Friday's Old Fashioned Flashes Back to the 90s

It happens all the time these days. Me, 40 year old man, born in the late 70s, who spent half the 90s in middle and high school, will be on the train just minding my own business when, suddenly, apropos only of the so-called 20 year fashion cycle, will look right and see some young kid who was born post-Y2K wearing a Nirvana t-shirt and then will look right and see a young woman, probably just out of college, wearing a dress and shoes that are straight from the Jenny Calendar catalogue. It’s an old song, sure, I get it, but still, it never ceases to amaze each generation that suffers through it. The other night I watched an Ellen HBO stand-up special from 1990 with My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife, one that I remember watching with my best friend nearly 30 years ago. Rest assured, when I would have watched with my best friend, I did not howl at Ellen’s hammer pants like I did with My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife because, well, in 1990, man, those pants, believe it or not, kids, would have just looked, like, normal. Life, it’s wild.

It's funny though, because even as I lament these fashion trends that I would have been fine never seeing again coming back around, I have found myself this summer, more than ever, pining for 90s movies. Well, not 90s movies, exactly, so much as 90s thrillers. You know, thrillers, exercises in suspense. And I’m not even talking about “The Fugitive” here. No, I’m talking about mid-level thrillers, airport rack versions of cinema, with above average pedigrees, preferably, in the form of solid actors who might well be there for paychecks but are nevertheless maintaining professional standards rather than Xeroxing their performances from past triumphs. I don’t want a movie like “The Net”, because in 2018 that would be ridiculous, I just want a movie with the air of “The Net.” Sandra Bullock had more fun in “The Net” than she did in “Ocean’s 8.” That ain’t right!

That’s what brings us to the Old Fashioned we plan to serve every Friday in August. Normally the eighth month of the year, the worst month of the year, is when we lessen the unrelenting wretchedness of summer’s dog days by returning to the cinema of our youth – that is, the 80s. Except, well, the 90s are part of our youth too. And between the sudden emergence of aspiring Chanel models sporting mom jeans on purpose and a summer movie season dearth of passable thrillers, it is time to re-set our August DeLorean date one decade later than usual. So dust off your Starter jacket, crank the Spin Doctors, and thank your lucky stars that Lisa Lopes (RIP) did not star in a mid-level, wrongfully accused thriller called “Kick Your Game” that finished 154th at the box office in 1995 because, rest assured, we would be reviewing the hell out of it. Beginning next Friday, August 3rd, and carrying through literally the last day of the worst month of the year, we will return to the 90s in search of suspense, turning our attention to a couple cult classics, or thereabouts, and a few other movies you probably thought you’d never hear from again only to wind up on the wrong blog at the wrong time.