NEWS AND NOTES

THAT WAS THE DECADE THAT...
From Hugh Grant’s Sunset Boulevard indiscretion to Robert Downey Jr’s drug-fuelled nightmares to John Travolta’s Tarantino-assisted career salvage operation, the ’90s were littered with stars either going off the rails or climbing back on them, on-off-back-on-again celeb romances and tragic events (so long, River...). 

FEATURES

INDEPENDENT DAYS
With the expansion of the Sundance Film Festival and the rise of Miramax, the independent film scene unleashed the decade’s most compelling movies and changed the industry forever.

OK COMPUTER
Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park grabbed Hollywood blockbusters by their quaint lapels and shook them up. Where were you when the revolution began?

THE KILLERS
The Silence Of The Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter and Se7en’s John Doe may be the two everyone remembers, but judging by the number of serial killers residing in ’90s cinema, they make up approximately 2.7 percent of the population.

90 FOR THE ’90S
Wild, weird, stupid, sexy, sad, glad, punchy, paunchy... Here are the sights, the sounds, the scenes and the lines that tickled our fancy in the last 10 years of the 20th century.

THE RETURN OF JAMES BOND
At the close of the ’80s, no one was sure if 007 would return to the big screen. When he finally did, with 1995’s GoldenEye, the first screening would seal his fate. Total Film was there.

ON SECOND THOUGHTS...
Total Film goes to the movie rescue home and picks out 10 films that were bruised, battered and left for dead by brutal ’90s critics.

DISASTER MOVIES
The decade when movie budgets looked like long-distance telephone numbers saw a poultry farm full of turkeys. Drum roll please for the decade’s biggest box-office losers.

THE ADVENTURES OF BATMAN
He arrived in the ’90s on a high, with Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, and departed with a Day-Glo whimper after Joel Schumacher sent him packing in Batman & Robin. The peaks, troughs and nipple-fuelled shame of being Batman in the ’90s.

OSCAR, OSCAR!
They came, they saw, they bleated on far too long accepting their awards. From bad hosts to cringy speeches, 10 crazy years of Academy Award mayhem and gong-giving.

ICEBERG DEAD AHEAD!
It made Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet superstars and turned James Cameron into the King Of The World. But before its triumph as the most successful movie of all time, Titanic was being tipped as the decade’s biggest disaster...

SPACE INVADERS
From Independence Day to The Matrix to a galaxy far, far away, Hollywood and moviegoers took science fiction to their heart.

HANGING UP
Trainspotting, The Matrix, Reservoir Dogs, Fight Club, The Silence Of The Lambs, American Beauty – the stories behind the creation of the decade’s most iconic movie posters. Plus some of our favourite taglines of the ’90s and
a few posters that no one ever hung on their walls!

THE ABRIDGED SCRIPTS
Yes, that’s right, the decade’s finest films run through The Abridged Script shredder. Well, it’ll save you having to watch them all over again.

FACES OF THE '90S

JULIA ROBERTS
She bestrode the decade like a colossus, seducing audiences with her girl-next-door charm, chalking up one hit after another. We take a look at the girl with the golden smile (and unfortunately furry armpits)...

TOM HANKS
Two Oscars, 14 films (including his one and only outing as a director), billions of dollars in box office, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute – America’s everyman star ruled the ’90s with an iron fist.

NICOLAS CAGE
From Academy Award winner to action hunk, Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew spent the decade defying expectations.

NICOLE KIDMAN
Although she struggled to shake her tag as Mrs Tom Cruise, the audacious Aussie actress battled the naysayers to carve out an admirable and eclectic career in the ’90s.

BRAD PITT
He kicked off the decade thrusting his hips in Thelma & Louise and finished it beating people to a bloody pulp in Fight Club. In between, he played vampires, detectives, explorers, asylum inmates and Death.

KEVIN SPACEY
In the latter half of the ’90s, Spacey was at his peak. He put Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in a box, tricked the world into thinking he wasn’t Keyser Soze and won two Oscars, the second as American Beauty’s suburban rebel Lester Burnham.

KATE WINSLET
There was much more than just running around a big, sinking ship for Winslet in the ’90s, the decade she was plucked from obscurity to become Britain’s reigning box-office queen.

EWAN MCGREGOR
He journeyed from a junkie in Trainspotting to a Jedi knight in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and in the process became Scotland’s biggest acting export since Sean Connery.

THE BEST FILMS OF...

1990
The decade kicked off with goths and grifters, Gallic assassins and frontier hippies, happy hookers and young soul rebels.

1991
Disney’s reborn animation army, the Coen brothers and a liver-loving serial killer called Hannibal all hit the spot in ’91.

1992
A homicidal blonde with an ice pick, a radical activist and a gang of colour-coded crims – twas the year of living dangerously.

1993
Steven Spielberg pulls off a breathtaking double whammy, while Altman, De Palma and Mike Leigh fly the flag for movie veterans.

1994
From till jockeys to teen assassins, Z-grade directors to tunnelling inmates, this year featured an eclectic batch of slackers and dreamers.

1995
How cool was ’95? It heralded the arrival of the first Bond movie since ’89, the birth of Pixar power and the decade’s best serial killer thriller.

1996
A bumper crop of celluloid stunners, with smart young directors hitting their stride and a Hollywood megastar at the peak of his powers.

1997
The year movies got emotional, with tragic tales from Gary Oldman and Ang Lee, and a plane full of convicts to lighten the mood.

1998
The winner was the audience, as Wes Anderson, Steven Soderbergh and Todd Solondz impressed with idiosyncratic classics.

1999
A year to savour, featuring career peaks from David Fincher, Pixar, Cameron Crowe and the Wachowski Brothers.

TOP TENS

No 1: Whack Hairstyles
No 2: Star Cameos
No 3: Animal Crackers
No 4: Movie Deaths
No 5: Ace Child Stars
No 6: Gross-Out Moments