Category Archives: 90’s movies
Timecop
Timecop 1994
I think it’s funny that the last time I participated in The Lamb’s movie of the month it was Demolition Man, a 90’s sci-fi movie that featured an 80’s action star and someone getting frozen and shattered, and this time around I watched a 90’s sci-fi movie that featured an 80’s action star and someone getting frozen and partially shattered. Anyway, this is one of Jean Claude Van Damme’s biggest movies from that era and with good reason. It came out a year after Demolition Man, but it tried to be a much more serious movie than the former. There is a heavily sci-fi mumbo jumbo plot, but instead of just jumping forward in time to a utopia, there is quite a bit of jumping back and forth through time with the occasional alternate timelines, and surprisingly I thought they were actually fairly well thought out and intriguing. It also featured Mia Sara who I remembered from the Ridley Scott fantasy movie Legend and she has a bit of a sex scene in the beginning of the movie that I wasn’t quite expecting. Overall the movie wasn’t quite as much 90’s cheese as I was expecting, and while it’s not the greatest sci-fi action movie by any stretch of the imagination, I had a really great time watching it and it was better than I was expecting it to be.
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The Crow
The Crow 1994
I missed out on a few things that I wanted to do as far as scheduling goes, I wanted to watch all of the sequels before watching the original and have the review of this one up on Devil’s Night, right before Halloween. Instead, I only watched the first sequel and then watched this one on Halloween. But I’m sure none of this is very interesting to anyone reading this so I’ll just get straight to it. I loved the Crow when I first saw it, I probably did not watch this in theaters as I would have been 14 at the time and I was not the type of teenager who saw a lot of R rated movies in theaters. But when I did watch it, I fell in love with it, and I was also very intrigued with the whole behind the scenes story about Brandon Lee’s tragic death during filming and the early computer and optical graphics to complete the movie without him. But the style, the writing, and the feel of it still holds up, it’s extremely quotable and filled with memorable characters and an amazing soundtrack. I’m honestly a little disappointed that it’s taken me this long to rewatch it.
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The Crow: City of Angels
The Crow: City of Angels 1996
I’ve been wanting to get to these movies for a while now, even though out of the four of them, there’s only one that I’ve seen and that same one is the only one that’s considered good. For that reason, I wanted to save it until the end, but I also wanted to be able to publish it on Devil’s Night, since the movie takes place around that day. After watching this movie, it really makes me want to skip straight to the original. This is a pale copy that pretends to be a sequel while at the same time apes nearly everything that made the original good, with only a handful of switcheroos here and there. Everything from the effects, to the stunts, even the soundtrack is not nearly as well done or entertaining. And since it’s been so long since I’ve watched the original, I spent most of the time being reminded of moments from the Brandon Lee version that were done immensely better. It has a few interesting moments here and there, but for the most part it tries to be like the original, but really misses the mark.
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Judge Dredd
Judge Dredd 1995
I’ve been wanting to watch this movie for a while, ever since I watched the Judge Minty short even though I know it’s a far cry from the more serious tone of both the short and the recent Dredd movie with Karl Urban. What really made me want to watch it was watching Demolition Man which also starred Sylvester Stallone and had Rob Schneider in a small role, so I wanted to watch this movie with the small thought in mind that this is a future that takes place after Demolition Man, and in a lot of ways there are some similarities, but this is a very different movie than Demolition Man. I also went into this thinking that it was going to be a very bad schlockfest with Schneider hamming it up and Stallone giving a bad performance, and yet it’s not that nearly as much as I expected it to be. It’s actually a relatively good movie, but it has a poor script that doesn’t make good use of the characters, and it’s also notable for breaking one of the only things that I know about Judge Dredd the comic character: he never takes off his helmet, and yet Stallone takes his helmet off a mere 15 minutes into the movie and doesn’t put it back on again until the very end.
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Almost Super: Demolition Man
Almost Super: Demolition Man 1993
I realized that it’s been quite a while since I’ve written one of these “Almost Super” reviews. And this past weekend I watched Demolition Man which had me thinking through most of the movie that it feels like it could easily be the prequel to Judge Dredd. It’s got Rob Schneider in it, and though it may be set in a utopian future rather than a dystopian future it has a similar feel to it. Well, a similar feel to the trailers that I’ve seen for Judge Dredd since I haven’t technically watched that one just yet. It also happened to be the Movie Of The Month over at the Lamb so I thought it would be a perfect movie to use my tag for movies that aren’t quite a superhero movie, but share a lot of the same qualities with them. Anyway, for the actual movie itself, Demolition Man was a fun little 90’s cheesy action movie with both Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes hamming it up with as many action one-liners as they can fit into their dialogue. It had a lot of really odd future ideas in it, but it was a fun ride while it lasted.
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Toxic Crusaders
Toxic Crusaders: The Movie 1991
Just when I thought I was done with the Toxic Avenger I noticed that they had collected some of the cartoon episodes and made it movie length. Not only that, but it’s currently available to watch on YouTube on Troma’s official YouTube channel, though for some reason the four live action Toxie movies aren’t available anymore. It’s a weird concept to turn a campy movie with so much sex and violence into a children’s cartoon. Something similar had been done before with Rambo having been made into a cartoon, but this at least has a superhero angle going for it. The animation is typical low quality like many of the mass produced cartoon properties of the 80’s and early 90’s. The writing is very formulaic, the voice acting is generally below average, but it’s sprinkled with moments of humor that hit me in just the right way, and the formulas fell right along with many of the cheesy cartoons I grew up with and I didn’t hate watching it by a longshot.
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The Rocketeer
The Rocketeer 1991
I know I watched this movie ages ago when I was younger, but rewatching it today I realized that the only thing I remembered from my first watch of this movie was that the guy had a rocketpack and it took place in the 30’s. When watching it again, I was really impressed with the style and the feeling of the movie. I also recognized so many different actors in this movie that I didn’t realize were in here. Mainly it was Alan Alda who I’ve been seeing in a lot of great roles recently. I did think there were some overly ridiculous plot points towards the end of the movie, but overall I quite enjoyed it. It’s been something pretty different than a lot of the movies that I’ve been watching lately for this site. It does slightly make me want to re-watch Captain America which was done by the same director, Joe Johnston. I don’t think it quite lives up to the quality of Captain America, but it still has quite a few charms to it.
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Batman & Robin
Batman & Robin 1997
I decided to watch this as part of the ipc’s Shitfest 2013 so keep an eye out for a slightly different version of this review over there. When Batman & Robin first came out it was pretty anticipated. While Arnold Shwarzenegger wasn’t the most obvious choice for Mr. Freeze, he did at least look the part in the trailers, somewhat. I wish I could remember what my initial reaction to the movie was, but if I had to guess I would say that I enjoyed it but also noticed a few things that weren’t quite right with the movie. The puns that crept into the last movie have steamrolled into this one full force. The action became more cartoonish, and the neon visuals were bigger and more colorful. This movie seemed to have taken on a life of its own, and when all was said and done, it almost no longer resembled Batman outside of the costumes.
Batman Forever
Batman Forever 1995
It’s been a while since I’ve seen this movie, though I remember loving it when it first came out. I was 15 at the time and remember going to Six Flags that summer and getting that question mark logo you see in the poster below on a t-shirt that I wore quite often for probably a year or more afterwards. I also find it somewhat interesting that there are actually several inside jokes that I don’t think I ever got when I was younger because I wasn’t that knowledgeable about the Batman universe outside of the movies or the animated series. There’s a brief reference to Nightwing, and at the end the psychologist’s name is Burton. After the very dark and gothic version of Gotham from Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher took over the reigns and lightened it up both in terms of his garish neon lighting as well as his pun-filled humor. None of this really sat well with me and it only portends things to come in the next movie Batman and Robin. It was filled with too many jokes and silliness that it barely felt like a Batman movie. While there are still some decent action sequences and other moments here and there, it’s a far cry from the quality seen in the Burton movies previously.
Almost Super: The Matrix
Almost Super: The Matrix 1999
This was a bit of a tough decision on whether or not to tag this movie with my “Almost Super” tag. This is very much like a superhero origin story, Neo has superhuman abilities, even an alter ego, and the visuals are very influenced by comic books in some places. But in the end, the philosophical elements and especially the sci-fi setting to it put this in the realm of a not-quite superhero. I saw this in theaters when it first came out, as well as the two sequels which I don’t think are as bad as everyone makes them out to seem, even though I won’t be continuing on to watch them just now. The movie was one of the biggest surprises to come out that year, it had a great marketing campaign with the question “What is the Matrix?” and it’s pretty much a cultural milestone, noted by the hundreds of bullet time Trinity jump kick parodies over the years. But even with the parodies doing their best to tarnish several of the scenes, the movie still holds up as one of the best movies out there.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 