Cinematic Throwbacks: July 1996/2006/2016

1996:

Here is where we would have Independence Day, but I already did this one for the 25th anniversary

No great 90s movie summer was complete without that great drama, the counter programming to all the big blockbusters.

In 1996, that was A Time To Kill, the 3rd time in 4 summers that a John Grisham book became a movie adaptation. And I think this was the best of the bunch. 

It's kind of striking to know that this movie with this plot was a big mainstream hit. Set in Mississippi, a couple of rednecks rape a young black girl. The father carries out a revenge killing of the 2 men, and then HIS murder trial makes up the majority of the movie. Mixed in is a KKK uprising. Can you imagine a mainstream, star packed movie like this being made now?

The film is directed with absolutely zero subtlety by Joel Schumacher, in his mid-90s commercial peak, where for 4 straight summers, he alternated Grisham movies (1994 brought The Client) and Batman movies. But pitching this at maximum pulp was the right move. You can't go subtle on a story this racial and this extreme. I mean, the judge's last name is Noose. 

The film is probably most known these days as the breakthrough role for Matthew McConaughey, who plays the young attorney defending the black father (a mesmerizing Samuel L. Jackson). There were a few of these big movies in the 90s where filmmakers decided to go for the young unknowns in major roles, often breaking stars. The role almost went to Woody Harrelson (who would have been good) or Val Kilmer (which would have been a disaster). McConaughey had a memorable role in Dazed and Confused, but other than that, he was just another young actor. This role is a little stock, but McConaughey gives it great life and personality. And his famous closing scene in the trial remains iconic. 

Jackson should have at minimum been nominated for an Oscar, if not won, for his part in the film. He was just killing it in movie after movie in the 90s, before he became more of a paycheck actor, showcasing his actual skill less and less. 

Top billed, cause she was the biggest name in the cast, was Sandra Bullock, who plays an out of towner law student who helps with the trial. She's a bit of an odd fit in the movie, cause being light and charming clashes with the main plot. But she's good, and my god was she hot in this. Actually, everyone is hot in this. Literally. Everybody is so sweaty in every scene. Don't they have air conditioning in Mississippi? 

Kevin Spacey, hot off his Oscar win, hams it up as the prosecutor. Oliver Platt is great as another lawyer. We get both Sutherlands, Donald as McConaughey mentor, and Kiefer as a future Trump supporter. Ashley Judd, also impeccably hot and sweaty, is McConaughey's wife. There's a whole slew of familiar character actors filling out the cast. 

So yes, this was a very big hit. It made McConaughey a star. It burnished the careers of Jackson and Bullock. They didn't do many more Grisham movies, and the whole courtroom drama genre kind of faded out soon after. 

2006:

Clerks. A sacred text of my 90s movie fandom. A movie that helped re-wire what I even liked in movies. But certainly not a movie that would be a franchise. 

Kevin Smith did go back to the Quick Stop well a couple of times, first with the Clerks animated series, and then with cameos in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. But that seemed to be it. After all, JASBSB was meant to be the end of the Askewniverse, and Smith would move on to the rest of his career. 

Then came Jersey Girl, a movie that I really love, but also, sadly, a movie that got savaged by critics and rejected by audiences. Just like that, Smith's plans to leave the Askewniverse behind were over. 

Now, I don't have proof that the failure of Jersey Girl broke Smith and made him retreat into the familiar. There had been talk of a Clerks sequel in the late 90s, but it's one of those things I have always strongly suspected. I don't see why JASBSB is presented the way it is if Smith always meant to come back. 

But ultimately, it worked out. Clerks 2 of course can't touch the original's impact or quality (although it looks better, naturally), but it's a worthy sequel and taken as a raunchy 2000s comedy, one of the better ones of that group. 

Dante and Randal move from the burned down Quick Stop, to the fast food stop Mooby's, but it's still a good place for random conversations and interactions with the hated customers. And to have many discussions about movies. The Lord Of the Rings bit here is a classic. 

There's another Dante love triangle. He's supposed to be marrying Emma (Smith unwisely cast his wife in this rather important role, even though she can not act for shit) but may actually be in love with his boss Becky. And who wouldn't be, since Becky is played by Rosario Dawson in a radiant, irresistible performance. 

Jay and Bob are back for some shenanigans. Trevor Fehrman is really funny as the awkward geek Elias, another Mooby's employee. We get some fun cameos sprinkled in.

Clerks 2 is very funny, and it has a late pivot into some genuinely effecting sentiment that really hits. I consider it the end of Smith's prime. It was his 7th film, and I really liked all of them. After this is where the wheels come off the tracks.

You can see the seeds of the career skid here. Clerks 2 is witty, but often relies on scatalogical shock humor for laughs, centrally in a 3rd act donkey show sequence that I really never found funny at all. Smith's other trips back to the Askewniverse well really got marred by the dick and fart jokes supplanting the smart dialogue. 

Clerks 2 was the last Smith movie I liked without any reservations, though, for nearly 20 years, until The 4:30 Movie a couple of years ago. 

2016:

The Star Trek franchise was born on TV, and it was years before there was ever a movie. We are now in the reverse situation, where the franchise is entirely a TV thing now. 

It has now been 10 years since we had a Trek film, the longest drought since the 1970s. Star Trek Beyond was the last one to date, and watching it, you can't believe they didn't keep this going.

Beyond had a director change. Out went reboot franchise starter JJ Abrams (he had been busy with the other Star franchise), and in came Justin Lin, best known for his work on some of the Fast and the Furious movies. And cast member Simon Pegg co-wrote the movie.

Beyond was kind of dismissed as being like a good episode of a TV series. The story has a guy (Idris Elba under a bunch of makeup) with a grudge against the federation, and his plan is to get a thing so he can attack federation planets. And the Enterprise crew has to stop him. There is nothing too groundbreaking about this. So what? It's extremely well made, with a couple of really cool action set pieces, one involving the destruction of the Enterprise. It figures that Lin would pivot the movie into more of an action mode.

I still marvel at how well they cast this thing. By this point, everyone had settled into their roles so well. Best stuff this time involved the gruff chemistry between Spock and McCoy. I really dug the one major new cast member, an alien gal played by a spunky Sofia Boutella. 

The movie had a little aura of sadness. Leonard Nimoy's death in between films was addressed in the movie. And Chekov, Anton Yelchin, died just a month or so before the movie came out. 

Beyond was pretty well received, and it did decent box-office. But "pretty well" and "decent" I guess we're not enough. It got caught up in this insane cycle where anytime a franchise movie doesn't turn a gigantic profit (often due to a way too big budget), its studio doesn't want to do any more movies. There have been rumors. There was even some talk of Quentin Tarantino wanting to do one. But a decade later and we only have rumors. You figure eventually Trek will return to the big screen, but it will probably be a new thing with a new cast.

Other non-deep dive flicks...

1966:

-Batman: The Movie: Hey, it WAS the first Batman movie. 

1986:

-Aliens: James Cameron's relentless action sequel. I prefer the original, but as 80s action goes, this is pretty close to too of the line. 

-Maximum Overdrive: The gloriously cheesy Stephen King adaptation (directed BY King) about machines all becoming possessed and trying to kill everybody. 

-About Last Night: Some early Demi Moore. 

-Big Trouble In Little China: This Kurt Russell action comedy has a big cult following. I watched it for the first time within the last few years, and it didn't work for me.

-Nothing In Common: Tom Hanks comedy, with Jackie Gleason in his final movie. 

-Under The Cherry Moon: The other Prince movie. 

1996:

-Kingpin: The Farrelly Brothers comedy in between 2 much bigger hits, a bowling comedy that's kind of funny but too often is just gross. 

-Courage Under Fire: The other big drama from that month, a war drama with Denzel Washington uncovering the truth around the death of an Army Captain (Meg Ryan playing against type). 

-Trainspotting: Danny Boyle's iconic movie about drug addicts. Made Ewan McGregor a star. 

-Phenomenon: John Travolta gets struck by lightning and becomes a genius. 

-Multiplicity: Michael Keaton comedy where he clones himself. 

-Kazaam: 1996, when a studio would release a movie starring Shaquille O'Neal as a genie. On purpose. 

-Fled: Action flick with Laurence Fishburne. Probably the worst movie I ever saw twice in theaters, cause my 1st viewing was ruined by the audience. 

-Joe's Apartment: 1996, when an MTV short about talking cockroaches could be made into a movie. I actually saw this in theaters. 

-The Frighteners: One of Peter Jackson's early ones. 

-Manny & Lo: Never seen this, but it has the first significant role for Scarlett Johansson. 

2006:

-Little Miss Sunshine: One of the decade's big breakout indie hits. Alan Arkin won best supporting actor. 

-Scoop: One of the best 21st century Woody Allen movies. Scarlett Johansson is at absolute peak adorableness in this, and sue me, I really enjoyed on screen Woody in this too. 

-Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: The first of the POTC sequels was a massive success, but I wasn't into it at all. This was not a franchise that needed to be bogged down with tons of lore. 

-Little Man: Dreadful Wayans brothers comedy. 

-A Scanner Darkly: Artsy Richard Linklater movie. Impenetrable. 

-Lady In The Water: Honestly, when I saw this in theaters, I thought it was a bounceback for M. Night Shyamalan after The Village, but critics savaged it, and it flopped, and I never did see it again. 

-You, Me and Dupree: Never seen this, but it was, pre-MCU, the most noteworthy project from the Russo brothers. 

-My Super Ex-Girlfriend: Uma Thurman is a superhero who gets dumped by her boyfriend. Chaos ensues. Not many laughs ensue. 

-John Tucker Must Die: One of those bad teen movies that came out as that genre was on the skids. 

-Miami Vice: Michael Mann's movie version of his TV show. Stylish, but I thought it was boring as hell. 

2016:

-The Purge: Election Year: Arguably the best of the series. This one has a hopeful ending, though, in which a woman can actually be elected president. In 2016. 😬

-Ghostbusters: Did you know they did a female-led reboot of Ghostbusters? I can't believe it was never talked about on the internet. The narratives around this obscure that it actually did pretty well at the box office, and Kate McKinnon is incredibly funny. 

-Jason Bourne: Matt Damon went back to the well with another Bourne movie that was kind of dull. 

-Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates: A blah comedy, but it did give us Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick. 

-Bad Moms: Another kind of blah comedy, but it was sure better than the awful sequel. 

-The Legend of Tarzan: Because for some reason, they thought we wanted to see Alexander Skarsgard as Tarzan. 

-The BFG: Steven Spielberg adapted a popular children's book. It was a dull dud. 

-The Secret Life of Pets: A no-brainer hit, and it was actually pretty funny. 

-Captain Fantastic: Terrific Viggo Mortensen performance as a man raising his family out in the woods.

-Cafe Society: Woody Allen movie with Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg. One of Woody's last movies to really get released. 

Coming in August...

The 80s bring us the biggest anniversaries, with Stand By Me, and the biggest movie in the world to little kid me, Transformers: The Movie.