The 1990s – The Last Great Hollywood Decade?
Sept. 17, 24, Oct. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, Nov. 5
On Campus – Thursday 3:10 pm – 4:50 pm
We look into the new stars (Julia Roberts, Keanu Reeves), the new star directors (Paul Thomas Anderson), the blockbusters (Titanic) and the classics (Goodfellas) of a pivotal period in movie history.
- Week 1: The blockbusters. Movies set new box office records and found new audiences in China. Titanic became the highest grossing production ever.
- Week 2: The new classics. Goodfellas, Boogie Nights and Office Space are just three of the 90s best films of lasting value.
- Week 3: The new female stars. Julia Roberts became the most popular actress of the era and was closely trailed by Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock and others.
- Week 4: The new male stars. Tom Hanks, Will Smith, Jim Carrey, and Keanu Reeves joined the reigning superstars Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- Week 5: The new star directors. Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher and the Coen Brothers pleased critics and cult audiences with innovative movies.
- Week 6: The return of the rom-com. Writer-director Nora Ephron showed there was new life in an old genre with Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail.
- Week 7: The business side of a highly profitable decade. The multiplex boom of the 1980s and early 1990s gave moviemakers a record number of screens to showcase their work and the rise of the DVD made it hard to lose money on almost any film.
- Week 8: 1999 gives 1939 a run for its money. Critics see the last 12 months of the decade as one of the greatest years in film history, with a slate that included a host of landmark movies, including American Beauty, Fight Club and The Sixth Sense.
Joe Meyers earned his BA from Penn State with a major in journalism and minor in film. He is Director of Programming for the Focus on French Cinema film festival in Connecticut. He is co-host of the Spotify podcast “Now a Major Motion Picture!” and wrote features about movies, theater and books for more than 30 years for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and other publications. In the 1970’s, Meyers ran the first (and only) art house on the Delmarva Peninsula—the Lewes Cinema. He received the Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his writing on crime fiction.