Cinematic Throwbacks: August 1995/2005/2015

1995:

The Usual Suspects is on every list of all-time great movie endings. I mean, spoiler alert for a 30 year old movie, but when it is revealed that our film's ostensible narrator, the meek cripple Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) was actually the story's unseen boogeyman uber villain Keyser Soze all along, it is stunning. I saw this in theaters, and there were literal gasps.

It weirdly has come to overshadow the movie as a whole. People kind of forget what an absolute banger of a film this is, with an airtight screenplay and a terrific ensemble of largely character actors all in career peaks.

A seemingly random collection of rather small-time criminals get thrown into a police lineup together. They wind up teaming up to do some higher profile crimes, which bring them across the aforementioned Soze.

Everything that happened is recounted in the police station by Spacey to a police detective (Chazz Palminteri). We know that basically every character that we meet early in the film is dead, we just don't know why. 

The film put director Bryan Singer on the map, and also writer Christopher McQuarrie (who won the Oscar for his screenplay). The film is immensely cool, and packed with great tough guy dialogue. Surely, this film was in production well before Pulp Fiction, but it felt like it had a big Tarantino influence.

Spacey deservedly won the 1st of his 2 Oscars for this. On first watch, you never believe he could be Soze. The film even has a fake Soze reveal before THE reveal, and you buy it.

Benicio Del Toro had his breakthrough with this film. Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Pollak, and Stephen Baldwin are all excellent as the rest of the core cast. 

This film stands the test of time both in the first 95% of its runtime as a great crime movie, and for that last 5% that really blows you away. 

Robert Rodriguez was one of the 90s big upstart star directors. His origin story was that he made an action movie called El Mariachi for roughly $7,000. By comparison, even the one location Clerks cost 4 times that.

I've since seen El Mariachi. It's nothing special, really, separated from the knowledge it was made so cheaply, but it gave Rodriguez the chance to make a studio film, with a vastly higher budget.

And he more or less remade his debut film into Desperado, not a one to one remake but pretty similar. This one just had more elaborate action scenes, bigger explosions, and name actors.

As the vigilante carrying a guitar case full of guns, hunting down the man who killed his wife, Antonio Banderas oozes movie star charisma. He is one-upped by the instant star performance by Salma Hayek. I mean, god dayyyyyym.

Rodriguez was buddies with Quentin Tarantino, and got him to do a fun cameo. I suspect he also helped with some of the dialogue for certain scenes, including a few hilarious Steve Buscemi scenes.

The film is paper thin, but there's no doubt the action is staged with maximum energy. Rodriguez instantly had the talent to make films look more expensive than they were. 

What a gloriously silly movie Virtuosity is. 

Set in the deeply futuristic year of 1999, the film stars Denzel Washington as a cop turned convict, tasked with tracking down as escaped virtual reality serial killer, who through plot stuff has escaped into the real world.

The killer, Sid 6.7, is played by Russell Crowe, in the 1st performance I ever saw of his. And, dare I say, still maybe my favorite. I mean, I love a good over the top villain, and this is one of the most over the top. Crowe doesn't just chew the scenery, he guzzles it. 

And he steals the movie right out from under Washington. Denzel didn't do many, shall we say, disreputable films in those days. I honestly have no idea how he wound up doing a glorified B-movie, with fx that were hilariously dated even then (although much of it is supposed to be fake), and gory violence.

The film is basically just Demolition Man, and not as good, but you can see stuff here that got ripped off by other future sci-fi films like The Matrix. The action is fun. There's an entertaining supporting cast (and also a woeful Kelly Lynch).

I actually didn't like this movie when I saw it in theaters. But later on, I started getting into it when it would be on cable, and it won me over. Crowe is just so entertaining. Definitely one of my favorite 90s villains. 

2005:

The dawn of the Judd Apatow era of big screen comedy arrived with a movie I had no interest in seeing in theaters. You're telling me that Brick Tamland himself, Steve Carell, is going to lead a movie?

So I didn't see this until it hit Blockbuster (aww, I miss Blockbuster). Yeah, I kinda blew this one. It's a very funny movie, with that trademark Apatow mix of raunchy comedy and heart.

Carell, who I have actually liked more in dramas (or at least dramedies), proved a perfect fit for the title role of Andy, a nice dorky guy who works in a stockroom. Hey! In 2005, *I* was a nice dorky guy who worked in a stockroom.

It comes out to his co-workers that he is still a virgin, and they try to get Andy laid. This leads to some misadventures, but then also romance with the nice Catherine Keener. Keener, too, was a deterrent for me, cause I hated her in most everything, but she's okay in this. 

This movie absolutely has one of the all-time murderers row of comedy supporting casts. Andy's trio of co-worker buddies are Paul Rudd, the hilarious Romany Malco, and Seth Rogen in his breakout movie role. Rudd was a known commodity. Rogen got Knocked Up off of this. I would have bet money that Malco would have been as big as either, but that just didn't happen. 

There's also Jane Lynch, Elizabeth Banks, Kat Dennings (who looked EXACTLY like a girl I had a workplace flirtation thing with around this time) and cameos by Jonah Hill (his movie debut I believe) and Kevin Hart. And even the total unknowns who pop up are funny.

I don't think this is the best of the Apatow oeuvre, but after years of toiling in TV and movies, this really made his career. The next decade of movie comedy would have been very different if not for this. 

Four Brothers would probably not be the most significant movie, if not for one thing. It was the last good film ever directed by John Singleton. Hard to believe it's been 20 years.

This is a gritty urban drama about 4 adoptive brothers (Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin, Garrett Hedlund) trying to solve the murder of their foster mother. The Detroit setting is used extremely well, including a car chase on a slippery road during a snowstorm.

The aces supporting cast has Terrence Howard, Taraji Henson, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Singleton always got great performances, and that applies here, too. Wahlberg sleepwalks through a lot of roles, but here he is dialed in. Gibson was Singleton's great acting find. Benjamin continued Singleton's knack for getting excellent acting from musicians.

It wasn't much of a hit, and has largely been forgotten. It's my least favorite of Singleton's good films, but it bookends a 14-year run that ranks as one of the greatest director eras ever. 

2015:

Rap was a huge deal to teenage me in the 90s. Specifically, it was the 1-2 punch of Dr. Dre's The Chronic and Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggystyle that completely re-wired my youthful brain.

Those albums and that era do not happen without the iconic rap group NWA, whose rise is chronicled in F. Gary Gray's biopic, which was a massive hit 10 years ago, even notching some Oscar attention.

NWA's prime was before I was even really listening to music at all, but even then, I didn't really know who they were. I still laugh at not knowing Dr. Dre was not DOCTOR Dre from Yo MTV Raps. It was a 5-man group, but the film primarily focuses on Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Dre (Corey Hawkins), and Ice Cube (Oshea Jackson Jr, Cube's actual son).

The film is definitely skewed more towards the money side of the story, which is where Paul Giamatti comes in as the sleazy manager. Not a whole lot of actual making of the music, though there is a very funny scene where Eazy takes to the mic for the 1st time and has no idea how to actually rap yet. 

There's stuff involving how NWA's music causes problems with censors and cops. Even though the narrative is following the, well, beats, I think the first half of the movie is electric stuff. The casting is pretty amazing. The film is energetic and funny. Really good. 

The second half of the film, basically starting once Cube leaves the group, is way messier. It becomes one of those "this happened then this happened" biopics, and a lot less focused. It also has a few weird historical inaccuracies, like a gratuitous Tupac cameo in a time and place he wouldn't have been, and recording a song he made much later. Suge Knight becomes a central character for a while.

The music is, of course, great, and there is a little bit of the fun of seeing iconic songs come to be. The "No Vaseline" scene is classic.

Other non-deep dive flicks...

1975:

-Rocky Horror Picture Show: I've never seen this one, but I know it's one of THE cult movies. 

1985:

-Pee Wee's Big Adventure: Definitely watched this as a kid. 

-Teen Wolf: Michael J. Fox becomes a basketball playing werewolf, because it was the 80s, and that's the kind of stuff that happened. 

-Weird Science: Two geeks create a woman in a lab. I need this technology to exist already. I have a list. 

-Real Genius: Charming comedy with some early Val Kilmer. 

-Summer Rental: Zany John Candy comedy 

-Volunteers: Zany John Candy AND Tom Hanks comedy.

-Better Off Dead: Zany John Cusack comedy. Big month for zany 80s comedies. 

1995:

-Dangerous Minds: Michelle Pfeiffer goes to the inner city to teach these keeeeds. This was kind of a big deal at the time and spawned the Coolio song. 

-Mortal Kombat: I was out on video games by this point, so this meant nothing to me. The theme is cool, though. 

-Babe: A pig talks, and gets Oscar nominations. 

2005:

-Red Eye: Terrific, economical Wes Craven thriller set mostly on a plane and starring Rachel McAdams and Cilian Murphy in top form.

-The Constant Gardener: Solid drama in which Ralph Fiennes tries to uncover the truth of his wife's death. Rachel Weisz won the Oscar. 

-The Dukes of Hazzard: Never saw this, but I did appreciate all of what Jessica Simpson was doing. 

-Junebug: Hit indie that got Amy Adams her 1st Oscar nod. 

-The Brothers Grimm: Big flop from Terry Gilliam that starred Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. 

-Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo: Only Trump has ever done more to hurt America's reputation on that continent. 

2015:

-Fantastic Four: Watched this for the 1st time in 10 years leading up to First Steps, and it was worse than I remembered. Boring, illogically structured (dumbest time jump ever), and wastes a few rising stars. 

-The Gift: Thriller where an old friend with a secret threatens a marriage. Solid serious turn by Jason Bateman. 

-The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: Mostly forgettable TV adaptation, but it did have Alicia Vikander. 

-American Ultra: Action comedy with the unusual genre pairing of Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart. 

Coming in September...

A few really big ones as we enter fall. Fall already?

Seven and Spike Lee's underrated Clockers turn 30. 

Joss Whedon's superb Firefly film Serenity turns 20.

And some other stuff.