Generation Wars: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) vs. TMNT (2007)

Now, I know I’m not the first person to do this, but I would like to see how many of these classic series have evolved over the years and I decided to start this series with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  

Originally based on Mirage Comic’s violent cult series of the same name (created by the duo of Laird and Eastman), the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made their mainstream debut in the late 80’s.  Now, it’s important to note that this was a time where a lot of major companies were seeing great success with animated series based on toy tie-ins.  The two biggest ones before TMNT were G.I. Joe and Transformers.  These two series drew huge fans to the stores to buy every toy for everything they saw on the 30 minute TV series.  The fact was, these shows really didn’t have much in terms of plot.  They were really just toy advertisements.  The same goes for a lot of hit series from the time, including The Real Ghostbusters and Thundercats.  Then came 1987…

‘87 was a bad, BAAAAD year for movies, but on TV, things were changing.  Some of the biggest shows ever made their debuts in this year.  Three notable entries were Star Trek: The Next Generation, Duck Tales and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  The latter of the two did something very different.  Unlike a lot of their tie-in contemporaries, these two animated series attempted to craft short stories around existing characters with established relationships and arcs.  They weren’t Shakespeare, but they were smart, funny and entertaining.  These two shows were essentially responsible for the huge boom of Saturday Morning animation in the late-80’s and early 90’s, a genre that was starting to fade a little at the time.

Fast forward to 1990.  A series as big as Ninja Turtles was not going to escape the Hollywood treatment, and on March 30th, fans of the series were treated to a hard-edge, energetic, fun and somewhat edgy action flick.  This was NOT a kids movie, in spite of its rating.  It had pacing, action, and the characters that were mostly known by everyone at that point were treated well in terms of their nature and relationships.  It must be said, that if you did not grow up in this period, you likely have no idea just how massive this series was.  Compare it to anything big today, and you may be close, but just short.  TMNT was a phenomenon, and it was everywhere.  So much so that it never actually went away.  The series lasted well into the 90’s, running for nearly a decade (that was HUGE for an animated series), and other animated shows, comics, games, movies (to a lesser extent) and other spin-offs continued to come out.  Still, the question is, does the 90’s movie hold up?

Well, not too long before writing this article I went back and watched it and was astonished by how good it still is.  No, seriously.  The action was good, the characters were spot on, they stayed true to the overall story and, thanks to help from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, the Turtles themselves were amazing.  The movie hit the nail on the head, transporting the Turtles out of the realm of 2D and bringing them to life.  Naturally the movie was a big hit.  The sequels… not so good, though.  They didn’t hold up and tried too hard to be more kid-friendly, ultimately losing some of the momentum the first film built.  This was partially in-response to some backlash that the first film was “for kids” but was too violent and dark for a few parents to handle… Boy how times have changed.

As a sort of hiatus, the Turtles went back to the shadows and remained out of the mainstream for a short time until being revitalized in a new 2007 animated film.  TMNT debuted to mixed reviews.  It sits at a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes and was generally panned by critics.  Two things are wrong with this picture.  First, having watched the movie, it was not a bad film; not by any means.  It was certainly better than a 37%.  I have SEEN what a 37% looks like and it’s a Hell of a lot worse than this.  No, I think there was some backlash to the tone in some cases.  First, the new movie addresses some of the things that were just glossed over in the original film and series more directly, in-particularly, April O’Neil’s restlessness and Raphael’s rebelliousness.  The latter is a prominent plot point early in the movie as it is an established and ongoing trait of the character.  No complaints there.  

Another point of contention is the 2007 film’s plot.  The story revolves around an ancient immortal warrior who is able to resurrect his ancient generals when the stars align, and with the moment right, he can open a portal to conjure up monsters and take over the world.  It’s like something out of a Final Fantasy game, and it’s goofy, but it’s not the worst I’ve seen from that type of story.  The other subplots involve a barely glossed-over relationship between fellow-vigilante Casey Jones and April O’Neil and the returning theme of Raphael’s lone crime fighting ways.  What I liked about TMNT is how it addressed the latter.  Leonardo, who returns from a prolonged absence of self reflection, finds his family in disarray and is faced with bridging a severed relationship with Raph.  It turns out, another armored vigilante hero has been taking out thugs around New York and Leo, in an attempt to stop him, finds that this so-named Nightwatcher is actually Raphael.  This leads to the two brothers having a nearly-fatal brawl on the rooftop.  As a long-time fan of these characters, THIS was satisfying to me.  It was the obvious and inevitable result of their rough relationship and at that point I was sold.

As a standalone movie, TMNT is not a masterpiece, but it does what it set out to do: Make a fun and solid TMNT adventure.  The only real complaints I have about the movie is it has that odd, jagged CGI animation a lot of series do today, that has these 3D characters with Disney eyes that looks sort of odd in the high-detail world around them, and a few of the “chase” scenes are a little overlong and are basically just filler.  These long action scenes make the few more meaningful ones seem longer than necessary by association.  Lastly, the plot is nothing fresh or astonishing, but it sets the stage for some cool character design for the villains, and a few pretty solid fights.

Really, I do not see why this has such bad reviews.  It is NOT a bad movie.  It’s faithful, it was obviously made by people with a lot of love for the source material, it has a lot of quality animation (especially in the case of the Turtles) and the attention to detail in the production design is great.  I also like that they didn’t go overboard with references to the old series.  Sure they’re eating pizza, Splinter is watching soap operas and Casey Jones is donning his trademark hockey mask, but it isn’t abused and shoved in our faces like a lot of throwback remakes and reboots tend to try to do.  It’s respectful is what I’m saying.

So, which one is better.  Well, in this case it really isn’t a contest.  The 1990 film was engaging and had warmth as well as tension.  There is just something about seeing these characters in the “real world” that brings them to life.  Also, practical effects always look better than CGI and while at least the 2007 movie is entirely animated, the tangible Turtles from the earlier film are much more believable.  For anyone who didn’t grow up during Turtlemania, I would say watch the original movie.  It is not too dissimilar but definitely feels more real and, on the whole, is a much better movie.

Faces Behind the Camera - Bryan Fuller

Bryan Fuller (source: IMDB)

You know “that guy”?  Yeah!  Him!  Everybody has that one actor in film and TV that just pops up everywhere but you never know his name or remember what you saw him in.  Now, what if “that guy” was not an actor but a television creator, writer and producer?  Now, imagine that the same individual was responsible for some of the best television shows of the last fifteen years.  Yeah.  That’s Bryan Fuller.

The closest point of comparison to Fuller I can make is a somewhat more whimsical version of Joss Whedon, the creator of TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and, most recently, the director of Marvel’s The Avengers movies.  Like Whedon, Fuller has a knack for writing captivating characters in unique situations and he excels at dialogue.  For a big-budget Hollywood movie, sometimes just dangling keys is enough to be entertaining, but having to operate on a limited budget for a TV show spanning a broader length in terms of story is much more difficult, especially when you are trying to sell an audience something so strange as to be occasionally unsettling.

A characteristic of Bryan Fuller’s series that I actually kind of like is his somewhat light approach to the dark topic of death.  Almost all of his shows have some darker undertone superimposed on bright or humorous backdrop.  This goes especially for his “big four” as I like to call them, but we’ll get to those in a moment.  First, it is important to know that Fuller does not have many credits to his name, and that is often a positive sign… No, really.  Granted, he has only been active in the industry since the late 90’s, so it stands to reason his career thus far would be barely impactful… right..?

Well, it really starts in 2000 with his work as a writer and producer on the spinoff series Star Trek Voyager.  I am not really a Star Trek fan, per se.  I have recently gotten into The Next Generation, watching episodes here and there, and liked what I’ve seen so far, but I have not watched Voyager, so I cannot really give any personal opinion on that one show, still, for an up-and-comer, landing such a position on such a storied franchise is very, very impressive.  The question is: Does he prove himself worthy of gaining such a credit early on in his career?

Dead Like Me (Showtime; source: Pintrest)

The first of the “Big Four” is 2001’s Dead Like Me, one of my favorite shows of all time and one of the most criminally short-lived shows in the history of television (both will be running themes here).  The series follows an apathetic teenager who died suddenly in an accident on her first day of work, only to be kicked back from the afterlife to the undead, tasked with becoming a Reaper.  She is then forced in with a crew of fellow veterans of the Reaper title who seemed to be trapped in limbo as she carries out her duties, ferrying souls to the afterlife.  It’s definitely a dark series but, in spite of its themes, it’s a comedy, and a damn-funny one at that.  It’s defined by its uniquely sardonic take on death, while still dealing honestly with the effects of loss, especially on the family and how they are unwittingly watched over by a daughter who only felt unappreciated before her passing.  It’s comically-grim, yet occasionally moving, and if you haven’t seen it, I give it my strongest recommendation.

Wonderfalls (2004; Fox)

Now, on that note, “Big Four” entry numero dos is Wonderfalls.  This is the first show that would really begin to highlight Fuller’s curse as a producer of hitting the right note but never maintaining a series beyond a few seasons.  This series ALSO followed an apathetic young lead, this time a worker at a gift shop for a Niagara Falls tourist trap.  The cyclical girl begins to have strange hallucinations of anthropomorphic objects (sculptures and the like) around her place of employment appearing to come to life, giving her one-word clues to… something.  When she discovers what that ‘something’ is, it becomes clear that as insignificant as she may have felt at first, she really does serve a greater purpose.  Wonderfalls is a strange show filled with many of the quirks that made Dead Like Me so damn enjoyable.  The writing is good, the characters are fleshed out naturally and never feel superfluous and the performances are all excellent.  Sadly, this great series lasted only a handful of episodes before its ultimate cancellation, and I have only the simplest explanation as to why it didn’t really last: bad timing.  It came up against the NBA games for the first third of its run, then Fox did what they do best, stopping the show dead in its tracks in favor of American Idol.  After only four episodes, the show was forced into a three month hiatus, followed by another Fall hiatus that same year.  The entire season (which was only 13 episodes) took ten-and-a-half months to complete.  It never stood a chance.

This was a big problem in the mid-2000’s.  The culture-killing Writers Strike of 2001 left many producers cold and bitter and what came out of that was an unfortunate and disastrous takeover of reality television.  Since these shows were cheap to produce, required zero support from the Writer’s Guild of America and proved to be quite successful, most shows that ran in the early 2000’s were just cut off in favor of the cheaper alternative.  This is why there was this massive sudden influx of dreadful reality TV that lasted for nearly a decade, with most networks only coming out of this Hellish slump in the last five-to-six years.  During this period, Fox’s American Idol was an audience-stealer and, as a result of this, the network would preempt entire series in favor of this one show, airing it as much as five nights a week in some periods, during which they rarely offered any show alternatives.  It was because of this decision that many cable networks began to rise up with their own original primetime programming, eventually taking over a majority of the prime time slots ever since.  I’m sure, at this point, in-spite of Idol’s success, Fox is sort of kicking themselves for driving out their audience.  Dead Like Me, Firefly and the excellent Freaks and Geeks were just a handful of shows killed by the WGA strike, the latter two of the three’s demise being helped along oh-so-handily by Fox executives..

Pushing Daisies (2007; ABC)

However, even after the unfortunate passing of Wonderfalls, Fuller was not deterred.  In 2007, Pushing Daisies premiered, this time on ABC.  This was a strange show.  It was honestly unlike anything else on television.  It had this whimsical tone, filled with wide-angle lenses, Douglas Adams-esque narration, odd undertones of death and sex and the occasional musical number, all set to a super-polished Americana theme peppered with very bright colors.  The series followed the Piemaker, Ned, who discovered as a boy that he had the power to bring the dead back to life with a touch, but only for a few seconds.  He learned tragically that if he did not touch the resurrected again, something (or someone) nearby will die in their stead.  So naturally, as an adult, an intrepid P.I. is there to exploit his powers to talk to the dead to solve mysteries.  Nope.  Not kidding.  They go on adventures and everything, and as funny as that sounds, there is a strong sense of tragedy surrounding the entire show.  His best friend, the love of his life, and one of his few true friends dies and his choice to raise her from the dead for good leads to more than a few complications.  Aside from someone else dying for her to live, there is the sad reality that he can never touch her.  There is a heartbreaking poetry in this idea, and it is presented nearly flawlessly in Pushing Daisies.  Also, like much of his work to this point, this series revolved heavily around death.  

Pushing Daisies is, by-far, Fuller’s most successful series.  It lasted two seasons but, unlike his previous shows that ended far too soon, I think it was enough.  It ran its course, plots were addressed and resolved and any more would have just been turning the wheels.  Instead of keeping this alive, Fuller and ABC did the right thing and touched it a second time, to put it down for good.  Yet, during its run, it won numerous awards and was nominated multiple times.  Lee Pace and Chi McBride were both great as always, but the show-stealer here was the then-mostly-unknown Kristin Chenoweth (unknown, at least, outside of the theatre scene).  At the time of the show’s production, Chenoweth was already a beloved Broadway star and it shows in her performance.  Her energy and vocal talents take over, especially in the second season, where she goes from being a supporting character to a more driving force in the overarching story.  Every show has the one character that people remember the most coming out, and for me, Chenoweth’s Olive WAS this show.

This brings us to today.  Bryan Fuller’s current notable project is the series Hannibal, a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs in which we see a younger Hannibal Lecter in his prime.  I’ve watched the first few episodes of the series myself and I… didn’t really like it.  Not to say that it was bad by any stretch.  It certainly stands out in terms of quality compared to most shows on network television today, but I think knowing it was Fuller’s work going in left me a little jarred.  It is so unlike his other efforts as to be sort of off-putting for me as a long-time fan.  I wanted there to be a hint of the charm found in his previous works, but what I saw of Hannibal is far too serious.  Now, I plan to go back and rewatch the first season, just so as not to dismiss it entirely because I may have missed something.  I want to like Hannibal, I really do, but I will require a lot of convincing.  

So, you have a talented young writer/producer who is notable for working on a few of the most criminally short-lived television series of all time.  This is a running theme, largely because TV executives are forced to look at short-term gain through ratings rather than long-term popularity.  It also doesn’t help that most of these shows were shoved into the fray against insurmountable odds.  Still, they have their fans; and justifiably-so.  Bryan Fuller is a tremendous talent and I as his career progresses on, I foresee him having a long string of successes and fan favorites.  His vision and style is just unlike anyone else in the industry today, despite a few imitators.  If you have not seen any of the series listed in this article, I strongly recommend checking them out, they are all good in their own distinct ways and have much wider appeal than their short runs might have you believe.

TV Pilot (Heaven!) - Northern Exposure (1992)

Northern Exposure (1990-1995; CBS)

Creators: Joshua Brand and Joe Falsey

Starring: Rob Morrow, Barry Corbin, Janie Turner

When I was a kid, there was a lot of hype surrounding Northern Exposure.  It aired as a mid-season replacement on CBS in the Summer of 1990.  After CBS’s 10pm timeslot opened up with that Spring’s finale of the beloved Newhart and the failure of The Dave Thomas Comedy Show, this little series came out of nowhere and become a winning and beloved titan in the eyes of millions.  

Rob Morrow plays Joel Fleischman, a New York doctor who is given an opportunity to work in lovely Anchorage, Alaska, but his big greeting to the city hospital does not go as planned.  He is informed his position was full and was redirected to the small, fictional town of Cicely, Alaska where he is greeted by a shrewd former astronaut who is consumed by his desire to turn his small hole-in-the-wall town into a booming resort.  Trapped in this strange place due to a legal contract, the breaking of which could result in a prison sentence, Joel opens a small practice with only the help of the awkward Marilyn.  Joel interacts with the locals, including a tomboyish pilot and a friendly young leather-clad bro-dude, and it all seems he has to make the best of it while he waits for his wife (who is still in the big city) to finally arrive in town.

Northern Exposure had a lot going for it; a funny premise, a smart and talented cast and a great team of writers, but the show had a troubled history behind the scenes.  After the first few seasons were extremely successful, CBS inexplicably cut the show mid-season to air new test programming during Sweeps.  This killed any momentum the show had for that running season.  Other issues, including actors demanding more pay and a failed list of new characters being introduced drive viewers away, resulting the in the show’s ultimate cancellation.  A lot of this could be traced back to some of its stars (Morrow in-particular), moving into film.  Morrow landed a major role in the critical darling Quiz Show, and as a result he began to seek either more compensation from CBS, or better film roles.  Sadly, his film career never really took off.  He’s a charismatic performer, good looking and was adaptable, able to play different types of characters, but ultimately his career landed him back in TV on the quality crime thriller Numb3rs after a decade of movie flops.

This is an example of how a very simple premise, a likeable cast and a smart team of writers can create something special under very strenuous circumstances.  A midseason replacement always has a few things going against it.  First, it moves in to fill a time slot for a show that people just did not watch.  Reason then dictates they were watching something else.  DVR was not a thing, and while you could record a different channel on the VCR at the same time, it was still a toss-up battling two other networks’ existing programming (Fox did not have a slot past 10pm).  Secondly, there is the risk of the network experimenting with other new programming for the Fall season.  This is what happened in Northern Exposure in its last year, with CBS breaking the season up to test other new shows in its slot.  The final major obstacle for this series was the fact that it ran on Monday nights, meaning for several months out of the year it was competing with ABC’s Monday Night Football.  

All-in-all, Northern Exposure tenaciously triumphed over great adversity thanks to a devoted fanbase and the chops that come from being a multi-year Emmy and Golden Globe nominee.  The final season’s cast and crew changes did it in, but that happens all of the time with TV, and the fact that this show lasted for four seasons is quite the accomplishment because most shows do not make it that far, even some really good ones.  It’s a funny, well-written show with a lot of warmth (in spite of the climate) and lastly, I’m willing to bet the mooseburger is actually quite delicious.

"Know" More Pop-Culture - What Happened With 'Turn-On'?

Turn-On's TV Title Card (ABC Television; 1969)

In February of 1969, a notorious TV pilot would air that would shock many and become notorious as one of the biggest television disasters in history.  I mean, the events of that fateful night make the trainwreck that was Joanie Loves Chachi look like Cheers by comparison.  So, what happened?

ABC led up to Turn-On with a lot of promotional hype.  It was the brainchild of the previous year’s big hit Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In’s executive producer George Schlatter, and the network was ready to set it up for a full twelve-episode first season before the pilot even aired.  Turn-On premiered on February 5th, 1969 at the 8:30pm time slot.  All seemed innocuous enough on the surface and with popular McHale’s Navy-star Tim Conway guest-hosting, people tuned in to see what ABC had been selling them for months.

Turn-On Promo;
TV Guide Clipping

Reactions to the show were immediate and visceral.  The Cleveland, OH ABC affiliate refused to continue airing the show after the first commercial break and Denver’s local producers refused to air the show at all after the network screening.  The show was described as “crass” and “blue”, bombarding the sensitive 1969 American audience with fast and not-so-subtle sex jokes.  A second episode was recorded in full, but was never released, with only a few very brief scenes clipped in as part of a documentary for BBC Channel-4 in the UK.  It is incredibly difficult to find footage of this show, but the few scenes I have seen indicate this show’s cancellation was not a tragic loss by any stretch.

Most of the show had slapdash sketches and quick stingers filmed in front of a blank white stage backdrop.  There would be props and some set dressing for certain sketches, but it was all actually pretty plain.  This was likely an artistic choice as the very funny piece of TV psychedelia that was Laugh-In came from the same producers and it had more quality in its production design.  Some complained that the show was unwatchable due to the hyper-kinetic editing which, mixed with the white background, reportedly caused some viewers to become “physically ill”, though, I do not know how true this actually is.  In reality, Turn-On was likely just too much for the audiences of its time.  The sex references and the very direct jabs at public figures like Richard M. Nixon really put people off of the show.  A number of affiliates issued complaints their local customers made, and the show was killed for good a few days after its debut.  

The notorious pilot didn’t do much for the cast, either.  The lovely Teresa Graves would go on to join Laugh-In that year, but only for one season.  She would then appear in a few blaxploitation films (most notably the Fred Williamson vehicle That Man Bolt) and would get her own short-lived show Get Christie Love! in the mid 70’s.  She then would retire from acting shortly thereafter and would focus primarily on philanthropy.  Tim Conway kept doing his thing, and remained successful in-spite of this disaster.  He later spoke about it, not really showing any regrets.  In-fact, he was in good spirits about it, but Conway was already a TV veteran by 1969, so he’d seen the worst come and go.

By most accounts, Turn-On was simply ahead of its time.  It was too much for the period in which it aired and it would be more than six years before SNL would piss off half the country in 1975, but it just did it a lot better.  A large factor that arguably led to the show’s abrupt end was that it just wasn’t that funny.  It was all edge and no wit.  Carol Burnett put TV comedy over the edge in the 60’s and 70’s but inspite of all of her controversies in her time, she was a well-loved and respected woman, but most of all she was just very, very talented.  Not to discount Tim Conway in any respect, but even his chops weren’t enough to keep Turn-On… Turned on… (Sorry I couldn’t resist… it was too easy)

TV Pilot Hell - Turner & Hooch (1990)

The dreaded one-joke premise.  It’s a nearly guaranteed show-killer and here, we have an absolutely braindead TV sitcom based on a pretty bad police comedy.  Quality TV series based on movie franchises are extremely rare and this is an example of how to take a movie that was already pretty unfunny and drive its single joke right into the ground.  The first ten minutes of this TV series seems like an hour, and it doesn’t get any better.

In 1990, Tom Hanks was already too hot a commodity to appear in low-grade crap like this, so instead we get B-list actor Thomas F. Wilson as Det. Scott Turner, who most probably remember best as Biff Tannen from the Back to the Future movies, or as Coach Fredricks from Freaks & Geeks.  He’s not a bad performer when he’s playing off of better actors, but here he is just awful.  He is not leading-man-material, and he spends every scene struggling through his lines.  However, as much as I complain about Wilson’s performance, the supporting cast is far worse.  This film even goes so far as to add an obnoxious delinquent kid to the mix, making what is already a really lazy and dull comedy into something that is nothing short of unwatchable.  He is far, far worse than Kid from Dick Tracy, another legendarily bad child performance from around that time, and like Hooch, he has one character trait: He gets into trouble!  Oh… how zany…  To top it all off, this show ends with a pillow fight between the kid and Turner complete with period-appropriate sax solo and a freeze frame on Hooch.  I wish I were making this up…

The rest of the supporting cast includes Wendee Pratt as Mrs. Turner.  She had a few roles after this but is mostly known for her brief run on the soap opera One Life to Live.  The rest of the characters just show up then disappear, having no real effect on the show, existing only to set up the next scene.  Comic Relief Cop (his name is ‘Boney’... Because he’s fat..?) appears to tell Det. Turner what the next act of the show is and sends him on his way, and the show has a brief appearance by a lively chef who knows Turner, and I am assuming he is meant to be a recurring character but here he only exists to facilitate the introduction of that damn kid.

This show is written in cliches.  This is common in sitcoms, but here everything has been done over and over again and Turner & Hooch goes the extra mile by taking those cliches and just replaying them ad-nauseum during its 23 minute run.  The kid is a runaway thief who ends up in the care of the unwilling cop.  The wife is a goody-goody who wants to help the “misunderstood” kid, only existing in the entire show to make sure Turner is stuck with Hooch and an aggravating child actor (Det. Turner really needs to get a divorce).  There are no other cops of consequence and imagine my surprise when the titular cop wasn’t called in to get chewed out by his tightly-wound and heavily-caffeinated chief.

All of those complaints aside, the episode is just a mess.  Scenes bounce between each other so fast it is actually a little disorienting and I have a sinking feeling this was meant to be a one-hour block but was cut in half after producers saw the finished product.  I make that assumption based on the fact that it feels like chunks of the show are missing.  Character introductions are fast and short and never really establish any sort of relationship.  The marriage between Det. Turner and his wife feels more like the relationship between a homeowner and a maid.  The kid in the show is bad, sure, but he seems like he was born ready to wind up in the care of a cop, never showing any resistance or surprise about anything.  Ultimately, nothing comes together.  There are sections of the story that feel lost and there is zero, ZERO character development.  The only thing we get is Hooch running into things, knocking people over and simply just causing a ruckus so we can get a zany jazz solo followed by a soul-crushingly-bad reaction shot from Thomas Wilson, who acted like he just didn’t want to be there at all.

Turner & Hooch aired on NBC in the Summer of 1990.  A Summer premiere (especially pre-2000) is usually a bad sign anyway, but hoooo-boy!  1990 was a bad, BAAAAD year for television.  To give you an idea of how awful this year was, Turner & Hooch, as stillborn and bland as it is, is not the worst cop-with-a-dog comedy series of that Summer!  The problem with Turner & Hooch is it’s just boring and lazy.  Outside of some of the performances, there isn’t really anything painful about it, and I can honestly see myself forgetting this show even exists.  At least with famously bad shows like Small Wonder you remember why it was bad.  Less than an hour after sitting through this snore-fest I was only thinking about what I wanted for lunch.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 3 - Pulp Fiction (1994)

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Pulp Fiction (1994; Miramax)

Writer: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Ving Rhames, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer

I want to be clear here, and I do not think this is hyperbole: 1994 is one of the greatest years in the history of film.  SEVEN of my top 40 movies of the 90’s are just from 1994.  The American Film Institute released their updated list of 100 Greatest Movies in 2005, a list spanning a century of film, and there were four movies on their list from 1994.  In fact, Pulp Fiction isn’t even the last film on THIS list from that year!

Pulp Fiction is a series of interwoven stories of violence and debauchery and it is absolutely glorious.  There is no one scene that isn’t captivating.  It is a powerhouse of cool direction, a distinct and fresh look and tone, and most of all a stunning screenplay.  So, naturally, it didn’t win the Oscar in 1995, but I’ve already gone over how worthless the Academy Awards are so I won’t bother you with that again.  Instead, let’s talk about one of the greatest films of all time.

Before directing Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino made a couple other genre films including the previously-reviewed Reservoir Dogs.  Tarantino draws heavy inspiration from the classic 42nd St. Grindhouses of the 60’s and 70’s.  These theaters were known for their release of unvetted indie films, often branding the exploitation label, that for the most part remained unrated and rarely saw any release outside of these theatres until the mid-to-late 80’s.  These are the theatres that brought us the great Blaxploitation classics like Shaft and Superfly, the two of which were rare examples of great movies leaving the Grindhouse and getting a wide release (largely thanks to their hit theme songs).  We also saw a lot of graphic horror from Italian directors like Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei who rarely saw any form of wide distribution, even in the video market, their films mostly remaining cult classics looming in the underground horror scene.

So, what does this have to do with Pulp Fiction?  Well, this is a movie that amalgamates ideas from the various genres of the time.  The title refers to “Pulp” a largely pejorative word used to describe entertainment that is considered low-quality but is widely popular.  The movie uses directorial styles, fashions and concepts that were common in the Grindhouses, but were rarely embraced by the mainstream film industry.  This is part of what makes Pulp Fiction such an amazing film, it is a beloved, winning classic that employs and draws its inspiration from films that were almost entirely marginalized.  It’s very acclaim and success is itself a commentary on the manufactured idea of “mainstream” entertainment.

Pulp Fiction’s plot is actually a series of interconnected storylines all wrapped around a handful of jobs and the daily lives of two hitmen, Julius and Vincent (Jackson and Travolta).  They exchange memorable banter as they travel around Los Angeles, from cleaning out an apartment of misguided college kids, to taking a local crime lord’s wife (Thurmond) out for a night on the town.  Between these wrapper plot lines, we get other stories revolving around a boxer on a rough deal and a couple of crazed robbers, and that really does only scratch the surface.

The fascinating thing about the film is how everything really comes together.  We see plotlines that are, at first, complete non sequiturs, but as the film goes on, harkening back to these scenes reveals a beautifully-woven series of smaller stories forming a greater whole.  In fact, I believe (and this is speculation) a large part of why this film is so beloved is how it uses these stories to paint an involving picture that encourages audiences to see how it all comes together, creating a sort of active viewing experience.  You mind is processing the stories individually, and when it all comes together it is like an ecstatic revelation.  

There isn’t a bad performance in this movie.  Not one.  This is very rare as even the best movies have a few throwaway acting choices, but Tarantino's meticulousness pays off here.  The cast is huge and everyone has a reason to be there.  This is all supported by the screenplay and, to be honest, if this were a top 40 based on writing alone, Pulp Fiction would be number one.  This is hands down one of the greatest screenplays of all time.  It’s fast, witty and the dialogue, even from the simplest scenes, is superb.  It’s funny and has a charm and character you just don’t see in most movies, this especially goes for Oscar movies, which actually trend on the boring side (and I say this as a film snob).

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 10 - Clerks (1994)

Clerks (1994; Miramax)

Director: Kevin Smith

Writer: Kevin Smith

Starring: Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith

In the early months of 1994, a young independent filmmaker named Kevin Smith would release Clerks, a massively influential black and white Generation-X film centering on the employees of neighboring convenience and video stores.  The worn-down and entirely passive Dante struggles with his boss, his personal life, his distrust of just about everyone and a slew of bizarre and unstable customers.  Jay, on the other hand, is cynical, bitter and entirely disinterested in just about everything, especially his customers.

Clerks is a portrait of the early 90’s.  It captures the cynicism, the uncertainty and the narcissism of the young working class while reflecting a period in time where the music was great, the attitudes were bad and the film industry essentially abandoned the idea of a good comedy.  Keep in mind that, just months after the release of this excellent low-budget movie, Hollywood would release a $40-million disaster called North.  This film is one of my all-time most hated movies and it tanked; I mean, it bombed bad.  Clerks, with around a $350k budget, grossed just over $3 million (while never getting a wide release; only being shown on just over 50 screens) but not only was it better, but most people forgot about North before its home video release (everyone except me it seems) while Clerks spawned a massive cult following, an excellent animated series and a list of other films from the writing talent of Kevin Smith including the excellent Chasing Amy and the lesser (but still hilarious) Mallrats.  

Pinning down an overall plot for Clerks is hard.  The film is told in vignettes separated by title cards with simple titles reflecting the tone or theme of the preceding scene.  While the overarching but simple story of the day in the life of an employee forced to work on his day off plays out, there are a lot of subplots and character moments that range from the slightly eccentric to the absurdly mad.  Outside the Quick Stop are two more working men, dealers Jay and Silent Bob, creations of Smith who would become omnipresent supporting characters in almost all of his films.  Bob stands coolly while Jay dances hits on female pedestrians, and acts boorish to the point of being rather likable.  

There is not one scene in Clerks that isn’t funny.  What’s better is Clerks is not tied down by many of the tropes that so often handicap the comedy genre…  Smith was saving a lot of those for Clerks II.

My 40 Faovirte Films of the 90's - 12 - The Usual Suspects (1995)

The Usual Suspects; 1995,
Polygram Filmed Entertainment

Director: Bryan Singer

Writer: Christopher McQuarrie

Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Benicio Del Toro, Kevin Pollak, Stephen Baldwin, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Spacey

I’m not usually a huge fan of ensemble films.  They are often pretty bad.  To me they always harken back to the likes of North or the Ocean’s Eleven sequels (the first one wasn’t really all that bad).  The movies are selling themselves on their cast alone, with little effort in the actual script or direction.  There are always exceptions to this rule, however as we will see in a few entries.  That brings us to the Usual Suspects.  For audiences today, this is a major cast, but in the mid-90’s… Well, many of these guys were known but were not huge stars.  The biggest gets in this movie by far were Gabriel Byrne and Chazz Palminteri, who were already well-regarded and praised actors at the time and they sort of held the unofficial position of being the main draw for audiences.  This was also only the second feature directed by soon-to-be X-Men director, Bryan Singer.

The Usual Suspects just may be the best heist movie of all time.  If it isn’t THE best, it’s up there.  This movie has a great cast of characters you believe were career criminals.  They knew the drill and it showed.  They were cynical, untrusting and just aggressive as Hell to everyone, especially each other.  They were brought together to pull a major job as commissioned by the enigmatic Kaiser Sousse, a shadowy figure that is often the subject of thieves’ lore.  The entire movie is told in flashback as a mentally challenged man named Verbal (Spacey) conveys the tale of a heist gone really, really bad to the impatient Det. Kujan (Palminteri).  He tells the story of the characters, who they were, how they were brought together by the mysterious Sousse and how the job became a total disaster.  

This is a damn-smart movie.  The film scored an Oscar for McQuarrie’s clever, fast and naturalistic screenplay and he deserved it.  He was a regular collaborator with Bryan Singer in the 90’s but sort of fell off the earth for nearly a decade.  He’s made a comeback in recent years, though.  He wrote/co-wrote a few would-be Hollywood epics like the box-office bomb Valkyrie and another Tom Cruise-headed flop The Edge of Tomorrow.  This is sad because, judging by The Usual Suspects, he is a damn-good writer.  The foul-mouthed, quippy and aggressive screenplay to Suspects really highlights the ideas of the 90’s, which were influenced heavily by Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, and drew from the grim attitude and gritty action of police films of the 70’s and 80’s like The French Connection and Prince of the City.  These influences in the 90’s led to a pretty solid series of b-grade actioners and high-quality independent films like this one.  If you like action, heists and a brilliant script, you will like The Usual Suspects.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 13 - Being John Malkovich (1999)

Being John Malkovich; 1999, Gramercy Pictures

Director: Spike Jonze

Writers: Charlie Kaufman

Starring: John Malkovich, John Cusack, Cameron Diaz

I adore the occasional quirky, energetic and strangely eccentric film, and therefore I love Being John Malkovich.  It is directed by one of my favorite directors of the last twenty years, written by one of my favorite screenwriters of the last twenty years and co-stars John Malkovich, one of my favorite actors, period.  It’s a perfect collection of amazing performances, a strange and funny premise and a directorial style that fits perfectly.

The premise follows a lowly puppeteer named Craig (Cusack) who stumbles upon a hidden door in a strange office building that leads into the mind of another person.  He can see through their eyes and can even obtain a certain influence.  After a short time he discovers he is occupying the mind of none other than actor John Malkovich (as himself).  He introduces his wife to the experiment and they both become obsessed and rather rejuvenated by the power.

This movie is NOT for everybody.  It is very offbeat, written with that trademark “Kaufman” style and features the soft-spoken charm that is often associated with Jonze’s direction.  Many film fans like myself have been following Jonze very closely for years, and while many have HEARD of his movies, I don’t think he has really began capturing a mainstream audience until his recent film, the awesome Her, which he also wrote.  However, if you like strange, funny and somewhat twisted movies, this is an awesome find if you haven’t seen it.  

If I had to pick a favorite scene, those who saw it would remember the moment when Malkovich finds out that people are actually entering his mind (I will not disclose the explanation for this) and decides to take action.  The results are both hilarious and somewhat terrifying, especially if you put yourself in Malkovich’s shoes.  Check this one out as it really is a brilliantly-clever, albeit bizarre film creation.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 14 - Forrest Gump (1994)

Forrest Gump (1994; Paramount Pictures)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Writers: Eric Roth (Screenplay); Winston Groom (Novel)

Starring: Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Sally Field

Winston Groom’s tale of a mentally-disabled man who directly experienced almost every world-changing event in the later half of the 20th Century is a truly charming and heartfelt examination of spirit and love.  Widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, ranking #14 on IMDB’s top 250 at the time of this post, number 76 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest American films of all time, and cleaning up in the 1995 Academy Awards with an astounding six wins, Forrest Gump is one of the essentials.  There are a few movies that I would recommend everyone see, and this is definitely one of them.

Tom Hanks plays Forrest Gump, a chatty man who patiently waits at a Savannah, GA bus stop just casually talking with his various benchmates.  He tells them tales of the things he’s done, the people he has met and the places he has been not knowing just how much of an impact he had on the lives of so many people.  Cutting back and forth from the story’s present time and flashbacks to various key moments in Forrest’s life, we see him meet presidents, fight in Vietnam, chat up John Lennon at a Black Panther Party meeting, and ultimately start a hugely-successful business, and he did all of this never knowing how great his achievements really were.

Along the way, as we explore Gump’s life, we meet a few people who will shape him.  His mother (Field) helps to ensure he lives as normal a life as possible and we watch as his childhood friend Jenny (Robin Wright) goes from a pretty tomboy to a broken and abused soul.  Gump’s lieutenant during his tour in Vietnam, Dan Taylor, leaves the war a crippled and angry man, embittered towards the so-called American dream.  We see Lieutenant Dan befriend the devoted Gump, despite occasional periods of frustration.  Then there is Bubba, a fellow recruit who is also slow, who becomes the titular protagonist’s best friend during his time in the Army, ultimately planting the seed of starting a hugely-successful shrimping business.  

Tom Hanks deservedly netted an Oscar for his performance of the kindhearted Gump.  Filled with shining moments of greatness, his performance is famously endearing.  The performances from the supporting cast including greats like Sally Field and Gary Sinise are stunning as well, and act as a great contrast to the unwitting Gump, reflecting the grievances and the disenfranchisement of the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Mykelti Williamson plays Bubba Blue with famous wit and a warmth that nearly matches Hank’s own Oscar-winning role, and every moment with the two on screen is either very funny, or extremely emotional.

Forrest Gump literally has everything.  It is a comedy, a drama, a war story, a romance, a period piece and a smart examination of the ideals and the passions that erupted during the Vietnam War era.  Despite literally trying to be everything, the film never misses a beat, always hitting just the right notes and crafting a very big, but cohesive story.  Ever since Citizen Kane there have been countless movies that have tried to weave a complex and intricate story around a single character through the years, but few have done it better than Forrest Gump.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 20 - Army of Darkness (1992)

Army of Darkness (1992; Universal Pictures)

Director: Sam Raimi

Writers: Sam and Ivan Raimi

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Marcus Gilbert, Anabeth Davidtz

Way back in 1981, two decades before he turned Spiderman into a blockbuster series, a young director named Sam Raimi brought together a small group of actors to star in a low-budget horror film called The Evil Dead (inflation-adjusted, the movie cost just under $1m, Daddy Day Camp cost $6m. Was it worth it, Hollywood?).  It is the story of Ashley “Ash” Williams and his group of friends who vacation to a cabin and find that the previous resident had gotten himself involved some unworldly stuff during his research into the Necronomicon ex Mortis: The Book of the Dead (A reference to the writings of H.P. Lovecraft).  What he found opened a portal to another world, allowing vile demons to enter our realm.  The young vacationers get more than they bargained for and things get kind of tragic.

What Raimi intended here was to make a legitimate horror film, one that is both terrifying and entertaining.  What he made instead was an unintentionally-funny cult classic (which is actually better, honestly).  Raimi was not discouraged by this and he set out to do one better.  The Evil Dead II was a combination of a sequel, a remake and a sendup of horror movie tropes.  There may be no single horror comedy (or horror film for that matter) that is more beloved by fans.  It is laugh-out-loud funny with tons of gore, over-the-top moments and very, very quotable lines.  The film ends with our hero Ash being sucked into a wormhole and waking up in the middle of a wasteland, with only his chainsaw arm to accompany him… at least in the beginning.

The above build-up was essential as the story of Ash getting here is part of Army of Darkness’ greatness.  As a direct follow-up, it takes the story in a direction nobody saw coming: Army of Darkness is a fantasy/action/comedy.  Now, I do not mean a comedy in that it has a few jokes in it among the actual action and horror, no, this movie is a straight up comedy starring the epic Bruce Campbell fighting the undead in a medieval world… and it’s AWESOME!  Army of Darkness is a work of perfection because Raimi set out to make a movie that just goes all-out and does the most ridiculous things, and as a result, makes a fun, exciting and damn-entertaining flick.

AoD starts with Ash in that strange world from the end of 2 in a chain gang locked in a yoke, forced into slavery.  When he proves himself an asset in helping to defeat the Deadites that plague the land, he is tasked with defeating the titular army, but first he must retrieve the fabled Necronomicon from its resting place.  It all culminates in an epic battle with the Deadite army as Ash does everything he can to save the day and finally get home to his job at S-Mart.

Occasionally silly and always energetic, Army of Darkness goes into some cartoonish territory, but at least for me, that’s a plus.  The movie does not take itself seriously at all, embracing the insanity wholeheartedly and just doing everything it can to mock its genre and utterly abuse its poor hero.  However, beyond the intermittent slapstick humor, there is a legitimate adventure film here, with some pretty good action and great makeup effects.  The film was fortunately made before the advent (and eventual abuse) of computer animation, so the practical effects have a spirit and a tangibility to them.  Knowing the actor is actually on screen with the makeup-covered actors helps to maintain the illusion of actual stakes.  CGI has, in more recent years, taken the place of classic makeup, puppetry, stop motion and animatronics and, as a result, much of the heart of special effects is lost.  Army of Darkness just may mark the last really good fantasy adventure released before CGI gave us sweeping shots of cartoonish castles and lazily-animated copy and paste creatures.  This is a film with actual sets and costumes, rather than a few actors standing in front of a green screen.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 27 - Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club (1999; 20th Century Fox Pictures)

Director: David Fincher

Writer: Jim Uhls

Starring: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter

Fight Club is the 1999 film adaptation of the novel of the same name from writer Chuck Palahniuk.  It is a funny indictment of unbridled consumerism, drawing comparisons to shopping from Ikea with enslavement and disease.  It is certainly an anti-establishment message shoved into a strange series of parallels and metaphors.  So, who better to put together a plot puzzle like this than the man who directed The Game and Seven?

Edward Norton plays a (sort of) unnamed narrator who is tormented by his endless fight with daily life and his sudden urge to buy increasingly-useless crap from the consumer catalog du jour.  Depressed and struggling with crippling insomnia, our narrator begins to attend various support groups for disease and addiction for things he does not even suffer from, only to feel… something.  This therapy works, until a woman named Marla (Carter) begins showing up for the same groups, becoming a plaguing distraction.  During a business trip, he meets an outgoing, fast-talking man named Tyler Durden (Pitt), who seems to have none of the same fears and worries he suffers from.  Essentially, he is the narrator’s polar opposite.  A freak disaster leads the narrator to contact Tyler and they meet up, becoming friends, and eventually, this leads to them fighting in an alley.  Over time, this one fight evolves into hundreds, all over the country, from multiple groups of Fight Clubs, and replaces any need for support groups and shoulders to cry on.  Things grow and grow, becoming even more desperate, and Marla is dragged back in with Tyler, with whom she begins a very, very loud sexual relationship.  With the narrator's own vision of what Fight Club becoming distorted into a movement that has grown far out of his control, the film’s tone becomes extremely dark and more than a little threatening, all leading to a climax that is surprising and kind of terrifying..

Fight Club is a brutal rejection of casual consumerism.  It mocks marketing, and even has the Club members use that marketing as a weapon against the system they feel has enslaved them.  The mood shifts from comic to thriller steadily throughout the film, but from the very beginning there is a sense of unease.  We are told early in the film that “With insomnia nothing’s real.  Everything’s far away.  Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy…”, and that is exactly what much of the first act feels like.  Scenes are very dreamlike, full of strange imagery of floating catalog price information and CGI penguins.  There are subliminal images that flicker and disappear, almost like hallucinations, and the whole production has this very cold, artificial feel to its benefit.  The surrealist elements of the film never feel too out of place since we are meant to be seeing this world through the eyes of a troubled man.  

David Fincher was the perfect choice to direct this movie.  He is able to weave incredibly complex and layered narratives into a cohesive and captivating story.  He is probably better at this than just about any other director working in Hollywood today, with successes like Zodiac and The Social Network telling stories that span several years with a great deal of coherence, something that is very difficult to do without losing your audience.  Fight Club just may be one of the most ambitious film adaptations of all time.  Not because of thousands of fighting soldiers and castles that need to be modeled and CGI’d, but because it is a story told in first person, from the perspective of an individual who sees the world very differently from the way most people do.  Fincher’s ability to put you in the eyes of this one broken and desperate man is simply astounding.  

Now, I am trying to stay vague with this article because if you have not seen this movie yet, it is a must-watch.  It is violent, gritty, and even a little convicting.  You could have been doing something great, and you did nothing productive.  In a shocking and brutal, but funny scene, Tyler holds a young man at gunpoint for “wasting his life” and not pursuing his dream career, for which he lets the man live with the promise that he will pursue a better life.  It is mean, but it is also honest.  Fight Club certainly has a little bit of preachiness to it, which is usually a turn-off, but I never got the feeling that this was based on some schizophrenic’s insane ramblings like I did with tripe like The Day After Tomorrow or overwrought, heavy-handed ripoff material like Avatar.  I was entranced by the film’s fun visuals and darkly humorous tone.  The screenplay is freaking outstanding and every performance is damn good.  Brad Pitt gives what is probably my favorite performance of his career as Tyler Durden and Edward Norton is bringing his A-Game as an awkward, nerdy doormat who is transformed into a tough-as-nails, takes-no-crap badass over the course of the movie.