1994 was a very strange year. It made a fiendish debut with the clubbing of Nancy Kerrigan in January and accelerated ghoulishly with the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson in June. A quick succession of notable deaths—for example, Kurt Cobain, Ralph Ellison, Richard Nixon, and Jackie O. in April and May alone—reified the sense of precarity, disturbance, and change. And internationally, well, genocidal conflicts raged in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Turning back to the decidedly more trivial, 1994 also brought us the release of an oddity called Wolf. Directed by Mike Nichols, it stars Jack Nicholson as editor Will Randall, who is traveling home from Vermont in his endearingly boxy Volvo 240, shorthand for good intentions, when he accidentally hits a mysterious creature. When trying to move the seemingly dead animal off the road, he is bitten by a majestic black wolf that trots away triumphantly.

Upon his return to New York, Will is demoted in favor of his trusted protégé, Stewart (James Spader, of course), who’s been working behind the scenes to earn the favor of the publishing house’s new owner, Raymond (Christopher Plummer). Fortuitously, Will’s newly keen senses—smelling morning tequila on a colleague’s breath, hearing conversations from down the hall—are gainfully employed in his office battles. Less fortuitously, they lead him to discover his wife is having an affair with Stewart. Along the way, Will enlists the reluctant interest and help of Raymond’s daughter Laura (Michelle Pfeiffer), an ultra-cool and crafty equestrian.

Though it relishes in the absurd—Will’s leaps flout gravity and a particular scene between Nicholson and Spader imbues the term “pissing contest” with new meaning—the plot has a pleasing cadence and an old-school gloss by way of its cinematography (Giuseppe Rotunno) and score (Ennio Morricone). Ann Roth's costume design is appropriately perfunctory when it comes to the boxy, bland '90s corporate wardrobe the film requires, but inspired when given the chance, as embodied by the Carolina Herrera-meets-Carhartt styling of Pfeiffer.

The cast is blessed with an easy chemistry marked with a subdued tongue-in-cheek wink. Nicholson--inherently lupine--and Pfeiffer—inherently feline, this is Catwoman, after all!—make the most of their extraordinary self-possession as they navigate and conquer rules and consequences. This, of course, makes for an excellent time.