Film History of the 1990s
Film History of the 1990s
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Notable British Films:
The      most successful British film of the first half of the decade was Mike      Newell's surprise hit Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), an intelligent,      well-scripted romantic adult comedy about the major rites of passage in      life (and death). It featured a long-running romance between a reserved      Britisher and confirmed bachelor (Hugh Grant) and attractive American      (Andie MacDowell), with a hilarious bit-part by Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr.      Bean). Writer-director Scott Hicks' Australian/UK film Shine (1996) told the story of recovering gifted pianist David Helfgott (Best Actor-winning      Geoffrey Rush) with a history of mental problems. Due to the film's popularity,      the real-life Helfgott went on a musical concert tour, but received mostly      negative reviews.
The decade's most successful British film was first-time        director Peter Cattaneo's Best Picture-nominated The Full Monty (1997) about a group of displaced, unemployed Sheffield steel-mill workers who        become 'Chippendale-style' male strippers. It brought new popularity to        two hits: Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing," and Donna Summers' "Hot Stuff." The edgy and visually-fresh film about drug addiction, Trainspotting (1995) was based upon Irving Welsh's famous novel        set in Edinburgh, with original Scottish characters (and unknown actors)        including Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie, and featuring a pulsing soundtrack        with Iggy Pop singing "Lust for Life". Although not a British        film, Rob Roy (1995) starred Liam Neeson as 18th century Scottish        legend Robert Roy MacGregor based upon Sir Walter Scott's legendary novel.
Distinctive Independent Film-Makers:
In the 90s' era of blockbusters, independent films made            significant headway. The major studios set up specialty art-house production            and distribution divisions, such as Sony Pictures Classics and Fox World Cinema. There were any number of shoestring-budget, non-mainstream            films that appealed to disenchanted Generation-Xers, from directors such            as Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith, Edward Burns, Todd Solondz, Gus Van            Sant and Jim Jarmusch.
Richard Linklater
Writer/director                Richard Linklater's first feature Slacker (1991) was a free-form,                low-budget film that defined a generation of dead-beat, drop-out, misfit                individuals living on the edge of the college town of Austin, Texas during                a 24-hour period. [Many of Linklater's films would be contained within                a 24-hour time frame.] The word 'slacker' was immediately seized upon                as a word to define a group within the twenty-something subculture. His                next film, a rambling ensemble drama Dazed and Confused (1993),                dubbed 'the American Graffiti (1973) of                the 90s', followed graduating Texas high-school students on their last                academic day in the Bicentennial year of 1976. The quotable, archetypal                film introduced many exceptional acting newcomers to audiences, including                Milla Jovovich, Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Renee Zellweger, Matthew McConaughey, Cole Hauser, Adam Goldberg, and Joey Lauren Adams.
Linklater's more accessible and sweet film Before                  Sunrise (1995) followed the overnight budding romance between a traveling                  young American (Ethan Hawke) and a French student (Julie Delpy) in Vienna,                  and the dialogue-heavy SuBurbia (1997), an adaptation of writer/actor                  Eric Bogosian's play, examined a group of punk twenty-somethings outside                  a suburban Austin convenience store. In the new decade, Linklater's innovative                  6th film, Waking Life (2001) combined digital video and animation                  to produce a highly philosophical avant-garde film.
Kevin Smith: The Jersey Trilogy
Writer/director                      Kevin Smith's first film (the first in a so-called "Jersey trilogy")                      was a dead-pan, low-budget, comedy cult film titled Clerks (1994) made in grainy 16 mm and originally rated NC-17 for foul language - it                      chronicled one day in the unglamorized, working-class life of Dante (Brian                      O'Halloran) - a twenty-two year old college dropout and Quick Stop convenience                      store clerk in New Jersey with his video-store clerk best friend Randal                      (Jeff Anderson). Smith went on to make Mallrats (1995) about two                      suburban New Jersey 'slackers' (Jason Lee and Jeremy London) who retreated                      to a shopping mall after being dumped by their girlfriends (Shannen Doherty                      and Claire Forlani), and then the low-budget comedy-drama Chasing Amy                        (1997) - an honest and appealing story of love between two New Jersey                      comic-book artists (Ben Affleck and Joey Lauren                      Adams), one of whom was lesbian. Smith's final film of the decade was the controversial religious                      satire Dogma (1999), with Linda Fiorentino as a Catholic abortion                      clinic worker, Alanis Morissette as God, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as                      banished fallen angels, Chris Rock as Rufus (the 13th Apostle), and Salma                      Hayek as a celestial muse named Serendipity.
Edward Burns: The Long Island Trilogy
Actor/writer/director Edward Burns' first feature (the                          first in a so-called "Long Island trilogy") was The Brothers                            McMullen (1995) - an old-fashioned character study of three Irish-American                          brothers living together in Long Island, New York. Burns' follow-up films                          were the romantic comedy She's the One (1996) about a pair of rivalrous                          brothers (Ed Burns and Mike McGlone) both interested in the same woman                          (Cameron Diaz), and the romantic, blue-collar drama No Looking Back                            (1998) set in a quiet coastal town, with Lauren Holly and Jon Bon                          Jovi.
Todd Solondz
Todd                              Solondz directed the painfully-realistic, uncompromising rites-of-passage black comedy Welcome                                to the Dollhouse (1995) - his first major success, about  bespectacled, geeky                             11 year-old  outcast  Dawn Weiner (Heather Matarazzo) in a middle-class                              New Jersey family and her cruel, miserable, and isolated progress through puberty, when                              called "lesbo," "weiner dog," and "dog-face" by her junior-high classmates. In one scene, she was menaced by a crass 7th grade bully classmate named Brandon (Brendan Sexton, Jr.) who  told her at her locker that he was going to rape her at 3 pm, but then didn't follow through - although she was willing to submit to him, if necessary, in order to be accepted. [Solondz would rexamine the same themes                              in his later film Palindromes (2004).]
His next film was the challenging,                                controversial dark comedy of sex and perversion unusually titled Happiness                                  (1998). It was about a predatory, suburban pedophile father/family                                man Bill Maplewood (Dylan Baker), a psychiatrist by profession, who in                                a startling scene shot with slow-motion closeups, gazes with affection                                at an 11 year-old boy (!), one of his son's classmates, during a little-league                                baseball game. His next dark film was Storytelling (2001), with                                two concurrent plotlines (titled "Fiction" and "NonFiction")                                examining racial and sexual themes.
Gus Van Sant
Gus                                    Van Sant directed two films of underworld outsiders in this period: Drugstore                                      Cowboy (1989), a 1970s 'Me Generation' tale of drug-store robbing druggies featuring a powerful performance by Matt Dillon, and My Own                                      Private Idaho (1991) about a roving group of young, gay hustlers (featuring                                    a terrific performance from River Phoenix). After the critical failure                                    of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1994), Van Sant's four biggest                                    films of the decade were:
To Die For (1995), a black comedy with Best        Actress Golden Globe-winning Nicole Kidman as a New Hampshire housewife        with wicked aspirations to be a famous TV newscaster
Good Will Hunting (1997), a hugely-successful,              coming-of-age drama co-scripted by the film's stars Matt Damon and Ben              Affleck (who won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for their efforts),              with the main character a brilliant mathematician who worked as a janitor              at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and had Minnie Driver              as his love interest
Psycho (1998), an inferior, shot-by-shot color              remake of Hitchcock's horror thriller classic Psycho                (1960) , with Anne Heche as Marion Crane (Janet Leigh's character),              and Vince Vaughn as the Bates Motel owner (Anthony Perkins' character)
Finding Forrester (2000), about an unlikely              relationship between a reclusive, past Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist              (Sean Connery) and a budding 16 year old writer (Rob Brown)
Larry Clark
One of the most controversial and bleak films of the 90s            was from a Miramax-related studio (with Gus Van Sant as executive producer).            It was still photographer and director Larry Clark's debut film, the unrated Kids (1995), about self-destructive New York street teens engaged            in unprotected sex, hedonism, and drug-taking. It mostly focused on the            promiscuous sexual experiences of AIDS-infected Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick),            a teen-aged seducer who desired only virgins (one of whom was Chloe Sevigny).            A similar follow-up film was the unrated, compelling Bully (2001),            another graphic film (often accused of being exploitative and leering)            based upon real life events, about amoral, drug-using, violent youth who naively conspired to murder one of their "bully" friends.
Jim Jarmusch
After his successes with the low-budget feature Stranger Than Paradise                (1984) and Down By Law (1986), Jim Jarmusch's films of the                decade included Night on Earth (1991) - an anthology of five "road" stories, the offbeat western Dead Man (1995) with Johnny Depp,                and the documentary on the rock band Neil Young and Crazy Horse in Year                  of the Horse (1997).
Original Films of the Decade:
Tim Burton's fantasy romance/comedy Edward Scissorhands            (1990) starred Johnny Depp as the scissor-handed title character who            was created by Vincent Price and adopted by an Avon lady. Mike Nichols' The Birdcage (1996) was the American version of La Cage Aux              Folles (1978), a weird in-law story about a young man who brought            his fiancee home to meet his parents. Robin Williams starred as gay nightclub            owner named Armand Goldman, and Gene Hackman as a right-wing conservative            politician - whose daughter is engaged to William's son. Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys (1995) remade La Jetee (1962), starring Bruce            Willis who came back from the future (the year 2035) to learn what killed            5 billion people years earlier. Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998) was an unusual but smart comedy about an improbable love triangle between   precocious 15 year-old 10th grade private school student Max Fischer (Jason   Schwartzman), his befriended depressed local steel factory millionaire/magnate   and jaded mentor Herman Blume (Bill Murray), and Rushmore Academy's   recently-widowed first-grade teacher Ms. Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams). And Reese Witherspoon starred as determined Student Council candidate Tracy Flick in Alexander Payne's satirical Election (1999).
One            of the most original, bizarre and surrealistic films of the 90s was Spike            Jonze's debut feature Being John Malkovich (1999) with an inventive            script by executive producer Charlie Kaufman - the story of a street puppeteer/filing            clerk (John Cusack) in a Manhattan office building who discovered and            entered a sealed portal that led into the mind of actor-celebrity John            Malkovich. At the end of the decade, Darren Aronofsky's shocking anti-drug Requiem for a Dream (2000) featured numerous addictions (food,            diet pills, TV, and heroin) exhibited with an intoxicating style. It starred            Oscar-nominated Ellen Burstyn as a diet-pill-popping, Coney Island widow/mother            of her junkie son and his girlfriend( Jennifer Connelly).
Actor/director Warren Beatty brought comic strip Dick Tracy (1990) to the screen, with Madonna as Breathless Mahoney and Al Pacino as Big              Boy. David Lynch directed the weirdly-perverse, surreal and erotic Wild                At Heart (1990) with Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage as on-the-road lovers              Sailor and Lulu. His next film was the truly bizarre, breathtaking and              enigmatic Lost Highway (1997). He finished the decade with an uncharacteristic,              G-rated, sentimental, real-life tale The Straight Story (1999),              about an aging brother's (Best Actor-nominated Richard Farnsworth) lawn-mower              journey to visit his ailing brother (Harry Dean Stanton).
Playwright Neil LaBute's film-directing debut work regarding                relationships was the provocative low-budget black comedy In the Company of Men                  (1997), a cruel and unsettling misogynous story about two businessmen, Chad (Aaron Eckhart) and Howard (Matt Malloy),                on a six-week trip who decide to romance and then brutally dump an unsuspecting                deaf woman, with lines such as: "Never trust anything that can bleed for a week and not die," and "What's the difference between a golf ball and a G-spot?...I'll spend twenty   minutes looking for a golf ball!" And Todd Haynes' second feature Safe (1995) brilliantly                told the story of a fragile, vulnerable Southern California housewife                Carol White (Julianne Moore) who suffered from environmental illness and                retreated to a perfectly sterile world beyond germs in Wrenwood - a holistic                center near Albuquerque, New Mexico. There, she became further alienated,                isolated, and detached from life - the film was interpreted as a comment                upon the AIDS crisis of the decade.
Ashley Judd:
One of the decade's best actresses, Ashley Judd made an                    impressive film debut in writer/director Victor Nunez's quiet character                    study and sleeper film Ruby in Paradise (1993), about a Tennessee                    heiress who fled her home and became a clerk in a Florida souvenir shop.                    For the remainder of the decade, she starred in crime dramas and thrillers                    (often as a reluctant victim), such as A Normal Life (1996), the                    serial killer thriller Kiss the Girls (1997) with Morgan Freeman, Eye of the Beholder (1999), and director Bruce Beresford's Double                      Jeopardy (1999) with Tommy Lee Jones.
Documentary Films:
In                        the documentary film genre, the most critically-acclaimed documentary                        appeared mid-decade: director Steve James' videotaped three-hour Hoop                          Dreams (1994), the six-year dramatic, uphill story of two hopeful                        teenaged, inner-city African-American basketball players (William Gates                        and Arthur Agee) in Chicago (with partial athletic scholarships at St.                        Joseph's - a predominantly white, suburban Catholic school) who struggle                        and aspire to be superstars in the NBA.
Animated - and Family Oriented Films:
Disney's studios had a number of animated-cartoon feature         classics in the 90s:
Beauty and the Beast (1991),         the first animated feature ever to be nominated as Best Picture
Aladdin (1992), an 'Arabian Nights' tale about              a street urchin who fell in love with a princess, with the hit song "A Whole New World" and Robin Williams as the voice of the Genie
The Lion King (1994), featuring Jeremy Irons as the voice of Scar and              the theme of the 'Circle of Life'; its sound track was available in              stores three weeks before its film opening
the romanticized fantasy Pocahontas (1995) -              the first Disney animated feature based on historical fact; it              had an outdoor premiere in Central Park, New York City on June 10, 1995              attended by nearly 100,000 people - the biggest premiere of any              film ever; winner of two Oscars: Best Original Musical or Comedy Score,              and Best Song "Colors of the Wind"
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Mulan (1998), an expensively-made story              of ancient China
Tarzan (1999), the first full-length              animated feature about "the King of the Jungle" and winner of Best Original              Song (Phil Collins) for "You'll Be In My Heart"
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), based on the              Jules Verne adventure
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) with Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo,              and Donatello succeeded (and grossed $130 million) with stylish comic-book              violence and licensed product merchandising until the public was saturated              with two more sequels in 1991 and 1993. Beethoven (1992) was about              a tiny puppy adopted by suburb-dweller Charles Grodin that grew into a              giant, slobbering and destructive St. Bernard who was threatened by an              evil veterinarian (Dean Jones). Free Willy (1993) told of a boy              (Jason James Richter) punished for vandalism by having to clean up the              graffiti mess at a theme park, where he developed a close emotional bond              with one of the performers - a killer whale named Willy (Keiko).
Director                Henry Selick's and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) was a monumental work of art - a stop-motion animated and musical fable.                It was followed by producer Burton's and director Selick's PG-rated James                  and the Giant Peach (1996) - about the fantastic adventurish journey                of a young boy, and the PG-rated comic fantasy Monkeybone (2001),                based on Kaja Blackley's comic book novel Dark Town - with a title                character combining traits of Curious George and Bart Simpson. Chris Noonan's                magical Australian film Babe (1995), about a talking pink piglet                with a talent for herding sheep for Farmer Hoggett, was an unexpected                success. It featured Ferdinand the duck, Duchess the cat, and a sheepdog                named Fly. The sequel Babe: Pig in the City (1999) was a darker                version of the original.
John                  Lasseter's and Pixar's Toy Story (1995) (with the tagline 'To Eternity                  - and Beyond!') was the first feature-length film completely animated                  by computer - the film and its pioneering digital animation studio Pixar                  won a Special Achievement Award. It featured cowboy toy Woody (with voice                  of Tom Hanks) and the futuristic, high-tech Buzz Lightyear (with voice                  of Tim Allen) and a richly detailed and imaginative world. Its blockbuster                  sequel was just as remarkable and considered the superior film, Toy                    Story 2 (1999) - produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Barbie, the                  most popular toy of the 1900s, made her movie debut in the popular film,                  and Kelsey Grammer provided the voice of the Prospector. Woody was threatened                  because he was regarded as a highly-collectible 1950s TV character. The                  film also featured the poignant "You've Got a Friend in Me" and Randy Newman's Oscar-nominated "When She Loved Me."
Japan's collectible Pokemon trading cards and video games (Nintendo and                    Game Boy) became enormously popular with America's children, courtesy                    of Warner Bros. studios. The crude and cartoonish Pokemon: The First                      Movie (1998), dubbed in English for American audiences, had the most                    lucrative Thanksgiving weekend film opening of the 1900s when released                    in the US in 1999. Its "pocket monster" star was Pikachu, a                    bright-eyed, baby-talking yellow creature with a lightning-bolt tail.                    The gross-out, vulgar feature South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut                      (1999) rivaled Disney's family-oriented animations, and produced an                    Oscar-nominated song "Blame Canada"with bawdy lyrics - ("Time's                    have changed, Our kids are kids are getting worse, They won't obey their                    parents, They just want to fart and curse!...").
In 2001-2003, the first three years of the new Oscar category of Best                      Animated Feature, there were many worthy competitors:
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001)
Shrek (2001) - the winner
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
Spirited Away (2001, Jp.) - the winner, in 2002
Treasure Planet (2002)
The Triplets of Belleville (2003, Fr.)
Finding Nemo (2003) - the winner
Adult-Oriented Films:
Filmmaking and production expenses continued to escalate, as well as                the violence and sex depicted. In some cases, the returns were enormous. Henry and June (1990), based on Anais Nin's memoirs, was the first                film to be released with the NC-17 (No Children Under 17 Admitted) rating                (which had replaced the old "X" rating in 1990 without the commercial                stigma) for its explicit handling of sex.
Director                  Paul Verhoeven was successful in the early part of the decade with Total                    Recall (1990), and the commercially-successful investigative thriller Basic Instinct (1992) - the year's most                  popular movie. In 1990, scriptwriter Joe Eszterhas had sold his script for the erotic thriller  for a record $3 million to Carolco Pictures. The film included gory violence, uncrossed/panty-less legs                  during a police interrogation, and sleazy, steamy sex scenes between Michael                  Douglas and Sharon Stone (playing a bi-sexual blonde suspected of murder),                  and with psychiatrist Jeanne Tripplehorn. Verhoeven's much-hyped, widely-distributed,                  NC-17 rated Showgirls (1995), teamed with writer Joe Eszterhas,                  became a camp classic rather than the erotic, Las Vegas lap-dancing drama                  it was supposed to be.
Director                    Milos Forman's sympathetic portrayal of Hustler publisher Larry                    Flynt (Woody Harrelson) as a First Amendment hero in The People vs.                      Larry Flynt (1996) brought criticism to the film. The eroticizing                    of gruesome car crashes in David Cronenberg's graphic Crash (1996) also engendered controversy and brought an NC-17 rating. Writer/director                  Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997) examined the world                    of late 70s and 80s pornography with Mark Wahlberg as well-endowed adult                    film star Dirk Diggler, Burt Reynolds in a comeback role as a director/producer                    of skin flicks, Julianne Moore as veteran porn star Amber Waves, and Heather                    Graham as an uninhibited Rollergirl. Adrian Lyne's controversial Lolita                      (1997) with nymphet teenager Dominique Swain, a remake of Kubrick's                    1962 classic, first aired on Showtime cable TV, and then experienced distribution                    problems.
The most anticipated film was legendary director Stanley Kubrick's psychosexual Eyes Wide Shut (1999), his final film released posthumously in                      the summer of 1999, with real-life husband/wife superstars at the time                      (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who would later divorce in 2001). The dreamy,                      visually-beautiful, thought-provoking film was a sexy adaptation of Arthur                      Schnitzler's 1926 novella Dream Story (Traumnovelle) and destined                      to become a Kubric classic. Although it was condemned as misogynistic,                      out-of-touch, and uncompelling, the story was about a Manhattan doctor                      (Cruise) who, after hearing an emotional confession from his wife (Kidman),                      explored his own sexuality during a tortuous, adventurous nocturnal journey                      (including a visit to a masked orgy in Long Island featuring all-nude                      naturally-endowed females). Segments of the orgy scene in the film were                      digitally-altered in order to bring the film an R-rating.
Film History of the 1990s