DVD: Divine Viewing Diversions
Nothing brings back the memories of the distant past quite as dynamically as the movies of that time. Sometimes they make 20 years ago seem like two or three years ago; sometimes they really do seem at least a couple of decades removed.
Here’s the lineup of theatrical movies that dominated the multiplex marquees of exactly 20 years ago.
And don’t be surprised at how vivid your memory of these films are. Especially the ones you either loved or hated. Or caught up with on smaller screens over the years in between.
And that was long enough ago that multiplexes were a relatively new phenomenon.
So say hello – again – to the movies of the summer of 1998.
“SAVING PRIVATE RYAN” (R)
Director Steven Spielberg’s martial masterpiece was not only the year’s box-office champ – taking in well over $200 million domestically – it also took home Oscars for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing, and was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction and Set Decoration, Best Music and Best Makeup. Hanks stars in this World War II drama as a captain assigned to take his squad of seven into France so they can locate the title character, a paratrooper played by Matt Damon, whose three brothers all have been killed in combat, and help him get home. The stunning first half-hour is as relentless and harrowing and realistic a depiction of warfare – in this case, the Normandy landing – as has ever been brought to the movie screen. Technically brilliant and emotionally devastating, this accomplished and unforgettable war-is-hell drama is remarkably authentic, a flesh-and-blood depiction of a moving mission of mercy.
“ARMAGEDDON” (PG-13)
The year’s runner-up at the box office, also clearing the $200 million hurdle, came from director Michael Bay, who has since come to be identified with the commercially successful but critically reviled “Transformers” franchise. It managed to snare four Oscar nominations – for Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Song (“I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”). “Armageddon” is a science-fiction adventure starring Bruce Willis as a veteran oil-well driller who rounds up a group of oil riggers, and the motley crew attempts to save humanity by planting a nuclear bomb on an asteroid. This doom-and-gloom blockbuster was empty-headed, overproduced and top-heavy with its special effects, and featured a parade of ho-hum-here-we-go-again explosions, hoping for the drill of a lifetime but not even coming close. It did, however, offer a big, familiar supporting cast, including Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Owen Wilson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Steve Buscemi, Keith David and Eddie Griffin, and featured narrator Charlton Heston. Loud, long, and lamentable, this is one doomsday thriller that, in terms of emotional involvement, keeps us all at Bay.
“THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY” (R)
In heady third place at the box office was the popular and influential “There’s Something About Mary,” a boundary-pushing comedy from the Farrelly brothers (the makers of “Dumb and Dumber”) that was punctuated with what used to be called water-cooler moments of I-can’t-believe-they-went-there outrageousness. Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz and a hilarious Matt Dillon head the game cast in an insinuating romp about a guy still in love with the woman he wanted to take to the high-school prom back in the day, until he endured a painful, embarrassing, and indelible accident involving a zipper – enough said – on prom night. Political incorrectness is the order of the day, as is the sky-high gross-out quotient in an unapologetically low-brow farce that boasts half-a-dozen spit-out-your-popcorn memories and lots of filler and dead spots in between the rude and raunchy sight gags. Still, Diaz, Stiller and Dillon shine and transcend the script’s stinginess with character delineation. Just keep in mind that you’ll never again be able to say “hair gel” without snickering.
“DOCTOR DOLITTLE” (PG-13)
At a time when a reinvented Eddie Murphy was the king of the family-film box office, he headlined this non-musical remake, based on the stories by Hugh Lofting, of a 1967 musical starring Rex Harrison. The comedy star plays a self-absorbed, workaholic doctor who rediscovers a unique skill he had as a child: understanding animals’ speech. So he starts communicating with every four-legged, two-legged and no-legged creature in the county. This is a gimmicky comedy, to be sure. But it turns out to be one richly fertile gimmick, breeding a whole species of audience-friendly, housebroken kid-flick laughs. Despite a plot that’s thinner than a tiger’s eyelid, the film is a decided improvement over the original. Celebrity voiceovers that bring the animals to life include funny contributions from Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres, Garry Shandling, Albert Brooks, Jenna Elfman, Gilbert Gottfried, John Leguizamo, Paul Reubens, Norm MacDonald, Julie Kavner and Jonathan Lipnicki, with Murphy essentially playing straight man to all the cute animal comics. For the kids, boffo yuks rain like cats and dogs as magnetic Murphy finds a balance among levity, gravity and barnside manner.
“GODZILLA” (PG-13)
The attention-getting ad campaign for this umpteenth Godzilla flick proclaimed that “Size Does Matter.” And here’s how much: The large leapin’ lizard at the center of this campy creature feature was so sizable, he (it?) nearly crushed the whole movie and our tingly enjoyment of it. This was a high-tech updating of a movie icon, one that abandoned the Pacific Ocean and instead came to terrorize the Big Apple by doing his (its?) version of the Wall Street crash, the Village stomp, and, Godzilla willing, some radical and immediate urban renewal. Needless to say, the undeniably spectacular special effects were the one-dimensional main attraction, the tail that wagged the reptile. But he (it) never quite became, as intended, The Lizard of Oz, because the woeful dialogue helped to flush our sense of dread right through us. The actors on hand, including Matthew Broderick, Hank Azaria and Jean Reno, were just along for the ride, playing skimpily delineated supporting characters acting opposite the computer-generated whatever-it-was in New York Harbor. But the film builds up no steam. Not only is there no awe, there’s barely any “Aw, shucks.”
“THE TRUMAN SHOW” (PG)
Australian director Peter Weir brings a master’s light touch to this terrific tall tale, and Jim Carrey is the perfect leading man in a role that’s a lot more demanding than his early, goofy starring showcases. Here, Carrey plays an insurance salesman who discovers that his entire life has been a long-running, around-the-clock, internationally popular and addictive television program that everyone has known about but him. Twenty years ago, “The Truman Show” (the true man show?) essentially prophesied our fascination with reality TV while Carrey’s titular everyman, Truman Burbank, experienced a paranoid nightmare in a sunny seaside town that seemed to come straight out of Disneyland. Ingenious, provocative, cheerfully subversive, and beautifully controlled, this allegory-fantasy, full of intelligent insights and graceful metaphors, is accessible to viewers of all ages. The film taps into our collective fear of being truly alone in the universe, and forces us to question our media-mad and video-glad society. Surreal, hypnotic, moving and entertaining, this was one of the year’s best movies as well as one of the most underappreciated.
“MULAN” (G)
This musical adaptation of an ancient and popular Chinese legend arrived in theaters as further proof – as if we needed any – that we were in the midst of a Golden Age of Animation. And still are. It’s about a stubbornly persistent girl in ancient China who disguises herself as a boy – a crime punishable by death – so that she can take her father’s place in the Imperial Army, thus bringing honor to her family. Effectively dramatic with sometimes self-conscious flourishes of comic relief, “Mulan” is a timeless folk tale about a clash within a tradition-bound society that offers an intriguing narrative, dazzling artwork, spirited action, and a handful of smoothly integrated musical numbers, which helped it to snare an Oscar nomination for Best Music. Ming-Na Wen contributes a fine lead reading of the title character, while Eddie Murphy earns his laughs as the voice of the dragon sidekick. And while it’s busy entertaining, the film resonates with subtle commentaries about devotion to family, patriotic duty and female empowerment. A splendid mix of girl-meets-war action adventure, humor, and poignancy, “Mulan” made much moolah – and deserved to.
“THE MASK OF ZORRO” (PG-13)
Oscar-nominated for Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing, this is one of those old-fashioned, “They do make ’em the way they used to” romantic adventures. Starring Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Anthony Hopkins, it’s a larger-than-life swashbuckler about the legendary titular Mexican freedom fighter, a brave and gallant swordsman played by Banderas who battled Spanish rule from behind a distinctive black mask that preserved his secret identity. Hopkins is the aging Zorro who trains his reluctant successor after a lengthy imprisonment. But once Banderas dons the mask and cape, he’s ready for action. And Zeta-Jones, a newcomer at the time, is the heroine and romantic interest. It’s a sweeping fable about a roguish outlaw who makes his mark – a big “Z” – by righting the wrongs committed against the Mexican people by their aristocratic oppressors. The three leads are fine, and the story is told with operatic scale, an overlay of emotion, athletic swordplay, smoothly choreographed stunt work, and mildly campy humor. The only Z’s you’ll catch watching this are the ones Zorro throws.
“THE X FILES” (PG-13)
“The truth is out there” and “Trust no one” were among the catchphrases of the popular television series of the same name that featured paranoia and the paranormal, a cult colossal about extra-terrestrial intrusions, biological warfare, and government conspiracy. In this compelling suspense thriller, which makes a fairly smooth transition to the movie screen, we go on the journey with FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, played on big screen and small by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson – he’s the lifelong believer, she’s the skeptic-but-not-for-long – as they do what the subtitle tells us: They fight the future. If there is to be one. The special effects are, as expected, more elaborate than they were in the TV series, and the visual scope has been expanded, also as expected. As for the two leads in their lived-in roles, they’ve got their slow-sizzle, minimum-contact chemistry down to a science. Like the TV show, this one is about questions, not answers, so you can enjoy it even when you’re not exactly sure what’s going on, which is often. But the dark and eerie mood carries the day in this smart and absorbing chiller. There may be aliens afoot, but “The X Files” leaves you exhilarated rather than … alienated.
“THE HORSE WHISPERER” (PG-13)
After iconic screen actor Robert Redford debuted in the director’s chair by taking home the Oscar as Best Director for “Ordinary People” in 1980, he helmed three more first-rate, well-received films before directing – also producing and starring as the title character in – “The Horse Whisperer,” a romantic drama based on the 1995 best-seller by Nicholas Evans. Redford plays a horse trainer that a woman and her teenage daughter, played by Kristin Scott Thomas and a very young Scarlett Johansson, contact after a tragic riding accident has turned them and their lives upside down. Ultimately, the film is about good old American horse sense and resembles another film enough to suggest that this one might have been titled, with apologies to Clint Eastwood, “The Britches of Madison County.” Redford’s beautifully crafted work does run on a tad long, but it allows for an exploration of such themes as healing and patience and family and trust in addition to romantic love. As for Redford’s role here, he was born to play it and it fits him as comfortably as a favorite pair of jeans. “The Horse Whisperer” is absorbing and poignant and powerfully emotional: a real thoroughbred.
And that – good, bad, or otherwise – was the moviegoing summer of 1998.
