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20 years ago - December 15, 1995

Jumanji
This PG-rated fantasy adventure was based on the 1981 children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg about a board game that unleashes an alternate reality of chaos. Robin Williams stars as a man who as been stuck inside the game’s world since he was a boy, and is released by the children of his childhood friend, now played by Bonnie Hunt. Kirsten Dunst, David Alan Grier, and Bebe Neuwirth co-star. Mixed reviews aside, the movie was a hit among family audiences. Jumanji opened at #1, unseating Toy Story after three weeks at the top, with $11 million from 2,487 theaters. It became a top 10 earner for the year, taking in just over $100 million. The success of the movie even spawned the Jumanji television series that ran for three seasons starting in 1996.

Heat
“If I’m there, and I gotta put you away, I won’t like it. But I’ll tell ya. If it’s between you and some poor bastard, whose wife you’re gonna turn into a widow… brother, you are going down.”
Martin Scorsese is a pretty good director, but for me, Michael Mann’s film is the magnum opus of crime thrillers. He originally adapted this story in 1989 (based on a real robbery standoff in the 1960s) as a TV pilot/movie called L.A. Takedown. In this 1995 reworking Robert De Niro plays Neil McCauley, the no-nonsense heist crew leader who has no interest in making waves or taunting the police; he’s a cold killer if he needs to be but will bail out of a plan if it’s prudent. Al Pacino plays volatile detective Vincent Hanna, who cares more about his cases than his marriage.

Though the whole movie is brooding and great, two sequences in particular make this one of the iconic movies of the 1990s; the running shootout climax, and the mid-plot face-off between McCauley and Hanna over coffee. This film is the first time Pacino and De Niro appear together acting face to face, and the quiet fireworks in the dialogue make for one hell of a scene. Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Ashley Judd, Amy Brenneman, William Fichtner, and Natalie Portman co-star, among others. The action still resonates a generation later; developers of the video game Grand Theft Auto V, released in 2013, included a sequence taken directly from the film. While some viewers probably got a little restless during the film’s nearly three-hour runtime, I just see that as more to enjoy. Heat opened at #3 to good reviews and the best theater average of the wide releases this weekend, with $8.4 million from 1,325 theaters. It only made $67 million in the U.S. but brought in a total of $187 million worldwide, making it a financial success. That this film eluded Oscar voters is just criminal.

Sabrina
This remake of the 1954 Bogart/Hepburn romantic comedy stars Harrison Ford as Linus Larrabee, Julia Ormond as Sabrina, and Greg Kinnear as David Larrabee in a complicated love triangle directed by Sydney Pollack. Critics were not impressed by the pale comparison to the original movie, though John Williams and Sting both received Oscar nominations for the musical score and original song “Moonlight.” Sabrina opened at #5 with $5.5 million from 1,821 theaters and finished with $53 million, just a hair more than its $50 million production cost.

Sense and Sensibility
Last week we saw the anniversaries of two of Ang Lee’s major milestones - Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - and this week we have his first major breakthrough project. Here he directs Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson as Marianne and Elinor Dashwood from Jane Austen’s novel and Thompson’s script. Hugh Grant, Tom Wilkinson, and Alan Rickman co-star. Jane Austen fans got their fill in 1995, with the theatrical releases of this film and Persuasion, and the BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth. Ang Lee’s film was very well received and later earned seven Oscar nominations - for Best Picture, Writing, Actress (Thompson), Supporting Actress (Winslet, who won the SAG award), Cinematography, Costume Design, and Music - but surprisingly not one for Best Director, despite a nomination by the Directors Guild of America (he and Ron Howard were replaced in the Oscar ballots by Chris Noonan and Tim Robbins). Emma Thompson won for her screenplay, making her the only person to have won Oscars in both the writing and acting categories. Sense and Sensibility opened in 70 theaters this weekend and expanded to over 1,000 in February, eventually earning $43.1 million in the U.S.

Othello
Laurence Fishburne stars as Shakespeare’s title character, with Irene Jacob as Desdemona and Kenneth Branagh as Iago. In the history of Hollywood films to this point, there were only two major theatrical adaptations of the play, one in 1952 starring Orson Welles and the other in 1965 starring Laurence Olivier who played the part in blackface. This version was the first to feature an African-American actor in the role. Reviews were good and Branagh later received a Screen Actors Guild nomination for his performance, but audiences didn’t support the film at the box office. Othello opened in two theaters this week with a good but not amazing site average of $14,558 per theater. It stayed in very limited release and earned $2.8 million overall.

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