Category: 1993

Philadelphia (1993)

Rating 12
Length 2h06
Release 25.2.1994
Director Jonathan Demme
About A young Philadelphia lawyer who is infected with AIDS keeps his homosexuality hidden from his employers. When he is suddenly dismissed, he hires a homophobic lawyer for a wrongful dismissal suit.
Moon: no moon sighting
Where to Watch: Now TV
Trailer:

The Good

  • Both Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks gave incredible performances.
  • The story itself is powerful and one of the first of its kind to explore, or rather challenge, views on sexuality and the stigma of the HIV/AIDS crisis that had been misrepresented in mass media for the entire decade since being recognised as a “novel illness” in the early 80s.
    By no means an easy watch, the film highlights the difference between opinion, morality and the law. It will make you think, learn and question. Something all films try to achieve, but very rarely accomplish.
  • For me, one of the highlights of the film is Daniel Von Bargen as the Jury Foreman. He’s a well known, been in everything, character actor (films include Thinner, The Faculty and A Civil Action). You’ll be forgiven for any presumption you make; don’t worry, the film manipulated you in that way too. He has very few lines, but draws your attention from the start to give a rather surprising and satisfying payoff in the end.

The Bad

  • There’s a use of the camera as Andrew’s POV. I can see what it was trying to achieve, however I felt it distracted and pulled the viewer from the story rather than being emotive and immersive.
  • How was it that Denzel Washington was not even nominated for an Oscar?! I knew he hasn’t won, because I believe he received that honour for Training Day (2002) almost a decade later.

The Ugly

  • The tears. This might be one you watch alone, because there’ll be a point in which this film will break you. When that happens, the cathartic tears will come, but they won’t stop till long after the film’s credits finish.
  • There’s some ugly language used, even by one of our protagonists; Joe. However hard it is to hear them being used, we have to remember the context and it’s representation of a certain time, culture and society. It makes for a hard, but important watch.

Final Thoughts

So good everyone must watch it once in their lifetime, but so heart breaking that it most likely be just that once.

Falling Down (1993) Film Review

Rating 18
Length 1h53
Release 4.6.1993
Director Joel Schumacher
About Bill Foster is an engineer whose increasing frustration levels lead him to act out violently and commit several crimes.
Where to Watch: Netflix
Trailer:

The Good

  • I don’t even know where to start with this film, so I guess I’ll start with that opening. I’ve never felt so triggered from a scene before, but with the heat at the moment, the sound of the traffic outside and the lack of air. I felt that opening.
  • Michael Douglas should have at least been nominated for this performance. I’m still processing the complexity of the character, but there’s not many people who can make me fear them while also empathising with their frustrations. In a similar way to his role in Disclosure, his character goes through a transformation and, you know what?, Michael Douglas is damn good at it.
  • There’s so much to learn. You could watching it for the composition of the visual artistry (the camera being inside the fridge near the beginning and the numerous aesthetic homages to other films), or you could watch it with a view to looking at the psychology, character parallels and individual actions.
  • I absolutely loved Robert Duvall’s character, Pendergast. While I struggled witch how he was treated by his co-workers, I understood it’s place in the plot. The bit I loved the most was that the character really surprised me.
  • This film is scary. It’s scary because of how real this all seems. It also doesn’t seem to blame mental health, but it certainly comments upon the issues people deal with that contribute to trauma, depression and mental ill health.

The Bad

  • While I personally love how the story is told. However, I can imagine some may struggle with how much film withholds about D-Fens. Considering he is our protagonist, we don’t really get any details about him until we’re past the point of no return. Some will struggle with the lack of instant information and may turn off long before they see results.

The Ugly

  • The racism, xenophobia and social deprivation makes this a hard watch. It will stick in the throat and stick with you long after the film has finished. Not because it seems like the views of the creatives, but that it reflects a genuine views and hatred within a community. The part that scares me most, is that the hatred spewed out by D-Fens and others are things I’ve read across social media recently from both Americans and Pro-Brexit Brits.

Final Thoughts

Quite possibly the scariest film I’ve ever watched. It’s not something I’ll watch with any regularity, however it is a film I will recommend.

Dave (1993)

Rating 12

Length 1Hr 50

Release 5.11.1993

Director Ivan Reitman

About Shifty White House chief of staff Bob Alexander (Frank Langella) hatches a scheme to use a double for the president (Kevin Kline) at a public photo opportunity. Small business owner Dave Kovic (Kline) fits the bill, but after the president suffers a debilitating stroke, opportunist Alexander arranges for Dave to step in full time without even informing the First Lady (Sigourney Weaver). It doesn’t take long before the press, the nation and the president’s wife realize something is different.

The Good

  • What a cast. Frank Langella, Ben Kingsley and Ving Rhames all play supporting roles, but its Kevin Dunn’s appearance that caught me off guard. It’s not like he’s been off our screens in the last few years, but I did forget about his presence in the 90s. Here he plays an almost moral compass that’s lost its way.
  • I love the relationship between Kevin Kline’s Dave and Ving Rhames’ Duane. Watching Dave melt the frosty persona is a delight and much more charming than the relationship of Dave and the First Lady.
  • It is a romantic comedy, but I like that the comedy is fluffy and not too over the top. It’s harmless and doesn’t derive it’s humour from taking shots at other people.
  • I do like the idea of looking at the presidency through the eyes of someone who has no political ambition.

The Bad

  • The politics is a little soft and doesn’t provide anything other than a backdrop and landscape for the story to unfold. It’s a riff on Prince and the Pauper or Man in the Iron Mask, but it does little else.
  • I do feel as if we didn’t spend enough time with Kline as Bill Mitchell. Yes, we see enough to know he’s someone who cheats and we are given additional information throughout the film from other people, but I really would have liked one more scene.

The Ugly

  • There’s a few time when the film using the method of speeding the film up to give us humour. It’s seen in many other films, including Romeo + Juliet and it’s just something I truly dislike. It calls attention to it and pulls me out of the story.
  • While I love Kevin Kline on the most part, there’s always something he does that has me cringing in my seat. Perhaps a sign of a good actor that he can throw himself all in, however I don’t like to cringe and this is perhaps, outside of Wild Wild West, the worst for it. I didn’t need the rendition of The Sun Will Come Out and I didn’t need that whole story.

Final Thoughts

It’s a bit too fluffy to be a go to film, but it does have a charm about it.

Hocus Pocus (1993)

Rating PG

Length 1Hr 35

Release 29.10.1993

About After moving to Salem, Mass., teenager Max Dennison (Omri Katz) explores an abandoned house with his sister Dani (Thora Birch) and their new friend, Allison (Vinessa Shaw). After dismissing a story Allison tells as superstitious, Max accidentally frees a coven of evil witches (Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy) who used to live in the house. Now, with the help of a magical cat, the kids must steal the witches’ book of spells to stop them from becoming immortal.

Treat

  • The trio of witches are perfectly cast as contrasting Sanderson Sisters. Bette Midler brings the head strong and witty head witch, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker are the silly foils to Midler’s harshness. It provides a perfect balance.
  • The film has a brilliant set up; in two scenes the film has set up the Curse, its central characters and a family new to the town who have no understanding of Salem’s witchy history.
  • Outside of the opening sequence, it all takes place on All Hallows’ Eve making it a smooth Disney narrative that easily becomes a comfort watch over the years and is up there with The Goonies for nostalgia rewatches that prompt discussion (whether that be in person or online). It’s a true good versus evil and it allows the kids to triumph on their own.
  • It’s a family film, but there are the jokes and comments for the parental benefit that go over little one’s heads.
  • Billy, played wonderfully by Doug Jones, is a carefully placed character that really pays off in the final act. I truly love his ‘go to hell’ moment.
  • This is one film that handles the defeat fake out really well. I always remember the first time watching it and knowing something wasn’t quite right. It had me on edge knowing there was more to the movie.

Trick

  • How has it not gotten a sequel?! Not a reboot. Bette Midler rocked the Winnie for Halloween a few years ago and no one is taking that role from her any time soon. I know there’s a book written that could easily be adapted so Disney, what are you waiting for?

Final Thoughts

A film that put a spell on me the first time I saw it and is one I’ll watch any time it’s on.

Jurassic Park. Halloween Edition (1993)

Rating: PG

Length: 2hr 8

Release: 15.7.1993

About: In Steven Spielberg’s massive blockbuster, paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are among a select group chosen to tour an island theme park populated by dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA. While the park’s mastermind, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), assures everyone that the facility is safe, they find out otherwise when various ferocious predators break free and go on the hunt.

This is no normal review. In fact, it’s possibly not a review at all. Everyone knows this is my all time favourite movie and has been since July 1993 when it set me on my path to geekdom.

It’s a film I’ve watched so often, but I don’t think I’ve ever considered it as a horror, or a film to watch as a lead up to Halloween so the fear factor is never going to be there. I’m too amazed and in all honesty, I want to be there too.

So instead, I’m considering how many tropes and themes that come up in horror movies apply to Jurassic Park. I thought I was on a dud mission, but I was very quickly proven wrong.

Creature Feature

The creature feature is perhaps the most obvious genre this dinosaur disaster fits into. There’s narrative similarities within Jurassic Park and the Creature From the Black Lagoon, a tonal structure that Spielberg brings organically from Jaws and there’s even an audio/visual reference to one of the greatest creature feature: King Kong, just invade you were wondering what they might be keeping on the island. In the same way Black Lagoon has that embedded wonder, Jurassic Park is all smiles until things go very, very wrong.

One key trope from the creature feature (and arguably other horrors) that is seen multiple times is the Scream Queen. Both of our females give their lungs a good airing when found face to face with the prehistoric reptiles and join Faye Wray, Julie Adams and Susan Blackline as Hollywood Hollering Royalty.

Science, Bitches!

Science and playing God is a staple theme in many a horror movie. Frankenstein, The Fly and Jekyll & Hyde all have scientists take on the god-like role of creator. In much the same fashion as the previously mentioned films, the scientists of Ingen fails to understand the true nature of the monster in their captivity and they rebel against the creator.

Of course, this is on a much grander scale so the stakes are higher and the town at risk is bigger. While the revulsion for the monster isn’t present, it’s clear not everyone is happy with the creators.

The Slasher

Hear me out because yes, there’s no Freddy or Michael but some of the rules still apply. I am, of course, talking about the raptors and their story arc.

The fact that we don’t get a sighting of the raptors until the last 20 minutes or so is frightening in itself. All we’ve seen, is their destruction and lethal potential, much in the same way we don’t see the shark in Jaws or the knife break flesh in the infamous ‘shower scene’, our imagination makes quick work of filling in the blanks with scares and blood. The raptors are isolated, imprisoned separately, from the rest of the park. Too dangerous: they indeed claim the film’s largest body count.

Of course, like Michael Myers, when they find freedom the raptors set their sights on human victims which brings us to the glorious stalking kitchen scene. Replace the predatory reptiles with Ghostface and this scene could fit seamlessly into a Scream movie.

I’ll agree that there’s more than one, and there’s no motivation forthcoming but you have to admit, sometimes the explanation sucks and ruins the movie.

The Harbinger of Doom

A trope I only really became familiar with thanks to Cabin in the Woods. A meta horror that calls out all the tropes is perfect education for film.

So, there are two characters that fit the bill of a harbinger within Jurassic Park. The first is Robert Muldoon, who is vocal about the raptors and their dangers. However, the key role goes to Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm. Not only is his entire persona as a theorist of chaos an ideal fit, he has a passionate speech warning Hammond of his companies’ naivety in playing with Science, even going so far as call it ‘rape of the natural world’.

Both Malcolm and Muldoon give us some foresight into the horrors that are to be faced even if, as Malcolm puts it, he ‘hates being right all the time.’

Haunted House

So it’s an island, doesn’t mean the haunted house rules don’t apply. The clear trope that can be seen is the fracturing of the group, repeatedly. Those that do end up on their own; Muldoon, the lawyer and Arnold, die in rather painful and bloody ways.

Now you’ve read this, you may see Jurassic Park in a different way, or maybe you’re like Ian Malcolm and consider it …

Either way, go check it out on Netflix. There it isn’t butchered like a Michael Myer’s victim on Halloween (yup ITV! I’m looking at you)

Han x

Christmas Movie Advent- Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

“But once a calamity ever so great occurred
When two Holidays met by mistake.”


Length: 1Hr 16
About: The film follows the misadventures of Jack Skellington, Halloweentown’s beloved pumpkin king, who has become bored with the same annual routine of frightening people in the “real world.” When Jack accidentally stumbles on Christmastown, all bright colors and warm spirits, he gets a new lease on life — he plots to bring Christmas under his control by kidnapping Santa Claus and taking over the role. But Jack soon discovers even the best-laid plans of mice and skeleton men can go seriously awry.

This is an interesting film for me as I am possibly incorrectly remembering my mum banning my brother from taking me to see this film at the cinema and is perhaps how we ended up seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger fronted Junior (and even if it’s not, brother, it’s the story we’re going with! I watched Junior under protest). I won’t lie; at the time I LOVED good ol’ Arnie waddling around and pretending to be knocked up with Emma Thompson’s baby. But time has not been kind to that film and I’m not certain I’d be able to sit through it now.
It was the year after, when the film aired on my neighbour’s coveted cable, that I hazily remember seeing this film for the first time and not being completely enamored as I thought I’d be. That’s not to say 9 year old me had any taste when it came to films; I loathed Lion King the first time I saw that too.
So it’s quite curious actually that despite never declaring my love of Tim Burton’s cult, and contentiously festive, classic and probably never seeing it more than a handful of times I’ve been gratefully inundated with Jack Skellington based gifts. There are certainly other films of Burton’s that I regard much higher; Sleepy Hollow still hangs on in my ultimate top 10 films and Beetlejuice is not far away from being in it either. This has been my second viewing this year; I’d just finished watching it with my film club in school as part of our Halloween viewing so it’s been interesting watching it with Christmas in mind.

The Good

The stop motion is stunning. Jack is such a perfect character; both as a piece of artwork and as protagonist who is conflicted. While Tim Burton is only credited as the screenwriter on the project, it truly fits within his world. There’s elements that tie this up with Beetlejuice and other films in Burton’s catalogue. I can’t deny that visually, this film is a masterpiece.
Being a musical is a bit of a double edged sword for me, but for now I’ll concentrate on the positives. While I haven’t watched this all that much, I have listened to the soundtrack to death. Danny Elfman stands, for me, alongside the great John Williams for having an instantly recognisable style. Elfman has created beautiful imagery within the songs that they do stand strong away from the visual aspects of the story. There’s a wonderful homage to Beetlejuice within the film’s instrumental suite that I just adore and pulls me into this world further by implying the films are universally linked.
My favourite song will always be Kidnap the Sandy Claws sung by the trio; Lock, Shock and Barrel. Its a underrated song, but has all the charm, fun and blend of both holidays. That’s not to say I haven’t saved any love for the fan favourites, This is Halloween and What’s This?

The Bad

I’m not certain it’s a kid’s film or one that fits within Disney’s branding. Which fits, as it was originally released under the Touchstone banner. It’s rather dark; visually and tonally. I’m not sure when I was a kid I was able to appreciate the approach taken by it. I’d also be weary of showing it to any children I may, or may not, have for fear of scaring them.

The Ugly (Truth)

This, I am certain, will be an unpopular opinion but this doesn’t work as a film for me. The dialogue between the songs doesn’t quite have the punch that I need to keep me engaged with the narrative. And that’s saying something when it’s run time is 76 minutes; you can’t even get a Hobbit out of the Shire in that amount of cinematic time.
Its actually frustrating because the story is there, visually I am enchanted and I want to love it, but it’s those damn songs. They actually outshine, rather than compliment and it should never be that way.

Final Thoughts

So, I’m fond of that skeleton man. I’ll keep pining after the cookie jar the Disney Store bring out every year like Wayne Campbell after the Fender Excalibur, but I will always listen to the soundtrack before watching the movie.

 Han x

Jurassic Park (1993)- PG

jurassic-park

Back in November I went to see my most beloved film in the Royal Albert Hall. I figured reviewing a film I know inside and out would be a good way to dip my toes back into the blogging world.

I first watched this film when I was 8 years old and it very quickly became my comfort movie. If I was unwell, if I couldn’t sleep; there it was like an old friend. I loved this film so much I completed my dissertation around the film and its theme of control.

The Good
It’s hard not to talk about it without bias, but as a blockbuster movie it checks all the boxes. It has pace, bratty children you kind of hope get eaten before the final act and some lines that as soon as they’re uttered, you know they’ll be set out as iconic quotes.
Even now, most of the CGI looks good and I will forever love Nedry’s demise along with the now famous ‘clever girl’

The music is quintessentially John Williams and a piece that complements the action. While the main theme is incredible, it is the section as they arrive to the island that sticks in my mind and floats my heart.

Getting Richard Attenborough out of retirement to play Richard Hammond was a stroke of genius. He has such an eccentricity about him that I can’t help but feel for him as his world collapses. The character that appears on the screen is world’s away from Michael Crichton’s incarnation in his 1991 novel.

Another smart move was to adapt the character of Alan Grant into a a-typical Spielberg leading man; a man who struggles to bond with children, but is resolved by the closing credits. See Close Encounters, Indiana Jones, War of the Worlds and even E.T for others within his body of work.

The Bad
As I’ve grown, I’ve become increasingly irritated by the ‘kitchen’ scene. I just think its a little too…. implausible. I know, I know… it’s a movie about cloned dinosaurs but it’s just a little too comical now to see those terrifying monsters man handling the door like some two man panto horse. I do still enjoy Lex’s ‘cunning’ attempt at confusing the raptor by trapping herself inside the kitchen cupboard. However, it’s not as calculated as I once thought; she looks too scared to be the bad ass I had pinned her as.

I’m also a little saddened by the omission of the last act of the book. There is a complete sub story about the raptors that reads like a directors dream. Okay, snippets make there way into Lost World, but it would have fit perfectly here.

The Ugly
The birds at the end of the movie are not condors! Up until last month, I watched this poignant cut from Alan Grant’s outward gaze to a flock of birds thinking it was a reference to Hammond’s outburst at the dinner scene. It made sense, I loved it.
Alas, I was wrong and it’s just a bunch of pelicans with no relevance to the rest of the movie. I guess that says more about me than the movie though.

Cast- 7
Cinematography- 8
Plot- 6 (missed too many bits from the book)
Pace- 9
Music- 8
Enjoyability- 10