Amph Film Releases & Trends of a Decade Retrospective: The Nineties A-Z- The Year 1991 in Review

May & June 2002

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

May:
-Hollywood Ending
-Spider-Man
-The New Guy
-Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
-About a Boy
-Enough
-Insomnia
-Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
-The Sum of All Fears
-Undercover Brother


June:
-Bad Company
-Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
-The Bourne Identity
-Scooby-Doo
-Windtalkers
-Minority Report
-Hey Arnold! The Movie
-Mr Deeds


T2Q Comments:

-Spider-Man: Perfectly timed movie. It was the first summer after 9/11 and people needed an unbeat blockbuster. I caught this with the perfect, sold-out geek audience in Indianapolis at Celebration II and everyone had a blast. And that one "you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us" line was appropriately vicarious for the nation at the time.

Though the armored Goblin design was odd, I still feel the movie did a better job at developing it's villain than Spider-Man 2 and not rushing into it, one reason I find it hard to choose between 1 & 2 since they both complement each others' flaws.

-Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones: A big improvement over TPM. Where TPM was a strange beast whose individual components were decent-to-good yet when taken as a whole came never clicked well, AOTC has a much more solid through-line plot with Obi-Wan's investigation, and it helps the movie greatly. It does suffer from atrocious love dialogue that is distracting to the viewer as it suspends our involvement/disbelief (I'll never accept the strawman's theory that it was intentionally bad), and a couple redundant or unnecessary scenes..

Interesting that it's an example of a modern film (Gladiator, maybe Black Hawk Down too) influencing sequences in a SW film, as well as real life dictating a change to the film (speeders being forced to crash into buildings during the Zam speeder chase were removed due to 9/11). Conversely, it's noteworthy that while the SW film of the year did change things due to 9/11, the then-recent Star By Star SW novel didn't, despite closer similarities to the events.

Oddly enough, it was the IMAX cut of the film that really sold me on it- since, at the time, IMAX projectors couldn't handle a film longer than 2 hours, AOTC had to be cut down by about 20 minutes to fit into the format. This forced them to trim some scenes, most of them needlessly talky ones (the Jedi and Palps talking before Padme's arrival, etc) or the horrific love dialogue (they managed to trim the love dialogue down to something that's not skin-crawlingly-bad, for the most part) which really upped the pacing and allowed the movie to tell it's story more effectively.

I still contend that the IMAX AOTC is almost about on par with the OT- and it inspired me to make my own re-edit of AOTC using it as a basis (though I took the liberty of rearranging a few other scenes and swapping in one or two deleted scenes).

Not to mention it spawned the excellent run of Clone Wars comics by Dark Horse, which are still miles better than the majority of material we've gotten out of the new series.

-Insomnia: I was a big fan of Nolan's Memento, so I saw this one on that strength alone, as well as Williams' performance. Perhaps a bit too long and not as tightly paced as he previous and subsequent work, it did effectively draw the audience into the mentality of the character, making us feel like we had insomnia ourselves.

-The Sum of All Fears: Pushed back to here due to 9/11 due to the nuclear bomb plot, the first attempted (and failed) reboot at the Jack Ryan series (another reboot is in the works) wasn't too bad. It didn't hit the high notes of Hunt for Red October or Clear & Present Danger, but it did have it's redeeming aspects (Liev Schreiber taking over the role of John Clark, previously played by DaFoe, was awesome).

-Bad Company: Never saw it, but I clearly remember the ads for this and how it just seemed like the worst kind of overt "hey, look at us- it's a buddy comedy between an old white guy and a young black guy

I missed the previous post, so I have a couple of films to go through.

March/April
40 days 40 nights - I hate it plain and simple. I don't think I can find any redeeming qualities in this one, and that's even if I factor in that Josh Hartnett is pretty cute.

We Were Soldiers - I think that when this one came out I was bored of big epic war film, also Vietnam films have never been as interesting to me as WW2 (probably because WW2 is closer to home). So I haven't seen it.

Ice Age - pure brillance according to me. I think I saw it three times in the cinema, even if that had do to with cheap tickets and my crazy Wednesday time table while studying in Ireland. It also had the last AOTC trailer attached to it.

ET Special Edition - It's a classic film, and I hadn't seen the original enough to notice the differences between it and the SE. I had a very fun personal moment with this one. I saw it with my sister who confessed that she loved the film and had seen the original several times when it was released, and this is my sister who thinks everything that is remotely sci-fi or has antyhing to do with aliens is totally silly. (She hates SW)

The Rookie - I was put up by the trailer and the Disney stamp, from what I read hear it might be worth watching.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding - I didn't see it until some years ago, but it has turned into one of my favorite films. I think it's great. The two main characters are very believable, even if the surrounding cast has been turned up a notch to surreality. Also even if I'm not in any way Greek I recognise quite a lot of my own family in this film. There's a sequel coming/has come now as well. I'm more worried about that being just too filled with cliches though.

May/June

AOTC - I'm a borderline gusher, so I really liked AOTC. It has some serious flaws though, and I've noted that I get pretty bored when I watch it nowadays. Still it's the best costumes of all SW.

About a boy - released in the UK/Ireland in April. A great film, showing that Hugh Grant can do other things than being just a nice guy in a romcom. It's a feelgood movie all the way through.

The Bourne Identity - I didn't see it until after the Bourne Supremacy. In a way it feels a bit like ANH. It's a stand alone film that they managed to build a series around, but I feel that the other parts in the series are better.

********************

In all I didn't see many of the films released during this period, but on the other hand the ones I've seen I've seen several times. To me Ice Age is the real trendsetter, starting up its own franchise and also inspiring more of the "grown up" animation that would follow, especially with the Madagascar films.

Some great films here. Spider-Man is great and I think Insomnia is definitely the overlooked gem in Nolan's catalogue and one of Pacino's last truly great performances, maybe his very last (to date, at least).

Bourne Identity, I loathed; I've seen none of the other films. They destroyed one of the greatest novels ever written about identity and truth.

July & August 2002

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

July:
-Like Mike
-Men in Black II
-The Powerpuff Girls Movie
-The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
-Halloween: Resurrection
-Reign of Fire
-Road to Perdition
-Eight Legged Freaks
-K-19: The Widowmaker
-Stuart Little 2
-Austin Powers in Goldmember
-The Country Bears


August:
-The Master of Disguise
-Signs
-Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams
-Blood Work
-xXx
-The Adventures of Pluto Nash
-Blue Crush
-One Hour Photo
-Serving Sara
-S1m0ne
-Undisputed
-Feardotcom



T2Q Comments:

-Like Mike: Never saw it, just remember the torture of the trailer playing so much.

-Men in Black II: A mixed sequel- it has some great moments to it, but also comes up below par in so many other places (poor Rip Torn is handled just awfully here).

-Halloween: Resurrection: Never saw it, just looked bad. Sequel to H20 (and not 4, 5 & 6), last entry in the original Halloween series.

-Reign of Fire: While this didn't outright kick as much ass as I would have liked it to (it had potential to be a classic) it's still very solid with both Bale and Maconahay doing a good job. The dragon effects are top-notch, and the post-apocalyptic retelling of ESB was a brilliant little touch.

-Road to Perdition: Surprised it was based ona graphic novel, but an enjoyable drama. Not sure I'd want to see it more than once more, though.

-Eight Legged Freaks: Zany and amusing. Another coulda-been-a-classic, but a fun flick to take a look at.

-K-19: The Widowmaker: It's not Hunt For Red October, or even U-571. But it's one of the better movies Ford has done in recent years...though that's not saying much, sadly.

-Austin Powers in Goldmember: It's grown on me a little, but I didn't care for this one as much as the first two (especially given how spectacular the second one was). I think it was the Scott Evil subplot that I felt, while a daring way to shake things up, just didn't feel right and went entirely against the character.

-The Master of Disguise: A shame Dana Carvey never got a good movie to break out of Wayne's World's shadow with. This had potential and some ok gags that play to his strengths (that turtle thing is funny...) but, alas...

-Signs: One of the few films to ever scare me (the hand in the basement) and my second favorite M Night film (after Unbreakable). It's just very effective overall, giving the common-person POV of an alien invasion. Funny enough, the end of the movie was telegraphed by the weather the night I saw the movie- a big thunderstorm was going on that night, and even in that packed theater you could hear the thunder and rain outside later in the movie when they were in the basement. At that point I assumed the reason the aliens went away was because of the rain/water I was hearing as part of the movie's soundtrack. Turns out mother nature spoiled the ending

-Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams- continuing the series into crazier and crazier scenarios, this love note to Ray Harryhausen came off as so-so.

-xXx: The final hit of the 3-hit punch that let Vin Diesel explode on screen, following Pitch Black and The Fast and Furious. And though Bourne may have barely beat him to the punch in a stylistic way, xXx was the film that showed the need for an Anti-Bond secret agent, and it did it very well (the opening sequence showing why the classic tux=wearing agent wasn't exactly ideal for the types of crowds found at a Rammstein concert ), taking a lot of iconic aspects to the secret agent genre and giving them their own spin that were identifiable to the character but also turned sideways from the typical cliches.

Sure, some of the action sequences are really over the top (but then, the whole dirtbike explosion thing really isn't any crazier than Bond's dive-into-plane at the start of GoldenEye), but it had some fun characters, some really fun dialogue (the first nightclub conversation between Xander and the baddies and the chick has some classic stuff delivered ina way that really shows off Vin's charisma- "I'll hav

This time period still suffered from being post AOTC, in that I haven't seen many of these films at all.


Men in Black II - it's an OK film. It has its moments and well worth watching, even if isn't top notch.
K-19: The Widowmaker - saw it years later, and mostly due to the Neeson/Ford combination. A very up and down film, but it gets better towards the end. If only they could have skipped the fake Russian accents.

So, wow, just two films out of the bunch. And only one that I actually saw on the big screen.

MIB II was absolutely awful. Just completely without wit.

Road to Perdition was overrated at the time and is now slightly underrated, I think. It's worth rediscovering, but it still isn't the greatest film of the year or anything.

On the other hand, Signs was great; at the time, it was the third absolutely five star film from M. Night and I remember watching it and just thinking that the guy was never going to stop being astonishing, that he was this generation's Hitchcock. That all ended pretty soon, but still, what a swan song, even if he never comes back to do a great film again.

K-19 I find very underrated. Ford and Neeson are both great and Sarsgaard is just incredible. I like Bigelow's style and I found the film extremely tense and extremely moving. It's far better, in my opinion, than U-571, which was pretty rote. K-19 had plenty of surprises and it's definitely Ford's last great film.

One Hour Photo also deserves a mention. Williams' performance is very good, quite disturbing. It's the film that really put Michael Vartan on my radar; he's extremely good in what should be an entirely thankless role, as the husband of the family Williams is fixated on. And then Gary Cole is extremely good in what amounts to a serious take on his role in Office Space, a completely unlikable store manager that's deeply threatening. And the direction was extremely good; it has a style and vibe all of its own. Great little thriller; if you haven't seen it yet, rent it.

Now that I think about it, I think I saw Serving Sara at some point- but, yeah, not very memorable or outside of type for Perry.

Interesting thought about the "teen film craze", though I don't think that ever goes away as studios always want to cater to that demographic. In a way, that same notion leads to things like Twilight (even if that's particularly slanted towards a particular gender of that demographic).

Demographic lines aren't brick walls- but something starring teens about teens not rated R is likely aimed at teens as the primary audience. Same way Twilight is clearly aimed at tweens and girls or most animated films aimed at kids or live action disney comedies aimed at families and kids, etc.

The best ones are the ones that appeal across demographics (ie: Pixar), but even in those cases they go in knowing that if the target demographic rejects it, it's likely sunk/DOA.

Part of it is directed marketing and the other is partly presentation. Theaters know the people sitting in the audience for a film have interest in things similar in genre or audience by them being there to begin with, so they help make them aware of similar films coming up in that genre.

Presentation-wise, it gets people in the mood for the film better if you include films attuned to their interests and the general genre of the film about to be viewed. Advertising horror films before a horror film, advertising kids/animated/family fare before an animated/family movie, action before action, etc.

It's like making a playlist- the best ones lineup songs in a order that flow into each other instead of abruptly changing style or genre. If you're setting up to listen to Metallica, you're not going to want Britney Spears right before it.

The last element is going to be attached trailers- trailers usually debut with films released from the same studio, with occasional exception to major holiday films where a lot of top trailers want to hitch a ride onto the big early Mya, memorial day, 4th of July, thanksgiving and xmas weekends.

I mean, usually there's some variety in trailers- you're likely to have at least one comedy trailer before most films (though usually as a soft-opening trailer to make way for the heavy ones), but it makes more sense for the theater to avoid showing random trailers you/the majority of the audience might not have an interest in based on the film you're watching. Better to show you stuff you'll probably have interest in based on the film being viewed than stuff that's just a shot in the dark. Otherwise the trailer experience becomes reduced to nothing but a TV commercial break (which you have already sat through ).

We'll just have to disagree there- being the trailer hound I am, I definitely prefer it. It just feels right o have a good "playlist" as the mini-entertainment I can usually rely on regardless of the feature's ultimate quality.

I don't mind some variety thrown in there, but given that there's a finite number of trailers before a film (2-6) I'd rather have a good lineup than a random one.

Say I go to see Ninja Assassin this weekend- a good lineup I'd like to have would be the trailers for Kick-Ass, Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia, Avatar, Season of the Witch. That's something that pumps me up and puts me in the right mood for the type of movie I'm about to see.

I guess it depends on how much you value them as entertainment linked to the overall theatrical viewing experience versus merely advertisements. I very much find them linked- seeing some films in theaters just would never have been the same without the right trailer or teaser before them. I couldn't imagine first experiencing Men in Black in theaters without the first Godzilla teaser airing right before it, for example. It generated a palpable electricity in the audience that had you ready for the feature.

I'm totally going to start calling you "dear mr. 2ndquest" now.

September & October 2002

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

September:
-City By the Sea
-Swimfan
-Barbershop
-Stealing Harvard
-Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
-The Banger Sisters
-The Four Feathers
-Trapped
-Sweet Home Alabama
-The Tuxedo


October:
-Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
-Red Dragon
-Brown Sugar
-Knockaround Guys
-The Rules of Attraction
-The Transporter
-Tuck Everylasting
-White Oldeander
-Abandon
-The 51st State
-The Ring
-Ghost Ship
-Jackass: The Movie
-The Truth About Charlie


T2Q Comments:

Wow, didn't see many of these...

-Swimfan: An Ok teen stalker flick- though truthfully I remember a parody poster of it featuring G'Kar from B5 more than the actual movie. I do recall thinking at the end of the movie why someone didn't just grab a pole and go all Darth Maul on the psycho chick.

-Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever: Named one of the worst movies of the decade in many circles (or the biggest bomb, I forget which). It's certainly not good. It was definitely a disappointment- the cast was cool, though sadly Ray Park with dialogue came across very dull- but I think it's more the film than him (I still have hopes for his acting career ).

-The Four Feathers: Never saw this, but seemed like Ledger cashing in on The Patriot by doing another period war movie in his efforts to break away from more comedic roles. I admit that I sadly never really took him seriously as an actor until it was mostly too late.

-Sweet Home Alabama: Never saw it, but another big hit for Reese Witherspoon.

-The Tuxedo: Again, never saw it, but it seemed a like it was a great funny concept perfect for Jackie Chan. Anyone see it?


October:
-Red Dragon: I'll take crap for this from some people, but I really, really enjoyed this movie. As I left the theater after the movie, I had one of those huge "I enjoyed that immensely" grins on my face that I don't get from full-on dramas very often. I admit I haven't seen it since then so maybe a subsequent viewing would turn out differently, but this was much more enjoyable than Hannibal, and I think I enjoyed it more than the non-Lecter parts of Silence of the Lambs as well (since it just seemed more personal than Buffalo Bill).

-Knockaround Guys: This was one of those "Oh, Vin Diesel is a big star now? Don't we have a movie with him in it sitting around somewhere?" movies made before he exploded big time, back when he just had his directorial debut, his role in SPR and the Iron Giant under his jacket. He's not the main star, but the film has a good cast and is a pretty enjoyable rental.

-The Rules of Attraction: A sequel/spin-off of American Psycho (though there's only one reference to Patrick Bateman). A dark satire that James Van Der Beek obviously hoped would break him out of teen-film-Dawnson's Creek typecasting. It's probably most notable for 3 things- 1) The infamous single-shot split-screen merge sequence (warning: language, etc; just jump ahead to about 3 mins or so into that clip), 2) it was the only production that kept shooting on 9/11 and 3) that this was the first studio film edited using Final Cut Pro, with director Roger Avary subsequently became something of a spokesperson for FCP, and it's felt that Avary's use of FCP here convinced other mainstream editors that FCP was now "ready for prime time". Which would lead to it becoming pretty standard for a lot of productions and schools (including the switch-over at NY Film Academy so that they'd have all FCP editing stations by time I attended almost exactly 2 years later ).

-The Transporter: Jason Statham is awesome, but his films are not always so. Transporter is an ok series, though I enjoyed the second one a tad more just because it's when the series became completely ludicrous. but he's definitely the 1980's Arnold-Without-Conan-and-Terminator of our time.

-The Ring: Never saw the japanese original, but the american remake wasn't bad- the ending was awesome though, I'll definitely grant them that. Never saw the sequel(s?).

-Jackass:

I haven't seen many of these either, but here we go:


-The Four Feathers, to be honest I think this was a terribly boring film. I didn't even finish watching it the one time I tried, eventhough I'm a big period film lover, and I really like Heath Ledger.

-Sweet Home Alabama, this one I actually saw in the cinema. I remember thinking it was really fun, but when I've tried to rewatch it I couldn't stand it. Too predictable


-The 51st State, this one must have been released earlier in Europe. I distinctly remember seeing it while I lived in Ireland, and I moved home to Sweden in May. I really like this film from all possible angles.


So it's a bit hard to talk about trends with only three films but I'd say that Heath continued his quest to be taken seriously and not only as a cute actor, Sweet Home Alabama as mentioned showed that Reese Witherspoon could carry a film at the box office and the 51st state was to me one of the last followers to the Guy Ritchie kind of action films from the end of the '90s.

I wouldn't say it's the last, though they do become fewer and farther inbetween- but you still get the occasional one like RocknRolla.

Ok, I'll correct that to the last that I saw. But I still think it shows the end of a trend.

I loathed The Four Feathers, The Truth About Charlie (a remake of Charade with Mark Wahlberg in the Cary Grant role which tells you all you need to know!) and even City by the Sea, despite the presence of De Niro, McDormand and Franco. City by the Sea was utterly horrible.

Red Dragon was okay; Norton was utterly miscast, but Fiennes was the definitive Dolarhyde.

November & December 2002

Notable releases: (listed in release order)

November:
-I Spy
-The Santa Clause 2
-Femme Fatale
-8 Mile
-Half Past Dead
-Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
-Die Another Day
-The Emperor's Club
-Friday After Next
-Eight Crazy Nights
-Extreme Ops
-Solaris
-Treasure Planet
-They

December:
-Analyze That
-Empire
-Drumline
-The Hot Chick
-Maid in Manhattan
-Star Trek: Nemesis
-The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
-Gangs of New York
-Two Weeks Notice
-The Wild Thornberrys Movie
-Catch Me If You Can
-Pinnochio (Roberto Benigni)


T2Q Comments:

-The Santa Clause 2: I don't know of I ever saw all of this- I just remember thinking that the first movie was enjoyable, but one was enough. That they made a third boggles my mind.

-8 Mile: This was a pretty solid semi-auto-biography for Eminem, who does a pretty good job in the role.

-Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Darker than the first film, perhaps slightly more enjoyable, though the series still hasn't started getting yet at this point. Still plagued by the stupid foster parents antics and a sense of "presumed" magical moments versus "earned" magical moments

-Die Another Day: The final Brosnan Bond, and it's actually pretty kick ass. We get a little more of the darker Bond Brosnan always tried to bring to the role, with the extended torture opening sequences, and a kick-ass supercar duel later in the film. Madonna had a fun small part in it too (though her song for the film is way out of place, it's not too half-bad on it's own).

Sadly the film is hurt a little by Jinx, whom the producers had hoped to spin off into her own series of films (instead of doing so with the far more likeable (and better-Bond-buddy) Michelle Yeoh character from Tomorrow Never Dies who was awesome). Certainly one of the better Bonds, and glad to see Brosnan's era end with a bang (instead of the dull and meanering World is Not Enough).

-Eight Crazy Nights: Nice to see Sandler stretch into something somewhat different by going the animation route. It's not a holiday classic, but neither is it typical holiday trash fare.

-Solaris: I remember I saw this, but not caring for it. I don't remember much about it.

-Treasure Planet: Never saw this, had been meaning to see it at least once.

-Analyze That: Not as good as it's predecessor, it still gets some credit for reuniting the cast from the original.

-Star Trek: Nemesis: Regardless of how you feel about the movie, opening a Trek film 5 days before a Lord of the Rings movie, which shares a similar core fanbase in addition to wider audience appeal, is just the dumbest ****ing thing I've ever heard of in regards to film releases.

The film itself I know gets mixed responses, but I think a lot of that is unfairly piled upon it due to the boxoffice failure (resulting, I feel, primarily from the LTOR proximity). But the film had the cards stacked against it- it was following what was arguably the second worst Trek film ever (the franchise-killing Insurrection), and had the least popular Trek show on the air during it's weakest seasons (so no TV clout to leverage). It would have taken the best Trek film ever made to recover from that hole that had been dug- a merely average one just couldn't do it.

When I first saw it, I thought the film was one of the better Trek films (though I felt B4 should have been Lore, etc), even if it was an echo of Wrath of Kahn. As I dwelled on it, I did start to notice some of it's flaws (the pointlessness of the Mad Max dune buggy sequence, etc) but I think the film's strengths still far outweigh it's faults. It also provides what is arguably the best tactical space battle in the entire franchise with the amazing showdown between the Enterprise-E and Scimitar.

-The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: My favorite of the trilogy (though, oddly, my least favorite Extended Edition- just too many "all our hopes lay with two little hobbits somewhere out there..." repetitive comments added in to the film) as the Battle of Helms Deep has a level of familiarity and human