Friday Five – Favorite Movies From the ’90s

Ughhh, this week’s topic is particularly hard. The breadth of awesome ’90s movies is very wide indeed. Narrowing this down to just five is extremely difficult. I tried to pick a bunch of movies that typified the ’90s, and that I’ll watch over and over and over again.

1. Can’t Hardly Wait – June 12, 1998 – I pretty much am Preston Myers. I too wrote (and rewrote) a letter to a girl I had a thing for all through high school that I gave to her on graduation day, but it certainly didn’t pan out the same. I am also a huge Jennifer Love Hewitt fan, and the list of people who appeared in this film before they went onto bigger and better things is goes on and on: Jason Segel as the watermelon guy, Peter Facinelli before he became a sparkly vampire, Jamie Pressly as one of the girlfriends, uncredited cameos by Jenna Elfman, Melissa Joan Hart, and Jerry O’Connell, and many more.

 

2. She’s All That – January 29, 1999 – What can I say, I’m a Rachael Leigh Cook fan. The smile she makes at the end of the movie is priceless. I saw this in theatres 5 times. Don’t worry, 4 of them were at the $1.95 theatre. Most times I was the only one there. I even have a print of the promo poster.

 

3. Playing by Heart – December 18, 1998 – I got turned onto this because it was one of the previews before She’s All That. It’s a romantic comedy whose central conceit is that talking about love is like “Dancing about Architecture”, the original title. It’s also one of those ensemble movies with like 6 groups of different people who at first all seem to be telling disconnected stories, but it turns out they are all closer than you thought, so it’s somewhat like Love, Actually. The cast in this is an amazing cross blend of people, with various couples played by Sean Connery and Genna Rowlands, Gillian Anderson and John Stewart, Angelina Jolie and Ryan Phillipe, Madeleine Stowe, Dennis Quaid and Anthony Edwards, and Jay Mohr and Ellen Burstyn. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it, even if just to see John Stewart in a serious acting role.

 

4. Angus – September 15, 1995 – I personally think the original short story by Chris Crutcher, A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune, was better. Another story I greatly identified with at the time. It’s a story about a “fat kid who’s good at science and fair at football” who has a thing for the hot cheerleader who doesn’t know he exists, but gets one dance with her at the Freshman Winter Ball. Replace football with chess, cheerleader with field hockey, and freshmen winter ball with sophomore cotillion, and you would have a description of me in high school. I still own a VCR so I can watch my well-worn tape of this, as they never put it on DVD. It was the first acting role for James Van Der Beek, so that’s gotta count for something. The Green Day song “J.A.R.” was from its soundtrack, which is what initially drew me to the movie, as I was a huge Green Day fan, as I’ve discussed before.

 

5. Mallrats – October 20, 1995 – Even though it was the worst grossing of Kevin Smith’s “Jersey Trilogy” (which consists of six movies), it is definitely the best, in spite of Jeremy London’s terrible acting because he was stoned out of his mind. I mean, it’s got Stan Lee in it for Christ’s sake! Also, I can’t ride an escalator without quoting the movie.

 
I didn’t throw in on the list because of all the crying it incites, so I don’t watch it as often as what did make the list, but I’ll never pass up an opportunity to plug just how awesome The Iron Giant is.
 

It’s not like I have it hanging over my bed, so it’s OK.

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook