Vampire in Brooklyn
When the minds of Wes Craven and Eddie Murphy meet, some strange shit happens. This is Vampire in Brooklyn, a horror-comedy that is light on both elements. It’s not a good movie, but it can be fun if you’re drunk off your ass.
Posts from the ‘1995’ Category
May 31
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Rumble in the Bronx
Rumble in the Bronx is a frenetic, chaotic, entertaining martial arts film from director Stanley Tong. Of course, it’s a Jackie Chan vehicle that, despite the title, was filmed in Vancouver. It had a relatively successful North American release, drawing Chan into the mainstream in the West and generating a fanbase that persists to this day. It is still considered one of his biggest box office draws to date.
Oct 14
Toy Story
Ah, the history-making Toy Story. The movie that started the CGI feature film trend is still one of the best of the genre. Directed by John Lasseter, Toy Story earned a pile of money when it was released and still is one of the most well-known animated features ever made. Distributed by Disney and created by Pixar, this 1995 motion picture is a dazzling look at what can happen when innovation is put to good use.
Toy Story came out of Lasseter’s Oscar-winning short film Tin Toy. Disney and Pixar signed a deal to produce three films out of the characters from the short and the series recently concluded with this year’s Toy Story 3. The original picture in the series sets up the characters and many of the themes for the two other films, of course, and it ends up as one of the finest Disney-associated films released in years.
Sep 8
Whisper of the Heart
Yoshifumi Kondō’s Whisper of the Heart is a beautiful and loving tale of art and youth. Released in Japan in 1995, the film didn’t find its way to an American release until 2006. Based on the manga series If You Listen Closely by Aoi Hîragi, Whisper of the Heart was the first Japanese film to use Dolby Digital sound and remains a classic in the Studio Ghibli pantheon.
It also stands as a bit of a sad testimony to Yoshifumi Kondō. He was expected to be one of Ghibli’s top directors alongside Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, but he died of a brain aneurysm in 1998. Luckily Whisper of the Heart remains to showcase the work of the talented director and animator, illustrating exactly why he was thought of so highly by his peers and why he was considered to be among the future of the industry.
Dolores Claiborne
Yet another Stephen King novel gets the movie treatment with 1995’s Dolores Claiborne. A film revolving around themes of justice and abuse, this Taylor Hackford-directed flick has all of the punch and weight of a made-for-TV movie. As average as it gets, Dolores Claiborne would be almost entirely insignificant were it not for a pair of good performances from Kathy Bates and Christopher Plummer.
Bates is the titular character, a middle-aged domestic servant living in King’s standard coastal fishing town somewhere in Maine. The set-up is analogous to what we usually get out of his novels, as the town is small and most everyone knows one another rather well. Claiborne, we learn, is suspected of murdering her elderly employer (Judy Parfitt) and detective John Mackey (Plummer) is trying to collar her for the crime. Mackey also suspects Claiborne to be guilty of murdering her husband many years ago.
