Recently, I was sitting around feeling somewhat bored. It was a Sunday evening, and I had been on the go all day. I toyed with the idea of going out, but then decided I would opt for a quiet evening at home instead.
On these nights, I either listen to podcasts, do housework, paint or watch movies on Tubi or documentaries on YouTube. After spending a minute figuring out what I wanted to do, I stumbled across an old gem on the computer, a movie that I hadn’t seen in close to three decade – Batman Forever.
Batman Forever is the third instalment of the popular superhero franchise that dominated silver screens and home video from 1989 until the late 1990s. Looking back at a film that was released during the summer of 1995, when I was about to enter Grade 11, not only made me feel slightly old, but the style of filmmaking was quite retro as well.
Furthermore, many of the performers in Batman Forever, including Val Kilmer as the Caped Crusader, along with Nicole Kidman, Tommy Lee Jones, and Jim Carrey-who were megastars in their time-are names we rarely hear about in the mid-2020s.
Perhaps because I’m well into my 40s that I prefer movies and music from my childhood and youth as opposed to what’s around these days, but that era was a golden age of sorts for huge Hollywood blockbusters. These films often came out during the summer months. Hence, the term the summer movies.
If I could pick a year in modern history that was a barnburner for cinema, it has to be 1995. In the mid-1990s, just as the world was becoming acquainted with the Internet, people were flocking to their nearest movie theatres to indulge in great and exciting action flicks such as this one, Braveheart, Under Siege 2, Sudden Death and Die Hard with a Vengeance.
For those who loved drama and comedy there was plenty to choose from including The Bridges of Madison County, Dangerous Minds, Before Sunrise, along with Clueless, a mildly funny story about high school life in the mid-1990s starring Alicia Silverstone that is most memorable for rich kids walking the hallways of their school talking on cellular phones. Keep in mind this was still a time when such modern conveniences were still a luxury owned by relatively few people. There was no texting or social media either.
Yes, while films have changed and evolved over the past 30 years, for me, 1995 will always be remembered as an epic year for a large number of movies that were a runaway success at the box office.
Sadly, in this day and age of instant streaming, going out to the movies isn’t what it once was. But for those of us who were growing up and coming of age in the 80s and 90s, like Batman, we will forever have those memories to cherish.
