For further background in the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies From 1996 entry.
The following things happened in 1996:
- 1996 was declared International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. Remember back when we had poor people? That was weird, wasn't it?
- The first flip phone appeared.
- A terrifically bad blizzard struck the eastern U.S.
- France conducted its last nuclear weapons test.
- A lot of planes crashed and a lot of boats sunk. Really. A lot.
- Taiwan held its first direct elections for the office of President.
- Theodore ("Ted") Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was arrested.
- The Nintendo 64 was released.
- The Summer Olympics were held in Atlanta, Georgia. (for details refer to the movie Richard Jewell).
- The Iraq disarmament crisis was ongoing.
Excellent
1. Breaking the Waves
Mention Lars von Trier and most people jump right to the most extreme examples. Antichrist, Nymphomaniac and maybe The House That Jack Built. Those with a deeper knowledge of his filmography might go back even further, to artier movies like Europa or Dogville. But in the jump to these more extreme examples simpler movies like Breaking the Waves are often forgotten, and that's a real shame.
In Breaking the Waves Emily Watson stars as a woman convinced that defiling herself in the arms of other men will somehow restore her crippled husband to health. And I know this sounds ridiculous, and in the context of Lars von Trier it sounds like another shock tactic, but this movie is very restrained compared to some of his other movies. It also makes a nice point about forgiveness.
Some Good Ones
1. Happy Gilmore
Adam Sandler is a former hockey player turned professional golfer. Honestly, this movie still holds up. You'll think: "Oh, but it's an Adam Sandler movie," but really, it's still funny.
The director of this movie, Dennis Dugan, has directed several other Adam Sandler films. This was the first film they did together, and I consider a vast improvement over the earlier Billy Madison. Dugan plays the commissioner of the tour in this movie.
Fun Fact (s): Both Carl Weathers (Rocky, Predator) and Richard Kiel (Jaws from the Bond films) are in this movie.
Thinking Too Much for an Adam Sandler Movie: His grandma taking him to see Endless Love when he was a child was completely inappropriate.
2. Independence Day
If you don't like this movie you're thinking more than I was when I thought about Adam Sandler's grandma taking him to see Endless Love. It's a big dumb American disaster movie - that's all. Did you complain about the contrived situations in The Towering Inferno? Did you scoff at the character development in Earthquake? Of course you didn't, and for the same reason you bought into the fact that Jeff Goldblum deciphered the alien code with prehistoric 1995 technology, and you also believed that primitive fighter jets could challenge a spacecraft 1/4 the size of the moon. Interstellar civilizations? Advanced computing systems, unintelligible to our species? If you're asking such questions you're already thinking to hard for Independence Day, and you've also forgotten that the answer to all such questions is always AMERICA. These colors don't run, buddy!
Fun Fact: The use of "ID4" in the marketing of this film wasn't just a way of capturing attention. There was another film named Independence Day, released back in 1983, and the studio was reluctant to give the producers the rights to the title.
3. Fly Away Home
In Fly Away Home Anna Paquin plays a girl returned to her father's care after the death of her mother. Before she's really settled into life in rural Canada, she finds a gander of motherless geese in need of someone to show them the way south. It's a solid movie, if predictable.
Uncomfortable Fact: Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin play father and daughter in Fly Away Home, and later played lovers in 2005's The Squid and the Whale.
Comfortable Fact: What's Anna Paquin been up to? She recently played Robert DeNiro's wife in 2019's The Irishman.
4. The Craft
Four Catholic high school girls practice witchcraft. It's longer than it needs to be, but much better than I expected. It's a very 90s kind of movie.
5. Last Man Standing
So, so manly. But of course it is - Walter Hill directed it from a script he wrote. Bruce Willis does his Bruce Willis thing, starring as a man pitting two gangs against each other in west Texas, and Christopher Walken always makes a good nemesis. Is it as good as Yojimbo? As good as A Fistful of Dollars? I don't think so, but it's still pretty good.
6. Set It Off
Four women from the Los Angeles Projects become bank robbers. It starts out great but overstays its welcome. That romantic subplot involving Blair Underwood really wasn't necessary.
7. Matilda
Is it just me or is Danny DeVito kind of like his generation's Jon Favreau? I wouldn't push this comparison too far, but there are some parallels.
DeVito directed this movie about a precocious little girl with a special power. It was adapted from one of Roald Dahl's books, and the author's trademark quirkiness remains in the finished product. I really enjoyed the first half - it gets weirder and weirder - even if it runs a bit long. If you enjoyed the brand of humor present in Jojo Rabbit you'll also enjoy this movie.
8. Primal Fear
Richard Gere stars as a defense attorney defending a man accused of murder. This was Edward Norton's first movie, and although both he and Gere's costar Laura Linney are excellent I wished it had been shorter. Taking out some of those courtroom scenes would have made the movie better.
9. A Time to Kill
Matthew McConaughey and Samuel Jackson star in this look at racial injustice in Mississippi. It's a good movie, but I have two complaints: 1) Sandra Bullock's character is completely unnecessary; he advances the plot in no way, shape or form. 2) It's a story worth telling, but director Joel Schumacher's characteristic lack of subtlety is evident throughout. He's always trying to turn every scene up to 11, when letting the drama play out naturally would have worked a lot better. As it is, the jarring emphasis on certain scenes and over-explanation show a lack of faith in the viewer.
Fun Fact 1: That judge look familiar? If so, it's because he's played by Patrick McGoohan, who appeared as the villain in Braveheart the year before.
Fun Fact 2: Both Donald and Kiefer Sutherland are in this movie. I could be wrong (they've been in a lot of movies), but I believe this was one of two movies they both appeared in.
"If You Don't Like Space Jam, You Didn't Grow Up in the 90s!"
1. Space Jam
It's true - I didn't and I don't. I turned 15 in 1990, and by the time Space Jam arrived I was 21. Too old for Space Jam. As a blend of live action and animation it worked a lot better for me than Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but I still had trouble focusing on it for any length of time. This love letter to Michael Jordan via the Looney Tunes characters isn't bad. I just couldn't relate to it.
Fun Fact: A sequel, starring LeBron James, will be released this year.
Some Bad Ones
1. Jingle All the Way
Back in the day I would have responded to this movie with a big 'ol NOPE, but in 2020 it exerts a certain retroactive charm. Is it good? HELL no, but seeing Sinbad, Phil Hartman and the Mall of America (not long after it first opened) brought back some memories. Like The Craft and Space Jam above, a very 90s movie.
Fun Fact 1: The studio cast Sinbad over Joe "Home Alone" Pesci. I guess they were worried about unflattering comparisons to another famous Christmas movie.
Fun Fact 2: Martin Mull, who appears briefly in this movie, also played a DJ in 1978's FM.
2. The First Wives Club
Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton team up to get revenge on their ex-husbands. It's very contrived, the revenge taken isn't very satisfying, and the chemistry between the three leads is nonexistent. It's really hard to buy into the idea that the three women would want to hang out with each other in the first place.
3. Sleepers
Kevin Bacon, Jason Patric, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt... director Barry Levinson assembled an impressive cast for this one, but the script could have used some work. Is it the story of four boys growing up in Hell's Kitchen? Is it the story of abuses within a juvenile detention facility? Is it a story of revenge? Whoever wrote the screenplay kept falling back on The Count of Monte Cristo, but Alexandre Dumas' novel was a huge undertaking, with a deep understanding of both its characters and their place in the story he was trying to tell. Sleepers isn't that.
4. La Belle Verte (The Beautiful Green)
When people say they hate French movies and then mention movies like this I get it. I suppose you could sit through La Belle Verte for a French conception of the perfect society, but this story of an extraterrestrial tourist in Paris offers nothing but obvious statements. Deep down we all know that money isn't that necessary; deep down we all know we should love others as we love ourselves, but without offering any solutions to the problems of modern life this movie says nothing.
Fun Fact: Coline Serreau, the director of this movie, was the writer and director of Three Men and a Cradle, which served as inspiration for the American Three Men and a Baby.
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