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The History of American Cinema: 1997

21/1 -

Col. Tom Parker, former manager of Elvis Presley, and ‘technical advisor’ on his films, dies at the age of 87 from complications from a stroke. [ADD]

26/1 -

The films Sunday (dramatic) and Girls Like Us (documentary) win the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. [ADD]

31/1 -

Christopher Guest's mockumentary Waiting for Guffman, which follows the staging of a small town’s amateur dramatics production, is released.   Christopher Guest,  Parker Posey, Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard, Matthew Keeslar and co-writer Eugene Levy star. [ADD]

31/1 -

Star Wars is re-released for the fifth time in twenty years. [ADD]

16/2 -

Elizabeth Taylor checks into a Los Angeles hospital for surgery to remove a benign brain tumour. [ADD]

28/2 -

Bille August’s adaptation of Peter Høeg’s 1992 bestseller, Smilla's Sense of Snow, is released.   Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, and Robert Loggia star. [ADD]

28/2 -

Mike Newell’s gangster drama Donnie Brasco, based on the real life undercover exploits of former policeman Joe Pistone, is released.   Johnny Depp stars as Brasco, taken under the wing of Mafia foot soldier Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino), who goes so deep undercover he begins to lose his sense of identity. [ADD]

24/3 -

Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient wins a total of 9 awards at the 69th Annual Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Supporting Actress. [MORE]

15/4 -

Action star Arnold Schwarzenegger undergoes heart surgery to replace a damaged aortic valve, prompting speculation that he has damaged his body with steroids. [ADD]

19/5 -

The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg's sequel to his 1993 blockbuster is released.   Jeff Goldblum reprises his role as chaos theoretician Ian Malcolm, joined by his girlfriend (Julianne Moore) and daughter on a visit to an island on which dinosaurs roam free. [ADD]

20/6 -

Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, the fourth in the current franchise, is released.   George Clooney replaces Val Kilmer as the caped crusader with Chris O'Donnell returning as Robin the Boy Wonder and Alicia Silverstone helping out as Batgirl.   Arnold Schwarzenegger and Uma Thurman provide the villainous element of the tale. [ADD]

20/6 -

P.J. Hogan’s romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding is released.   Julia Roberts stars as a restaurant critic who enters into a pact with her best friend (Dermot Mulroney) to marry one another if neither of them is married by the age of 28, but who discovers she has loved him all along when he arrives in Chicago with his fiancée (Cameron Diaz). [ADD]

2/7 -

Barry Sonnenfeld’s sci-fi comedy Men in Black is released.   Will Smith stars as the rookie partner of secret agent Tommy Lee Jones who is assigned to track down illegal Earth-dwelling aliens.   Rip Torn and Vincent D'Onofrio also star. [ADD]

1/8 -

Neil LaBute's independent film In the Company of Men is released after success on the festival circuit.   Bored businessmen Aaron Eckhart and Matt Molloy decide to liven up their six-week visit to a remote company branch by romancing a deaf colleague (Stacy Edwards) and then savagely ditching her. [ADD]

19/9 -

Curtis Hanson’s adaptation of the James Ellroy novel L.A. Confidential, which is based on the real-life Black Dahlia case of the 40s, is released.   Australian actors Russell Crowe and Guy Pierce star as LAPD officers hunting the killer of a would-be actress.   Kim Basinger, Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, David Strathairn, Ron Rifkin and Gwenda Deacon also star. [ADD]

23/9 -

Murray Burnett, co-writer of the play Everybody Comes To Rick's – which eventually became the classic movie Casablanca - dies at the age of 87. [ADD]

10/10 -

Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson’s tale of life in the 70s porn industry, is released.   An expanded version of a video Anderson made called The Dirk Diggler Story when he was 17, the film stars Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Heather Graham, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ricky Jay. [ADD]

24/10 -

Andrew Niccol’s directorial debut, Gattaca, - which he also wrote – is released.   Set in the near future where a person’s future is determined by their genes, Ethan Hawke plays a low-caste natural-born who manages to break through the society’s barriers with help form a disabled Jude Law.   Uma Thurman also stars. [ADD]

7/11 -

Paul Verhoeven’s violent SFX-laden sci-fi film Starship Troopers, in which youthful heroes do battle with giant alien bugs, is released. [ADD]

21/11 -

Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter is released.  Ian Holm stars as an attorney who travels to British Columbia to prepare a lawsuit after 14 children are killed in a school bus accident. [ADD]

26/11 -

Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley in the fourth film of the Alien franchise.  Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the film also stars Winona Ryder. [ADD]

4/12 -

Steven Spielberg’s Amistad, which tells the story of a bloody rebellion aboard a slave ship by 53 West Africans in the 1840s is released.   Matthew McConaughey and Djimon Hounsou star. [ADD]

8/12 -

Robert Downey Jr is sentenced to six months in jail for violating his probation, which was revoked in October due to his continued drug use. [ADD]

9/12 -

Christian Slater is sentenced to three months in jail, and 36 months probation, for assaulting his girlfriend and a police officer and for cocaine abuse on 11 August. [ADD]

12/12 -

Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential is announced as the winner of the New York Film Critics Circle.   Hanson also wins the best director award and shares the screenplay award with co-writer Brian Helgeland. [ADD]

14/12 -

James Cameron’s Titanic is released.   Plagued by problems during production and industry and media predictions that the film would be a box-office disaster, the film goes on to break box-office records around the world and make a superstar of male lead Leonard Di Caprio.   Kate Winslet also stars as DiCaprio’s love interest. [ADD]

18/12 -

Comedy film actor Chris Farley dies from an accidental overdose of opiates and cocaine in his Chicago apartment at the age of 33. [ADD]

25/12 -

Christmas Day sees the release of a glut of high-profile films: Kevin Costner's The Postman, Martin Scorsese's Kundun, James L. Brooks' As Good As It Gets, Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog, Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown and An American Werewolf in Paris. [ADD]

Other Key American Films of 1997