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…)
July 20, 1994
BATMAN & ROBIN is 20 years cold, and 
Joel Schumacher’s FALLING DOWN (1993) is a movie I’ve always hated for what I thought it was saying. Watching it again a couple decades later I think I was partly wrong. Maybe even mostly wrong. But I still can’t get all the way on board. I’ll try to explain why.
This is gonna be pretty short. It’s easy to think of Nic Cage movies in binary terms, like he does good movies and he does terrible ones. And you just hope whichever one it is he’s uncaged enough to make it interesting or funny. But just like there is grey area and overlap between evil Castor Troy and heroic Sean Archer there are various shades of good and bad Cage. For example I thought he was great in KICK ASS but the rest of the movie wasn’t necessarily on the same level. I thought NEXT was a funny-bad classic despite his restrained performance. I thought him being normal in DRIVE ANGRY seriously held the movie back. Even THE WICKER MAN, one of his all time top 5 mega-acting performances, has some pretty boring stretches between classroom rants and bee attacks. (I love it though.) 
