Summertime is the season for blockbusters, has been since 1975. The biggest hit of 1991 came out Fourth of July weekend, a movie that didn't just spend four weeks at #1, but wound up the #1 movie of the year, the first of three times director James Cameron could claim the top spot of the year. Obviously, I'm talking about Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
After the success of 1984's The Terminator, a sequel may have seemed inevitable, but it was a process getting started. James Cameron didn't want to do one, and besides, he had had a falling-out with the production company that held half the rights (Cameron's ex Gale Ann Hurd held the other half). Arnold Schwarzenegger did want a sequel, and he convinced Carolco Pictures, which had produced Total Recall, to purchase the rights and move forward - they even set a release date for Memorial Day weekend, before a storyline was even set. So, Cameron came back, and soon, it was the typical stories for a James Cameron film: behind schedule, over-budget, with reports that it cost too much to ever see profit. They were finishing post-production all the way up until the star-studded premiere on July 1; two days later, it hit screens.
A juggernaut. Not only did it take the top spot at the box office for the weekend, it broke the record for Fourth of July weekend releases. And everyone saw it, men, women, and children. It held onto the top spot for the entirety of July, sticking around long enough to end the year as 1991's highest grossing film. Right below it? Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which had come out three weeks before...and which we'll also discuss below, alongside eleven others:
Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
release: June 7
dir: Stephen Herek
pr: Robert F. Newmyer / Julia Phillips / Brian Reilly / Jeffrey Silver
scr: Neil Landau & Tara Ison
cin: Tim Suhrstedt
Mom leaves the country for a romantic vacation, the babysitter dies, and the eldest kids have to learn how to be self-sufficient. Fantasy, yes, but it's more than a lark, it's a funny, well-acted, and surprisingly sincere reflection on growing up, realizing that being an adult means there isn’t a summer vacation, not every year, at least. Nice, believable arcs executed perfectly by Christina Applegate (as our heroine, wonderful) and Keith Coogan (as her brother, adorable). And how can you not love a movie with a fashion show finale?
Jungle Fever
release: June 7
dir/pr/scr: Spike Lee
cin: Ernest R. Dickerson
Married Black architect begins affair with his Italian-American assistant, as their families and neighbors experience their own troubles. Tough to write about, for me, as it seems like such a scattershot film with perhaps too many ideas and concerns about contemporary society, but I find it compelling, and, ultimately, a portrait of a family undone by the rigidity of its patriarch. I mean, sure, the main plot is Wesley Snipes having an affair with Annabella Sciorra and then trying to make it a real relationship when it's discovered, but the crux of the film is Snipes' pastor father Ossie Davis monologuing about the evils of the white woman while also refusing to acknowledge his other son, drug-addicted Samuel L. Jackson: this is a family run by a man who's not very affectionate, who will not help or try to understand his children, and who doesn't see his stubbornness reflected in his sons' own muleheadedness. And as for that central love story, there's a good contrast to that, too: John Turturro, shyly weighing whether or not to approach Tyra Ferrell, knowing how his so-called friends will react to hearing of his interest, not for Black women, but for a woman who is Black. Provocative, worth another look.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
release: June 14
nominations: Best Original Song ("(Everything I Do) I Do It For You")
dir: Kevin Reynolds
pr: Pen Densham / Richard Barton Lewis / John Watson
scr: Pen Densham & John Watson, story by Pen Densham
cin: Douglas Milsome
Another Robin Hood tale, this one has Robin as a nobleman fighting in the Crusades, who returns home to find corruption has destroyed his family and property, so he takes arms against the exploiters. Effective 90s blockbuster filmmaking, though its most interesting aspect is the inclusion of the Muslim Azeem, who returns with Robin, and the Pagan witch Mortianna, who is in the service of the villainous Nottingham. Both are representatives of outsider religions, one currently being crushed by Robin’s own countrymen in the Muslim’s homeland, the other having been destroyed in the very country where this faith was nurtured, each of them with a personal stake in the outcome of this rivalry, contrasted against the actions of the Church, whose higher-ups make alliances with scoundrels and whose lowlier-ranked join the resistance. Arguably more fascinating than whatever’s happening with Robin and Marian!
The Rocketeer
release: June 21
dir: Joe Johnston
pr: Charles Gordon / Lawrence Gordon / Lloyd Levin
scr: Danny Bilson & Paul De Meo, story by Danny Bilson & Paul de Meo & William Dear, from the graphic novel by Dave Stevens
cin: Hiro Narita
Guy makes a flying suit and becomes a legend and the only person who can take down a secret Nazi spy ring operating in Hollywood. You can draw a direct line from this flick to Captain America: The First Avenger, both Joe Johnston films, both seeking to recapture the style and excitement of Old Hollywood cinema. The Rocketeer is also, for me, just exhaustingly dull, getting everything right in its homage except for snappy pacing and a charismatic lead. The magic just isn’t there.
The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear
release: June 28
dir: David Zucker
pr: Robert K. Weiss
scr: David Zucker & Pat Proft, from the television series Police Squad! created by Jim Abrahams & David Zucker & Jerry Zucker
cin: Robert M. Stevens
The further adventures of inept Lt. Frank Drebin. This time he takes on a conspiracy hatched by fossil fuels execs to kneecap the President's soon-to-be-announced renewable energy bill. I laughed the whole time, mission accomplished.
Europa Europa
release: June 28
nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay
dir: Agnieszka Holland
pr: Artur Brauner / Margaret Ménégoz
scr: Agnieszka Holland, from the memoir Ich war Hitlerjunge Salomon by Solomon Perel
cin: Jacek Petrycki
Intriguing work here, from the memoirs of Solomon Perel, a Jew coming-of-age in Poland on the eve of Nazi invasion, who separates from his family and survives by joining the Hitler Youth. then, following "liberation", a Soviet boy scout (or whatever it's called), allegiances and identity changing just as the borders do. Brings up the thin line between invasion and liberation, each with its own indoctrination force, each punishing the wrong thought or uniform, each treating its latest collected nation as one more piece of land in a growing empire. Also addresses the thorny subject of survival: it’s not always “noble” suffering, sometimes it’s letting the other guy take the hit while you don the enemy’s jacket; sometimes it's sewing the skin of your dick to look less Jewish. Most of all, and I do mean most of all, it’s about himbo privilege: that boy doesn’t survive if he isn’t so beautiful, the perfect poster boy for the genetic superiority of whatever version of White you’re pushing.
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
release: June
dir: Simon Callow
pr: Ismail Merchant
scr: Michael Hirst, from the novel by Carson McCullers and the play by Edward Allbee
cin: Walter Lassally
A hermit moonshiner’s estranged cousin comes to town, transforming her business and her life…until a former lover returns. You know Simon Callow as an actor (A Room with a View, Four Weddings and a Funeral), perhaps even as a biographer (his two-volume Orson Welles), but this is his sole directorial effort for cinema, and that’s a shame. Turning his English eye towards the American Deep South, he and writer Michael Hirst courageously eschew voiceover or any unnecessary exposition, trusting the camera, the performers, the sound design, and the set and costume workers to do their job well enough to immerse us into this world, and it works. Now, I will say, Vanessa Redgrave seems to be trying on several Southern accents in every scene, sometimes in a single sentence, but she nails the awkwardness of someone who doesn’t feel entirely at home in their own body, or among people, who’d prefer to wear overalls and fistfight, a loner, a probably queer woman who doesn't have the language for it. It’s a slow-burn film, a deeply strange film, but a rewarding, haunting one.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
release: July 3
wins: Best Makeup (Stan Winston / Jeff Dawn), Best Sound (Tom Johnson / Gary Rydstrom / Gary Summers / Lee Orloff), Best Sound Effects Editing (Gary Rydstrom / Gloria S. Borders), Best Visual Effects (Dennis Muren / Stan Winston / Gene Warren, Jr. / Robert Skotak)
nominations: Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing (Conrad Buff IV / Mark Goldblatt / Richard A. Harris)
dir/pr: James Cameron
scr: James Cameron & William Wisher
cin: Adam Greenberg
A rewatch! After the events of the first film, the Terminator is reprogrammed and sent back to the past to protect Sara Connor and her son John from a time-traveling shapeshifting android. Incredible, cinematic perfection on every level, from the score subtly matching your own heart rate to the effects that turn a man into Liquid Metal and back to Linda Hamilton’s star performance, truly one of those works where she left it all on the screen, fully emotionally naked, breathtaking. And oh, that screenplay, how it dials up the action but never feels ludicrous, wows us with new technology then asks us to reconcile with what it would mean to fully embrace such advanced AI, even as it depicts the man behind the science as just a Dad, a Husband, not a monster, just a man trying to make things easier.
Slacker
release: July 5
dir/pr/scr: Richard Linklater
cin: Lee Daniel
On the other end of the cinematic spectrum is this round robin-style indie flick, an often relaxed portrait of artists, intellectuals, stoners, anarchists, waiters, hobos, murderers, and other assorted eccentrics in contemporary Austin, TX, each scene following a character or two until we find someone else to follow to the next scene. You could call it a time capsule (the lack of cell phones!), but there’s a familiarity to the rhythms of conversation and people’s behavior that make you go, “Ah! Yes! I remember that age!” There is truly nothing new under the sun…
Boyz N the Hood
release: July 12
nominations: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay
dir/scr: John Singleton
pr: Steve Nicolaides
cin: Charles Mills
A rewatch! Teens in South Central try to make it to graduation, despite gang violence, profiling cops, and other entrapments. I can come into this movie anytime, but I have to watch to the end once I do: it’s that captivating, it’s that expertly made (by a first-timer!), I believe every character, every detail, down to the plastic on the couch. It’s a punch in the stomach, that final act, even if it also feels inevitable. And I’ll never get over the look on Ice Cube’s face in the parking lot in the penultimate scene: no catharsis, no vengeance, not even anger, just this empty sadness at this cycle he participates in. This film delivers moments like that and hilarious dialogue - to laugh with someone is to care for them; those laughs are why we feel so strongly about the violence they later endure, why it feels so personal even to those of us who will never live in that neighborhood or understand that life. This movie lets us in not to see a news story, not to view statistics, but to meet and know and understand people and their environment and their home.
Point Break
release: July 12
dir: Kathryn Bigelow
pr: Peter Abrams / Joseph Newton Cohen / Robert L. Levy
scr: W. Peter Iliff, story by Rick King & W. Peter Iliff
cin: Donald Peterman
A rewatch! FBI agent goes undercover with a group of surfers he suspects to be a gang of bank robbers...but is he in too deep? I've heard this film defended as both "just dumb fun" and as a purposeful commentary on the performance of masculinity whose homoerotic undertones subvert action movie tropes. Maybe, but my God, it’s such a bloated, exhausting movie, I just can't click with this one, and actors I usually like just seem at sea with their dialogue, characters, even facial expressions.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
release: July 19
dir: Peter Hewitt
pr: Scott Kroopf
scr: Chris Matheson & Ed Solomon
cin: Oliver Wood
Now it seems crazy that these Keanu flicks were released back-to-back, but it's true. This is the better one, a sequel to Excellent Adventure that sees our two himbo heroes targeted by a menace from the future whose machinations result in the most excellent duo having to outwit Death itself, among other insane twists and turns. Reeves and Alex Winter are masters here, playing both good and evil versions of themselves, and you always know which is which by the way they smile, their mobility, they way they hurl the f-slur. Visually and narratively ambitious, tackling questions about faith and the afterlife without compromising the integrity of Bill or Ted. How is it so good?
The Doctor
release: August 16
dir: Randa Haines
pr: Laura Ziskin
scr: Robert Caswell, from the book A Taste of My Own Medicine by Ed Rosenbaum
cin: John Seale
William Hurt reunites with Children of a Lesser God director Randa Haines in a drama - based on a memoir! - about a doctor whose philosophy of “don’t get personal with patients” is tested when his throat cancer puts him on the other side of the healthcare system. I don’t want to say it needed to be longer, necessarily, but there’s a lot this film wants to cover - hospital bureaucracy, what constitutes good bedside manner, neglect of family for work, the privacy of self-grieving vs. allowing others in, facing your own mortality, the joy of Jimmy Buffett - and there’s just too little time for it to do everything justice. For instance: every time his kid came up, I thought, “Oh, yeah, that kid!” so underutilized is he, and I wish we actually had more time to explore the relationship with his wife, delicately played by Christine Lahti. They set up that relationship so well, only to reduce it to "You're late, why can't you let me in" shouting matches. But Hurt’s giving a great performance, of course, and he’s in every single scene - that’s always worth the time.
Next time, a groundbreaking documentary about New York's drag balls, and an unlikely box office hit.
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