Desperado (1995)
DIRECTOR: Robert Rodriguez
CAST:
Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Joaquim de Almeida, Steve Buscemi, Cheech Marin, Quentin Tarantino, Danny Trejo, Carlos Gomez
REVIEW:
In 1992, film student Robert Rodriguez took a group of complete unknowns (his personal friends) and $7,000 to Mexico and filmed El Mariachi. The so-called ‘$7,000 Wonder’ was successful enough for Columbia Pictures to give Rodriguez a Hollywood-scale budget to essentially remake the unpolished indie (although it’s technically a sequel). The concessions to Hollywood influence over indie freedoms are obvious. Continue reading
Virtuosity (1995)
DIRECTOR: Brett Leonard
CAST: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Kelly Lynch, William Forsythe, William Fichtner, Louise Fletcher, Stephen Spinella, Kevin J. O’Connor
REVIEW:
Virtuosity, from director Brett Leonard (playing in virtual reality for the second time after 1992’s The Lawnmower Man) and screenwriter Eric Bernt, is another in the mid-90s fad of “high-tech” thrillers, following Sneakers and The Net, and like the latter Sandra Bullock vehicle, it fails to offer up anything very original or creative, using a “futuristic” premise for a cheesy thriller long on generic action sequences and bad action movie dialogue and deficient on intelligence or thrills.
Continue readingApollo 13 (1995)
DIRECTOR: Ron Howard
CAST: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan
For those old enough to have watched the April 1970 Apollo 13 crisis unfold live on television, Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 may bring back strong memories. For those who did not experience it at the time, it may serve as a fascinating history lesson. For everyone else, it’s a well-constructed docudrama, and a tribute to what one character refers to as NASA’s finest hour. Continue reading
Braveheart (1995)
DIRECTOR: Mel Gibson
CAST: Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Catherine McCormack, Patrick McGoohan, Angus Macfadyen, Brendan Gleeson
REVIEW:
WARNING: THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN “SPOILERS”
For only his second outing behind the camera, Mel Gibson (who made his directorial debut in 1993’s The Man Without a Face, in which he also starred) has tackled the kind of ambitious undertaking Hollywood rarely mounts anymore, a grand epic throwback to the likes of Spartacus and Lawrence of Arabia. What might be more surprising is that he’s pulled it off in impressive fashion, showing he can handle a lavish production with large-scale battle scenes. In fact, among the directorial debuts or near-debuts of actors-turned-directors, it’s the most impressive entry since Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves five years earlier. Braveheart isn’t perfect, but it’s a rollicking, crowd-pleasing adventure painted on an epic scale with the kind of grandeur that might appeal to fans of Spartacus or The Last of the Mohicans. Continue reading
Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995)
DIRECTOR: John McTiernan
CAST:
Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Irons, Graham Greene, Colleen Camp, Larry Bryggman
REVIEW:
I don’t know if it’s because John McTiernan is back in the director’s seat, or the inclusion of the always high-octane Samuel L. Jackson, or the script, or a combination, but Die Hard With A Vengeance has a higher energy level than Die Hard 2, even if it’s not as tightly-plotted and well-crafted as the original film. Continue reading
While You Were Sleeping (1995)
DIRECTOR: Jon Turtletaub
CAST: Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman, Peter Gallagher, Peter Boyle, Jack Warden, Micole Mercurio, Glynis Johns, Jason Bernard, Michael Rispoli, Monica Keena, Ally Walker
REVIEW:
While a truly exceptional romantic comedy that does something special remains an elusive beast, Hollywood churns out mediocre entries like link sausages. While You Were Sleeping is such a film; it goes down pleasantly and easily for those who don’t demand too much of a movie as long as it indulges their inner romantic, but is assembled wholly from familiar ingredients and does nothing exceptional with any of them. Whether or not you’re the type to appreciate its modest charms, you probably know who you are.
Continue readingRob Roy (1995)
DIRECTOR: Michael Caton-Jones
CAST:
Liam Neeson, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, John Hurt, Brian Cox, Eric Stoltz, Brian McCardie, Andrew Keir
REVIEW:
There actually was a Robert Roy MacGregor, a Scottish cattleman whose battles against wealthy landowners made him a folk hero in 1700s Scotland, but the film by Michael Caton-Jones is only inspired by MacGregor’s story, and ultimately how much or little of it is based on fact is irrelevant to one’s enjoyment of the movie. Continue reading
Priest (1995)
DIRECTOR: Antonia Bird
CAST:
Linus Roache, Tom Wilkinson, Robert Carlyle, Robert Pugh, Christine Tremarco, Lesley Sharp, Cathy Tyson
REVIEW:
It is a not uncommon experience for me to happen across some older independent film I had only fleetingly heard of or not heard of at all, that turns out to be underrated and worthy of more recognition than it received. Priest is not a “great” movie, but it is an intelligent and thoughtful drama that provides some food for thought and a serious examination of themes involving homosexuality (and to a lesser extent sexuality in general), celibacy, incest, and religion, and how they relate to and conflict with each other. Continue reading
Circle of Friends (1995)
DIRECTOR: Pat O’Connor
CAST: Minnie Driver, Chris O’Donnell, Saffron Burrows, Geraldine O’Rawe, Colin Firth, Alan Cumming, Aidan Gillen
REVIEW:
An adaptation by Irish filmmaker Pat O’Connor of Maeve Binchy’s novel, Circle of Friends isn’t anything hugely ambitious or original, but it’s a charming, delightful romantic comedy/drama, heartwarming and a little nostalgic and poignant, anchored by an effervescent debut by lead actress Minnie Driver. Continue reading
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi
CAST: Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lance Henriksen, Keith David
REVIEW:
The Quick and the Dead is Sam Raimi switching gears from campy horror movie (his Evil Dead movies) to campy Western. To this end, Raimi proves he’s intimately familiar with Western tropes and cliches which he both gleefully satirizes and pays affectionate homage to. The result is a movie that’s style over substance, often feeling like little more than a vehicle using a flimsy narrative skeleton to move from one gunfight to the next, but it’s still often a lot of campy fun until never really seeming to amount to very much and eventually running out of gas with an underwhelming conclusion.
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