August 16, 1996
THE FAN is one of those movies I saw at the time, thought was pretty decent, didn’t think much about for 30 years, watched again, still thought was the same pretty decent. In fact, I might have to bump that up to pretty good.
One good thing about it is the same thing that happens when you watch many of the Tony Scott movies, even lesser ones: you remember that god damn, movies used to look good. The cinematographer is Dariusz Wolski, who’d just shot CRIMSON TIDE for Scott, but also he’s the guy who did THE CROW, and later DARK CITY, and then he did some Gore Verbinskis and Tim Burtons, and then a whole bunch of Ridley Scotts. A high ranking cinematographer of my lifetime, in my opinion. So here he’s doing those hazy orange Tony Scott skies, he’s making shots of the most routine shit look god damn beautiful, he’s staging business meetings in conference rooms with magic hour light shining through slit blinds, just ridiculously beautiful shots in a regular ol’ stalker thriller.
In his followup to CASINO and HEAT, Robert De Niro stars as Gil Renard, a very serious fan of the San Francisco Giants. Not just a guy who watches the games and has the hats and bobbleheads and shit (though of course he does), he’s also a regular sports radio caller, apt to defend his team, for example when radio personalities Jewel Stern (Ellen Barkin, MAN TROUBLE) and Bernie (Kurt Fuller, MIRACLE MILE, NO HOLDS BARRED) are a little too hard on the highly paid new player Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes between WAITING TO EXHALE and MURDER AT 1600). (read the rest of this shit…)
On May 13, 1994, Johnny Carson was on Late Show with David Letterman, his final televised appearance. Times were rolling on, guards were changing. That same day Miramax, an indie studio recently purchased by Disney, had their biggest opening ever with a bitter R-rated comic book adaptation. While boomers were preparing to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Woodstock, here was a movie with a soundtrack full of Lollapalooza bands, their names underlined on the poster, above a 1-900 number you could call “for music CD preview.” That particular demographic hadn’t really been cinematically catered to so directly, and they showed up, as did others. It was even well reviewed by critics, who were unlikely to be comic book nerds or Nine Inch Nails fans in those days.
One night an amnesiac (Rufus Sewell, EXTREME OPS, 
