Cinematic Throwbacks: September 1995/2005/2015

1995:

Serial killers were big in the 90s. After The Silence of the Lambs was a massive hit and won Oscars, it spawned a ton of movies about cops tracking down serial killers. Some were okay, but the absolute best of the bunch, and one of the best films of the entire 90s, was David Fincher's impossibly brilliant Seven.

One of the decade's best films was birthed by one of the best screenplays of all time. Credit to Andrew Kevin Waller for that one. Fincher was not the well established directing icon yet. He had done music videos, and the somewhat reviled Alien 3. But he certainly had the visual style down, and Seven, grimy and gross as it is, is one of the most impeccably designed films ever. It creates an unending feeling of dread.

Morgan Freeman is William, the grizzled old detective nearing retirement. Brad Pitt is David, the hotshot young cop. It's kind of an in-joke that the film is premised off such cliches. It makes you think you know how things will go in a film that constantly keeps you on edge.

Anyway, they are investigating a series of murders that each are based around one of the seven deadly scenes. Thanks to one of Freeman's many perfect line readings, I know by heart those are gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, pride, lust, and envy.

This isn't a film that shows a lot of violence, or many killings at all. But we sure see the grotesque aftermath.

Seven is surprisingly a very funny film at times. The clash of styles (and characters) between Freeman and Pitt are hugely entertaining. This is Freeman recently off Shawshank, and there was nobody better at that time. This is still one of Pitt's best performances, too.

The first half of the film, with Freeman and Pitt doing their work, is gripping enough. It's just one great scene after another. But then, when they first encounter the killer, the film goes up another level. 

The marketing of the film did not disclose who played the killer, only ever referred to as John Doe. It's Kevin Spacey. He wasn't that big a star yet, although this film came right after The Usual Suspects, so he was getting there. I know, I know, he's evil. But, I mean, he is playing a psychopath in this film, so it's not an issue. Once Spacey shows up, chillingly calm and calculating, Seven becomes an all-timer.

Probably the most famous part of this film is its ending. John Doe accompanies William and David to what he says is the site of his final victims. A delivery van brings a box, which contains the head of David's pregnant wife (Gwyneth Paltrow, before she became annoying). David shoots John, and the master plan is complete. Kind of incredible that Spacey was involved in 2 of the best movie endings in history a month apart.

Seven is an absolute masterpiece. I loved it at the time, for sure. It's exactly the kind of film a 16 year old budding film fanatic would go nuts for. But it's only gotten better over time. Everything in it works, and I would say it's still the best thing basically everyone involved ever did. 

My Spike Lee Mount Rushmore is pretty solid. Do The Right Thing, He Got Game, and 25th Hour take 3 slots. Number 4 is sometimes fluid, but my anniversary rewatch confirmed that, yeah, it's Clockers. 

Spike's rise as a filmmaker opened up doors for a lot of other black filmmakers, and a lot of those films were "hood" movies, taking place in the inner city and dealing with crime and drugs and violence. Spike was doing other films, but for the first time, he made his own film in this newer subgenre. And fittingly, he made the most de-glamorized film he could. 

Clockers is a film that barely sets foot outside of the Brooklyn projects. Mekhi Phifer made a stellar acting debut as Strike, a young man who spends his time selling drugs for local drug lord Rodney (Delroy Lindo). 

A shooting, possibly carried out by Strike, possibly ordered by Rodney, brings in a pair of detectives (Harvey Keitel's Rocco as the main, and John Turturro). Strike's straight-laced older brother Victor (Isaiah Washington) takes the fall for the shooting, but nobody seems to buy it, least of all Rocco.

So, Clockers functions great as a procedural. You don't actually know for sure what happened with this shooting until the final minutes. But Lee is also stripping down the hood movie to the stubs. Some of the films that preceded this kind of made the young criminal life seem cool. Not Clockers. Strike's life is absolute hell, especially once this main plot kicks in, and Rocco suspects Strike as the shooter and turns the screws on him. 

Strike is a fascinating character, hotwired to lie in every situation as a defense mechanism, but then that screws him over big time. He can't tell Rocco the truth. He can't tell his fellow clockers the truth. And he can't tell Rodney the truth. And man, when Rodney flips in a second from father figure to scary, holy shit. Delroy Lindo is unbelievable in this, and should have been an Oscar nominee at minimum. 

I've also always been fascinated by Rocco. Is Rocco just a racist cop, or is he actually a good guy? We know absolutely nothing about his personal life, and Keitel, in a great performance, keeps him a mystery. Strike asks Rocco at the end of the film why he cared so much, and Rocco's vague response answers nothing.

There are other vivid characters, like Keith David, in probably my favorite performance of his career as a neighborhood cop whose presence is another issue that Strike has to deal with. Thomas Jefferson Byrd, a Lee regular, is freaky as a neighborhood criminal.

Clockers was based on a novel from a few years earlier, and was actually originally going to be directed by Martin Scorsese, who got a producer credit here. That obviously would have been a fascinating film, and probably a great one in its own right, but I do suspect that Rocco would have been much more of the focus. I don't think Scorsese specifically would have done this, but you can easily see a version of this film that turns Strike into a one-note criminal, like O-Dog from Menace II Society.

Instead, Strike wants out. He's obsessed with trains, a metaphor for his desire to get out of Brooklyn. He tries to do good things sometimes, but always gets sacked back into the criminal life. But he's not some saint either. The end of the film reveals that he isn't a killer, but he has still ruined his life. He had to leave New York for his own safety, and he can never return, and presumably can never see his family again. The film ends with him riding a train to points unknown, and who knows if he can get his life together wherever he ends up. 

Clockers is so damn good, but it barely made a ripple upon release. It got solid reviews, but with no big stars, it didn't make much money. Ironically, many of the movies this film was in response to made more money. It's never discussed among Lee's best but absolutely should be. 

This film came out in back to back weeks with Seven. What a month that was. 

2005:

Joss Whedon became a major figure in fandom when Buffy and later Angel became big hit series. And those successes led to him being able to make Firefly, a ramshackle sci-fi western, full of his trademark quipped dialogue. It's about a group of smugglers trying to get by in a future war-torn galaxy. It was very episodic, adventure of the week type stuff, and fully realized in a way few shows are to start. 

Firefly didn't air on one of the small networks, though, where it would get the chance to grow. FOX aired it, and when it wasn't a ratings bonanza right away, it was soon canceled. FOX did it no favors, of course, by airing it in poor time slots, and even airing it out of order. And some episodes never aired at all. 

But it wasn't unprecedented for a beloved cult sci-fi show to go too soon and eventually be revived as a film. Star Trek, anyone? 

And after a lot of fan uproar, and many DVD sales for the series, Whedon got the chance to do a film, albeit a low-budget one for the genre.

Serenity takes its name from the ship used on the show. I remember when the trailer for this hit, it looked like it was going to be almost like a new pilot episode, geared more towards newbies than the small but loyal fanbase.

But it really isn't. Serenity acts as both an entry point for new fans and as a continuation of the series. I guess I can't know for sure, but the film felt very accessible.

The plot pivots largely on Summer Glau's River, a mysterious girl picked up by the crew and revealed here to be part of a science experiment by the Alliance (this franchise's equivalent of the empire). She and the Serenity crew are tracked by a villain known as The Operative, very memorably played by the then still very new Chiwetel Ejiofor. 

It's the main cast that makes this thing sing. Whedon, as he would show again several years later in The Avengers, is a master of the ensemble.

Nathan Fillion became a fandom star as the rogueish, very Han Solo-inspired captain. The stunning Morena Baccarin got her start with this franchise. Gina Torres's Zoe is an elite badass female. Adam Baldwinnis a horrible human being, but he was great as the gruff mercenary Jayne. And Jewel Staite is plucky and cute as hell as the ship's mechanic Kaylee.

I could have watched many seasons, or many films, or both, with this collection. Alas, this was it, but it went out with a bang. Even with a limited budget, Serenity is an exciting, really well-made film. It has some great action, including a thrilling space battle in the climax. The production design was always very good. It's funny, but also emotional (Whedon does love killing major characters, after all). I'm certain this film convinced Marvel to hand Whedon their baby.

But ultimately, the box office decides, and this film didn't draw in nearly enough people to kickstart a movie franchise, even though everyone who saw it did like it. In a way, it was probably fitting for what the series and film were. 

2015:

I am not one of those people who aspires to climb mountains. But many dream of climbing to the top of Mount Everest, and some don't make it back down. 

I'm always drawn in by man vs nature stories. It's always something more relatable. I can't relate to monsters or supervillains. But what if I'm stranded in the cold? 

I'm not talking Minnesota cold. You climb Everest, and you're basically lucky as hell if you don't get frostbite at minimum. So, ok, basically Minnesota cold.🥶

Anyway, these climbs are long-established big business, and Everest is a true story about one fateful group of climbers who went up the mountain in May 1996 and encountered disaster.

The storytelling is simple enough. We learn some stuff about the process of making a climb, including adapting the body to the thin air. We learn some of the layout of the mountain, including various narrow passages and checkpoints. And we get to know some of the climbers.

The cast in this is really excellent. Highlights for me are John Hawkes and Josh Brolin, but this is also some of the best work ever from Jason Clarke and Sam Worthington. Jake Gyllenhaal has a somewhat smaller role as a particularly cocky guide, and Keira Knightley is really affecting largely just speaking into the phone.

Before everything goes to hell, you can just appreciate the grandeur of the mountain. It's convincing. You believe you're up there with the characters. 

Then, a few little things happen that portend doom, and a big storm comes rolling in. Everest's peak is so high you can wind up ABOVE the clouds. As things go downhill, the film becomes incredibly gripping drama. There are a couple of really harrowing deaths here. Much of it is speculation, since in some cases, exactly how someone died is unknown, and some bodies remain on the mountain cause you can't exactly go retrieve them.

It's very gripping and well done. As a result, I've actually probably watched the last 45 minutes of this thing dozens of times on cable. It made my ten best list for 2015. 

Other non-deep dive flicks...

1975:

-Dog Day Afternoon: Elite Al Pacino. 

-Mitchell: Oh, we MSTies know this well. Joe Don Baker IS Mittens. My-my-my-my Mitchell. 

1985:

-After Hours: Super entertaining Martin Scorsese film that I watched for the 1st time during COVID. Too lazy to go grab my review. 

1995:

-Showgirls: Okay, I was 16 when this came out, so a movie full of naked women appealed to me, as did the appearance of Saved By The Bell's Elizabeth Berkley. I didn't get to see this in theaters (it was NC17), but the second it hit pay per view, I did. It was a notorious flop, and an eventual cult classic. Is it actually good? No. It's trash, but it's very self-aware trash, and it is undeniably fun to watch in spots. Berkley is fucking horrible, but Gina Gershon rocks. 

-Canadian Bacon: Michael Moore's narrative debut, a pretty amusing political satire, and John Candy's last released film. 

-Devil In A Blue Dress: Denzel Washington as an old time private eye. Don Cheadle's big breakthrough. 

-To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar: This movie was kind of a big deal at the time, cause you had big stars (Snipes, Swayze) as drag queens. I did see this, but have no memory of it. 

-Hackers: The first time many of us noticed Angelina Jolie. 

-Empire Records: Okay, this movie barely made a ripple at the time but seems to have become a big cult film. 

-Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Return: Only worth noting because this thing has early Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger. I don't think it was even widely released until both had their big star turns a year later. 

2005:

-Transporter 2: Jason Statham doing the driving action thing again. The last good one of these. 

-Just Like Heaven: Mark Ruffalo falls for Reese Witherspoon, but she's a ghost or something. Man were romcoms floundering by now. 

-Flightplan: Airplane thriller with Jodie Foster. 

-A History of Violence: Viggo Mortensen is a mild mannered suburban dad with, well, title. 

-Lord Of War: Another one of those mid-2000s Nicolas Cage movies that arrived with some prestige and disappeared quickly. 

-Into The Blue: Jessica Alba in a bikini. There's like some crime plot too. 

-Capote: Never seen this, but it did win Philip Seymour Hoffman his Oscar. 

2015:

-Black Mass: Johnny Depp ditched his weirdo stuff to play mobster Whitey Bulger and gave his best performance in years. 

-Sicario: Denis Villenueve's drug war thriller with a trio of great performances. I prefer the sequel that has more humanity. 

-The Visit: The film that kind of got M. Night Shyamalan back on track. 

-Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials: The middle part of the trilogy. For the life of me I can't remember anything about either sequel. 

-99 Homes: Really liked this drama with Andrew Garfield as a down on his luck guy who has to make ends meet by carrying out evictions. 

-The Intern: Immensely charming comedy with Robert Deniro as the title character working for Anne Hathaway. 

-The Walk: Robert Zemeckis film about the man who did a wire walk between the WTC towers. 

Coming in October...

Kevin Smith's Mallrats turns 30, along with Dead Presidents and Get Shorty. And The Martian and Room turn 10.