Films of 1994

Taking a look at some of films that came out 30 years ago

So, it’s been quite some time since I wrote anything for Substack. I figure since I turned 30 this last May, I’d look back 30 years ago for film and write briefly about some of my favorite films of that year. Léon: The Professional, Speed, The Lion King, The Crow and Forrest Gump are among the best films of 1994 and for me, films like The Mask, Immortal Beloved, Pulp Fiction, Hoop Dreams and The Shawshank Redemption are at the top of the list.

The Mask showcased the wacky, cartoonish humor audiences we know Jim Carrey for, especially in two other 1994 films he was in, Dumb & Dumber and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, though as Stanley Ipkiss, Carrey is more dramatic than the other two ‘94 films, while Stanley does have a good amount of comedy when he’s as himself, when he’s as The Mask, he is like a Looney Tunes or Tex Avery character. To me, The Mask showcases Carrey’s ability to be both comedic and dramatic within the same film the best. Maybe it isn’t his best performance, but to me The Mask is his best film.

Immortal Beloved is about Ludwig von Beethoven and trying to find out who the mysterious Immortal Beloved is and while we don’t get a definitive answer, the film seems to imply that Johanna Reiss, played by Johanna ter Steege, was Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved, but in reality we don’t know who Beethoven was referring to. Beethoven is played by Gary Oldman, my all time favorite actor, and boy does he deliver quite a performance. It’s the kind of performance that should have gotten an Oscar nomination, and while he would finally win a well deserved Academy Award for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, Immortal Beloved is one of many films starring Oldman where he was snubbed by the Academy.

Pulp Fiction is quite possibly the film of 1994. No film had more impact on pop culture and film from 1994 right out of the gate than Pulp Fiction. The ensemble cast starring John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel, Amanda Plummer, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Maria de Medeiros, Christopher Walken, Quentin Tarantino, Ving Rhames and Bruce Willis is a a fantastic film that showcases the talented writing that is non-chronological, which Tarantino not only did in his debut film Reservoir Dogs, also starring Roth, Keitel, Tarantino and Steve Buscemi, who has a cameo as the Buddy Holly waiter at Jack Rabbit Slims, but he weaves the story back and forth in familiar scenes, beginning from different perspectives, making the story very intriguing and worth rewatching over and over again. The soundtrack is also amazing, which is to be expected from a Quentin Tarantino film. The film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Tarantino, Best Actor for Travolta, Best Supporting Actor for Jackson and Best Supporting Actress for Thurman, while Tarantino and his co-writer Roger Avery took home Best Original Screenplay for one of the best scripts ever written.

Hoop Dreams is my second favorite film of 1994. While it is a documentary, it is phenomenal at showing how two young boys, William Gates and Arthur Agee, in the late 1980s to the early 1990s do what they can to try to realize their talents at basketball in hopes of one day becoming professional basketball players. During the course of the film, we spend time with the boys and their families as well as the couches and their teammates while we see Gates and Agee do their best to achieve their dreams while seeing some low points and some high points from their freshman year in high school to their freshman year in college. The documentary is 170 minutes and while that may seem daunting to watch, the almost three hours flies by so fast as you’re absorbed in the lives of these teens and their families. Unfortunately, this film was not nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, but many were upset by this and you can see online here as well as the Criterion Collection extras that film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, both who named this film the best film of 1994, going through from when Hoop Dreams first comes out all the way to it’s snub and even later when the Academy makes some changes due to the previous system for voting for the documentary category was set up. Ironically, while the Documentary branch didn’t nominate the film for Best Documentary, the editing branch gave the film a nomination for Best Editing, so while some may have an issue with the run time, the editing branch had no problem with it and maybe that’s the best reward of all. Though, the film did deserve to win Best Documentary as well as being nominated for Best Picture in addition of being nominated for Best Editing.

The Shawshank Redemption is my favorite film of 1994. This film is a perfect film from the writing, directing, acting… just everything about it is amazing. I was fortunate enough to see this film in theaters in 2019 for the films 25th Anniversary. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman give amazing leading performances, with Freeman narrating the film as Ellis “Red” Redding, with Andy Dufresne, played by Robbins, going to prison for killing his wife and her lover, a crime which he didn’t commit. During the course of the film we see Andy, Red and the other prisoners in their day to day lives doing various jobs in the prison and mingling with each other. It’s such an amazing film that I don’t think words and do it justice, or at least my words can’t. Based on the novella Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King, this is my favorite film adaptation based on anything by King. It’s as faithfully told as can be from the source material, even if Red was originally a short, redheaded Irishman, with whatever liberties taken with it are quite good in the end. Written and directed by Frank Darabont, who would also make the films The Green Mile and The Mist which are also based on King stories, Darabont is one of the few people to be able to adapt a King story and tell it as faithfully as possible without a whole lot of liberties taken. Having critical acclaim, the film unfortunately was not a box office hit, the film would later be nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Freeman and Best Adapted Screenplay for Darabont. In my opinion, the film should have defiantly won these three Oscars, but an interesting thing to note is that the film became the number 1 rented VHS when it came out, beating Pulp Fiction and Best Picture winner Forrest Gump. There are many excellent films of 1994, those that were and weren’t nominated, but to me Shawshank Redemption is the best film of 1994 and deserves the acclaim it has received the last 30 years.

So there’s my showcasing of my top 5 favorite films of 1994. It was a great year for movies and to some the best year for films, though every so often we get years with excellent films one after the other. I also want to take a mention my fondness for Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Even though it’s a TV show, I just wanted to take a moment and say how much I love the show. It’s my favorite show of all time, debuting a month and a day before I was born and it’s a show that was instrumental in forming my sense of humor. The characters are great, especially how they’re used in terms of taking a superhero from the 1960s and putting him in the position of a talk show host, making fun of late night talk shows as well as a 15 minute runtime, thus making fun of the 15 minutes of fame gimmick that seems to effect various famous people who often have a moment where they’re huge and then that’s it for them, especially with some of the real life guests that are interviewed by the cartoon Space Ghost. George Lowe voices Space Ghost, C. Martin Croker voices Zorak & Moltar, Space Ghost’s enemies that are now his band leader and director, while Andy Merrill voices Brak and Lokar, two more of Space Ghosts villains, though Brak became the breakout of the show since they made him a doofus. Don Kennedy would come in as Tansit, who would become the announcer for the last part of Season 3 and about the first half of season 4, before being fired by Space Ghost. Dave Willis would write for the show from season 3 to the shows 8th and last season on television, while also appearing on the show on camera and as well as voicing numerous characters. The show not only had a major impact on myself, but Cartoon Network as a whole since it became a cult hit, had a spin-off Cartoon Planet, which was a block where cartoons would be shown with Space Ghost, Zorak and Brak appearing in segments before and after other cartoons airing on the block and was a launching pad for Adult Swim to come to fruition, which also had other spin-offs of CoSt to Coast, such as Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021, The Brak Show and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, also Birdman appeared in various Coast to Coast episodes where he was given the name Harvey. Honestly, Space Ghost Coast to Coast is a very influential show just as much as many of the films I talked about here and I thought it would be good to just acknowledge an influential show from 30 years ago in addition to some of the the best and influential films that came out 30 years ago.