When a film is done right, it's timeless. The best movies have the ability to mean something incredibly personal to someone while also conveying a universal message that touches everyone. Every year has its defining films, and 1997 was no different. Somehow, 25 years have passed since all-time greats such as Titanic and Good Will Hunting made their way into the world. Not to mention, futuristic flicks such as Starship Troopers ring truer now than we should be comfortable with.
Before venturing into a new year of potentially game-changing cinematic offerings, take time to reminisce on movies that already have made undeniable marks in the pop culture zeitgeist. Below are 25 movies you won’t believe turn 25 in 2022.
"Titanic": Directed and written by James Cameron, Titanic means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Some people swoon at the forbidden romance of it all and declare Titanic the greatest movie of all time. Others can't get over the fact Rose (Kate Winslet) didn't even try to share her floating door with Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), which could have prevented his devastating death. Regardless of which side you fall on, Titanic's staying power is undeniable. The romantic drama won a whopping 11 Oscars, including best picture.
After its Dec. 19, 1997, release, Titanic became the highest-grossing film in history and held the title for a long time before Cameron's Avatar surpassed it in 2010 followed by Avengers: Endgame in 2019 (h/t Box Office Mojo). On top of all that, Titanic's theme song "My Heart Will Go On" won Celine Dion two Grammys, for record of the year and best female pop vocal performance.
Boogie Nights introduced Mark Wahlberg to the mainstream as a dramatic actor to be taken seriously—beyond Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch and Calvin Klein. Directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights followed Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) as he discovers busboy Eddie Adams (Wahlberg) and transforms him into adult film star Dirk Diggler.
Anderson (best screenplay), Reynolds (best supporting actor), and Julianne Moore (best supporting actress) were each nominated for an Oscar. The cast also boasted John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy, Nicole Ari Parker, and more.
"I was really kind of turned off by the subject matter," Wahlberg admitted during a 2020 Vanity Fair career retrospective video. "I was not interested in doing a movie about pornography, and I was really just trying to build my career one role at a time. I felt like any time there was an opportunity to do something that seemed to be sexual or exploiting me physically, it was like, I don't know." Wahlberg continued to explain that he was sold after meeting with Anderson and Boogie Nights became "one of the great experiences of my career."
Boogie Nights introduced Mark Wahlberg to the mainstream as a dramatic actor to be taken seriously—beyond Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch and Calvin Klein. Directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights followed Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) as he discovers busboy Eddie Adams (Wahlberg) and transforms him into adult film star Dirk Diggler.
Anderson (best screenplay), Reynolds (best supporting actor), and Julianne Moore (best supporting actress) were each nominated for an Oscar. The cast also boasted John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy, Nicole Ari Parker, and more.
"I was really kind of turned off by the subject matter," Wahlberg admitted during a 2020 Vanity Fair career retrospective video. "I was not interested in doing a movie about pornography, and I was really just trying to build my career one role at a time. I felt like any time there was an opportunity to do something that seemed to be sexual or exploiting me physically, it was like, I don't know." Wahlberg continued to explain that he was sold after meeting with Anderson and Boogie Nights became "one of the great experiences of my career."
Directed by Jay Roach and written by Mike Myers, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery introduced Myers as Austin Danger Powers—the shagadelic "world-class playboy and part-time secret agent from the 1960s" who "emerges after 30 years in a cryogenic state" to take on Dr. Evil, also played by Myers, alongside Ms. Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley).
"After my dad died in 1991, I was taking stock of his influence on me as a person and his influence on me with comedy in general," Myers explained for The Hollywood Reporter's oral history in 2017. "So Austin Powers was a tribute to my father, who [introduced me to] James Bond, Peter Sellers, The Beatles, The Goodies, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
"I wrote it in 1995, and the bones of the script came out in two weeks," he continued. "It was one of those things where I didn’t know if anybody would get this movie who didn’t grow up in my house. But when I showed it to [director] Jay Roach—we had met at a party and become movie buddies—he gave me 10 pages of typewritten notes. Everything he said made it better."
Myers and Roach re-teamed for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002).
Starship Troopers was based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 sci-fi novel by the same name and adapted by director Paul Verhoeven alongside screenwriter Edward Neumeier. Starring Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards, the premise was simple: "Humans in a fascist, militaristic future wage war with giant alien bugs." But as posited by David Roth for The New Yorker in 2020, the daunting and violent plot reflects more in present-day American society than it should.
Will Smith owned television for six seasons on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 1990 to '96, but a transition to the big screen was inevitable. During Fresh Prince's acclaimed run, Smith starred in movies such as Where the Day Takes You ('92), Made in America ('93), Six Degrees of Separation ('93), and Bad Boys ('95).
Two months after the Fresh Prince series finale aired, Independence Day premiered in July 1996. And then came Men in Black in 1997, where Smith teamed up with Tommy Lee Jones as Jay and Kay, respectively, to monitor (and humorously defend against) extraterrestrial activity on Earth. Per IMDb, Men in Black was the second-highest-grossing movie in 1997 behind only Titanic.
A franchise was born, as Men in Black II hit in 2002 and Men in Black 3 in 2012. Men in Black: International came in 2019, but Smith was not in it. Instead, the fourth installment was led by Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson.
Roberto Benigni directed and starred in Life Is Beautiful, an Italian dramedy. "Guido is a charming, bumbling Jewish waiter whose colorful imagination and playful spirit help him to woo a beautiful schoolteacher," the official synopsis explains. "The couple marries and has a young son, but before long their idyllic world is threatened by Nazi soldiers who force the family into a concentration camp. Guido must now use his imagination again." Nicoletta Braschi and Giorgio Cantarini starred as Dora and Giosuè, respectively—Guido's wife and son.
The film earned seven Oscar nominations at the 71st Academy Awards, becoming just the second-ever movie at the time to be up for best picture and best foreign film. Benigni took home the Oscar for best actor, while Life Is Beautiful also claimed best foreign film and best music, original dramatic score.
In some ways, apparently, 1997 was the Year of the Alien. Directed by Luc Besson, The Fifth Element starred Bruce Willis as Korben Dallas, a former special forces major now working as a taxi driver. He becomes enmeshed "in the search for a legendary cosmic weapon to keep Evil and Mr. Zorg at bay." Rounding out the cast were Gary Oldman, Milla Jovovich, Ian Holm, Chris Tucker, Luke Perry, Brion James, and Tom Lister Jr.
Director Curtis Hanson adapted L.A. Confidential from James Ellroy's 1990 novel by the same name, which centers around mounting corruption in 1950s Los Angeles and three policemen's investigation into a series of murders. The star-studded cast featured the since-disgraced Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger, Russell Crowe, Danny DeVito, and Guy Pearce.
The crime drama was nominated nine times at the 70th Academy Awards. Basinger won best supporting actress, and Hanson won best adapted screenplay alongside Brian Helgeland.
For George Clooney, 25 years removed from Batman & Robin is not far enough in the past.
"I'd gotten killed for doing Batman & Robin, and I understood for the first time because, quite honestly, when I got Batman & Robin, I was just an actor getting an acting job, and I was excited to play Batman," Clooney reflected earlier this year. "What I realized after that was I was gonna be held responsible for the movie itself—not just for my performance or what I was doing. And so, I knew I needed to focus on better scripts. The script was the most important thing. You can't make a good film out a bad script. It's impossible."
In the universally ridiculed movie, Batman (Clooney) and Robin (Chris O'Donnell) go up against Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) to protect Gotham City.
After the booming success of 1993's Jurassic Park—to the tune of $402.45 million at the U.S. box office and three Oscars—Steven Spielberg returned with The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997.
The official synopsis explains: "In this sequel, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) summons chaos theorist and onetime colleague Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to his home with some startling information—while nearly everything at his Jurassic Park had been destroyed, engineers were also operating a second site, where other dinosaurs, resurrected through DNA cloning technology, had been kept in hiding. Hammond has learned the dinosaurs on the second island are alive and well and even breeding; Hammond wants Malcolm to observe and document the reptiles before Hammond's financiers can get to them. Malcolm declares he had enough of the dinosaurs the first time out but decides to make the trip when he finds out that his girlfriend, paleontologist Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), is already there."
Vince Vaughn and Pete Postlethwaite also starred.
Jurassic Park III followed in 2001, though without Spielberg. The Jurassic franchise was revived in 2015 with the Chris Pratt-led Jurassic World. Pratt also fronted Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and will again star as Owen Grady next June in Jurassic World: Dominion.
(With inputs from agencies)