90s – Page 11 – Yesterday's Movies

The Out of Towners

December 24, 2015December 24, 2015temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I need a break from Christmas. Also there are very few Christmas movies I can get hold of that I can blog and wanted to see.

The impression I had of a couple getting out to New York for a change and everything going off the rails reminded me a lot of Date Night, but it looks like they’re looking at moving out there permanently as a change once their kids have moved out, so it’s a different time of life here. And also it probably isn’t going to go off the rails in anything like the same way.

Steve Martin is of course very consistent, and I recall Goldie Hahn doing well in Foul Play, but that may be the only thing I’ve seen her in.

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Ghost Dad

November 20, 2015temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I may have mentioned a multipack of cheap movies I bought with gift money late last year, about half of which I reviewed. There are still a few more candidates in that set, but I wandered away from it for months. This is one of them.

Since before I acquired the set, I’ve been reluctant to cover Bill Cosby for obvious recent events reasons (warning: serious article on an alleged humor site), but I think the moratorium has worn off, and I’ve been interested in this movie since years before I started the blog, when I saw it in a discount movie bin back when I was just starting to decide that I didn’t want to buy videocassettes anymore.

The summary on the box sounds a lot like Ghost, only with a dad. And this dad, who is a ghost, instead of being played by Patrick Swayze, is Bill Cosby, who is, as Cracked put it, America’s Dad. It essentially sounds like instead of trying to be a lover while working out the whole being dead thing, he’s trying to be a father. Which actually also sounds like Jack Frost, only not as a snowman. This train of thought is getting circular and silly, and is best dropped at this point.

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The Mummy (1999)

October 23, 2015May 12, 2016temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I only very recently, perhaps in the last year or so, learned that this movie is a direct reboot of the Universal Monsters version of Mummy lore. The original Universal Mummy may have greatly influenced popular perception of mummies, but it’s perhaps the most generic legend in the franchise. Even werewolves, which are perhaps more independent, have a greater connection to The Wolf Man than mummies.

Additionally, I always thought of this as a fantasy action film, while the 30s film is, like the rest of the 30s and 40s films, definitely positioned as horror. Perhaps the genre shift accounts for the unpopularity I perceive this movie to have, though I’m not sure it’s actually all that unpopular, considering it had a handful of sequels and starred Brendan Fraser at the height of his fame. On the other hand, maybe the sequels are on the strength of the overall franchise. I may understand better after watching.

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How Stella Got Her Groove Back

August 7, 2015temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

So maybe this will be the lighter film I was hoping for last week. This is definitely sold as a feel-good movie and I think a romantic comedy? It can’t be too serious with Whoopi Goldberg playing the best friend.

I always have this movie’s plot conflated in my head with Peggy Sue Got Married, for no other reason than the vaguest of similarities in the title (“past-tense complete sentence that refers to the female protagonist by name”). Obviously they are very different movies.

So anyway, this is the story of a 40-something (who looks like she’s in her early 30s) having a fling with a 20-something on a vacation and… embarking on a journey of self-discovery? Rediscovering a youthful spirit she’s lost in the rat race? ~~Telling her boytoy to stay the hell away from her daughter?~~ I’m not entirely clear on what this groove is, but it’s obviously a good thing, not something to beware.

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The Net

July 17, 2015July 17, 2015temporalparadox1 Comment

Before watching the movie:

I first heard of this movie at least five years ago, and pretty much every time it comes up, it’s being mocked for confusing the Internet with Magic. However, that’s hardly unique in Hollywood, and the main examples I’m thinking of seem less implausible now that the Internet of Things is ~~a trendy consumer electronics buzzword~~ on the horizon.

Basically, Sandra Bullock gets on the wrong side of some Hackers for Reasons, and they use the power of the Internet to destroy her life. The drama comes from the fact that since the assault is Online, her antagonists are basically everywhere yet nowhere. At the time, this was clearly New Things Are Scary But We Don’t Really Understand Them, but I want to see if it’s any better now that technology has gotten its hooks into more things.

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Event Horizon

May 29, 2015May 29, 2015temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I guess before just now I didn’t know anything but the title. So apparently a ship that was lost in a black hole has mysteriously come back, and the people who go investigate discover that it brought Something back with it. It seems to basically be a horror story with sci-fi trappings, so I wonder how much it’s indebted to Alien, when I was picturing something more like The Fifth Element or The Black Hole (three films I have yet to see as well). I suspect the main reason I have it connected to The Fifth Element in my head is because of similar looming heads posters and proximity of release dates, but also possibly they were stored close to each other in a friend’s collection. As a tense horror film, I don’t know how much to expect as far as visual and practical effects, and the only name I recognize among the top billing is Laurence Fishburne. So I don’t have much of any foundation for expectations here. Continue reading →

Only the Lonely

May 22, 2015May 22, 2015temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Whose leg is that in behind Candy? It's completely wrong for Sheedy's position. — Only the Lonely. Hughes Entertainment 1991.

Before watching the movie:

From what I can tell from summaries, this movie covers several years of John Candy sneaking a relationship/engagement behind his mother’s back. The length of time that seems to be involved is throwing me off so I have no idea what to expect from the plot.

It’s not even readily apparent why his character has to hide his lover from his mother, but from some minor things on IMDB I glean that there’s a strong Irish-American element, so my guess is that O’Hara’s character is a very traditional Irish mother and Sheedy’s is not Irish enough or Catholic enough or something for her.

I expect good things from a movie written and directed by Chris Columbus and produced by John Hughes.They both have a strong track record on earnest portrayals of life and family.

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House Arrest

May 15, 2015May 15, 2015temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I’m not sure how I feel about the premise of this movie. Parents get trapped in a locked room by their children so they won’t get divorced. Kids turning the tables on adults, family funtime hijinks, that sort of thing. I believe that divorce should be a last resort after attempts at saving what was once a happy, healthy relationship have failed, but forcing people to find a way to stay together really depends on how it’s handled.

There are a lot of good actors I’m looking forward to seeing, even if they’re presenting material I disagree with.

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Total Recall

April 10, 2015April 10, 2015temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

Why is it that Hollywood seems to like Phillip K. Dick more than any other SF writer? Off the top of my head, there’s Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Looking it up, I was surprised to learn that the recent The Adjustment Bureau is another adaptation of his, as well as almost as many more I hadn’t even heard of, including two television series.

I recall the short story this is based on “We Can Remember it For You Wholesale” as a cerebral thriller, while this movie seems to be positioned as an action-packed blockbuster. To be fair, I can certainly see the room to open up the plot with action sequences.

I feel like this is one of those movies that if it wasn’t rated R I would have seen it ages ago. It came out only two years after I was born and its staying power has only been diminished by having a recent remake. If I’d been 17 in the 90s, I probably would have been invited to watch it with someone before the decade ended, or been invested enough to make the effort myself. However, in the last ten years it’s just been on a shelf or digital shelf somewhere, with no particular reason to make “I’ll watch it someday” into “I’ll watch it now”, until well, now.

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Black Sheep

March 13, 2015March 13, 2015temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

Chris Farley and David Spade. That’s all I need to know.

Okay, apparently there’s a man running for office and Chris Farley is ~~Rob Ford~~ his misbehaving brother who keeps getting into headlines for all the wrong reasons, dragging the family name though the mud. What comes to mind is Spin City or The Thick of It, but with familial ties instead of political ones.

I guess I should say that from what I have in front of me, I’ve been assuming that Farley and Spade play brothers (which I would buy in the context of such a comedy), but on second thought, Spade is probably the head of the PR team or at least the member personally responsible for keeping Farley’s character in line, because that’s the combination that gives them the most opportunity to play off each other. Spade’s type of character is much more of an image manager than an office-seeker, anyway.

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