It Came From . . . 1992.

“Schwing!” – Wayne’s World

Here’s advice.  If you see a big mouse, don’t try killing it with a baseball bat.  At least not in Disneyland®.

The cliff is real.  As we move from the 1980s into 1992, we see that the world has really changed.  Movies, for the most part, have much higher production value – perhaps someone could explain that, but even low-budget B movies looked better than they did in the 1980s.  Take, for example, Reservoir Dogs.  It was on a budget of $1.5 million (depending on who you believe) and it looks great.

Movies look better.  But are they better?  There are a few that have passed the test of time, but most are “meh” tier movies at best.  Now, not that there isn’t some good (or at least memorable) acting in some of the films.  “You can’t handle the truth” Nicholson and whatever Pacino was yelling in Scent of a Woman after gargling gravel are memorable, but the movies themselves are flat, and feel a bit defeated.

Of the top four movies in box office for the year, three are sequels, mainly forgettable sequels.  The top movie is Aladdin, from the time that Disney® went from making family entertainment to becoming a strip-miner of popular culture.  Only two movies from the top 10 made the list.

Anyway, in no particular order, here are films from 1992.  Enjoy!

In Wayne’s World, everyone apparently has Wayne’s face.

Wayne’s World – I always had a soft spot for this silly movie.  It’s basically the story of how to stretch a premise for a four minute skit into a 95 minute movie.  It’s silly.  It’s self-referential.  It’s what people were looking for.  It was released in movie “garbage time” (February) and ended up resurrecting Bohemian Rhapsody into a hit for the second time and also resulted in a lot of unnecessary whiplash.

Noises Off – A comedy movie about a play with John Ritter and Carol Burnett and Michael Caine chewing their way through their lines..  A huge box-office bomb.  Probably 10 minutes too long.  Yet, for me, it works.  It’s sort of like if the television show Frasier was a movie.  I liked it  Most people didn’t.

Encino Man – Fat hobbit® Sean Astin and Pauly Shore find a prehistoric caveman (Brendan Fraser) while digging a hole for a swimming pool.  They thaw him out, and pretend to be Bill and Ted with a cavemen.  A bit of advice:  don’t wheeze the juice.

Well, that’s one reason to let her stay.

House Sitter –  Goldie Hawn plays a psychotic stalker and Steve Martin plays an architect that she blackmails and terrorizes.  Oh, wait, that would be the way it would have been written about in 2020 if they made it and the sexes were reversed.  Instead, it’s a charming comedy about Goldie Hawn pretending to be Steve Martin’s wife because . . . reasons.  It was fun, and Martin/Hawn have a pretty good chemistry.

A League of Their Own – Geena Davis carries this movie about a baseball league that was focused on the World War II period when it actually wasn’t controversial to assume a woman was a woman and all the able-bodied men were off killing each other and all of the rest of them were making bombs.  The film is mainly memorable for Tom Hanks’ line, “There’s no crying in baseball,” which was funny before Me, Too and now it is said that he committed feelings rape.  I watched this movie once.  It was enough.

To your house in 30 minutes, or the next murder is free.

Universal Soldier – This movie is based on a documentary about reanimated soldiers from the Vietnam era being used to deliver pizzas for Dominos™ in thirty minutes or less.  No, I kid.  It’s about Dolph Lundgren and Jean Claude Van Damme shooting lots of guns and killing lots of things.  Not sure that you need much more in a movie.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer – If you think 1992 wasn’t far back in time, of the top five billed actors in this movie, four are dead:  Donald Sutherland, Paul Reubens, Rutger Hauer, and Luke Perry.  The one undead main actor is Buffy herself, Kristy Swanson.  The movie isn’t great, but it still had some of the spirit of the late, great 1980s comedies.  Plus, Kristy Swanson regularly likes my comments on X®.  Because she’s based.  And not dead.

Wouldn’t all westerns be better if they rode giant housecats?

Unforgiven – This is the Eastwood movie of a lot of Eastwood fans.  It’s Eastwood shooting things, so I’m on board, but I put this one below many of his other films.  Why?  It’s got good dialogue, plausible action, and great actors.  So what’s missing in this film?  In my mind it’s the fact that essentially every single character is morally bankrupt.  That was the trend of movies in the 1990s that got stronger as the decade went along.  Give me Josey Wales or Dirty Harry any day over this character.

Captain Ron – This is a weird movie because I could see about 593 actors that could have played each of the roles in this film.  In one way, it’s a generic 1980s comedic romp featuring an ex-SCTV comedian.  In another version it could have starred Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren killing people on a boat.  Which, again, what more do you need in a movie?

Second prize is, as always, a set of steak knives.

Glengarry Glen Ross – For me, this movie is really only 8 minutes long.  Alec Baldwin is a tool in real life, but his portrayal of a top salesman is the speech that won him an Oscar™ in the only scene he’s in.  The rest of the movie is okay.  Another dark, gritty movie with no real heroes.

Mr. Baseball – In this movie, Tom Selleck is turned into an actual baseball, but with small arms and legs and is forced into a Japanese prisoner of war camp where he devises nuclear weapons and bombs Hiroshima and wins World War II.  Nah.  Not that at all.  Tom Selleck is a baseball player who goes to Japan and becomes a better person in a romantic comedy centered around baseball.  Everyone else likes Bull Durham better, but I’d easily pick this one over it.  I believe that only Tom Selleck would agree with me.

Steven Seagal after he joined Meal Team Six.

Under Siege – Steven Seagal had exactly one good movie.  It awas this one.

Reservoir Dogs – Speaking of a cheap movie looking good, this is another one.  Tightly filmed on a budget that consisted of Twinkies®, cocaine, and some sort of cheap whiskey, this was the movie that got Tarantino the nod to make Pulp Fiction.  Is it his best?  Maybe.  It’s easily the best movie on this list.  Gritty, yet humanity still managed to seep through.

But what if they were actual dogs?  I suppose this could be the Disney® version, but then they’d all have to be black labs.

Passenger 57 – In another universe, this starred Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme killing people on a plane.  Which, again, what more do you need in a movie?

Bad Lieutenant – This was a movie so intent on being gritty that at times it turns into nearly comic parody.  I never saw it at the time, but saw a review of it indicating how good it was and watched it a few years ago.  Whoa.  No.  It’s not good.  It’s just 96 minutes of Harvey Keitel becoming increasingly unhinged.  Critics loved it.

Okay, it’s Paxton and Paxton, and they’re carrying fireman tools from some Lovecraftian alternate universe, but I’ll go with it.

Trespass – I really like this movie.  It’s a tight little treasure run into the heart of a ghetto, and Bill Paxton and William Sadler star as two firefighters who get a tip to where a bunch of gold is.  Complications ensue.  Again, I really liked it, but I have a soft spot for both Paxton and Sadler, who were/are very underrated actors.  Why was it a box office bomb?  It featured white guys fighting black gang members right after the LA riots in ’92.  Yeah, the market wasn’t ready for it.

1992 continued the demise of the anti-hero and the rise of “everyone sucks” that seemed to permeate the 1990s like a bunch of bodies buried under the crawlspace of a nice house.  Sure, it looked great, but something didn’t smell right.  The comedies were mostly generic pale imitations of the Morning in America confidence of the 1980s.

As usual, I deleted a few for length.  What did you like that I missed?