Some Other Movies From 1998 (2)

For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies From 1998 entry.

The following things happened in 1998:

• Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky was discovered.
• Titanic won the Oscar for Best Picture.
• The final episode of Seinfeld aired.
• India and Pakistan threatened one another with rounds of nuclear testing.
• Microsoft released Windows 98.
• Google was founded in California.
• The Tencent company was founded in China.
• Akira Kurosawa died.

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.  Aside from The Patriot, which was direct-to-video, and Fallen, which was released in theaters, all of the YouTube entries below were TV movies.

Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix.

Classic 

1. Armageddon

Lens flare!  Pan 180 degrees!  Zoom out!  Zoom in!  Extreme close-up!  Cut!  Cut!  Cut!

Still my favorite Michael Bay movie.  You can even see the director early on in the film.  It's big, it's loud, it's dumb and it's unapologetically American.  Watch a double feature consisting of this and Independence Day.  You'll be glad you did.

Fun Fact 1: The narrator in the beginning?  Charlton Heston.

Fun Fact 2: Ben Affleck once asked Michael Bay why "training oil drillers to be astronauts was easier than training astronauts to be oil drillers."  He was told "to shut the fuck up."

Some Good Ones

1. A Bug's Life

Disney/Pixar production.  I just bought a 4K TV, and you can really see the improvements in cgi that took place in the late 90s. Not especially memorable in terms of story, but man those graphics just pop out on a newer TV.

2. Deep Impact 

Heavy on the drama, light on both the science and the sense of suspense.  Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman and Elijah Wood star in this movie about a killer comet, and the results are decidedly mixed. This disaster film really needed more disasters, and less conversations inside closed sets.

Deep Impact is often compared to Armageddon (above), which came out the same year. I like Armageddon much better.  Sure, Armageddon is a bloated movie, soaked in implausibility from beginning to end, but it gets people going, damnit! It reminds you that AMERICA (in the form of Bruce Willis) is what it takes to stop any and all celestial threats!

Fun Fact: Deep Impact started out as a film adaptation of both the 1951 movie When World's Collide and the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke novel Hammer of the Gods.

3. The Truman Show 

Whenever people discuss "Jim Carrey as a serious actor" they pull out Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but Peter Weir's The Truman Show also fits the bill.  In this movie Jim Carrey slowly discovers that his life is viewed by millions worldwide.  It's a good movie, even if it could have dug deeper into the subject matter.

4. The Pentagon Wars

Kelsey Grammar and Cary Elwes star in this look at the weapons development process inside the Pentagon.  No pyrotechnics in The Pentagon Wars, just a good script performed by good actors.

Fact Check: In reality the Bradley wasn't the disastrous failure this movie makes it out to be, and the argument between the general and his subordinate wasn't so clear cut.  A modified version of the Bradly is still in use today.

5. Fallen

Denzel Washington stars as a detective facing a supernatural adversary.  It'll remind you a lot of the far superior Seven, and the bad guy falls into a certain trap rather easily, but it's still an entertaining movie.

6. 30 Years to Life

Robert "Airplane!" Hays stars as a man wrongly "geriatrified" (aged 30 years) after his stepfather is murdered.  It's far from awesome, but very watchable.  Remember when "VR" was the newest, coolest thing?

Fun Fact: This movie was filmed in Luxembourg.

Ehhhh.....

1. Godzilla 

Roland Emmerich's take on Japan's most famous export.  He did this after Independence Day and before The Patriot.  As popcorn movies go it's certainly loud enough, and packed with the kind of destruction you'd expect, but none of the characters are especially likable and the movie (not unlike The Siege below) grows increasingly silly toward the end.

And what's up with the rain in this movie? Why is it almost always raining, and why do so few characters dress for the weather?  I guess the director felt that conversations in the rain were more dramatic, but after a while you begin to wonder at the apparent raincoat /  umbrella shortage in New York.

Is this movie as good as the more recent interpretation of Godzilla? In my opinion not even close.  If you're bored and want to see monsters stomp around it's ok, but there was a lot of room for improvement left in this movie.

Fun Fact 1: The news anchor in the beginning is played by Harry Shearer, the bass player from Spinal Tap AND the voice of several characters in The Simpsons.  His character's secretary is played by Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson.  Hank Azaria, who plays the cameraman, also voiced several characters on The Simpsons.

Fun Fact 2: On the way to becoming a reality this movie went through many iterations. Jan de Bont, the first director attached, would have given us a Godzilla created by Atlanteans, fighting an extraterrestrial threat named The Gryphon.

Some Bad Ones

1. Meet Joe Black

Anthony Hopkins plays a wealthy communications magnate who has a brush with death. And then... who cares?  The characters in this movie have the most ridiculous conversations, and it's impossible to care about any of them.

2. Small Soldiers

Director Joe Dante attempts to fuse Gremlins and Toy Story.  The results are predictably bad.

Fun Fact 1: The voice cast includes almost all the actors from the 1967 film The Dirty Dozen AND all three members of Spinal Tap.

Fun Fact 2: Stan Winston designed several puppets for this film.  They were later discarded for cgi.

UNfun Fact: This was Phil Hartman's last movie.

3. The Siege

Denzel Washington, Tony Shalhoub, Annette Bening and Bruce Willis star in this thriller about Muslim terrorist cells in New York.  It starts out GREAT, but Bening's and Willis's characters are never developed. The ending also goes from inexplicable to infuriating very quickly.

4. Lost Souls

The parents in this movie are weird.  They KNOW the house is haunted, but for whatever reason they think the ghosts will cure their daughter's autism.  After that point I fell asleep.  What I saw when I woke up was not encouraging.

Fun Fact: You might remember star John Savage from The Deer Hunter.  He played "Steven" in that movie.

5. The Patriot

No, not that Patriot!  The other one!  The Steven Seagal movie!  In The Patriot he plays (or attempts to play) an immunologist battling a virus in rural Montana.  Sounds like a setup for "So Bad It's Good" status, right?  Sadly most of this movie is just boring.  Sure, there are some unintentionally amusing bits, but for the most part it's a chore.

6. Futuresport

Like The Patriot above, casting Dean Cain and Wesley Snipes in this low(er) budget Rollerball knockoff sounds like the recipe for some glorious badness.  Unfortunately it's also talky and boring.

So Bad It's Good

1. Legion

"I fear that we are all pawns in a diabolical game of death!"

Corey Feldman and Rick Springfield. You know what time it is.  Act, you fuckers, ACT!!  And can we talk about the budget for this movie?  Or the lack thereof?  I think they filmed it in an old hospital, with a script copied from Aliens... except they forgot the aliens. Or they didn't have enough money for those.  Whatever.

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Some Other Movies From 1998

1998 was my last year at the University of Washington, and also the year before I moved to Taiwan.  I remember it being a good, if uncertain, time in my life.

The big movie that year was Saving Private Ryan, which remains one of Spielberg's best movies.  Rush Hour, There's Something About Mary, The Big Lebowski, and Mulan were other big movies from that year.  

It's funny to look back at the box office hits from that time.  Despite coming in third at the cinemas that year, how many people have seen 1998's Godzilla recently?  Deep Impact?  Shakespeare in Love?  I can't help but think that in subsequent years other films have overshadowed their earnings - smaller efforts like Wild Things, The X-Files, and Pi.

Some Good Ones

1. A Civil Action

Robert Duvall all but steals the show from John Travolta - but it's a great movie regardless of this fact.  The best thing about this courtroom drama is its sense of moral ambiguity.

2. BASEketball

Dodgeball it ain't, but it's still much funnier than Half Baked (see below).  Trey Parker and Matt Stone star as two regular guys who invent a new national pastime.

3. Wild Things

The preview would lead you to the conclusion that this movie's just another excuse in tits and ass, but Denise Richards' enormous breasts aside, it's an excellent noir thriller.  Matt Dillon stars as a high school guidance counselor who may or may not be a rapist, Kevin Bacon plays the vice cop investigating him, and Denise Richards and Neve Campbell play two high school students under Dillon's "guidance."

And you know what?  This movie would have only been half as good in the absence of Bill Murray.  I don't know how they talked him into playing the lawyer, but however much money they paid him probably wasn't enough.

4. Rushmore

Bill Murray again, this time with his director of choice Wes Anderson.  I didn't like it as much as Bottle Rocket, but this story about a self-important private school student is well worth your time.

5. Primary Colors

1998 was a good year for Travolta.  Not only did he star in the oft-forgotten A Civil Action, but also co-starred* in the far more likable Primary Colors.  This stab at Bill Clinton is still entertaining, though modern viewers might find more resonance in Emma Thompson's portrayal of "Stanton's" wife "Susan" (read: "Hillary").  It won several awards, and is one of the better political movies.

Fun... Fact?: Various sources have alleged that Travolta has, on several occasions, attempted to leave the "Church" of Scientology, but threats of blackmail concerning previous "homosexual acts" have kept Travolta in the fold... thus far.

6. Pi

Director Darren Aronofsky's first movie.  It's about a mathematician obsessed with a secret code, and bears strong similarities to A Beautiful Mind, which came out three years later.  Pi is of course a lot lower-budget and more abstract, but it's still an excellent movie.  While I haven't enjoyed more recent efforts like Noah and mother!, I'd have to say that everything Aronofsky directed from Pi to Black Swan is great.

7. Savior

Dennis Quaid joins the French Foreign Legion, and visits the scenic Balkans.  It's a surprisingly visceral film, and one of Quaid's best performances.

8. Bulworth

Warren Beatty stars as a senator on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  Hearing Beatty rap is truly cringeworthy, but that cringeworthiness is largely intentional, and I think this movie's heart is in the right place.

Some Bad Ones

1. Half Baked

Dave Chappelle before anyone knew what to do with him.  Oh, and some white dudes too.  This is one unfunny comedy about weed.  If you liked Chappelle's Show (as I did), you might get something out of it, but those moments of "almost funny" aren't worth sitting through an hour and a half of people trying (and failing) to act stoned.

2. The Faculty

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (or is it The Thing?) meets Lucas.  There are a ton of people in this movie that were much better known later on.  Elijah Wood spends most of the movie getting bullied, and do you know what that big, scary monster is a metaphor for?  CONFORMITY, my friends!  And conformity's NOT cool.  ...or something.


And Elijah Wood's parents even take away his masturbation privileges.  That's just some weird parenting right there.

3. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

Worst Caribbean vacation EVER.  Jennifer Love Hewitt spends about 70% of this movie walking around empty rooms, failing to find the killer, AND IT'S SO F*&KING BORING.  This movie's only redeeming features are 1) the guy from Re-Animator, who plays the hotel manager, 2) Jack Black, who plays a Rastafarian drug dealer, and 3) Brandy, who is (was?) FINE.

I still haven't seen the first one, so I have no idea whether this installment is better or worse than that.  I'm guessing the first one was slightly... better?

4. The Avengers

No, not THOSE Avengers!  The other, British ones!  You know, from that old TV show you can barely remember?

Except in this instance we get Ralph Fiennes as the man in the bowler hat, and Uma Thurman as his female counterpart.  Oh, and Sean Connery plays the villain.  Sounds not bad in theory, but the movie fails in the execution.  Whereas the REAL Avengers have varied superpowers, THESE Avengers' only power is boring anyone within earshot to death.

Fun Fact: As I'm sure you know, Sean Connery played James Bond many times, but did you know that there are other connections between The (British) Avengers and 007?  Ralph Fiennes would later appear opposite Daniel Craig in both Skyfall and Spectre, Patrick Macnee (the original John Steed) appeared opposite Roger Moore in A View to a Kill, and Diana Rigg (the original Emma Peel) played George Lazenby's love interest in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

5. Lost in Space

For those complaining about Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes' lack of chemistry in The Avengers, I give you Matt LeBlanc and Heather Graham in Lost in Space.  Leblanc was woefully miscast in this movie, and he also has some of the worst lines.

In 1998 this movie somehow upstaged Titanic, ending its reign as #1 at the box office.  Just the same it's pretty bad, and one wonders if it wasn't an attempt to cash in on the success of the previous year's Starship Troopers.

And what the f*&k is with that cgi-alien-monkey thing?  Who thought that was a good idea?

6. Mighty Joe Young

In the same year that Roland Emmerich directed the very forgettable Godzilla, Disney released this movie featuring King Kong - er - Mighty Joe Young.  Bill Paxton is in it, and I'll watch any movie with Bill Paxton at least once, and Charlize Theron is also in it, her status in Hollywood much improved since the previously reviewed 2 Days in the Valley.

This movie starts out ok, but it goes from boring to nonsensical fairly quickly.  Theron's character is very irritating, and by the end of the movie I found myself hoping that some sort of fatal accident would befall her while running around that amusement park.

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*Co-starred?  The star of this movie is actually Adrian Lester, who plays Travolta's (Clinton's) campaign manager.  Lester's filmography is very short.  He starred in Primary Colors, and only appeared briefly in a few later movies.