An inescapable marketing juggernaut, powered by the superhero burger and collectable drinking glasses. Seal and U2’s soundtrack contributions also dominated the airwaves, the Grammys and MTV.
Let’s just split the difference and say that 1995 Nicole Kidman was the hottest thing on two legs. I was a month shy of 14 when I saw Batman Forever at the theater. I think I’d accelerated all the way through puberty by the time the end credits roll due to her..
The summer of 1995 is absolutely burned into my brain. It evokes a very specific feeling. I was 13/turned 14 in July. One of my nephews was born. My grandmother on my mom’s side was diagnosed with breast cancer. I spent practically the entire summer at one of my grandparent’s house…either my grandmother on my mom’s side while my mom helped her through what would be her final year of life…or at my other grandmother’s house which was right down the street in Quitman, TX (hometown of Sissy Spacek). Believe it or not, my grandmother actually took Sissy’s prom pictures in her yard in front of her wisteria bushes. But that was way before I was ever around obviously lol. I remember Batman Forever and that soundtrack on constant play and seeing Die Hard with a Vengeance and Crimson Tide on the same day. And Mortal Kombat. And Waterworld. And Species. And even dumb old Judge Dredd. And the constant OJ Simpson stuff on TV. I remember getting sent to the hospital after getting stung by a massive amount of bees because I started vomiting uncontrollably. And then going to see Under Siege 2 the next day and kinda liking it. If I could go back to one year to restart my life in a better way…that’d probably be the year. It’s such a schizophrenic year. I think I was slightly traumatized by it given how I’d never been exposed to the realities of cancer that up close and personal before, though my mom did try to shield me from much of it…I knew very well what was happening. Movies weren’t just entertainment that year. They were an escape from a harsh reality.
This probably reads pretty corny. But for some reason I can remember it all so vividly. The sights and sounds. The dawn of the internet. Renting all 9 of the then released Friday the 13th movies and watching them over two or three days. I can remember the smell of breakfast cooking at my grandma’s house (not the one with cancer…my paternal grandmother…the one I stayed most of the summer with). She always burned it. We used to joke that we didn’t need an alarm clock at her house. Everyone just got up when they heard burnt toast being scraped. She’s now 93 and has very advanced dementia and barely recognizes me anymore. She probably won’t be around much longer. My whole family used to live in Quitman. Now there’s nobody left there that I have any connection to. It’s very strange. I have no reason to go there anymore. It makes me tear up thinking about it. I can’t remember 1996 hardly at all for some reason. When I think of 1996, all I think of is rain. But 1995…it’s like it was yesterday..
One of our poor parents took my best friend Jeff and me to see Judge Dredd in the theaters on opening weekend. Sheesh, our parents suffered through a lot for us. I haven’t seen it in a long time but I remember Armand Assante and Jurgen Prochnow being the only fun parts of this mess. Shout out to Diane Lane and Joan Chen for bringing the sexy back to post-apocalypse America.
It was critically lauded and an Oscar frontrunner until the Academy did its give the star actor turned director all the awards thing, one of the biggest movies at the box office that year, and has lines that have entered the popular lexicon. I wouldn’t call it overlooked. It’s just not “cool”, or the kind of phenomenon that helps define an era.
It’s technically brilliant but it bores me to tears. I love reading about this subject endlessly but the movie puts me just OUT. Kind of a paradox. Probably Ron Howard’s boring directing. Almost all of his movies have that self important, salivating for Oscar recognition aire to them that always rubs me the wrong way..
Impossible to overstate how massive the James Horner score was for 13-year-old me, as a band geek who played trumpet and was really into movies. Still have the sheet music!
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