Another decade of discovery.

Well, we've finally gotten to the end of the 1990's in review. 1990-1999 was a longer road than I thought it would be.
But, not a road without some enjoyment and discovery.

First, the internet is NOT a god.
A lot of the movies from the early 1990's were hard to track down. They were either already forgotten about when the internet came about. Or worse, they were so bad that they were buried under so many different layers of "porn" related stuff that it was almost impossible to find a usable picture regarding the movie. Even when pressed into a corner, it still became hard to find a good picture of just the movie poster. While I do appreciate the Internet's bounty of information, the fact that a dedicated effort to find those odd movies and transfer them to the internet isn't around. Sure, there's the issue of copyrights and legal issues regarding the images of a movie. But, honestly I would have thought that you could go to WB's website or Sony's or even Fox's sites and be able to pull something for those older movies up. But sadly none of them seem to be able to provide a "full" movie library.

Second, there are too many movies that use the same name.
(Sigh) If I have to EVER sit through all those damn Twilight pictures from last year, just to get to a SINGLE usable picture from 1998's version with Paul Newman..... I'm going to shoot someone. Then of course, Cuba Gooding Jr. wishes that his version of Gladiator was as popular as Russel Crowe's, although Cuba's version came out 8yrs earlier. Then of course, let's not forget that wonderful classic movie DOA getting a remake in the 1990's, mixed with a really bad version of the DOA game ALL using the same fucking name. It gets really hard to track down those 'right' movies that share the same name. I am sure a couple of you will remember the "Screw up" that happened with just "Twister" on the lists. (1989's list had a picture of the 1996 movie)

Third, please remember I'm using the USA release dates.
I love you guys, really I do. But PLEASE don't jump in to go "Oh no, this movie came out in XXXX instead". I KNOW that a movie is made in other countries will have a different release date. But honestly, the Jackie Chan movies of the 1990's in the US were 2-3 years OLD when we got them in theaters. Plus, movie sites like IMDB are good for when a movie gets made, but they mention NOTHING about it getting DELAYED. Prime example, is John Candy's last two movies. Canadian Bacon was made about THREE YEARS before it got released into theaters because it had issues with the production company getting a distributor. Matter of fact, John Candy filmed Canadian Bacon FIRST, died during the filming of Wagons East!, and had Wagons East! released in theaters FIRST. Like I said, I'm trying to get a glimpse of when a movie is released in the US theaters, so there might be some leeway between release dates here and there. So please remember that I'm going off the USA theaters only, and the competition based on the weeks before and after.

Now, on to the movies themselves.


Wow did people really hit their stride in the 90's
By far, I'd have to say that Seagal, Jackie Chan, Van Damme, and Christopher Lambert all had a constant string of movies coming out. In total, these FOUR people starred in around 50 (FIFTY) movies alone. That doesn't include made for TV movies, Direct-to-video movies, or any other movies. And what's worse, EACH of them had a movie come out almost every year of the 90's. In some cases, they had two movies a year come out.

Where are they now?
What happened to Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Melanie Griffin, Don Johnson, John Goodman, Tom Beringer, Louis Gosset Jr., Cuba Gooding Jr., Cher, Tom Selleck, Ted Danson, Steve Guttenberg, Kevin Costner, Fred Ward, Michael Keaton, Christian Slater, Charlie Sheen, Emilio Esteves, Kiefer Sutherland, Rick Moranis, Billy Crystal or Peter Weller? Well, for a lot of them they sort of faded away to just being nothing more than an after thought. When was the last time you were excited about a Sharon Stone movie? Did you even see Meg Ryan's latest movie? (The remake of The Women.) Can you even remember what Steve Guttenberg's face looks like? Some went to TV shows. Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Ted Danson, Tom Selleck all found spots on TV either being the stars (Sheen/Sutherland) or guest spots (Selleck on Friends as Richard). Their stars rose and fell all within a decade. Makes it interesting considering that Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and others continue to draw in movie-goers decades after they appeared on the scene. By the way, Peter Weller (Robocop) went on to become a professor at Syracuse University and is the process of working on his Ph.D.

Over all, the 1990's were a fun ride. Good, bad, even shitty movies were constantly coming out. But at the end of the decade, so many things had changed in that decade. The actors themselves changed from "Old names" to new faces. Brad Pitt for example really came into his own during the 90's. Anthony Hopkins because a household name world-wide. Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, and others started to do more dramatic roles and shake off their comedy or action roots. Denzel Washington took on more challenging roles, and got the respect he deserves. Laurence Fishburne, Kevin Spacey, Tim Robbins, Johnny Deep and Kevin Bacon all started to take a wide range of roles that made them all possibly some of the most versatile actors that could do comedy, action, drama, romance and still be believable. Even if they weren't the leading men in their movies they were reliable ones that you knew you would get something to remember. The 1990's was an interesting decade for movies indeed.

What will the 2000's bring us?