And here we are, sophomore year in high school where things start to change for me in some fundamental ways. This year I started dating my first girlfriend, I started making parody videos with my friends (mostly with friends from Best Video), I met my writing partner Katie who was one of those people I made videos with, my relationship with my parents, particularly my mom, was starting to fracture due to a variety of teenage and school related factors, and I wrote my first movie review ever for my school newspaper. That review was for Single White Female, which is a wild film for a sophomore to be reviewing for the school newspaper but I did it and it started me on a long path that has led me to right now.
It isn’t that life was peaches and cream up until this point, my school year during 7th grade was punctuated by severe and devastating bullying because people at my school thought I was gay, but the years after that settled into an uncomfortable balance in which it seemed like things would get better moving forward. And they did to a degree but then when I got in high school, things started shaking again. The addition of dating to the mix started to spiral issues that already existed into an unwinnable war of wills with my parents built upon their insecurities as much as my own. That coupled with the at the time unseen maneuvering of someone actively grooming me and you have a volatile mixture of emotional trauma that would color the rest of my life moving forward. That is a lot to place at the feet of 1992 but this year was the real tipping point in which some things started to suck and never really stopped.
This was also the year that I started to really become myself in a way that was more solid than it had been prior to this. Tastes were still being formed and I was starting to move into writing the sorts of things I wanted to write, making movies to whatever degree that I could, and forging my identity as a creative person. I was also still trying to relate to my parents through film.
I don’t want to paint this as some dystopian time of my life but it was the beginning of a of things both good and bad and both of those extremes are punctuated by what I was watching and how I was interacting with it.
It is also a year with fewer movies that I love over all, but the ones I love from this year are ones that I love hard. This was a difficult top five because several of the ones not included were very painful cuts. Glengarry Glenn Ross, in particular, really hurts not to talk about that because the Mamet dialogue really brought me to life in a way that I hadn’t before. The movies that DID make the cut, however, also did this but in a bigger way. So here we are. This year was really influential in a time when I was starting to go through a lot and my choices reflect that. Sorry this intro is so heavy but it was a heavy year.
Runners up: Basic Instinct, the Cutting Edge, White Men Can’t Jump, Thunderheart, the Player, Year of the Comet, Encino Man, Waxwork II, Batman Returns, Cool World, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Death Becomes Her, Single White Female, Rapid Fire, Sneakers, Singles, Glengarry Glenn Ross, the Mighty Ducks, Candyman, Reservoir Dogs, Aladdin, and a Muppet Christmas Carol.
If you have not read the introduction to this exercise, I recommend you do so for context regarding what this all is. In short, be nice, these are my favorites based on how I encountered them in my life and what they mean for mean to me. This is not a list of objective best movies in their respective years and if a movie that you love or is considered great does not appear, it does not mean that I think it is shit or that I don’t love it. These are just my favorites for particular personal reasons. Feel free to let everyone know your favorite five for 1992 and why as well. It is also worth mentioning that there will be spoilers here for what are now 34-year-old movies. Let’s dig in!
1. A Few Good Men
Based on the play by Aaron Sorkin (who also wrote the screenplay) and directed by Rob Reiner, a Few Good Men tells the story of a military trial based loosely on a real incident and ultimately potentially exacerbated that original incident to lethal results. After Private William Santiago dies during a Marine hazing ritual known as a Code Red at his post at Guantanamo Bay , the two responsible privates Dawson (Wolfgang Bodison) and Downey( James Marshall) are court-martialed. Lt. Daniel Kaffe (Tom Cruise), a JAG Corps attorney known for plea bargains, is assigned to defend them. Internal Affairs advocate Lt. Cdr. JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore) is retained by Downey’s aunt and Kaffe is assigned Lt Sam Weinberg (Kevin Pollack) as co-counsel to support him as he has never seen the inside of a courtroom. The privates refuse to agree to a deal and Kaffe, haunted by the pressure of living up to the shadow of his legendary father, finds himself railroaded into a trial that will lead him all the way to Col. Nathan Jessep (Jack Nicholson) who may have ordered the Code Red but even asking him the question would lead to a court martial. Kaffe has to find a way to get to the truth that will not lead him to incarceration and dishonorable discharge.
A Few Good Men is an absolute tour de force of acting, writing, and directing. The script absolutely sizzles with dialogue that would become Aaron Sorkin’s signature across future projects like the West Wing, Sports Night, the Social Network, and so many others. This is the movie that introduced us to the Sorkin walk and talk which, ironically, was a Rob Reiner invention to give the scenes something more interesting visually than just standing in a room going back and forth. The way Reiner stages the movie and moves the camera makes it feel dynamic and dramatic and decidedly not stagebound. He knows where the camera should go when and it shows absolute confidence in his ability and what the film should be. So strong was his vision, Reiner held lengthy rehearsals for the film and gave the actors specific line readings, which is when a director literally tells an actor the way to say a line. This is not often well received by actors but, based on subsequent interviews after, the cast was on board. Even powerhouse Jack Nicholson took it in stride.
Those performances are some of the best that the cast have ever delivered, earning Nicholson a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Any time anyone tries to write Cruise off as an action movie actor or claims he is all style and no substance, I point to this movie. This is my favorite Demi Moore performance as well as she maintains being the straight laced, stick in the mud moral center of the movie who manages to maintain authority while being disrespected by the men around her.
Keifer Sutherland is absolutely vile as 2nd Lt. Kendrick and leans into his contempt without self-consciousness. “Private Santiago is dead, and that is a tragedy. But he is dead because he had no code. He is dead because he had no honor, and God was watching.”
Kevin Bacon rides a tricky line as Marine prosecutor Capt. Jack Ross who has sympathy for the accused while also having to do his duty. “Don’t you dare lump me in with Jessep and Kendrick just because we wear the same uniform. I’m your friend and I’m telling you, I don’t think your clients belong in jail but I don’t get to make that decision! I represent the government of the United States without passion or prejudice and my client has a case!” Kevin Pollack shines as Lt. Weinberg, a bit comedic relief while also being the dissenting voice regarding Dawson and Downey. He is the victim advocate who understands that whomever gave the order, Santiago was the victim of extreme bullying that turned fatal. “They beat up on a weakling; that’s all they did. The rest is just smokefilled coffee-house crap. They tortured and tormented a weaker kid. They didn’t like him. So, they killed him. And why? Because he couldn’t run very fast.”
Wolfgang Bodison is fantastic as PFC Harold Dawson, a Marine standing on principal that he will not admit fault when he was ordered to do the Code Red. His ridged sense of code and honor mirrors that of the Marines accusing him and he shares their contempt for Kaffe. The way that the story plays out for Dawson through the movie is one of growth, understanding, and respect. If this actor doesn’t get this right, the whole thing falls apart. James Marshall offers Dawson’s opposite number in PFC Louden Downey a naïve and impressionable Marine who does not have a clear understanding of the situation he is in. If Dawson is the hard edge of justice, Downey is the emotional core. The two are full explanations of what is happening here and Marshall does not need to let the audience know he is not actually this simple, he just provides a naturalistic character the we can get behind.
While the story is compelling on its own, there is a philosophical argument at the core of a Few Good Men that elevates it beyond just a compelling court case. The argument is multifaceted and while the film does have a take on it, the characters all have their own perspectives within that. Galloway supports the two privates on trial “Because they stand on a wall and say, “Nothing’s going to hurt you tonight, not on my watch.”” This is essentially the same argument that Jessep uses on the stand when pressed about having ordered the Code Red “Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know; that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, *saves lives*. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said “thank you” and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!” The difference between their positions in this is one of degree and strikes to the heart of the movie. At what point does the greater good run afoul of right and wrong. Jessep argues that his conviction weakens the nation and that Santiago’s death is a necessary evil, collateral damage that serves the greater good but his ego does not allow him to see another way, that archaic and barbaric hazing rituals are not the best way to serve the country.
If Jessep did not have a compelling argument this story would not have the thematic or emotional weight that it does. I am sure there are reads on this movie that Jessep was in the right and that is kind of horrifying on its own, but it does demonstrate how important this argument is and the importance of balance and oversight. That Dawson realizes at the end of the movie that fault and responsibility are not one and the same, we have the real answer. When Dawson and Downey are dishonorably discharged despite Jessep admitting to ordering the Code Red and Downey doesn’t understand, saying they did nothing wrong, Dawson delivers the final statement in the argument the movie is making: “Yeah we did. We were supposed to fight for people who couldn’t fight for themselves. We were supposed to fight for Willy.” And there it is.
I don’t normally quote dialogue this much but it is just so good here. Aaron Sorkin is a master but here he is bolstered by screenwriting legend William Goldman, there to help Sorkin adapt his play much in the same way that Weinberg is there to guide Kaffee. There were fights with the studio about what should be in the movie with pressure to have a sex scene between Kaffee and Galloway which Sorkin had originally capitulated to because he thought he had to. Reiner told him to take it out, which is absolutely the right call, and Sorkin was further pressed by some dickhead executive who asked in a note “”If Tom Cruise and Demi Moore aren’t going to sleep with each other, why is Demi Moore a woman?” He responded, “I said the obvious answer: Women have purposes other than to sleep with Cruise.” Sorkin identifies this as his lowest point as a screenwriter and it really points to how deep the misogyny is in Hollywood.
A Few Good Men, named after a Marine recruitment slogan, was nominated for Four Academy awards including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound mixing. It is insane it didn’t get a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Score to say nothing of Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director. This film is a masterclass at every level and it is frustrating that it was not fully recognized.
Clearly, I fucking love this movie. I saw this with my parents. My mom loved courtroom dramas so we watched a lot of them as I was growing up and I inherited this love from her. When the Lincoln Lawyer came out after she died, I found myself angry because she would have loved it so much. She loved this one too, I think largely because she had a deep and abiding respect for the military in general and the Marines in particular. My grandpa, her father, was a Marine who fought in World War II, was at Pearl Harbor, and had a purple heart. We had some fairly in-depth conversations about this movie and its message. We were in agreement at the time, but as she got older, more conservative, and more blindly patriotic, that shifted.
I have the utmost respect for those who protect others. Putting yourself between the defenseless and harm’s way is as noble a thing as anyone can do. I agree that it is a specialized job that not everyone can do and respect is owed and honor is earned. I also understand that leadership can be corrupt and intentions do not negate responsibility. Of all the amazing things that a Few Good Men does, I think the most important is respecting the men and women in the armed forces while acknowledging inherent corruption of power and acknowledging that not everyone in the military is a war mongering baby killer and not everyone in the military is a noble protector. Much like acknowledging the problems my parents and I had, I don’t believe that you truly honor someone by ignoring the parts you don’t like to paint a rosy picture. The military is like this as well. This is even more evident now than ever before. Leadership can be corrupt and ‘just following orders’ is no excuse for hurting the people you are there to protect. Authority is not absolute nor does it absolve you of responsibility for overreach and corruption. Checks and balances must be maintained. A Few Good Men is a fairly perfect encapsulation of these concepts and is more relevant today than ever before.
Politics and philosophical arguments aside, A Few Good Men is just a really fucking great movie with one of Nicholson’s best performances and sharp, funny, and compelling writing. It is damn near a perfect movie for me and it has been enormously influential on me as a writer. It is also infinitely rewatchable. It is also key in ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ as it has a ton of actors in it. It is in my top five movies of all time and it makes the ranking of Rob Reiner’s movies nearly impossible because how can the Princess Bride be the best when a Few Good Men is there? How can Princess Bride not be the best? This is Spinal Tap would like a word and When Harry Met Sally is waiting right behind. Rob Reiner was an amazing director and it is horrifying that he is no longer with us and why. He left us an amazing body of work that means more to me than I can put into words (Although I am really trying to). He was a master and he is very missed. In closing, a Few Good Men rules.
2.Wayne’s World-Penelope Spheeris
Born from the Saturday Night Live sketch of the same name, Wayne’s World’s follows Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) and Garth Algar( Dana Carvey) as their public assess show Wayne’s World is courted by shady TV producer Benjamin Oliver (Rob Lowe) who plans to exploit it as an advertising vehicle for a local arcade chain. In the meantime, Wayne meets and attempts to woo Cassandra (Tia Carrera) the vocalist and bass player for local Chicago band Crucial Taunt. As Wayne and Garth get deeper into the deal they risk losing the show and Cassandra to Benjamin.
Wayne’s World is probably the best and most successful of all of the films based on SNL sketches. The only other one in the conversation is Blues Brothers. Wayne’s World made a lot more money but there is a debate about cultural impact. I personally think Wayne’s World wins this category too but your mileage may vary.
Wayne’s World is a parody film at its roots and is chock full of metatextual jokes before that was much of a thing. Wayne and Garth use direct address with the audience and have the ability to redirect the endings which makes it a very strange movie narratively but still manages an engaging story. The movie is full of hilarious set pieces, parodies of other movies, and memorable lines. It is rare a day goes by that I don’t quote Wayne’s World at some point.
I was supposed to see this movie with my cousin Kelly but I got put on restriction, I think due to my grades, and I wasn’t allowed to go. I was fairly distraught about this and my mom took pity on me and agreed to take me to see it if I saw Fried Green Tomatoes with her. I agreed and we saw both movies on the same day with me ducking out just a bit early from Tomatoes to see Wayne’s World. This was not theater hopping, by the way. My mom did not want to do that so she bought tickets to both shows and we watched both. I genuinely don’t remember if my mom liked Wayne’s World or not but she was in it for Tomatoes. I can only assume that my dad didn’t want go with her so she leveraged my desperation to get me to go. I would have gone anyway but I am glad I got Wayne’s World out of it. This is one of my favorite movies and I could watch it at any time.
3.Kuffs- Bruce A Evans
Kuffs is a weird little cop movie starring Christian Slater about a George Kuffs who takes over his brother’s (Bruce Boxleitner) privatized police franchise after his brother is murdered by local criminal Kane (Leon Ripey). Kuffs is on the outs with his girlfriend Maya (Milla Jovovich) after finding out that she is pregnant and has no law enforcement experience but he wants to solve his brother’s murder and get revenge. Police Captain Morino (Troy Evans) assigns Kuffs an experienced police officer Ted Bukovsky( Tony Goldwin) to be his partner and keep him out of trouble which Ted resents but he has been suspension for sleeping with the Chief’s wife and this is the only way he can get back in good standing. The pair uncover an art smuggling operation involving laundry.
This movie is pretty ridiculous but I loved it when I saw it in high school. It was right when I was paying attention to writing and film techniques in movies and I thought this was cleverly written and shot. Revisiting it now, I don’t know how interestingly it is shot but I still enjoy the writing and characters. Christian Slater is pretty awesome as the quirky and sarcastic George Kuffs and I feel like the jokes still stand up now. I don’t have much of an argument that it is some kind of elevated art but I really dig it still and watch it with fair regularity. It isn’t bad for a movie my friend Mike and I went to because he had a crush on Milla Jovovich.
4.My Cousin Vinny-Jonathan Lynn
Another legal movie on this year’s list, My Cousin Vinny is much more of a comedy than drama and follows lawyer Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci) from New Jersey and who has never won a case who is brought in to help his nephew Bill (Ralph Macchio) and Bill’s friend Stan (Mitchell Whitfield) who have been wrongfully accused of murder while on a road trip through the deep south. In tow is Vinny’s fiancé Mona Lisa Vito (Marrisa Tomei) who proves instrumental in blowing the case wide open.
My Cousin Vinny is another movie I can watch over and over again. It is funny and clever and earned Marissa Tomei an Oscar (there is no small amount of controversy around this). Fred Gwen is excellent as the judge in the case and Lane Smith’s southern lawyer character solidifies the trope in the best ways.
I did not see this movie with my mom. I wanted to but she went a different way. We decided to go to a movie one summer afternoon and there were two movies that we were interested in, My Cousin Vinny and Basic Instinct. I wanted to go see My Cousin Vinny because the trailer looked awesome and I didn’t really want to see an erotic thriller with my mom. She wanted to see Basic Instinct and I lost the debate. So, instead of seeing this in the theater with my mom, I sat next to her while Catherine Tramell murdered people with an ice pick while getting filled out like an application. At one point my mom leaned over and said ‘I know we should leave because of all the sex but I want to see how it turns out.’ So we watched the whole thing. This was a far cry from when I got dragged out of European Vacation cause of a set of boobs and further illustrates the scattershot nature of my mom’s censorship.
I eventually saw my Cousin Vinny on VHS and loved it very much. My mom did too and I never got tired reminding her how we could have seen that in the theater instead of the emotionally scarring experience of watching Basic Instinct. It is worth mentioning that I love Basic Instinct but just not when I am trapped in a dark room next to my mom.
5.Unforgiven-Clint Eastwood
The film that stole Best Picture from A Few Good Men, Unforgiven is a revisionist Western story following retired gunfighter and outlaw William Munny( Clint Eastwood) who is taking care of his two kids following his wife’s death. Munny is recruited by ‘the Schofield Kid (Jamie Woolvet)’ on a bounty job offered by a group of sex workers to take revenge on the men who disfigured one of them. Munny initially refuses but he is getting too old to keep up his Kansas farm and needs a way to provide for his children and catches up with the Kid. Along the way he recruits Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), and old friend and partner, to help collect the bounty. This brings them up against Little Bill Dagget (Gene Hackman) a gunfighter turned sheriff who let the two mutilators off easy and doesn’t take kindly to outside gunslingers coming to town to mete out justice.
Unforgiven explores themes of justice, violence, morality, and plain old good and evil but it does so with much more nuance and subtlety than Eastwood’s past westerns but mines that paydirt for its pathos and challenging of the genre’s tropes. The performances are amazing and it is shot in a dreary, muted style benefitting the more grounded and realistic take on the western genre. Despite the seriousness, this film is enormously rewatchable.
When I was growing up I didn’t really like westerns much aside from Silverado and the Lone Ranger. MY dad was absolutely nuts about westerns. It was probably his favorite genre and he ate it up. This was a bummer for me when I was a kid because I never really liked them. That changed with Unforgiven. We saw it in the theater and I was blown away by it. It made me feel closer to him because I was able to understand a thing he loved in a way that I never had before. I started to pay more attention to westerns from there on out and I came to eventually really like them. This was nice given that I live in Arizona which is the land of the western. It also led me to make a western of my own eventually. It was a western zombie comedy and we rented a western town to film it in. The town was outside of Benson, AZ and due to its proximity to my dad’s property in Saint David we all stayed out there with my dad. Before filming, my dad came to me and asked if it would be okay if he came to set to take pictures with his new camera because he had always wanted to be on a western movie set. I said ‘Dad, do you want to be in the movie?’ I had never seen his eyes light up so much in my life. He got to be a cowboy in the movie and get in a barfight and eventually get turned into a zombie and I shot him. It was a pretty amazing experience for both of us and I think about it often. My dad gave me movies and I was able to give him a part in a movie. None of that would have happened without Unforgiven. Even if it wasn’t a movie I watched dozens of times in my life it will always be one of my favorites because of what it gave me with my dad.