May 22, 1996
By my count, there are ten summer of ’96 movies that turned out to be the first of a series. Usually only a series of two, though. THE CRAFT, TWISTER, THE ARRIVAL, ERASER, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, INDEPENDENCE DAY, and TRAINSPOTTING each got one sequel. Five of those were decades later, three were direct-to-video. DRAGONHEART had surprising longevity, with its fourth DTV sequel released in 2020. But only MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, which reached its 30th anniversary last week, got seven theatrical sequels, all with Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames returning, all good in my opinion. Most of them very good. So it’s arguably the best summer of ’96 movie and the most consequential.
I have reviewed it before, eleven years ago, so consider this a companion review, because I stand by what I wrote then. I still think MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE is a prime example of a blockbuster done right, because yes, “it’s a big movie star vehicle, based on an existing ‘property,’ climaxes in a noisy special effects-laden action spectacle, did end up becoming a franchise,” but “it is a Brian De Palma movie, it doesn’t feel like he had to compromise anything. He got to take his style and his interests and experiment with them on a little larger canvas than usual.” It’s still something I get excited for when it happens – a visionary director getting a budget to put their stamp on some familiar piece of pop culture – but the franchise machinery has gotten so much stronger. They’re better at keeping somebody like that under control, plugging them into an existing thing, letting them kind of make it theirs, but not entirely. That would be reckless. They’d have to disavow them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Although the weird blockbusters like 
I really want to direct you to my review of COOL WORLD if you haven’t read it, though, because this is a real headscratcher of a movie from indie/adult animation pioneer Ralph Bakshi, working with Paramount and making all kinds of concessions that might’ve turned it even weirder. Back then I liked it (or wanted to like it) enough that I saw it twice in the theater, then when I watched it five years ago to write that review I decided to retire from watching COOL WORLD. But in any study of the weirdness of summer ’92 it must be acknowledged.
July 1, 1998
ARMAGEDDON is Michael Bay’s third movie, but in some sense it’s the one where he revealed his true face to the world. There were plenty of examples of his style and character in BAD BOYS and 
I don’t know about you guys, but I have found that it’s weird watching Brian DePalma’s MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE for the first time since the 1990s. Tom Cruise sure doesn’t look 52 now, but he does look a little younger here than he does now. I kinda forgot he used to be like this. More fidgety and cocky, kinda smarmy, playing it really different from in the other movies, because he’s newer. His Ethan Hunt is not the leader, he’s the apprentice of the original TV series hero Jim Phelps (now played by John Voight), forced to strike out on his own, without his mentor or his team, for the first time. Yeah, he seems much younger.
In the opening of TEQUILA SUNRISE, Mel Gibson as “Mac” McKussic comes to a motel with a guy and a briefcase full of coke for one of those business transactions that guys with briefcases full of coke have at hotels. One of the guys who comes to meet him is Nick Frescia (Kurt Russell), talking cocky, hair all slicked back. Mac immediately knows that Nick is a cop so he talks his way out of the room and makes a run for it, doing a parkour-like swing from a balconly, nimbly hopping fences, ducking under a freeway overpass, trudging through water, dodging police searchlights. 
