Our Favorite Summers: 1998
Filed under: Fandom, Summer Movies
Believe it or not, I wasn't yet a full-blown movie geek in 1998. I didn't even start saving my ticket stubs until the summer of '99. In all fairness, I hadn't been quite old enough to go to the movies by myself yet -- not much younger than any of my colleagues in the summers they covered, but young enough to spare you the math.
Every third weekend, my younger brother and I spent with our father, and a reliable way to spend time together was often to go to the movies or rent something and stay home. So by only (probably) going to the movies every third weekend, I only saw maybe six movies theatrically over the course of those eighteen weeks. I'll bold those that I remember going to see as I go along, and then touch upon the rest of the releases in between.
(By the way: the weekends in the summer of 1998 happen to line up with those of this summer. Let's see just how far we've come...)
May 1st: The first weekend of May being the new start of summer didn't quite catch on until 1999's The Mummy, so instead, we were offered Patrick Swayze's action-packed tractor-trailer flick, Black Dog (I've probably seen half of this on cable); Spike Lee's Denzel-starring sports drama, He Got Game (a friend lent me this for a good year and I never got around to watching it); and Les Miserables with Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush (never seen it, never read it, moving on).
May 8th: The aforementioned creep of the Big Weekend seems to be reflected in the timing of the release of Deep Impact, which I watched on home video, liked at the time, and probably still do. But man, to go from Jon Favreau starring as Astronaut #4 to directing an Iron Man 2? It would probably take a black president like Morgan Freeman to achieve change like that... Also opening is Jada Pinkett Smith's urban rom-com, Woo, which was the 1998 equivalent of counter-programming something like Next Day Air against something like Star Trek.
May 15th: I never saw The Horse Whisperer, and I never saw Quest for Camelot. (Okay, Bulworth did open on a whopping two screens this weekend, and I surely wouldn't have appreciated it as much then as I do now.)
May 20th: We did go to see Godzilla. I bought the hype. I got the toys. I was the ideal age to fall hook, line, and sinker into the big, bad monster movie. It was fun then. I'm afraid to watch it now. Still, all things considered, at least my pops didn't take us to see Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas instead that Friday, the 22nd. A whole different kind of mutant lizard in that one...
May 29th: Chris Farley follows in John Candy's footsteps by making a frontier comedy and then passing away before it comes out (Almost Heroes), Sandra Bullock pulls a Renee Zellweger and goes back home to fall in love with Harry Connick Jr. (the Forest Whitaker-directed Hope Floats -- back when Mae Whitman was the day's Abigail Breslin), and I have no idea what I Got the Hook-Up! is.
June 5th: Gwyneth Paltrow is married to Michael Douglas, sleeping with Viggo Mortensen, and bending over Alfred Hitchcock in A Perfect Murder, and Jim Carrey straddles the comedy/drama boundary most successfully in Peter Weir's still potent The Truman Show.
June 12th: I eventually saw Can't Hardly Wait, Dirty Work (directed by Bob Saget), and Six Days, Seven Nights (directed by Ivan Reitman) all on video. There's a very good chance this was the week I went on a school trip to Washington, D.C. (Alibi!)
June 19th: Our summer day-care program took us all to see the cross-dressing antics of Mulan (oh, to see Eddie Murphy as an animated, wise-cracking sidekick for a change), and I caught up with The X-Files: Fight the Future on good ol' VHS.
June 26th: First, Eddie Murphy as a wise-cracking animal. Then, Eddie Murphy surrounded by wise-cracking animals! Of course we saw Dr. Dolittle in theaters! Talk about the glory of widescreen! And yet, eleven years later, I still haven't made my way through all over Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight (I know, I know, I ought to! Simmer!).
July 1st: Armageddon -- now I know where credited co-writer J.J. Abrams got the idea for all those lens flares in outer space. (Also receiving a writing credit: Tony freakin' Gilroy.)
July 10th: I suppose that I'd still have rather seen the family-friendly Lethal Weapon 4 over the Gremlins-by-way-of-Toy Story shenanigans of Small Soldiers, so thanks for making that call, dad. (Fun fact! Kevin Dunn would go on to also play a parent concerned over the perils of advanced technology in DreamWorks' Transformers films.) The other opener: Madeline, from the director of Woo (!), in which Frances McDormand keeps tabs on a rambunctious French schoolgirl. (Oh, but if a guy does it, it's considered "creepy.")
July 15th: There's Something About Mary comes out, and everybody loses their s**t. I see it on video and indeed laugh. I likewise caught up with that Friday, the 17th's The Mask of Zorro at home, but it wasn't nearly as raucous.
July 24th: My father wouldn't take us to see Saving Private Ryan; the opening scene didn't seem to disturb him as much as the slow, steady stabbing of one soldier by another. It seemed like a great movie by the time we rented it; I really should give it another spin. Also opening: the much less disturbing, still fitfully funny Mafia! (man, when she throws the poodle...), and the allegedly disturbing Disturbing Behavior (nope, never saw).
July 31st: One night at the video store, I had picked out Blade and was impatiently waiting for my brother to make his selection so that we could go home already. I saw something about "South Park" on the box for BASEketball and, knowing both he and I liked that show that we weren't really supposed to watch, I nudged him to go for that. Lo and behold, it was actually pretty funny (I still think it is). Sophomoric, sure, but the part where Trey Parker's character realized that a much-cherished baseball game had been taped over with the reality special "Roadkill Caught on Tape," you would've sworn that we'd been huffing nitrous oxide. Otherwise: I don't recall whether we went to see The Negotiator in theaters or not (Shoutin' Sam Jackson in surround sound!), and I've yet to set aside the time for either Ever After or The Parent Trap.
August 7th: Halloween: H20? More like Shrugoween: H2-Oh, Yeah, There's Probably Something Better On. And while I thought Snake Eyes was really clever at the time, I stand skeptical today.
August 14th: If your options were Air Bud: Golden Receiver, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Return to Paradise and The Avengers, you probably would've seen The Avengers too.
August 21st: I mentioned Blade above, wasn't recently tickled by Wrongfully Accused, and haven't seen either Dance with Me or Dead Man on Campus.
August 27th: I turned eleven.
August 28th: No dice on 54 or Why Do Fools Fall in Love?.
Robert Pattinson Talks 'Breaking Dawn' & 'Unbound Captives'
Gwyneth Paltrow Joins Nicole Kidman in 'The Danish Girl'
Discuss: The Movies That Haunt You_thumbnail.jpg)
'Yogi Bear' Will Cry Me A River With Its Cast
Watch This: Movie Titles That Slip Into the Dialogue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-11-2009 @ 9:26PM
mezzanine said...
I was 7 for that summer, Godzilla and Small Soldiers were a big deal. I went to see Small Soldiers with my dad, and before it started I went to the bathroom. When I came back, I accidentally went in the wrong theater and watched the opening sequence of Blade. It took me a while to realize this was not Small Soldiers.
Reply
5-11-2009 @ 9:48PM
Martin said...
I only remember Saving Private Ryan from that year. 11 Years later 98 doesn't seem that special. Or course special years only around only so often.
Reply
5-11-2009 @ 9:32PM
William Goss said...
We were running out of years! :)
5-11-2009 @ 9:30PM
Peter Hall said...
Good pick for the younger generation. '98 marks, I believe, the first summer lineup that divides the years in which I was merely a mindless fan and the years in which I was a, burgeoning, critic.
Summer of '98 was my coming of age.
Reply
5-11-2009 @ 9:31PM
William Goss said...
Here's a towel.
5-11-2009 @ 9:39PM
Peter Hall said...
Sorry, I left that at your mom's on Sunday.
Hey-oh!
5-11-2009 @ 10:08PM
Erik Davis said...
That summer I was working at Disney World in Orlando Florida as a guy who wore laederhosen and operated the sky tram. When Private Ryan came out, I went by myself to the theater at Pleasure Island and saw it. Very weird experience; this wasn't a movie to watch by yourself.
Reply
5-11-2009 @ 10:22PM
mikestir said...
We have the same birthday but I turned 18.
I saw 90% of them in the theater that summer
Reply
5-11-2009 @ 11:53PM
adnpryde said...
I was 16 that summer. I have many great memories surrounding seeing most of those moves, even if they turned out to be bad.
Reply
5-12-2009 @ 12:57AM
Chris said...
william we are the same age, 8/27/87 ftw. and i also bought into godzilla hook, line and sinker.
aside from ryan, looks like out of sight is the best thing to come out of that summer.
Reply
5-12-2009 @ 1:27AM
Darsh said...
Hey, a year that I actually vividly remember! I remember watching Mafia!, Small Soldiers, Deep Impact, and Saving Private Ryan in theatres. I couldn't believe people laughed during the Private Ryan show, and I was 14! I liked BASEketballI for South Park, and cuz my neighborhood friends and I made a game called baseketball years before it, so we were the shit. I still think Almost Heroes is underrated, a Blockbuster/Christopher Guest gem. I still enjoy Dirty Work & Truman Show, and I also thought Snake Eyes was cool for some reason in its day. Can't Hardly Wait was actually a good flick amongst the bazillion teen comedies of its time. Not a bad year at'all.
Reply
5-12-2009 @ 2:03AM
Michael Ferraro said...
I think I remember being that friend who lent you He Got Game. You should have given it a spin dude.
And stupid lens flares. JJ Abram's directing skill still worries me (but mostly because of his overage of lens flares).
Reply
5-12-2009 @ 10:54AM
Jason said...
Ah, the summer of 98....I had just graduated college and left to go spend the summer in New Hampshire with friends.
I remember seeing Godzilla before I left town, at the brand new local AMC24 ****MEGATHEATER!!!!!***. It was so new, we were sitting in the theater waiting for the first showing of Godzilla while the fire department was doing its alarm system testing to give them their occupancy permit so they could actually show us the movie.
Saving Private Ryan, Armageddon, Lethal Weapon 4, The Negotiator, and X-Files I saw while I was in New Hampshire for the summer.
I was working part time at a McDonalds up there while they were doing the Armageddon promotion and the manager let me keep the banner we hung from the store since he was just going to throw it away after the summer. It is about 3 feet tall by 20 or 30 feet long, and still resides in the corner of a closet at home. One of those things that I still wonder why I have it, but have to admit, there is something kind of neat about it so I cant get rid of it.
X-Files I just remember one of the friends I was with was such a huge fan of the show, he walked up to the front of the line after we got to the theater and offered money to someone to let him cut in front of them so he could get us all seats dead center of the theater.
Reply
5-12-2009 @ 10:54AM
monstermac said...
Saving Private Ryan was my introduction to proper movie action-violence and realism ( the other being Gladiator, which it could be argued, was more or less that type of bloodbath, spontaneity & grit applied to the Roman flick ).In that sense, I could pretty much ascertain that this flick served as the exact transition point from which I started moving away from the bland, wholesome drivel I was unfortunately saddled with previously, towards the more ruthless, edgier, better cinema I've been on ever since.
It's the one film I remember which provoked me into cultivating and developing my own tastes, and evolve it towards something a lot more acceptable. Besides, of course, the fact it's what directly introduced me to war/ non-fiction flicks, and a lot more of these worthier topics.
This is what that truly made me start paying attention, into taking the medium seriously....
If it weren't for this flick, I would have enjoyed the hell out of ' X-men Origins : Wolverine '.
Reply
5-12-2009 @ 11:26AM
monstermac said...
Saving Private Ryan was my introduction to proper movie action-violence and realism ( the other being Gladiator, which it could be argued, was more or less that type of bloodbath, spontaneity & grit applied to the swords-and-sandals genre ).In that sense, I could pretty much ascertain this was the flick w/c served as the exact transition point from the bland, wholesome drivel I was unfortunately saddled with previously, towards the more ruthless, edgier, better cinema I've been on ever since.
The way it shook up the previously neat, fixed, and plasticized sheen and sensibility of major studio period works is something that cannot be swept aside. It has helps it remain an aesthetic and technical standard people still look up and set as reference to this very day. It has impacted viscerally lots of ways, in the same manner that, perhaps, ' Dark Knight ' intellectually did. Yet the change it introduced, I feel, was a hell of a lot more encompassing, and immediate in its spread.
It's the one film which provoked me into cultivating and developing my own tastes, and evolving it towards something a lot more acceptable ( besides what directly introduced me to war/ non-fiction flicks, and other more profound, and grounded ones ).
This is the movie that truly made me pay attention to the medium....
If it weren't for this flick, I would have enjoyed the hell out of ' X-men Origins : Wolverine '.
Reply
5-12-2009 @ 11:31AM
monstermac said...
Double post. What the hell ?!?
Reply
5-12-2009 @ 12:57PM
Dan said...
I was young enough that I didn't see a lot of these alone, or not till a few years later when my Dad unleashed his flurry of movies on me...but damn, all things considered that was a pretty good summer. I remember all of those movies, and likewise, I remember taking those trips to the video stores where you picked something edgy (and BASKETball is funny). I started saving my ticket stubs in late '99-2000, I believe. Kinda wild to think I've got nearly 10 years worth of movies tucked away.
Reply
5-13-2009 @ 2:53AM
Elise said...
I turned 11 on August 25th. I remember renting Ever After every week for months. And going to an early screening of The Parent Trap full of twin girls. Oh, random childhood memories...
Reply
5-14-2009 @ 10:22AM
Liz said...
I saw so many of these movies in the theater that summer. The weird thing is that I saw age-appropriate stuff (I was 13) like Armageddon, Ever After, and Parent Trap, but my friends and I also snuck into Halloween H20 and 54. 98 was probably the first year that I actually became brave enough to do that.
Reply