Insomnia File #76: Hackers (dir by Iain Softley)

Posted on June 23, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you’re having trouble getting to sleep tonight, you can always go over to Prime or Tubi and enjoy 1995’s Hackers.

Hackers is a film about …. well, it’s right there in the title. They’re hackers. They’re cool. They’re hot. They’re sexy. And they are way into computers! They know everything that there is to know about exploring the internet, breaking into protected accounts, and rewriting code. They know all about viruses, both how to spread them and how to cure them. And they’re all teenagers! The coolest kids at school are totally into computers and they’ve all got nicknames.

Hackers is very much a film of the 90s. When this film came out, the Internet was still exotic and it was assumed that anyone who could write code had to be an eccentric genius with a larger-than-life personality. Johnny Lee Miller is Dade Murphy, a.k.a. Zero Cool. When he was a kid, he almost crashed the global economy. Matthew Lillard is Emmanuel Goldstein, also known as Cereal Killer. Lillard is hyperactive and he yells a lot but one can be sure that he’ll be a Silicon Valley billionaire by the time he’s 22. Angelina Jolie is Kate Libby, also known as Acid Burn. Hackers was early in Jolie’s career, back when she had so much personality and charisma that she seemed like she might literally step off of the screen and ask you if you wanted to step outside to smoke a joint or maybe do something a bit wilder. All of the hackers go to high school together. They all hack computers together. And they all find themselves targeted by The Plague (Fisher Stevens), a super hacker who is so evil that he rides a skateboard to work.

It’s a perfectly ludicrous film but it’s so cheerfully and excessively stylish and Miller and Jolie have so much chemistry that it doesn’t really matter whether or not the film makes any sense. This is one of those films where The Plague hatches his evil scheme while standing in a neon room surrounded by screens, as if the film is suggesting that The Plague actually lives in the middle of the Internet. The music is early EDM. The action is fast. The cast has charisma to burn. This film is about as 90s as a film can get.

Johnny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie (who was 20 when she shot this film) were married shortly after the film’s release and, though the marriage may not have lasted, their chemistry is explosive. For lack of a better term, they are totally into each other and it’s exiting to watch them interact. The end credits roll over a scene of them undressing and making love in a pool and it’s the perfect ending for this film, a jolt of energy that feels like the proper way to celebrate having saved the world from collapse. It’s also the type of thing that few studio films would be willing to do today. Somehow, 2026 has turned out to be more puritanical than 1995 and progressiveness has, for many, come to mean either chastity or performative asexuality. It’s as if both Hollywood and many modern critics have been captured by Orwell’s Anti-Sex League. (Just consider the bizarre reaction that many had to Christopher Nolan including a sex scene in Oppenheimer.) Hackers may not be a realistic portrayal of programmers or hackers but it is reminder of a time when movies were not only fun but they were also sexy. Watching the film, one regrets that Johnny Lee Miller never became a big star and that Angelina Jolie is no longer the unpredictable force a nature that she once was.

Hackers is a trip to a time that may have only existed in our imaginations but it’s still nice to go back and visit on occasion.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Story of Mankind
Stag
Love Is A Gun
Nina Takes A Lover
Black Ice
Frogs For Snakes
Fair Game
From The Hip
Born Killers
Eye For An Eye
Summer Catch
Beyond the Law
Spring Broke
Promise
George Wallace
Kill The Messenger
The Suburbans
Only The Strong
Great Expectations
Casual Sex?
Truth
Insomina
Death Do Us Part
A Star is Born
The Winning Season
Rabbit Run
Remember My Name
The Arrangement
Day of the Animals
Still of The Night
Arsenal
Smooth Talk
The Comedian
The Minus Man
Donnie Brasco
Punchline
Evita
Six: The Mark Unleashed
Disclosure
The Spanish Prisoner
Elektra
Revenge
Legend
Cat Run
The Pyramid
Enter the Ninja
Downhill
Malice
Mystery Date
Zola
Ira & Abby
The Next Karate Kid
A Nightmare on Drug Street
Jud
FTA
Exterminators of the Year 3000
Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
The Haunting of Helen Walker
True Spirit
Project Kill
Replica
Rollergator
Hillbillys In A Haunted House
Once Upon A Midnight Scary
Girl Lost
Ghosts Can’t Do It
Heist
Mind, Body & Soul
Candy
Shortcut to Happiness
Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders II
Don’t Kill It
Listen To Me
300 Miles For Stephanie

Guilty Pleasure No. 28: Swimfan (dir by John Polson)

Posted on February 26, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh my God, y’all — Swimfan was on last night!

Do you remember Swimfan? It originally came out in 2002 and it starred Jesse Bradford, the hot guy from Bring It On, and Erika Christensen, the drug addicted runaway from Traffic. The movie is like a high school version of Fatal Attraction. Jesse swims for the high school swim team. Erika is a psycho stalker who is obsessed with swimmers. Chaos follows.

I was on a high school date when I first saw Swimfan. Fortunately, the movie offered up some very important life lessons.

Probably the film’s most important lesson was that you should always put out because, if you don’t, your dumbass boyfriend is going to end up cheating on you with some psycho bitch who is going to go all obsessive on his ass and end up framing him for murder. When Swimfan starts, Ben (Jesse Bradford!) is dating Amy (Shiri Appleby) and they’re a cute couple but Amy is more into studying and planning for the future than in having sex with Ben.

So, of course, Ben ends up cheating on her with the new girl at school, Madison Bell (Erika Christensen). He does this despite the fact that Madison is obviously unbalanced from the minute that he meets her, has a major case of the crazy eyes, and tends to come across as being a little bit robotic. It’s only one night and Ben says that he feels terrible about it but Madison still decides that Ben is her man now.

It all leads to this scene:

(I have to admit that the artful placement of the camera in this scene makes me laugh every time. The filmmakers were obviously really determined to get that PG-13 rating. Also, just a little tip — if you’re taking nudes for your man, try smiling.)

When Ben keeps rejecting her, Madison conspires to get him kicked off the swim team. She also kills the swimmer who takes Ben’s place on the team and frames Ben for the crime. (The exact same thing happened to Michael Phelps but you never hear about it because all the media wants to talk about is that time he got his picture taken at that party.) And then she tries to kill Amy and, the movie tells us, this all could have been avoided if only Amy hadn’t spent so much time worrying about which college to go to. Keep your man happy, girls, the movie tells us, or be prepared to deal with the consequences. Boys will be boys!

The other life lesson is that you should really learn how to swim. Since this movie is called Swimfan and it features a gigantic subplot about swimming, you can already guess that it’s all going to end with a big fight in a pool. Ben can swim. Madison and Amy can’t. Can you guess what happens? Watching Swimfan last night reminded me that I still need to learn how to swim. Thank you, Swimfan!

Anyway, Swimfan is definitely a guilty pleasure. I mean, if you want to get technical about it, this is a really, really bad movie. The plot is derivative of every single stalker thriller that you’ve ever seen. Jesse Bradford is pretty good but Erika Christensen appears to be in a daze. And yet, whenever I see that it’s on, I can’t help but watch it. Some of it, of course, is because Swimfan appeals to the same nostalgia that still causes me to sing …Baby One More Time, at the top of my lungs, whenever I’m driving home despite the fact that Britney’s later songs are so much better. But beyond the nostalgia appeal, Swimfan is just so ludicrous and silly and over the top. How can you not be a fan of Swimfan?

Previous Guilty Pleasures

What Lisa and Erin Watched Last Night #63: Bring It On (dir. by Peyton Reed)

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, my sister Erin Nicole (a.k.a. Dazzling Erin) and I watched the classic 2000 cheerleading movie Bring It On on AMC.

Why Were We Watching It?

Seriously, how can you not watch Bring It On?

Back in high school, while I was doing my goth ballerina thing, Erin Nicole was a cheerleader and, though she denies it, she pretty much was Kirsten Dunst back then. Anyway, Erin usually refuses to watch Bring It On because she says she had already had to sit through it a few hundred times by the time she turned 17. For this reason, I always make it a point to let Erin know when Bring It On is on TV and to try to trick her into watching it with me.

But last night, to my surprise, she was the one who saw the movie listed in the guide and started watching it because, according to her, there was nothing else on. (Personally, I think Erin was feeling nostalgic but she denies it.) I joined her shortly after the movie started and, according to Erin, I spent the next two hours jumping around and acting all hyper. That’s not quite the way I remember it but Erin’s the cheerleader so I’ll take her word for it.

What’s It About?

Torrance (played by Kirsten Dunst) is the new captain of her high school’s cheerleading squad and is determined to lead them to yet another national title. However, Missy (Eliza Dushku), a new member of the squad, reveals that the squad only won those titles by stealing routines from an inner city cheerleader squad. Torrance now has to create an original routine while dealing with her cheating boyfriend (Richard Hillman) and flirting with Missy’s brother (Jesse Bradford), who looks a lot like Paul Rudd and is skeptical about whether cheerleading’s really all that important in the grand scheme of things.

What Worked?

Let’s just come right out and say it: Bring It On is one of the greatest high school movies ever made. It’s fun, it’s funny, and best of all, it’s real. The film’s director, Peyton Reed, the film’s writers, Jessica Bendinger and Stephen White, and the film’s cast all perfectly capture just how important the little dramas are when you’re a teenager. The film even manages to say something very important about issues like race and economic inequality.

Plus, as Erin and I both agreed last night, Jesse Bradford is HOT!

According to Erin, she has flashbacks and starts laughing uncontrollably whenever she hears the line “These are spirit fingers!”

What Didn’t Work?

It all worked. Seriously, if you can be critical of a film like Bring It On then you’re probably taking life too seriously.

“OH MY GOD! Just like Erin!” Moments

Last night, I finally got Erin to admit that she liked Bring It On because it reminded her of her cheerleading days but Erin added, “But I wasn’t as bouncy as Kirsten Dunst is in this movie.” To that, I can only smile and say, “Whatever,” because, as everyone knows, the Bowman Girls are always bouncy. That’s a part of our charm.

Lessons Learned

If you’re going do it, then bring it!