In 1992,
Boutros Boutros-Ghali became the sixth Secretary General of the United Nations;
President George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin declared an end to the Cold War;
The Maastricht Treaty established the European Union;
The acquittal of four police officers accused of beating Rodney King sparked a series of riots in Los Angeles;
Li Hongzhi introduced Falun Gong;
The Games of the XXV Olympiad were held in Barcelona;
The North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted;
Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Florida;
Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot to become the 42nd President of the United States;
Charles, Prince of Wales and Dianna, Princess of Wales announced their separation;
Logan Lerman, Mac Miller, Sasha Banks, Neymar, Taylor Lautner, Freddie Highmore, Samara Weaving, Emily Osment, Kaya Scodelario, John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Chloe Bennett, Adam Lanza, Victor Oladipo, Spencer Breslin, Sam Smith, Kate Upton, Selena Gomez, Cole and Dylan Sprouse, Cara Delevingne, Frances Bean Cobain, Demi Lovato, Nick Jonas, Ezra Miller, Cardi B, Josh Hutcherson, 21 Savage, and Miley Cyrus were born;
While Grace Hopper, Dame Judith Anderson, Jose Ferrer, Alex Haley, Dick York, Sandy Dennis, Richard Brooks, Menachem Begin, Friedrich Hayek, Paul Henreid, Sam Walton, Isaac Asimov, Benny Hill, Satyajit Ray, Francis Bacon, Marlene Dietrich, Robert Reed, Lyle Alzado, Lawrence Welk, Buddy Rogers, Mary Wells, Joe Shuster, John Cage, John Sturgess, Barbara McClintock, Anthony Perkins, Denholm Elliot, Allan Bloom, Willy Brandt, Shirley Booth, Jim Garrison, Cleavon Little, Roger Miller, Hal Roach, Chuck Connors, Sterling Holloway, Roy Acuff, Vincent Gardenia, Stella Adler, and Peyo died.
The following is a list of my ten favorite films released in 1992:
10) Chaplin
A biographical film about the life of one cinema’s early stars. Directed by Academy Award winner Richard Attenborough, starring Robert Downey Jr. in the title role, and featuring an all star supporting cast, including Dan Aykroyd as Mack Sennett, Marisa Tomei as Mabel Normand, and Kevin Kline as Douglas Fairbanks, this would have been hard pressed to not be excellent.
Downey earned his first Oscar nomination, but I wish it had been a miniseries instead of a two and half hour movie. Despite the limitations of telling too much story in two hours, Downey is so good and Chaplin is such a fascinating character it makes up for it.
9. Aladdin
The plot is Disney paint by numbers: meet cute, mistaken identity, strong willed princess refuses to marry and falls in love with an outsider.
The music (as was usually the case during the Mencken era) was excellent. “A Whole New World” is a legitimate part of the Great American Songbook. This was the last film of Howard Ashman’s brief, illustrious career as a lyricist. Tim Rice took over and finished the work when Ashman’s illness made his participation impossible.
Gilbert Gottfried is hysterical as Iago (in his most enduring, endearing role). Jafar is a worthy villain.
All of the above makes it a better than average entry into the Disney canon, but this movie separates itself with Robin Williams’s tour de force performance. This was Williams at the height of his powerful, imaginative powers. Coupled with a medium which could explore and heighten the kinetic absurdism of his work, it made an indelible impression on me when I was a boy and I think no less of it now. He was so transcendent, there was a credible campaign to get him an unprecedented Oscar nomination for a voice acting role. Since this movie was released, a lot more top tier talent have signed for animated roles, all hoping to recreate his success. A few have been close, but none have matched the excellence on display here.
The film is not without critics who lament the racial overtones of a story with Arabs as the villains. And while the movie’s politics are out of touch with today’s sensibilities, it does not lessen the joy of this magical carpet ride.
Dickens’ most enduring legacy + The Muppets + Michael Caine = holiday magic.
It’s a very close second to Scrooged as the best adaptation of the venerable classic.
7. Unforgiven
Will Munny (Clint Eastwood) is a former Western outlaw who settled down with a woman he loved to raise a family. After his wife dies and their farm struggles, he reluctantly agrees to help a bounty hunter in exchange for a part of the reward.
Munny successfully tracks and kills Quick Mike, but his friend Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) is murdered by Sheriff “Little” Bill Daggett in retaliation. Bound by his sense of honor, he avenges Ned’s death.
In a side story, Richard Harris is blowhard English cowboy exposed as coward.
The movie rightly won Best Picture and transformed the public perception of Eastwood from symbol of 70s and 80s machismo to auteur director. Hackman won his second Oscar, solidifying his reputation among acting’s greats. It’s the best of the revisionist westerns which deconstructed the mythology of earlier works in which Eastwood frequently starred.
It’s a great rumination on what it means to be a good man, and how morality is often individual and situational. It reminds me of the fantastic line from The Wire: every man has got to have a code.
When Jack (Sydney Pollack) and Sally (Judy Davis) casually announce their marriage has ended, it forces Gabe (Woody Allen) and Judy Roth (Mia Farrow) to question their own relationship. Gabe flirts with Rain (Juliette Lewis), one of his students, while Judy eyes a relationship with Michael Gates (Liam Neeson).
Filmed as a documentary with interviews explaining the character’s inner emotions, this film asks if it’s possible to maintain vitality in a relationship, or if all long-term relationships inevitably devolve towards predictability and boredom?
While better known as the director of Tootsie (1982), Absence of Malice (1981), Out of Africa (1985), and The Firm (1993), Sydney Pollack had an extensive career as an actor with memorable roles in Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and Michael Clayton (2007). Jack, the husband in a midlife crisis, is his most realized on-camera role.
A Woody Allen regular in Alice (1990), Deconstructing Harry (1997), Celebrity (1998), and To Rome, with Love (2012), Judy Davis is a delightful actress whose lack of recognition doesn’t seem to match her talent. She’s great as Sally, the wife who thinks she wants something more than her marriage offers.
While Davis is not as well-known as her talent would suggest, Juliette Lewis is the opposite: a name we all know, and think she’s talented, but, in actuality, she peaked with Natural Born Killers (1994) when she was 22 years old. In this movie, all she has to do is be a young object of desire.
It’s hard to remember a time before Liam Neeson was a household name, but at this point in his career, his biggest role had been in Darkman (1990), and he was a year away from his breakthrough role as Oskar Schindler.
This was the last film to feature Woody Allen and Mia Farrow together. A few months after its release, Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi Previn was made public. Watching this film now, you want to believe it offers insight into the controversy, and the faux-documentary style only adds to the impression we’re getting a glimpse into Allen’s state of mind. In light of his then burgeoning relationship with Soon-Yi, it’s a little creepy and self-indulgent Woody casts himself in a relationship with the younger Juliette Lewis.
If the movie had starred someone else it would have worked more like Woody intended and less than it does.
5. Howards End
When Helen Schlegel (Helena Bonham Carter) is briefly engaged to the eldest Wilcox son, Paul, causes dissension in both the middle class Schlegels and the wealthy, conservative Wilcoxes..
While the two families live near each other in London, Margaret Schlegel (Emma Thompson) develops a friendship with Ruth Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave). When Ruth dies, she bequeaths a property, Howards End, to Margaret. However, the Wilcox family, lead by patriarch Henry (Anthony Hopkins), destroy her will and ignore the request.
Ironically, Henry and Margaret soon begin a romantic relationship.
As typical of Merchant Ivory productions, the film is a beautifully crafted paean to a bygone era of luxury and class. They always make the early 20th century look like the pinnacle of history.
Hopkins and Thompson costarred in a pair of Merchant Ivory productions in back to back years which cemented both of them as superstars of their craft. Hopkins was already immortalized as Hannibal Lecter, but this movie was the coming out party for Thompson.
Helena Bonham Carter is now mostly thought of as the wild haired muse of Tim Burton, but in her early career she was a powerful dramatic actress. It’s retroactively odd to see Thompson (who was at the time married to Kenneth Branagh) playing the sister of Helena Bonham Carter (who would soon break up their marriage and partner with Branagh for several years pre-Burton). All three would semi-reunite in the Harry Potter series.
Vanessa Redgrave is wonderful as the first Mrs. Wilcox in this beautiful film about social propriety, forgiveness, and the ability of people to grow beyond their family histories.
Keaton’s Batman is an iconic part of my childhood. Burton’s vision for the Caped Crusader was German gothic to the extreme. The set design was Cabinet of Dr. Caligari on steroids.
Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is delightful and her chemistry with Keaton’s Batman is electric. “Mistletoe is deadly if you eat it; a kiss is even deadlier if you mean it.” It’s one of the sexiest scenes in any comic book movie.
Devito was perfection as Penguin. He’s got a perfect build for the role, and the scene where he bites the reporters nose has stuck with me for thirty years.
Christopher Walken is great as Max Shrek, the evil, greedy businessman who inadvertently births Catwoman.
It was a wonderful touch for Burton (who broke though with Pee Wee’s Big Adventure) to cast the down on his luck Paul Reubens as Penguin’s dad. Jan Hooks of SNL has a fun, brief role.
Great to see Michael Murphy (most famous from Altman’s Tanner ’88 series) as the mayor of Gotham.
Before Spider-man and the MCU, this was the definitive comic book movie. A major step forward from Superman (1978), showing artistic vision and flair could find a home in the Batcave.
After a diamond heist, the gangsters involved meet at the rendezvous point.
They all have color code names: Pink (Steve Buscemi), White (Harvey Keitel), Orange (Tim Roth), and Blonde (Michael Madsen).
Tarantino’s trademarks are already in place, including pop culture obsession (a discussion of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”) and a Macguffin (the diamonds).
The plot is reminiscent of his breakthrough film two years later, Pulp Fiction (and they exist in a shared universe because Blonde is actually Vic Vega, brother of Travolta’s Vincent Vega from the latter film.)
The violence is harsh and tough to watch, but believable; these are violent men.
Buscemi became a star based on this performance. Tim Roth is still more known for this than anything else, and, in a long career, it’s this film and his association with Tarantino which gives Harvey Keitel his cache.
I love this version of John Steinbeck’s short novel.
George Milton (Gary Sinise) and Lennie Small (John Malkovich) flee from their previous job after Lennie is falsely accused of rape; George is insistent on protecting him.
Despite George’s best efforts, the intellectually challenged Lennie accidentally kills the wife of their new boss’s son.
The book was a standard in high school English courses for sixty years, although it seems to be falling out of favor. I love the book and the 1939 version starring Burgess Meredith.
Sinise pulls double duty and directed this version too. He’s excellent and Malkovich is masterful.
Ray Walston is, as always, dependable in a small role and Sherilynn Fenn is great as Curley’s ill fated wife.
It’s a wonderful film about love and friendship, and how cruel the world can be to those it doesn’t understand.
1. Baraka
This spiritual successor to Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisquati (1982) was directed by Ron Fricke, the cinematographer of the earlier film.
Containing no narrative, it’s a series of long tracking shots of people and places from around the world, often using time-lapse photography: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, oil fields in Kuwait, Auschwitz, African tribal ceremonies, a crowded subway terminal. It’s National Geographic without interpretive voice overs.
A statement about the interconnectedness of humanity, it’s a breathtaking, beautiful film highlighting the diversity of the world and the wonder of creation.