Cinematic Throwbacks: July 1985/1995/2005/2015

1985:

I'm not sure what movie held the title of my favorite prior to the 90s. But Back To The Future would have definitely been in the discussion. It was for sure one of the movies I had watched the most. 

I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before, but BTTF is pretty close to a perfectly constructed film. Premise and execution are just in peak form. 

Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) time travels back to 1955 and has to make sure his parents still meet and fall in love or he'll never be born. But his teenage mom (Lea Thompson) has the hots for him. And when 80s Lea Thompson is there, I mean, I would have conflicts. 

BTTF is a great sci-fi movie, and a great comedy. It's loaded with iconic quotes. For 1985, the fx work really holds up. The score is one of the best of all time. 

Perfectly cast. I was recently horrified to find out I am nearly the same age as Christopher Lloyd was when he made this movie. 

The movie taught me what a sequel was. I watched this movie, saw the "to be continued" at the end, saw in the TV guide that it was on again later, and tuned in...only to see the same movie. But I did get hooked on the movie. And then we did get a sequel, which imo is maybe even better, though not as seamless as this. 

It's one of THE movies that best represents the 1980s. It set Robert Zemeckis's career. It made Fox a big movie star, and one of the 1st to crossover from TV to film. I got to see it on the big screen finally during that post-COVID time when older films were getting showtimes. 

1995:

I happened to be a teenage boy in 1995, and as a teenage boy in 1995, Alicia Silverstone was a very important person to me.

So when she was going to be starring in her 1st big movie, Clueless, that was a pretty big deal. 

Clueless was directed by Amy Heckerling, who a decade-plus earlier had made one of the quintessential high school movies, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, which I had not seen at the time. 

Fast Times kicked off a whole decade of high school movies, but by the mid-90s, this was a genre of movie that really didn't exist anymore. I was in high school when this movie came out, and while it certainly didn't reflect my life at all, it was nice to see. 

Silverstone is Cher, a Beverly Hills student who is shallow but well meaning. This movie would have been unbearable if she had been some mean girl, but she's actually super likable. Or maybe Silverstone just made her that way. Look, I was helpless to resist her charms. She's cute and sweet and funny. 

Clueless has taken on an added layer of importance, because this was the breakthrough role for Brittany Murphy, who plays Tai, a dorky new girl at school who Cher takes under her wing. Brittany is so ridiculously adorable in this movie. Honestly, she's the best part of it. At the time, I'm not sure how much she registered with me, but it's clear she had IT. 

The cast is full of fun new budding stars and enjoyable character actors in the adult roles. Donald Faison is hysterically funny. And this was the breakthrough for one Paul Rudd.

I don't really care about the "I'm in love with my stepbrother" romance that dominates the last half hour, but all the stuff with the school and Cher's daily life are fun. This movie really holds up as a comedy.

It was a big hit, and you would probably have to credit this with kind of re-invigorating the high school movies. This and Scream led to a lot of great movies in their wake. 

This did end up being the peak of Alicia Silverstone. I really don't get why it didn't keep going for her. I guess they're going to be doing a kind of sequel series with her sometime soon. 

Waterworld is one of the most notorious bombs of the 90s. Except, there's two things. 

One, it really wasn't a bomb. It didn't make back its bloated budget in theaters, but over time, it at least broke even.

And two, it's a really fucking good movie.

Set in a world where melting polar ice has flooded the whole world, and everyone left lives on the water, Kevin Costner is "the mariner" who spends his time sailing around on his boat, and occasionally stopping to trade. One stop at an atoll (a floating city) brings him into the main plot. The bad guys (led by a hilariously over the top Dennis Hopper) want to find a little girl (Tina Majorino) who supposedly has the map to dry land tattooed on her back. And she's at this atoll, with Jeanne Tripplehorn as her guardian Helen.

The people at the atoll decide they want to kill the mariner, cause he is a mutation (he has gills), but while they're sentencing him to death, the bad guys attack. Helen frees the mariner so he can get her and the girl out of there. And so the rest of the movie has them trying to evade the bad guys. Hopper leads a whole old oil tanker full of henchmen. 

The reason this film became so notorious is that all the water stuff was actually done out on the open water, a setting that does not cooperate with film crews. So there were all sorts of logistical issues. But what wound up on screen looks fantastic, and like many films from this era looks so much better for featuring real sets and real locations. The actual cgi in this looks pretty bad.

The action, done mostly practically, is superb. Costner never did a lot of straight up action movies, but it suits him. It's too bad this movie went down as a negative in his career. His character isn't exactly warm, but as 90s action heroes go his is one of the more underrated. 

The world building in this is amazing. All the little details are really interesting. I would have loved more stories from this world. Or even a reboot, but you know it would never look this good. 

Ah yes, the internet. How you are reading this. 

In 1995, the internet was this strange new thing that we normal folk didn't know much about. I sure didn't. It was just, like, this thing on a computer. 

Movies didn't know what to do with this, for sure, other than turn it into a thriller, which is where The Net arrived.

Post-Speed it was obvious that Sandra Bullock wad the next big star actress. She did her romcom, and now this was her thriller. She plays a computer programmer who doesn't really leave her house, and doesn't appear to have any real life friends. She gets her hands on a computer disk with the kind of information that always used to wind up on disks back in the day, and soon is being targeted by some bad people, who use the internet to wipe her identity. And so she has to spend the rest of the movie trying to evade the bad guys and get her name back.

It's not the greatest thriller, but it's very serviceable and does a good job of turning the screws to make Bullock's predicament look impossible to get out of. The main bad guy is kind of a moron, so that helps. All the computer stuff is dated as hell. Nothing in it is more dated though than the casting of Dennis Miller as a nice guy. 

It's the Sandra Bullock show. She is warm and likable and looks great. She wears a bikini in one scene, which made my aforementioned 16 year old self happy. The movie was a solid hit, and another notch in her rising stardom. 

2005:

July of 2025 brought us a new Fantastic Four movie from Marvel Studios, but 20 years ago, there was not yet a Marvel Studios. These were still the days when different studios owned different characters. Fox owned many of them, and had found a lot of success already with the X-Men, and a little bit of success with Daredevil.

Next up was Fantastic Four, one of their most famous comics. Ioan Gruffudd would be Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Michael Chiklis would be Ben Grimm/The Thing, a young actor named Chris Evans would be Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and most importantly, Jessica freaking Alba would be Sue Storm/Invisible Woman. With Julian McMahon (RIP) as Dr. Doom.

The new film skips over the origin, and the failed 2015 reboot botched it entirely. So this is the only one that's given us the real origin. They're all up in space when a cosmic cloud hits them and gives them superpowers. The plot is kept very simple, as this film was made much more for kids. 

Much of the movie is just everybody discovering their powers and figuring out how to use them. The Dr. Doom villain stuff doesn't even really get in there until the climax.

McMahon is the weak link, as a very dull and one-note Doom. But the FF are all good. Evans is super charismatic, providing a lot of the comedy. And after Sin City and this, 2005 was the breakout for Alba, who is also a lot of fun.

The movie was a box office success, but got hated on a lot. It had the misfortune of being released shortly after Batman Begins, so dark superhero stuff was the hot thing then (although they tried a darker FF in the reboot, and that was a disaster). I liked this BECAUSE it was lighter. 

Michael Bay's feature directing career knew nothing but success early. 5 for 5 in hit films to start out, sandwiched by a pair of Bad Boys flicks. And all 5 were produced by Jerry.Bruckheimer. 

The Island was his 1st venture without Bruckheimer. And stylistically, it was also a pretty big departure. A lot of this movie is slowed way down.

The premise is that there has been some sort of apocalyptic event, and survivors are all living inside this large compound. Two of them are Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson (looking the best she ever did). The goal seems to be to be taken away to "the island," which is said to be the last habitable area on earth. It is done through a lottery. 

The first half of the movie is kept mysterious...unless you saw any of the marketing for it. That gave it away that all these "survivors" are actually clones, basically there to be harvested for organs for whatever clients are rich enough to pay for this. The lottery is just the cover story for when someone on the outside needs an organ.

But still, that first half, with the slower pace and cool production, is very good. And pretty funny at times. Then the movie flips after Ewan discovers the truth, and he and Scarlett escape out into the world. Then it becomes a more typical bit of Bayhem, albeit a good one. There's some superb action in this, including a freeway chase that literally elicited "oooos" when I saw it in theaters. 

This is mostly the Ewan and Scarlett show, and both are good. This one definitely knocked her up another level for me. Steve Buscemi pops up for a few scenes. Sean Bean plays one of his 500 bad guy parts. 

Unfortunately, the movie was a pretty big financial failure. I think it deserved a much better fate. But it did lead Steven Spielberg, whose company made this, to get Bay for Transformers. So if you're mad that much of Bay's career the last 20 years has been making Transformers, well, you should have supported The Island. 

2015:

The production of Ant Man was probably the first time the MCU hit some real turbulence. The film was going to be directed by Edgar Wright, but creative differences led him to being replaced by the more journeyman-like Peyton Reed. There was a lot of blowback online against Marvel, and their supposed unwillingness to let distinctive filmmakers do their thing.

That bad PR, plus the fact that, you know, it was a movie about Ant Man, made it look like maybe this was going to be the MCU's first flop.

But even if I, too, would have liked to see Wright's version of the film (he did keep a writing credit), Reed's worked just fine. 

This is not one of my MCU faves. I think on my most recently updated ranking, I might have even had it in the bottom 5. But that's always more a reflection of how many good ones they've made. 

Paul Rudd was great casting as Scott Lang, a recently released convict who becomes the titular character after crossing paths with scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas having a ball). Rudd as an action star was never expected, but a lot of it is cgi anyway. Evangeline Lilly, with an ungodly wig, is fine as Hope, the eventual Wasp. Michael Pena is, of course, great fun as Scott's criminal buddy. Little Cassie is adorable. 

Bad villain, though. This was one of the MCU's worst. Corey Stoll, a solid actor, is just one note and boring as the eventual Yellowjacket.

The film's slight, but with plenty of creative action that plays with the shrinking aspect. The best scene is the one that ties in most with the MCU, as Ant Man battles Falcon at Avengers HQ. 

Other non-deep dive flicks....

1985:

-National Lampoon's European Vacation: Nowhere near as good as the original or Xmas. 

1995:

-Species: I went with my mom and sister to see Apollo 13, which I had already seen, then left shortly after it started and snuck into this. And my 16 year old self very much enjoyed this cheesy sci-fi thriller, with a vastly overqualified cast (Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker, Michael Madsen RIP) chasing an alien in the form of the often naked Natasha Henstridge. 

-Under Siege 2: I would say this is arguably a superior sequel. This was on a train instead of a ship. Young Katherine Heigl was definitely a draw. 

-First Knight: Sean Connery as King Arthur. I saw this in theaters but don't remember much. 

-Nine Months: The Hugh Grant comedy that got overshadowed when he got busted for picking up a prostitute. 

-Kids: The infamously dark movie about New York teenagers. The debuts of Rosario Dawson and Chloe Sevigny. 

2005:

-Wedding Crashers: I'm only a mild fan of this Vince Vaughn-Owen Wilson movie. It's most watchable for the ladies, the radiant Rachel McAdams, and the irresistible Isla Fisher. 

-Bad News Bears: I actually only recently watched this Richard Linklater directed (really) remake starring Billy Bob Thornton. It's so uninspired I have no idea what anybody bothered. 

-Hustle & Flow: Produced by John Singleton, this was a surprise hit that got Terrence Howard an Oscar nom and won best song. Haven't seen it in years. 

-Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The remake from Tim Burton starring Johnny Depp. I never saw it. Looked horrible. 

-Stealth: A ludicrous action movie about a military plane going rogue. Jamie Foxx made this before winning an Oscar and surely regretted it. 

2015:

-Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation: This was the one that introduced the Rebecca Ferguson character, and had the big set pieces with Cruise hanging off a plane and trying to do a thing inside a swirling water tank. I think it's probably the weakest overall of the McQuarrie entries. 

-Terminator: Genisys: I like this one, sue me. At least I do until the John Connor twist, which is pretty bad. Emilia Clarke as Sarah is great, and Arnold (his 1st Terminator film since 3) is a lot of fun. Good action, too. 

-Trainwreck: The comedy that put Amy Schumer on the map, briefly, as a movie star. 

-Paper Towns: From the eventual director of Thunderbolts, this was from the same writer as The Fault In Our Stars. It wasn't nearly as successful, but it remains probably the only movie to tap in Cara Delevingne's particular charisma. 

-Pixels: The Adam Sandler video game movie. Pretty bad. 

-Vacation: The wholly unnecessary remake/reboot starring Ed Helms as older Rusty. 

-Southpaw: Every actor does their boxing drama. This was Jake Gyllenhaal's. 

-Minions: The minions are amusing, but no, they didn't need their own movie. And this thing made a fortune. 

Coming in August...

August is usually a little lighter, and that's true again.

The Usual Suspects turns 30. That's the big one.