Memories are questioned, Arnold gets meta, and cannibals take over the American frontier.
These movies were low key gems, but you'd never know it looking at their box office
draw.
The Keanu Reeves renaissance continues, largely via his "John Wick" movie franchise about
a beleaguered former assassin, but he has already appeared in a whole host of great
movies starring beleaguered guys named John — from Johnny Utah to John Constantine to
Don John.
But easily one of the best and weirdest Johns that Reeves has played is the titular role
in "Johnny Mnemonic," a much-derided movie in spite of its all-star cast.
It almost single handedly set back the cyberpunk movement while earning Reeves a Razzie nod
for Worst Actor.
"Hit me."
Reeves' Johnny is trapped by his circumstances: he's traded in his memories to be a "data
courier" — his brain is "wired" to receive uploads.
He wants to do one big job in order to make money and buy back the memories he's lost.
But yesterday's technobabble is today's modern age.
It's honestly a wonder that millennials haven't gravitated more toward this movie.
"I want to get out of this rat hole.
I want to get online.
I need a computer."
While a fairly low budget is no help, the flick's biggest flaw is perhaps that it came
out about 20 years too early for your average moviegoers to relate to its cyberpunk subject
matter.
"The Dark Half" is based on the novel of the same name by the spooky king of horror prose,
Stephen King.
Definitely one of the stranger concepts, it's the story of a writer who has abandoned his
pen name, only to find his phony persona has come to life — with murder on its mind.
While the novel had a concept seemingly — or solely — perfect for the written word, the
movie has one excellent attribute that makes it a standout: the late cinematic king of
horror, director George Romero.
"The Dark Half" delivers some gruesome images up there with Romero's best.
One scene in particular features a brain tumor "reacting" to its removal — a scene that
will make you anxious the next time you get a headache.
Unfortunately, the movie failed to click with audiences; it made just over $10 million.
Still, the movie's worth a watch, especially with an adept Timothy Hutton in a double role
playing both the writer and his evil pseudonym counterpart.
"Dead Alive" was one of the most surprising horror films of the '90s.
Filmed on a shoestring budget of only $3 million by Peter Jackson, "Dead Alive" is a gory,
inventive romp about a teenager fighting off a horde of zombies… and dealing with some
nasty mother issues too.
Although its low budget should have made it an easy success, the film only made $240,000
stateside, and it would be unjustly ignored by American audiences until Jackson's later
success prompted a re-evaluation.
It might not have connected with American audiences, but across the pond, the film had
a profound influence on another young horror buff, Edgar Wright, who would pay homage to
the film in his own movie "Shaun of the Dead."
Even setting its influence on other movies aside, "Dead Alive" is electrifying, with
some of the best practical effects seen in a horror movie — and a truly innovative
use of a lawnmower.
"Party's over."
You might think you've seen bloody horror movies, but you've almost certainly never
seen anything quite like "Dead Alive."
Dreamworks didn't know what they had in "Galaxy Quest."
Upon its release in December 1999, the sci-fi comedy about the cast of a "Star Trek"-type
TV series getting whisked away on a real space adventure opened at an embarrassing #7 for
its weekend at the US box office.
As Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg would later admit to director Dean Parisot,
the studio bungled the promotion of the quirky, whip-smart comedy as a kid-targeted adventure,
and by and large failed to sell the movie to mass audiences.
Nevertheless, the film picked up momentum over the course of its theatrical run, eventually
recouping twice its production budget over the course of five months.
Maybe it's an exaggeration to call it a "box office bomb," but considering a legacy with
almost no promotion, it's clear that it could have performed so much better if given the
proper support.
"You guys came.
Who wants the grand tour?"
"Galaxy Quest" is now a highly-regarded film in the sci-fi canon, boasting career-high
performances from Sigourney Weaver, Tim Allen, and the late Alan Rickman.
In addition to being a charming work in its own right, "Galaxy Quest" also has a special
place in the hearts of "Star Trek" fans, who have adopted it into their own (uneven) film
canon.
It's a film, in part, about fandom itself, and its devotees honored it with the retrospective
film "Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary" for its 20th anniversary in 2019.
Ralph Bakshi, the man that made the infamous "Fritz the Cat" — the first animated film
to ever receive an X rating from the MPAA — combined sex and cartoons one more time
with "Cool World."
In it, a cartoonist has to resist the sexual advances of his own creation, a "doodle" named
Holli Would — as in, "would do anything" — while a detective works to prevent her
from breaking down the boundaries of reality.
It can be a strange movie, with a juxtaposition of live-action and animation that looks like
a bizarro porn parody of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," but it's a fascinating experiment.
Audiences weren't exactly drawn to the film, and it ended up only recouping half of its
$30 million budget, which isn't exactly surprising.
While it likely won't turn up on anyone's "Best of the '90s" list anytime soon, the
film is so singular in its conception that it's worth seeing, at least once.
Whereas Captain America is box office gold today, in the early '90s, a superhero period
piece about a handsome, patriotic hero in WWII could barely cover its own budget.
"The Rocketeer" follows mechanic Cliff as he becomes a hero by donning a stylish jacket
and rocket pack to uncover a hidden Nazi plot in Hollywood.
"The Rocketeer" has got a refreshing ease to the pacing and style — plus stylish design
and earnest execution.
"How do I look?"
"Like a hood ornament."
It's easy to see why director Joe Johnston got the chance to reinvent another superhero
decades later with "Captain America: The First Avenger"; his "Rocketeer" is a strong, criminally-underrated
film that just didn't really connect with audiences.
It may be that the film was released too early to tap into the now-current superhero zeitgeist,
or maybe it was ignored in favor of other family fare.
Either way, the film is absolutely worth revisiting, especially with Timothy Dalton's performance
as an over-the-top, Errol Flynn-esque actor.
While "Alien" might be the most well-known horror movie that takes place in space, it's
far from the only one.
Paul W.S.
Anderson's "Event Horizon" is a slow-simmering film that taps into that uniquely human fear
of space as an endless, empty void.
The movie follows a crew investigating a distress signal coming from the titular spaceship,
which had disappeared seven years prior.
What follows is a kaleidoscope of horrifying images, spooky Latin phrases, and the creeping
realization that flying millions of miles through space doesn't put you any farther
away from hell.
"Oh my god.
What happened to your eyes?"
"Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see."
"Horizon" is pretty handily Anderson's best movie, combining the bloody genre thrills
that pervade his other work with an able cast that is able to inject the necessary gravitas.
Sam Neil in particular is absolutely terrifying as the member of the space crew most susceptible
to the dark whispers of the otherworldly horror on the ship.
If the "Alien" movies didn't completely turn you away from space travel, then "Event Horizon"
certainly will.
The late '90s were a time of rapid change in the animation industry.
The Disney Renaissance had revived mass interest in animated films, but Disney alone seemed
capable of turning one into a massive hit.
After the continued success of Pixar proved that computer-driven animation was here to
stay, studios across Hollywood and beyond were scrambling for a direction.
It was during this time that Warner Bros. recruited animator Brad Bird to overhaul their
process with an ambitious new feature called "The Iron Giant."
"The Iron Giant" is a masterful film on both a technical and story level, showcasing the
potential of blending traditional and digital animation in service of spinning a heartwarming
sci-fi twist on a classic "boy and his dog" narrative.
Accessible to kids but textured enough for adults, "The Iron Giant" is just about everything
you could want from an all-ages animated adventure film.
Except, by the time it was finished, Warner Bros. had already given up on its feature
animation department.
The financial failure of their previous release, "Quest for Camelot," convinced them to get
out of the business, so "The Iron Giant" was released with minimal promotion and recouped
a mere $23 million from its $70 million budget.
A twist ending was yet to come, however, as critical acclaim and frequent replays on cable's
Cartoon Network helped the film find a cult following; today "The Iron Giant" is a recognizable
pop culture touchstone — making cameos in "Ready Player One" and "Space Jam: A New Legacy"
— and is considered one of the best animated movies... perhaps even one of the best science
fiction movies... of all time.
The Coen Brothers have made a successful career for themselves with a slew of distinctive
scripts.
While they've found plenty of success, and cult status, that doesn't mean they're immune
to failure, even for one of their best movies.
"The Hudsucker Proxy" is a biting satire of big business and, although filled with characters
who "talk fast and wear sharp clothes," is a loving homage to classic feel-good movies
like "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town" and "It's A Wonderful Life."
The film follows Norville Barnes as he moves to New York from Indiana and accidentally
becomes head of a massive company as the unknowing patsy for a complicated scheme to depress
stock prices.
"Whoa."
As with any Coen Brothers movie, the film is packed to the brim with memorable dialogue
and likable characters, but the look of "Hudsucker" was so striking that more than a few critics
and audiences felt put off and confused.
In his review, Roger Ebert called the film "all surface and no substance," but argued
that it was "a pleasure to regard" and well worth the trip to the theater.
If nothing else, there's never been a better explanation for why hula hoops exist.
"Last Action Hero" has the perfect recipe for a hit movie in the 2020s.
It stars Hollywood's pre-eminent muscle man playing a parody of his own stock character
in a marathon of cute cameos and gags about the tropes of action cinema.
"I'll be back.
Ha!
You didn't know I was going to say that, did you?"
"That's what you always say."
The movie starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, was directed by John "Die Hard" McTiernan, and
arrived in theaters about 30 years too early.
For modern audiences who love nothing more than when movies shamelessly riff on other,
more familiar movies, it'd likely have been both a critical darling and a box office hit.
In 1993, however, "Last Action Hero" was seen as a career-threatening dud for all involved.
It barely stood a chance to begin with, opening against the second weekend of "Jurassic Park,"
which would soon unseat "E.T."
as the highest-grossing film in US history.
Critical reception didn't do it any favors, either; Variety's review dismissed it as "a
joyless, soulless machine of a movie," and they weren't its only haters.
Though it would recoup its budget internationally, it seriously underperformed at the domestic
box office and would be Schwarzenegger's only outright flop of the 1990s.
In hindsight, "Last Action Hero" is one of the actor's better comedies.
One part "Terminator 2," one part "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?," and one part Robert Altman's
"The Player," it's an absolute treat for fans of '80s and '90s Hollywood excess.
It's joke-dense, action-packed, and littered with easter eggs for the eagle-eyed cinephile.
The original "Tank Girl" comics are an energetic, frenetic, counter-culture blast to the eyeballs
with a unique art style by Jamie Hewlett, but it was the character of Tank Girl herself
that endeared the comic to fans.
She was rude, hyper-violent, and so utterly unconcerned with other people's opinions that
she became a '90s embodiment of riot grrrl-adjacent "punk."
Depicting a comic with such a specific visual voice and character might have been a tall
order, but the film adaptation of Tank Girl does about as good a job as it's possible
to do with the backing of a major film studio.
"Drop something?
Haha."
"Ah, s---."
To start with, Lori Petty is a picture-perfect Tank Girl, nailing the irreverence and punk
attitude of the character.
The movie itself is a mishmash tonally and is almost impossible to defend or recommend
— you either "get" it or walk away shaking your head.
The movie is defiantly visually abrasive, but loaded with a dynamite soundtrack and
a charismatic lead.
"Have you ever jacked in?
Have you ever wire-tripped?"
Today, filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow is best known as the first woman to win the Academy Award
for Best Director, as well as the director of the 1991 classic "Point Break" starring
Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze.
In between these two triumphs, however, Bigelow's career was nearly tanked by the colossal box
office failure of her 1995 cyberpunk noir, "Strange Days."
Written by Bigelow's ex-husband James Cameron and occasional Martin Scorsese collaborator
Jay Cocks, "Strange Days" is a stylish, visceral thriller set in a near-future in which memories
can be recorded, relived, and exchanged on the black market.
When a scummy memory dealer happens across a recorded memory of a heinous crime, he teams
up with a lovelorn badass to solve a case that the police don't seem to care about.
"Strange Days" harshly divided critics upon its release and was a commercial disaster,
winning back just short of $8 million on a $42 million budget.
In the decades since, however, the film has been rediscovered and reevaluated as a lost
treasure of genre cinema and an example of some of Bigelow's finest work as a director.
With an unflinching eye and style to spare, "Strange Days" touches on themes of police
brutality, sexual violence, and the voyeuristic spectacle of suffering, all of which are as
relevant today as they were in 1995.
It also features one of the great unsung heroines of science fiction in Angela Bassett's "Mace"
Mason.
Notoriously hard to find but occasionally reappearing on major streaming services, "Strange
Days" is worth going out of your way to find.
"Ravenous" is a brilliant subversion of audience expectations, a horror movie as funny as it
is scary.
The film follows a mid-19th century war hero exiled in the Sierra Nevada, investigating
stories of a Wendigo — a human given otherworldly strength after eating the flesh of another
man.
Guy Pearce shines as the ousted captain, struggling with survivor's guilt and the consequences
of the actions which brought him into exile.
The entire cast is able to tap into the film's tone, pushing for laughs in humorous scenes
and giving weight to the dramatic ones.
Ultimately, the film's a biting satire of American exceptionalism, capitalism, and Manifest
Destiny.
It's a rare film that's able to make such subject matter work within a horror movie
structure — and doubly so within a film that's funny as well.
Audiences likely missed out on this cannibalistic creme de la creme due mostly to a trailer
that misrepresented the tone of the movie, selling it as an awkward, comedic period piece.
Don't be fooled, though, "Ravenous" has a lot of meat on its bones.
Superhero movies might not have been all that popular in the '90s, but they were at least
more popular than superhero parodies.
With that in mind, "Mystery Men" never really had a chance.
Still, people who slept on the film missed an endearing superhero story with one of the
strangest casts ever assembled: Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Tom Waits, Eddie Izzard,
Paul Reubens, Hank Azaria... and a Michael Bay cameo.
It's a quintessentially '90s movie, complete with a Dane Cook sighting and a music video
tie-in to Smash Mouth's "All Star."
With the current glut of superhero movies, it's a delight watching the misfits of "Mystery
Men" fumble around with their mostly useless superpowers.
"You can't throw a knife sometimes?"
"No I can't.
You can't use a rake sometimes?"
"No, I'm the Shoveler."
"Well I'm the Blue Raja.
I'm not Stab Man."
In fact, many of the jokes in the film have actually improved with age.
As frustrating as it must be for any artist to be years ahead of their time, it must be
agony to precede their moment by mere months.
Such was the case for writer/director Alex Proyas.
His 1998 film "Dark City" is a rain-soaked, leather-clad sci-fi thriller about a man who
learns his reality is not what it seems and that he and everyone he knows is being manipulated
by an invisible malevolent force.
"They mix and match our memories as they see fit, trying to divine what makes us unique."
If you think that sounds sort of like 1999's "The Matrix," you're not the only one — the
ten people who saw "Dark City" in theaters also thought so, as did critic Roger Ebert.
"Dark City" was dropped into theaters in February 1998, debuting at #4 at the domestic box office
and sliding ever downward from there, barely winning back its $27 million budget.
Just a year later, "The Matrix" would become a massive pop cultural phenomenon and Hollywood
action cinema would never again be the same.
"Dark City" would have to settle for status as a cult classic, albeit one that Ebert recorded
a rare commentary track for its DVD.
Perhaps in no universe does "Dark City" receive the same love and attention as the Wachowski
masterpiece.
Nonetheless, "Dark City" still deserves better than languishing in obscurity.
Weird, moody, and distinctively '90s, "Dark City" is like a missing tonal link between
"The Matrix" and "Blade Runner," and is worth a watch for any science fiction devotee.
After debuting as a feature director with five consecutive hits, Tim Burton pivoted
away from his usual flights of fancy towards a quirky, black-and-white biopic saluting
one of the most famously inept filmmakers of all time, Edward D. Wood, Jr.
Starring Johnny Depp as the titular auteur of shlock, "Ed Wood" is a terrific showbiz
comedy with tremendous heart.
Wood's story — or at least, this version of it — fits the Tim Burton mold perfectly,
painting a portrait of a man whose quirks make him an outsider, until he seizes the
opportunity to share his uniqueness with the world.
Unlike the talented Edward Scissorhands, however, what makes Wood unique is a total blindness
to how terrible his art really is.
"Ed Wood" is Tim Burton's most critically-celebrated film, winning Martin Landau an Academy Award
for his supporting role as washed-up horror icon Béla Lugosi.
For all its acclaim, however, it was a clunker at the box office, recouping only about a
third of its production budget.
It remains Burton's lowest-grossing film by far, and he has rarely strayed from his signature
blood-and-pinstripes aesthetic since.