Guilty As Sin (1993)

You can tell how good a lawyer Rebecca De Mornay's Jennifer Haines is by the way she swaggers around a courtroom and drapes herself in the desk chairs of sleek 90s-minimalist law offices, but a new client played by Don Johnson is a real ladykiller - she thinks literally so - and knows just how to crack Jennifer's cocky lawyer facade, so soon she is making the worst decisions of her legal career, in Sidney Lumet's charmless but perfectly watchable legal thriller marketed disingenuously as erotic.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Malice (1993)

This thriller, a bit Pacific Heights in that Nicole Kidman and Bill Paxton's married Boston couple take in a charismatic but likely troublesome renter to overcome a financial trouble, is really quite fun despite how silly and overstuffed it all is, featuring an entire serial rapist/killer subplot (with an early career Gwyneth Paltrow) seemingly for the sole purpose of justifying the taking of a sperm sample for a grander story arc involving a too-good-to-be-true Uncle Charlie, a ludicrous Rear Window flourish, and a Witness For The Prosecution consultation in a squalid apartment where truths are out.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Aura (El Aura) (1993)

In this really good Argentinian thriller, an epileptic taxidermist with an eye for detail (played by the always excellent Ricardo Darin) goes on a hunting trip with his buddy and everything is hunky-dory until a shooting accident leaves one man dead and more men, grim-faced ones, show up wondering why the dead man hasn't kept some kind of an appointment.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Striking Distance (1993)

With 25 minutes to go, Bruce Willis' Detective Tom Hardy casually drops that he was closely connected with each of the three female victims of the serial killer he is hunting, a detail you'd think even the most dejected, alcoholic cop traumatised by his partner's and his father's deaths might have mentioned sooner (and even if he suspects the killer of all these people is someone on the force), but this wooden police procedural, almost so bad it's good, is more about cramming in the clichés, not about clever plotting, so Tommy's new partner, a woman he remains unkind to until she offers sex, is the next to be kidnapped, and a distinctly uninteresting denouement ensues that suggests ultimately that the connection Hardy had with the victims was a passing coincidence afterall.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

So I Married An Axe Murderer (1993)

For this comedy thriller to work, it really needed to draw parallels between its main character's fears that his new wife is a serial killer with his fears in general about commitment - some depth like that - but story depth takes a back seat in this Mike Myers vanity project - he distracts with fourth-wall-breaking nods to the camera, cameos by all his comedian friends and an elaborate but wholly unnecessary side role as his main character's father, clearly approaching the movie as an extension of his SNL and Wayne's World work, rendering SIMAAM an inane, overlong skit with the story hacked into little unsatisfactory pieces.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Cliffhanger (1993)

1988s Die Hard is transported to the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains in this 1993 action that tells the rollicking good story of mountain rescuers who find that their rescuees are in fact a gang of violent criminals seeking to recover money lost in a plane crash, and the only unfortunate thing is that the movie scatterguns the treacheries of the mountains (bats, glaciers, avalanches, rockfalls, dizzying heights, stalactites) and doesn't instead make use of longer Spielberg-style set-ups designed to heighten the thrills beyond the merely episodic.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Fugitive (1993)

The 60s show, The Fugitive" stretched its story - Dr Richard Kimble flees from police after a one-armed man murders his wife - to 120 fifty-one minute tv episodes across four seasons screened between 1963 and 1967, whereas this 1993 movie adaptation compacts the story into just two hours and adds blockbuster flair in the form of a spectacular train crash, a river plunge, Tommy Lee Jones as the dogged but misguided detective, and everyone's favourite good-guy-in-distress, Harrison Ford as the fugitive.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Addams Family Values (1993)

Morticia has a baby, Uncle Fester marries a notorious Black Widow killer, and Wednesday and Pugsley spend time at a Summer Camp in this overlong but surprisingly funny second of the 90s live-action Addams Family movies.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Jurassic Park (1993)

I won tickets to see this in 2017 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra performing the John Williams score live, and the movie - about a dinosaur breakout in an ill-conceived Jurassic themepark - is so full of thrilling Spielberg setpieces and humour, and special effects still impressive today, that I forgot to stop even for a moment to appreciate the orchestra.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Groundhog Day (1993)

Bill Murray is perfect as the worldweary, bad-mannered weather presenter Phil who finds himself living the same excruciating day over and over in small town America, in this hilarious 80s comedy classic from Harold Ramis which sees Phil first becoming dismayed by his situation, then taking full advantage of it, and finally learning the lesson that frees him.

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993)

Even less funny than The Hungover Games and as puerile as Movie 43, this National Lampoon's comedy is a Lethal Weapon spoof featuring Emilio Estevez in the mulleted Riggs role and Samuel L Jackson in the Murtaugh role and is yet another film belonging to the bigger-than-you-realised Hollywood genre, dismal-comedies-that-you-can't-believe-really-famous-people-agreed-to-appear-in.

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Sliver (1993)

A short-lived genre in the 90s was the "erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone" and in this not very erotic nor very thrilling addition, based on the Ira Levin book, Sharon Stone is the new resident in a NY apartment complex that happens to be not just under the thrall of a serial killer but also a shadowy voyeur who has the building under complete video-surveillance, affording viewers a look at what Director Phillip Noyce evidently thinks titillating: highly improbable, choreographed soft porn interactions between Sharon Stone and the likely culprit.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

With an elaborate lie, Will Smith ingratiates himself with affluent Ouisa and Flan Kittredge in this pretentious, wordy, tragic, and ultimately cathartic treatise on the human condition, inspired by a real New York professional interloper -- and I love it!

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS