I saw every single movie in theatrical wide release between 1996 and 1999. This has not been true of any other period of my life. The factors influencing this remarkable accomplishment are not difficult to figure out: a) I had a driver’s license or knew someone who did, and b) I had nowhere else pressing to be.
This thoroughgoing approach of ordering from the entire multiplex menu occasionally brought great films or enjoyable trash; offhand I think of Breakdown, Con Air, Cruel Intentions, The Devil’s Advocate, Dirty Work, Face/Off, The Game, In Too Deep, Kingpin, Snake Eyes, Starship Troopers, Wild Things… More often the results were not so fortuitous. With the benefit of hindsight, I might’ve done better to read the canonical works of Western literature during the same period (They were too busy gorging us on Toni Morrison and Leslie Marmon Silko at school—take that, Dead White Men!)
The radio was often on when driving to-and-fro from the cinema, and just as I will be haunted to the grave by the Alternative hits of the same period, likewise will fragments of the garbage movies that I saw on school nights continue to litter my mental landscape. This week will be devoted to purging.
B*A*P*S
At some point in this Halle Berry vehicle, an oh-so-proper English butler hollers out “West Side!”, possibly while doing that ‘W’ thing with his fingers, as popularized by the likes of Westside Connection. I got nothing else.
Buddy
Gorilla movie. I got a scored a free poster for it which was inexplicably printed backwards. Even more inexplicably, I gave it to my then-girlfriend who then, most inexplicably of all, hung it over her bed for the better part of a year.
Chairman of the Board
Gained a measure of immortality as a punchline in one of stone-cold legend Norm MacDonald’s Conan appearances. I was hanging out with some buddies outside the Norwood VFW hall, where there was a show going on. Some friend’s band was about to play when we, at the spur of the moment, decided to go see Chairman of the Board at the nearby Central Parke Plaza Cinemas. We drove over, paid—as I recall it was like $5, being the rare occasion when a first-run movie OPENED at a second-run house—and watched about twenty minutes before discovering, to no-one’s shock, that is was an unwatchable piece of shit. We got back to the VFW just in time to completely miss the friend’s band. In retrospect, this all seems rather dickish.
Chill Factor
You wouldn’t believe the premise of this movie if I told you.
Double Team
Had to double check against my porous memory to see if this actually ended with somebody fighting a tiger in a Roman coliseum. It does.
Firestorm
Less successful than the Dennis Rodman action-hero 
crossover, represented above and in the likes of Simon Sez, this was brush-cut square Howie Long’s attempt to assay his quarterback-sacking into viable stardom. The film, about forest firefighters, is mostly memorable for William Forsyth’s villain, who for reasons I cannot recall poses as a Canadian, and at one point says, “How ‘bout a good Canadian beer, eh?”
The General’s Daughter
Never actually saw this, but when I was ushering at the now-departed Showcase Cinemas Kenwood, it was always a treat to go in and sweep up popcorn while listening to “Sea Lion Woman,” which played over the closing credits. Less enjoyable was tidying up after Notting Hill, which subjected one to Elvis Costello’s “She,” a pretty fair contender for worst song eva.
Good Burger
Another musical note: Ended with a ska song, with guest vox by stars Keenan and Kel. My friend reminded me recently of the fate of Sinbad in the film: “He gets buried under debris, perhaps fatally, at film’s end.” Some years prior, I paid upwards of $2 to see Sinbad in First Kid.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Nelson de la Rosa killed it in this. Did he wear a tiny tuxedo and pose atop a piano while Marlon Brando tickled the ivories, or am I just dreaming aloud?
Mickey Blue Eyes
Like the girl on the Jersey ferry that Bernstein talks about in Kane, not a month has passed since I first saw the trailer for this film that I haven’t thought about Hugh Grant’s line readings (“Ees me, Miggy”) when doing his Wiseguy voice. As a sidenote, I recall being intensely attracted to Jeanne Tripplehorn in this movie, which today seems just odd.
MouseHunt
Went to a sneak preview of this and they gave us koozies shaped like wedges of cheese.
Out to Sea
Find me another 16-year-old who paid admission, of his own free will, to watch this sad, slack, deeply depressing late-period Lemmon-Matthau film.
Switchback
Danny Glover is a serial killer or something. Upon exiting, my friend and I decided that it was the most boring movie we had ever seen. Nothing has happened since to make me significantly revise this opinion.
Wishmaster
A comedy staple for years. The villain in this movie is a Genie, but since you cannot very well make a horror movie about a “Genie,” they call it/ him a “Djinn” instead. The premise is that he grants people’s wishes in cruelly ironic fashion. However, this is done through either leading them on or, more often, willfully misconstruing or even ignoring what they’re asking for. For example: In either this or the direct-to-video (I think) sequel, someone says “Fuck me” in the presence of the Djinn, at which point they are suddenly bent in two, so as to be able to fuck themselves up the ass. This seems to me an egregious cheat on the part of the Djinn, as “Fuck me” is a far cry from “I wish I could fuck myself up the ass.”
Nick Pinkerton is a regular contributor to The Village Voice film section, Sight & Sound Magazine, and sundry other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.