Because I'm blessed to live in a city with a vital collection of repertory movie theaters, only a slight minority of what I see are new releases. Otherwise, sometimes at home but often in public, I seek out old stuff that's new to me, working through directors and genres and actresses or getting into these cool loops, especially at Film Forum, where I see something, catch a trailer for another thing that looks cool, buy a ticket for that, and so on. Over the past two weeks, for example, I've seen Black Narcissus, The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, Blow Out, and Amadeus all on big screens. It's one of my favorite ways to spend a phoneless afternoon or evening.
But with the release of Twisters, apparently a sequel to Twister, I've been alerted to a gigantic blind spot in my watch history: smash hits from the 1990s.
I promise I'm not approaching this from a place of proud ignorance. I was too young to go to the movies in the 1990s, except for like Tarzan or Stuart Little, but in my adulthood, I've formed the opinion that the '90s were a very special decade for film—a time of expanded creative diversity, advances in special effects that still had to be used judiciously, and a wealth of mid-budget genre offerings that didn't feel the need to be franchises. Rarely do I choose a film from this era without being rewarded by at least some little quirk of originality that I didn't know I was missing. A few especially compelling ones I've seen of late include The Last Seduction, Bulworth, Drive Me Crazy, The Lovers on the Bridge, Barcelona, Chungking Express, and The Wedding Banquet. But those smaller '90s darlings inhabit a completely different universe than the one I've unintentionally ignored.
There are a ton of hugely popular '90s movies that I've missed out on for various reasons: I feel like I've gotten the gist through references and conversations, or nobody's ever really impressed upon me that I should watch them, or the director isn't anyone of note, or they just seem kind of bad. It's for this reason that I'm lost whenever my co-workers—a bunch of them a decade older than me—bring up, like, any Will Smith movie ever. With people now also recalling a certain fondness for Twister, I've decided to make up a list of blockbusters I've never watched, in order of how good I think they probably are.
1. The Mummy. One of the first movies I truly loved, Looney Tunes: Back In Action, features Brendan Fraser playing Brendan Fraser's stuntman and bragging about how much he's in The Mummy. Also, multiple women I know had big crushes on Rachel Weisz in this when they were kids. It seems fun in an Indiana Jones kind of way.
2. The Fugitive. I DIDN'T KILL MY WIFE! That's all I got. I have seen Air Force One, which was fine, and of course I like Harrison Ford. I just never got around to this one.
3. Twister. I swear I'd never heard people talk about Twister being good until they started advertising the new one, but I guess people have a soft spot for it. I think folks are nostalgic for action-comedies with big ensembles where nobody wears any tights.
4. Men In Black. A fun alien movie, I think. They've made like four of these, somehow.
5. Independence Day. It was recently explained to me that this is more of a war movie than a sci-fi movie. People talk this up every July but it's less appealing to me than Men In Black. Suits > Military Uniforms.
6. Speed. My youngest co-worker has seen this. It sounds bombastic.
7. The Sixth Sense. I have not seen a single M. Night Shyamalan movie, in part because the time when I first became aware of him was also the moment when everyone turned on him. I would like to change that, perhaps with Trap, but I am not seeking out The Sixth Sense, because I already know the twist.
8. Basic Instinct. I'm a Paul Verhoeven fan, and "erotic thriller" is one of my favorite lost genres. (Linda Fiorentino is a hurricane in The Last Seduction.) But this movie has been boiled down, for me, to a lot of accusations of homophobia and misogyny and Sharon Stone's unwitting exposure on camera. I'm not exactly itching to see it.
9. A Few Good Men. I've seen that scene on YouTube, and this post is a classic. Do I need to catch any other part of it? I'm going to say no.
10. Saving Private Ryan. I just don't want to see the infamously violent opening, and anyway, I much prefer dinosaur-and-shark Spielberg to human Spielberg.
11. Rush Hour. Jackie Chan is an incredible craftsman and a charismatic actor, and I could spend all day watching clips of his physically grueling fight scenes. But a Brett Ratner version of him with a familiar mismatch gimmick sounds mediocre, by his standards.
12. Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. I saw the parody(?) of this, Men In Tights, when I was a kid. It's hard to get into an original once you've seen the thing making fun of it.
13. Bad Boys. I keep seeing the trailer for whichever sequel number they're on for this series. Cop movies all kind of blur together for me. I haven't seen Lethal Weapon. I watched Beverly Hills Cop for the first time pretty recently. There are a lot of guns!
14. The Bodyguard. Listening to Whitney Houston sing is always a good idea. I bet the rest is sappy.
15. Ghost. When people ask me for my favorite song, a regular answer I give is "Unchained Melody." It's a beauty, and I love all the different ways that artists have interpreted it through the years. I think this movie is partially to thank for making it one of the best-known songs of the entire 20th century, up there with "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and "Can't Help Falling In Love." Community made fun of this film with a pottery gag, but I can't tell you if they actually do pottery in this. I just imagine Patrick Swayze and a woman looking longingly at each other.
16. The Green Mile. I genuinely know nothing about The Green Mile besides that its title was a regular presence on the cable TV guide, and I'm pretty sure it's a Stephen King adaptation. I think it takes place in a prison, and it sounds like something Tom Hanks would have been in. I'm not checking any of this.
17. Dumb And Dumber. I don't even dislike Jim Carrey all that much, but I'm annoyed just thinking about this movie. I can't even say that there's a chance I would enjoy Dumb And Dumber.
18. Hook. I've always had a soft spot for Peter Pan, because I liked that it took place in the "real world"—somewhere that wasn't a nonspecific fairytale village with a prince in a castle and all that faraway ornamentation. In theory, some twink and and his tiny drag-queen sidekick could have flown through my bedroom window on any given night. But Robin Williams, for all his talent, was not a twink, and just looking at the poster for Hook makes me think of Muppet Treasure Island, which is one of the lesser Muppet films. Pass.
19. Armageddon. BOOM! Also: Aerosmith.
20. Getting hit by the cruise ship from Speed 2, which I also have not seen.
21. Dances With Wolves. This list is over!
