Intermission: One Year at the Box Office

In the timeline of the column, I've just turned a year old. Let's see the best movies I missed as a baby!

With last week’s edition of “A Life Through Film” on Maximum Risk, we’ve reached my first birthday in our movement through history. In 33 movies, we’ve seen a pretty wide gamut of both genre style and film quality, but what can we learn from these movies? That was the central thesis of this series, after all. What have we gleaned from these movies as they relate to American culture? Since we’re operating on a calendar centered around my birthday, let’s use this opportunity to do a wrap-up of sorts.

First off, I think that 1995 and 1996 had people clamoring for new leading men. Over the course of this column, we’ve witnessed the continued rise of guys like Jim Carrey and Brad Pitt as well as the spark of new stars like George Clooney, Matthew McConaughey, and Edward Norton. Pierce Brosnan has arrived as an A-Lister thanks to his first outing as James Bond in Goldeneye, and the John Travolta comeback train has kept rolling two years after Pulp Fiction.

And that’s before we even get to the influx of talent coming over to America from Hong Kong. With the handover to England looming in 1997 and US interest higher than ever thanks to endorsements from in-demand stars like Quentin Tarantino, some of the territory’s greatest creatives have made a real splash at the box office in my first year of life. John Woo, Ringo Lam, and Jackie Chan all topped the box office for the first time during this period, and you could even make the argument that the continued existence of The Crow as a franchise is at least partly based on its increasingly tenuous connection to Bruce Lee.

The rise of these more kinetic action movies from Hong Kong creators paralleled a downturn in the old guard of the genre. People were no longer content watching established icons like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme show up with their natural might and save the day easily. Both of these men suffered some of their final hits as leading men during this time, as the everyman rose up and saved the day in titanic hits like Independence Day and Twister.

I wish I could say that women had great representation at the top of the box office during this first year of my life, but chick flicks were surprisingly few and far between. The best of them was easily The Craft, but Waiting to Exhale and Up Close & Personal both made solid efforts to appeal to America’s more sensitive side, even as they were dwarfed by baser hits like The Nutty Professor and The Rock. We’re in a macho moment at this point in the column, as proven by the cultural cache of two different movies about golf.

Comedy in general is in a weird place at this point. Some of its biggest stars are already trying to reinvent themselves to varying degrees of success, while future icons like Adam Sandler are still trying to find out what their lane even is. In the coming years, a whole new crop of SNL alums and funny people from other origins will shake things up a bit more, but I can’t say that the stretch between the Septembers of 1995 and 1996 were all that funny.

The exception were the moments where comedy met up with America’s evolving feelings towards gay people. To Wong Foo started this whole series off with a fun, good time, while The Birdcage more closely interrogated why people even had a problem with gay marriage at all. The success of these movies ultimately did little to move the ticker of equality before Y2k. But as someone who expected all of the past to virulently homophobic, it was pleasantly surprising to see nuance represented by some pretty good movies.

Of all recurring motifs from this column so far, the one that keeps coming up over and over again is the rise of computer graphics in film. Not too long into the column, we saw the first movie entirely animated using computers, and it was far from the only film to use the technology. Whether studios were using computer graphics to depict tornadoes, wild animal stampedes, or teen girls doing magic, audiences were ready and willing to take in as much of those shiny textures and questionable models as they could get.

The first year of my life paralleled a time of change in American movies. New stars, new technology, new trends, new ideas. Will future years bring that same level of change? We’ll have to wait and see. For now, let’s go over the best and worst of that first year and see how much they lined up with these trends.

The Top Three Movies of Year One

3. Se7en

The second movie ever reviewed in the column was the best way to introduce many of the ideas that would become essential to this first year. Hot new Hollywood names like Brad Pitt and director David Fincher, America’s continued obsession with violence in the wake of the OJ trial, and a reminder that the end of history doesn’t mean the end of suffering. On top of all that, it’s just a fantastic film, even if one of the main reasons why it’s so good is tough to look back on now. A brilliant thriller that stands up to this day.

2. Toy Story

Part of me was worried that my love for this movie was too steeped in nostalgia. After all, I don’t know if I’ve watched any other movie in my life as much as this one thanks to childhood revisits on VCR. But even if the movie wasn’t still incredible (it is, thanks to brilliant writing, voice acting, and use of color), surely that lingering presence in my mind all these years later is a sign of quality. I watched a lot of movies and TV as a kid that barely register in my memory today, whereas I could probably recite this whole movie back to front right now. The computer revolution kicks off with a bang.

1. 12 Monkeys

To this point the only perfect 5/5 in the column. It’s off-kilter, it’s strange, it’s beautiful and terrifying and oh God, it might all be true. It was all downhill for 1996 after the year started with this at the top of the box office. 12 Monkeys is not for everyone, but I found no movie more personally satisfying to watch (or rewatch, in this case) while writing this column. Every day, as life gets stranger and harder to believe, the sweet excuse of insanity that this movie presents get more and more appealing. 12 Monkeys may truly get better and better with every passing year.

And, on the flip side…

The Bottom Three Movies of Year One

3. Jack

Robin Williams is lucky this movie only destroyed one career. Francis Ford Coppola may have been disillusioned with Hollywood and studio bullshit before making this movie, but the critical and commercial collapse of this misguided attempt at maudlin humor put the last nail in the coffin. There’s a direct line between this, perhaps the most baffling movie of 1996, and Megalopolis, perhaps the most baffling movie of 2024. Yay?

2. Black Sheep

There have been a couple of very bad comedies covered so far in the series; in truth, this place should probably be occupied by the racism of Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls or the homophobia of Bulletproof. But no movie and its accompanying research hole made me sadder than Black Sheep. Chris Farley got to star in three movies in his life and this empty echo of a far better predecessor that ruined one of his closest friendships had to be one of them. Just a depressing waste of time and energy.

1. The Island of Dr. Moreau

What else could it have been? The only 1/5 so far, The Island of Dr. Moreau probably would have been in this spot even if everyone involved had had a great time making it and everyone walked away a better person because of the experience. The production of this movie ruined at least a handful of lives as well as the lasting image of Marlon Brando as one of our finest actors. It couldn’t have helped with the rapidly declining appeal of Val Kilmer either, even if his final box office topper came a few weeks after this one. This movie sucks big time, and not even in a fun way. If it’s possible to have a cinematic nemesis, this is now mine.

Thanks so much for reading and being a part of this journey so far! It’s been incredibly rewarding to go back to these movies and to research the circumstances that made them possible. I’m looking forward to many more years of this, so please stay tuned as we continue onwards towards the year 2000 and beyond.

Next Week: I try to pretend everything is okay in the world by writing a review of The First Wives Club during Inauguration Week. It doesn’t go well.

See you then!

-Will