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.
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.
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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