Joel Schumacher's five best films

It took me until three days later to learn of the death of Joel Schumacher. I must have been hiding in my COVID hole even more than usual this week.

Schumacher was known as one of cinema's great punching bags, a hack who was an easy go-to any time you were looking for someone quick to dump on. He was also known as a bit of a dandy, as he was openly gay for the majority of his career, which seems quite courageous and did nothing to impede his upward mobility. (The claim that he had slept with 20,000 men sounds as absurd as when Wilt Chamberlain said the same thing about women. If true, it's a miracle that he died of cancer rather than AIDS.)

And yeah, he made his share of turds. But making your share of turds is something that happens when you average .76 films per year over a feature directing career that lasted exactly 30 years (1981 to 2011). The man liked to work, and if all his choices didn't land critically, he didn't care. He just moved on to the next one.

I probably did my share of dumping on Joel Schumacher over the years; every critic did. I mean, he did direct Batman & Robin. But I had a soft spot for the guy, as he also made a handful of films I liked more than most other people did. Today I want to talk about my five favorite.

5. The Lost Boys (1987) - As this is probably Schumacher's most beloved film and I'm trying to highlight his films that were underappreciated, this makes for a good entry to start with at #5. Besides, I've actually only seen The Lost Boys once, even though it is a childhood favorite for people in my age group. I'm sure this film would feel quite dated if I cued it up today, but at the time, I remember The Lost Boys having a real sense of atmosphere and danger. (I also liked the song "Cry Little Sister," which I found haunting in a teen-angsty type of way.) It was Twilight two decades before Twilight, only good.

4. The Phantom of the Opera (2004) - I remember this movie did not do well and was generally dismissed by critics and audiences alike, but I had quite a different experience with it. I really admired the art direction, and considered it dramatically potent to boot. Emmy Rossum was perfectly ethereal in the Christine role, and fun fact: Did you remember that this is where most of the world -- those who saw it, anyway -- was first introduced to Gerard Butler? I'm sure an affection for Andrew Lloyd Weber's original show had something to do with my appreciation, but I'm hardly the only person in the audience who could make that claim, and I liked it more than they did.

3. Falling Down (1993) - Another film that was generally rejected that really struck a chord with me. And no, that wasn't for the reasons it got discussed in the media at the time, as an encapsulation of the rage of the white male who feels like he's losing his country to women and immigrants. No, I actually
wrote an extended piece in a film class about this movie, which I believe likened Michael Douglas' main character (known only by his license plate number, DFENS) to Frankenstein's monster. It was a film class on German Expressionism. I probably couldn't rehash my argument at all now, but the themes I identified spoke to me at that time.

2. Flatliners (1990) - That mood I mentioned in The Lost Boys? It's in Flatliners too. (As is Kiefer Sutherland -- maybe he's the common ingredient.) I think there's something to the idea that Schumacher had a way of engaging with young people's nascent grappling with death, or maybe just this young person, as I would have been 16 at the time I saw this. I remember being specifically haunted by the character of Julia Roberts' father, who killed himself. This movie was in my wheelhouse when I saw it and I was disappointed (though not surprised) that the remake, which I saw earlier this year, couldn't accomplish anything like what Schumacher did the first time around.

1. A Time to Kill (1996) - And Kiefer Sutherland makes his third appearance on this list. I can't really tell you why A Time to Kill lodged itself in my brain and wouldn't shake free -- seeing it with a girlfriend I was head over heels for could have had something to do with it -- but I can tell you that I ranked it tenth out of the films I saw in 1996. Schumacher was known for identifying young male actors with bright futures ahead of them (natch) and so it was with this film, which gave us Matthew McConaughey. I'm sure this film is way too overwrought and overheated for its own good, but something about it really clicked for me, and I always remember the performance McConaughey gives when he's doubled over with emotion in his climactic summation.

Rest in peace, Joel. You weren't always great, but you were a constant during three decades of important cinematic maturation for me, and for that I thank you.