable. Fallon and Barrymore are charming as hell, and have great chemistry. Plus it's just a very funny movie. 

The baseball hook is what elevates it. I have literally had conversations like ones in this movie, where the girl doesn't get why I care so much about sports. I mean, there's a lot of relatable stuff in this movie. I've always thought they should do a remake and make it about a Vikings fan. You wanna talk about torture! 

2015:

With the Fast and the Furious franchise raking in hundreds of millions of dollars with entries 5 and 6, obviously they were going to keep going. So less than 6 months after Fast 6 hit theaters, part 7 went into production. 

But shortly after, tragedy struck when Paul Walker died, ironically, in a car crash  I wouldn't say I was a huge fan of his in particular, but it was still one of those deaths where you remember exactly where you were when you found out (I was at a Jay-Z concert).

Perhaps callously, thoughts turned quickly to what would become of this next movie. They had already shot a decent chunk of the movie, and this was a big franchise, so there WOULD be another movie. But maybe they would have to scrap it and start over.

Things similar to this had happened before, and would again (Wakanda Forever was going to be very different), so there was at least some precedent for carrying on. Ultimately after a lengthy production delay, Furious 7 was back on. It would still co-star Walker, but his role would have to be finished with some fx work and some stand-in work from his brother.

I have no idea what was switched. I know that Jason Statham was always going to be the bad guy this time. I don't think the bit with Kurt Russell's Mr. Nobody was. Not sure. 

I don't think Furious 7 is as good as the movies that surrounded it are, but under the circumstances it's kind of a miracle that it wound up being still pretty good. 

Statham's a great bad guy. The ensemble is fun as always. This is the movie that brought the gorgeous Nathalie Emmanuel into the group. There is some great action, topped by the sequence of cars parachuting out of a plane. 

Walker looms over the whole film. The work they did to get his extra scenes in there is rather stunning. Aside from a couple parts that obviously could not have been him, it's really hard to tell what was done posthumously. The ending becomes a really emotional send-off for actor and character  

The curiosity over how this film would come together drove the franchise to its biggest box office heights. I still don't think it's one of the best Fast films, but again, the fact that it became even as good as it did was commendable. 

Directed by Alex Garland, Ex Machina is about a computer programmer who gets invited to the secluded home of a tech CEO to evaluate an AI robot.

One of the films that put A24 on the map in a big way, the film is an icy cool sci-fi drama about what it means to be human, the ethics of man creating artificial life, and how we treat those we feel we have control over. 

But it's not homework or a sermon. It's a really good story, with a lot of building mystery and tension as we are made to distrust the host. The screenplay was Oscar nominated. And the fx work is masterfully subtle.

The casting great. Oscar Isaac is great as the CEO who you are pretty sure is a bad guy. Domnhall Gleeson gives one of his best performances as the unassuming guy thrown into a weird circumstance. 

But this is a Alicia Vikander film. As the robot in question, she brings an enormous amount of empathy and warmth to the character of Ava. I mean, I can totally see why someone would fall for her. She's beautiful. Vikander really was firing on all cylinders in that mid-2010s era. She won as Oscar soon after this, but probably should have won it for this. 

I always found the ending equal parts happy and disturbing. God for Ava, but man, poor Gleeson. Don't think he deserved what happens to him. 

Other non-deep dive flicks...

1975:

-Monty Python and the Holy Grail: The best Python film, and pound for pound one of the funniest movies of all time. Deliriously silly. 

1995:

-While You Were Sleeping: Hard to top Sandra Bullock in the mid-90s. This romcom is a little cringey, but she was completely irresistible in it. 

-The Basketball Diaries: Early Leonardo DiCaprio starring role. 

-Jury Duty: Pauly Shore doing jury duty. 

-Stuart Saves His Family: Kind of an ok SNL spinoff, with Al Franken doing his self help character Stuart Smalley.

-Kiss of Death: This crime flick got a lot of hype as David Caruso's big stab at movie stardom, but is most remembered probably for a Nic Cage villain turn. 

2005:

-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A messy adaptation of the cult book series. It's pretty funny though. 

-XXX: State of the Union: For some reason they made a sequel to XXX and swapped out Vin Diesel for Ice Cube. 

-The Amityville Horror: A dreadful horror remake starring Ryan Reynolds. 

2015:

-Unfriended: A horror movie that took place entirely on a computer screen. It was actually pretty solid, but hard to watch off the big screen when you can't see all the stuff. 

Coming in May....

Well, the greatest Star Wars film of all time turns 20. That will get its own post. Spoiler alert: I damn near cried seeing it in theaters again. 

Another biggie, Avengers: Age Of Ultron turns 10. 

And Crimson Tide and Die Hard With A Vengeance turn 30.