| Member of the Internet Link Exchange | Free Home Pages at GeoCities |
  
|
Nineteen-ninety six has been one of the most successful years in box office history, with many pre-summer films (including Seven, Toy Story, and the two Robin Williams smashes : Jumanji and The Birdcage) grossing in excess of $100 million in the US alone. Then came the Summer blockbusters such as Mission : Impossible, Twister and Independence Day. Whilst the quality of some of these was lacking, the ticket sales went through the roof. However, as always, some of the year's real stars went almost unnoticed… January saw the release of two of the most depressing films ever made : Seven and the Oscar-winning Leaving Las Vegas. On the down-side, however, there was the plain annoying Dangerous Minds and cinema was taken to previously unthinkable depths by the dirty duo of Paul Verhoeven and Joe Esterhaus. They were the men mainly to blame for Showgirls, the 'daring, provocative and poignant' film about naked women and nothing much else. February was a superb month for films. There was the double bill of Robert De Niro 3-hour epics, with Heat and Casino receiving critical acclaim and huge profits. Sadly, the latter was slightly overlooked due to the former, which put De Niro on screen with Al Pacino for the first time ever. It was technically impressive, but at least half an hour too long, unlike Casino. Whilst this did not manage to match up to the undeniably similar Goodfellas, it was still a superb portrayal of the violence and corruption behind Las Vegas, including three superb performances from De Niro, the ever-brilliant Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone, who finally landed a part in a good film and was able to show what a great actress she really is. It was also the month that Trainspotting arrived, to great reviews and massive public approval. At times hilarious, at times poignant and moving, this was only spoiled by the huge hype that it had created. It was brilliant, but not the greatest film of the year, let alone ever. Jumanji provided great special effects and enough shocks to keep the cash pouring in, Desperado was awash with laughs and superb action sequences and created a new level of tongue-in-cheek stupidity. Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek smouldered wonderfully, but many audiences stayed away and missed one of the most fun and outrageous films of the year. Sense and Sensibility was yet another big-earner, winning Emma Thompson a much deserved Oscar for her screenplay. Only one major release, the dull Keanu Reeves vehicle Johnny Mnemonic, disappointed. Finally, February saw the first in a line of many brilliant films which were re-released during '96. Withnail and I is one of the funniest films ever made. Strange Days, the superb yet violent and often disturbing action-thriller from James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow was first off the mark in the mixed month that was March. Despite the big names, the great cast (led by Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett) and it being very, very good, it failed to make an impact at the box-office. John Travolta headed up a superb cast in the hippest film of the year, Get Shorty, a clever and very funny adaptation of the book by cult novelist, Elmore Leonard. This was followed by the huge success that was Disney's Toy Story. Anthony Hopkins was superb in Oliver Stone's flawed epic, Nixon. A similar story is true of Tim Robbins' directorial debut, Dead Man Walking. It had impressive performances from Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, but little else. It obviously thought that it was a lot better than it actually was. March was also the month of Renny Harlin's Cutthroat Island, a highly average, hugely expensive flop. April's packed release schedule included the excellent 12 Monkeys and Broken Arrow. In addition to the latter, there was another silly action film, Jean-Claude Van Damme's Sudden Death. An average Die Hard rip-off, this was only saved by pushing the boundaries of stupidity so far that it made True Lies look realistic. Bad, but incredibly good fun. Woody Allen brought us Mighty Aphrodite, Julia Roberts starred in the turgid Mary Reilly, Shakespeare was brought to the 1930s in the wonderful Richard III, and The Birdcage packed out cinemas nation-wide. However, the real stars (along with 12 Monkeys and Broken Arrow) of this month were a pair of independent releases: the darkly funny Swimming With Sharks (starring man-of-the-moment Kevin Spacey) and Smoke, a film about cigars and daily life! The cast and crew had such fun making it that in two weeks they improvised a superior sequel, Blue in the Face, which was released in May… Sadly, so too were Barb Wire (Pamela Anderson in her first major film) and two utterly atrocious 'comedies' : Leslie Nielsen's Spy Hard (a 'hilarious' attempt to spoof the James Bond series) and Vampire In Brooklyn, another nail in Eddie Murphy's coffin (sorry). Richard Gere starred in the dire courtroom drama, Primal Fear, and handsome young men in tight T-shirts bonded and subsequently drowned in the pale imitation of Dead Poets' Society, White Squall,. The highly controversial Kids proved to be too intense to achieve commercial success, and too average to win the approval of the press, the only people who actually bothered to see it. However, there were some great releases this month. The imaginatively titled Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead was a cool, Tarantino-esque crime thriller (which was accused of copying the films of Tarantino, when in fact is was written before Reservoir Dogs was even being reeled off his typewriter, let alone actually released); Secrets and Lies was a fantastic, touching slice-of-life drama from Mike Leigh; From Dusk Till Dawn was a gloriously gruesome horror pastiche and Fargo was a clever, original murder mystery from the brothers Coen. This month also saw the celebration of National Cinema Day, on which all tickets cost just £1. June was the month of the 'chick flick'. As Euro '96 engulfed the country, the film companies saw fit to release the trio of the well received Moonlight and Valentino, and the not-so-well received How to Make an American Quilt and Now and Then, in which four young actresses were far better than those who played their mature equivalents. It also starred Melanie Griffith, which automatically confines it to the realms of sentimental, sickly sweet, annoying and unfunny romantic 'comedies'. The brilliant, frenzied actioner, The Rock, was by far the best of the Summer's big-budget, effects packed blockbusters. Spike Lee's Girl 6 disappointed the critics and died at the box-office and the gay teenage drama, Beautiful Thing, proved that all that was necessary to make the best film of the month was a good script with believable characters and a refreshing lack of clichés and stereotypes. Mission : Impossible and Twister fled from their August release dates (after Independence Day's record-shattering US opening) to head up July's releases. Both were over-hyped and did not live up to what they promised, but still managed to entertain enough to send them whizzing past the coveted $100 million mark. July 12th was a bad day for comedy, with the putrid pair of releases : Cable Guy and Kingpin. Even Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame was not up to the usual standards of Mickey's creators. In fact, the best things about this month were the re-releases : the Coen brothers' eighties classic Blood Simple, and re-mastered prints of The Godfather, and The Godfather Part II, upon which no more praise could possibly be heaped. August was host to a dire blockbuster double-bill, with the painfully average Schwarzenegger vehicle Eraser, and the utterly abhorrent Independence Day. The awful run of spoofs in 1996 (Spy Hard, Down Periscope) was furthered by The Silence of the Hams (ho ho), Sharon Stone starred in a laughable imitation of Dead Man Walking, Last Dance, and Elijah Wood infuriated every parent who was mercilessly dragged to see Flipper by their children, who adored it. Phenomenon was great for the majority of its running time, before the cop out final reel that went for the tear duct, and in doing so ruined a perfectly good Summer flick. Only Tim Burton's wonderfully imaginative interpretation of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, and the independently released black comedy, The Last Supper, shone. The long delayed Sharon Stone remake, Diabolique, had the most fitting title of the year, the long-awaited Hughes brothers film, Dead Presidents, was shockingly violent but brilliant, and the even longer-awaited sequel to Escape From New York emerged twelve years after the original, in the form of the dull rehash, Escape From L.A. Demi Moore received $12 million for her role in the abomination that was Striptease, and John Grisham's A Time To Kill failed either to entertain or provoke. September's Last Man Standing was a surprise success, pairing 48 Hours' director Walter Hill with the ever-balding Bruce Willis in a violence filled gangster-fest. Prolific director Rob Cohen helmed the unimpressive Dragonheart, and Short Cuts' director Robert Altman pulled out a trump card with the little publicised Kansas City. Dracula: Dead And Loving It did nothing to revive the flagging spoof-movie genre and the latest Austen re-hash saw the appaling Gwyneth Paltrow massacring the role of Emma. Robin Williams, meantime, tried to follow up the success of Jumanji and The Birdcage with the excrutiatingly bad Jack. November saw the sequel to one of the strangest movies of the 90's, The Crow: City Of Angels, which was criticised for failing to capture the sombre mood of it's predecessor, then hastily excused when it was realised that this was mainly due to the tragic death of Brandon Lee, something which could hardly have been repeated for the sequel. Perhaps the finest film of the month though was Neil Jordan's biopic Michael Collins, which managed to convince sceptical British audiences that the former IRA leader was really not as bad as they thought. Yet another of 96's remakes was the John Frankenheimer version of H. G. Wells' The Island Of Dr. Moreau, which failed to do justice to the classic novel. The Fan was let down by a poor screenplay and bad directing, even though it starred the top hollywood pairing of Robert DeNiro and Wesley Snipes. The curious Acts Of Love merely bemused the few that saw it, whilst Chain Reaction (a film produced so cheaply it relied on reusing Mark Mancina's Speed score) was a critical and commercial write-off. The year drew to a close on an altogether more concilliatory note. Mark Herman's superb British drama Brassed Off, Renny Harlin's The Long Kiss Goodnight and the obligatory bi-annual Star Trek movie (this time subtitled First Contact) all providing respectable movie fodder for the last couple of months of the year. 101 Dalmations and Danny DeVito's Matilda amused the kids over the Christmas holidays, but Arnie failed to amuse anyone in the dire Jingle all The Way. On Boxing Day, Silvester Stallone's Daylight opened across the country and we were treated to previews of the excellent Sleepers and long-awaited Evita. Whilst 1996 did play host to some real trash, it also contained some of the greatest releases of the decade, and made up for a disappointing set of Summer blockbusters with true classics such as Seven and 12 Monkeys, which rank alongside any film of the '90s, such as The Usual Suspects and Goodfellas.
Tom Green & Tom Whitaker
[E-mail Tom Green] [E-mail Tom Whitaker] [Sign Our Guestbook] [View Our Guestbook] [Reviews] [Links] [Themes] [Scripts] [Features] Copyright © 1997 Tom Green & Tom Whitaker This page hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page |