"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Joe’s Apartment

July 26, 1996

I talked earlier in this series about HARRIET THE SPY and how it was a Nickelodeon production that sort of had its roots in an interstitial-turned-special-turned show made by quirky, creative people with vision. A major cable network farm-teaming artists and giving them opportunities. Now we have JOE’S APARTMENT, the first theatrical film from Nick’s older-sister network MTV, expanded from a CableACE Award-winning 2-minute short they’d used as filler. Writer/director John Payson had worked on the animated intros to MTV shows including Remote Control, The Big Picture and Just Say Julie, plus been a producer on Liquid Television and the Henry Selick short Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions. That’s great work and an incredibly cool world to come out of, but does it translate to knowing how to write and direct a mostly live action feature film?

In this case no. Maybe yes in other cases, I don’t know.

In the feature version the titular Joe is played by Jerry O’Connell (STAND BY ME) in only his fifth movie, even including “uncredited kid at beach” in POLICE ACADEMY 5: ASSIGNMENT MIAMI BEACH. He’s a hapless dork who takes the bus from Iowa to New York City and has kind of the “Living For the City” experience.There’s a joke that he’s narrating his trip as a letter to his mother but he gets interrupted by three different muggings.

The movie is premised not only on the city’s reputation as a crime-ridden hellscape, but also as a refuge for art weirdos thanks to rent control. Joe meets a guy named Walter Shit (Randee of the Redwoods himself, Jim Turner) of the band Shit by being the only person to check on him laying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood (as an art project). It’s Walter who finds Joe the titular apartment because they happen to be walking by when an old lady is thrown to her death out of her window and Walter pushes Joe to pretend he’s her son. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 18th, 2026 | 6 Comments »

A Time to Kill

July 24, 1996

A TIME TO KILL is a court room drama, but it was in the top ten of the domestic box office for 1996. It made more than some noisier movies like ERASER, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, BROKEN ARROW, and EXECUTIVE DECISION. That used to be a thing that could happen. Of course, it was kind a name brand, because it came from the first book by John Grisham, and there had already been movies of THE FIRM (1993), THE PELICAN BRIEF (1993) and THE CLIENT (1994). And this one came from the same director and writer as THE CLIENT, Joel Schumacher and Akiva Goldsman. (They sandwiched this between BATMAN FOREVER and BATMAN & ROBIN.)

I remember all the hype about Schumacher choosing the virtually unknown Matthew McConaughey for the lead role of Mississippi attorney Jake Brigance. The actor had made an impression in DAZED AND CONFUSED, and had recently been in LONE STAR, but most people had never heard of him, and this was his first lead role. Schumacher was talking him up as the next big thing, and it worked! Soon after this he did CONTACT and AMISTAD. Watching it now it doesn’t seem like that flashy of a role, it just seems like McConaughey, but I guess it was more exciting when it was new. He definitely stands out in the movie by being Texan and not doing an outrageous southern accent like Kevin Spacey and Donald Sutherland do. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 17th, 2026 | 30 Comments »

Faces of Death (2026)

I know we’re supposed to be cynical about i.p. and remakes and what not, but I am a child of Freddy, so to my mind franchising has always been one of the elements of horror. It doesn’t have to be the main one, it could be low on the totem pole, like beatboxing in hip hop. But it’s always gonna have some appeal to me when they do it right.

Is FACES OF DEATH even horror, though? I guess it is now. The 2026 film of that title is one of the more inventive brand refreshes, or whatever you want to call it. It’s not exactly a remake of the most notorious title in home video history, because the original purported to be a documentary, a sort of video essay/mondo film by pathologist Francis B. Gröss (actor Michael Carr). He narrates a collection of gruesome videos involving death: an alligator attack, a police shootout, a corpse washed up on a beach, an execution, people eating monkey brains, fun stuff like that.

Like any child in the ‘80s I heard legends of FACES OF DEATH and took everybody’s word for it that it was the real deal. Then in high school I took part in this group, not a debate club, mostly a social activity, but we got together to discuss/argue different topics, for example whether or not executions should be televised. It’s one of those insane questions people used to pretend was important to consider. Would it be a deterrent to criminals? Would it jolt society into rethinking capital punishment? And somebody said well, if we’re going to consider it then we should really understand what it means. So we watched the electric chair scene from FACES OF DEATH. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 14th, 2026 | 18 Comments »

Spider-Man: Brand New Day / The Punisher: One Last Kill

There’s a scene in SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY where Peter Parker (Tom Holland, THE ODYSSEY) sees his high school best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon, THE WRECKING CREW) at the bodega. Ned doesn’t remember him due to a spell Dr. Strange had to do to save the world from multi-dimensional doom (long story, and I don’t remember it), so Peter just watches as he tells the clerk to never let him buy a certain type of energy shot that he’s addicted to. Then he asks to buy one last bottle. Then two.

Yeah, that’s sorta like the MCU these days. We all say we’re over it, then this movie has the biggest opening weekend of all time. It sure doesn’t give me the same kick it once did, but maybe my body craves an approximation, and this will do for now.

I wouldn’t go to bat for BRAND NEW DAY. It’s definitely more of the MCU episodic dilly-dallying and not the compact, standalone cinematic storytelling that used to be the goal. Seems like a lost art in the days of late stage comic book movie – is that why they gave up on doing a new BLADE? But this one has plenty that works, particularly in Peter’s relationships with MJ (Zendaya, THE ODYSSEY) and Frank Punisher (Jon Bernthal, THE ODYSSEY). The love story with MJ has been built up over three previous movies, while his even knowing The Punisher happened (I believe) off screen between movies. But Peter will long for his lost love until they meet again, and he’ll butt heads with his street vigilantism rival until they’re a mismatched buddy pair. One of those classic teams, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and the severely traumatized mass murdering gun and bomb freak who hides out in a squalid industrial barge. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 13th, 2026 | 23 Comments »

Skyscraper (1996)

July 24, 1996

SKYSCRAPER is a DTV movie that nobody would’ve missed if I’d skipped it in this retrospective. But it’s DIE HARD in a building, starring Anna Nicole Smith, and I hadn’t seen it, so I thought I felt I had a responsibility.

Smith had been Playboy Playmate of the Year in 1993, but most of us knew about her because in 1994 she married 89-year-old petroleum billionaire J. Howard Marshall, who died the following year. She wasn’t named in his will and had to go all the way to the Supreme Court failing to get the half of the estate she said he’d promised her, but the world had opinions about what was going on there. (A deeper and truer love than most will ever know.)

Smith got into movies with bit parts in THE HUDSUCKER PROXY and NAKED GUN 33 1/3 (both 1994), which would remain the jewels of her filmography. But SKYSCRAPER wasn’t her first starring role, or even her first action role – PM Entertainment and director Raymond Martino had already used her in TO THE LIMIT (1995). Maybe that’s why she seems a little more comfortable in this role than I expected. Just a little, though. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 10th, 2026 | 20 Comments »

Trainspotting (plus some notes on The Frighteners)

July 19, 1996 (U.S. release date)

It’s not exactly a bold statement to say that TRAINSPOTTING was a phenomenon. A low budget Scottish counterculture movie that made $72 million around the world, made stars out of most of its cast, internationally launched a director who has since won best director and best picture Oscars and is still a major player today, and has been named by the BFI as the 10th greatest British film of the 20th century. Also it’s a good movie. I hadn’t seen it since the theater 30 years ago, and it knocked me out again.

It’s the sophomore film for director Danny Boyle and producer Andrew Macdonald, and they reunited much of their team from SHALLOW GRAVE: writer John Hodge, cinematographer Brian Tufano, editor Masahiro Harakubo, production designer Kave Quinn. This time it’s based on Irvine Welsh’s 1993 debut novel, and it’s the first-person-narrated tale of twentysomething heroin addict Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor in only his fourth movie) and his rowdy social circle in Edinburgh.They have some wild times, some horrible times. Fights, deaths, pubs, soccer fields, hospitals, court rooms. They rehab, relapse, reintegrate, and most of them survive it with a bit of punk rock stubbornness and Gen-X ironic distance.

Chances are you’ve seen it, I don’t have to tell you who these characters are. If not, you’ll meet them in the movie. I like the lovable idiot Spud (Ewen Bremner, JUDGE DREDD, who had played Renton in a stage adaptation), even though I really can’t fathom how he managed to accidentally splatter his shit all over his lady’s parents’ breakfast. I like seeing their square jock friend Tommy because now I recognize Kevin McKidd from starring in Rome later. Bleach blond Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller, HACKERS) is such a funny character, because it both makes sense why they’d hang out with him and why he would be so aggravating. Renton says that Sick Boy tries to kick at the same time as him just to show he can do it easily, “thereby downgrading my own struggle.” (read the rest of this shit…)

August 6th, 2026 | 22 Comments »

The Odyssey (2026)

THE ODYSSEY. Good movie. Christopher Nolan (executive producer: ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE) gives us his take on the ancient poem, as filtered through his heavy duty filmatism, shot on IMAX film, with some of his beloved non-linear structure, a ridiculously stacked cast and a weird Ludwig Göransson (THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN) score. It’s classic Nolan material but with the welcome addition of some monsters and horror, because it’s set in “a time of apparent magic.”

Nolan has joined the category of Spielberg and Eastwood, where I’ll see anything he makes and know I’ll probly like it even if it’s something I wouldn’t otherwise be interested in. Even if it seems like homework. Obviously THE ODYSSEY sounds like more of a popcorn movie than DUNKIRK or OPPENHEIMER, but I sure do feel like I’m supposed to already have opinions about Homer and epic poems. By the time I saw the movie the discourse revolved around a lengthy takedown in the London Review of Books by classicist Emily Wilson, whose 2017 translation Nolan cites as an influence. But even regular movie critics seem to be full of thoughts about The Odyssey and The Iliad and what not.

This is all valuable, but I must say up front that I have none of that background. Instead I come to THE ODYSSEY as someone who actually liked the remake of CLASH OF THE TITANS and paid to see such Fantasy Sword Dude movies as KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD, BEOWULF (in IMAX 3D), CONAN THE BARBARIAN 2011, HERCULES 2014, WARCRAFT, GODS OF EGYPT, and IN THE LOST LANDS, as well as Elevated Fantasy Sword Dude movies THE GREEN KNIGHT and THE NORTHMAN. And I enjoyed most of those. Not to brag. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 5th, 2026 | 29 Comments »

Fled

July 19, 1996

As you can see I’m lagging behind on this summer retrospective, struggling to catch up. But it doesn’t feel like it while watching FLED, because this is the kind of mediocre movie they used to dump off in August. Perfectly competent, nothing more. A lesser work from two actors I was excited to see in anything back then. But also Stephen Baldwin.

It’s an action movie directed by Kevin Hooks, the child star turned TV director turned guy who did STRICTLY BUSINESS and PASSENGER 57, and it’s written by Preston A. Whitmore (THE WALKING DEAD [1995]). So we can at least give it credit as one of the ’90s movies by Black filmmakers that’s just allowed to be commercial and not under pressure to represent a culture or stop the violence and increase the peace or anything (even though it features Furious Styles himself).

When I saw the credit for producer Frank Mancuso Jr. (FRIDAY THE 13TH 2–7) and some flashy camera moves (cinematographer: Matthew F. Leonetti, HARD TO KILL, STRANGE DAYS) and then I heard composer Graeme Revell (THE CROW, THE CRAFT, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE) playing DIE-HARD-type orchestral bombast over a hip hop beat on the opening credits, I wondered if maybe this was gonna be more pulpy fun than I remembered. Not really. But I can see, in retrospect, that they’re trying to do a bit of a John Woo thing with some flying through the air shooting and slow motion and vicious squibs. It was neither stylish or emotional enough to register at the time, but now it’s such a time capsule I guess I can appreciate that a little more, at least. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 3rd, 2026 | 6 Comments »

Multiplicity

July 17, 1996

MULTIPLICITY is the Michael Keaton clone movie. I remembered it being okay at best, but Keaton being very good at playing multiple characters who are distinguishable from each other just based on his mannerisms. Yes, I was correct about all that.

It’s directed by Harold Ramis, who I hold in high regard because of GROUNDHOG DAY, but I don’t think any of his other movies reach those heights. Certainly not this one.

Doug Kinney (Michael Keaton the year before JACKIE BROWN) is some kind of manager at an L.A. construction company, he’s forced to work long hours, doesn’t see the family enough, all that. I was impressed that at least he misses his daughter’s Campfire Girls graduation instead of the standard Little League game or piano recital. (read the rest of this shit…)

July 30th, 2026 | 9 Comments »

Kazaam

KAZAAM is one of those movies we all know as a punchline because “Shaquille O’Neal as a rapping genie” sounds more like a fake movie inside another movie than an actual thing that exists. The only one that’s guaranteed less existent is the other genie movie starring Sinbad that somehow became a shared delusion of millennials? I don’t even want to think about that shit.

But until now I hadn’t actually seen KAZAAM. It’s as ridiculous as I imagined and no higher in quality, but I suppose kind of different in some ways, so I found that mildly interesting. What I didn’t know from the reputation and the poster is that it follows in the tradition of some of the ‘80s comedies where it’s ostensibly a kids movie about baby shit but also it has crime and violence treated seriously, like an action movie of the time. Or at least the criminals are treated seriously. There’s a fight scene with genie Shaq throwing people through walls and it’s obviously pretty cartoony, but I noticed the stunt coordinator was Jeff Imada (RAPID FIRE, THE CROW) and stunt performers in the movie include Billy Blanks, James Lew and Jeannie Epper (seen earlier in the summer in the re-release of SWITCHBLADE SISTERS). (read the rest of this shit…)

July 29th, 2026 | 15 Comments »

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