For further background on the year in film, please refer to the Some Other Movies From 1995 entry.
The following things happened in 1995:
- The World Trade Organization was established. Excuse me for getting political, but FUCK those guys.
- Mexico borrowed $20 billion from the U.S. after their "peso crisis."
- Bosnian Serb commanders were charged with crimes against humanity after the Wars in the Balkans concluded.
- A religious cult attacked commuters with sarin gas inside the Tokyo subway system.
- The Oklahoma City bombing occurred, killing 168 people.
- Microsoft released Windows 95.
- Sony released the first PlayStation.
- The Indian government changed "Bombay" back to "Mumbai."
Excellent
1. La Haine (Hate)
Three young men from a Parisian slum go looking for trouble. In this era of Black Lives Matter this movie is even more timely, and the ending packs quite a punch. I'll watch Vincent Cassel in anything, but his costars in this film are equally good.
Fun Fact: This was Cassel's third movie. He appeared in his first the year before.
2. Braveheart
Dances With Wolves or Braveheart? The stars of both movies also directed their respective films, and both films won Best Picture, Best Director and many other awards at the Oscars. I'd pick Dances With Wolves, but there's not doubt that Braveheart is still a powerful film.
What's more, it hasn't aged a day. The battle scenes are still great, the story's still involving, and you can't help but agree with the praise it received at the time. It's a gripping tale of a Scottish uprising in the 13th century.
Fun Fact 1: Historically inaccurate? Braveheart is almost completely so.
Fun Fact 2: A sequel to this movie, Robert the Bruce, was released this year.
Some Good Ones
1. Memories
Animated trilogy concerning three dystopian futures. The first short is about the discovery of an opera singer's tomb. The second short is about a man unintentionally transformed into a living weapon. The third short is about a warlike society in which a young boy dreams of glory. Overall the trilogy is good, but I think I would have found more depth in it as a younger person.
Fun Fact: If you enjoyed Akira you'll want to check this one out. Katsuhiro Otomo served as executive producer, all three shorts were based on his manga stories, and he directed the last of the three shorts.
2. Outbreak
Gotta love that scene where Dustin Hoffman is sitting in a hut full of dead, infected bodies, some random guy walks in and says "It's not airborne," and Dustin Hoffman just believes him.
And remember when we thought all the killer viruses came from tropical Africa? Those were the days. In 2020 certain parts of this movie ring false... as anyone wearing a face mask can tell you.
Oh, and that government conspiracy? If you can't see that coming within the first ten minutes you just haven't seen enough pandemic movies. Fucking OF COURSE it's a government conspiracy. How could it not be?
In Outbreak Dustin Hoffman stars as a virologist trying to stop a virus from killing Americans and/or eroding American freedoms. Rene Russo costars as his wife and fellow virologist, with Cuba Gooding Jr. as an army man new to the world of superflus. Director Wolfgang Peterson amps up the suspense thoughout, and I'd have to say this is one of his better movies.
Fun Fact: Marlon Wayans' character in 1998's Senseless references this movie when he says: "I'll be your little Outbreak monkey."
3. A Little Princess
An imaginative young girl struggles with a domineering headmistress after her father's death. There's a whole lot of coincidence at work in this movie, compounded by a heaping helping of implausibility. Even so it was well done.
Fun Fact 1: Eleanor Bron, the actress who played the headmistress in this film, has a LONG history in movies. She appeared in The Beatles' Help in 1965, and her name was inspiration for the song "Eleanor Rigby."
4. Fallen Angels
I love the way this movie was filmed, if not the actual story that was filmed. The characters in it are so deliberately eccentric that they alienated me from the story they were trying to tell. Karen Mok gives a brief but memorable performance here, but I think in this instance director Wong Kar-wai's vision of Hong Kong's seedy underbelly could be seen as overreaching itself. I liked it a lot more than Chungking Express, but it wasn't blowing me away.
Michelle Reis, the Portuguese-Chinese actress who plays the hitman's girlfriend, is insanely hot though.
Some Bad Ones
1. Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh
A sequel that adds almost nothing to the original, aside from a yawn-inducing subplot about Candyman having a daughter. I will say that it's better than I thought it would be, but that's not saying much.
Like the Hellraiser franchise - another Clive Barker property - the Candyman mythos as presented in this movie could have been thought through in more detail. He could be a good metaphor for white fear of black men, and also of guilt over historical wrongs. All of this could be potent fuel for a much more powerful horror film that isn't afraid to expose some uncomfortable truths. Unfortunately Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh isn't that film.
Fun Fact: The 1999 sequel to this movie, Candyman 3: Day of the Dead, was set in the year 2020.
2. Billy Madison
The one where Adam Sandler has to go back and repeat grades 1-12. When you think about it, the plot of this movie is in some ways very similar to Tommy Boy, which came out the same year, and Chris Farley appears in both movies. Billy Madison was Sandler's second starring role after 1989's Going Overboard.
3. Major Payne
I get that this movie was made for kids (even more so than Billy Madison above), but even compared to similar fare like Kicking and Screaming it's just not very good. I thought the bits where Damon Wayans shares anecdotes about combat fatalities were genuinely funny, but he's never convincing in the role and gags involving laxatives just weren't cutting it.
One can't help but wonder how Damon Wayans feels about Jim Carrey. Both were arguably the stars of TV's surprise hit In Living Color, though Wayans left his big brother's show earlier than Carrey. Both scored hits in Hollywood early on (Wayans with The Last Boy Scout, Carrey with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), but decades later only Carrey has sustained the same level of fame. Racial politics at work, or just different career choices?
Fun Fact: Damon Wayons almost played The Riddler in Batman Forever. He lost out to - you guessed it - Jim Carrey.
4. Land and Freedom
A young woman learns about her father's time spent fighting the fascists in Spain. None of the characters in this movie are interesting. None of them are introduced properly. It was a real struggle to get through.
5. Aeon Flux: The Complete Series
The third and final season of Aeon Flux was aired on MTV in 1995. I can remember being mildly intrigued by it during high school, but its mixture of adolescent sexuality and unscientific science fiction hasn't aged well.
6. Now and Then
Four childhood friends reunite in small town U.S.A. years after an eventful summer. And no, Pennywise isn't in it.
The script for this movie could have used some work. It's never sure what story it's trying to tell. Is this a movie about an unsolved murder? The value of friendship? About finding an individual identity? It tries (and fails) to tell all three stories at the expense of coherence. At times it feels like a girl-centric Stand by Me, but it's not nearly that good.
The chronology also seems a bit off. Sure, it's rural Indiana, but "All Right Now" on the radio while everyone's dressing like the British Invasion just happened? Love Story playing at the local drive-in while the Vietnam War seems to have just erupted? Really not sure if they were going for early 60s, late 60s or early 70s. One of the characters says 1970, but the historical details don't seem to add up.
7. Total Eclipse
Leonardo DiCaprio in that weird place between What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Titanic. In Total Eclipse he stars as the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, with David Thewlis as his conflicted lover and fellow poet Paul Verlaine. There is ZERO chemistry between the two leads, and we're never given much reason to care about either of them.
8. Assassins
Better than I remembered, but still not great. Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas star as two hitmen trying to kill each other, with Julianne Moore as a tech-savvy Seattleite with little regard for her own personal safety. I was surprised to learn that Richard Donner directed this, and also that the script was written by the Wachowskis. As it is you can see glimpses of a much better movie in this one, but it's a dud nevertheless.
Fun Fact: Both of the Wachowski brothers are sisters now. Assassins and The Matrix were the first of their scripts purchased by a studio, though Assassins was almost completely rewritten by another writer after purchase.
Not Just Bad. REALLY Bad.
1. Tank Girl
NOW I know why I hadn't seen this movie. Lori Petty stars as the titular Tank Girl, with Malcolm McDowell playing a villain who reminded me a lot of Shredder. Tank Girl makes you feel sorry for Lori Petty, who is consistently upstaged by animated sequences that are better than the actual movie. It also makes you feel sorry for Ice-T and whoever else is buried under all those prosthetics.
Fun (?) Fact: This movie has a dedicated cult following. I have no idea why. Are we in such need of onscreen examples of "feminism" that we need resort to Tank Girl?
So Bad It's Good
1. Species
This movie asks you to believe two impossible things: 1) that Natasha Henstridge would have trouble getting laid in L.A. and 2) that Ben Kingsley's elite team of alien hunters are halfway competent. Oh, and the CGI in this movie looks even more terrible in 2020.
In this movie's defense, Henstridge looked great naked and the Giger-designed dream sequences still look creepy.
2. Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter? The first Street Fighter arcade game came out a lot earlier, and I maintained a certain loyalty to that series. This, and even in high school the violence in Mortal Kombat seemed gratuitous to me.
The movies? I think Jean-Claude Van Damme's Street Fighter was more genuinely bad than Mortal Kombat, but this might not be to Mortal Kombat's credit. I can watch Street Fighter today and truly enjoy its badness, while Mortal Kombat's relative goodness makes it harder for me to get into.
Director Paul Anderson built quite a career on this movie. Event Horizon, Resident Evil, and several other movies were all made possible by the success of this film. Is it good? Definitely not, but it is representative of the time period.
Fun Fact 1: Cameron Diaz was originally cast as Sonya Blade in this movie, but had to drop out due to a wrist injury.
Fun Fact 2: Jean-Claude Van Damme turned down the role of Johnny Cage to play Guile in Street Fighter.
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