I made it my mission to go see every summer movie from june thru august in the year 1998. All of these played in major theaters in my area. Just a few hours ago, unable to sleep, I decided to look back at box office records and make a complete list. MOST OF IT WAS GARBAGE!!!!!! What was hollywood thinking that year?? Please discuss. Here is the list...

!! means blockbuster to me
! means a redeeming movie
All else are crap (in my eyes)

!!truman show
a perfect murder
six days seven nights
!!Cant Hardly Wait (I somehow skipped this the first time i made the list)
dirty work
!x files
!!mulan
dr dolittle
!out of sight
!!armageddon
!lethal weapon 4
small soldiers
madeline
!mask of zorro
!!something about mary
!!!saving private ryan
disturbing behavior
jane austen's mafia
the parent trap
the negotiator
ever after: a cinderella story
!baseketball
!snake eyes
halloween : h20
how stella got her groove back
the avengers (probably the worst movie i ever saw)
air bud: golden receiver
return to paradise
slums of beverly hills
!!blade
dead man on campus
dance with me
wrongfully accused
!54
why do fools fall in love

so final count 6 blockbuster worthy movies and 7 worthwhile movies.

So you're saying there were more bad movies released in a three month period than good ones? What a shock!

Man 1998 kicked ass for summer movies!

The Avengers gets a bad rap, easily better than most movies on that list. Not that it was great or anything.

Agreed, except change the word "probably" in your quote to "absolutely, positively, oh god! why'd you'd have to remind me of that painful experience!".

That actually sounds like some surefire entertainment.

You need to pick better movies.

Ha. Blade is a perfect example of a perfect release date. If it wasn't released at just the right time (late July?), I don't think it would have done much BO. I like the movie, but don't see why it made 80mil or so. It was rated R, and just didn't really stick with me as being a really good movie. It's always striked me as a movie that shouldn't have been so big.

That list didn't have me psyched. But that was when these HUGE, front-loaded blockbusters weren't so common. I remember being floored by the advertised 120mil budget for Armageddon. But that's hardly peanuts just nine years later.

Also, funny that it's been so long, and Armageddon still takes A LOT of negative criticism from people.

Blade, Saving Private Ryan and the Negotiator were the best movies of the summer

And nice to reflect on that summer. Those were simpler days, living with my parents, 30 miles to the closest crappy movie theater. I saw...

truman show
armageddon (twice)
lethal weapon 4
saving private ryan
wrongfully accused

Out of Sight is one of my all time favorites. But I didn't see it in theaters.

Truman show, Small Soldiers & esp. Saving private Ryan were all good movies.

Hallowen: H2O wasn't great by any means but its wasn't a complete piece of shit. The Avengers was pretty bad tough and it probally is one of the worst DVD Blind buys ever.

The Parent trap & the X files were probally the top 2 worst movies of the 98' summer, I haven't seen any of those movies in theatre but I own the ones I saw listed above on DVD (with the exclusion of Parent trap & X files).

Halloween h20 was great in the last 20 minutes

Those are all good/great movies. A case could be made for Six Days, Mulan and X-files but they are decent.

The Truman show - Great movie
A Perfect Murder - Bad
Six Days Seven Nights - Godawful
Dirty Work - Godawful, and I like Norm
Dr Dolittle - Feh. Good for a kids movie I guess
Armageddon - I loved it the first time I saw it. I've seen it a couple of times since and liked it less each time. Now I hate it. Weird.
Lethal Weapon 4 - Terrible end to a great franchise.
Something About Mary - Funny
Saving Private Ryan - Good movie, but Spielberg is about as subtle as a heart attack
Disturbing Behavior - Not bad
The Negotiator - A little long, but good
Snake Eyes - Garbage
Halloween : H20 - I liked seeing the return of JLC, but that's all it has going for it.
Dead Man on Campus - Godawful, but I didn't expect much

Only three good ones from that list. So yeah, I agree with you.

I didn't see Deep Impact listed, which I thought was fairly entertaining. I believe it kicked off the Summer movie season that year. '98 had a nice mix of films.

SPR

Something about marry, Dirty Work and The Truman Show

Late 90's sucked for films imo (97 and 98 esp)... 99 got a bit better.

There's no doubt Summer 1998 had its share of stinkers:

Sh!tzilla
Armagodawful
Six Days, Seven Nights(that's how long the movie felt)
Snake Eyes(the first 20 minutes were great though)
A Perfect Murder(Gwyneth Paltrow ain't Grace Kelly)
Lethal Weapon "Bore"(aside from Jet Li, an absolutely horrendous sequel)
Mulan(Eddie Murphy ruined this movie)
Small Soldiers(I liked it better when it was called Gremlins)
The Avengers(thank God I never saw this in theaters)

But it also had some decent movies:

Deep Impact
BASEketball
The Negotiator(would've been better had the trailer not ruined it)
The X-Files(it would've made more sense had I watched the show)
Blade

Some good ones:

Pi
The Truman Show
The Mask of Zorro
There's Something About Mary

And some great ones:

Out Of Sight
Saving Private Ryan


Honestly, this is no worse than any recent summer. And unlike this summer, in 1998 we weren't bombarded with sequels and threequels, and remakes were kept to a minimum.

thats it i am renting out of sight... i just dont trust a movie with Jennifer lopez ... but you guys are changing it for me...

I am sorry, but compared to summer movie season ever since 2000. It makes me wish I relived the 1990's all over again, summer movies of today just falt out suck.

What's funny is that all those titles really launched DVD. By fall '98 all the movie studios were on board with DVD and the summer '98 movies were the first big glut of big movies to hit the format.

It's pretty decent, much better than you might think. Bear in mind it's from Soderbergh, director of the Ocean's flicks and Traffic.

Don't get me wrong, it sucks, but many movies suck and for some reason this one gets singled out. At least it had Uma in it.

Without any doubt The Avenger and Armageddon sucks each other really hard.

Deep Impact came out in may and I did see it in theaters. It definitely was a "summer movie" but my list was june-august which was after school got out. It was the summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school.