Spend 24 Hours in 1992 with the AV Club's Movie Marathon

Every Halloween, we traditionally invite a horror-movie enthusiast to program a 24-hour horror film fest. To wind down 1992 Week at The A.V. Club, a few of us decided to suggest a similar marathon for those looking to travel back in time to the strange world of 20 years ago. To that end, we?ve compiled a 24-hour selection of films that in some way embody 1992. We had two simple rules going in: 1) The films had to take place in the world of 1992, which eliminated everything from Unforgiven to Bram Stoker?s Dracula immediately. 2) They had to be films viewers could look at and say, ?Yes, that?s what 1992 was like.? These aren?t necessarily the best movies of 1992?though some are excellent?but in one way or another they?re all films made possible by the year in which they were released.

6 p.m.: Wayne?s World?
Why not begin your 24 hours of 1992 with the most 1992 movie imaginable? Wayne?s World lovingly brought Saturday Night Live?s late-?80s/early-?90s second golden age to the big screen in a film that magically made the concept of transforming a five-minute, catchphrase-dependent sketch into a 95-minute movie seem not only palatable but irresistible. Even more remarkably, Wayne?s World hearkens back to a time when Mike Myers was a beloved young comic with a fresh and funny sensibility that the world embraced, and not a desperate hack cynically recycling the same tired shtick in tired sequel after tired sequel. Here, Myers plays the lovably stunted host of a public-access TV show who, with sidekick Dana Carvey, wrestles with the temptation of selling out after a slick young executive (Rob Lowe) promises to catapult his modest little Aurora, Illinois sensation into a big deal with the help of sponsorship. The connective tissue between the meta-tomfoolery of Looney Tunes and the everyone?s-a-star populism of the YouTube and Facebook age, Wayne?s World giddily tears down the fourth wall throughout, most notably in a riotous spoof of product placement that doubles as nifty, high-profile product placement. Wayne?s World documents the end of the beautiful, idiotic hair-metal dream through a subplot that finds Myers and Lowe competing for the affections of a big-haired temptress played by Tia Carrere. Funny and enormously likeable, it?s a lighthearted and utterly delightful opener to our grueling descent into 1992 in film.

7:35 p.m.: The Crying Game?
Hopefully, after a comedy, our theoretical marathoners will be able to settle down and get serious for a while. Otherwise, they may get whiplash moving from something as silly and self-aware as Wayne?s World to a movie as somber as The Crying Game. But those who haven?t already seen this movie may get whiplash anyway. It?s one of those unpredictable gear-changers that starts one way?as a moody hostage drama that puts British soldier Forest Whitaker in the semi-reluctant hands of IRA guard Stephen Rea for a long, low-key opening that sees the two of them cautiously bonding?then switches gears altogether. Neil Jordan?s Oscar-winner (for Best Original Screenplay, though it was also up for Best Leading and Supporting Actor, Director, Picture, and Editing) defined arthouse theater in 1992: Its complicated politics and long conversations marked it as serious cinema, while the stylish cinematography and sex-and-violence focus gave it a mainstream appeal, and its reputation for having an amazing, unforeseeable twist made it famous. It?s still a solid thriller, and a great film to watch while still focused and alert enough to take in all the little give-and-take moments among the actors.

9:30 p.m.: Basic Instinct
The AIDS crisis made sex, disease, and death synonymous in the minds of a generation that came of age in the late ?80s and early ?90s and consequently came to see sex as inherently dangerous, if not fatal. No thriller of 1992 exploited that toxic association more smoothly, potently, or lucratively than Basic Instinct, a zeitgeist-capturing erotic romp that?s perfect as our movie marathon heads deep into the sexy, sexy night. A triumph of style over substance?or perhaps style-as-substance?Basic Instinct finds brilliant satirist and stylist Paul Verhoeven taking a deliciously pulpy Joe Eszterhas screenplay about a jaded detective (Michael Douglas at his most Michael Douglas) bedding a wealthy bisexual provocateur (Sharon Stone, in the peek-a-boo role that launched her to stardom) who may be behind a series of brutal, sexually charged murders and elevating it to the realm of art, or at least super-sleek entertainment. Verhoeven brings a Hitchcockian sense of style to the sordid doings while playing up the exquisite vulgarity of some of Eszterhas? ripest non-Showgirls dialogue. Basic Instinct exploited the sexual and gender uncertainty of the time to its own drooling, prurient ends?in spite of its lush, decadent production values, the film?s mind remains in the sewer?while capturing a widespread sense of unease over the possible ramifications of these new freedoms. Basic Instinct was a film of its time, but Verhoeven?s direction and the film?s neo-noir trappings lend it a distinct timelessness. ?

11:35 p.m.: The Lawnmower Man
In 1992, the world at large was just starting to figure out what a huge role computers and this strange thing called ?cyberspace? would play in the near future. Consequently, science-fiction films like The Lawnmower Man started to look to the influence of William Gibson and other computer-focused writers for inspiration. Ostensibly based on a 1975 Stephen King story?though King sued to have his name removed from the project?the film owes more to the ascendant cyberpunk movement and some vague notions that we?d soon be spending a lot of our time in virtual-reality realms where anything could happen. Well, anything that 1992 special-effects technology could imagine, anyway. Here, Jeff Fahey plays a simpleton given godlike powers by virtual reality, somehow. (Hey, it?s science.)? The film?s computer imagery could be called ?groundbreaking? in the sense that ?groundbreaking? sometimes means ?pretty silly looking.? It?s not a good film, at all, but it?s now mind-bending as a vision of an impending future that never arrived.?

1:20 a.m.: Candyman?
Here?s something genuinely scary for the middle of the night to wash away the taste of The Lawnmower Man. Adapting a Clive Barker short story, writer-director Bernard Rose moves the action to Chicago and casts Virginia Madsen as a scholar exploring urban legends, including that of ?The Candyman,? a murderous spirit summoned by saying his name five times in a mirror. As she investigates, Madsen finds evidence to back up the story and eventually runs into Candyman himself, played with monstrous dignity by Tony Todd. Rose skillfully doles out all the requisite jolts of a horror film released at the tail end of the cycle that produced boogeyman franchises like Child?s Play and A Nightmare On Elm Street, but he adds creepy class via a Philip Glass score and grounds Candyman in real-life problems. The film traces its bad guy?s origins back to his life as a slave who was murdered for falling in love with a white woman, and sets much of its action within Chicago?s real-life (and since-demolished) Cabrini-Green housing project. Candyman?s scary, sure, but he also serves as a reminder that America?s bloody history of racial injustice lingers on.

3 a.m.: Straight Talk
After all that, how about a less-terrifying tale of 1992 Chicago? If nothing else, the romantic pairing of James Woods and Dolly Parton could only have happened in 1992. Here, Parton plays a small-town girl (well, middle-aged woman) who moves to the big city, accidentally falls into a career as a radio therapist, and falls in love with Woods, a no-nonsense reporter won over by her country charms. It?s the purest big-screen distillation of Parton?s persona, which has always been grounded in the notion that country common sense trumps big-city sophistication any day of the week, and while it?s not entirely successful as a movie, the weird anti-chemistry between the reptilian Woods and Parton makes it fascinating, especially to slightly sleep-deprived viewers. Try to stay awake for the scene where the film signals that the lovebirds will consummate their relationship by having Parton drop an enormous bra from behind a door.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1925897/news/1925897/

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