How do I honestly look at the 1990's?

In order to make my top 100 List or for any discussion on films in the 1990's period, it's near impossible to look at that decade with any objectivity and I thought it was worth discussing that because we all are children of one decade or another, aren't we?

The 90's was when I grew up. My movie diet during the 90's was a very different regiment than it is now.

One of the very first films I fell in love with was "Batman Forever" which has been eloquently torn apart all over the internet since. It's now remembered as the omen before the storm that was "Batman and Robin." While the performances of Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones would seem like overacting to adult eyes, they were larger-than-life to my 11-year old eyes. "Batman Returns" was too scary and dark for me but "Batman Forever" was bright and colorful and the violence was playful rather than just violent. Of course, if you're desensitized to violence, you would be dissapointed. Still, I can't say "Batman Forever" wasn't one of the best moviegoing experiences of my life.

I remember watching "Home Alone" and loving it, but it was hard to retain that love after watching it at least 10 times. Watching Home Alone was the go-to activity for any summer camp on a rainy day or any teacher without a lesson plan.

I had the same experience with the "The Lion King" which I remember watching it 3 times in one day in school. My homeroom teacher, my science teacher (same as my homeroom teacher) and my drama teacher all had their classes watch the same film. Talk about overload. Then a month later, I went to visit my aunt and uncle whose 2-year old daughter watched that movie all the time. When they took us on a big yacht trip, we got so seasick and had to be put down in the galley. To take our mind off our seasickness, my aunt put in a movie but the only thing they had was the Lion King, so it was the worst thing ever. I just wanted to throw up from seasickness and to make it worse, I was watching this film, I had recently watched 3 times and had practically memorized the Lion King by then.

I also grew up thinking all the great films involved sports and dogs. "Oliver and Company" "Homeward Bound" "All Dogs Go to Heaven" were some of my early movie-going experiences. I don't know if this is still the case today with kids' films but "Cool Runnings" "Iron Will" "Sandlot" "League of their Own" "Rookie of the Year" "The Air Up There" and "Mighty Ducks" were among the defining films of my childhood and they all revolved around sports.

If there were great films going on at the time like "Crying Game" "In the Name of the Father" "Howard's End" or "Ed Wood", I was pretty unaware of them and watching them in retrospect isn't the same as being there in the moment. It's true that argument applies to any film before the 90's too, but there's much more distance from a classic film so that we appreciate it as a classic. 90's films are still looked at through the same paradigm as films of the 00's which I'm much more familiar with.


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In defense of Batman Forever

Thinking of extending that trilogy past its prime? I think it's important to realize how an especially bad turn in a film series can hurt the legacy of the entire series to the point where it might damage the director's reputation and the retroactive reputation of films that come before it.

As a 12-year old kid, I loved Batman Forever and I recently went to look up reviews of it. Before looking them up, however, I had a preminition that because of the disaster of Batman and Robin, Batman Forever would be seen as much worse than it actually was.

While Batman and Robin extends those "campy characteristics" to an extreme, without extending any substance to them, I think it's important to note that Batman Forever had a stopping point to its corniness before it ever interfered with the story at hand.

Furthermore, It's important for everyone to realize that since Batman's creation in what I believe was the 1920s, there have been two parallel versions of Batman going on. One is the "dark knight" Batman, the mysterious force of good who no one knows about, and then there's the "camp" batman, who's more family-friendly, and more colorful, put it that way, his costume has blues and purples in it, rather than just plain black. The key difference, when you think about it, is Robin, because with Robin in the picture, Batman is nowhere near as mysterious and extraordinary because there is at least one other person doing the same things he is and there is at least one other person who is fighting the same battles he is, and also because Batman has to watch out for someone else, you know he's not selfless and evil. The people who like the "dark knight" Batman, are probably people whose prime hobby is comic book collecting over film watching, because that's where the dark knight first appeared.

Me, on the other hand am a film watcher who was born in 1983, so when Batman Returns came out I was 9, and while the depth of Burton's dark urban vision was so extraordinary even i could be amazed by it, I had a hard time with all the violence, seeing so many of Penguin's henchmen killed (a couple at the hands of Penguin, himself) or the scene where catwoman robs a store and kills a guy with her fingernails, etc. I'm not saying I needed a happy ending, but all the characters, even Batman, were just very depressing.

When Batman Forever came out, I was 12, and unlike its predecessor I really got on board the ride, because the movie had really great heroes and villains, which i could be engaged rooting for or against. In Batman Forever, Batman and the villains are all equally perverse and dark, I really didn't care much who won at the end, and maybe people who are harsh on Schumaker's films fail to take into account what these Batman movies are like for a kid's perspective.Visually, the movie was a marvel to watch. Tommy Lee Jones' make-up job is so great, i'd like to see someone tell me they weren't blown away, the first time we see the left side of his face in the film. Some people say that Tommy Lee Jones' portrayal of Two-Face wasn't true to the original character, who was a less hysterical individual, but I think a more composed and cool villain wouldn't have been as fun, simply put. The Riddler/Two Face partnership is the best mildly deranged villain/completely deranged villain chemistry in the series, I found (especially considering the other two partnerships never really had very much interaction with each other). Just look at the movie poster for this movie and the colors of the riddler's green, two-face's purple, robin's red, batman's dark blue/black. Like a John Williams score associates musical themes with each character, those colors with surreally bold hues draw out the characters throughout the movie. Also, Nicole Kidman blew me away too. This was long before she was in a stage where every movie role she took was basically crying out, "give me an Oscar." And as for Val Kilmer vs. Michael Keaton? Well, I think the best person to answer that question would be original Batman creator Barry Kane (did I get the name right?) who aid that Val Kilmer was the actor who played Batman closest to the vision he originally conceived it to be.