Latest news with #90sMovies
The Sun
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
90s movie star from huge cult classic film looks unrecognisable after ditching fame for very different career
GUESS WHO? This star shot to fame when she was just 11-years-old THIS 90s movie star appeared in one of the biggest cult classic films of that time. Now 51, the actress looks unrecognisable after ditching fame for very different career - but can you guess who it is? 7 7 7 7 Did you guess it was Fairuza Balk who played Nancy in teen classic film, The Craft? Following her huge career in the 90s, the actress now has taken a very different path in life, making jewellery. She promotes her pieces on her popular Instagram grid, where she showcases everything from rings to necklaces to bracelets. The multi-talented star is also lead singer of the band Armed Love Militia and, in 2011, she began to exhibit her own art in LA and New York. Fairuza also continues to act, and over the years has appeared in the films American History X and The Island of Dr. Moreau and the TV series Ray Donovan. THE CRAFT FAME Without a doubt, Fairuza is best known for her leading role in The Craft. When the movie hit cinemas in May 1996, it cast a spell on film lovers everywhere and proved a surprise smash at the box office. The teen horror follows a trio of schoolgirl witches who invite newcomer Sarah to join their coven. The new addition strengthens their powers and the four teenagers, all viewed as outcasts and bullied by classmates, begin to use their witchcraft to get revenge on those who have wronged them. In the film, Fairuza's character Nancy is one of the most powerful of the group. She leaves a trail of death and destruction with her spells,. In a spooky twist, Fairuza was so taken with the occult shop in Los Angeles where she researched her role, she bought it. The film, which also stars Neve Campbell, Robin Tunney, and Rachel True, raked in £40m worldwide - four times its budget - and became a cult hit. Fairuza also made an appearance in The Craft: Legacy, the 2020 sequel. 7 7 CHILD STAR The Craft wasn't Fairuza's first taste of fame, as she actually grew up as a child star. In 1985, aged just 11, she took the leading role of Dorothy in Return To Oz. The film was a sequel to the much-loved classic film, The Wizard of Oz. This role led to the lead role in another classic film The Worst Witch (1986), where she played Mildred Hubble.
Daily Mail
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
90s actor who starred with Julia Roberts and Melanie Griffith is unrecognizable with shockingly thin frame
Fans of '80s and '90s movies were in for a treat when one of the most beloved scene-stealers from those decades made a rare appearance in Manhattan on Friday. The iconic actor, now 65, turned heads during a brisk walk through the West Village—looking shockingly thin and nearly unrecognizable. The slimmed-down look was a far cry from the full-figured stockbroker he played opposite Melanie Griffith in 1989's Working Girl. It also marked a major departure from his heftier appearance in 1990's Flatliners, where he starred alongside Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, and Kiefer Sutherland. Dressed in a gray polo and navy shorts, the Tony-nominated star—who also appeared in Indecent Proposal and Benny & Joon—seemed to be getting in a workout, breaking a sweat while carrying a water bottle. Can you guess the star? Fans of '80s and '90s movies were in for a treat when one of the most beloved scene-stealers from those decades made a rare appearance in Manhattan on Friday The iconic actor, now 65, turned heads during a brisk walk through the West Village—looking shockingly thin and nearly unrecognizable If you said Oliver Platt, you're right! Back in 1999, Platt reflected on his career during a particularly busy moment, with three major films hitting theaters: Three to Tango with Matthew Perry, Bicentennial Man alongside Robin Williams, and Lake Placid with Betty White. 'I look back at the movies I've made, and there's not a single one I regret,' he told Esquire. 'But I like them for different reasons—some were fun to do, and for others the result was satisfying.' Platt singled out a few personal favorites. 'Funny Bones is really dear to me, but such a tense experience. Then there's The Impostors, which was criminally fun to make,' he said, referencing the 1998 comedy in which he and Stanley Tucci played struggling New York actors posing as stewards aboard a luxury liner bound for France. 'We kept saying to each other, "I can't believe we're getting paid for this—oh, yeah, we aren't."' In addition to his film career, Platt has earned critical acclaim across both television and theater. He's received five Primetime Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe nod, and two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, including recognition for his role as George Steinbrenner in ESPN's The Bronx Is Burning (2007). He was also Emmy-nominated for standout guest appearances in The West Wing (2001), Huff (2005–2006), and Nip/Tuck (2008). Platt is a familiar face on the small screen, known for major roles in The Big C, Fargo, and The Good Wife, as well as his ongoing performances as Uncle Jimmy on Hulu's The Bear. On Broadway, he made his debut in Conor McPherson's Shining City in 2006, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor. He later returned to the stage as Nathan Detroit in the 2009 revival of Guys and Dolls.
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
13 Awesome '90s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember
These awesome '90s movies only cool kids remember helped define that era of teen spirit and relative prosperity. We saw almost all of them in theaters. Of course these things are subjective, so please let us know if you think we missed something. And now, onto the '90s movies. It's hard to oversell how worked up some people were about Kids in 1995, because of how bluntly the film portrayed sex and drugs. It's a rarity among coming-of-age '90s movies in that it isn't focused on a high school — because its characters spend all their time on the street, in parks, in bodegas, in houses where parents aren't home, doing things they shouldn't be doing. Directed by Larry Clark, and written by Harmony Korine when he was barely older than his teenage subjects, Kids helped launch the career of two of the most iconic Gen X actresses, Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson (above). It also has one of the most excellent soundtracks ever, anchored by Folk Implosion's "Natural One." By the way, that thing Chloe Sevigny is using in the photo? That's a public phone. People used to scrounge for change for the privilege of sharing a dirty phone. Whenever people tell you everything was better in the '90s, consider that this was a common method of contacting your friends. Christian Slater plays a pre-internet edgelord who uses a pirate radio station to vent his teen angst and play some cool rebellious music. LIving in a Phoenix suburb, he's known by day as Mark, a bookish high school student who struggles to make friends. But at night, he becomes Hard Harry, a kind of Gen X shock jock who rails against parental hypocrisy and unleashes the full fury of... Leonard Cohen? That musical selection is one of many tip-offs that Harry is secretly a sensitive soul, driven more by sadness than rage. Pump Up the Volume is one of the most fascinating '90s movies because it felt almost instantly dated once the internet came into wide use — no one needed a pirate radio signal anymore to share their uncensored thoughts. But it's hard not to see a blueprint for our modern lives, in which we sometimes behave one way in the real world, and another online. Also Read: 12 Shameless '90s Comedies That Just Don't Care If You're Offended If you think of Reese Witherspoon mostly as a producer-star of inoffensive rom-coms family dramas, go see Freeway, and buckle in. A very dark, very '90s retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, it's one of our favorite mostly forgotten '90s dark comedies — and the '90s was maybe the best decade for dark comedies. Witherspoon plays an illiterate runaway, fleeing from the authorities after the arrest of her sex worker mom and abusive stepdad, who somehow lands in an even worse situation when she accepts a ride on her way to her grandmother's house. She's been targeted, it turns out, by Big Bad Wolf, aka Bob Wolverton, a creep played by a vanity-free Kiefer Sutherland. Their loaded supporting cast includes Den Hedaya, Amanda Plummer, Brooke Shields, Bokeem Woodbine and Brittany Murphy. Wow. It was produced by Oliver Stone, because of course it was. Is Can't Hardly Wait a Gen X movie, or millennial movie? It's stacked with Gen X rising or soon-to-be stars, including Ethan Embry, Lauren Ambrose, Seth Green, Melissa Joan Hart and of course Jennifer Love Hewitt (above), who anchors the whole thing. And while the soundtrack is very Gen X — it's named for a Replacements song, and features showstopping needle drops by Run-DMC and Guns N Roses — the characters are right on the blurry line between two generations, at the end of a relatively carefree decades for suburban teens. They don't know it, but they're about to enter a much scarier decade and world. It's one of the most breezy and fun '90s movies, taking its cues from '80s teen movies. But it's also fascinating. We think about Can't Hardly Wait all the time when we think about the years when you're relatively free of responsibility, and all the problems you make for yourself as you set out into the world. Its writers-directors, Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, also made a terrific Gen X satire that's on our list of Smart Movies Disguised as Dumb Movies. A similar question: Is Dazed and Confused a Baby Boomer movie? Or a Gen X movie? It's stacked with Gen X actors, from Ben Affleck to Parker Posey to Matthew McConaughey, but is set on the last day of school in 1976, arguably Baby Boomer territory. Richard Linklater, who wrote and directed the film, was inspired by his own Texas youth. Born in 1960, and a Gen X icon since the news media seized on his 1990 film Slacker to help define a generation, he isn't sure what generation he falls into. "We called oursvelves Busters," Linklater told MovieMaker in 2022. "We were the end of the boom, beginning of Gen X." Whatever the case, he took the wisdom of the past and the energy of the future to make a timeless movie that resonates across decades. McConaughey's reprehensible but hilarious line about high school students perfectly captures the paradox of movies: We get older, the movies that raised us stay the same. A lot of '90s movies present an America that is mostly white, suburban, and affluent. The main characters of Hangin' With the Homeboys are well outside that demo, and the film provided a fun, smart, endearing look at a quartet of four young men from the Bronx, two Black and two Puerto Rican, who go looking for a night of fun and end up confronting their futures. Directed by Joseph Vasquez, it has a light touch and a stellar cast including Mario Joyner, Doug E. Doug, Nestor Serrano and John Leguizamo. Critically acclaimed, it missed with audiences but later got plenty of VHS play. Quentin Tarantino has said one of the best things about Dazed and Confused is that you feel like you're hanging out with the characters, and that's very true of Hangin' With the Homeboys, too. There was something incredibly funny and profound about seeing Ferris Bueller himself, Matthew Broderick, turn into one of those teachers Ferris tormented. Adding to the joys of Election is that he isn't bedeviled by a slacker or rebel, but by the most type A of achievers, Tracy Flick, played to perfection by Reese Witherspoon. Election is one of those high school movies we're almost everyone is smarter than they let on and no one is as nice, or naive, as they seem. Is it possible to make a movie that feels as dark as actual high school? Director Alexander Payne, working off the novel by Tom Perrotta, proved it was very possible. We're also very excited for the adaptation of Perrotta's 2022 election sequel, Tracy Flick Can't Win, a novel that found the now-adult Flick in the unenviable position of high school administrator. "You can do that?" was the frequent reaction to Baz Luhrmann's brazenly 90s — but surprisingly faithful — adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Dispensing with old costumes and settings to put his star-crossed lovers (Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes) in hyper-modern (for the time) Verona Beach, he made the bold and daring decision to barely touch The Bard's dialogue. Or, even more daringly, to go for long stretches without it. Thanks to the music of Des'ree, The Cardigans, and many more, this is an utterly intoxicating movie, especially if you happened to be a 90s teenager in love. Not every song still works, but the ones that do — most notably Des'ree's "Kissing You" — really do. The story of a record store perhaps on the brink of sale to a corporate chain, Empire Records is a time capsule of a time when "selling out" was recognized as a bad thing. It boasted an irresistible cast, including Ethan Embry, Debi Mazar, Rory Cochrane, Renée Zellweger, and Liv Tyler, as well as an even more irresistible song in Edwyn Collin's '60s/'90s mashup "A Girl Like You." It failed miserably at the box office — Variety brutally called it "a soundtrack in search of a movie" — but has since become a cult classic. Sometimes a soundtrack (and a bevy of future stars) is enough. Is it a '90s movie that was too true to itself? Or one of those '90s movies that felt too in the zeitgeist? Also, for people who weren't around in the 90s: "Selling out" was the concept of abandoning the things that made you or your art cool in order to make money. It's what we're doing at this very moment by writing photo galleries instead of making four-track demos in our bedroom. At a time when 18-year-olds are routinely infantilized, this movie feels like all kinds of wrong — but we love it. What sick genius thought of remaking Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses with a bunch of high schoolers? The credit goes to Gen X writer-director Roger Kumble, who gave a clearinghouse of Gen X actors – notably Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Selma Blair — their first shot at darker, more grown-up roles. (Reese Witherspoon was already an old hand at this thing, having broken out with the aforementioned Freeway.) The movie artfully manages to be extremely dirty without being explicit, a smart line-trading given that it was targeted at people the same age as the characters. And it inspired a 2024 revamp, because of course it did. Speaking of lines: Todd Solondz seems to live for laying down challenges some audiences will just refuse to cross, and his indie classic Welcome to the Dollhouse was one of the first to make that clear. (At one point the movies title was F-----s and R-----s, two words everyone who was every on an elementary-school playground in the 1980s heard an awful lot.) Another product of the '90s movies indie boom, Welcome to the Dollhouse was the breakout for Heather Matarazzo, who plays the unpopular Dawn "Wiener Dog" Wiener, a girl so desperate for contact she agrees to meet up with another kid who threatens to assault her. Things only get darker from there. But Solondz's next film, the stunning Happiness, went even further. Teeming with style and a don't-talk-about-it-just-do-it brand of girl power, The Craft became a surprise 1996 hit, even if it paled in cultural impact to the other big 1996 Neve Campbell high school horror movie, Scream. A sequel to The Craft came and went in 2020, which wasn't, let's be honest, the best year to release a movie. But the original still holds up spectacularly, especially its blunt, ahead-of-its time take on bullying. The cast, meanwhile, is spectacular, including Fairuza Balk, Robin Tunney, Rachel True, Christine Taylor and Campbell's Scream castmate, Skeet Ulrich. Just watch it. It's one of the teen '90s movies that holds up the best. A delightfully twisty high school noir with as many dark surprises as a swamp, the Florida-set Wild Things features Denise Richards and Neve Campbell as very different high school students who get involved in a very complex situation we don't want to reveal too much about here. It flirts with being exactly the right kind of exploitive trash, but it's equal opportunity exploitive thanks to a wonderfully gratuitous scene involving Kevin Bacon. The stellar cast also includes Matt Dillon and Bill Murray. Some people may clutch your pearls throughout Wild Things, but no one will be able to deny being shockingly entertained. If you like '90s movies, perhaps we can also interest you in this list of 80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember or the video version of Awesome '90s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember. Main image: Photo illustration from Can't Hardly Wait. Sony Pictures Releasing. Related Headlines Murray Bartlett Thought Leaving NYC Could Hurt His Career — Then Landed The White Lotus Plainclothes Wins Best Narrative Feature at Provincetown International Film Festival 5 Ugly Abraham Lincoln Facts No One Likes to Talk About
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
10 Greatest Thrillers of the 1990s, Ranked
Everyone loves a good thriller. From 1960's Psycho to 2024's Conclave, suspense movies have been around for decades and will always find an appreciative audience. The genre has been in a bit of a slump lately, with fewer thrillers released in theaters than in its heyday in the '90s. That decade was arguably a high point for thrill-seeking movie fans, with a seemingly endless supply of commercial and critical hits like Basic Instinct with Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone and Se7en with Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow. Watch With Us picks the 10 best thrillers of the '90s and ranks them from the very good to the absolute best. It's a testament to the strength of '90s thrillers that some fan favorites like Primal Fear with Richard Gere and Misery with Kathy Bates didn't make the cut. David (Mark Wahlberg) is every teenage girl's dream: he's polite to parents, attentive to his partner and looks like a Calvin Klein underwear model. That's why 16-year-old Seattle high school student Nicole (Reese Witherspoon) falls for him, and why most of her friends and family like him. But Nicole's dad, Steve (William Petersen), doesn't trust him, and soon his instincts are proven right — David is a psychopath who wants to take over his entire family. Can Steven convince Nicole she's sleeping with the enemy? Fear is a criminally underrated thriller that was largely ignored when it was first released in 1996. It's still effective in 2025, and that's due to the surprisingly layered performances by Witherspoon and Petersen as a father and daughter whose lack of connection is exploited by David. Fear also functions as a great snapshot of Seattle in the mid-'90s, when grunge music and flannel shirts still ruled pop culture. Fear can be rented on Amazon Prime Video. It's every mother's worst nightmare — your children are being threatened, and there's nothing you can do about it. For Claire (Annabella Sciorra), the threat comes not from outside, but from within her home. New nanny Peyton (Rebecca De Mornay) is not what she seems, and her pleasant demeanor hides a quiet rage that threatens not only her friends and family but Claire's life as well. 9 Must-See Thrillers on Netflix Right Now (May 2025) Often derogatorily described as 'the killer nanny movie,' The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is better and subtler than its trashy reputation suggests. As Peyton, DeMornay brings real pathos to her disturbed caretaker and pulls off the impossible trick of making her more sympathetic than Sciorra's frustratingly helpless Claire. The film isn't afraid to be pulpy, and a young Julianne Moore energizes every scene she's in as Claire's chain-smoking friend Marlene, who clocks Peyton's phony angelic act right from the start (and pays for it later on). The Hand That Rocks the Cradle can be rented on Amazon Prime Video. Allie Jones (Bridget Fonda) doesn't like to be alone. After catching her longtime boyfriend cheating on her, she kicks him out and places an advertisement looking for a 'SWF' (Single White Female) roommate to share her spacious Manhattan apartment. That's how she meets Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who soon moves into Allie's place and slowly takes over her life. Hedy is just as needy as Allie, and she's willing to kill to remain in her new roommate's life. Single White Female has a lurid premise, but the two lead actresses invest enough depth and conviction in their roles to make the thriller better than others. Hedy is clearly disturbed, but Jason Leigh lets you see the full extent of Hedy's lethal neediness. Allie isn't that much different from Hedy, and Fonda excels in showing Allie's subtle transformation from victim to hero by the film's end. Single White Female is one of the more stylish thrillers on this list, and its blue-tinged cinematography gives the film a unique, moody look that is hard to forget. Single White Female is streaming on Pluto TV. 'What's in the box?' Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) desperately asks his partner, William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), near the end of Se7en. He already knows the answer— and so do we. The events leading up to that devastating moment are just as nauseating and fascinating, making Se7en one of the few thrillers you're glad to have seen and never want to watch again. Two city detectives, David and William, team up to investigate a series of murders based on the seven deadly sins: gluttony, lust, pride — you get the idea. As each murder is increasingly more bizarre and violent than the next, the two detectives race against time to stop him before he claims more victims. Se7en can be rented or purchased on Amazon Prime Video. Malice offers the best value on this list — it's two thrillers in one movie, and there's little connection between the two. A serial rapist is terrorizing a small campus town, and Prof. Andy Safian (Bill Pullman) is both a suspect and maybe the only man who can catch the assailant. Meanwhile, Andy's wife, Tracy (Nicole Kidman), loses the ability to have children due to a botched emergency surgery conducted by Andy's old friend, Jed (Alec Baldwin). Did Jed deliberately harm Tracy due to a God complex? Or is something more sinister at play? 16 Must-Watch Movies on HBO and Max to Stream Right Now (May 2025) Malice is a curiosity — both plots don't really add up, and you're left wondering why it bothered to have two of them instead of one. But that doesn't mean it isn't an effective thriller filled with atmospheric shots of shadowy homes and secret seaside cabins, a creepy score by Jerry Goldsmith and memorably nasty turns by Baldwin and Kidman. Malice also has one of the great comeuppance endings in the thriller genre when the bad guy gets a nice dose of karmic justice. Malice can be rented on Amazon Prime Video. Dr. Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver) is a rich and successful criminal psychologist who is agoraphobic due to a past attack by a deranged fan. Her mind is still sharp, though, and she's the only one who is noticing that a serial killer is stalking San Francisco and copying famous killers like Son of Sam and Ted Bundy. She begrudgingly teams up with two detectives, MJ (Holly Hunter) and Reuben (Dermot Mulroney), to find the killer before he strikes again. Copycat is a rare thriller with two female leads who function as both the damsel in distress and the hero of the story. What makes the thriller even more fascinating — and entertaining — is that Helen and MJ don't really like each other. Both women get on each other's nerves, but are smart enough to realize they are the only ones who, together, can catch the copycat murderer. Weaver and Hunter provide real dimension to their characters, and aren't concerned with making them likable or even relatable. You still pull for them to succeed, though, and that's what makes Copycat one of the best thrillers in any decade. Copycat is streaming on Hulu. Max Cady (Robert De Niro) is a career criminal with an axe to grind. He believes his defense attorney, Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), deliberately lost his case years ago so he could spend time behind bars for the rape of a 16-year-old girl. Now free, Max enacts a revenge plan that involves seducing Sam's daughter, Dani (Juliette Lewis), and alienating Sam from his depressed wife, Lee (Jessica Lange). Sam might have to go beyond the law to protect his family and deal with Max once and for all. A remake of a so-so 1962 thriller of the same name, this version is more nuanced, more violent and infinitely better. Credit director Martin Scorsese for using the bones of Cape Fear's original story and crafting a superior remake that's just as interested in showing how damaged a seemingly typical American family really is as he is at scaring audiences with Max's periodic violent outbursts. De Niro got an Oscar nomination for his unsettling performance, but just as good are Nolte and Lange as a married couple whose love has been overwhelmed by their mutual exhaustion with one another. The great cinematographer Freddie Francis gave the film a dreamy, hallucinatory feel, and Scorsese wisely left Bernard Herrmann's original tense score largely intact. Cape Fear can be rented on Amazon Prime Video. It's New York in the 1950s, and Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), broke and alone, is offered a unique job: travel to Italy to persuade a wealthy man's son, Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), to return to the United States. Tom accepts, but he quickly likes Dickie's la dolce vita too much and decides to murder him and assume his identity. But how long can Tom keep up this act before being discovered by the authorities and Dickie's increasingly suspicious girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow)? 3 Underrated Thrillers You Should Watch in May 2025 The Talented Mr. Ripley remains the best of all the Ripley adaptations because it excels as an escapist thriller that never loses sight of the loneliness that both fuels and cripples its lead character. Tom wants what others have, and murder is a justifiable means to get to a desired end. Damon was never better as Ripley, and the whole film has a warm, sunny feel that is deceptively welcoming and sets up its brutally cold, gut-punch of an ending. The Talented Mr. Ripley is streaming on Paramount+. Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) just might be the coldest woman ever to exist in a movie. That's both a compliment and a warning, as nothing can really prepare you for what she does in The Last Seduction, a modest neo-noir from 1994 that's still as brittle and brilliant after all these years. Longtime New Yorker Bridget has stolen some drug money from her abusive dentist husband, Clay (Bill Pullman), and she's lying low in a small town so she can get a quickie divorce. But when she meets dumb, good-hearted Mike, she soon concocts a plan to get rich quick and maybe get rid of Clay without the help of a lawyer. Directed by John Dahl, The Last Seduction doesn't get enough credit for its lean, mean direction (not a second is wasted) and tight story. But this is Fiorentino's show all the way, and she's hypnotic whenever she's on screen. Her Bridget is always cool and collected, even when things don't go according to her plan. By the time the movie ends, you're left feeling impressed by what she pulls off — and a little scared at how easily she does it. The Last Seduction is streaming on Tubi. When rock star Johnny Boz (Bill Cable) is brutally murdered with an ice pick, Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) thinks his girlfriend, bestselling author Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), is the killer. She has a thing for ice picks, writing books about murders that eventually occur and hanging around with reformed serial killers — oh, and she also has a thing for Nick. Nick likes to live dangerously, so he begins an affair with her even though he's not convinced she's innocent. Did Catherine kill Johnny? Or is the real killer closer to Nick than he realizes? With its mix of noir, action and even horror, Basic Instinct is a maximalist thriller slickly directed by Paul Verhoeven and cleverly plotted by Joe Eszterhas. It's always entertaining, even if it's often in bad taste, and it's dominated by Stone's blonde femme fatale. It's obvious Catherine is the killer, but the genius of her performance is that she convinces Nick — and you — that she's innocent. The main thrill of Basic Instinct isn't finding out who did it, but piecing together the puzzle afterwards. It's enormously fun, too, and that's why it's the best thriller of the 1990s. Basic Instinct is streaming on Paramount+.
Harpers Bazaar Arabia
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Harpers Bazaar Arabia
Materialists: Is The Golden Age Of Rom-Coms Officially Back ?
Materialists arrives in cinemas on June 13, championing the age-old charm of an irresistible rom-com, but did we ever really fall out of love with them? For a (long) while, it felt like rom-coms were, well… on life support (or to be honest almost non-existent). We some how slipped into an era of superhero showdowns, dystopian dramas, and movies with enough CGI to make anyone's head spin. But where are the messy love triangles, the awkward meet-cutes, the breathless kisses in the rain, that we all once (and to be honest, still) use to devour with a side of Ben & Jerry's in hand. Maybe that's part of why dating and romance seem different these days. When those stories stopped being shown on screen, it was like we lost a little bit of the magic. Or maybe it's the other way around—maybe the way we date now made those kinds of movies feel outdated. Either way, the late '90s-early 2000s were the golden age of romantic comedies, and it feels like something is missing from our box office billing. Granted, they weren't always the most sophisticated ouevres de cinema. They didn't have fancy special effects or deep, complex plots. But that was part of their charm. Back then, life was simpler (though still plenty chaotic) and those films captured that messiness with panache. Without all the social media hype and endless marketing we have today, those straightforward movies about life and love still found a way to connect with people. They felt personal, they felt real. And even now, the old rom-coms are the ones we go back to watch over and over again. When Harry Met Sally, Pretty Women, How To Lose a Guy In 10 Days, and many more. These movies are comforting, cosy, and timeless. These days, it feels like a lot of movies are made just to be watched once, created to showcase a production's digital prowess on the big screen or simply streamed on your phone screen, to then forget about entirely. But those classic rom-coms? They're the kind of movies you can watch ten times, a hundred times, and still fall in love, every single time. View this post on Instagram A post shared by A24 (@a24) Perhaps though, there is hope. Materialist s, starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal is set to be released on June 13, and just from the trailer, people are already excited. It has that same rom-com energy—tricky love triangle, the girl next door, and all the clichés we secretly love (and miss). Even though the movie isn't out yet, social media is already buzzing. It's a reminder that people still want those kinds of stories. The ones with charm, humour, a little drama, and a lot of heart. Maybe we got too caught up in big-budget superhero movies and high-concept fantasies and forgot how much we love the simple, sweet familiarity of romantic comedies. The truth is, no amount of flashy effects or marketing can replace a good story with relatable characters and emotions. And if the excitement around this new movie is anything to go by, it seems like rom-coms might be making a comeback. Maybe love on screen—and in life—isn't dead after all.
