Best of 1995

The Hunt for Red October

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Hunt for Red October
  • IMDb: link

Easily the best adaptation of any Tom Clancy novel, 1990’s The Hunt for Red October starred Sean Connery as defecting Russian sumbarine captain Marko Ramius and Alec Baldwin as CIA analyst Jack Ryan who sniffs out the truth and finds himself thrown into the field to bring Ramius in before the United States or the Russians (claiming Ramius plans to fire his missiles on U.S.) can sink the stealth prototype submarine the Red October.

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Apollo 13

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Apollo 13
  • IMDb: link

“Houston, we have a problem.”

Re-released (for the first time in IMAX) to celebrate the film’s 30th Anniversary, director Ron Howard‘s 1995 film based on the real events surrounding the flight of NASA’s Apollo 13 is arguably his best (I’d put it neck-and-neck with the underrated Frost/Nixon.) Casting Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon as the three astronauts whose mission to the moon goes horribly wrong and Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, and Chris Ellis as those in Mission Control who help bring them home, Apollo 13 is a tense drama where knowing beforehand the ending somehow (despite all logic) doesn’t hurt it’s climactic final act.

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1995 – The Usual Suspects

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Usual Suspects
  • IMDb: link

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

The Usual SuspectsOn or around this date 20 years ago The Usual Suspects hit theaters for the first time. Written by Christopher McQuarrie (who recently gave us the best Mission: Impossible movie yet) and directed by Bryan Singer (who has struggled to make a film even half as good ever since), The Usual Suspects introduces us five criminals through a series of flashbacks which recount the events which brought them all together in a police line-up and what then led them to the docks a fateful night leaving only a single member of the group alive to tell the tale.

Despite the fact that the film hinges on reveal and twist ending, it works as well on the twelfth viewing as it does the first. Kevin Spacey stars as Verbal Kent (a role that would earn him an Academy Award and make him a star) who recounts the events of the crew’s movements to Customs Agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) while attempting to keep certain facts about the boat and the mythical Keyser Soze from coming to light. The definition of an unreliable narrator, Verbal’s accounts are all Kujan and the audience are given to deduce the truth for themselves.

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Between Sunrise and Sunset

/ / Home Video, Theme Week

Let me tell you a strange but wonderful story.  Once upon a time there was a filmmaker who made a small independent art house movie that was moderately successful.  No big stars, no special effects, no plot twists here kids.  It was just a two character piece about a man and woman finding each other in Vienna and spending one day and one night together sight seeing, discussing their lives, loves, beliefs, desires, both large and small, and falling in love. 

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