90s movie classics

Andrew and Tim dodge fishing hooks in Southport in 1997's I Know What You Did Last Summer. With an all-nineties cast of Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr and Ryan [no-third-name] Phillipe, ably supported by Anne Heche, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras and Johnny Galecki, this movie answers all the big questions. Will a sleeping person wake if you cut their hair? How quick...

In this episode, Tim and Andrew revisit the 1996 rom com, The Truth About Cats and Dogs. Starring Uma Thurman, Janeane Garofalo and Ben Chaplin, this movie explores how women who are short, fat and ugly like Garofalo can compete in the quest for a man with tall, blonde, stunning women like Thurman.   Hasn't aged a day! Can charming performances overcome the inherently troubling premise?  Is i...

One of the true 90's classics - Tim and Andrew dive into She's All That. Starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Freddie Prinze Jnr, Matthew Lillard, Paul Walker and Jodi Lyn O'Keefe with appearances from a heap of classic 90's actors, this is the movie that created the She's All That effect: Woman wears glasses and is into art, declared by all and sundry to be an ugly dork; woman ta...

Pop quiz hotshot: Name a movie from the late 90s involving lots of deaths on a huge ship in the middle of the ocean. No, this is not Titanic!  Why settle for Leonardo DiCaprio when you can have Treat Williams?  Kate Winslet?  Try Famke Jansson!  Falling into a propeller and then freezing in the icy waters?  How about getting half-digested by a monstrous tentacled creature? But was Deep Rising any...

In 1999, David E Kelley, the star writer who had brought the world (at that time) Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice and Ally McBeal, said - "I can do more than write TV shows about quirky lawyers and doctors... I can write movies about quirky cops, quirky palaeontologists and giant (presumably quirky) crocodiles." And so he did, bringing Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, Oliver Platt...

Tim and Andrew watch 1998's Snake Eyes. Directed by Brian de Palma on a hot streak, Snake Eyes was ambitious and highly anticipated. Showy camerawork?  Tick.  Nicolas Cage overacting?  Tick.  Gary Sinise scowling?  Tick. Following on from Carlito's Way and Mission Impossible, has de Palma locked in his third great movie in a row?  Or is this a portent of the doom that would follow with M...

Tim and Andrew watch 1996's The Craft. Starring Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, Rachel True and Skeet Ulrich, a group of teenage witches use their powers to deal with bullies, racism and physical disfigurement.  But in a shock twist, things go wrong, resulting in a magical face-off between good and evil. Will young-Tim's Fairuza-obsession and Tunney-dissing prove to be justifi...

Tim and Andrew watch 1996's Daylight. Sylvester Stallone at the peak of his powers, battles his nastiest foe to date - a New York tunnel.  Thrilling!  Supported by Amy Brenneman before she was Judging and a young, brash Viggo Mortensen years before he picked up a sword, Sly is tasked with rescuing a group of disparate New Yorkers before they drown, get blown up, choke on chemical gas or kill...

Tim and Andrew watch 1992's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Starring Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Luke Perry, Rutger Hauer and Paul (Pee Wee Herman) Reubens, this was somewhat of an oddity at the time, given more significance in light of the enormous success of the TV show that followed. So how does it stand up as a movie in its own right?  Is Swanson a slayer worthy of the title?  Did Donald...

Tim and Andrew watch 1999's Idle Hands. A young man's hand is possessed by an evil presence.  No, it's not the vastly superior Evil Dead 2 but rather Idle Hands, a stoner/horror/comedy starring Devon Sawa, Seth Green, Elden Henson (character name - Pnub, obviously) and a very early Jessica Alba. Will there be a gratuitous scene with Jessica Alba in her underwear?  Will Seth Green be...

Tim and Andrew watch 1990's Arachnophobia. Just scraping into the 90's, this Spielberg-produced PG-13 horror pits a young Jeff Daniels against an army of jumping, poisonous spiders. John Goodman chews the scenery while Jeremy Irons sports a strange accent (possibly his real accent).  Pre-CGI, we have real spiders sharing the screen with puppet spiders - can you tell the difference? (Hint...

Tim and Andrew watch 1998's Can't Hardly Wait. Declared by Andrew to be one of THE key movies of the 90s, Can't Hardly Wait had a lot to live up to.  With Ethan Embry, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Seth Green, Lauren Ambrose (now in Yellowjackets and Servant), Jenna Elfman and Jerry O'Connell, plus just about every 90s actor ever making a cameo, this is the party movie to end all party...

Tim and Andrew watch 1997's Anaconda. Spawned multiple D-grade sequels, each more awful than the next.  But what about the original?  Was it the masterpiece we remembered from our youth?  Was Jon Voight's accent really that bad?  Does he really wink after getting un-digested or was that some sort of fever dream? With an all-star cast of Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz,...

Andrew and Tim watch 1997's Volcano. Released around the same time as Dante's Peak and generally considered the 'more crap one', Volcano has Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche trying to stop lava that starts streaming from the La Brea Tar Pits in post-race-riots LA. Will Tommy Lee Jones save the day?  Will the town officials do their disaster-movie duty by refusing to believe the d...

Tim and Andrew watch 1997's Mimic, starring Mira Sorvino and Jeremy Northam, with Josh Brolin and a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance by a young Norman Reedus from Walking Dead. Guillermo Del Toro's first American movie.  Will the genius that followed be foreshadowed here?  Was he justified in later disowning the movie?  Will a film about giant human-like cockroaches be as good as it soun...

Tim and Andrew watch 1997's The Relic, starring Tom Sizemore and Penelope Ann Miller. Directed by Peter Hyams, hot on the heels of the Van Damme double, Time Cop and Sudden Death, the Relic asks what would happen if you let a large, bloodthirsty monster loose in a museum.  Smashed glass aplenty, for sure.  Add Sizemore as a grizzled cop and Penelope Ann Miller as the brilliant scientist who n...

Tim and Andrew look back at the 1996 action classic, The Rock. Back when 'the Rock' meant a prison and not an wrestler-turned-actor, we look back to the days when Nicolas Cage was an A-Lister, Sean Connery was playing Sean Connery and Ed Harris was lifting substandard material to a higher level.  How does the Rock stand up?  And what movie will be selected for analysis next? WARNING: SPO...