1990s – Page 23 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – To Sleep With Anger

To Sleep With Anger (1990)
Written & Directed by Charles Burnett

To Sleep With Anger is a mixture of things. It’s a meditation on modern urban family dynamics. It is a retelling of the Biblical stories all mashed together. The film is an extension of fears about nostalgia, especially in black communities who have lots of moments in history that they reasonably should fear. It’s ultimately hard to classify this picture into a single genre, which is a benefit and a flaw at times.

Movie Review – Reversal of Fortune

Reversal of Fortune (1990)
Written by Nicholas Kazan
Directed by Barbet Schroeder

I have faint memories of the names of Klaus & Sunny von Bulow in the late 1980s/early 1990s likely from episodes of A Current Affair or Inside Edition. I was a child, so I didn’t really know who these people were or what the reporters were talking about. As time has passed, it seems the von Bulows are becoming a forgotten piece of pop culture, fading from the collective memory as our 24-hour news cycle floods us with new information. So who are these people that they would devote a whole movie about them based on a book by Claus’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz?

Movie Review – Total Recall

Total Recall (1990)
Written by Philip K. Dick, Dan O’Bannon, Ronald Shusett, and Gary Goldman
Directed by Paul Verhoeven

Total Recall is not the best film ever made. It’s not even the best science fiction movie, but it is a beautiful example of a type of science fiction film that died out around the beginning of the 1990s. The practical effects, the matte painting, the clever use of computer effects in minimal ways, all add up to a world I wish we could spend more time in. But, I’m sort of glad that we don’t get more of this setting because it makes the bits and pieces provided all that more interesting to mull over.

Movie Review – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)
Written & Directed by Tom Stoppard

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are schoolmates of the title character as well as sycophants for King Claudius in his machinations to eliminate his nephew as a problem. They ultimately agree to take Hamlet to England after he murders Polonius, unaware that Claudius’ letter to the monarchy calls for Hamlet to be killed. Hamlet discovers the letter and rewrites it so that upon arrival, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the ones hung. It can be argued that these two supporting characters navigate the narrative in complete ignorance as to the greater agendas at work in Castle Elsinore. They just sort of bumble about and then die.

Movie Review – Nightbreed

Nightbreed (1990)
Written & Directed by Clive Barker

Nightbreed has so many great elements and ideas but ultimately fails at everything it is trying to do because it overflows with stuff. That stuff is characters, mythology, plot, pretty much everything. Horror legend Clive Barker wrote and directed this adaptation of his own novella, which I think might be at the core of the problems. He wants to have everything in this movie, but that means so much gets abbreviated but still presented, which leaves the audience confused about who certain people are or what some of this mythology being spoken about is.

Movie Review – Darkman

Darkman (1990)
Written by Sam Raimi, Chuck Pfarrer, Ivan Raimi, Daniel Goldin, and Joshua Goldin
Directed by Sam Raimi

What do you do when you want to make a superhero movie, but you don’t have the rights to any superheroes? Well, you invent your own. That’s what filmmaker Sam Raimi did as he embarked on making his first Hollywood studio feature. Originally, Raimi wanted to make a movie about Batman or The Shadow; however those characters were already in development with other directors at the time. Raimi managed to combine the shadow mystery men of comic books’ Golden Age with the brooding angst of classic Universal monsters to bring audiences Darkman.

Movie Review – Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Written by Bruce Joel Rubin
Directed by Adrian Lyne

My wife’s first remarks as the credits rolled were, “That was intense.” Now, it takes a lot to phase my wife when it comes to movies. Between the amount of horror cinema I’ve exposed her to and the limited sentimentality, she has towards many films, she is a tough nut to crack. I’ve only known her to weep at two movies, Dancer in the Dark and The Elephant Man, otherwise, she appreciates the pictures but doesn’t get too deeply emotionally invested in them. I tell you all this as a way to begin talking about this heartbreaking existential horror film, a movie that the first time I viewed it, my maturity wasn’t at the level to really understand what the filmmakers were saying. This time around, I agreed with my wife, I was shaken and found a deep appreciation for the performances and themes in this movie.

Movie Review – Miller’s Crossing

Miller’s Crossing (1990)
Written Joel and Ethan Coen
Directed by Joel Coen

Miller’s Crossing is not often cited these days when people talk about the Coen Brothers’ body of work, but I think it deserves a higher spot. The film is such a cleverly constructed story, moving at a brisk pace and never feeling it’s two-hour runtime. The world of the film is so rich and layered with a back story, and the Coens reveal only as much as we need to know to understand the story. The rest is left up the viewer to infer and ponder, which is something about the Coen Brothers that I absolutely love.

Movie Review – Matilda

Matilda (1996)
Written by Nicholas Kazan & Robin Swicord
Directed by Danny DeVito

Roald Dahl has always been one of my most favorite children’s authors ever since I had first Charlie and the Chocolate Factory read to me. Dahl has an incredible nastiness in his writing that appeals to kids, he reveals the truth of the world, mainly that adults are often gluttonous buffoons. There are also monstrous children, usually offshoots of their rotten parents. The child protagonists on Dahl’s work are overwhelmed by these abrasive forces but typically find a source of internal strength to overcome them and triumph. Matilda is one of the most archetypal Dahl heroes, and her story is very much centered in a nuanced examination of the education system.

Movie Review – Billy Madison

Billy Madison (1995)
Written by Adam Sandler & Tim Herlihy
Directed by Tamra Davis

I loved this movie when I was 14-18 years old. It had been almost two decades since I last watched it, and I was wondering if it would hold up. The Adam Sandler presented on movie screens then was very different from the version of him we get now. Most of the time, you get Sandler in an adult/parent version of his old persona, more cooly disaffected and still yelling a lot. Other times you get a performance that challenges your preconceived notions of him (Punch-Drunk Love, Uncut Gems). But this was the baby Sandler, fresh off of Saturday Night Live and playing a particular Generation X comedy schtick.