MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991), NIGHT ON EARTH (1991)

1991

River Phoneix is the hustler

and Keau Reeves is the prince

in My Own Private Idaho

You have to give Gus Van Sant some credit for getting a movie about a gay hustler with narcolepsy that breaks into monologues from Henry IV throughout even made. It is effective at times...though it might benefit from repeated viewings. I think Keanu Reeves as the Prince Hal character is surprisingly good as is William Richert as the stand-in for Falstaff.

William Richert as the funny, but tragic Falstaff equivalent

in My Own Private Idaho

My wife was not a fan of My Own Private Idaho and will probably not join me for subsequent viewings of this film. I did watch one of her 1991 favorites which is listed at the bottom of this page.

Next from 1991 is Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth. It tells four stories of one night that are all set in cabs during one night in different parts of the world. Young Winona Ryder gives rich Gena Rowlands a lift in Los Angeles, an East German immigrant who can't drive gives Giancarlo Espisito a lift in New York, a driver from the Ivory Coast gives a ride to a blind woman in Paris, wacky Roberto Benigni gives a ride to a priest in Rome and we conclude with a driver from Helsinki who gives three drunk workers a ride home.

Night on Earth: Giancarlo Esposito teaches 

cabbie Armin Mueller-Stahl how to drive in New York

This doesn't seem to be as well liked as some other Jarmusch films...It isn't even listed in the 1001 book...but I liked it quite a bit. Every story is interesting and different than the next. My favorite is probably the Helsinki driver telling his passengers the saddest story they ever heard...though Robert Benigni driving around a dead priest is definitely the funniest.

Night on Earth: Winona Ryder lights up 

Gena Rowlands in Los Angeles

Here are some other films released in 1991 that I have seen at some point that didn't have the right stuff to make the 1001 movie list.

The Addams Family
I remember taking a date to see this when it came out. I chose this over Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country that night because I thought she'd like it more... but I digress. The Addams Family was a well know comic strip and a 1964-1966 television series (I still think The Munsters was a better show in that heated debate.) about a ghoulish family of eccentrics. The 1991 movie I remember as being an amusing update, with nice casting of Raul Julia as Gomez and Anjelica Huston as Morticia...I wonder whatever happened to that girl I took to see it....I digress again.

They're creepy and they're kooky...

The Addams Family 1991

Backdraft
I remember Ron Howard's action film starring Kurt Russell about heroic firefighters as being pretty entertaining.

Emergency!...I mean Backdraft

Barton Fink
I remember watching an episode of The Simpsons with my niece when she was a kid where Bart and his friends sneak into an R-rated movie chanting "Barton Fink!" Barton Fink!" I thought it was funny because this totally wacked out Coen Brothers film is not the kind of thing you think of when kids sneak into an R-Rated movie. 

A couple of years ago, my now grown niece told me that she just saw Barton Fink and now understood the joke on The Simpsons!...My work here is done.

The R-Rated
Barton Fink

Bugsy
I thought it was interesting that Warren Beatty took a more serious criminal turn after Dick Tracy playing gangster Bugsy Siegel. I actually like Bugsy much more that I liked Dick Tracy.

Annette Benning and Warren Beatty
in Bugsy 

Cape Fear
One major difference in Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear (1962) is that released sociopathic criminal Max Cady (Robert De Niro) is not seeking revenge on the attorney that convicted him, but on his own attorney (Nick Nolte) who he feels did not do his duty in defending him full force. De Niro really transforms himself (emotionally and physically) for this one. One example where I prefer the remake to the original.

Max Cady interrupts a movie screening in
Cape Fear. I'm not saying anything to him!

City Slickers
The line from this I have quoted to my wife (more that once) is the scene around the campfire when Helen Slater throws out something to the effect that you guys remember some really inconsequential stuff like who was the third baseman for the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. The group around the campfire immediately all shout out Don Wert! Don Wert! I may not have that part quite right, but if the movie comes up in conversation, I probably will just instinctually shout out Don Wert!

Billy Crystal and Jack Palance
discussing the one thing that is
important in City Slickers

The Commitments
I didn't take a date to see this movie, but dated a girl that really liked it. I like this Irish band movie too and even bought her the soundtrack. Before I could give it to her, we decided that our dating would be something that would not continue and I returned the cassette to the Record store for a refund...I didn't know going in that going through 1991 movies would bring back romances that didn't work out!

Nice movie, fun soundtrack
in The Committments 

Dead Again
Offbeat mystery thriller from director Kenneth Branagh is one of the reasons I became a Branagh fan. 

Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson
and Robin Williams in Dead Again

Defending Your Life
Interesting teaming of neurotic Albert Brooks and the one and only Meryl Streep. I'm a Brooks fan and have seen most of his movies...I need to re-watch this one.

Streep! Brooks! Defending Your Life

Drop Dead Fred
Not another date story! Let's just say she thought this story of a girl who grows up but doesn't outgrow her weird imaginary friend Fred was pretty stupid. Maybe...though Rik Mayall was a pretty funny guy.

Never lose you innocence...I guess that's the 
lesson of Drop Dead Fred

Ernest Scared Stupid
"How about a bumper sandwich booger lips!" If you take nothing else away from Ernest scared stupid other than this quote...well, isn't that enough?

Jim Varney shows more bravery than
the title of the movie lets on
in Ernest Scared Stupid

Father of the Bride
The original Father of the Bride with Spencer Tracy spawned a sequel a couple of years after the original called Father's Little Dividend. The 1991 remake also had a sequel less creatively called Father of the Bride II. I'm pretty sure there was no equivalent of the Martin Short gay wedding planner in the either Spencer Tracy version.

Engaging couple Steve Martin and Diane Keaton
in Father of the Bride '91

Frankie and Johnny
Just released convict Al Pacino starts a romance with waitress Michele Pffiefer. The plot point I remember most was that it was pointed out that Pacino doesn't make any noise during sex because in the joint you learn to be quiet during those times of self pleasure if you know what's good for you. Not related to the Elvis/Donna Douglas movie of the 60's, though both allude to the popular 1904 song in the title.

Frankie and Johnny are sweethearts...

Fried Green Tomatoes
The Godfather II of chick flicks! Not exactly, but this story within a story and flashbacks and such based on Fannie Flagg's book is involving in its on right. I still think the scene where they're getting the honey out of the tree has a double meaning of some kind...

Mary Stuart Masterson and Mary-Louise Parket
in the flashback part of Fried Green Tomatoes

Grand Canyon
The title has to do with the racial divide and this story...I confess I can't remember much about the story here, though I know Danny Glover and Kevin Kline form an unlikely friendship. I don't even remember Steve Martin as being in this! I'll put this on the re-watch list...a list which is getting pretty heavy. 

Glover and Kline seek
common ground in Grand Canyon

Hook
One of Steven Spielberg's less positively reviewed films is still pretty popular with kids on VHS...I mean Laser Disc...I mean DVD...I mean Blu-Ray...I mean streaming...Kids still like it.

Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams and Bob Hoskins

in Hook

Hot Shots!
If you like the Zucker/Abrams Airplane! movies, you'll probably like this. I watched this just a few years ago with my niece (another niece reference) and it's funny, but a lot of references may have to be explained to younger viewers. "You see, Fluffy Bunny Feet is a reference to Dances With Wolves, that had just come out a year before and..."

Lloyd Bridges stealing pretty much every 
scene he's in in Hot Shots!

Jungle Fever
Spike Lee's story of interracial romance I remember as being one of his best films. Might make a future double feature rewatch with Grand Canyon?

Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra 
in Jungle Fever

L. A. Story
How many movies was Steve Martin in in 1991? I tend to compare this one to The Player-Both are L. A. stories, both were released about the same time, both have Richard E. Grant...Unfortunately, that's not a battle L. A. Story is going to win. 

Steve Martin and Marilu Henner
tell an L. A. Story

My Girl
I defy you to watch this movie or even mention this movie without starting to sing The Temptations song of the same name to yourself...I got sunshine...on a cloudy day...

Talkin' bout' my girl...My Girl!

Naked Gun 2 ½
The David Zucker section of the Abrams/Zucker combo directed this sequel to Naked Gun which was an adaptation of Police Squad! to begin with. Zucker even gets to parody his brother Jerry Zucker's film Ghost in the potter's wheel gone awry scene!

Naked Gun 2 1/2...Cue The Righteous Brothers

Other People’s Money
The scenes between corporate raider Danny De Vito and old-fashioned company man Gregory Peck are pretty good. The romance subplot between De Vito and Penelope Ann Miller doesn't work so well.

Mergers and Acquisitions in
Other People's Money

Paris Trout
Dennis Hopper adds to his gallery of reprehensible characters in this adaptation of Pete Dexter's novel.

Uneasy Rider: Dennis Hopper is Paris Trout

Point Break
Bohdi and Johnny Utah...The Ex-President bank robbers...the longing to be a beach bum all your life...that airplane jump...the search for a perfect wave...There's a lot going on in this cult film and I like it quite a bit. I'd put this one on my 1001 list.

Keanu Reeves understands that Patrick Swayze 
has finally found the perfect wave in Point Break

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Not the best adaptation of the Robin Hood legend, though worth watching for Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham.

Morgan Freeman and Kevin Costner
have both had better days than in
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Shadows and Fog
One of the final Woody Allen/Mia Farrow collaborations and what happens in it is a bit of a shadow and fog to me...though I do remember that Woody adapted part of his character from a story in his book Side Effects. (Or was that Without Feathers?)

Woody and Mia and Shadows and Fog

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
The final voyage of the entire original crew was a pretty good one. I guess we're lucky VI was an even number.

Goodbye, Farewell and Amen
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Sleeping With the Enemy
Without Julia Roberts, this story about a woman that fakes her death to avoid her abusive husband would have probably ended up as a Lifetime movie. With her, it was one of the biggest movies of 1991.

Her hair of floating sky 

is shimmering, glimmering...

Julia Roberts in Sleeping with the Enemy

Soapdish
Behind the scene comedy of soap opera shenanigans with an all-star cast.
If I revisit a 1991 Kevin Kline movie, it'll be Grand Canyon.

Sally Field and Kevin Kline in Soapdish

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
The green guys are back for more. I can't remember what the secret of the ooze was. Am I curious? Not really.

Happy Together: The Ninja Turtles return

What About Bob
I've been a Bill Murray fan since he first became a cast member of Saturday Night Live in the 70's. So it's pretty surprising that I've never seen one of his showcase roles in What About Bob? My wife couldn't believe it either. Well, now I've seen it and it is a great part for Bill as the neurotic/psychotic patient of psychiatrist Richard Dreyfus as Dr. Leo Marvin. Dr. Marvin is so unlikable, that you have no sympathy for him when the needy Bob comes to invade every aspect of his life, including when he's on vacation and about to do the interview of his life on 60 Minutes.

"Baby Steps..baby steps." A must for Murray fans even if you're twenty-seven years late to the party.

"Did someone call a Ghostbuster?
Because I think you're gonna need a bigger boat...'
Murray and Dreyfus in What About Bob?

Little Man Tate
I've seen parts of this one, but not the whole thing. It's another one of my wife's favorites, so I added this one to the list as well. Director and star Jody Foster has a kid that is too smart to fit in well in school, so the working class Foster signs the kid up with Psycholgist/Teacher played by Dianne Weist who runs a camp for smart kids. There isn't really a bad guy here, though Harry Conick Jr. needs to be a little more careful where he throws a globe around. A nice recommendation for the smart kid in your life.

Mother and son in Little Man Tate

SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE (1989), DRUGSTORE COWBOY (1989)

1989

Andie Macdowell bares her soul to James Spader in
sex, lies and videotape

Coming at the end of the 80's, sex, lies and videotape was the first Gen-X picture, taking shots at the predatory, suspender-wearing, Reagan-era yuppie (Peter Gallagher) in favor of James Spader's version of Steven Soderberg, a recovering liar who is witholding and impotent to boot, yet soft and sensitive, a feminized man racked by the kind of guilt that was obviously a stranger to the freewheeling Oliver North's of the decade about to be past.
-Peter Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film 

Biskind further sees Sex, Lies and Videotape as a watershed of the independent film movement during that important year of '89. That's a lot of retrospective baggage to put on a film about a guy that likes to tape women talking about sex This was the third time I've seen this movie over the years. I wasn't all that looking forward to watching it again, but I found myself quickly sucked into the story about a guy who likes to videotape women talking about sex and his involvement with the wife of an old school friend before I knew it. Who is to say what works in a film and why? But whatever it is, I think sex, lies and videotape does work. I'm glad it found an audience and I'm glad smaller films get made, but it did leave a trail of failed smaller movies that tried to copy its success in subsequent years.

To further get into the mood of the thing, I also watched the movie on a VHS copy I taped off The Movie Channel during the early 90's...It was also the only copy I had readily available to me, but it still seemed fitting.

As luck would have it, the other movie I wanted to watch from that year was on that same old VHS tape...

Matt Dillon and William S. Burroughs in
Drugstore Cowboy

Another smaller film from 1989 was Gus Van Sandt's Drugstore Cowboy, about two couples in Portland in the early 70's who go around stealing drugs from local pharmacies to get a fix. It's a good character study and you can empathize a bit with these band of misfits...to a degree, anyway...and any film with Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs as a priest has certainly got that going for it. The film is based on a book by real life drugstore cowboy, James Fogle. Sadly, Fogle was arrested for robbing a drugstore as late as 2011, well into his 70's. He died the following year. So it goes.

----

I went through the Wikipeda list of films released in 1989 movies and listed about twenty-five that I've seen that weren't on the 1001 list. I remember seeing all of them...but the details for some are a little murky.

1. Dead Poets Society
O Captain, my captain! Lots of inspirational moments in this film, though I do think at times the line between good and bad is spelled out in terms that are a little too black and white. I would put it in my 1001 book anyway, if only for the Robin Williams scenes.

O Captain, my captain!...Dead Poets Society

2. The Abyss
Yes, here's one that I saw and it was directed by James Cameron and had a lot of good underwater special effects and...a little murky on the details.

3. Back to the Future II
I like this second movie in this series where Marty goes to that futuristic date of 2015 and we see hoverboards, the Cubs winning the World Series (Maybe they were just a year off) and other fun stuff. My son really loves the line where we see bad guy Biff telling old man Biff to "Get out of my car, old man!" Some things can just ring funny to you, I guess.

4  Driving Miss Daisy
The Oscar winning film from 1989 about the relationship between an elderly southern Jewish woman and her black driver through the years did not quite make the 1001 cut. I have a bias in favor of Daisy for a few reasons. One is that it is set in Atlanta, which \is where I grew up. Another is that I saw some of the scenes from the movie being shot in Decatur, Georgia, my hometown. But mostly because I was in a stage production of the play a couple of years ago where I played Boolie. Why wouldn't it be in my book?\

Dan Aykroyd as Boolie, my favorite character in Driving Miss Daisy.

5. Heathers
"I love my dead, gay son!" and other quotes from this pretty dark but likable teen comedy.

6. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
The kids get shrunk and then the parents try not to eat them and dogs try not to play with them as toys. Some fun special effects from what I remember.

7. In Country
You got to give Bruce Willis credit for jumping from the success of Die Hard to a serious film about a Vietnam vet with post-traumatic stress disorder. The film got good reviews, but really didn't do that well, which is too bad.

8. Ghostubsters II
More Ghostbusting fun five years later. When I think of this movie, I think of the song "Talk it Over," by Grayson Hugh which they showed the video for during the previews when I saw this at the theater in the Summer of 1989. I guess that's a little off point.

I really think they could have made a Ghostbusters III.

9. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Probably the best of the Indiana Jones sequels and the film is stolen by Sean Connery as Indy's Dad.

10. K-9, Turner and Hooch
USA network loved to show these two movies over and over again for years. K-9 Cop was the one with Jim Belushi as the cop and the dog was a German Shepherd. Turner and Hooch was the one with Tom Hanks as the cop and the dog was a mastiff.

11. Licence to Kill
Not everyone loved Timothy Dalton's turn as James Bond, but he was definitely more from the Sean Connery school than the Roger Moore school.

12. The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid at the time seemed to me like an unlikely candidate to lead the Disney company back into the Disney renaissance because it didn't seem to have much appeal for boys...and this is why no one's ever asked me to be president of the Walt Disney company.

Ursula in The Little Mermaid

13. Look Who's Talking
Stupid but sometimes funny movie about a couple and a baby that you can hear his thoughts and stuff. But just how many of these damn movies did they have to make?

14. Major League
Pretty funny baseball movie, but non-appearance of Kevin Costner in movie about baseball from this period just seems wrong somehow.

15. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
When Chevy Chase was roasted once, a comedian told him that he had made four good movies and forty lousy ones. I think this is one of the good ones.

16. New York Stories
Three separate stories presented here from directors Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola. The one that scores the most is Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks featuring a pretty hilarious turn by Mae Questel as Woody's domineering mother.

Woody Allen's mother appears to be haunting him in Oedipus Wrecks.

17. Parenthood
Very likable Ron Howard comedy with a good cast led by Steve Martin about the ups and downs (like a roller coaster, you know) of family life.

18. Pet Cemetery
One of the better Stephen King book to film adaptations. Any movie with Fred Gwynne in it has that going for it, too.

19. Steel Magnolias
Honestly, I've watched a very good local production of this on stage. Only then did I watch the film and I honestly preferred the stage production, all-star cast in the movie or not.

20. Star Trek IV
The often maligned William Shatner directed Star Trek movie isn't awful, but is still probably the weakest entry in the movie series featuring the original cast.

God makes a cameo in Star Trek V

21. Sea of Love
I remember seeing this in the theater the week it opened. Nice story, nice use of title song and nice cast featuring Al Pacino, Ellen Barkin and John Goodman.

22. The War of the Roses
Another one that's a little murky in my memory. The Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner marriage was bad I think...but it was kind of funny? Danny De Vito was pretty good, too...but it's less murky in my mind than the next entry...

23. Warlock
I know I watched a movie called Warlock when it first came on cable. I remember who I watched it with. I remember pointing out to her that I don't usually watch this kind of movie. That's about all I got on this one.

24. Road House
Another film that is likely to make an appearance on a cable station near you. At least it did in the 90's. Patrick Swayze is a bouncer who takes his shirt off an awful lot.

25. UHF
I'm a big Weird Al fan. I love most of his videos and saw him in concert a couple of years ago. And UHF certainly has funny moments. But a long feature film career was not in the cards for Al.

The Oscar proves out of reach for Weird Al Yankovick in UHF

That's it for 1989, but read my lips...I'll be back!