If you haven’t read the intro to this series please do so that you have some idea of what’s going on here.
Who doesn’t like Tom Hanks?? I can even overlook his loathsome political beliefs because I’ll be darned if he isn’t a great actor who has starred in a plethora of really entertaining movies. Our marathon doesn’t have the best of Hanks’ filmography by any stretch, but there are reasons for that which will become clear down the road. That being said, I do think we have a solid cross section of his career, from one of his breakthrough roles in 1984 to a late 90’s entry that he wrote, co-starred in, & directed. Rest assured that you’ll be seeing a lot more Hanks here in the future, but I think this is a fun way to start.
Friday Night
Bachelor Party
Full disclosure…I hadn’t watched Bachelor Party for many years until I thought it prudent to do so for this discussion. Let’s be honest…Tom Hanks has grown into a much better actor in the past three & a half decades than he was in 1984, and has starred in a ton of more highly regarded movies. However, what one gets with Bachelor Party is Hanks at his peak level of fun, before he got caught up in trying to become a great actor, before he became a regular at awards shows, before anyone had high expectations of him. Bachelor Party is exactly what it sounds like. It tells the story of Rick, a happy go lucky bus driver by day and a total party animal by night. His buddies throw him a wild bachelor party the night before the wedding (as is always the case on TV & in movies even though it’s not actually a thing in real life most of the time). Hijinks occur, and the overriding question is whether the groom will cheat on his gal before the big day. The bad guys are the bride’s father & her ex-boyfriend, who conspire to torpedo the marriage before it even begins. Recently deceased Tawny Kitaen portrays the bride, and the wave of fame earned from this movie and a notable music video she starred in a few years later was something she successfully rode for decades. The best man is played by Adrian Zmed, who was a big deal for a few years in the 80’s (anyone remember Grease 2?? TJ Hooker?? Dance Fever??). Bachelor Party has a tepid 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but that’s not surprising. It isn’t really the kind of mindless entertainment notoriously priggish critics praise.
Saturday Matinee
Toy Story
To date there have been four Toy Story films, a franchise largely responsible for reviving interest in animation and taking the genre to a whole new level. Feel free to watch the entire series, but we’re only covering the original film today. It was the first ever full length feature using computer animation, putting Pixar on the map. In the years since Pixar has produced two dozen movies, and most of them have been hits. Perhaps this is trivia that only interests me, but did you know Apple founder Steve Jobs is listed as an executive producer of Toy Story?? Or that Joss Whedon, now known for writing & directing The Avengers and creating television shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel, is credited as one of the writers of Toy Story?? Anyway, the plot revolves around a group of toys that belong to eight year old Andy. These toys become walking, talking, breathing beings as long as no humans are around, which is almost creepy when you really ponder the idea. The leader of Andy’s toys is Sheriff Woody (voiced by our guy Hanks), a pull string rag doll cowboy, but his role within the group and in Andy’s life is threatened by the arrival of Andy’s latest birthday present…Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen), a boisterous space ranger action figure who doesn’t realize he is a toy. Woody is jealous of Buzz and a rivalry develops, but things happen and they eventually become friends. Toy Story was the third highest grossing film of 1995 and boasts a rare 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critically acclaimed & accessible to the masses is a rare combination.
Saturday Night
Turner & Hooch
I just watched Turner & Hooch not long ago, which was the first time I’d seen it in atleast 20 years. You know what though?? It holds up well. It’s a comedy, but provides a small glimpse into Hanks’ future with some dramatic, tearjerker type scenes because (spoiler alert) anytime a cute animal is in mortal danger there will be some emotion. A similar film…K-9 starring Jim Belushi…featuring a cop partnered with a dog had been released a few months earlier in 1989, and I recall thinking that K-9 was a better movie than Turner & Hooch, but critics & audiences alike disagreed with me. One thing I noticed when watching Turner & Hooch recently was the supporting cast, which includes forgotten Brat Packer Mare Winningham, Craig T. Nelson (you remember him from films like All the Right Moves & Blades of Glory as well as hilarious 90’s sitcom Coach), and Reginald VelJohnson, who was Bruce Willis’ sidekick in Die Hard and the Dad who had to put up with nerdy neighbor Urkel in Family Matters. Kudos to the casting director.
Sunday Matinee
Punchline
Unlike alot of other Hanks films this isn’t one I’m all that familiar with or have watched many times, which surprises me given my affection for the dramedy sub-genre. Roger Ebert criticized Punchline for “making the fatal mistake of taking stand-up comedy seriously”, while the Washington Post opined that it “commits the unforgivable sin of being a movie about comedy that’s not funny.” Both are valid criticisms because dramedy is so difficult to pull off successfully, but Punchline isn’t bad because how can anything with a cast including Hanks, Sally Field, & John Goodman be terrible?? Hanks straddles the line, making one ponder how great he could’ve been as a standup comedian while simultaneously showing off acting chops that have been refined in the 30+ years since Punchline was produced. We can’t be too surprised though that it’s a performance oftentimes lost in the shuffle of his stellar filmography. Still, I’d encourage anyone to give it a whirl.
Sunday Night
That Thing You Do!
By the time Hanks wrote, directed, & co-starred in That Thing You Do! in 1996 he’d already won two Academy Awards for Best Actor and was a bona fide megastar, so of course Hollywood was like “Okay dude, go ahead and make your silly little film about a one hit wonder band in the 60’s with its catchy theme song”. The thing is, it’s actually a pretty decent flick. The cast consists mostly of character actors like Steve Zahn, Tom Everett Scott, & Ethan Embry. Liv Tyler is also there in one of her earlier performances, just a couple of years after she & Alicia Silverstone had gained notoriety starring in Aerosmith’s music video for the song Crazy. I suppose Jonathon Schaech, who portrays the band’s brooding lead singer in That Thing You Do!, was supposed to become a big star, but Hollywood didn’t get the memo. And then there is Hanks, whose role as the band’s manager is relatively inconsequential, but whose name & mere presence helped the movie make $35 million at the box office…not bad for film with a $26 million budget. For context, 1996’s biggest hit…Will Smith’s Independence Day…had a budget of $75 million. It certainly helps that That Thing You Do! is a pretty good film with a 93% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning that critics liked it even more than folks like you & me. It’s the kind of delightfully satisfying movie that one watches on a lazy weekend when there’s nothing more pressing going on.
You have likely noticed that I consistently use two metrics in my evaluation…box office and critic reviews. I utilize 
If there is one film in this competition that might qualify as “quintessential 90’s” I think Reality Bites fits the bill. It’s right there in the title…Reality Bites. Angst-ridden twenty-somethings try to find their footing in the post-graduate jungle that is life. That’s pretty much the idea. The cast is impressive, and the soundtrack is representative of its era, with songs from Crowded House, Lenny Kravitz, Julianna Hatfield, & The Posies. Not exactly mainstream, right?? I feel like the most enduring legacy of Reality Bites 
is the hit song Stay by quirky Lisa Loeb. This movie came out right after I graduated college and had entered the workforce, but at the time I was also still clinging to the old college life…hanging out with my friends and patronizing familiar watering holes ‘til 3am. Stay was in heavy rotation on the jukebox, and I have a vague recollection of a female acquaintance of mine dancing to the song and stripping down to her unmentionables right in the middle of the bar. Ghost was nominated for five Academy Awards and won two of them. When a banker is shot & killed by a mugger his ghost enlists the help of a shady psychic to warn his grieving girlfriend of impending danger. The enduring legacy of Ghost includes the zenith of Patrick Swayze’s solid career, Whoopi Goldberg when she was still funny and not a political hack, one of Demi Moore’s best performances, a renewed appreciation for The Righteous Brothers’ hit Unchained Melody, & a sudden interest in learning more about pottery.
Just glancing at the cast of Glengarry Glen Ross elicits such high expectations that it’d be almost impossible for a film to live up to them. Based on a 1984 Pulitzer Prize winning play by David Mamet, the story shows us two days in the lives of aging real estate salesmen desperate to keep their jobs. The corporate office has announced that half of them will be fired in a week, so they must do whatever necessary to get the numbers needed to impress the boss. Lemmon, Arkin, Harris, & Pacino are powerful performers on an individual basis, and as an ensemble they are unmatched. Throw Spacey and a brief but memorable appearance by Baldwin into the mix and what you have is a movie in which the plot is secondary to the performances. In the hands of lesser actors it might be a total yawner, but what we end up with is a masterclass in how to make relatively mundane subject matter absolutely riveting. Bruce Willis was already a big movie star by 1993, with two Die Hards, two Look Who’s Talking films, & less appreciated fare like The Bonfire of the Vanities, 
Hudson Hawk, & The Last Boy Scout on his resume. Striking Distance tells the story of a disgraced Pittsburgh homicide detective relegated to river rescue duty after opining that a serial killer might be a rogue cop. When someone begins stalking him the game is afoot and the only person he can trust is his fetching female partner…or so he thinks. Striking Distance isn’t fondly recalled as one of Willis’ best, but with a cast that includes Parker, Mahoney, & Farina and a Pittsburgh backdrop familiar to this West Virginian I believe it is better than many may recall.
Ol’ William Shakespeare is still inspiring people 400 years after he left this mortal coil, and a big Hollywood trend the past few decades is to take the basic theme of a Shakespeare play and set it in modern times with young & hip movie stars. Ten Things I Hate About You turns Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew into a romantic dramedy about high school students. Stiles, Ledger, Gordon-Leavitt, & Oleynik star as two sisters and the guys attempting to woo them, and the cast also includes Andrew Keegan, David Krumholtz, Gabrielle Union, & Allison Janney. It was the 53rd highest grossing film of 1999 and has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 62%, with Variety observing that it “doesn’t even seem certain which decade it’s set in”, the San Francisco Chronicle opining that the movie “wimped out by blanding down the story and the characters to the point where she isn’t really a shrew and he isn’t really a maniac”, and Ebert chiming in that high school films are “running out of new ideas and have taken to recycling classic literature”. The Big Lebowski has grown in stature & popularity in the two decades since its release when it was the 96th highest grossing movie of the year, behind 
immense competition like Half Baked, Simon Birch, & Bulworth. It is the very definition of a cult film, although with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 82% it seems like critics recognized its greatness long before the masses caught up. Jeffrey Lebowski is known by his friends and refers to himself simply as The Dude. He is the quintessential slacker who enjoys sitting around in his bathrobe, drinking white Russians, and bowling with his pals Walter & Donny. When two thugs assault him in his house demanding money that is owed to their boss it becomes clear that they have the wrong guy…they’re after the other Jeffrey Lebowski – an old, handicapped millionaire. The thugs leave The Dude in peace but take a wiz on his area rug first, which offends him tremendously because the rug “really tied the room together”. When The Dude seeks out the other Lebowski for recompense he ends up getting caught in a complex plot involving kidnapping, ransom, a porn magnate, & a high school kid named Larry. The Cincinnati Enquirer called The Big Lebowski “loopy, unfathomable, profane, & very funny”, while Ebert simply framed it as “weirdly engaging”. There is actually an annual event in Louisville, KY called Lewbowski Fest which, since 2002, has celebrated the film with bowling, trivia, & costume contests, and a “religion” called Dudeism that advocates & encourages “going with the flow”, “being cool headed”, and “taking it easy” in the face of life’s difficulties, which does sound kind of awesome.
Hugh Grant first became a thing in the early 90’s mainly because of Four Weddings & A Funeral. The plot is pretty simple, as it follows a small group of people whose lives keep intersecting at various social engagements, specifically…you guessed it…four weddings and a funeral. Andi MacDowell is a charming actress who has been in a few films that I’ve really enjoyed but she mostly flies under the radar. I vaguely recall seeing Four Weddings & A Funeral back in college, and what I remember most is a cover of an old 60’s song Love Is All Around that would be co-opted again a decade later for the British Christmas rom-com Love Actually. I think others enjoyed the movie more than me, as Four Weddings & A Funeral was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards, holds a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score, & was the 21st highest grossing film of 1994. Gene Siskel observed that it “couldn’t be more psychologically astute in its portrait of a man who defines himself by his bachelorhood”, while Entertainment Weekly raved that its “infectious charm and sunny goodwill can immediately buoy a soul”. Fellow West Virginian Homer Hickam is the subject of October Sky, which is based on his memoir 
Rocket Boys. We meet Homer as a high school student living amongst the economically and otherwise depressed coal fields of southern West Virginia in the 1950s. Homer and his pals dream of a better live outside of Appalachia, and the launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik into space inspires an interest in building rockets. Unfortunately dreams of success, happiness, & achievement are met with resistance from the redneck masses, and it’s up to the young lads to blaze their own trail and prove everyone wrong. The only person who seems to be in their corner is a kindhearted science teacher, but that’s enough. Homer Hickam went on to become a NASA engineer for nearly thirty years. October Sky was the 63rd highest grossing film of 1999 and holds a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Ebert complimented the movie’s “deep values”, while CNN called it “a sensational character-driven story with a strong narrative and great visual style”.
Jim Carrey is a mixed bag for me. His shtick gets old really quick, and I tired of it fifteen years ago. However, between 1994 & 2003 he starred in a handful of memorable films, and Liar Liar might deserve a spot at the top of the list. Carrey plays a hotshot attorney whose focus on his career and deceitful ways have already ended his marriage and are on the verge of costing him his young son Max, who makes a wish on his birthday that his Dad not be able to lie at all for just one day. Max’s wish comes true and hilarity ensues. Liar Liar was the fourth highest grossing film of 1997 and has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 81%. Variety called it “close to an ideal jumping-off point for Carrey”, the Hollywood Reporter opined that “Carrey has never been better, funnier, or more controlled”, and Ebert expressed trepidation that “I am gradually developing a suspicion that Jim Carrey is growing on me”. Doc Hollywood marked Michael J. Fox’s emergence from the Back to the Future niche that he’d been in for over five years, and the results aren’t too shabby. He plays a 
hotshot Washington DC doctor on his way to Los Angeles to make bank as a plastic surgeon. But when he crashes his classic Porsche in a rural South Carolina town he finds himself marooned for awhile and forced to serve as the local physician for a quirky group of townsfolk. Gradually he starts to mellow and grow fond of his new neighbors, and of course there is a fetching young lady with which he becomes smitten. Doc Hollywood is kind of predictable, but enchantingly so, with a great cast and fun characters. It was the 24th highest grossing movie of 1991, ahead of Bugsy, Thelma & Louise, and Point Break. Rotten Tomatoes scores it at 71%, with Newsweek saying that it “oversells its whimsy and fits its quirkiness into a sitcom formula”, while Ebert called it “a sweetheart of a movie”.
Fans of the Lethal Weapon series have been anxiously awaiting a fifth installment for twenty years, and though I’m usually a “never say never” kind of guy I believe at this point that it’s too little too late and I’m okay with that. The fourth & final Lethal Weapon finds Riggs reluctant to marry his very pregnant girlfriend Lorna, Murtaugh dealing with the pregnancy of his eldest daughter by a mystery man, and the long in the tooth duo investigating an illegal Chinese immigrant smuggling situation. Rock joins the cast as an overzealous detective who is more than he lets on, and of course Pesci is back as fast talking ex-con Leo. Lethal Weapon 4 was the 11th highest grossing film of 1998, though it was also the most expensive of the four films to produce. It holds a 52% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with Time referring to it as “mindless, sadistic violence juxtaposed with rote sentimentality”, while the New York Times generously pronouncing that it “turns out to be one of the nicer blow-’em-ups around”. Can’t Hardly Wait is another 
Hindsight Film, full of young actors who have stuck around long enough to be known for other things. It is also a classic high school film, set at a conventional graduation party and deconstructing all of the requisite high school archetypes. It was the 74th highest grossing movie of the year, ahead of Rushmore and A Simple Plan but behind Bride of Chucky and A Night at the Roxbury. It holds a 40% Rotten Tomatoes rating, with Entertainment Weekly calling it “a high-spirited, synthetically raucous house-party comedy” and Ebert saying that it “lumbers ungracefully from romantic showdowns to deep conversations to bathroom humor”.
Every uniformed profession…policemen, the military, doctors, lawyers (hey…a three piece suit is kind of a uniform)…seems to get their own movie or TV series eventually. After all, life or death situations provide plenty of theatre. Backdraft is an ode to firefighters that tells the story of a wave of suspicious fires in Chicago, with a little family drama, political intrigue, & romance thrown into the mix. Ron Howard is a terrific director and the all-star cast is impressive, helping to make it the 14th highest grossing film of 1991, just behind Fried Green Tomatoes and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II but ahead of JFK and The Prince of Tides, and has a solid 74% Rotten Tomatoes score. Gene Siskel called it “a spectacle worth observing”, Ebert feebly praised it by saying “the scenes involving fire are so good they make me recommend the movie anyway, despite its brain-damaged screenplay”, and the Washington Post said “Backdraft is sure to do for fire what The Poseidon Adventure did for water”, which may have been meant as a compliment…
possibly. That Thing You Do was written & directed by Hanks and tells the story of a small town band that quickly rises to fame in the early 60’s on the popularity of an infectious pop hit. Hanks plays a supporting role, while the real stars are the band along with a fetching young female groupie. As with many actual bands egos & personal agendas quickly get in the way and torpedo the group’s success, making the movie a more insightful than expected examination of why one hit wonders are what they are. It was the 60th highest grossing film of 1996 (better than Fargo and Sling Blade) and has a stellar 93% Rotten Tomatoes score. Variety calls it “a sweet, likeable tale”, the New York Times dubbed it “rock-and-roll nostalgia presented as pure fizz”, & Rolling Stone framed it as “a brightly entertaining blend of humor and heartbreak”.
In 1999 The Internet was still in its infancy and “going viral” was a new concept. Social media wasn’t a thing yet, but that worked out well for The Blair Witch Project. The movie was highly anticipated before it even hit theaters because of its ingenuous marketing campaign. Reality television wasn’t on anyone’s radar yet either, so many folks were easily duped into believing that the movie was actual lost footage of a student documentary gone terribly awry. One kind of longs for those halcyon days when we weren’t so jaded & cynical. The movie itself follows three student filmmakers investigating an urban legend called The Blair Witch. I’m not a horror film aficionado, but I recall thinking that the movie isn’t really that scary, that it is more fascinating as an examination of the trio’s descent into madness. It was the tenth highest grossing film of 1999, earning more than The Green Mile, Oscar winning Best Picture American Beauty, and the first American Pie movie. That feat is even more impressive when you know that The Blair Witch Project had a budget of only $60k and earned almost $250 million. It has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 87%, with the Associated Press pointing out that “the thought that it might just might be real makes it much scarier”, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune calling it “a no-excuses horror show with an emotional wallop like falling headlong into a bear trap”, and the Washington Post saying it is “not the goriest, the grossest, the weirdest, the eeriest, the sickest, the creepiest, or the slimiest movie…just flat out the scariest”. A Time to Kill might be John Grisham’s best book…even better than The Firm…maybe. The movie takes a few liberties in telling the 
story of a Mississippi lawyer attempting to defend a black man who murdered two white men that raped & beat his young daughter. McConaughey is superb as the stressed out attorney, and Jackson gives one of his most nuanced performances as the distraught & vengeful father. The main issue I have is that the part of the female law student helping the defense team is beefed up considerably from the book because Sandra Bullock was cast in the part, but I realize that probably only bothers fans of the novel. A Time to Kill was the tenth highest grossing film of 1996, ahead of Scream but behind The Nutty Professor. It has a 65% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Rolling Stone called McConaughey “dynamite in a performance of smarts, sexiness, scrappy humor, and unmistakable star sizzle”, while Ebert thought the movie “a skillfully constructed morality play that pushes all the right buttons and arrives at all the right conclusions”.
The Manofesto 