Category: 1990s

Undercover cop Jason Patric pairs up with inexperienced Jennifer Jason Leigh to bring down the drug trade in a Texas town. Based on an actual scandal from the 1970s, the two become addicts themselves and eventually falsify evidence under pressure from their chief of police. I’ve had this on my radar for a long time and I’m not sure why since I didn’t know anything about it going in. I seem to recall that around the time of its release the performances were highly praised and indeed they are praise worthy, even for the smaller roles like those of Greg Allman and Sam Elliott. I never understand why Jason Patric hasn’t had a more stellar career. When given the chance, he really knocks it out of the park as he did here and is well matched by Leigh. 

Wall Street trader Tom Hanks gets lost driving girlfriend Melanie Griffith home from the airport and a series of events ends with her driving over a Black teenager. On the other side of town, down on his luck journalist Bruce Willis uses the story, which becomes a rallying point for district attorney F. Murray Abraham’s attempts to improve his image in the Black community, to get in good with his editor. I know this film has a bad reputation, but I had no idea how deserved it was. Every single one of the main characters is horrendously miscast in the film that it’s hard to believe anyone thought it would work. I’ve never read the source material, but for such a success, I can’t imagine its plot is as muddied and tone so incredibly uneven as this film turns out to be.

Taking a summer job at a restaurant near Cedar Point with his best friend Tina Holmes, Chris Stafford is forced to confront his sexuality when he develops feelings for co-worker Anderson Gabrych. Aside from a fantastic soundtrack and the occasional fabulous clothing choices, this doesn’t generally feel like it fits in the 1980s Midwest that it is supposedly set in. Luckily that isn’t terribly important as this coming-of-age story is fairly universal regardless of the time period as the main character attempts to find his true self even if that risks alienating those who previously supported him the most.

When his girlfriend falls into a coma after a car accident, Army test pilot Mel Gibson begs his best friend, scientist George Wendt, to cryogenically freeze him for a year so he doesn’t have to watch her die. More than fifty years later, the Army has lost track of the chamber containing Gibson until two kids playing in a storage facility accidentally activate it. Featuring Mel Gibson as a charming lead, Elijah Wood an annoying child, and Jamie Lee Curtis the caregiver mom, it’s truly a film from a very obvious place in time. Overly sentimental and overtly predictable, I wish it had spent more time on the time period adjustment than it does on the buddies running from the authorities bit, especially as there didn’t seem to be a good reason for the authorities to be pursuing him so aggressively.   

Tupac Shakur and Jim Belushi are pair of corrupt detectives who are left scrambling when a person they murdered turns out to be an undercover DEA agent. The film has a lot of good ideas going for it, but the result is terribly uneven. Released a year after Tupac’s own murder, I was unsure of him playing the more level-headed character to Belushi’s unhinged mastermind, but it speaks to the talent that was lost that he pulled it off quite well. Belushi on the other hand does not know how to bring the steely, ruthlessness necessary for his character whose arc goes on for too long and wraps up in a terribly convenient way.