The Worst eight movies I personally saw in 1995 (only 8!)
Batman Forever
Before Sunrise
Beyond Rangoon
Jumanji
Mi Familia
Mighty Aphrodite
The Beans of Egypt, Maine
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Nothing!
Terminal Essay
1995 was the year of the bomb. In scattershot fashion, unable
to determine what people might want to see, moviegoers were
bombarded with an enormous amount of movies released this year. If
1993 was the year of the art movie, and 1994 was the year of no
good movies at all, 1995 was the year of Something For Everyone.
You got your Agent-Package movies, you got your high concept
movies, you got your blockbusters, you got your flops, you got tons
of "quirky" movies both good and bad, you got your Merchant-Ivory
movies, you got your retrospectives like Satyajit Ray and those
British people who made "The Red Shoes." If you like seeing a
particular actor, we'll throw them in a ton of films! How many
times did you see Jim Carrey, Sandra Bullock, Hugh Grant, or
Antonio Banderas in a movie this year? On any given day there was
nothing GOOD to see at the movies, but in the aggregate, no matter
what your taste there are enough movies for us to pick a Top Ten,
which is more than I can say for last year.
What it was NOT was "the year of the director." Even the good
movies didn't have "great director" written all over them, they
were collaborative efforts (Ang Lee, Wayne Wang, etc.). Many
usually good directors stumbled, like Woody Allen, John Boorman,
Gus Van Sant, Agniezka Holland, Steven Soderbergh, Joel Schumacher,
Robert Rodriguez, John Sayles, Richard Linklater, the El Norte
director, even Paul Veerhoven (who isn't THAT great but is usually
at least interesting), and, as a final coda confirming this, four
usually good directors all went down in flames together in "Four
Rooms." Only Todd Haynes didn't let fans of the auteur theory
down.