The Best and Worst Movies of 1995

And so it's back to movies, as I rate the year 1995 and present my list of the best and worst from this year, and compare them to what the audiences and the critics seemed to love.  Notice how my movie reviews are getting just a little bit longer?

My Top Ten Favorites of 1995:

Babe

A mere 7 years after Bob Hoskins and Joanna Cassidy shared the screen with cartoons for the entire length of a movie, the technology had improved enough to make a film about talking animals seem believable, and this film actually opened the door for much more of this type, from Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web to films like Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful, and even the tiger and other zoo animals in Life of Pi.  Babe is a charming tale about a pig who develops a special relationship with a dog named Fly and is able to keep himself off the dinner table by learning to herd sheep.  Along with the special effects, the writing is good, and James Cromwell did a wonderful job as Farmer Hoggett.  Magda Szubanski wasn't as good as his wife, who took over as the main human co-star in the disappointing sequel three years later

Batman Forever

Or maybe not forever!  In fact, this was actually the beginning of the end as director Joel Schumacher started to take the caped crusader into the world of the silly.  However, this film is still vastly superior to the one with Clooney and Schwarzenegger.  Val Kilmer brings some brooding to the role, Nicole Kidman was well cast as love interest Dr. Chase Meridian ("and what a chase"), and Chris O'Donnell's Robin was introduced, and though his introduction was a bit on the long side, it was still rather emotional.  Of the villains  Tommy Lee Jones wasn't as good or memorable as Jim Carry as The Riddler.  It takes a bit of time to get Edward Nigma ("E. Nigma") into those green tights, and his story is a bit silly until then, but once he dons them, everyone else has a difficult time keeping up.

The Brady Bunch Movie

Being a fan of the original show, this movie version was a nearly perfect way to introduce the Brady's to a whole new audience while keeping the fans of the old show highly entertained.  With elements of the old plots sewn in, the Bradys are presented as a family stuck in the 70's and clueless about the real life of the 90's, and the comparisons between the two time periods are a lot of fun, as is this entire cast of groovy and wholesome kids, centered by speech-making Mike and Shelly Long as Carol, often repeating that old catchphrase "Oh, Mike" over the Bradys little problems.  The sequel didn't have quite the same magic.

Dead Man Walking

This film took me surprise.  Being a conservative Christian, I'm not the biggest fan of Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, or Sean Penn, particularly of their rude politics.  That's why this film is such a surprise.  Oliver Stone also managed to be rather fair and polite when he took on George W. Bush in the movie W., and likewise, Robbins steadies his hand and is rather fair with Christian concepts in this tale of a nun who comforts a murderer on death row and the family of the victims he massacred.  As Christians, our attitudes should follow suit.  St. Paul talks about Faith, Hope, and Love, and how the greatest of these is love, and Jesus himself directed us to serve and to help, along with specifically mentioning how we are to visit the broken and the fallen in prison. 

Desperado
Cool, slow motion action scenes abound as the characters shoot at each other and blow things up, and look cool doing it.  The plot is happenstance, and takes a back seat to the well-shot action scenes, including the one that features a wise-cracking Quentin Tarantino.

Dolores Claiborne
It had been five years since Kathy Bates had won an Oscar for playing a strong-willed woman in a Stephen King thriller.  Could she strike gold twice by doing it again in another Stephen King movie?  Although the character of Annie Wilkes, and the movie Misery, were more memorable, this one comes in as a close second.  The cinematographer had a real nice handle on how to shoot the past and the present.  Christopher Plummer plays subdued villainy so well, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judy Parfitt, and David Strathairn do some great work with some strong material as well.  Dolores Claiborne had already been accused of murder once.  Has she killed again?  Finding out the truth about both murders and her past is an intriguing experience.

GoldenEye
Brosnan.  Peirce Brosnan.  Welcome to the world of Bond... finally!  You didn't disappoint, and brought a suave bravado back to the character.  They also rolled out the red carpet to Judi Dench, who makes a great addition as James Bond's boss M, and switching the character from male to female.  In the villain department, Sean Bean was pretty good as former Bond colleague Alec Trevelyan, and though he was a better villain than Robbie Coltrane's Zukovsky, he also wasn't quite as colorful as Alan Cumming as Boris Grishenko.  Meanwhile, Bond girl Izabella Scorupco was cute as Natalya Simonova, a computer scientist in way over her head, but the best addition was the combo Bond girl/villain Xenia Onatopp ("she likes it onatopp") well played by Famke Janssen.

Tommy Boy
Comedies can so often be stupid, but when they work, they really work.  This road movie about a snarky company man babysitting the boss' dimwitted son on a sales trip across country is loaded with enough great gags for two movies, and though David Spade is great as the "babysitter", it is Chris Farley's movie all the way!  Classic bits include "fat guy in a little coat", "holy schnike", and several hilarious mishaps with the car, including the door falling off, M&M's melting into the vent, the hood flying up unexpectedly, and a dead deer in the backseat suddenly coming back to life and destroying the car.  Perhaps this is the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles actually wanted to be!

Toy Story
Though the market is now flooded with them, the first full-fledged computer animated film is still one of the best, and unlike the Shrek movies, they haven't made a bad one of these Toy Story movies yet!  The story of toys that come to life when nobody is looking was the perfect idea for the first full CGI animated film, and as good as this early CGI work was, it's actually the story, the comedy, and the emotion that made it an instant classic.

A Walk in the Clouds
I'm not the biggest fan of romance movies.  I actually think this type of movie is very difficult to pull off and make it seem real, or truly romantic.  This film, however, really works, and the location in Napa Valley in Sacramento, California is the perfect backdrop for this story of a simple chocolate salesman who meets a single, unwed pregnant woman on the bus and agrees to pretend to be her husband during her visit with her traditional, authoritarian Mexican-American father at his winery.  As the charade continues, the two begin to really fall in love with each other, but what will it mean if the family finds out he is not really the baby's father?  The romantic atmosphere in this film is just right.  

The Best of the Rest:

Apollo 13

Braveheart

Copycat

Crimson Tide

A Little Princess

Mr. Holland’s Opus

The Quick and the Dead

Se7en

Twelve Monkeys

The Usual Suspects

Thrillers abound on this list of ten other good films from the year, from the psychological mind-games of Copycat and Se7en to the hunt for the mysterious and possibly fictional Keyser Söse in The Usual Suspects to the dangers of being stuck inside a claustrophobic tin can in both Apollo 13 (spaceship) and Crimson Tide (submarine).  Meanwhile, elements of the thriller genre can also be found in the Sam Raimi western shoot-em-up The Quick and the Dead, the intriguing Bruce Willis time-travel yarn Twelve Monkeys, and even in the remake of an old Shirley Temple movie, A Little Princess, which also includes some colorful fantasy sequences.  Finally, both Richard Dreyfuss and Mel Gibson make labors of love, with Dreyfuss playing a favored High School music teacher and Mel Gibson directing and starring in the true story of 13th century Scottish rebel William Wallace.    

The Worst:

Billy Madison

Casino

Demon Knight

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

Johnny Mnemonic

Judge Dredd

Leaving Las Vegas

Mad Love

Tank Girl

Waterworld

Only two horror movies this time, the rest of them run the gamut from dark and morose (the critically acclaimed Leaving Las Vegas and the kooky Mad Love) to dumb, grade Z sci fi (Johnny Mnemonic, Judge Dredd, Tank Girl, and the expensive Kevin Costner flick Waterworld) to brain dead comedy (Billy Madison) and an unnecessary gangster film (I remember David Spade on Saturday Night Live saying he liked the movie Casino the first time he saw it, when it was called Goodfellas!)

With each of these yearly lists, I like to compare my choices with the biggest hits at the Box Office and the Oscars.  Of these films, I never saw Il Postino or Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, and I didn't care much for Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Bruce Willis' next Die Hard film, or Disney's animated Pocahontas, which wasn't as good or memorable as the other films Disney had been making as of late.  Other kids films I didn't care much for included the big screen version of Casper and Robin Williams starring in Jumanji, a disappointing film that really needed better effects.  For all the advances Babe made in the realm of real looking animals who could talk, Jumanji was a step backwards.  None of the animals seemed particularly real.

Notable Oscar Films                                         Biggest Box Office Hits

Braveheart                                                          Die Hard: With a Vengeance

Apollo 13                                                            Toy Story

Babe                                                                    Apollo 13

Il Postino                                                            GoldenEye

Sense and Sensibility                                          Pocahontas

Leaving Las Vegas                                             Batman Forever

Dead Man Walking                                            Se7en

The Usual Suspects                                            Casper

Mighty Aphrodite                                               Waterworld

Pocahontas                                                        Jumanji