Cinematic Throwbacks: April 1996/2006

1996:

The 80s and 90s were the glory days of the pulpy, often sleazy studio thriller. But they were all starring adults and dealing with adult things. We youths needed our own version, and we got it with Fear, a real blast of a movie.

This is teen Fatal Attraction. Innocent high school girl Reese Witherspoon falls for the initially nice older guy, Mark Wahlberg, but then to the surprise of no one he turns out to be a total psycho, in those ways that only movie villains ever are.

This movie could easily veer into total trash, but it has a lot going for it. It was made by a legitimate director, James Foley, who had made Glengarry Glen Ross just a few years earlier. I really like the Pacific Northwest setting. I really like how the parents (William Petersen and Amy Brenneman) are fleshed out as actual people. 

The casting was really canny. Wahlberg had begun to get into acting, but was still mostly known as Marky Mark, and we had a year to go before Boogie Nights. His career has wound up primarily playing good guys, but he's genuinely creepy here when he has to be. 

Witherspoon was even less known at the time. She had been in a couple of things, but this was her 1st big movie. She's good at balancing being amusingly naive but also pretty plucky. 

The movie has some iconic needle drops. Comedown by Bush is a song I hear a fair amount on the radio, and it always takes me back to this movie. And the scene of Wahlberg fingering Witherspoon on a rollercoaster as Wild Horses by The Sundays plays is burned into my brain forever.

Fear is well paced for its first two acts. Then the 3rd act gets pretty crazy, as thrillers often do. This was a hell of a movie to see in theaters. There's a moment in the climax involving a dog that elicited literal screams from the audience when I saw it.

The movie wasn't that well received and only did okay at the box office, but it quickly became one of those movies that did great on video. And the fact that both its leads became big stars within the next few years adds to its legacy. 

2006:

2026 will mark 25 years since 9/11, the biggest single day news event of my lifetime, and even though my 9/11 was just another day, I still have vivid memories of the day. And to this day, I'm kind of a 9/11 junkie. I've seen countless documentaries and videos about it. It's weird. It was a tragic day, but I miss that era overall, and I like to go back to it.

It was inevitable that there would be movies made about that day eventually, but in the aftermath of 9/11, Hollywood took the approach of pretending nothing happened. So it would be years before a film was set on that day. 

The first major 9/11 film was United 93, directed by Bourne franchise director Paul Greengrass, telling arguably the most cinematic story to come out of that day, that being the one hijacked plane that didn't reach its target due to a passenger revolt. (One of the passengers went to the same high school as me, years earlier)

United 93 was the last of the hijacked planes on 9/11. It crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, and nobody survived, but through passenger phone calls to loved ones, and a few transmissions, the story of what happened got out quickly.

Telling the story would still require some degree of guesswork.

The film isn't entirely about that flight. Early on, the documentary-style film also chronicles the goings on at the FAA, a military installation, and the air traffic control center. Many of the actors in this were the actual people involved on that day. That applies to the whole film, although there are a couple of recognizable actors. But nobody who takes you out of the movie. 

The incredible attention to authentic detail makes the film feel like a visceral documentary. But re-enacting what happened to and amongst people still alive is one thing. Nearly everything aboard the plane had to be made up, including the mundane things happening before the hijacking.

At some point, the film abandons the other locations, and we are singularly focused on the plane for the rest of the run time. The tension and intensity are strangling, cause we know the end of the story. And the final moments of the film are mesmerizingly sad. I remember people very audibly sobbing in the theater when I first saw it. 

I think United 93 is a masterpiece. I ranked this as my #1 film of 2006, and it made my top 10 of the 2000s. It is gripping even in its quiet moments, and the nearly real-time approach keeps you breathless. It doesn't matter that everyone watching knows what the ending will be. 

I mean, I don't see how a better non-documentary film about 9/11 could ever be made. It's masterful filmmaking, and does right by all the passengers. It's easy to say "oh I'd have done the same," but it puts you in that position where you have to think about it. The word gets overused, but these people were heroic. 

I suppose this was never going to be a big financial success. Some were mad the film existed at all. It did get Greengrass a best director nomination. And it stands as a great document of the 21st century's most famous day. 

Before he became the man behind the most divisive Star Wars film of all time and the man behind the lucrative Knives Out franchise, Rian Johnson was just another up and coming indie filmmaker. As is so often the case, it took Johnson a long time to get Brick made. It eventually was made for a piddling sum of less than half a million dollars. 

The conceit of Brick is that it is a hardboiled noir mystery, but all the main characters are in high school. But it is not done as a parody at all. There are plenty of moments where Johnson mines some humor from the anachronism, but there's no winking. It's played straight.

Johnson was wise to cast Joseph Gordon-Levitt as his lead, shortly before JGL got big. He handles the bulk of the heavily stylized dialogue, which even after seeing the movie a bunch of times can be a little hard to grasp.

His character is looking into the apparent disappearance of his ex-girlfriend. There's the bad guy, the muscle, the femme fatale, the info man on the street, and in this instead of a police figure you have the school principal (and it's Richard Roundtree!).

For a tiny budget, it's striking how much Johnson's talent was able to burst through. The dialogue is really interesting to listen to. The tone never slips. The atmosphere is cool. The music is excellent.

About the only disappointment is that this cast isn't one of those collections of future stars. JGL got there, and Meagan Good was already known at the time. I thought Nora Zehetner, the femme fatale, might have been something, but that didn't happen. 

The film was an instant cult hit, but only made a little money. Its main legacy is launching the career of one of the best filmmakers of the last 20 years. 

The late 90s were filled with Tarantino knockoffs, crime movies with knowingly witty characters, pop culture-infused dialogue, and non-linear structures.

But by the mid 2000s, we didn't get that many of them anymore, which made them feel a little fresher when one did pop up. And on the same weekend as Brick, we got a really good one, Lucky Number Slevin.

Slevin is the lead character, played by Josh Hartnett (who is really good here), a goof who at the start of the film gets mistaken for his friend, who owes a big debt to one of those crime bosses you don't want to owe anything to. 

There are actually two of these crime bosses in the movie, rivals, and Slevin gets mixed up in all of that. They are played by Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley. There is also a key mystery character, an assassin, played by Bruce Willis. And Lucy Liu is just a delight as a perky neighbor who also gets wrapped up in the plot. 

The way the plot unfolds is a lot of fun, in that way you enjoy when you know a film is keeping things hidden for no reason other than to set up reveals. But it is thoroughly entertaining.

It wasn't a big hit or anything, and I don't think it developed that Brick-like cult following. And the director, Paul McGuigan, didn't really become anything after this. But sometimes it's nice to have a movie you really like that isn't really well known. 

Other non-deep dive flicks...

1976:

-The Bad News Bears: Gotta be honest. I've never been into any of these movies. 

-All The President's Men: The story of the eventual takedown of Nixon. Remember when criminal presidents actually faced consequences? 

1996:

-Primal Fear: The 90s were a golden age of courtroom thrillers, and this was one of the better ones, most memorable as the sterling debut of Edward Norton, and with one of the decade's best twist endings. 

-Celtic Pride: How 90s is this? It posits the Utah Jazz as being in the NBA Finals. A couple of Celtics fans (Dan Aykroyd and Daniel Stern) kidnap the Jazz star (Damon Wayans) during the finals. OK comedy, but this is a premise that could be remade better. 

-Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie: One of my favorite shows of all time hit  the big screen with just another episode, only with bigger production values (which as the Netflix version shows, is not necessarily a gain). 

-A Thin Line Between Love and Hate: I was a big fan of this at the time, but it fell off. Martin Lawrence in a comedic take on Fatal Attraction, so this marked 2 FA style flicks that month. 

-The Truth About Cats and Dogs: Charming romantic comedy in which we were supposed to think Janeane Garofalo wasn't cute as hell. 

-Sunset Park: Rhea Perlman of all people coaches an inner city basketball team. 

-The Substitute: A fun B movie where a soldier goes to a crooked high school and has to kick ass. I have a very fun memory of seeing this with some friends. 

-Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy: Another movie version of a cult TV show. I haven't seen this in years, but I recall it being pretty funny. 

2006:

-Scary Movie 4: I stand by this as being the best of the sequels. The mix of War Of The Worlds, Saw, The Grudge, and The Village really worked, and there are a lot of big laughs. I randomly laugh at "We'll build our own tripods. They'll have four legs" on a regular basis. 

-Hard Candy: A vicious thriller in which Patrick Wilson meets an underage girl (TAFKA Ellen Page) online and has the tables turned. Oh, they could NEVER make this today. It's a skillful film in which we never truly know who the bad guy is. The castration scene nearly made me faint in the theater and still makes me queasy. It was an incredible breakthrough for Page. 

-The Benchwarmers: Very stupid baseball movie with Rob Schneider and David Spade. 

-The Sentinel: Thriller that Kiefer Sutherland made between 24 seasons. 

-RV: Vacation ripoff with Robin Williams. 

-American Dreamz: Comedy about an American Idol type show. 

-Stick It: Gymnastics comedy that for some reason had Jeff Bridges in it. 

2016:

-The Boss: One of the many bad Melissa McCarthy comedies. 

-Hardcore Henry: I think this unbearable POV action movie was my pick for the worst movie of 2016. 

-Demolition: I don't really remember this Jake Gyllenhaal dramedy, but I remember thinking it was pretty good. 

-The Jungle Book: This "live action" remake made a ton of money. 

-Barbershop: The Next Cut: The 3rd Barbershop movie. I'm kind of surprised they stopped at 3. 

-Green Room: Some people loved this thriller about a rock band running afoul of neo-Nazis, but it didn't work for me. Patrick Stewart in a rare villain role. 

-The Huntsman: Winter's War: A sequel that ditched Snow White. Despite having Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, AND Jessica Chastain, this made no impact. 

-Elvis & Nixon: A whole movie about the 2 meeting. Kevin Spacey played Nixon, which was easy for him since he too is evil. 

-Keanu: Before Jordan Peele became a big deal with Get Out, he and Key made this dreadful comedy. 

Coming in May...

Things get busy as we head into summer. Top Gun turns 40. Twister and Mission Impossible turn 30. Mission Impossible 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand turn 20. And Captain America: Civil War turns 10.