The nineties were the most peculiar epoch of cinema because anything could be made, any daft premise conceived on an Etch A Sketch served with complete conviction by an array of A-list power brokers. Maybe it was the surfeit of cash and the freedom of daft ideas, a pre-digital splurge of celluloid, a cinematic Götterdämmerung.
Meet Joe Black (1998) is mental. The non-premise, that it’s stacked with rarefied talent, that it mostly comprises peak Adonis Brad Pitt tanning peanut butter and creepily following Anthony Hopkins around, inserting his monosyllabic deathly presence into high-stakes boardroom negotiations. There is a shoehorned romance as well with John Mason’s daughter (Jade) from The Rock (1996). And it’s somehow intertwined with PG-13 corporate takeovers and peanut butter.
God bless the naughty, truly barking nineties.
